Anthony Koloje (2:32)

So one of the things that Mike is doing get his vending machines because he had some at like some of the campuses in a college town. So what he has been doing is he's been getting the like these hats and shirts and they've been putting those in the machines and selling those things at like 35 bucks a pop where he's getting.

Chris (2:49)

Yeah, okay.

Anthony Koloje (2:49)

And you're making like $1720. Because when you're doing this vending business, especially like on the smart markets, you have a very restricted square cubic inches of space that you have to fit product in there, right?

Chris (3:03)

Yeah.

Anthony Koloje (3:04)

And so one of the main things that you always want to kind of do and think about is how are you going to get the highest revenue possible for that machine? Like reverse engineering it. You know, with me in the beginning, like I would have 1 ounce bags in there. I don't have any 1 ounce bags in any of my machines now. Like I'm not going to buy a bag of chips for 38 cents and sell it for a dollar 25. Okay, you make 87 cents. I would rather buy one of the bigger two ounce bags that I can get for 75 cents, but I could sell for two 99 or two 50. You know, I'm now making $2 in profit instead of 87 cents. So in this business I would rather sacrifice margin for profit.

Chris (3:45)

Lower percentage, but better raw dollars.

Anthony Koloje (3:48)

Yeah, exactly. Because like think about it like your guy that you're going to have to pay to stock your machine, you're paying them $25 an hour. Like, well, at least that's what I pay in my market. And I'm in the Chicagoland area. For my guy to stock my machines, each market will be different. But I pay 25 and he's stocking that machine. Like I got to make sure that that machine that that guy's going to. I'm making money in his profit. If everything that I have learned over the past two years and it's Crazy that I'm coming up on my two year anniversary of like being involved in this business, you know, coming up.

Chris (4:16)

It's crazy that it's only been two years.

Anthony Koloje (4:17)

It is. It is so cr. Two years that when I joined vendingpreneurs is literally September 27th, and that's like Saturday. My wife and I were just reflecting on like how it's gone by so fast.

Chris (4:30)

What a wild ride.

Anthony Koloje (4:31)

Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. You know, somebody told me, opportunities, they don't disappear, they just go to the people that act on them first. And it has always stuck with me. So when I was contemplating about should I join Mike's community, I'm about to be laid off from my job, do I go all in? And me and my wife are having a conversation. She's like, well, yeah, we should go all in. If you get a corporate job, you know, two years from now, you could be laid off again. So, you know, we went all in. I bet on myself, you know, the rest is history. So I'm just excited here to answer anybody else's questions or anything like that that they have here today about the experience, because I've been through a lot.

Chris (5:03)

Well, perfect. With that, we'll open it up, we'll tee it up. Curious if anyone in attendance has one or more vending machines already. We'll get a sense of where people are at. But feel free to unmute if you have something for Anthony or drop it in the chat and we can read from there as well. Thanks for. Thanks for coming by this afternoon.

Gary (5:23)

I'll just jump in for a minute. I'm just curious. How do you vet with the incredible big guys that are out there? You know, everybody from Compass or Aramark or Sodexo or from United Strategies Group or what have you. How do you navigate around those organizations?

Anthony Koloje (5:38)

It's a great question. I mean, they are our competition. And I'll tell you right now, I've taken over a lot of my locations from them, to be honest with you. To be straight up, out of my 44 locations I have right now, I could confidently say probably 60 to 70% of those are ones that there were operators already in there and they were just crappy operators. One of the things about those big guys is, is that they are resistant to tech. A lot of their operators are resistant to some of these smart AI machines. So that's a huge advantage for people that are hungry and ready to go. Sometimes it's really hard to reach those folks. You know, maybe they're not either servicing it. The Best or something kind of dropped through the cracks there with that operator and they're just very unhappy with the service of where they're at. And then I would come in there and I would say I learned all this stuff like in vendingpreneurs about like, hey, this is what you say. This is how you go and pitch it. And there's all these different modules and content. Because when I get when joined here guys, two years ago when I started this business, I had zero experience like inventing. I was a real estate guy development company, worked for another company. I had my own business from 09 in 2016 and I worked for a different real estate firm from 2017 to 2023. But I go in there and I preach service. I sell them on me. It's funny that you mentioned USG is that Mike has actually for vendingpreneur community, he's actually struck a deal with them and within regards of for rebates. So again with strength in numbers with the community of how it has grown to such a higher amount of people that have been in there since I joined two years ago. Mike has been very smart and savvy by taking that and going to all these different manufacturers and like vending companies and founding USG and now we get massive rebates than if we were to get. If we were to do it by myself as a hundred thousand dollar route. Yeah. If I'm going to call Frito Lay, what type of rebate are they going to give me? I'm only 100 grand, you know. So we are like even for USG, one of the positive things about that is like with the program, we now have a distributor relationship where we're able to order all the inventory. So that has helped my operations of my business tremendously as I was doing this. But don't be afraid of the competition. I've taken over a lot of places that had some of those bigger boys in there for sure. And there's a lot of things that those people that those groups are like overlooking. And Mike and his team are doing a phenomenal job by like sourcing those type of properties that work for us. I mean there's urgent cares, student housing, like a ton of different opportunities that we have that Mike's like locking up for people in the community. I've been a benefit of getting a couple of those, you know, national leads.

Gary (7:57)

That's awesome. Yeah. Usg, I'm a little familiar with them for quite a few years and they seem to be really well run. Very beneficial for the Operators that they work with. So I think that they're probably one of the best for independent operators.

Anthony Koloje (8:10)

Yeah, absolutely. They're a nonprofit co op. It's great. Like their team has been collaborative because one of my main pitches, when I go into these buildings, I will get the pushback from some of the property managers and they'll say, well, you're not just stocking this from like Costco or Sam's. Right? And I'll say, well, before the first couple of months when I joined the community, I was. Because that's all we had access to. And so the community grew to what it grew. And then Mike was able to negotiate a distributor relationship where we were able to have access to 3,000, 5,000 SKUs. So part of my pitch, when I would go in there, I go, no, I'm like, you know, I could source anything. You know, I had a request come through the other day for Gardetto spicy Italian trail mix. I can't get that from club. I have to get that from a distributor. And one of the things is, is that it's. It's been tremendous to see the growth in my business by having those different tools that Mike has been able to bring to the community for us operators to make us more efficient and obviously make us more profitable.

