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This episode is a rebroadcast. Dusty has handpicked episodes from the archive to air while she and Ash are on their annual summer break. New episodes resume in September! This week we are delighted to present another special episode dedicated to exploring the lived experiences of people of color with ADHD by presenting an interview with ADHD coach Marc Almodovar. Along with being a coach, Marc is an advocate for men's mental health and runs a support group for men with fellow mental health advocate John Hazelwood. In this episode, Marc speaks about his own challenges growing up with ADHD and depression in a Hispanic community wary of mental health issues. Marc shares how his own diagnosis at 16 changed everything for him, answering so many questions, and how he found support and encouragement from his similarly wired father. Marc discusses with Cam how his desire to change the narrative on men's mental health inspired him to share his own story of struggle and resilience and how the power of a supportive community is essential to real change. Join us in this fascinating, inspiring and far-ranging discussion with Marc Almodovar. Marc's attitude and enthusiasm will carry you through the rest of your day! Episode links + resources: Marc's Twitter feed ADHD Men's Support Group Advocate Kofi Obeng Interview ADHD Parent Advocate Rhashidah Perry Jones Interview ADHD Coach Inger Shaye Colzie Interview Join the Community | Become a Patron Our Process: Understand, Own, Translate. About Asher, Dusty and Cam For more of the Translating ADHD podcast: Episode Transcripts: visit TranslatingADHD.com and click on the episode Follow us on Twitter: @TranslatingADHD Visit the Website: TranslatingADHD.com
The Texas Republicans weren't messing around. Their Trump-directed redistricting map could end the political careers of the three longest-serving Texas Democrats in Congress and shake up who represents Black and Hispanic districts. It all triggered heated exchanges in and around the Texas Capitol. We break it all down, plus give you the latest on the battle over THC products, the future of the STAAR test and another potential way Gov. Greg Abbott wants to stop property tax hikes. As an added bonus, we have a rare recording of Ronald Reagan weighing in on the evils of redistricting 35 years ago in one of his last speeches ever on the topic. Host Jeremy Wallace breaks it all down with Reporters Isaac Yu and Benjamin Wermund. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The left is counting on friendly House maps in California, New York, and other states to get them a House majority back in 2026. Is it time for Republicans to strike back by redrawing the map of Texas's House seats? Texas state Rep. Abraham George discusses a bid that could net Republicans up to 5 additional seats next year — if the Hispanic vote continues to trend Republican. Plus, Hillsdale's Prof. Paul Rahe discusses the prospects for peace in Ukraine and whether Vladimir Putin has gotten himself stuck in a long-term quagmire of his own making. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Title: How to Make Millions with Vending Machines with Mike Hoffman Summary: In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike Hoffman delve into the world of vending machines as a business opportunity. Mike shares his journey from a Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur in the vending industry, highlighting the evolution of vending technology and the potential for passive income. They discuss the importance of location, understanding demographics, and the scalability of vending routes. Mike emphasizes the need for upfront work and learning before delegating tasks, while also addressing the misconceptions surrounding passive income in the vending business. In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike discuss various aspects of entrepreneurship, particularly in the vending machine business. They explore the importance of capital raising, the journey of self-discovery, influences that shape business decisions, and the definition of success. The dialogue emphasizes the significance of flexibility, discipline, and focus in achieving entrepreneurial goals, while also touching on financial milestones and the attributes that distinguish successful entrepreneurs. Links to Watch and Subscribe: Bullet Point Highlights: Mike's journey from a classic Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur. The evolution of vending machines from traditional to smart technology. Understanding the importance of location in the vending business. The analogy of baseball levels to describe starting in vending. Scaling up from single A to big leagues in vending routes. The significance of demographics in product selection for vending machines. The potential for passive income with proper systems in place. The need for upfront work before achieving passivity in business. Vending is not a get-rich-quick scheme; it requires dedication. The future opportunities in the vending industry are expanding rapidly. Raising capital can dilute ownership but may be necessary for rapid growth. Self-discovery often leads to unexpected career paths. Influences in business can come from personal experiences rather than just mentors. Success is often defined by the ability to prioritize family and flexibility. Entrepreneurs work harder than in traditional jobs but gain flexibility. Discipline is crucial for saying no to distractions. Successful entrepreneurs often focus on niche markets. High foot traffic locations are ideal for vending machines. AI is transforming business operations and efficiency. Networking and connections can lead to valuable opportunities. Transcript: Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:04.898) Mike, what's going on buddy? Doing great brother, doing great. How about you? Mike (00:06.748) Don't worry, Mike (00:11.664) Good, I'm a little flustered. I usually have my mic set up over here, but I guess we just moved and it's not here today. I guess, yeah, new office and it's been a whole hot mess. Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:19.822) New office or what? Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:27.862) Nice man, nice. I see you got the whiteboard cranking back there. Love to see that. Mike (00:33.114) Always. I love your background. That's sweet. Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:38.03) Thanks man, yeah, I'm on camera all the time so I like I need to just build this out instead of using like a green screen so Made the investment made it happen Mike (00:44.86) Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:49.442) Have we met in person or not? I don't know if we've met at a Wealth Without Wall Street event or I couldn't tell. Okay. No, I did not go to Nashville last year. Mike (00:58.478) I don't think so. don't think you're... Were you in Nashville last year? Mike (01:04.634) No, okay. No, I don't think we've met in person. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:08.256) Okay, all good, man. All good. Well, cool. I'll just go over the format real quick. We'll do kind of a shorter recording. We're do like 30 minutes, something like in that range. And then we'll just kind of like break. And then I'll, want to record a couple of other quick segments where I call it Million Dollar Monday. I'm kind of asking you about how you made your first, last and next million. And then 1 % closer, which would just be kind of what separates you, what makes you the top 1 % in your particular vertical. So we'll just kind of record those separately. Those will be real short, like five minutes or so. Mike (01:44.924) Okay, yeah, I'll follow your lead. All good. Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:47.15) Cool. Cool. Let's see. I think I already have this auto recording. So we're already recording. So I'll just jump right in. Mike (01:55.377) Okay. Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:57.782) Welcome to Raise the Bar Radio, hosted by yours truly Seth Bradley. We today we've got Mr. Passive, Mike Hoffman. Mike, welcome to the show. Mike (02:08.189) Thank you for having me fired up to be here. Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:10.855) Absolutely man, really happy to have you on. I know it's been a little bit of a trek here to get our schedules lined up, but really stoked to have you on today, man. I see you said you moved into a new office. You've got the whiteboard cranking, so love to see it. Mike (02:25.372) yeah, whiteboards are the only place I can get my thoughts down. Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:29.399) Yeah, man, it makes a difference when you actually write something rather than type it or even on a mirror board where you're doing it online. just there's something about physically writing something down. Mike (02:41.328) You know, I'm glad you said that because yesterday I flipped to Seattle for a quick work trip and I didn't have wifi and I literally had three pages of just, I, was so like the clarity of some of these kinds of bigger visions I have now from just being able to write for an hour on a flight was, I was like, man, I gotta do this more often. Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:00.363) Yeah, for sure. The key though is once you write it down, it just doesn't go into the trash or into a black hole somewhere where you never see it again. So that's kind of the disadvantage there. If you have it on your computer and you're taking notes or you have it on a mirror board, at least it's there to reference all the time. If you write it down on paper, sometimes, I've got my Raze Masters book right here for notes, but it's like, it might go into the abyss and I'll never look at it again. So you gotta be careful about that. Mike (03:27.184) Yeah, yeah, I need to check out the Miro boards. I've heard a lot of good things about them. Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:31.467) Yeah, yeah. Awesome, Mike. Well, listen, for our audience who doesn't know anything about you, maybe just tell them, you know, tell them a little bit about your background. Tell them about your your main business and we can take it from there. Mike (03:43.354) Yeah. So I think for those that don't know about me, I'm a classic Midwest farm boy started with a classic, you know, showing cattle at the county fair and all of that and had a lemonade stand growing up. And then my first job was actually at McDonald's, you know, thinking about the whole success of that business model. But when I was coaching and, out of college, I got my first rental and I was like, wow, this is crazy. making money without. really much time involved. and then with my work in Silicon Valley, know, Seth, was classic Silicon Valley, you know, cutthroat job that, startup life and traveling three weeks out of the month. And I was on, I was in airports all the time. And was like, these vending machines I would run into at airports were just so archaic. And so I went down this path of like unattended retail and kind of the future of, of that. And that's really where I just see a huge opportunity right now. And so it's kind of what led me into all these different income streams that I'm passionate about. Seth Bradley, Esq. (04:49.431) That's awesome, man. Well, let's dive into that a little bit deeper. me about these income streams. It centers around vending machines, right? But I'm sure there's a lot more to it. I'm sure there's a lot of different entry points for people. Maybe just kind of give us a general synopsis to start out. Mike (05:06.78) Yeah, so I think the big thing with, you know, if we're talking vending specifically as an income stream, you know, most people think of vending as the traditional machines where you enter in a code, you put your card on the machine and then a motor spirals down a Snickers bar or a soda and you go into the chute and grab it. Nowadays, there's these smart machines that literally you just unlock the door, or even if you go into, land in the Vegas airport right at the bottom of the escalator where it says, welcome to Las Vegas, there's a 7-Eleven with gates and AI cameras, and there's no employees in the 7-Eleven. And it just tracks whatever you grab and to exit the gate, you have to pay for it. So like, there's just this huge market now where we just installed it in urgent care. less than two months ago and we can do over the counter meds in that machine because it doesn't have to fit into a motor. It's just shelf space. You identify with the planogram with the AI cameras like, okay, Dayquil in this slot or Salad in this slot and then whatever they grab, gets charged to the person that pulls it from it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (06:15.469) That's interesting, man. Yeah, I mean, my initial thought too, was just like the traditional old vending machine where you're getting a candy bar or a cola out of there. But yeah, nowadays, now that you mentioned that, you see this more and more every single day where you've got these scanners, you've got kind of self-checkout, that sort of thing. So that's kind of, that expands that world and really opens it up to the future, right? Like it just really, that's what we're trying to get to, or at least we think we wanna get there, where we're kind of removing humans and... kind of working with technologies and things like that. Mike (06:49.488) Yeah, and I think, you know, removing the whole human thing. mean, those machines still got to get stocked and you know, there's not robots running around doing that. But I just come back to, I was a Marriott guy when I was on the road all the time and I'd go to these grab and goes at a Marriott and grab a, the end of the night, I'd grab like a little wine or an ice cream sandwich. And I literally had to go wait in line at the check-in desk behind three people checking in just to tell them, Hey, put these on. room charge and I was like if I had a checkout kiosk in that grab-and-go I could have just removed all the friction for this customer experience. Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:27.772) Right, 100%. Yeah, I mean, there's a place and time for it and there's more and more applications for it that just pop up every single day and you can kind of spot that in your life as you're just kind of moving through, whether you're checking into your hotel or whatever you're doing. Mike (07:41.456) Yeah, yeah. So that's just kind of what excites me today. Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:45.973) Yeah, yeah, so when a stranger asks you what you do just in the street, what do you tell them? Because I have a hard time answering that question sometimes too, but I'd love to hear what your answer is. Mike (07:56.804) Yeah, I would just say it depends on the day. You know, what do you do or what's your, you know, it's like at the golf course when you get paired up with a stranger and they're like, tell me about what you do for your career. And I just say, I'm a classic entrepreneur. And then I'm like, well, what do you do? And it's like, well, tell me about the day. You know, what fire are you putting out? Like today we just got the go ahead for five more urgent cares for our local route. But then, you know, we have a community of operators across the country that we help really build. Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:57.933) haha Ha ha ha. Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:09.879) Yeah. Yeah. Mike (08:25.616) Vending empires and so we had a group call this morning. So literally, there's a lot of just, you know, it's classic entrepreneurial life. You never know what the day's script is gonna be. Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:36.161) Yeah, for sure. And you focus a lot on not only on your own business, but also teaching others, right? Teaching others how to kind of break into this business. Mike (08:45.402) Yeah, that's my passion, Seth. When I got into my first investment out of college was a $70,000 rental, you know, putting 20 % down or 14K and using an emergency fund. like my background in going to college was as a coach. like I knew I wanted to kind of take that mindset of like coaching people, you know, teach them how to fish. I don't want to catch all the fish myself. It's just not fulfilling that way. So that's really where my passion is. Seth Bradley, Esq. (09:15.373) Gotcha, gotcha. tell me about like, tell me about step one. I mean, how does somebody break into this business? Obviously your own personal business is probably very advanced. There's probably a lot more sophisticated investing strategies at this point and you've got different layers to it. But somebody just kind of starting out that said, hey, this sounds pretty interesting. This vending machine business sounds like it can be passive. How do you recommend that they get started? Mike (09:40.57) Yeah, so I'm always, I view like the whole vending scale as similar to Major League Baseball. You got your single A all the way up to the big leagues. And if you're just starting out, I always recommend like find a location where you can put a machine and just learn the process. Like to me, that's single A analogy. you know, that always starts with, people want to jump right to like, well, what type of machines do you recommend? products, how do you price products? And the first question I'll always ask Seth is, well, what location is this machine going in? And they're like, well, I don't know yet. I was just going to buy one and put it in my garage to start. And it's like, no, you need to have the location first. So understanding that, is it a pet hospital? Is it an apartment? Is it a gym? Where is the foot traffic? And then you can cater to what's the best machine for that type of location. Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:36.887) Got it, got it. Now is this a kind of a rent, you rent the space to place the machine with that particular business or wherever you're gonna place it or how does that all come together? Mike (10:47.644) not typically, some people are kind of more advanced, like apartment complexes are used to the revenue share model. So they're going to ask for a piece of the pie for sure, for you to put the machine in their lobby. but like, you know, when we're talking urgent carers or even pet hospitals are viewing it as an amenity. And so we probably have, I don't even know how many machines now 75 now, and we, you know, less than half of those actually, Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:50.423) Okay. Mike (11:15.1) us rent or ask for a revenue share to have them in there. So I never leave lead with that, but we'll do it if we need to get the location. Seth Bradley, Esq. (11:23.989) Interesting gotcha. So it's really a value add for wherever you're gonna place it and that's how most people or I guess most businesses would look at that and then you're able to capture that that space Mike (11:27.366) Mm-hmm. Mike (11:34.236) Yeah, absolutely. So, um, a great case study is we have a 25 employee roughing business here in Oregon. And you might think like, only 25 employees. It's not going to make that much money. Well, we do $1,200 a month. And the cool thing about this, Seth, is the CEO of this roughing company literally did napkin math on how much it costs for his employees to drive to the gas station during their 20 minute break. And then How much they're paying for an energy drink at the gas station and then how much gas they're using with the roofing like the work trucks to get to and from the gas station So he's like I want to bring a smart machine into our warehouse Set the prices as half off so that four dollar monster only costs his rofers two dollars and then we invoice him the the business owner every month for the other 50 % and so he actually Calculated as a cost savings not asking for money to rent the space Seth Bradley, Esq. (12:35.597) Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. I love the baseball analogy with the single A, double A, triple A, even into the big leagues here. know, a lot of the folks that listen to this are already kind of, you know, in the big leagues or maybe think about some capital behind them. Like how would they be able to jump right in, maybe skip single or double A or would they, or do you even suggest that? Do you suggest that they start, you know, small just to learn and then maybe invest some more capital into it to expand or can they jump right to the big leagues? Mike (12:48.891) Yeah. Yeah. Mike (13:03.966) I think they can jump right to the big leagues. this is, I'm glad you brought this up because just listening to some of your episodes from the past, there's no doubt that you have people that could buy a route like a off biz buy sell today. And I think this is a prime opportunity. it's very similar to flipping a house. you, you know, there's a route in Chicago, I think it was for $1.1 million, you know, whatever negotiating terms or seller financing or, or what have you, got a lot of, your, your audience that is experts in that. But the cool thing about these routes is they have the old school machines that have the motors and that are limited to, this type of machine, you can only fit a 12 ounce cannon. Well, guess what? The minute you buy that route, you swap out that machine with one of these micro markets or smart machines. Now you just went from selling a 12 ounce soda for $1.25 to now a 16 ounce monster for $4.50. Well, you just bought that location based on its current revenue numbers and by swapping out that machine, you're going to two or three acts your revenue just at that location. And so it's truly just like a value play, a value upgrade, like flipping the house of, okay, there's a lot of deals right now of these routes being sold by baby boomers where it's like, they got the old school Pepsi machine. Doesn't have a credit card reader on it. They can't track inventory remotely via their cell phones. So They're not keeping it stocked. Like all those types of things can really play in your favor as a buyer that just wants to get to the big leagues right away. Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:37.651) I love that. When you say buy a route, what are you really buying? Tell me about the contractual agreement behind that. What are you really buying there? Mike (14:47.184) You're just buying the locations and the equipment associated with it. So like this Chicago route, it's like, we have machines in 75 properties all across the Chicago suburbs. And they could be medical clinics. could be apartments. could be employee break rooms at businesses, but that's when you start diving into those locations. It's like, I have a snack machine and a soda machine here. Well, you swap that out with a micro market that now instead of. Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:49.279) Okay. Okay. Mike (15:13.626) that machine that'll only hold a small bag of Doritos that you charge two bucks, well now you get the movie size theater bags that you can really put in there in a micro market. Like naturally just that valuation of that route based on those 75 machines current revenue, I mean you're gonna be able to two or three X your revenue right by just swapping out those machines. Seth Bradley, Esq. (15:35.959) Wow, yeah, I love that analogy with real estate, right? It's just like a value add. It's like, how can I bring in more income from what already exists? Well, I need to upgrade or I need to put in some capital improvements, whatever you want to call it. Here's the vending machine upgrades or a different kind of system in there. And you get more income. And obviously that business in itself is going to be worth more in a higher multiple. Mike (15:58.396) Absolutely. mean, a great example of this is we had a machine in an apartment complex and it was your traditional machine with the motors and you have to enter in the code. Well, we could only put in four 12 ounce drinks and then chips. Well, we swapped that out with a micro market. Well, now that micro market, we literally put in bags of Tide Pods for laundry, like these big bags of Tide Pods. We'll sell those like hotcakes for 15 bucks. And our old machine, Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:25.281) Yeah, let's say those aren't cheap. Mike (16:27.246) Yeah, our old machine Seth, it would take us to get to 15 bucks, we'd have to sell eight Snickers. That's one transaction. Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:33.547) Right, right. Yeah, yeah. How do you do an analysis kind of based on like what you think is gonna sell there, right? Like you're replacing, let's say a Dorito machine with Tide Pods, you know? So you have to individually go to each location and figure out what will work, what will sell. Mike (16:47.738) Yeah. Mike (16:51.834) It's all about demographic. Absolutely. So, you know, we have, we have, we have a micro market and a manufacturing plant that's, it's a pumpkin farm and there's a ton of Hispanic workers. So we do a lot of like spicy foods, a lot of spicy chips. do, we do a ton of, mean, the sugar or sorry, the glass bottle cokes. They do, they love their pastries. Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:53.431) Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:06.349) Yeah. Mike (17:15.868) So we just doubled down on the demographics. So yesterday I was filming at one of our micro markets that's in a gym and they crushed the Fairlife protein shakes, like the more modern protein shakes, but they won't touch muscle milk. So we're literally taking out one row of muscle milk just to add an extra row of Fairlife shakes. So you're constantly just catering to the demographics and what's selling. Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:40.632) Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I mean, this is literally just like real estate, right? Like you go and you find a good market. You're talking about demographics, right? Find the market, see what they want, see how much you can upgrade, how you can upgrade. If it's an apartment, it's a unit. If it's here, it's the product that you're selling and the type of machine, or maybe it's a mini market. A lot of things to kind of tie your understanding to here. Mike (17:45.926) Yeah. Mike (18:05.904) Yeah, absolutely. Seth Bradley, Esq. (18:07.615) Yeah, awesome, man. Awesome, Where are you at in your business? Like what, you know, what are the big leagues looking like right now? You know, what are you doing to expand your business, raising the bar in your business? Mike (18:18.692) Yeah, I'm going after that's a really good question. I'm going after kind of these newer markets and we're kind of past that point of like, okay, let's pilot in this location. For example, that urgent care, we didn't know if it was going to be a good location two months ago when we installed. Well now it's already crushing it. Well, there's six other urgent cares in town and we just got to go ahead on five of those six. So like for me, it's doubling down on our current proof points of where. okay, we know that manufacturing plant, the pumpkin farm does really well. So let's start getting intros to all their, manufacturers of the products they need to grow pumpkin. know, like we're just doubling down on scaling because now we have the operational blueprint to really just kind of to go after it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:03.917) Gotcha, gotcha. Tell me about how passive this can really be, right? So I used to have, before we switched over to the new brand, Raise the Bar podcast, it was the Passive Income Attorney podcast, right? I was really focused on passive investments, focused on bringing in passive investors into my real estate deals, things like that. And I think that word passive gets thrown around quite a bit, right? And sometimes it's abused because people get into things that are not truly passive. Mike (19:18.427) Yeah. Mike (19:28.784) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:33.517) What's your take on that as it relates to the vending business? Mike (19:38.49) Yeah, so I think as far as with the vending business, there's clearly upfront leg work that needs to be done, whether that's finding locations or any of those things. So I have a route that is here in Oregon, and then we bought a route last year in Illinois and have scaled that route. I spend 30 minutes a week on each route now. that these urgent cares and stuff, like we have an operator that's running the whole route. Here's the problem, Seth. It's like people are so scared to build systems to ultimately systemize things or they're too cheap to hire help. And I'm the opposite. like, you know, kind of like Dan Martell's buy back your time. Like I have like a leverage calculator and like I constantly think about is this worth my time? Cause as you know, you're busier than me. Like it's so limited. for me, my routes, I would consider them passive, like one hour a week is, is nothing in my mind. But as far as like, you know, I'm, I'm also a passive investor on, we're building a, an oil loop station in Florida and I sent my money a year ago to, to my, active investor and I haven't talked to him since. Like that's actually truly probably passive now, you know, I'm not doing anything, but there's, there's different levels to that. And I'm a huge believer like. don't delegate something until you know what you're delegating. So people that want to start with the vending routes, sure, if you want to buy a route that already has an operator, that's one thing. but these, if you're starting a vending route for your kid or for your stay at home wife or whatever, as a side hustle, like get in the weeds and install that first machine. So when you hire help to take over the route, you know what you're delegating. Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:09.773) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:27.021) Yeah, that's key. That's key. And you you described just like any other business, right? I think that's kind of where people get themselves into trouble. That sometimes they get sold the dream that is truly passive. And eventually it can be. I mean, you're talking about an hour a week. To me, that's pretty damn passive, right? But you know, upfront, you you've got to learn the business. You've got to know what you're getting yourself into. Like you said, you've got to learn before you delegate so that you know what you're delegating. There is going to be some upfront work and then as you're able to kind of delegate and learn Then you can make it more and more passive as you go Mike (22:00.88) Yeah, I mean, it's no different than what's the same when people tell you that they're busy. I mean, you're just not a priority. Like that's a fact. you're not. People say it's the same thing when people come to me and they're like, I'm so busy. It's like, okay, well let me, let me see your schedule. Where are you spending your time? You know, it's like when people are like, I can't lose weight. Okay, well let me see your food log. What did you eat yesterday? Did you have ice cream? Like this is like the same kind of thing. That's where passive I think has been really abused. Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:16.097) Yeah. Yep. Mike (22:29.638) To me, the bigger issue is like, vending is not get rich quick. And so like, if you're expecting to leave your nine to five tomorrow and vending is going to make up for that in one day, like that's not going to Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:41.089) Right, Makes sense. Speaking of passive, do you raise capital or do you have any kind of a fund or have you put together a fund for something like this? Mike (22:51.48) We haven't put together a fun, we're definitely buying routes is definitely becoming more and more intriguing. And I know there's some PE players starting to get into the vending game, but it's something we've been definitely considering and on our radar of do we want to. Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:58.541) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:10.231) Gotcha. Cool. I mean, you brought in money partners for some of those routes yet, or is that still something you're exploring too? Mike (23:18.168) No, I think it's just something we're thinking about. mean, what do you recommend? Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:21.089) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd recommend I mean, it depends, right? Like I'm I'm scared to turn you by trade, but I don't like to say you should always raise capital no matter what. Right. Like you've been able to scale your business as you have and grown it to where it is without bringing outside capital. It sounds which is great because you own 100 percent or with whatever business partners you might have. You know, when you start raising capital, you're giving a large chunk of that piece away, not necessarily your whole company. But if you're buying you know, a set of routes or that sort of thing. You you're gonna give a big piece away to those past investors if you're starting a fund or even if it's up. Even a single asset syndication here for one of these, you know, these routes, you could put it together that way. You know, it's just something to consider. But a lot of times when people are looking to scale fast, right, if they wanna grow exponentially, you've gotta use other people's money to get there or hit the lottery. Mike (24:08.294) Mm. Mike (24:15.856) Absolutely, no, agree. That's spot-on and I actually before you know the Silicon Valley company That I was part of we had a we went through probably series a B C D C ground Let's just say we weren't very fiscally responsible. So I come from the, you know, it's like the ex-girlfriend example. I don't want to just start taking everyone's money. Seth Bradley, Esq. (24:42.413) Yeah, yeah, that tends to happen with some startups, right? Like before you get funding, you're super frugal because it's your money and every single dollar counts. And you're like, I don't want to pay, you if it's software, you don't want to pay the software engineers. I'm going to out, you know, put it, you know, hire Indian engineers, that sort of thing. And then once you get a few million bucks that you raised in that seed round, then it just goes and you're like, whoa, wait a minute, let's hire 20 people. You know, it's you got to be careful about that. Mike (25:05.606) Yeah Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great take on it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:11.245) Yeah, it's, yeah. It's a question I love to ask and I think it's about time for that. So, in a parallel universe, tell me about a different version of you. So a different but likely version, right? Like, for example, for me, I went to med school for a year and a half and then I dropped out and I ended up becoming an attorney. So that was like a big turning point, right? So I could have easily at some point just said screw it and became a doctor and that would have been a totally different route than I'm going down right now. What's an example of something like that for you? Mike (25:42.524) Wait, are you being serious about that? I took the MCAT too. I got into med school and then I, yeah, I was pretty mad in school. And then the more I learned about exercise science, I was like, organic chemistry is not fun. Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:44.321) Yeah, totally. yeah? There you go. Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:57.39) It is not fun. I did not love that. I majored in exercise physiology and then I ended up switching to biology because it was just a little bit of an easier route to get my degree and go into med school and I went for a year and a half and then I dropped out because I absolutely hated it. I knew I didn't want to do it. I was just more attracted to business and that sort of thing. Mike (26:16.346) Yeah, that's crazy. That's awesome. parallel universe. I, that's a really good question. I don't know. I, kinda, I have two kids under three and the other side of me wishes I would have traveled more. you know, I mean, we'll get there hopefully when they get out of high school and someday. But right now I just think there's so many different cultural things and ways to skin the cat. And it's just fascinating to learn some of those things. Mike (26:55.352) yourself in those cultures. go to different cultures and really like understand how they did things for a time, a period of time to really just learn their thinking. Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:07.777) Yeah, I love that man. I had a similar experience of what you're describing. I didn't travel abroad really other than like, you know, Canada and Mexico until I studied abroad in Barcelona during law school and I got to stay there for a couple of months. So you actually had some time. It wasn't like you're just visiting for a week or a weekend or anything like that. You got to kind of live there right for a couple of months and it just totally changed my, you know, my outlook on life and just the way that you see things like I feel like we're in the US and we just think Mike (27:19.627) Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:37.76) US is number one and there's only one way to do things the way that we do things that kind of attitude. And then when you go to Western Europe and you see that culture and you drive or get on a train, it's like an hour away and you're in a totally different culture and they're doing it a certain way as well and it's working. You just see that other people are doing things differently and still being successful at it, still having a thriving culture and it's just awesome to see. Mike (28:03.312) Yeah, absolutely. Seth Bradley, Esq. (28:06.251) Yeah. Tell me about some major influences in your life. What turned you or got you into that, the vending business? It's not one of those typical things. mean, I know you're in the education business, so you're kind of really spreading the word about this type of business. But I would say when you started, there might not have been a mastermind or educational courses around this. mean, how did you kind of get drawn into that? Were there any particular people or influences that brought you in? Mike (28:29.308) you Mike (28:36.188) Yeah. So the, biggest influence for me to get into vending, uh, wasn't actually a person. It was actually, was, um, I had landed, I was coming back from the Pentagon from a trip back to the Bay for the startup we were talking about. And I was in the Denver airport and 11 PM, you know, our flight was delayed. And then they're like, Hey, you have to stay in the airport tonight. The pilot went over their hours for the day, blah, blah, blah. So I went to a vending machine and I remember buying a bottle of water. I think it costs like at the time three bucks or something. I knew that bottle of water cost 20 cents at Costco. And I was like, there is someone that's at home with their kids right now making money off me and they're not even at this mission. Like the machine is doing the work. So I had like an aha moment of like, what are my true priorities in life? And like, why am I chasing this cutthroat startup from. Palo Alto and trying to make it when reality was my priorities are freedom to spend more time with my family. So that's really kind of what led me into this path of starting a vending machine side hustle to keep our lifestyle as we had kids. We wanted to have a nanny and we wanted to be able to still go on dates and things like that as a couple with my wife. So that's really kind of my family and just like... having the freedom to do things. Like that's what I'm really passionate about. Seth Bradley, Esq. (29:59.084) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, building on that, and you may have already answered that, but what does success look like for you? Mike (30:01.766) next Mike (30:06.268) an empty calendar. Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:08.621) Good luck with that. Good luck with that. Mike (30:11.516) Oh man, I was gonna say, how do we crack that code? No, yeah. No, but I think success to me is doing things like picking up my daughter at three and even being able to say no to the things that aren't gonna get you to where you need, like the discipline piece of this too. Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:15.708) man. Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:33.995) Yeah, yeah, mean, you know, for me, it's kind of similar, right? It's not going to be able to empty that calendar. Not yet, at least maybe here in the future. But for now, it's pretty filled. But it is it's flexible, right? Like us as entrepreneurs, you know, we probably work more than we ever worked when we were in our W-2s. But at the same time, it's you know, we're working in our own business for ourselves, for our families. And we have the Flexibility, a lot of people will say the freedom, right? But we have the flexibility to move things around. And if you want to pick your kids up at school at three, or you do want to take a weekend off, or something comes up in your schedule, you have the flexibility to do that. Whereas if you're kind of slaving away at the nine to five, you can't really do it. Mike (31:04.486) Yeah. Yeah. Mike (31:20.198) Yeah, that's spot on. mean, I just wrote that down, but flexibility is, cause you're right. When you started becoming an entrepreneur, this is what I tell people all the time when they want to get a venting around is like running your own business. You are going to work harder than you do for your boss currently at your W-2. Like you have to do payroll. You have to do, like you gotta like make sure there's money to actually do pay, you know, like all those things that you just don't even think about when you have a W-2. It's like, today's Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:39.543) Yeah Mike (31:48.89) You know, this Friday I get paid. Well, when you run a business, mean, that money's got to come from somewhere. Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:51.905) Yeah Right, yeah, 100%, man, 100%. All right, Mike, we're gonna wrap it up. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Tell the listeners where they can find out more about you. Mike (32:05.286) Yeah, so thanks for having me. This has been great. I have free content all over the place. can find me on the classic Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, but I also have vendingpreneurs.com is where we help people that are more interested in actually the vending stuff. But I've been really trying to double down on YouTube lately because there's just a lot of content and you can't get it off a one minute reel. Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:32.417) Love it, man. All right, Mike, appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show. Mike (32:35.91) Thanks for having me. Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:37.227) Hi brother. Alright man, got a couple more questions for you. We do like a quick, kind of do the full podcast episode and then I'll just do kind of a quick episode that'll follow up on a Monday and then another one on a Friday. Cool. Mike (32:55.814) See you. Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:59.693) We out here. Welcome to Million Dollar Mondays, how to make, keep, and scale a million dollars. Mike is a super successful entrepreneur in the vending machine business and beyond. Tell us, how did you make your first million dollars? Mike (33:20.922) Yeah, Seth. It was probably actually through real estate and just getting a little bit kind of lucky with timing with COVID and short-term rentals and some of that. But yeah, that's probably how I got the first million. Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:25.229) Mm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:37.079) Gotcha, cool. Yeah, real estate usually plays a role in the everybody's strategy down the line, whether they're in that primary business or not, whether they start out there or they end up there, real estate usually plays a part. How'd you make your last million? Mike (33:53.956) Yeah, that's a good question because it's completely different than real estate, but it's actually been vending machines. So that's been kind of fun. just, you you talk about product market fit whenever you're an entrepreneur with a business. And that was just kind of the perfect storm right now of traditional vending really kind of being outdated. And we found a product market fit with it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:57.57) Right. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:16.215) Gotcha. Cool. that was from, was this maybe mostly attributed to kind of buying those routes, those larger routes? Mike (34:23.32) Exactly. Yeah. Buying old school routes and really kind of flipping them like a house with modern micro markets charging, with different products and what would fit in a vending machine, like more of the unorthodox, you know, toilet paper and tide pods and things that wouldn't fit in a traditional vending machine. I mean, we'll sell $35 bottles of shampoo in these micro markets. So just kind of, go and add it in a different way. Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:49.857) Yeah, and then with the aging population, there's gotta be more and more of these things popping up. So there should be more opportunity for people to get involved or for people like yourself to just snag everything, right? Mike (35:01.102) Yeah, I think there's no chance I could snag everything, not even just in this town alone that I'm currently in. I mean, machines are getting cheaper, the technology is getting way better with AI. And nowadays, it's not what fits in a vending machine motor. It's okay, what's shelf space? if it's a bottle of shampoo or a glass Coke, it doesn't matter because it's not just getting thrown down the chute of a traditional machine. Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:05.387) Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:27.521) Makes sense, makes sense. Last, how are you planning on making your next million dollars? Mike (35:34.3) I think probably with AI, we're doing a lot of interesting stuff with helping people scale their, their vending routes. that is applicable to any, small business. And so I'm really intrigued. Just every time I go down a rabbit hole with some new AI tool, I feel like there's another better one that just came right behind it. So I just think it's kind of that time where you can really get ahead by just learning. Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:06.209) Yeah, totally makes sense. mean people that are not paying attention to AI whether it's simply using chat GPT instead of Google search are getting left behind quickly because it's just advancing so fast. I can't even imagine what this world's gonna look like five years from now the way that things are moving. Mike (36:23.132) It's crazy. Three years ago when I was working for a tech company selling software into the government, I would have to work with three secretaries to schedule a meeting with the general to sell their software. Now my EA is literally an AI bot and everyone that's scheduling time on my calendar, they don't even know they're talking to a non-human, which is pretty Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:43.479) Yeah, 100%. We're gonna, I predicted within five years, everybody's gonna have a humanoid robot in their home with AI instilled and they're gonna be doing physical things for us at our homes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. 100%. Awesome, All right, moving on to the next one. Mike (36:50.181) Yeah! Mike (36:57.917) I hope so. I hope they can go to Costco get all our groceries do our do our laundry The dishes Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:11.501) You're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do, Mike. What is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field? Mike (37:19.056) Ooh, that's a good question, Seth. I think it's just discipline, know, discipline and focus. One of the hardest things is being able to say no with the things that don't align. And when I was growing up, I had a quote that has really stuck with me. That's like, it's better to be respected than liked. And I think that really resonates. Like naturally as a human, you want to be liked and help people, but the 1 % are really good at saying no. Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:47.649) Yeah, I love that man. That's a great answer. Kind of building on that, what do you think the number one attribute is that makes a successful entrepreneur? Mike (37:57.468) probably focus. Yeah. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:59.212) Yeah, focus. Yep. The one thing, right? The one thing. Mike (38:04.186) Yep. That's why you come back to like the most successful entrepreneurs. They always niche down and they niche down because they just, got hyper-focused. Like this is kind of why for me, you know, I started this passive Mr. Passive on social media before I even got into Vendi. Well, now everyone's like, well, how passive is Vendi? And well, it's like, what's really interesting is I was posting all these different, what I thought passive income streams in the time, but everyone, 95 % of the questions I got about Airbnbs are all my different investments was about bending. So I just niche down on, on bending and I just looked back on that and I was like, it really forced me to focus. Seth Bradley, Esq. (38:43.263) Awesome, awesome. What's one thing someone could do today to get 1 % closer to success in the vending machine business if they are really interested in learning more? Mike (38:53.892) tap into your connections and find a location that has high foot traffic, whether that's a friend that works at an urgent care, a sister that lives at an apartment. You know, you take your kid to that gymnastics studio that has a ton of foot traffic between 4 PM and 8 PM. Like all those locations are prime locations to put one of these modern smart machines in. so, tapping into your connections, well, you know, Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:24.567) Love that man. Awesome. All right, Mike, I appreciate it, brother. We'll to meet in person sometime, Mike (39:30.574) I would love to. Where are you based, Seth? Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:31.789) I'm in San Diego, where you at? Mike (39:34.78) I am in Eugene. Yeah, Oregon. I'll come down your way though. Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:37.39) Cool We're planning on doing yeah, we're planning on doing so me and my wife we have a Sprinter van and Last May we did we did going back to the flexibility piece, right? We did 32 days in the van up through Wyoming Montana and then into like Into Canada and they're like Banff and Jasper and all the way up to Jasper and then we circled back on the west coast Through Vancouver and then down back to San Diego Yeah Mike (40:05.52) What? Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:06.829) Pretty wild, pretty awesome. And the reason I brought that up is this year we're gonna do shorter trip. We're probably gonna do two, maybe three weeks at the most, but we're gonna do kind of the Pacific Northwest. So Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver and all those parks and stuff up there. Mike (40:17.254) Yeah. Mike (40:21.744) Yeah, you definitely have a, have you been to Bend before? Bend is like my, that whole area, Central Oregon is, and even Idaho, like all those kind of, yeah. That's awesome. Please let me know when you're up this way. I mean, I'll come meet you wherever. That'd be amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:24.641) Yeah, yeah I have. Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:38.861) Sure man grab a coffee or beer. I appreciate it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah all right brother great to meet you and I will send the information on when this is gonna get released and give you you materials and all that stuff so we can collaborate on social media Mike (40:51.964) Okay. Okay. Yeah. Is a lot of your audience, like passive investors? Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:58.593) So most of that, so now I'm rebranding. I rebranded because I'm gonna be speaking more towards like active entrepreneurs, Active entrepreneurs, people raising capital, that sort of thing. Whereas before it was based on passive investors and people really focused on attorneys. So I'm an attorney and I was raising capital from attorneys for my real estate deals. Now I'm really more into selling shovels. I'm scaling my law firm. I'm chief legal officer for Tribest, which is, we've got a fund to fund. Mike (41:20.262) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:28.085) legal product there as well. So we're really trying to bring in active, active entrepreneurs and people raising capital. Mike (41:29.777) Yeah. Mike (41:36.572) Okay, because I got that, I was just thinking through when we talking about that oil development project, that could be a good, the guy that runs that fund could be a good interview for you. Just thinking through your audience, because he's always looking for investors into his fund and like these oil lubs are just crushing it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:49.901) Cool. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:58.464) Yeah, cool. Who is it? Just, I don't know if I know him or not. Mike (42:02.183) Um, Robert Durkey, he's out of Florida. has, his problem is he's sitting on a gold mine that has no, like he's old school, doesn't know social media, any of that. So that's why I think he'd be perfect for you. Cause I think you could help him and he could definitely help you with some kickback. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we meet soon. Okay. See you Seth. Bye. Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:05.645) I don't think I know. I don't think I know. Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:13.889) Yeah. Gotcha. Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:20.705) Cool, okay, sounds good man. Yeah, I appreciate the introduction. Yeah, all right brother. Talk soon. See ya. Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Mike Hoffman's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/ https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive
After an abrupt closure in June that left vendors scrambling to make up for lost income, Broadacres, the massive swap meet and hub of Hispanic life in North Las Vegas, has announced its official reopening on August 1st. But what does this mean — and will it ever be the same again? Co-host Dayvid Figler talks with artist Justin Favela and Nevada Current reporter Jeniffer Solis, both born and raised Las Vegans who grew up going to Broadacres, about what the reopening means, and how the fear of ICE raids and immigration enforcement continues to impact everyday life for a huge swath of our city. Want to get in touch? Follow us @CityCastVegas on Instagram, or email us at lasvegas@citycast.fm. You can also call or text us at 702-514-0719. For more Las Vegas news, make sure to sign up for our morning newsletter, Hey Las Vegas. Learn more about becoming a City Cast Las Vegas Neighbor at membership.citycast.fm. Looking to advertise on City Cast Las Vegas? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads at citycast.fm/advertise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:Punchbowl News publishes details on a new congressional district map that Texas Republicans lawmakers may release as soon as today, featuring five new GOP-leaning districts in Austin, D/FW, Houston and the Rio Grande Valley: https://punchbowl.news/article/campaigns/texas-sized-gamble/...It bets heavily on Hispanic voters in Texas, in an election not featuring Donald Trump, to resist buyers remorse and remain loyal to Republican candidates in 2026: https://punchbowl.news/article/campaigns/gop-texas-latinos/...The Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus will hold a press conference on Democratic options this afternoon upon the adjournment of House business, as U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries plans a closed-door meeting with those same lawmakers tonight: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/29/house-democratic-leader-hakeem-jeffries-to-visit-austin-amid-redistricting-fight/85429537007/...The national Democratic Party is in a massive fundraising push ahead of a planned targeting of several Republican lawmakers they believe will be compromised by the new map: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/politics/democrats-texas-redistricting.html...The House Majority PAC and its new Lone Star Fund have started running TV ads against those likely GOP targets in Texas: https://youtu.be/OvfgpTo2Vkk?si=sIfuvKXJMFNrhu_pThere's also a Democratic presser today being held by Dallas Senator Nathan Johnson and the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus on the status of THC regulation: https://www.facebook.com/NathanforTexas/photos/media-advisory-join-me-for-a-press-conference-on-cannabis-legislation-with-membe/1194566255807967/?_rdrAustin friends and soccer fans! Mark your calendar for Monday September 15, when we will gather for a live podcast taping with legendary Austin goalkeeper Brad Stuver! Sponsorship opportunities are available now, and individual tickets will go on sale soon: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/allstaractivism_2025...The Brad Stuver interview will be co-hosted by Landon Cotham of the terrific Austin FC podcast Moontower Soccer: https://www.moontowersoccer.com/Progress Texas' financial reserves have dropped to about 3 months worth of funding. Help us avoid going on a permanent vacation this summer by becoming a sustaining member: https://progresstexas.org/join-pt-summer-vacation-membership-driveThanks for listening! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at https://progresstexas.org.
Title: How to Make Millions with Vending Machines with Mike Hoffman Summary: In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike Hoffman delve into the world of vending machines as a business opportunity. Mike shares his journey from a Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur in the vending industry, highlighting the evolution of vending technology and the potential for passive income. They discuss the importance of location, understanding demographics, and the scalability of vending routes. Mike emphasizes the need for upfront work and learning before delegating tasks, while also addressing the misconceptions surrounding passive income in the vending business. In this conversation, Seth Bradley and Mike discuss various aspects of entrepreneurship, particularly in the vending machine business. They explore the importance of capital raising, the journey of self-discovery, influences that shape business decisions, and the definition of success. The dialogue emphasizes the significance of flexibility, discipline, and focus in achieving entrepreneurial goals, while also touching on financial milestones and the attributes that distinguish successful entrepreneurs. Links to Watch and Subscribe: Bullet Point Highlights: Mike's journey from a classic Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur. The evolution of vending machines from traditional to smart technology. Understanding the importance of location in the vending business. The analogy of baseball levels to describe starting in vending. Scaling up from single A to big leagues in vending routes. The significance of demographics in product selection for vending machines. The potential for passive income with proper systems in place. The need for upfront work before achieving passivity in business. Vending is not a get-rich-quick scheme; it requires dedication. The future opportunities in the vending industry are expanding rapidly. Raising capital can dilute ownership but may be necessary for rapid growth. Self-discovery often leads to unexpected career paths. Influences in business can come from personal experiences rather than just mentors. Success is often defined by the ability to prioritize family and flexibility. Entrepreneurs work harder than in traditional jobs but gain flexibility. Discipline is crucial for saying no to distractions. Successful entrepreneurs often focus on niche markets. High foot traffic locations are ideal for vending machines. AI is transforming business operations and efficiency. Networking and connections can lead to valuable opportunities. Transcript: Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:04.898) Mike, what's going on buddy? Doing great brother, doing great. How about you? Mike (00:06.748) Don't worry, Mike (00:11.664) Good, I'm a little flustered. I usually have my mic set up over here, but I guess we just moved and it's not here today. I guess, yeah, new office and it's been a whole hot mess. Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:19.822) New office or what? Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:27.862) Nice man, nice. I see you got the whiteboard cranking back there. Love to see that. Mike (00:33.114) Always. I love your background. That's sweet. Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:38.03) Thanks man, yeah, I'm on camera all the time so I like I need to just build this out instead of using like a green screen so Made the investment made it happen Mike (00:44.86) Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:49.442) Have we met in person or not? I don't know if we've met at a Wealth Without Wall Street event or I couldn't tell. Okay. No, I did not go to Nashville last year. Mike (00:58.478) I don't think so. don't think you're... Were you in Nashville last year? Mike (01:04.634) No, okay. No, I don't think we've met in person. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:08.256) Okay, all good, man. All good. Well, cool. I'll just go over the format real quick. We'll do kind of a shorter recording. We're do like 30 minutes, something like in that range. And then we'll just kind of like break. And then I'll, want to record a couple of other quick segments where I call it Million Dollar Monday. I'm kind of asking you about how you made your first, last and next million. And then 1 % closer, which would just be kind of what separates you, what makes you the top 1 % in your particular vertical. So we'll just kind of record those separately. Those will be real short, like five minutes or so. Mike (01:44.924) Okay, yeah, I'll follow your lead. All good. Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:47.15) Cool. Cool. Let's see. I think I already have this auto recording. So we're already recording. So I'll just jump right in. Mike (01:55.377) Okay. Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:57.782) Welcome to Raise the Bar Radio, hosted by yours truly Seth Bradley. We today we've got Mr. Passive, Mike Hoffman. Mike, welcome to the show. Mike (02:08.189) Thank you for having me fired up to be here. Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:10.855) Absolutely man, really happy to have you on. I know it's been a little bit of a trek here to get our schedules lined up, but really stoked to have you on today, man. I see you said you moved into a new office. You've got the whiteboard cranking, so love to see it. Mike (02:25.372) yeah, whiteboards are the only place I can get my thoughts down. Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:29.399) Yeah, man, it makes a difference when you actually write something rather than type it or even on a mirror board where you're doing it online. just there's something about physically writing something down. Mike (02:41.328) You know, I'm glad you said that because yesterday I flipped to Seattle for a quick work trip and I didn't have wifi and I literally had three pages of just, I, was so like the clarity of some of these kinds of bigger visions I have now from just being able to write for an hour on a flight was, I was like, man, I gotta do this more often. Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:00.363) Yeah, for sure. The key though is once you write it down, it just doesn't go into the trash or into a black hole somewhere where you never see it again. So that's kind of the disadvantage there. If you have it on your computer and you're taking notes or you have it on a mirror board, at least it's there to reference all the time. If you write it down on paper, sometimes, I've got my Raze Masters book right here for notes, but it's like, it might go into the abyss and I'll never look at it again. So you gotta be careful about that. Mike (03:27.184) Yeah, yeah, I need to check out the Miro boards. I've heard a lot of good things about them. Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:31.467) Yeah, yeah. Awesome, Mike. Well, listen, for our audience who doesn't know anything about you, maybe just tell them, you know, tell them a little bit about your background. Tell them about your your main business and we can take it from there. Mike (03:43.354) Yeah. So I think for those that don't know about me, I'm a classic Midwest farm boy started with a classic, you know, showing cattle at the county fair and all of that and had a lemonade stand growing up. And then my first job was actually at McDonald's, you know, thinking about the whole success of that business model. But when I was coaching and, out of college, I got my first rental and I was like, wow, this is crazy. making money without. really much time involved. and then with my work in Silicon Valley, know, Seth, was classic Silicon Valley, you know, cutthroat job that, startup life and traveling three weeks out of the month. And I was on, I was in airports all the time. And was like, these vending machines I would run into at airports were just so archaic. And so I went down this path of like unattended retail and kind of the future of, of that. And that's really where I just see a huge opportunity right now. And so it's kind of what led me into all these different income streams that I'm passionate about. Seth Bradley, Esq. (04:49.431) That's awesome, man. Well, let's dive into that a little bit deeper. me about these income streams. It centers around vending machines, right? But I'm sure there's a lot more to it. I'm sure there's a lot of different entry points for people. Maybe just kind of give us a general synopsis to start out. Mike (05:06.78) Yeah, so I think the big thing with, you know, if we're talking vending specifically as an income stream, you know, most people think of vending as the traditional machines where you enter in a code, you put your card on the machine and then a motor spirals down a Snickers bar or a soda and you go into the chute and grab it. Nowadays, there's these smart machines that literally you just unlock the door, or even if you go into, land in the Vegas airport right at the bottom of the escalator where it says, welcome to Las Vegas, there's a 7-Eleven with gates and AI cameras, and there's no employees in the 7-Eleven. And it just tracks whatever you grab and to exit the gate, you have to pay for it. So like, there's just this huge market now where we just installed it in urgent care. less than two months ago and we can do over the counter meds in that machine because it doesn't have to fit into a motor. It's just shelf space. You identify with the planogram with the AI cameras like, okay, Dayquil in this slot or Salad in this slot and then whatever they grab, gets charged to the person that pulls it from it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (06:15.469) That's interesting, man. Yeah, I mean, my initial thought too, was just like the traditional old vending machine where you're getting a candy bar or a cola out of there. But yeah, nowadays, now that you mentioned that, you see this more and more every single day where you've got these scanners, you've got kind of self-checkout, that sort of thing. So that's kind of, that expands that world and really opens it up to the future, right? Like it just really, that's what we're trying to get to, or at least we think we wanna get there, where we're kind of removing humans and... kind of working with technologies and things like that. Mike (06:49.488) Yeah, and I think, you know, removing the whole human thing. mean, those machines still got to get stocked and you know, there's not robots running around doing that. But I just come back to, I was a Marriott guy when I was on the road all the time and I'd go to these grab and goes at a Marriott and grab a, the end of the night, I'd grab like a little wine or an ice cream sandwich. And I literally had to go wait in line at the check-in desk behind three people checking in just to tell them, Hey, put these on. room charge and I was like if I had a checkout kiosk in that grab-and-go I could have just removed all the friction for this customer experience. Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:27.772) Right, 100%. Yeah, I mean, there's a place and time for it and there's more and more applications for it that just pop up every single day and you can kind of spot that in your life as you're just kind of moving through, whether you're checking into your hotel or whatever you're doing. Mike (07:41.456) Yeah, yeah. So that's just kind of what excites me today. Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:45.973) Yeah, yeah, so when a stranger asks you what you do just in the street, what do you tell them? Because I have a hard time answering that question sometimes too, but I'd love to hear what your answer is. Mike (07:56.804) Yeah, I would just say it depends on the day. You know, what do you do or what's your, you know, it's like at the golf course when you get paired up with a stranger and they're like, tell me about what you do for your career. And I just say, I'm a classic entrepreneur. And then I'm like, well, what do you do? And it's like, well, tell me about the day. You know, what fire are you putting out? Like today we just got the go ahead for five more urgent cares for our local route. But then, you know, we have a community of operators across the country that we help really build. Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:57.933) haha Ha ha ha. Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:09.879) Yeah. Yeah. Mike (08:25.616) Vending empires and so we had a group call this morning. So literally, there's a lot of just, you know, it's classic entrepreneurial life. You never know what the day's script is gonna be. Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:36.161) Yeah, for sure. And you focus a lot on not only on your own business, but also teaching others, right? Teaching others how to kind of break into this business. Mike (08:45.402) Yeah, that's my passion, Seth. When I got into my first investment out of college was a $70,000 rental, you know, putting 20 % down or 14K and using an emergency fund. like my background in going to college was as a coach. like I knew I wanted to kind of take that mindset of like coaching people, you know, teach them how to fish. I don't want to catch all the fish myself. It's just not fulfilling that way. So that's really where my passion is. Seth Bradley, Esq. (09:15.373) Gotcha, gotcha. tell me about like, tell me about step one. I mean, how does somebody break into this business? Obviously your own personal business is probably very advanced. There's probably a lot more sophisticated investing strategies at this point and you've got different layers to it. But somebody just kind of starting out that said, hey, this sounds pretty interesting. This vending machine business sounds like it can be passive. How do you recommend that they get started? Mike (09:40.57) Yeah, so I'm always, I view like the whole vending scale as similar to Major League Baseball. You got your single A all the way up to the big leagues. And if you're just starting out, I always recommend like find a location where you can put a machine and just learn the process. Like to me, that's single A analogy. you know, that always starts with, people want to jump right to like, well, what type of machines do you recommend? products, how do you price products? And the first question I'll always ask Seth is, well, what location is this machine going in? And they're like, well, I don't know yet. I was just going to buy one and put it in my garage to start. And it's like, no, you need to have the location first. So understanding that, is it a pet hospital? Is it an apartment? Is it a gym? Where is the foot traffic? And then you can cater to what's the best machine for that type of location. Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:36.887) Got it, got it. Now is this a kind of a rent, you rent the space to place the machine with that particular business or wherever you're gonna place it or how does that all come together? Mike (10:47.644) not typically, some people are kind of more advanced, like apartment complexes are used to the revenue share model. So they're going to ask for a piece of the pie for sure, for you to put the machine in their lobby. but like, you know, when we're talking urgent carers or even pet hospitals are viewing it as an amenity. And so we probably have, I don't even know how many machines now 75 now, and we, you know, less than half of those actually, Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:50.423) Okay. Mike (11:15.1) us rent or ask for a revenue share to have them in there. So I never leave lead with that, but we'll do it if we need to get the location. Seth Bradley, Esq. (11:23.989) Interesting gotcha. So it's really a value add for wherever you're gonna place it and that's how most people or I guess most businesses would look at that and then you're able to capture that that space Mike (11:27.366) Mm-hmm. Mike (11:34.236) Yeah, absolutely. So, um, a great case study is we have a 25 employee roughing business here in Oregon. And you might think like, only 25 employees. It's not going to make that much money. Well, we do $1,200 a month. And the cool thing about this, Seth, is the CEO of this roughing company literally did napkin math on how much it costs for his employees to drive to the gas station during their 20 minute break. And then How much they're paying for an energy drink at the gas station and then how much gas they're using with the roofing like the work trucks to get to and from the gas station So he's like I want to bring a smart machine into our warehouse Set the prices as half off so that four dollar monster only costs his rofers two dollars and then we invoice him the the business owner every month for the other 50 % and so he actually Calculated as a cost savings not asking for money to rent the space Seth Bradley, Esq. (12:35.597) Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. I love the baseball analogy with the single A, double A, triple A, even into the big leagues here. know, a lot of the folks that listen to this are already kind of, you know, in the big leagues or maybe think about some capital behind them. Like how would they be able to jump right in, maybe skip single or double A or would they, or do you even suggest that? Do you suggest that they start, you know, small just to learn and then maybe invest some more capital into it to expand or can they jump right to the big leagues? Mike (12:48.891) Yeah. Yeah. Mike (13:03.966) I think they can jump right to the big leagues. this is, I'm glad you brought this up because just listening to some of your episodes from the past, there's no doubt that you have people that could buy a route like a off biz buy sell today. And I think this is a prime opportunity. it's very similar to flipping a house. you, you know, there's a route in Chicago, I think it was for $1.1 million, you know, whatever negotiating terms or seller financing or, or what have you, got a lot of, your, your audience that is experts in that. But the cool thing about these routes is they have the old school machines that have the motors and that are limited to, this type of machine, you can only fit a 12 ounce cannon. Well, guess what? The minute you buy that route, you swap out that machine with one of these micro markets or smart machines. Now you just went from selling a 12 ounce soda for $1.25 to now a 16 ounce monster for $4.50. Well, you just bought that location based on its current revenue numbers and by swapping out that machine, you're going to two or three acts your revenue just at that location. And so it's truly just like a value play, a value upgrade, like flipping the house of, okay, there's a lot of deals right now of these routes being sold by baby boomers where it's like, they got the old school Pepsi machine. Doesn't have a credit card reader on it. They can't track inventory remotely via their cell phones. So They're not keeping it stocked. Like all those types of things can really play in your favor as a buyer that just wants to get to the big leagues right away. Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:37.651) I love that. When you say buy a route, what are you really buying? Tell me about the contractual agreement behind that. What are you really buying there? Mike (14:47.184) You're just buying the locations and the equipment associated with it. So like this Chicago route, it's like, we have machines in 75 properties all across the Chicago suburbs. And they could be medical clinics. could be apartments. could be employee break rooms at businesses, but that's when you start diving into those locations. It's like, I have a snack machine and a soda machine here. Well, you swap that out with a micro market that now instead of. Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:49.279) Okay. Okay. Mike (15:13.626) that machine that'll only hold a small bag of Doritos that you charge two bucks, well now you get the movie size theater bags that you can really put in there in a micro market. Like naturally just that valuation of that route based on those 75 machines current revenue, I mean you're gonna be able to two or three X your revenue right by just swapping out those machines. Seth Bradley, Esq. (15:35.959) Wow, yeah, I love that analogy with real estate, right? It's just like a value add. It's like, how can I bring in more income from what already exists? Well, I need to upgrade or I need to put in some capital improvements, whatever you want to call it. Here's the vending machine upgrades or a different kind of system in there. And you get more income. And obviously that business in itself is going to be worth more in a higher multiple. Mike (15:58.396) Absolutely. mean, a great example of this is we had a machine in an apartment complex and it was your traditional machine with the motors and you have to enter in the code. Well, we could only put in four 12 ounce drinks and then chips. Well, we swapped that out with a micro market. Well, now that micro market, we literally put in bags of Tide Pods for laundry, like these big bags of Tide Pods. We'll sell those like hotcakes for 15 bucks. And our old machine, Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:25.281) Yeah, let's say those aren't cheap. Mike (16:27.246) Yeah, our old machine Seth, it would take us to get to 15 bucks, we'd have to sell eight Snickers. That's one transaction. Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:33.547) Right, right. Yeah, yeah. How do you do an analysis kind of based on like what you think is gonna sell there, right? Like you're replacing, let's say a Dorito machine with Tide Pods, you know? So you have to individually go to each location and figure out what will work, what will sell. Mike (16:47.738) Yeah. Mike (16:51.834) It's all about demographic. Absolutely. So, you know, we have, we have, we have a micro market and a manufacturing plant that's, it's a pumpkin farm and there's a ton of Hispanic workers. So we do a lot of like spicy foods, a lot of spicy chips. do, we do a ton of, mean, the sugar or sorry, the glass bottle cokes. They do, they love their pastries. Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:53.431) Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:06.349) Yeah. Mike (17:15.868) So we just doubled down on the demographics. So yesterday I was filming at one of our micro markets that's in a gym and they crushed the Fairlife protein shakes, like the more modern protein shakes, but they won't touch muscle milk. So we're literally taking out one row of muscle milk just to add an extra row of Fairlife shakes. So you're constantly just catering to the demographics and what's selling. Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:40.632) Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I mean, this is literally just like real estate, right? Like you go and you find a good market. You're talking about demographics, right? Find the market, see what they want, see how much you can upgrade, how you can upgrade. If it's an apartment, it's a unit. If it's here, it's the product that you're selling and the type of machine, or maybe it's a mini market. A lot of things to kind of tie your understanding to here. Mike (17:45.926) Yeah. Mike (18:05.904) Yeah, absolutely. Seth Bradley, Esq. (18:07.615) Yeah, awesome, man. Awesome, Where are you at in your business? Like what, you know, what are the big leagues looking like right now? You know, what are you doing to expand your business, raising the bar in your business? Mike (18:18.692) Yeah, I'm going after that's a really good question. I'm going after kind of these newer markets and we're kind of past that point of like, okay, let's pilot in this location. For example, that urgent care, we didn't know if it was going to be a good location two months ago when we installed. Well now it's already crushing it. Well, there's six other urgent cares in town and we just got to go ahead on five of those six. So like for me, it's doubling down on our current proof points of where. okay, we know that manufacturing plant, the pumpkin farm does really well. So let's start getting intros to all their, manufacturers of the products they need to grow pumpkin. know, like we're just doubling down on scaling because now we have the operational blueprint to really just kind of to go after it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:03.917) Gotcha, gotcha. Tell me about how passive this can really be, right? So I used to have, before we switched over to the new brand, Raise the Bar podcast, it was the Passive Income Attorney podcast, right? I was really focused on passive investments, focused on bringing in passive investors into my real estate deals, things like that. And I think that word passive gets thrown around quite a bit, right? And sometimes it's abused because people get into things that are not truly passive. Mike (19:18.427) Yeah. Mike (19:28.784) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:33.517) What's your take on that as it relates to the vending business? Mike (19:38.49) Yeah, so I think as far as with the vending business, there's clearly upfront leg work that needs to be done, whether that's finding locations or any of those things. So I have a route that is here in Oregon, and then we bought a route last year in Illinois and have scaled that route. I spend 30 minutes a week on each route now. that these urgent cares and stuff, like we have an operator that's running the whole route. Here's the problem, Seth. It's like people are so scared to build systems to ultimately systemize things or they're too cheap to hire help. And I'm the opposite. like, you know, kind of like Dan Martell's buy back your time. Like I have like a leverage calculator and like I constantly think about is this worth my time? Cause as you know, you're busier than me. Like it's so limited. for me, my routes, I would consider them passive, like one hour a week is, is nothing in my mind. But as far as like, you know, I'm, I'm also a passive investor on, we're building a, an oil loop station in Florida and I sent my money a year ago to, to my, active investor and I haven't talked to him since. Like that's actually truly probably passive now, you know, I'm not doing anything, but there's, there's different levels to that. And I'm a huge believer like. don't delegate something until you know what you're delegating. So people that want to start with the vending routes, sure, if you want to buy a route that already has an operator, that's one thing. but these, if you're starting a vending route for your kid or for your stay at home wife or whatever, as a side hustle, like get in the weeds and install that first machine. So when you hire help to take over the route, you know what you're delegating. Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:09.773) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:27.021) Yeah, that's key. That's key. And you you described just like any other business, right? I think that's kind of where people get themselves into trouble. That sometimes they get sold the dream that is truly passive. And eventually it can be. I mean, you're talking about an hour a week. To me, that's pretty damn passive, right? But you know, upfront, you you've got to learn the business. You've got to know what you're getting yourself into. Like you said, you've got to learn before you delegate so that you know what you're delegating. There is going to be some upfront work and then as you're able to kind of delegate and learn Then you can make it more and more passive as you go Mike (22:00.88) Yeah, I mean, it's no different than what's the same when people tell you that they're busy. I mean, you're just not a priority. Like that's a fact. you're not. People say it's the same thing when people come to me and they're like, I'm so busy. It's like, okay, well let me, let me see your schedule. Where are you spending your time? You know, it's like when people are like, I can't lose weight. Okay, well let me see your food log. What did you eat yesterday? Did you have ice cream? Like this is like the same kind of thing. That's where passive I think has been really abused. Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:16.097) Yeah. Yep. Mike (22:29.638) To me, the bigger issue is like, vending is not get rich quick. And so like, if you're expecting to leave your nine to five tomorrow and vending is going to make up for that in one day, like that's not going to Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:41.089) Right, Makes sense. Speaking of passive, do you raise capital or do you have any kind of a fund or have you put together a fund for something like this? Mike (22:51.48) We haven't put together a fun, we're definitely buying routes is definitely becoming more and more intriguing. And I know there's some PE players starting to get into the vending game, but it's something we've been definitely considering and on our radar of do we want to. Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:58.541) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:10.231) Gotcha. Cool. I mean, you brought in money partners for some of those routes yet, or is that still something you're exploring too? Mike (23:18.168) No, I think it's just something we're thinking about. mean, what do you recommend? Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:21.089) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd recommend I mean, it depends, right? Like I'm I'm scared to turn you by trade, but I don't like to say you should always raise capital no matter what. Right. Like you've been able to scale your business as you have and grown it to where it is without bringing outside capital. It sounds which is great because you own 100 percent or with whatever business partners you might have. You know, when you start raising capital, you're giving a large chunk of that piece away, not necessarily your whole company. But if you're buying you know, a set of routes or that sort of thing. You you're gonna give a big piece away to those past investors if you're starting a fund or even if it's up. Even a single asset syndication here for one of these, you know, these routes, you could put it together that way. You know, it's just something to consider. But a lot of times when people are looking to scale fast, right, if they wanna grow exponentially, you've gotta use other people's money to get there or hit the lottery. Mike (24:08.294) Mm. Mike (24:15.856) Absolutely, no, agree. That's spot-on and I actually before you know the Silicon Valley company That I was part of we had a we went through probably series a B C D C ground Let's just say we weren't very fiscally responsible. So I come from the, you know, it's like the ex-girlfriend example. I don't want to just start taking everyone's money. Seth Bradley, Esq. (24:42.413) Yeah, yeah, that tends to happen with some startups, right? Like before you get funding, you're super frugal because it's your money and every single dollar counts. And you're like, I don't want to pay, you if it's software, you don't want to pay the software engineers. I'm going to out, you know, put it, you know, hire Indian engineers, that sort of thing. And then once you get a few million bucks that you raised in that seed round, then it just goes and you're like, whoa, wait a minute, let's hire 20 people. You know, it's you got to be careful about that. Mike (25:05.606) Yeah Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great take on it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:11.245) Yeah, it's, yeah. It's a question I love to ask and I think it's about time for that. So, in a parallel universe, tell me about a different version of you. So a different but likely version, right? Like, for example, for me, I went to med school for a year and a half and then I dropped out and I ended up becoming an attorney. So that was like a big turning point, right? So I could have easily at some point just said screw it and became a doctor and that would have been a totally different route than I'm going down right now. What's an example of something like that for you? Mike (25:42.524) Wait, are you being serious about that? I took the MCAT too. I got into med school and then I, yeah, I was pretty mad in school. And then the more I learned about exercise science, I was like, organic chemistry is not fun. Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:44.321) Yeah, totally. yeah? There you go. Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:57.39) It is not fun. I did not love that. I majored in exercise physiology and then I ended up switching to biology because it was just a little bit of an easier route to get my degree and go into med school and I went for a year and a half and then I dropped out because I absolutely hated it. I knew I didn't want to do it. I was just more attracted to business and that sort of thing. Mike (26:16.346) Yeah, that's crazy. That's awesome. parallel universe. I, that's a really good question. I don't know. I, kinda, I have two kids under three and the other side of me wishes I would have traveled more. you know, I mean, we'll get there hopefully when they get out of high school and someday. But right now I just think there's so many different cultural things and ways to skin the cat. And it's just fascinating to learn some of those things. Mike (26:55.352) yourself in those cultures. go to different cultures and really like understand how they did things for a time, a period of time to really just learn their thinking. Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:07.777) Yeah, I love that man. I had a similar experience of what you're describing. I didn't travel abroad really other than like, you know, Canada and Mexico until I studied abroad in Barcelona during law school and I got to stay there for a couple of months. So you actually had some time. It wasn't like you're just visiting for a week or a weekend or anything like that. You got to kind of live there right for a couple of months and it just totally changed my, you know, my outlook on life and just the way that you see things like I feel like we're in the US and we just think Mike (27:19.627) Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:37.76) US is number one and there's only one way to do things the way that we do things that kind of attitude. And then when you go to Western Europe and you see that culture and you drive or get on a train, it's like an hour away and you're in a totally different culture and they're doing it a certain way as well and it's working. You just see that other people are doing things differently and still being successful at it, still having a thriving culture and it's just awesome to see. Mike (28:03.312) Yeah, absolutely. Seth Bradley, Esq. (28:06.251) Yeah. Tell me about some major influences in your life. What turned you or got you into that, the vending business? It's not one of those typical things. mean, I know you're in the education business, so you're kind of really spreading the word about this type of business. But I would say when you started, there might not have been a mastermind or educational courses around this. mean, how did you kind of get drawn into that? Were there any particular people or influences that brought you in? Mike (28:29.308) you Mike (28:36.188) Yeah. So the, biggest influence for me to get into vending, uh, wasn't actually a person. It was actually, was, um, I had landed, I was coming back from the Pentagon from a trip back to the Bay for the startup we were talking about. And I was in the Denver airport and 11 PM, you know, our flight was delayed. And then they're like, Hey, you have to stay in the airport tonight. The pilot went over their hours for the day, blah, blah, blah. So I went to a vending machine and I remember buying a bottle of water. I think it costs like at the time three bucks or something. I knew that bottle of water cost 20 cents at Costco. And I was like, there is someone that's at home with their kids right now making money off me and they're not even at this mission. Like the machine is doing the work. So I had like an aha moment of like, what are my true priorities in life? And like, why am I chasing this cutthroat startup from. Palo Alto and trying to make it when reality was my priorities are freedom to spend more time with my family. So that's really kind of what led me into this path of starting a vending machine side hustle to keep our lifestyle as we had kids. We wanted to have a nanny and we wanted to be able to still go on dates and things like that as a couple with my wife. So that's really kind of my family and just like... having the freedom to do things. Like that's what I'm really passionate about. Seth Bradley, Esq. (29:59.084) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, building on that, and you may have already answered that, but what does success look like for you? Mike (30:01.766) next Mike (30:06.268) an empty calendar. Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:08.621) Good luck with that. Good luck with that. Mike (30:11.516) Oh man, I was gonna say, how do we crack that code? No, yeah. No, but I think success to me is doing things like picking up my daughter at three and even being able to say no to the things that aren't gonna get you to where you need, like the discipline piece of this too. Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:15.708) man. Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:33.995) Yeah, yeah, mean, you know, for me, it's kind of similar, right? It's not going to be able to empty that calendar. Not yet, at least maybe here in the future. But for now, it's pretty filled. But it is it's flexible, right? Like us as entrepreneurs, you know, we probably work more than we ever worked when we were in our W-2s. But at the same time, it's you know, we're working in our own business for ourselves, for our families. And we have the Flexibility, a lot of people will say the freedom, right? But we have the flexibility to move things around. And if you want to pick your kids up at school at three, or you do want to take a weekend off, or something comes up in your schedule, you have the flexibility to do that. Whereas if you're kind of slaving away at the nine to five, you can't really do it. Mike (31:04.486) Yeah. Yeah. Mike (31:20.198) Yeah, that's spot on. mean, I just wrote that down, but flexibility is, cause you're right. When you started becoming an entrepreneur, this is what I tell people all the time when they want to get a venting around is like running your own business. You are going to work harder than you do for your boss currently at your W-2. Like you have to do payroll. You have to do, like you gotta like make sure there's money to actually do pay, you know, like all those things that you just don't even think about when you have a W-2. It's like, today's Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:39.543) Yeah Mike (31:48.89) You know, this Friday I get paid. Well, when you run a business, mean, that money's got to come from somewhere. Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:51.905) Yeah Right, yeah, 100%, man, 100%. All right, Mike, we're gonna wrap it up. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Tell the listeners where they can find out more about you. Mike (32:05.286) Yeah, so thanks for having me. This has been great. I have free content all over the place. can find me on the classic Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, but I also have vendingpreneurs.com is where we help people that are more interested in actually the vending stuff. But I've been really trying to double down on YouTube lately because there's just a lot of content and you can't get it off a one minute reel. Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:32.417) Love it, man. All right, Mike, appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show. Mike (32:35.91) Thanks for having me. Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:37.227) Hi brother. Alright man, got a couple more questions for you. We do like a quick, kind of do the full podcast episode and then I'll just do kind of a quick episode that'll follow up on a Monday and then another one on a Friday. Cool. Mike (32:55.814) See you. Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:59.693) We out here. Welcome to Million Dollar Mondays, how to make, keep, and scale a million dollars. Mike is a super successful entrepreneur in the vending machine business and beyond. Tell us, how did you make your first million dollars? Mike (33:20.922) Yeah, Seth. It was probably actually through real estate and just getting a little bit kind of lucky with timing with COVID and short-term rentals and some of that. But yeah, that's probably how I got the first million. Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:25.229) Mm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:37.079) Gotcha, cool. Yeah, real estate usually plays a role in the everybody's strategy down the line, whether they're in that primary business or not, whether they start out there or they end up there, real estate usually plays a part. How'd you make your last million? Mike (33:53.956) Yeah, that's a good question because it's completely different than real estate, but it's actually been vending machines. So that's been kind of fun. just, you you talk about product market fit whenever you're an entrepreneur with a business. And that was just kind of the perfect storm right now of traditional vending really kind of being outdated. And we found a product market fit with it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:57.57) Right. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:16.215) Gotcha. Cool. that was from, was this maybe mostly attributed to kind of buying those routes, those larger routes? Mike (34:23.32) Exactly. Yeah. Buying old school routes and really kind of flipping them like a house with modern micro markets charging, with different products and what would fit in a vending machine, like more of the unorthodox, you know, toilet paper and tide pods and things that wouldn't fit in a traditional vending machine. I mean, we'll sell $35 bottles of shampoo in these micro markets. So just kind of, go and add it in a different way. Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:49.857) Yeah, and then with the aging population, there's gotta be more and more of these things popping up. So there should be more opportunity for people to get involved or for people like yourself to just snag everything, right? Mike (35:01.102) Yeah, I think there's no chance I could snag everything, not even just in this town alone that I'm currently in. I mean, machines are getting cheaper, the technology is getting way better with AI. And nowadays, it's not what fits in a vending machine motor. It's okay, what's shelf space? if it's a bottle of shampoo or a glass Coke, it doesn't matter because it's not just getting thrown down the chute of a traditional machine. Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:05.387) Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:27.521) Makes sense, makes sense. Last, how are you planning on making your next million dollars? Mike (35:34.3) I think probably with AI, we're doing a lot of interesting stuff with helping people scale their, their vending routes. that is applicable to any, small business. And so I'm really intrigued. Just every time I go down a rabbit hole with some new AI tool, I feel like there's another better one that just came right behind it. So I just think it's kind of that time where you can really get ahead by just learning. Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:06.209) Yeah, totally makes sense. mean people that are not paying attention to AI whether it's simply using chat GPT instead of Google search are getting left behind quickly because it's just advancing so fast. I can't even imagine what this world's gonna look like five years from now the way that things are moving. Mike (36:23.132) It's crazy. Three years ago when I was working for a tech company selling software into the government, I would have to work with three secretaries to schedule a meeting with the general to sell their software. Now my EA is literally an AI bot and everyone that's scheduling time on my calendar, they don't even know they're talking to a non-human, which is pretty Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:43.479) Yeah, 100%. We're gonna, I predicted within five years, everybody's gonna have a humanoid robot in their home with AI instilled and they're gonna be doing physical things for us at our homes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. 100%. Awesome, All right, moving on to the next one. Mike (36:50.181) Yeah! Mike (36:57.917) I hope so. I hope they can go to Costco get all our groceries do our do our laundry The dishes Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:11.501) You're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do, Mike. What is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field? Mike (37:19.056) Ooh, that's a good question, Seth. I think it's just discipline, know, discipline and focus. One of the hardest things is being able to say no with the things that don't align. And when I was growing up, I had a quote that has really stuck with me. That's like, it's better to be respected than liked. And I think that really resonates. Like naturally as a human, you want to be liked and help people, but the 1 % are really good at saying no. Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:47.649) Yeah, I love that man. That's a great answer. Kind of building on that, what do you think the number one attribute is that makes a successful entrepreneur? Mike (37:57.468) probably focus. Yeah. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:59.212) Yeah, focus. Yep. The one thing, right? The one thing. Mike (38:04.186) Yep. That's why you come back to like the most successful entrepreneurs. They always niche down and they niche down because they just, got hyper-focused. Like this is kind of why for me, you know, I started this passive Mr. Passive on social media before I even got into Vendi. Well, now everyone's like, well, how passive is Vendi? And well, it's like, what's really interesting is I was posting all these different, what I thought passive income streams in the time, but everyone, 95 % of the questions I got about Airbnbs are all my different investments was about bending. So I just niche down on, on bending and I just looked back on that and I was like, it really forced me to focus. Seth Bradley, Esq. (38:43.263) Awesome, awesome. What's one thing someone could do today to get 1 % closer to success in the vending machine business if they are really interested in learning more? Mike (38:53.892) tap into your connections and find a location that has high foot traffic, whether that's a friend that works at an urgent care, a sister that lives at an apartment. You know, you take your kid to that gymnastics studio that has a ton of foot traffic between 4 PM and 8 PM. Like all those locations are prime locations to put one of these modern smart machines in. so, tapping into your connections, well, you know, Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:24.567) Love that man. Awesome. All right, Mike, I appreciate it, brother. We'll to meet in person sometime, Mike (39:30.574) I would love to. Where are you based, Seth? Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:31.789) I'm in San Diego, where you at? Mike (39:34.78) I am in Eugene. Yeah, Oregon. I'll come down your way though. Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:37.39) Cool We're planning on doing yeah, we're planning on doing so me and my wife we have a Sprinter van and Last May we did we did going back to the flexibility piece, right? We did 32 days in the van up through Wyoming Montana and then into like Into Canada and they're like Banff and Jasper and all the way up to Jasper and then we circled back on the west coast Through Vancouver and then down back to San Diego Yeah Mike (40:05.52) What? Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:06.829) Pretty wild, pretty awesome. And the reason I brought that up is this year we're gonna do shorter trip. We're probably gonna do two, maybe three weeks at the most, but we're gonna do kind of the Pacific Northwest. So Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver and all those parks and stuff up there. Mike (40:17.254) Yeah. Mike (40:21.744) Yeah, you definitely have a, have you been to Bend before? Bend is like my, that whole area, Central Oregon is, and even Idaho, like all those kind of, yeah. That's awesome. Please let me know when you're up this way. I mean, I'll come meet you wherever. That'd be amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:24.641) Yeah, yeah I have. Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:38.861) Sure man grab a coffee or beer. I appreciate it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah all right brother great to meet you and I will send the information on when this is gonna get released and give you you materials and all that stuff so we can collaborate on social media Mike (40:51.964) Okay. Okay. Yeah. Is a lot of your audience, like passive investors? Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:58.593) So most of that, so now I'm rebranding. I rebranded because I'm gonna be speaking more towards like active entrepreneurs, Active entrepreneurs, people raising capital, that sort of thing. Whereas before it was based on passive investors and people really focused on attorneys. So I'm an attorney and I was raising capital from attorneys for my real estate deals. Now I'm really more into selling shovels. I'm scaling my law firm. I'm chief legal officer for Tribest, which is, we've got a fund to fund. Mike (41:20.262) Mm-hmm. Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:28.085) legal product there as well. So we're really trying to bring in active, active entrepreneurs and people raising capital. Mike (41:29.777) Yeah. Mike (41:36.572) Okay, because I got that, I was just thinking through when we talking about that oil development project, that could be a good, the guy that runs that fund could be a good interview for you. Just thinking through your audience, because he's always looking for investors into his fund and like these oil lubs are just crushing it. Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:49.901) Cool. Yeah. Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:58.464) Yeah, cool. Who is it? Just, I don't know if I know him or not. Mike (42:02.183) Um, Robert Durkey, he's out of Florida. has, his problem is he's sitting on a gold mine that has no, like he's old school, doesn't know social media, any of that. So that's why I think he'd be perfect for you. Cause I think you could help him and he could definitely help you with some kickback. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we meet soon. Okay. See you Seth. Bye. Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:05.645) I don't think I know. I don't think I know. Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:13.889) Yeah. Gotcha. Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:20.705) Cool, okay, sounds good man. Yeah, I appreciate the introduction. Yeah, all right brother. Talk soon. See ya. Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links: Seth Bradley's Links: https://x.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/ https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en Mike Hoffman's Links: https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/ https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/ https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive
Preparing for Spanish-language media interviews is about proper transcription and building connection. Sonia V. Diaz, President of the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) and founder of Zaid Communications, highlights the importance of crafting culturally resonant messages that truly speak to Spanish-speaking audiences. In this conversation, she shares thoughtful advice on how to choose the right spokesperson to authentically represent your message, and offers insights into HPRA's growing impact and its vision to expand opportunities for Latino professionals across the communications industry.
The following article of the Trade & Invesment industry is: “Tariff Impact on Talent and Economy: Challenges, Opportunities” by Alfredo Araneda, Senior Director Hispanic America, Robert Walters.
Welcome to CURE America, hosted by Donald T. Eason, President of CURE—the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Joining the discussion are Marty Dannenfelser, Vice President for Government Relations at CURE; Kris A. Ullman, President of Eagle Forum; and Jonathan Alexandre, Senior Counsel at Liberty Counsel Action. The panel unpacks the “One Big Beautiful Bill” signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025, analyzing its content and implications. The episode includes a speech by Mike Johnson, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, a Louisiana Republican known for advocating conservative policies, faith, family, and American exceptionalism since 2023. The bill is presented as a landmark of the America First agenda and fulfillment of 2024 election promises by voters who rejected open borders, inflationary spending, and political division. Johnson highlights the bill's unifying effects across Black, Hispanic, Jewish, union, and suburban communities by promoting common-sense reforms. It permanently extends the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, averting 2026 tax hikes and offering families an average annual savings of $10,000. Major components include raising the Child Tax Credit to $2,200 (indexed to inflation), increasing the adoption credit to $5,000, exempting tips and overtime from taxation, and raising the estate tax exemption to $15–30 million. The bill encourages investment through full expensing of equipment and research, targeting a 1.2% boost in GDP. Welfare reforms implement work requirements (20–80 hours per month) for able-bodied adults on Medicaid or SNAP, while focusing assistance on vulnerable populations, excluding illegal immigrants, and cutting $1.5 trillion in government waste. Planned Parenthood is defunded for one year, with resources redirected to community health centers. Education policy includes permanent Opportunity Zones and a $1,700 scholarship credit to help students leave failing public schools. Border security receives $170.7 billion in funding: $51.6 billion for completing the wall, 116,000 detention beds, 13,000 officers and agents, and reimbursements to Texas. The bill emphasizes law enforcement, reducing illegal crossings, and restoring American global leadership through increased NATO spending, ceasefire initiatives, and trade deals. Though adding $3 trillion to the national deficit in the short term, the bill is framed as an investment in national strength, economic stability, and opportunity. Built on principles of liberty and self-governance, the bill seeks to deliver measurable results.
