Dreaming on the Job
This quirky video – Office Space meets The Office meets Joe Versus the Volcano all in 4 minutes – is a huge reason for starting a vending machine business. You might not think vending machines provide the escape you’re looking for, but keep this video in mind and read to discover more reasons that it is. (Aside: Joe Versus the Volcano is a 1990 Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks film that I watched after enjoying You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle. Not on the same level. Very strange.)
1) Your Ideal Job is Out There
As a recent graduate with a degree in something I do not want to do, I have spent a lot of time lately looking for my ideal job. The elusive dream. I only have a few small requirements:
a) I want to do something meaningful. I want to work for the good of humanity and feel like my time is well spent. Forget flipping burgers or endless data entry — I want to make a difference. Life is too short to spend it on meaningless pursuits. I want to leave a legacy for future generations.
b) I want to do something profitable. I have a lot of skills. Sure, at the moment they seem to not be that marketable, but if Joe Techno down the road can get 35 dollars an hour, possessing the social prowess of an irritated donkey, I — a well-rounded, well-read, smart, social, motivated, working woman — should be able to find something that people will pay me well for.
c) I want to do something flexible. Let’s face it: there are a lot of jobs, even meaningful, profitable ones, that are soul-killing in their practice. Take being a surgeon, for example. Yes, you are saving people’s lives and making a ton of money. But that schedule! You never see your family — if, that is, you found time somewhere between medical school and interning to start one. Your social life revolves around the nurses’ station and patients’ paperwork. You are in surgery for hours and come out so brain-dead you might as well be the next one on the table, and you find you have 10 hours left of your shift.
No, thank you! I want to see my family. I want to spend time with friends. I want a vacation once in a while. I kind of want to travel to France. Maybe Turkey. Is that too much to ask? In America today, sometimes it seems like flexibility (or, what I call, “livability”) is no longer an option. And then when you ask for all three together –meaningful, profitable, flexible — you might as well ask for the moon.
So when I found something that combined the three, I had to talk about. For all you idealists out there, don’t give up hope! You’ll never believe what it is: vending machines. I couldn’t believe it either, but stay tuned in. You can get into the healthy vending machine business and make our own schedule, make money, and make a difference. Vending in general is great, but if you really want to make a difference, health-food vending is the way to go in this day and age.
Why Vending?
It is very easy to start a vending business on your own. You don’t need any special degree; you just have to be a self-motivated individual, willing to learn, with a good dose of common sense. But you’ll find out exactly what you need after you get started. I’m here to ensure that you do.
2) Passive income
After you buy and stock a machine and put it in a great location, your machine is making money for you around the clock. Vending machines require very little attention, which means you can do other things with your time. Whether you are putting in a 40-hour week, road-tripping with the girls, or getting stuff done around the house, you can be making extra money without even thinking about it. What could be better than that? Whereas with most employment there’s a 1-to-1 trade-off, (work for pay, or, no work for no pay), passive income generates itself. It’s like an investment: Work up front and reap the benefits for a long time.
2) Flexible schedule
Here’s that livability thing I was talking about. Life happens, whether or not you are around for it. But there are steps you can take to be around. One such step is finding a job where you set your own schedule. Vending machines generate passive income, so that already allows you lots of able-to-be-absent time, but they also don’t have office hours. Of course, you have to work with the location, but within reason you can make your “rounds” whenever you want. Technologically advanced machines help this process even more. With a computer and the Internet, you can remotely monitor stock levels, maintenance needs, and cash flow. You may get to such a level of comfort that you never have to visit a machine after initial installation.
3) You’re the boss
Making your own schedule is only one benefit of being your own boss. Think of the others. No performance reviews. No micromanaging or politicking. No conforming to someone else’s vision or demands. No making money for somebody else. You work the way you want to achieve the result you’re looking for. You take home the profit at the end of the day. Of course, you’ll want to work with a vending franchise, but you aren’t working for them. A good franchise can help you with location and item selection, machine technology and maintenance, and can offer continuing support. I mean, you’re new and they’re professionals, so make use of their expertise. With the Internet, learning from the pros is easy. This clip gives you an introduction to “vending school.”
5) Healthy Vending Helps People Live Better lives
Now, as a pragmatist, vending makes sense. But can you really feel good about it? Before I learned about the healthy trends in the vending market, I would have said no. Selling junk to people who don’t need it in places they can’t resist is not the way I want to make money. That scenario is clearly less than ideal on a human level.
Instead you can make money by providing healthy alternatives to people who need them in places that lack them. Now doesn’t that sound better? Downright altruistic. And America needs some altruists working on their food. According to the Center for Disease Control, childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years. In 2009, only Colorado and D.C. had a prevalence of obesity less than 20% of the population! That’s outrageous! Clearly, people don’t know how to eat the right amount of food for their bodies. So what do food retailers do? Make addictive, chemical-filled, calorie-chocked, highly marketed food completely devoid of nutritional value and sell it to us to make ridiculous profits. That’s unconscionable.
You can be a part of changing that. In fact, if you’re getting into the vending industry, you should be a part of it if you’re savvy. Traditional vending is on its way out. People are starting to monitor what they’re putting into their bodies, and they’re starting to want it to be something that will benefit them long-term instead of just gratify them in the moment. Of course, if some little snack could do both, that would be even better.
Bright entrepreneurs are catching on. When bottled water sales started growing by leaps and bounds, thinkers put on their caps and thought: “Perhaps people are looking for something healthier among the sodas and Snickers bars in that machine. What if everything in that machine were healthy?” Others, like Sean Kelly, founder of one up-and-coming vending movement, saw devout exercisers on the treadmill with a Coke at the gym and thought: “If we don’t have healthy items accessible, how can we expect anyone to get healthier?”
Kelly’s company, H.U.M.A.N., is doing the product research and technological innovation you would not know how to do and ensuring that your healthy vending machines are glitch-free. They find what products sell – some even interview people at the location of the machine to find what kinds of snacks they prefer – and are making top-of-the-line machines with features like LCD displays, cashless payment options, and infrared vend sensors to ensure that you are making the most efficient profit you can.
So, if you missed the 5 reasons, here’s the quick recap:
1) You don’t want to be in a cubicle
2) Vending creates passive income
3) The schedule’s flexible
4) You’re your own boss
5) Healthy vending helps people live better lives
Now get started. Find a company with a conscience, and the technology to back it up, and start your dream job today.
Who knew that vending could be so interesting?
Recommended Resources
Ready to go? Become a partner operator with H.U.M.A.N.: http://www.healthyvending.com/contactus/operators
- Top 3 Things We Learned About HUMAN Healthy Vending Subscribers - July 25, 2014
- HUMAN’s Micro Markets Land on Entrepreneur Magazine’s Innovation List - July 4, 2014
- Healthy Micro Market Expansion at Edmunds.com - June 10, 2014
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