Gary (9:00)

Who's Mike?

Anthony Koloje (9:01)

So Mike is a. So Vennipreneurs is the community that I joined a couple years ago, probably maybe on that podcast or something. Like there was like a link of what I went through, but I went through like a coaching program which was called vendingpreneurs because I didn't know anything about it. So I went through there, I joined their program and I've been in there ever since for the past two years. And I actually, it's like one of the main values for me of why I joined was because coming from a real estate business, going into vending where I had no experience, I didn't have time, I was about to lose my job. I basically needed to buy into a network in a Rolodex. And that's exactly what in like a pseudo board of directors. And that's exactly what I did.

Gary (9:36)

Interesting. Awesome. Congratulations. I know 20 years ago, or what have you, there was a lot of so called mom and pop vending companies out there. It was really easy, low cost of entry. And I think a lot of the big companies came in and dug deep after that. But when the pandemic hit, I think that's when you found a lot of them had to pull back, they were overextended. Which probably opened up a whole lot of opportunity for independent operators. Come in and make a big difference is probably exactly what you found, especially at a big market like Chicago.

Anthony Koloje (10:02)

You make a great point, because there was one location that I went into and they literally brought me into their storage unit and they're like, we don't know where the guy's at. Like, he's gone. Like, but here's the machine, but he's gone. And I'm like, you might be right. Because like, I even entertained looking at a route to purchase here in Chicago, like this summer. Massive route, like 1.5 million it was doing in revenue. And I thought it was going to be a pretty. It was going to be a good opportunity. I didn't end up moving forward with it. He had more of like all traditional machines. And for me it was going to be a lot of logistics, wholesaling these things off, doing this re upping, like, it was just a lot. It was interesting when I was looking at his pnl to kind of see that dip for Covid and then that year afterwards and how he was able to kind of survive to kind of get to where he was at. But yeah, you're right, you're spot on with that. You make a valid point for sure.

Gary (10:49)

Have you dipped into micromarts?

Anthony Koloje (10:51)

Yeah. So majority of my portfolio right now, out of the 78 machines that I have 45, five of them are like those micro marts. It's like an AI machine. It's a. It's a minus 40 refrigerator with a video board on top. I have 15 stock wells which are like the ambient cooler. Those are from 365. I have four micro markets. I have one through Monetto and a couple through Cantaloupe. And then I have some traditional Futura combo machines. And then I got a beverage machine, just a straight up beverage machine. I only got five of those my whole operation. Like out of all 77 machines, I have six machines that have cash. That's it.

Gary (11:25)

No kidding. Most companies just, they don't even deal with cash anymore.

Anthony Koloje (11:28)

Yeah, some of them will request it. Like the one I'm at, you know, it's a medical outpatient facility, so they wanted it there. Some of the patients, there's a lot more of like elderly people that are kind of going through there. A lot of them are. You still use cash. So that's what I ended up doing there at that market as well too.

Gary (11:43)

What do you do for your fleet?

Anthony Koloje (11:45)

So fleet wise. Yeah, great question. So when I started scaling my business last Year I was doing, like, around 18, $20,000, like, a month in revenue. And I had an SUV. But I'm like, okay. Like, I had to be pushed and not to keep plugging vending printers. But, like, it's. It's part of my story. I was stocking the machines, and Mike called me out one day on one of these community calls that he has. And he goes, hey, Anthony. He goes, why are you still picking and stocking machines? And I'm like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, who's also going to do it? And he's like, well, you're doing a low leverage task right now. I'm like, I know. I go. He goes, but what are you gonna do? The pop ins? When are you gonna scale? Because for me, I got addicted to the business when I. When I installed my first 24. 7 location, when I started making money at night. Now, I understood the expression make money while you sleep, but I was never able to fully physically feel it. So when I installed my first location, I woke up the next day. Oh, my God. I told my wife, we made 25 last night while you're sleeping. I said that to her every single 30 days while we were getting ready in the morning, giving her an update of how much money we were making. And then at the second week, third week, she goes, could you imagine if we had, like, 10 of these? And what if we had. I go, what if we had 20? You know? So, like, I was getting jacked up and excited about it. I was like, okay, this business is for me. Like, this thing's real. I'm going, let's make it happen. And I got to go. Balls to the wall. I got to make it happen. So I was still picking and stocking machines all the way to June of last year. And Mike goes to me, hey, Anthony, you know, you're never going to scale like that, because like I said, my goals have changed now. When I got in the community, it was only to make $5,000 a month. You know, like, that was it. So he called me out. I go, okay. He goes, you need to hire. You need to focus on higher leverage tasks. So I did that, and I bought into, like, what he said, and with me doing that, I ended up hiring somebody. I got all the ad through the content of the community. I posted it, screened people, interviewed people, went through that whole process, hired somebody, but the guy didn't have the right car. Mike goes by the van. I go, what do you mean by the van? I go, dude, every time I Call every time I talk to you. You're costing me money. But he was right, you know. So I went out and I bought a Ford Transit Connect van. And you guys will think I'm nuts. But like I took the measurements of the totes that I use and the guy gave me the cubic inches of the ins. The, the load because we have no back seats. It's just the front and then the passenger. So he go, he gave me the measurements and I'm like, I was reverse engineering the math and all that stuff and I'm like, I got to figure out. Exactly. So I literally went there with like 18 totes, empty totes. And I packed them in the van before I even bought the thing just to make sure that I knew how many could fit in there. So then I knew how many stops my guy could do in a day for that, you know. And you're nodding your head because I, you get it because you've been in this. But like I'm not taking a chance. Like I need to reverse engineer to how about going doing this process. So then I know what my limitations are. So right now, yeah, so I have one full time driver, I have a part time stalker that uses his car. It's like a RAV4, which is like a little mini beast where he's able to fit six or seven totes in there. So he's able to like there's a certain capacity that he has, but he's only going to be part time for me. He's going to be able to give me 25 hours a week. And then I have a warehouse guy that's in my warehouse that does my pick and pack, takes the deliveries, throws out the trash and updates the inventory via our spreadsheet. And I just made a hire for like an operations GM guy to kind of really handle the ordering and managing those guys putting temp people in place and all that stuff as well too, if anybody were to get sick. So yeah, it's turning into.