In this episode of Digging Deep, MG and Luis welcome Haley Manning—OKIE811's Education Outreach Manager. With over 20 years at OKIE811, Haley brings valuable insight into the organization's mission and the impact of educational outreach. Together, they reflect on a recent milestone Spanish-language training event that brought in over 300 attendees, showcasing the growing need and enthusiasm for bilingual safety education. The conversation also highlights preparations for major upcoming events like Virtual Safety Day and the Tulsa Safety Day, both key moments in the organization's yearly calendar. On top of that, they explore new efforts in community engagement through job fairs, partnerships with Hispanic media, and grassroots outreach. Along the way, you'll hear fun personal stories—like MG's first movie memory and the promise of OU football games—as the hosts share their passion for connecting safety with real people and communities.
Analysts Jake Hawkridge and Roger Entner discuss the new deal between Comcast, Charter, and T-Mobile, as well as Q2 earnings from the big players in telecom.00:31 Comcast and T-Mobile deal 04:59 Verizon Q2 overview 07:26 AT&T Q2 overview 09:42 T-Mobile Q2 overview 12:26 Rising churn and Q2 earnings summary 14:22 Episode wrap-upTags: telecom, telecommunications, wireless, prepaid, postpaid, cellular phone, Jake Hawkridge, Roger Entner, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, earnings, Comcast, Charter, cable, MVNO, net adds, churn, Project 624, devices, FirstNet, fiber, FWA, Hispanic market
In 1899, Ramon Gonzalez, his wife Guadalupe, and his children Romana and Prudencio, left their home in Dixon, New Mexico, to settle in Monticello, Utah. A wagon carried all their household possessions, while a few head of livestock followed on the hoof.
It's YOUR time to #EdUpStay ahead of the conversation in higher ed. Get early, ad-free access & exclusive leadership content by supporting Elvin & Joe for only $5.99 a month or $44.99 a year. YOU can also donate or gift a subscription at edupexperience.comIn this episode, President Series #385, powered by Ellucian,YOUR guest is Vernon Harper Jr., President, CSU BakersfieldYOUR host is Dr. Joe SallustioHow does CSU Bakersfield serve as "Kern County's university" in California's San Joaquin Valley?What does it mean to be designated as an "Opportunity University" by the Carnegie Foundation?How does a university balance slow, methodical change with modern consumer expectations for speed?Topics include:Leading a Hispanic-serving institution in one of America's most important agricultural regionsServing 10,500 students in a region that produces 25% of America's food supplyBreaking ground on an $83 million Energy Innovation Building to double engineering capacityListen in to #EdUpThank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp!Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - Elvin Freytes & Dr. Joe Sallustio● Join YOUR EdUp community at The EdUp ExperienceWe make education YOUR business!P.S. Support the podcast trusted by higher ed leaders. Get early, ad-free access & exclusive leadership content by supporting Elvin & Joe for only $5.99 a month or $44.99 a year. YOU can also donate or gift a subscription at edupexperience.com
In this empowering episode of The Lisa Fischer Said Podcast, Lisa sits down with Roxanne Ruiz—speech pathologist, health advocate, and intermittent fasting success story—who reversed prediabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease through the power of OMAD (one meal a day) and consistent intermittent fasting. Roxi shares how her journey from a high-carb, culturally influenced diet on the Texas-Mexico border to a sustainable fasting lifestyle transformed her health, body, and mindset. Hear how she dropped 30+ pounds, avoided the need for insulin, boosted her immunity, and inspired her daughter and community to reclaim their health without expensive medications like GLP-1s.
Thank you to my sponsors: BlueChew & Reliefband BlueChew - Try your first month of BlueChew FREE when you use promo code DAVID -- just pay $5 shipping at https://bluechew.com Reliefband - For 20% off your order, head to https://Reliefband.com and use code FDL More DoKnowsWorld YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DoKnowsWorld IG: https://www.instagram.com/doknowsworld TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doknowsworld David Lucas Tour Dates: https://www.davidlucascomedy.com/tour Tempe, AZ: July 25-26 Appleton, WI: July 31 - August 2 Dallas, TX: August 9 Fort Worth, TX: August 10 Miami, FL: August 22-23 Louisville, KY: August 28-30 0:00 Fishing is peaceful, Roast Me, Church 7:37 Cuban cigars, Post Malone, Hanging with comics 12:38 Roasting, DoKnows girl, People in public 20:49 DoKnowsWorld comedy 29:53 Hotels are lonely, Fisherman beef, Exotic meats 44:31 Hot Cheeto bait, Country stuff 48:50 Hispanic fans, Family watching our comedy, The South 55:41 Roadtrips, Old comedy clubs, Charleston White NEW MERCH AVAILABLE https://shopdavidlucas.com/ Connect with David Lucas Website: https://www.davidlucascomedy.com Merch: https://shopdavidlucas.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidlucasfunny Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnydavidlucas Youtube: @DavidLucasComedian David Lucas was born in Macon, GA. He started acting an early age, performing in numerous stage plays at the Macon Little Theatre. He relocated to Hollywood where he was a contestant on, “MTV Yo Momma”. He has since written for several television shows and continues to perform stand up all over the country (for such comedians as Louis CK, Erik Griffin, Joe Rogan, Brendan Schaub, Tony Hinchcliffe, Bert Kreisher, DL Hughley and many more). David is a Kill Tony Hall of Famer and currently headlining his own tour! Filmed By Daniel Casas https://www.instagram.com/presentedbydaniel A 7EQUIS Network Show https://www.instagram.com/7equis https://www.7equis.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Join us on this episode of Nothing But The Truth as we sit down with the remarkable Juliette Ashley Valle, Miss Florida 2023! Juliette shares her inspiring journey through the world of beauty pageants and beyond, revealing how she's leveraged her platform to advocate for critical causes. More about Juliette: ▸ Miss Florida 2023: Made history as the second Hispanic titleholder and the first Miss America contestant to deliver a bilingual onstage Q&A, placing in the Top 10 nationally. ▸ Advocate for Kidney Health & Women's Empowerment: A National Ambassador for Donate Life America and the National Kidney Foundation, she founded "Rise Up, Latinas!" – a nonprofit focused on Latina leadership and mentorship. ▸ Dynamic Background: A law student, aspiring reporter, and professional performer with a B.A. from the University of Miami and current studies at St. Thomas University College of Law and Harvard University. ▸ Award-Winning Talent: Recognized with multiple preliminary competition awards, she's also a verified recording artist who donates album proceeds to CKD charities.
Rosa Antunez Boatwright, an immigrant from Honduras, was excited to attend community college in her new Florida home – until the college rescinded its acceptance because of her immigration status. Fast forward years later. Today, she is a personal injury attorney at the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin and the incoming chair of NCAJ's Hispanic/Latino Legal Issues Division. In this conversation with host Amber Nimocks, Rosa explains how national and local legislation affecting the Hispanic community means that all lawyers need to be “on our toes.” “If we need to get together next week because of something that happened this week, we need to be able to do that and have those open discussions,” she says. Tune in to learn about Rosa's journey from Honduras, her path from paralegal to lawyer, and her experience as an NCAJ NEXT Leadership Program fellow.
Antonio Fernandez King Tone Almighty Latin Kings CEO of Grow Up Grow Out LLCAntonio Fernandez, also known as King Tone, is the former head of the Latin Kings (the largest Hispanic street gang in the US). In 1999, Fernandez was sentenced to 12 to 15 years for conspiring to sell narcotics.[1] He is the main figure in the HBO documentary, Latin Kings: A Street Gang story, which was released in 2007. He is also featured in the book, The Misfit Economy, by Alexa Clay, which was published in 2015. Upon his release, Fernandez has shared his insights as a former gang leader and political activist, and how that relates to the "legitimate world".CEO Grow Up Grow Out LLC WWW.GrowUpGrowOut.comLatin Kings: A Street Gang storyIn 2007, HBO released a documentary called "Latin Kings: A Street Gang story", which was primarily a biography of Fernandez. Created by award-winning documentary maker Jon Alpert, it depicts two sides to Fernandez' role as head of the Latin Kings. It portrays him as a symbol of hope who empowered the Latin American Community, and increased the King's membership by more than a 1000 people. It also portrays him as a man who could not practice what he preached. Despite asking his Latin King members to find legitimate employment and to reject a life of crime, he continued to use his position as leader of the Latin Kings to assist in large scale narcotic transactionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.
The underlying causes of health disparities are many, and sometimes healthcare providers can exacerbate disparities with how they operate. Health equity researchers have conducted "secret shopper" studies, revealing how healthcare providers limit appointments — and even treatment recommendations — to people with certain types of insurance. “Patients with Medicaid were significantly less likely to be offered appointments compared to those with Medicare or private insurance, and in many cases, clinics told us they weren't accepting any new Medicaid patients or that they didn't take Medicaid at all,” says Dr. Daniel Wiznia, Associate Professor of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation at Yale and a former member of Movement Is Life's Steering Committee. “But when we would call back with private insurance, suddenly they have plenty of appointments available for the private insurance patients,” he says. Wiznia and his colleagues also found that even when Medicaid patients were offered appointments, wait times were often much longer — delays which can have serious consequences. “So if a Medicaid patient has to wait six weeks or eight weeks for an appointment, while a private patient just waits maybe a week, that can really impact outcomes, especially for patients with chronic conditions or urgent needs,” he says. Wiznia joined Movement Is Life's Dr. Mary O'Connor to discuss these findings in detail. He offers advice to patients who may find themselves in a situation where they're denied care due to their insurance status and explains how raising reimbursement rates for Medicaid could help address the problem. Never miss an episode – be sure to subscribe to The Health Disparities podcast from Movement Is Life on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Agency Nation Radio - Insurance Marketing, Sales and Technology
On this episode of Agency Nation Radio, Cash McMillen, partner and executive vice president of operations at The Cashion Company Insurance in Little Rock, Arkansas, and chairman of the Big “I” national Young Agents Committee, hosts a discussion with two young agents about getting started as a commercial lines independent insurance agent. Deuel Romero, commercial lines agent at Tedford Insurance in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Kate Adams, commercial lines marketing manager at Flood & Peterson in Denver, Colorado, explore why and how to choose a commercial lines niche, how to get up to speed in a new industry segment, and tips for building a strong network. Romero discusses his work with Hispanic business owners and Adams shares insights from her business marketing role and how her commercial lines background helps her connect with clients. "I think people are too afraid of making mistakes," Adams says. "The lessons that we have learned the best, and that have stuck with us, have been from the mistakes that we've made along the way." Romero and Adams were also featured alongside eight other young agents in Independent Agent magazine's June issue. https://www.iamagazine.com/2025/06/01/license-to-lead-meet-10-young-agents-35-and-under/ Agency Nation Radio is where insurance professionals turn on the mic and share unscripted stories about leadership, technology, marketing, success, and failure—stories that helped make them the professionals they are today. From Main Street USA to the pages of Independent Agent magazine—we've got the stories you want to hear. For more, catch Agency Nation Radio on your favorite streaming platform or visit iamagazine.com/category/podcasts.
07-21-25 - WWBD - His Late Shift Crew Is Mostly Hispanic And One White Lady Bitches They Should Speak English - He Doesn't Love His Wife And Has Started Dating An NBA DancerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
There has been a huge increase in Christian “Bible” Cults over the past 40 plus years- especially ones that do “Shepherding or Dicipling” in an authoritarian structure. The public doesnt understand how millions of people are deceptively recruited and indoctrinated into these groups and why they are called “cults.” One such cult network started in Massachusetts in 1979 as “the Boston Church of Christ” and are not to be confused with the mainline Church of Christ or the United Church of Christ. This group uses BITE Model methods to recruit and indoctrinate followers to follow the top leader as an “apostle or prophet” or “God's chosen man to lead Christianity on earth. Unlike legitimate Christian churches this cult claims to be the “only” path to salvation and demands people subit and obey a discpling partner as if they were Jesus. Their lives and free will are taken over by involvement with this group. REcruiting other, giving money, abandoning education and careers, even family are part of the playbook. Tania Diaz was recruited as an 18 college student in Mexico and spent over 20 years. She and her husband were groomed to recruit countless Hispanics into this cult. She would rise through the church's ranks, only escaping nearly thirty years later to become an anti-cult activist, self-compassion advocate, and host of a podcast dedicated to survivors of religious abuse, Voces: Espacio Sagrado para Sobrevivientes de Abuso Religioso (In English, Voices: A Sacred Space for Survivors of Religious Abuse) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Boston Globe's Shirley Leung and former public safety secretary Andrea Cabral sub in the host seats for Jim and Margery. Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans talks about how Hispanic and Latino communities are adapting to the Trump administration's immigration policies, and ICE's latest push to build migrant tent camps. Local woman Sue O'Connell discusses inner-party GOP debate over the Epstein files, Stephen Colbert's cancellation and the Astronomer CEO caught on the Coldplay concern 'kiss cam.'Boston Medical Center's Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett discusses local hits to Medicaid from Trump's massive spending bill, plusnew evidence on the harms of vaping. Princeton University's Khalil Gibran Muhammad discusses how claims of anti-semitism are being used to undercut DEI in higher-ed, and why Black Americans are continuing to boycott big-box retailers.
This week: Jason finds some information about a van, Mike does an alien thing, Doug bugs out, and Matt needs to sleep.Support the showStarting your own podcast? Use this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card when you sign up for a paid account with Buzzsprout!https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1671664LinktreeBuy us a beer!Join us in Discord!DLUTI.comUnplanned PodnancyUndefined Graphics (Photography & Graphic Design)Ghoulish MortalsInquiries: dlutipod@gmail.comDon't Look Under The Internet PO BOX 6437 Aurora IL 60598
07-21-25 - WWBD - His Late Shift Crew Is Mostly Hispanic And One White Lady Bitches They Should Speak English - He Doesn't Love His Wife And Has Started Dating An NBA DancerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
WYCE's Community Connection (*conversations concerning issues of importance in West Michigan)
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The machine is forming, and Pasco Republicans better wake up!
Episode 105 Deanna Merryfield On the night of July 21, 1990, thirteen year old Deanna Merryfield spent much of the night watching movies with her grandmother in Killeen, Texas. After her grandmother went to bed, Deanna snuck out of the house, and at 3:30am, went to see her sister Rebecca who lived with their uncle nearby. Deanna knocked on Rebecca's window and the sisters briefly talked before their uncle woke up and told Deanna that she needed to leave. Deanna had been driven to the house by two men in a Brown or Bronze four door car that Rebecca did not recognize. Deanna left with the two men who were thought to be either Caucasian or Hispanic, and after that, she vanished. Hours later, Deanna's grandmother realized that she was missing and reported her missing, but because she was suspected to be a run away by police, there was no investigation started. In 1992, Rebecca reportedly received a collect phone call from someone who told the operator that her name was Deanna, but when Rebecca accepted the call, the caller had hung up. The call was traced to Kentucky, where Deanna had family, but none of her relatives there reported seeing Deanna. During the 2000-2002 time period, there was an unconfirmed sighting of Deanna by a relative of hers who claimed to have encountered her, and that Deanna at the time of the sighting had several tattoos. The information provided by this family member may not be credible. At another point over the years, someone contacted police and told them that Deanna had returned home safely. As a result, her case was closed. It was only realized later that the call was to police was inaccurate, and Deanna was still missing, at which point her case was re-opened. Deanna remains missing to this day. In this episode, Deanna's sister Melissa is our guest. At the time of her disappearance, Deanna was described as a White female standing between 5ft and 5ft5, and weighing 108-120 pounds. She had Blonde hair and Hazel eyes. She had a small scar on her upper lip. Deanna if alive today, may or may not have tattoos; including the name “Merryfield” with an unknown date on her neck, a cross with lines on her ankle and a yellow rose with “Texas Born” on her back. There is a DNA sample on file for needed comparisons as per Deanna's NAMUS page Investigators are interested in identifying and speaking to the two young men Deanna was last seen with. At the time of Deanna's disappearance, the men, possibly brothers, were thought to be White or Hispanic, and their names may be Tony and Rudy Longoria. Police were also seeking a Sylvia Martinez for questioning. If you have any information or tips in Deanna's case, please contact the Killeen Police Department at 254-501-8830 or submit a tip on Bell County Crime Stoppers. To learn more about Deanna's case, or provide information, please check out the website and Facebook page connected to her case. To listen to every episode of Missing Persons ad-free and get other benefits, simply visit our channel page on Apple Podcasts to get started with an AbJack Insider subscription. Of course, you can also support DNA: ID with a Patreon subscription. Follow us on social media; https://linktr.ee/missingpersonspodcast
Boom shakalaka! Dive into Ep 1,022 of The Clay Edwards Show, July 17, 2025 – 2 hrs of unfiltered reality radio with Clay Edwards firing on free speech, local scandals, & cultural clashes. Kicking off with a passionate defense of uncensored platforms amid AI de-ranking for taboo topics like COVID & crime. Local Roundup: Rudy Warnock's guilty verdict on corruption charges spirals into tragedy – post-trial car wreck & suicide attempt on I-20 near Pelahatchie. Clay unpacks the "victimless" white-collar crime, long federal sentences (20-50 yrs), & painful recovery ahead. Sympathy for family, but accountability stressed: "Nobody deserves that, but suicide isn't the way out." Breaking: Possible raid on Savannah Street – JPD activity, news crews; ties to roadblocks hunting escaped New Orleans prisoner Derek (last seen in MS). "They're doing cop stuff – welcome to the party!" FAFO Champ: Brandon block party shooting (June 21, Mary Miles Dr.) – city-permitted event turns deadly. Ryan Mosley (31) arrested for 1st-degree murder & felon w/ firearm after killing one, injuring another. "Don't go to parties needing a gun – rethink standards for permits!" Shrimp Scandal: Study reveals 30/44 Jackson-area spots serve imported shrimp despite "wild-caught" claims. Kudos to 14 authentic ones (e.g., Drago's, Half Shell, Shaggy's) – call for transparency under new MS labeling law. Immigration Truth Serum: Border chaos blamed on Dems' open policies; regrets good folks caught in crackdown. "No negative Hispanic interactions ever – hard workers, accountable. But illegal entry = crime; come through front door!" Obama's Masculinity Critique: Ex-prez urges men to get gay friends for empathy, share feelings, ditch provider roles, & embrace arts over sports. Clay fires back: "Already have gay alpha friends! This attacks manosphere – ironic from fragile Barry. Distinguish from LGBTQ agenda; assumptions offend conservatives." Epstein Ties: Listener nods to connections & suicides – "Weird how they're linked." Clay's Rants: Offense at sensitivity over words ("gay" as ball-busting, "retard" for stupidity – not targeting disabled). Stereotypes earned; force acceptance backfires (e.g., Redskins name – Indians want it back!). Raw, chaotic vibes on politics, culture, & accountability.