Gary (15:01)

That's impressive.

Anthony Koloje (15:02)

It's not a side of hustle anymore. That's when I talked to Nick earlier.

Nick Loper (15:07)

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Chris (17:25)

Well a couple questions in the chat. I want to get to Chris's in a minute because I think this is a good topic. But first Kristen asked about company structure, entity structure, llc, corporation, stuff like that.

Anthony Koloje (17:36)

Obviously reach out to your accountant for that. But how I've structured mine is is that I have an LLC where I file as an S Corp is how I file mine.

Chris (17:44)

That's the same structure as side Hustle Nation actually consult your advisors but potentially self employment taxes.

Anthony Koloje (17:50)

Yeah, exactly. Because there's a reason why I do it. There's a Certain tax benefits and structure of way how you can go about paying yourself. But definitely talk to your accountant about those strategies, about how you're going to go ahead and set yourself up for any business, basically.

Chris (18:02)

And you carry some level of, I imagine like a general liability in case a machine tip over on somebody.

Anthony Koloje (18:08)

Yeah, absolutely. Insurance is extremely, you know, nobody needs insurance, you know, until you need it. Right. So, yes, you definitely need that. Mike just partnered with another insurance company inside the community and I was using something, a cheaper version like online that was really like, leaving me like some risk and exposure. And with talking to this new insurance agent, the consultant, like, we totally rewrote my whole policy to make sure a lot more things were covered. Like, I had the umbrella, I had the general liability, had the workman's comp. But like, there were some things there for, like just in regards of like the machines of like what I need to. The insurance that I needed to cover for those actual machines. If there was any vandalism, which thank goodness there was not in the two years. But it really kind of coached me along the way of, you know, to make the right policy. And I only paid like 30 bucks a more a month or something like that for like more protection. So insurance is definitely important for sure.

Nick Loper (18:57)

You haven't seen any vandalism?

Anthony Koloje (18:59)

I have not. There has been other people in the community that have seen it. There is a location that I'm at which is an old traditional machine. The guys were trying to. I felt like they were trying to tip it, they were trying to shake it a little bit. Because every time when I would go there or my stalker would go there, he would send me photos of the spirals coming loose from the motor, which means that they were maybe kind of push it, trying to rattle some of those little products come down there. So, yeah, I took some definitely secure measures there to make sure that that thing's not being, you know, mess with or tipped.

Chris (19:31)

That's one of the risks I see with unattended retail. Say, well, nobody's there. You know, people are going to mess with your. With your stuff.

Anthony Koloje (19:38)

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And unfortunately, you know, at that place, there's like 247 security that monitor the halls. But these, I mean, people, if they're going to be a criminal, they're going to be a criminal. Like they're going to figure out a way like how to steal stuff or try to get stuff, like for free. You know, they're going to wait till that guy goes around and you know that, and then they Got their whole operation set up.

Chris (19:55)

Yeah. And it sounds like from our conversation, targeting more, more affluent buildings and more. You can do what you can to deter that by picking the right location.

Anthony Koloje (20:04)

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 100. You know, like, majority of my portfolio are luxury apartments, but I do have a outpatient medical facility. I have warehouses, a ton of people that crush inside the community. It's like student housing, you know, does phenomenally well for people. Office space will, if you're in the right place, you just got to make sure the foot traffic's there. I'm over four on office spaces. You know, I am, I am. I went in last September into one location. Property manager promised me that he'd be at 80% by the spring of this year. I gave him till that time to get it all up and ready to get more tenants in there. I didn't eclipse a thousand dollars a month. So May of this year I gave him the 30 day notice. I moved it to a different location. I did $3,700 in the first month where I moved it to. It's almost like a $3,000 swing for my business. So, yeah, I will say this to everybody. Like I had an easier time to clip. Now that I just have a team and infrastructure. I just look at a spreadsheet and if the numbers are not there, it's like, okay, I'm giving a 30 day nose. I'm trying to figure it out. My beginning, my issue was is that I'm a little bit of a. I'm a nice guy, I would say. So when I was going there and stocking the machines myself, I was interacting with the co workers and the employees and I was like, oh yeah, I'll make this work. And you know, and some of these other locations that maybe were not doing that well for me in the beginning that I pursued. But like I got, I was emotionally attached because I was like talking to the co workers and I went, but now that I'm removed from that, it's like stock traders like you, you can't be emotionally attached to a st. You know, you gotta sell it and cut and go.

Chris (21:30)

Sometimes that's one benefit of these things being not necessarily. You can't just put it in the back of your sedan and roll it over to the next location. But it's portable, right. It's like in the car business with saying was, well, my toolbox has wheels, right? If you're not gonna pay me, somebody else will. And so if the location isn't working, you can move it on to the Next spot. Chris brings up a good point about starting with a small budget and, you know, maybe $5,000. One machine, two machines. And I think the broader point here is like, is there a path where this stays a side hustle when you wake up and you're excited to tell your wife, hey, I made, we made 25 bucks last night. Like, is that a lane or is like. Do you almost have to go crazy and have 70 locations?