Dayton High Schooler Haylie Chavez discusses being often the only Hispanic performer in southwest Ohio theater productions and the importance of representation on stage.
Growing up with both White and Hispanic heritage, Lucia struggled to connect with her Mexican roots as she was raised away from that side of her family. Determined to embrace her lineage, she became fluent in Spanish while studying abroad in Spain. As a passionate music lover raised in Washington state, Lucia was particularly influenced by Brandi Carlile. A chance encounter in 2018, while Lucia was helping set up for Brandi's rehearsal at her high school, led to an impromptu singing session with one of the band members. Brandi overheard Lucia's talent and invited her to perform at a fundraiser concert. Today, Lucia performs regularly at local festivals and recently achieved a milestone by headlining her first show.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.
In this episode of the 'None of Your Business' podcast, host Sean welcomes Michael Bastien, who shares his inspiring journey of overcoming a speech impediment and growing up in a predominantly Hispanic community. Michael discusses how he taught himself to control his stutter and build self-confidence, leading him to create non-profits aimed at mentoring youth and supporting men's mental health. He elaborates on the challenges he faced, his successes in community activism, including the largest Black Lives Matter mural in Massachusetts, and his ongoing work with the organization Brothers in Arms. The episode highlights Michael's dedication to supporting mental health for men and advocating for inclusivity and acceptance. 00:00 Overcoming a Speech Impediment00:33 Welcome to the Podcast01:11 Facing and Overcoming Failures04:19 Starting a Non-Profit Journey05:23 Advocating for Mental Health07:30 Creating the Largest Black Lives Matter Mural10:29 Community Impact and Challenges11:18 Conclusion and Call to Action Connect with Michael:http://Biacircle.comhttps://www.instagram.com/bastieninspires/Support the showJoin the #1 Community for Service-Based Entrepreneurshttps://www.blackdiamondclub.com Follow Shawn and Lacey on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/drshawndill/ https://www.instagram.com/drlaceybook/
In this episode of the Road to Growth podcast, we are pleased to introduce you to Tito Alvarez. Tito is California's legendary Hispanic advocate and the original voice behind the most trusted name in accident victim support throughout the 80s and 90s. After decades defending the community and working with attorneys of every caliber, Tito developed a rare insight: he knows exactly which lawyers truly fight for their clients—and which ones don't. That hard-earned wisdom became the foundation of TitoParaTi, a revolutionary brand built to protect families from predatory legal marketing. Rooted in the Hispanic community but now embraced by Californians of all backgrounds, TitoParaTi is California's only 100% free legal advocacy service connecting accident victims with the select few attorneys who actually win in court. In an industry dominated by flashy ads and quick settlements, Tito's mission is built on truth, dignity, and real justice. Featured on Despierta América and trusted by over 1,200 families, Tito helps ethical law firms rise above the noise—not through gimmicks, but through values-driven connection. Learn more and connect with Dave Behar by visiting him on Website : https://titoparati.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TitoParaTiOfficial?mibextid=wwXIfr Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/titoparatiofficial?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@titoparatiofficial_?_t=ZT-8wIlzhbR994&_r=1 Be sure to follow us on Twitter: Twitter.com/to_growth on Facebook: facebook.com/Road2Growth Subscribe to our podcast across the web: https://www.theenriquezgroup.com/blog Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2Cdmacc iTunes: https://apple.co/2F4zAcn Castbox: http://bit.ly/2F4NfQq Google Play: http://bit.ly/2TxUYQ2 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKnzMRkl-PurAb32mCLCMeA?view_as=subscriber If you are looking to be a Guest on Podcasts please click below https://kitcaster.com/rtg/ For any San Diego Real Estate Questions Please Follow Us at web: www.TheEnriquezGroup.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKnzMRkl-PurAb32mCLCMeA or Call : 858 -345 - 7829 Recently reduced properties in San Diego County * Click **** bit.ly/3cbT65C **** Here* ************************************************************ Sponsor = www.MelodyClouds.com
Join hosts Clay Edwards, Shaun Yurtkuran, and Lindsey Beckham for another raw, unfiltered dive into the issues shaping America on Uncensored Live. Streaming live every Sunday through Thursday at 8 PM on our social media channels (Facebook, X, YouTube, and Rumble @SaveJXN or Clay Edwards Show), this nightly show delivers honest conversations without the spin. In Episode 7—our second Monday in a row—we're feeling energized and ready to tackle the tough topics, from border policies to historical close calls and beyond. If you missed our underwhelming performance last night (thanks to a killer headache), we're redeeming ourselves tonight! We kick off with some behind-the-scenes fun: tech glitches in the studio (why can Lindsey hear Clay loud and clear but not Shaun?), a pitch for a new show name—"Unfiltered" instead of "Uncensored" for a fresh twist—and a shoutout to Clay's merch site where you can snag the OG FAFO shirt for just $15 in 2XL (gray or black available now!). The heart of the episode is a fiery recap of Shaun and Lindsey's daytime show Crossing the Aisle on WYAB (12-1 PM weekdays), where sparks flew over immigration polling numbers showing only 38% of Americans supporting the current administration's mass immigration policies. We debate Shaun's analogy of the long-time Home Depot worker who's been in the U.S. for 20 years—criminal or not? Clay argues that illegal entry makes one a criminal by definition, while Shaun pushes for nuance, prioritizing dangerous offenders first as per Trump's campaign promises. Lindsey weighs in on pathways to citizenship for non-violent contributors who've paid taxes and built lives here. We explore employer accountability: should businesses face penalties for knowingly hiring undocumented workers via fake IDs or third-party agencies? Google dives reveal civil fines up to $3,000 per employee and potential jail time, plus real-world examples like ICE raids on Mississippi chicken plants. The conversation evolves into cultural insights—praising Hispanic work ethic and community integration while contrasting it with challenges from other groups like Haitians in Miami or Muslims in England, as discussed on Patrick Bet-David's podcast. We reflect on the one-year anniversary of the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, PA, replaying the chilling audio and appreciating Trump's defiant "fight, fight, fight" moment. What if he'd been killed? We avoided civil unrest, conspiracy-fueled wars among Americans, and a chaotic GOP nomination floor fight (Nikki Haley as frontrunner?). Plus, thoughts on potential deepfakes, Biden conspiracies, and how history might remember this iconic event with statues someday. Diving deeper, we touch on birth rates (Hispanics lead, potentially shifting demographics post-Roe), language assimilation (learn Spanish to bridge gaps while insisting on English?), and why American Christians are drilled to defend Israel unquestioningly—questioning if it's the same biblical Israel amid modern geopolitics and accusations of genocide in Gaza. We call out biases: criticizing Israel's government isn't antisemitism, just as critiquing Jackson, MS, isn't racism. Local flavor includes a Hattiesburg attorney arrested for allegedly embezzling $450K from a widow's settlement—his second rodeo after voter fraud charges. We discuss bar association oversight and how some start corrupt young. Entertainment roundup: Highly recommend Sinners (vampires in 1920s Clarksdale juke joints—think Crossroads meets Dusk Till Dawn); skip the new Gladiator. Excitement for F1 with Brad Pitt, but mixed on Superman and Fantastic Four. Super chats from fans like Peekaboo, Angela (Mic Magazine), AB, Matthew Gibson, and more—thanks for the support! Catch us tomorrow on WYAB or right here. Subscribe, share, and join the uncensored conversation. What do you think—criminal or contributor? Drop your takes in the comments!
Send us a textErika Herrera and Milton Arredondo are the heart and soul behind Domestic BBQ, the family-owned California-style barbecue spot that's become a local favorite in La Puente and Covina. They made the bold leap from corporate life to smoky kitchens, turning a weekend hobby into a flourishing restaurant. Their success isn't just about cooking—it's about bringing people together with food that feels both comforting and inventive.What makes Domestic unique? Erika and Milton infuse each dish with handcrafted care: meats slow-smoked up to 14 hours, a secret 16-blend dry rub, and signature sauces—all prepared fresh daily. They honor classic Texas-style barbecue while adding their own spin, drawing from their Hispanic heritage and California flair. It's barbecue with a twist—using premium ingredients like Angus beef, Duroc pork, and Jidori chicken, paired with locally brewed craft beers.The menu is filled with stand-out items, but one creation has become a cult favorite: the Brisket Flautas. This clever mash-up wraps their tender, smoky brisket in a crispy tortilla, topped with chipotle crema, cotija cheese, and fresh pico de gallo. It's got the crunch of a street taco, the flavor of a backyard smoker, and the kind of umami punch that makes people do a double take. It's California BBQ at its boldest—and it's unforgettable.Behind the scenes, Erika and Milton remain deeply rooted in the community. Their staff is locally sourced, every corner of the restaurant reflects hometown pride, and their commitment to scratch-made quality makes them a destination worth visiting. Erika says the best part is seeing smiles on customers' faces, while Milton notes that having his wife as a business partner gives him a sense of security and trust as they navigate every challenge together. Their journey shows that when passion meets partnership and heritage meets creativity—you get barbecue that's as meaningful as it is mouthwatering.__________Music CreditsIntroEuphoria in the San Gabriel Valley, Yone OGStingerScarlet Fire (Sting), Otis McDonald, YouTube Audio LibraryOutroEuphoria in the San Gabriel Valley, Yone OG__________________My SGV Podcast:Website: www.mysgv.netNewsletter: Beyond the MicPatreon: MySGV Podcastinfo@sgvmasterkey.com
In this episode of American Potential, host David From welcomes Sandra Benitez, Executive Director of The LIBRE Initiative, to discuss how LIBRE is empowering Hispanic communities through direct advocacy. Sandra shares how LIBRE's national fly-in brings stories and real-world concerns from Latino communities across 13 states to the halls of Congress. From celebrating the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and advocating for policies like the REINS Act and the DOJGAR Act, to spotlighting issues like economic opportunity, tax relief, and occupational licensing reform, LIBRE is leading the charge to ensure Hispanic Americans are heard—and represented. Sandra also reflects on her personal journey from grassroots organizer to national leader, and how her team's work is helping millions of Hispanic Americans pursue and protect their piece of the American Dream.
The Indispensables: How the Marblehead Regiment Saved Washington's Army The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Interview Series
It's rare for 60 MINUTES to follow a story for 16 years, but correspondent Lesley Stahl reports on Jennifer Thompson, a rape victim who learned years after her attack that an innocent man had been sent to prison, a story Stahl covered in 2009. In this era of DNA exonerations, Thompson has come to believe that crime victims are forgotten, and even blamed, when the justice system gets it wrong. She has created Healing Justice, an organization that brings together the wrongfully convicted, crime victims and family members for multi-day intensive retreats. She invites 60 MINUTES to come along as they share their stories and move together on a path of healing. Correspondent Bill Whitaker cruises through Espanola, N.M., a town that's a hub of lowrider culture: vintage American automobiles with vibrant paint jobs and street-scraping suspensions. He meets a community of “cruisers” who are turning their hobby's bad-boy reputation on its head, paving a new route as activists and community servants, and claiming a place as custodians of Hispanic culture and champions of fine art. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
GDP Script/ Top Stories for July 12th Publish Date: July 12th PRE-ROLL: From the BG AD Group Studio Welcome to the Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. Today is Saturday, July 12th and Happy Birthday to Christine McVie I’m Peyton Spurlock and here are your top stories presented by Gwinnett KIA Mall of Georgia. Gwinnett charges dropped against detained journalist Mario Guevara Georgia Power to update energy forecasts amid uncertain demand Lawmakers conclude listening tour on access to cancer care All of this and more is coming up on the Gwinnett Daily Post podcast, and if you are looking for community news, we encourage you to listen daily and subscribe! Break 1: 07.14.22 KIA MOG STORY 1: Gwinnett charges dropped against detained journalist Mario Guevara Local journalist Mario Guevara, known for covering Atlanta's Hispanic community and ICE operations, is no longer facing traffic charges in Gwinnett County. Solicitor General Lisamarie Bristol announced insufficient evidence to prosecute charges of reckless driving, unlawful use of a telecommunication device, and failure to obey signs, as the incidents occurred on private property. However, Guevara still faces federal immigration charges, with ICE questioning his legal status despite his work permit and ongoing efforts toward permanent residency. Guevara claims he is being targeted for his journalism, which has drawn local and national attention. STORY 2: Georgia Power to update energy forecasts amid uncertain demand Georgia Power's 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) faces scrutiny for overestimating energy demand, driven by the rapid growth of data centers. Critics, including environmental groups, argue the projections could leave ratepayers covering billions in stranded assets if demand falls short. While Georgia Power committed to updating forecasts and reporting on large-load projects, many called for stronger demand-side management (DSM) efforts to reduce energy needs. The utility plans to increase DSM spending from $90M to $160M annually, but some remain dissatisfied. The PSC will vote next week, with debates ongoing over coal plant operations and natural gas upgrades. STORY 3: Lawmakers conclude listening tour on access to cancer care Around 66,000 Georgians will be diagnosed with cancer this year, with 19,000 deaths expected, prompting state lawmakers to study ways to reduce these rates. Georgia exceeds national averages for lung, prostate, breast, and colorectal cancer, with rural areas facing significant barriers to care due to rising costs, limited access, and medical industry consolidation. Experts highlighted issues like pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) controlling drug markets and low reimbursement rates for clinics. Lawmakers aim to address drug pricing, access to screenings, and systemic healthcare challenges, with plans to continue studying cancer care access and solutions. We have opportunities for sponsors to get great engagement on these shows. Call 770.874.3200 for more info. We’ll be right back Break 2: STORY 4: Deputies: Buford man threw deep freezer at 59-year-old at Lake Lanier after fight over nudity A Buford man, Logan Nicholas Young, 42, was arrested on July 3 after a bizarre incident on Lake Lanier involving public indecency, a fight, and a flying deep freezer. Young allegedly got naked on a boat, argued with a 59-year-old man, punched him, and later threw a deep freezer at him, causing a head injury and knocking him into the lake. Deputies found Young hiding under a bed on his houseboat after he ignored their attempts to contact him. He was charged with six offenses, including aggravated assault, and released on bond on July 6. STORY 5: Robert Michener named Gateway85 CID's interim executive director The Gateway85 Community Improvement District (CID) appointed longtime employee Robert Michener as interim executive director following Emory Morsberger's resignation after nearly 20 years of involvement. Michener, with 17 years at Gateway85, previously served as director of operations, overseeing infrastructure, security, and landscaping projects. Board Chairman Shiv Aggarwal praised Morsberger's contributions and welcomed Michener's leadership during the transition. The CID will continue focusing on economic development, mobility, and quality of life improvements as it searches for a permanent leader. Michener expressed excitement about guiding the district's next phase of growth. Break 3: STORY 6: 'Superman' stars excited to bring DC reboot to theaters Edi Gathegi, Isabela Merced, and Anthony Carrigan star in the new "Superman" reboot, with Gathegi playing Mr. Terrific, Merced as Hawkgirl, and Carrigan debuting as Metamorpho. At a red carpet event in Atlanta, Gathegi contrasted his survival as Mr. Terrific with his infamous death as Darwin in "X-Men: First Class." Merced highlighted the mix of CGI and practical sets, comparing her Hawkgirl role to her experience in "Dora the Explorer." Carrigan, excited to bring fan-favorite Metamorpho to life, praised the detailed makeup used instead of CGI. STORY 7: Gwinnett fire investigators say arsonist tried to burn down Lawrenceville home Gwinnett County fire officials are investigating a suspected arson at a Lawrenceville home on Clairidge Lane on June 27. Firefighters responded to a fire alarm and smoke report, discovering an incendiary device behind the home. The fire was out by the time they arrived, and no injuries were reported. Officials are seeking public help to identify the suspect, with a potential reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Tips can be directed to the Gwinnett Fire Investigations Section or the Georgia Arson Control Hotline. We’ll have closing comments after this Break 4: Ingles Markets 2 Signoff – Thanks again for hanging out with us on today’s Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. If you enjoy these shows, we encourage you to check out our other offerings, like the Cherokee Tribune Ledger podcast, the Marietta Daily Journal, or the Community Podcast for Rockdale Newton and Morgan Counties. Read more about all our stories and get other great content at www.gwinnettdailypost.com Did you know over 50% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly? Giving you important news about our community and telling great stories are what we do. Make sure you join us for our next episode and be sure to share this podcast on social media with your friends and family. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Briefing and be sure to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the BG Podcast Network Show Sponsors: ingles-markets.com kiamallofga.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this week's Modern Retail Podcast, senior reporters Melissa Daniels and Gabriela Barkho Barkho kick things off with a look at Constellation Brands' declining beer sales. The Modelo and Corona owner is facing tariffs and weaker demand from its large Hispanic consumer base, which makes up half of its U.S. sales. Later in the episode (9:27), Modern Retail's e-commerce platforms reporter, Allison Smith, joins the show for a roundtable on how Prime Day and accompanying deals galore went over. With sales off to a slow start for Amazon's four-day summer event, some wonder whether it's a bellwether for decline in consumer sentiment.