Anthony Koloje (22:13)

No, no, no, you don't. It all depends on, like where you're at, where you're located. When I started this business, I was saying, hey, I'm gonna build my business 25 minutes away from my house. It didn't work out like that. I ended up making a, ended up building it 2 hours, an hour, 45 minutes to 2 hours away from my house, depending on traffic. It is what it is. You're an entrepreneur, Something happens, the business changes. Hey, maybe you slide over there. Maybe, you know, you gotta be agile, you gotta adjust. But no, you do not need 70 locations. So, like, to give you guys an example, two of my locations right now are sister properties. One does 53 to 6 grand a month, the other one does like 6 to 6,500amonth. So just say 12,000 for average monthly is what I have from those two properties and they're right next to each other. I could get rid of my warehouse, my truck, the rest of my other guys, you know, I could get rid of like a lot of other people. Like all that stuff. I can run it out of my garage if I wanted, hire a part time guy to stock those two locations three times a week, do the picking in my garage, or get a commercial space for store, you know, storage space. So then that way your wife's not freaking out if somebody is at the house or something like that. But I could do that right now if I wanted to and make like 5,700amonth net. So it's not about locations. Don't worry about like how many machines you need. X amount of machines. I built my business out like that. I'm in a more populated area. So if, if I got a location that's doing 3500, but then if I have another one that's like right next door that's doing 1800, like, I'm just going to have the guy go there and just do it. Guy's not driving like an hour to get to the next spot where I have to pay him $25. Right. So you have to really think about it logistically, about how you Build how you build your business and how you're going to do it. And you have to make sure it's worth it. Everybody on this Q and A did not join today because they want another low paying job. Right? Right. Nobody did. That's my thing is like the biggest thing that I could say to folks is that wait for the right location. Who cares if that side hustle takes you 10 months? I would rather wait 10 months and have a $5,000 location instead of having three locations that are doing $800 a month in the first two months. So then that way you could post on Facebook that you have a vending machine business. No, because look at the bottom line. Be poised and wait for the right location is what I tell everybody.

Chris (24:20)

Yeah. Looking for a higher volume just makes it simpler on so many levels. Like higher volume, fewer, fewer stops to make, fewer places to restock.

Anthony Koloje (24:28)

Absolutely. There's a guy in the community, he's out of Texas, high school football coach. So, you know, it's demanding for his job. And he's a teacher. He is very selective. You know, he's more quality over quantity. Where with me I was more populated. So I was like, okay, I'll just take that $1,700 location. I'll just. Because it's like on the way of like what I explained for him, he was very strategic and picky and selective of which locations. So he had like four locations doing 20k. You know, so there's def. There's many different ways of how to go ahead and build out this business for sure. Depending on your goals.

Chris (24:58)

Yeah, that's some moving some serious inventory there.

Gary (25:02)

Yeah, it's nice.

Anthony Koloje (25:02)

And it's less of a headache too. You know, you don't have this, you don't have this machine, you know, potentially this machine going down. So. Yeah, I mean there's opportunities out there. I mean like out of my locations, I have five or six locations that average anywhere from 55 to 6,500amonth. I do do. And I'm concentrating right now, guys. Like my route, I did 102 grand last month. My route realistically should be doing like 118, 120. My goal for the next four months is to trim the fat on my route. Trimming the fat means moving some of those lower mover locations and putting them into better type of locations.

Chris (25:35)

Yeah. And once you have a critical mass of different machines and data, you start to say, well, there's an 80, 20 to all of this and we can trim off.

Anthony Koloje (25:42)

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Chris (25:43)

Some of the lower ones.

Anthony Koloje (25:44)

Yeah, because like for me, like I'll move those locations. Okay. I'm gonna have to pay a company like a third, like a moving company to do it. And there's a company that I, whatever, it cost me 350 bucks, but then at least I don't have to buy brand new machines. I already have the same debt service, so I'm going to keep the same debt service when I'm moving it over to these different locations. So like I gave that example of that one that I did earlier. It was $900 in that office building or 950 is what it did in May and then I still moved it and I did $3,700 in June for the first time. I moved it to that first location. So same debt service. My cogs obviously went up a little bit because I had to buy more, but that's fine. But I made more within regards of revenue and profit that much month.

Chris (26:19)

Yeah, that makes sense. Chris says for context, he's in Salt Lake, which I think would definitely have the population to support that kind of volume.

Anthony Koloje (26:25)

Sure, for sure.

Chris (26:26)

Kristen asks, maybe we can make this a two parter. How many hours per week are you working on the business? And I think we'd like to get a snapshot today and then a snapshot of when you started.

Anthony Koloje (26:38)

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. That's a great question. So in the beginning, I'm not going to lie, this is not some get rich quick scheme. I was grinding. So besides the lead generation that I had from vendingpreneurs that was working on trying to set up leads for me, I was also doing my own, my own Poppins as well too. I was.

Chris (26:52)

Time out Poppins. Mean, I'm just going to drop into this building, see if I can drop into this building.

Anthony Koloje (26:56)

I'm driving by. Yep, exactly. Poppins. I'm just. There's a building there. I think this is going to be a good situation. I think this might be a good location. I'm going to pop in, drop off a flyer. I'm going to try to get to somebody and you're going in cold. Right. So I did that a lot. I probably spent you know, maybe 20 hours a week initially because I also was like doing like my, I was rebuilding because I got laid ops. So I was doing, I was rebuilding my real estate business and starting this vending business all at the same time. So. So what happened was, is I was like split between each. So did I have like a 9 to 5? No. But I had another thing That I was trying to build as well too. That was kind of like I was only. I was tapped out with as much time as I had, like during the day. So I was doing like 20 hours. But you want to pop in as many as possible. And you know guys, it's just a numbers game, you know, you pop in for every 10 you get one. So try to pop in, try to do that as much as possible. My ratio was a little bit higher for closing the venuepreneur lead generation helped me out a ton. You know, out of 44 of my locations, 40 of them came from them, which was powerful.

Chris (27:53)

This an add on service that they have like kind of an outbound calling.

Anthony Koloje (27:57)

Service where they're generation service. Yep.

Chris (27:59)

Okay, got it.

Anthony Koloje (28:00)

So that's where I was at in the beginning, I would probably say once I started having a couple machines, you know, you're ordering inventory, it's not hard. You know, you built out your warehouse, you're picking for that location maybe once a week. The location it takes you maybe 20 minutes to pick. If it's a beast location, it might take you 35 minutes. And then you go there and stock it, you know, which whatever your commute time is and then you stocking it, you know, maybe a half hour when you're there. If it's a beast machine. When I'm saying beast machine is like it does like really well. Like where you're almost like kind of cleaned out, you know, those can take you anywhere up from like 45 or 50 minutes to do those micro markets, the open markets, they take you a longer time to stock because there's so many items there. And then you have to verify inventory for theft and all that stuff. And then you have to add. So those take a little bit longer to stock compared to the AI machines where you verify inventory. But it's more. You don't have as many products as you do as an open market does. Second part of your question. Before I hired my ops manager here in the past week and a half, which I'm training him right now, but I was working on my route with the infrastructure. I was working on it eight hours a week. That was it. But that's full transparency. I'm not business developing anymore. I did that all last year. So what happens with. Since I did all that grunt work and that pound the pavement last year and I provided such a great service, I've been now just getting. I built up a referral base now. So like literally like once or twice a month I'll get a Contact from one of my current clients and they'll say, hey Anthony, we got my. I'm referring you over to this person. They want to add a machine and then I'll go out there, I'll measure, I'll meet that person on site, take measurements, send over the contract, do all that and then have the machine installed. So yeah, basically my day would be ordering inventory, which I do maybe two or three times a week, and then reporting my business of how I have it set up. I have six different operating systems. I would not recommend this at all. But like I have six different operating systems because I have all these different type of machines that I laid out earlier in this call. So it kind of makes my reporting a little bit of tedious and a little time consuming, even with me trying to incorporate it and using AI and all these other different things as well too. Trying to find a software solution. I've been trying to search for it. I think Mike's going to build me one. There's software solutions out there. But then it's like, hey, this person doesn't integrate with this one. So it may be factor 25% of my business, but if I were to have one software, my operations and my reporting of what I would have to do like a week, it would go from 8 to literally down to an hour. Like no joke, it would be that easy for me. It's just gotta download an Excel spreadsheet, merge it all into one, go to a. It's, it's a lot. I don't recommend it.

Chris (30:21)

Yeah, I'm sure somebody, somebody listening is like, I could build that for you.

Gary (30:24)

Yeah, right.

Anthony Koloje (30:25)

Give me your number.

Chris (30:26)

Kristen asks about the journey to profitability and maybe we can take into consideration the cost of the vendingpreneurs program and the first machines. And there's different ways to look at it in terms of cash flow and debt service. But like, yeah, I'll just tee that up. Journey to profitability. How long?

Anthony Koloje (30:43)

When I joined the community and then as you start adding more locations, obviously that number of when you join the community starts being less and less like for that. So when I first initially joined like I was like, okay, here I would do it by like I would have an income statement just for like that's for that location. Then when I started growing to where I just have like one income seat now that I have where I have like all my reporting on and where I look at and everything. So like now where I was able to kind of go ahead and build the business as I was able to scale. Yeah. I used credit to have lower monthly payments. And then as cash was coming into the business, I was just paying down that debt. Some of the things that I would recommend to do is just to, you know, as you're building your business, my opinion, don't pay off any of the machines cash. I would finance them all. I finance a ton of my machines over 60 months. No difference in a car, just a way. That way the revenue and the profits of that would be able to pay off machine and that debt service, where then I would be able to go ahead and get profitability. So it's kind of like where I'm at in the beginning. You buy a couple racks in your garage from Harbor Freight to build out, like warehouse. You buy a couple tow containers from Home Depot. So like warehouse materials, you might be like around 350 bucks bucks with a wagon. But then you need the inventory to purchase for your first install, you know, so it's probably gonna be like a thousand bucks that you're gonna have to go ahead to that you're gonna need to maybe fill up your first machine. And obviously you'll have some leftover inventory. Some inventory you might not have leftover, depending on how many chips and stuff like that come in there. But, like, you'll have some inventory that'll kind of get you away. Usually like month two, month three is like when you really start turning the curve of that profitability. There's been some times I've, like, I've hit it in the first month because I've ordered inventory and. And the machine just did so well in that first month. Like, I mean, I was profitable, but I would say usually like month two, month three, it's kind of like paying your real estate taxes. Like, you're in the rear as you're kind of like building it up and you're scaling and growing. It's a business. Like sometimes it could happen in month one, but, you know, most of the time of my locations of what I've been. Month three, month four is kind of like when I really hit that inflection point.

Chris (32:41)

And then you're looking at the vendingpreneurs program as one part education cost and, you know, personal development. And then also there's this marketing and sales cost associated to it. If they're doing the outbound lead gen for you.

Anthony Koloje (32:54)

Absolutely. When I did it, like I said it had, it was for me to save time, you know, for myself, because I was starting that real estate business and vending, and my wife was like, hey, well, I don't know if we should pay the higher packages. Pay the lower package, but I did after I went through all, like, with reason why I want to do the higher package, and I didn't want to leave any stone unturned. I thought it was going to expedite our success, and I was, I was all right. And she saw that and she agreed. And like, after she got the full understanding with it, you know, we went, we went all in and she. I had her support, which was huge.

Chris (33:21)

Yeah. So would you say after three, four, five months, you're broken even on that investment and now it's. Now we're like purely on cost of the machines, debt service, cost of inventory, stuff like that.

Anthony Koloje (33:33)

I would say I got there, like around like July of last year is like when I felt like where I was doing like 23,000 or something like that a month I was doing like, I hired the guy when I was doing like 18,000 thousand, like in June. Yeah, I mean, it was like, like right around that point, you know, there. But like, even that, if I had to take it back, I probably would have kept it and I wouldn't have paid it off as quickly as I did. I would probably have stretched it out a little bit longer just so I was able to maybe conserve that cash to maybe use that for like the down payment of a machine or something like that, you know?

Nick Loper (34:06)

Yeah.

Anthony Koloje (34:07)

You know, because, like, it's. With you being a business owner, you got to be very cash flow creative of like, what's coming in, what's going out. That's one thing that I love about this business, and one of the things that I leverage myself, I got into this business is that if my machine was being delivered, I was getting it operational and I was stocking it that day. I needed to start making money that day because these vendors, they, these, they pay you out every week. So Wednesday I get a chunk of cash. Today I got a chunk of cash, Tomorrow I get a chunk of cash. So they pay you out every single week of sales, minus their fees every single week. And it gives you the good creative flexibility of, hey, maybe I should pay this. You got to make sure you have money for your guys. So, yeah, it gives you some creative flexibility, for sure. And that's the best thing I love about this business, because coming from real estate, where you got paid in check chunks, and it's like, how are you going to manage this? And it's like, this is so consistent. Once you build it up and get going, it's. It's it's, it's great business and it's a low barrier of entry of capital. I looked at all these other ones, laundromats, car washes, everything.

Chris (35:03)

Yeah, what self storage. Like let's check all the trendy boxes of what businesses kids are talking about these days. Yeah, yeah.

Anthony Koloje (35:10)

Like, I mean, like I, it even come from me coming from a real estate background. Like I ran the numbers on bigger projects for me to go ahead and raise the equity, get the bank loan, do this. Yeah, the appreciation was going to be great, but like when I was running the numbers of like what the cash flow would be per month, like I had to do like a lot of these buildings, you know, to even get to the point of where I'm at right now. And I needed a lot more capital, a lot more partners to do it to get to where I'm at right now with the cash flow. Now I'm not gonna have the same appreciation as maybe real estate, but for cash flow wise, I haven't found anything that beats this business.

Nick Loper (35:39)

More with Anthony in just a moment, including newbie mistakes making him pick his favorite machine and why you want to secure a location before you ever buy. Buy your first vending machine. All that and more coming up right after this. There are less than 100 days left in 2025, which means less than 100 days left to hit those goals that you set or to refocus your energy on what really matters. If you've got some catching up to do and maybe you've been procrastinating on taking that next step, our sponsor, Indeed can help you find the best candidates for the role you need to fill and find them fast. In fact, three and a half million employers worldwide already use Indeed to hire great talent fast. And it'll be my first stop when I need to make my next hire. Don't struggle to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. Plus, with Indeed sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to indeed.com Sidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. One of the tools I Personally see make a huge difference for business owners is Quo, formerly OpenPhone. It's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before, just with a new name. When you're running a business, you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity. The Quo formerly openphone. This is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or your computer. So no more using your personal number as your business line. No more carrying two phones around. With Quo, your team can share one phone number and collaborate on customer calls and texts just like a shared inbox. So anybody can jump in to keep response times back. And this is where it gets super cool. You can set up Quo's built in AI agent in just a few minutes to handle calls after hours, answer customer questions and capture leads on autopilot. I want to invite you to get started for free. Plus side hustle show listeners get 20% off your first six months at quo.com sidehustle that's qU-U-O.com sidehustle look at them getting that three like letter domain q u o.com sidehustle and if you've got existing numbers with another service, quo will port them over at no extra charge. Whoa. No missed calls, no missed customers.

Chris (38:16)

We talked about some numbers wise where it was like, if I can make enough sales on that machine, you know, month after month, where it's like broke even on my acquisition cost. After a year I got 100% ROI on that and now the rest for the useful life of that machine. Yeah, I gotta pay somebody to go stock it. But like the rest of that useful life is gravy. Essentially it's all profit. And so that's kind of how I'm looking at it in terms of, okay, acquisition cost. If I can defer the payments of that, pay it down with the cash flow from that machine that's generating and then kind of parlay that into the next thing and the next thing and you're off to the races there.

Anthony Koloje (38:53)

And then the other thing too is you guys gotta think about is like you have that, but then you also have to take a about in regards to like how your books look. When you're talking with your accountant, talk with him. Because you have an asset now, just like a real estate building or a rental building. Like this is an asset that you could depreciate. Talk to your accountant, but I'm not gonna say it, but like you could depreciate so much where it's going to be able to be an advantageous benefit for you, like on your tax return.

Chris (39:12)

Sure. Let's talk. Jaclyn asks about newbie mistakes for somebody brand new. I'm sure there are some that come to mind.

Anthony Koloje (39:20)

The biggest thing, guys, that I want you guys to get out of this, this, and I talk so passionately about it. You're all not on here for a low paying job. I know I said it earlier, but it's the truth. Stay poised for the right location. That's one piece of advice I can give you. Be poised, wait for the right location. Don't try to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Chris (39:38)

What's a red flag? How do you know? Because, like, if I'm knocking on doors and I got somebody to, to say yes to me. Yeah, you can put a machine here. Probably going to be like, yeah, let's do it.

Anthony Koloje (39:48)

Exactly. And that's the resistance that you need to have and the poise that you need to have as an early entrepreneur that you make a decision because you can't walk into. For instance, I had a referral last week. The guy's like, hey, I got a closet company. I'm like, okay, great. He goes, I'm moving warehouses. I go, awesome. 20 minutes away from my house. And it's on our route anyway because I got another location out over here by me. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. I'm like, not a problem. I go, how many employees you have there? Well, we got 40 and, you know, 20 work from home. I go, so you got 20 people there. You got not enough foot traffic for me. I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm like, I could do it, but like. Like, I'm gonna have to charge you a minimum for me just to cover my overhead, you know, for me to be there. Now, Mike has had a good job of structuring some of those minimums with some of these other locations that he has. He's got like a roofing company that, like, has like 25 employees, and the employer subsidizes some of it, and he makes like 15 or 1600amonth from that one, you know, and they stock it like once a week. And he makes. It's. It's a nice location.

Chris (40:42)

Yeah. Just because I'm over the owner of the company. They just want it as an amenity for them.

Anthony Koloje (40:46)

Yeah, they want an amenity. So what he'll do is that he'll send it over. So instead of charging the monsters at 450, he's charging the people at 2 bucks. And then Michael send an invoice at the end of the month of the difference of the Cox. And then the owner will pay it because he wants the amenity there for the, for his workers.

Chris (41:00)

Got it.

Anthony Koloje (41:00)

You know, he doesn't want them running at 7:11 or all that stuff. He wants them to focus, get their stuff, get what they need for the day and go out and put on roofs they don't want. He doesn't want them driving around the 7 11s and all this other stuff. Stop. And everything to find that unicorn.

Chris (41:12)

3, 4, $5,000 per month location. Are you using data from the old vending machine company that was there or you know, how do you estimate that it's going to be a winner? And you have the discipline to say, yeah, sure, if it's only 20 employees, probably not. But there's I'm sure a large gray area in the middle where you're like.

Anthony Koloje (41:30)

I don't know, 100%. And I'll tell you guys, nothing beats the parking lot test. Nothing. If there's cars in the parking lot, that's your tail. You know what happened to me in the beginning? Beginning, I thought I was being strategic. And I'll explain to you why I thought I was. I ended up using like some like this free database software from the library when I first started. And I started reverse engineering leads for myself like closer to my house. Even though I was utilizing veterinarypreneurs, I wanted to also kind of like for me, I'm a go get. I wanted to make sure like I was not leaving any stone unturned. I wanted to be successful with this business. So I started reverse engineering, like employees of like 200 employees or more, you know, like out of building or warehouse, fan manufacturing and all that. So I ended up running a list and I got it. Then I went out to go do some pop ins. What I was noticing was I was like, parking lot's not that full for 250 people. That they said that was on the website. So I walk in there talking to some, I go, yeah man. He goes, it's like me and like three other guys here. That's it. Everybody else works from home. And I'm like, oh, you know. So like I went through all these other ones and like I had like the same experience like through all these other ones. So here I thought I was being like strategically busy, like of setting up it up. Throw that out the window, guys. Just if the parking lot's full, that's where the traffic's at. You know, and then just set up your certain thresholds and stuff like that. Like, I'm not going into an apartment building if it has less than 200 units. I'm not.

Chris (42:48)

All right, I like that. The parking lot test, that's a good one. Kristen asks you to pick your favorite machine. If you, if you can only have one, it's like picking your favorite child.

Anthony Koloje (42:56)

I'm going to give you a loaded answer. I personally like Micromarts. That's why it's majority of my portfolio. They're an expensive machine. An ambient and a cooler, they are, they're just expensive. There's other machines that are out there that are a lot cheaper. So when people ask me, hey, what type of machine do you like? I go, okay, here, this is what I like and this is what I'm doing for my business. But for your business, I gotta ask you, what is your capital situation like, what is your credit capacity like, what are you going to be able to finance like, it starts there for you individually, then work the numbers backwards. A lot of people in the community this year that joined, they went with another vendor that had a lower entry point point because they could get more money out of their, their cash that they had like, no joke, like Micromart right now, like my balance sheet is probably like 475,000, $480,000 worth of debt right now. You know, with all the machines that I have. If I went with that other vendor, that other manufacturer, you know, my, my balance sheet might be quarter million, 250, you know, so I would have like a greater, my balance sheet would be like a lot less of debt. But you know, that vendor wasn't around last year when I was kind of building out my route. And I've been resistant to add another operating software machine to my business. Micromarts ones a lot. I do, I like the user interface on the back end. I like their video board up top that they have on there. I have some plans where I want to go ahead and sell ad space on there. So that's revenue that I'm not even like budgeting in there right now. Let's just be icing on the cake for me. I do have Stockwells. I do like those as well too. They work in great situations. They're smaller, they're sleeker, and they could fit a good amount of inventory in there. So if you have a certain spot where some of these other AI machines where it can't fit in there, you could go ahead and use a stock well and it's a sleek looking machine. It is. But these fees, they're SaaS fees and their credit card fees and all this.

Chris (44:36)

Stuff, everybody's going to get a piece of every transaction. Next one is Chris, would you finance and have those machines on hand then try to secure locations?

Anthony Koloje (44:47)

Definitely not. Do not secure a machine before you have a location. Because if you go to that location, case in point, example May of this year, year, I had a referral to go to this property. I went to the property, I proposed putting a micromart in this area that I wanted to put it in. The owner took that proposal of the renderings that I put together and turned it down and said, no, I wanted to go in the same place of where we have the current machine right now, where they had a current stockwell in there right now. So I had to buy a stockwell for that one. You know, don't buy a machine because like there's going to be so many different dynamics that are going to happen that are out of your control for you to make sure of, like which machine that you're to go ahead and purchase.

Chris (45:21)

Who are the best people to contact when you do a pop in each.

Anthony Koloje (45:24)

Business or each thing is going to be different, but you're definitely going to want to shoot for like an operations manager or a property manager.

Chris (45:30)

Jacqueline says I'm not near a major city. And I guess it's like, well, even in not a major city, you're trying to find those buildings where there's a bunch of cars in the parking lot.

Gary (45:40)

Yeah.

Anthony Koloje (45:40)

Is there a hospital there? I mean, yeah, just look for parking lot. And I'll tell you right now, I know you're not in a major city, but what is the closest near major, major city to you? I'm not talking major city like Chicago where there's like 2 million or 3 million people. I'm just talking maybe is there a ton town that you have where it's 300,000 or 200,000, like there's opportunity. Like, what's the quickest way that you can get to that? Like, for me, like I told you guys, my route is an hour and 45 minutes, two hours away. The majority of my locations and I made, I make it work. And I feel confident now that I could even run if I wanted to, to go into another state and build the infrastructure to go ahead and do it. I'm not doing it. My wife would kill me. But like, I'm just, I'm just saying, like I have the confidence that I could go ahead and do it.

Chris (46:13)

Cool. Luis asks, what type of information or documents are you taking in to your drop ins, your pop ins.

Anthony Koloje (46:20)

So there's a whole module about this in that community, in Mike's community of entrepreneur. But like I'll go in there, I'll have a flyer that is made with the type of machines that I want to have in my business. So you have to think about what you want to do with your business first. What is your, like I talked about, what is your credit capacity, what is your capital that you have? You have to decide on what type of machine manufacturer are you going to go ahead and do down. That's your first thing of what you have to do, of your due diligence before you even create the flyer and even go out there and go out and make it happen. Because when you go there with a flyer, you want to be able to make sure that you got that machine on there that you're working, pitching, right? Otherwise you want to show them a Micromart and then you show them another one and then they're like, well, I want the Micromart. Well then it's like, oh, well, I know Micromart costs, you know, 14 grand where the other one would have cost me six. And now you're trying to backtrack in and saying, hey, I'm going to use this. Well, I don't want this one. I'm going to, we want this one because this one has the video board. You know, now you just kind of screwed yourself because you kind of showed them something that maybe you didn't plan out there. So a lot of those steps, a lot of that education is given to you in mice community.

Chris (47:16)

And if you don't have, you know, three or four locations yet to, to say, hey, we're in this building, this building, you might recognize this property. You kind of have to showcase the, you know, what the machines look like and come in and talk a good game to say, hey, we're going to be more responsive than your current vendor if you already have somebody in place. And you know, here's why, we're young and hungry and looking to get after it. We are just about at our hour, so last call for questions here. Before we wrap, I think Anthony will have an invite to book a call with the vendingpreneur team to do, I don't know they still do market analysis or anything for your local area?

Anthony Koloje (47:48)

Yeah, those like, same thing that process that I went through. There'll be guys on, on there. They'll kind of talk to you about like your situation of like where you're located. Like that lady that had that, you know, hesitation about where she was at, look, kind of audit look, see, you know, if there's any potential opportunities and it's, it's a two way street. They want to make sure they're a good fit too, you know, because Mike has really has grown this community. He's been negotiating these national contracts with these bigger companies throughout the country. And you know where they're handing out these national leads, they got to make sure they're handing out to reliable people. They're going to go ahead and do the work, work and to perform because it's his brand on the line.

Chris (48:19)

All right, you got time to do a couple more?

Anthony Koloje (48:21)

Oh, absolutely.

Chris (48:22)

All right. Jacqueline asks about market saturation. There still feel like room for somebody brand new to come in?

Anthony Koloje (48:28)

Yeah, I took over 60% of these locations. I've taken over. You guys would be shocked. The low barrier of entry of like how people treat these locations and the routes, like how they're being serviced right now. Gary's got a little bit of a good sense of it, but like there's a lot of people, people that are not running these things efficiently whatsoever. And if you are organized and if you are a good person, where you're going to do what you're going to do and you're going to service that thing the way that it's going to be serviced and you talk with conviction on that popping, you will get that deal.

Chris (48:56)

Next one was Michelle. Do you ever get pushback from the locations that the machine is going to add to their electric bill and combination of handling, maintenance issues, leaks, stuff like that?

Anthony Koloje (49:08)

No, I haven't. Nothing about electric bill, I really haven't. I've not gotten that. It's a 120, so it's just like plugging in, you know, just like a regular refrigerator is like what it is. There is a cost to it, obviously, but like, I'm sure it's minimal. But they're so focused, you gotta redirect it. This is amenity for either their employees, their residents or whatever. Like there's a bigger picture here, you know, instead of like going back and forth to them or them bringing up like, you know, potentially like $5 that it's gonna cost like their electric bill like over the month. So. But like, no, I, I have never gotten that. And what was the other part of it?

Chris (49:37)

It was related to maintenance.

Anthony Koloje (49:39)

Oh, maintenance. I just tell them that, hey, if something ever goes wrong, you text me, you let me know, our team will handle it. You know, as soon as possible and I'll give you live updates of why something's going on. And that's it. Like we, for instance, we had something, it was one of our machines went into health lockout the other day. And unfortunately with this one machine, like you can't do it remotely. You have to literally go there and hold the button down for five seconds. So we went there, showed them how, exactly how to troubleshoot it if it were to ever happen again. And yeah, that's. That's it. And actually I put that as part of my standard operating procedure. Now once we install the machines, to show that engineer how, how that's done.

Chris (50:11)

When in doubt, do a hard reset. Yeah, exactly. Are you typically doing profit sharing with the locations?

Anthony Koloje (50:18)

Yeah, when you do residential apartment buildings, it's somewhat expected. I don't lead with it on the pop in, but it is expected. And I average like around 5% on those. It's not profit. I give them of a gross sales a month. It's really hard to do the profit because if I got Pepsi, since Gary's from Pepsi, if I got Pepsi on a discount because they ran a promotion for, for rebates for the quarter, how am I going to be able to quantify that unit specifically that I bought, that sold, you know, so it just makes it so gross, is just cleaner.

Chris (50:45)

Okay. All right. We have a couple more habits early on. What habits do you credit with your success and any other habits that came later that you wish you'd built earlier?

Anthony Koloje (50:57)

Being organized in the beginning, guys really just kind of really setting up your. Like I use Google Drive, so I have my Google Drive folder, like where I'm saving documents. Like I built out like my own little craft CRM through Google sheets of like tracking leads that I was following up with. Making sure you're on top of all that stuff. Like you're building up like a lead pipeline. You're building up a business. So really keeping track of that and knowing like where you're at, you know, within regards of your business and then set goals for yourself. You really have to say, hey, I got to do 20 poppins. This one I got. If you got the time, do 30 poppins. Sometimes I would do those on like two or days. I would three days. I maybe I do 10 on one day and I'd go one to another and maybe 10 I would go into. I'd be over 10 on that day. But then on the other one I would go into. I would, I'd pop into maybe only three because the I actually got the property manager and I did a tour with her for 30 minutes, you know, or another guy where I did it for 45. So it's a numbers game. You got to get after it and you got to make sure you set your goals and you have the right mindset for it. Not to be cliche, but just try to get like 1%, get better every single day, and eventually the floodgates will open and that's what happened for me.

Chris (51:57)

Very cool. Gary, did the 5% thing answer your tiered commission structure question?

Gary (52:01)

Yeah, I was just wondering, like, like you've mentioned, there's the difference between a good and a medium account. I didn't know if you have figured out a way to do a tiered structure. So pay for is is a lot more accurate or you just stick to a flat, Easy to handle 5% if needed.

Anthony Koloje (52:16)

No, and I'll give everybody a nugget here. So there was another vending printer that brought this up about six weeks ago on one of the calls, and I actually liked his structure better than mine. He broke it down in tears. Exactly like what you were saying. Like, hey, get to this threshold. You give him x percent. You give this threshold, you get this percent. And I like that. I do. You learn something new every day.

Nick Loper (52:34)

Learn something new every day. That's a great place to wrap this one up. I know I got a ton of value from this call with Anthony, and I hope you did as well. I think the line that st out to me was the visual and the excitement of telling his wife how they literally made money while they were sleeping 25 bucks at a time. Hey, imagine if we could scale this. Really, really fun. If you want to learn more about setting up a vending route in your.

Chris (52:56)

Area, make sure to set up a.

Nick Loper (52:58)

Call with the vendingpreneurs team@sidehustlenation.com vending call all one word. We'll also link up that resource in the show notes and description for this episode along with the full previous interviews with both Anthony and Mike. Big thanks to Anthony for sharing his ins. Thank you to the side hustle nation community for showing up live and bringing those really thoughtful questions to the table. And of course, thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Sidehustlenation.com deals is where to go for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle show. Hustle on.