In this inspiring episode, we sit down with Artemisia, a powerhouse in the real estate world. She is the number one agent in Minnesota by transactions (Real Trends) and the number four Hispanic agent nationwide (NAHREP). From her early days as an immigrant navigating language and cultural barriers to raising a family while building a thriving business, Artemisia shares how she leads with heart, purpose, and relentless determination.We dive into:How she balances motherhood and a top-producing real estate careerWhat ultimately led her to make the move to eXp RealtyThe importance of reputation and human connection in getting offers acceptedWhy mindset, discipline, and passion matter more than any scriptHer vision for the future (spoiler: she's not slowing down anytime soon!)Whether you're a new agent looking for real talk about the hustle, or a seasoned pro in need of inspiration, this episode is packed with wisdom, humor, and truth bombs.You can find Artemisa at:artemisaboston.comEmail: arte54@yahoo.com
Donate (no account necessary) | Subscribe (account required) Join Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA Operations Officer, as he breaks down today's biggest stories shaping America and the world. Alligator Alcatraz and ICE Raids Spark National Debate Polling shows over 60% of Americans support deportations, including a growing number of Hispanic voters. At Florida's “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center, migrants complain about conditions, while LA officials criticize ongoing ICE raids. Meanwhile, left-wing attacks on ICE officers escalate, and Democrat senators propose unmasking agents. President Trump slams the idea, calling it dangerous and un-American. Trump Offers Tariff Discounts to African Nations That Accept Deportees President Trump is using tariff policy to pressure countries to accept U.S. deportees. In a bid to ease deportation backlogs, he offers lower tariffs and increased investment to African nations like Gabon, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau if they agree to resettle illegal migrants. Some leaders appear open, especially where economic incentives align with rare earth mineral access. Brazil Tariffs Escalate as Trump Responds to Free Speech Crackdown Trump imposes a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods in response to President Lula's treatment of former conservative leader Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil threatens retaliation, which could affect prices for key imports like coffee, beef, and rare earths. Bryan supports Trump's leverage strategy but cautions against alienating allies without diplomatic finesse. Tariffs Not Driving Inflation, But Price Pressures May Be Coming Despite fears, Axios reports that tariffs have not significantly raised consumer prices. Most U.S. companies are absorbing the costs or adapting supply chains. However, 77% say they may raise prices within six months. Bryan celebrates being right about his “Costco analogy” and urges listeners to watch corporate earnings next week for updates. Microsoft Lays Off Americans, Hires Foreign Workers, and Embraces AI Microsoft plans to lay off 15,000 U.S. workers while replacing them with AI and 14,000 foreign hires, mostly from China and India, via H-1B visas. Critics argue the program is abused to undercut American wages. Bryan warns of growing youth unemployment and calls for policy changes before AI and outsourcing further erode the U.S. labor market. "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." – John 8:32
Also known as El Infierno Verde (the green hell), The Darién Gap is a stretch of jungle that connects Colombia and Panama. A place so dangerous, only those with no other choice would dare to cross in hopes of a better life. In this episode, Ayden shares a Susto original based on the jungle of death.Please consider donating to Doctors Without Borders for their work at the exit of The Darién Gap and around the world:https://events.doctorswithoutborders.org/campaigns/sustoWant to hear your story on Susto? Fill out the Letters From the Beyond form or visit SustoPodcast.com to be shared on the show!Become a Patron here!
Our guests today are marriage counselors and former MLB chaplains Gio and Suzy Llerena. Gio and Suzy have been serving the Lord faithfully their entire married life and currently serve at Christian Family Life ministry. In the early years, Gio and Suzy invested in youth and helped start a Hispanic church. Following that, Gio went on staff with a ministry called Baseball Chapel for 14 years where he served as the chaplain for the Tampa Bay Rays; oversaw International Ministries in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Venezuela; and recruited and trained MLB chaplains. Today on the podcast, Gio and Suzy discuss the early expectations of marriage, the challenges they faced, and how they learned to navigate conflicts through prayer and mutual submission. The Llerenas emphasize the significance of understanding God's purpose for marriage and the role of spiritual warfare in relationships. They also highlight the importance of investing in other marriages and maintaining daily communication to keep Christ at the center of their own relationship.."Get in the Game" is part of the Sports Spectrum Podcast Network.Sign up for our Sports Spectrum Magazine and receive 15% off a 1-year subscription by using the code PODCAST15http://SportsSpectrum.com/magazineDo you know Christ personally? Click here to learn how you can commit your life to Him.
DAMIONThe next phase of Starbucks' turnaround plan is offering executives up to $6 million in stock grants, as baristas scrap to get annual raises above 2%Starbucks will reward company executives with up to $6 million in stock grants should they effectively fulfill cost-saving and timely rollout goals of the company's “Back to Starbucks” turnaround strategy. Starbucks Workers United representatives dubbed the move “ridiculous and irresponsible” amid contract negotiations over barista wages.WHO DO YOU BLAME?Double boomerang CEO and founder Howard Schultz1987-2000; 2008-2017; 2022-2023CEO and Chair Brian Niccol and his $113 million golden hello packageThe company's work-from-home policy which allows its CEO to work remotely from his home in Newport Beach, California, while the company's headquarters are in Seattle, Washington. As part of his employment agreement, Starbucks pays for him to travel between his home and the Seattle headquarters on the company's private jet.Former failure Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer who was appointed as a director to Starbucks 4 days before the announcement of the new retention awards. Compensation Committee chair Ritch Allison: The guy passes every pay plan for whoever; is the former CEO of Domino's Pizza so is here to enrich executives; and owns $3M is SBUX stock so doesn't really care: someone should be responsible for a CEO pay ratio of 6666:1Agios Appoints Dr. Jay Backstrom to Board of DirectorsJay Backstrom appointed as Class III director as of July 8, 2025, 20 days after the company held an election to appoint two Class III directors.WHO DO YOU BLAME?The top 4 institutional investors (35% of voting power):Farallon Capital 10% Vanguard 10%BlackRock 9% BB Biotech 6%The company's childish bylaws which separate directors into three classes that are voted on every three yearsFormer CEO Jacqualyn Fouse (23%) who stuck around to serve as board chair after being CEO for only 3 yearsNominating Committee chair and Lead independent director Kaye FosterEmasculated CEO Brian GOff (15%) who presides over a board with a +7% gender influence gapAn anti-DEI investment firm postponed its Tesla ETF, saying Elon Musk has 'gone too far' by launching a political partyWHO DO YOU BLAME?Its BS mission statement: “Azoria is an investment firm with the mission of compounding capital for investors through a commitment to free thinking, excellence, and meritocracy.”Wouldn't that include Elon?James T. Fishback, Founder and CEO of Azoria, a free-thinking investment firm“We have an anti-American subculture that cancels the science fair in favor of drag queen story hour, forces colleges to spend more time teaching micro-aggressions than microbiology, and teaches kids in America that Cardi B is a role model and Thomas Jefferson is a racist.”“Fishback will become a major Gen Z star in our pro-American movement.” — Vivek Ramaswamy, 2024 Presidential Candidate.“dropped out of Georgetown University to establish a hedge fund at 21 years old”Azoria partner Sol Ehrlich:“For my last day at Spectra, it's important that I share just how much this opportunity has meant to me. In June of 2023, I was a 28 year old mediocre Euro League baseball player with no job prospects outside of coaching. My only qualification to work in finance was my work ethic, which Brent Donnelly recognized when he met with me over Zoom and saw the litany of Post-It tabs I used to annotate his book”“It's with great excitement that I'll be taking this skillset to Azoria as a partner and its Head Trader- an opportunity I couldn't have imagined 18 months ago.”While the internet was introduced to James Fishback's talents this year, I've been aware of them since 2009 when we competed against each other in high school debate. (His meme game was A+ even then- I still remember him closing a speech on U.S. sanctions with 4 Russian leader puns.)”Me. Because somehow I'm connected to Fishback on linkedin.Greenlight Capital, for making James angry:In a lawsuit: “Greenlight Capital says James Fishback is a liar. The 29-year-old hedge fund manager and former employee, contrary to his own proclamations, was never “head of macro” at Greenlight, never had any “authority or discretion” over investments, and certainly wasn't responsible for an “insane” $100 million in profits as a mere research analyst. In fact, his contributions were so not “insane” that the hedge fund was about to fire him before he chose to leave of his own accord.”Greenlight's alleged former head of macro is hoping to get at least $5 million from David Einhorn, claiming age discrimination"Mr. Einhorn dismissively told Mr. Fishback that his compensation was 'a lot of money for a kid,'" the filing states, and Fishback argues the comment "demonstrates that Defendants' decision about Mr. Fishback's compensation was driven largely by his age — a protected characteristic."Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire's Mamdani commentsMaguire, an outspoken supporter of President Trump, posted on X over the weekend that Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything.”WHO DO YOU BLAME?Shaun Maguire: “My whole life I've sought out people that I think are really talented but a little bit off the radar.”Shaun Maguire: “[E]ven more important to me is someone that's just irrationally motivated. For whatever reason, it's their life mission to try to revolutionize the industry they're going after.”Shaun Maguire: “Should I go public with the story about the time I was told I can't be promoted for being a white man? Fuck it, This happened at Google. That company is an absolute trash can dumspeter fire.”Sequoia Capital: for proudly endorsing some of its most insipid founders: Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Vlad Tenev (Robinhood, online betting on stocks), Keller Rinaudo (Zipline, autonomous delivery), Winston Weinberg (Harvey, AI for lawfirms), Brian Chesky (Airbnb, rent killer)MATTForward Air, after their AGM battle with Ancora, still hasn't released their 8K after a MONTH despite Ancora announcing it was a “landslide” directly afterWHO DO YOU BLAME for not releasing an 8k?Charles Anderson, Robert Edwards Jr, Michael Hodge who own roughly 25% of the voting power, even if FF data doesn't properly show them as having all the influence on the boardAncora, who just couldn't help but IMMEDIATELY put out a press release stating: “Absent the more than 30% of shares that were legally committed to vote for the incumbent Board, Chairman George Mayes, Jr., Javier Polit, and Laurie Tucker lost in a landslide, highlighting the substantial level of concern regarding the legitimacy of the Board's strategic review. We believe the resignations of these legacy directors will empower the Board to carry out a thorough assessment of value-maximizing opportunities.”Christine Gorjanc, chair of the audit committee, who was chair of the audit committee at Invitae from 2015 to 2024 when it declared bankruptcy despite getting her degree in accounting and a MS in “taxation”Michael L. Hance, chief counsel who also holds a masters in Divinity, who couldn't find the “submit” button on his iPhoneNo, Carnival Cruises is not banning rap musicCarnival Cruise Lines denied reports circulating online that DJs aren't playing hip-hop.The cruise line has responded to claims circulating online that DJs aren't including hip-hop music in their sets or honoring song requests, with some social media users saying the alleged move is racially motivated.WHO DO YOU BLAME for this malicious rumor?Carnival's ZERO BLACK leadership team, lead by Mickey Arison - they do have two Hispanic men, Enrique Miguez (General Counsel) and Gustavo Antorcha (President of Princess Cruises), but it's balanced out by the Scandinavian (Lars Ljoen, Chief Maritime Officer) and other Euro men (Felix Eichhorn, Paul Ludlow)Carnival's Board of Directors, which has 11 members and is 91% white, with one black woman, Nelda Connors. Nelda's background is in hydraulics and metals with a degree in mechanical engineering, so she's probably too “nerdy” for rap anywayChristine Duffy, the head of Carnival Cruises, whose prior role was President of the Cruise Lines International Association which put out a report in 2008 showing that 93% of cruise passengers were white, and in 2025 said that 1 in 4 passengers came from either Texas or Florida. Duffy grew up in Northwood Philadelphia, which in 1950 was three quarters white but by 2020 is 93% black.Thinking hip hop is “black music”DAMIONPeople are boycotting Etsy over ‘Alligator Alcatraz' merchCalls to boycott Etsy are growing since “Alligator Alcatraz” merch popped up on its marketplace. The term refers to the Trump administration's new migrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades.WHO DO YOU BLAME?The 48% influence duo: CEO Josh Silverman (25%) and longest-tenured director (2007): Board Chair and Nominating Committee chair Fred Wilson (23%)The -13% gender influence gap at a company where: “approximately 80% of Etsy's buyers and sellers are women.Leadership is 6 men and 2 women, one of who is CHROThe company's dumb classified board structureThis year's 3 directors: 24%, 28%, 22% againstTokens to Access Private Companies, or to Investor Trouble?Robinhood is the latest to offer investors a novel, and potentially risky, investment opportunity: crypto that's meant to give exposure to the likes of OpenAI.WHO DO YOU BLAME?CEO/founder/Chair Vladimir Tenev: 47% influence; 24% voting power Baiju Bhatt: 37% influence; 36% voting powerThe pesky Class B share: for being worth ten votes per shareThe non-democratic Founders' Voting Agreement: Our Co-Founders have agreed: “to vote all of their shares in favor of the election of each Co-Founder”Lead Independent Director Jonathan Rubinstein: for being the most pointless Lead Independent Director of all time: Lead Independent Director at Robinhood since 2021 and Lead Independent Director at Amazon.com from 2017-2023OpenAI Says It's Hired a Forensic Psychiatrist as Its Users Keep Sliding Into Mental Health Crises"We're developing ways to scientifically measure how ChatGPT's behavior might affect people emotionally."WHO DO YOU BLAME?Sam AltmanBret Taylor (Chair)Sam AltmanMatt: AI itself for being a jerk
About this episode: Asthma can cause sometimes debilitating symptoms for children who have it, and some—particularly Black and Hispanic children—can experience higher rates of diagnoses, hospitalizations and emergency department visits. In this episode: pediatrician and immunology researcher Dr. Elizabeth Matsui talks about the known causes behind childhood asthma and how it impacts youths, and how factors like poor housing conditions and barriers to care and medication worsen conditions and undermine long-term lung development. Guest: Dr. Elizabeth Matsui is a pediatric allergist-immunologist and epidemiologist and a leading researcher on the connection between asthma and environmental conditions. Host: Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Show links and related content: The Role of Neighborhood Air Pollution in Disparate Racial and Ethnic Asthma Acute Care Use—American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Association of a Housing Mobility Program With Childhood Asthma Symptoms and Exacerbations—JAMA Do upper respiratory viruses contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in emergency department visits for asthma?—The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Tackling Housing Injustice—and Improving Childhood Asthma—Public Health On Call (June 2023) Transcript information: Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel. Contact us: Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website. Follow us: @PublicHealthPod on Bluesky @JohnsHopkinsSPH on Instagram @JohnsHopkinsSPH on Facebook @PublicHealthOnCall on YouTube Here's our RSS feed Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University
Elon Musk is at it again, dumping on the Big Beautiful Bill and trying to start a new political party. Pride in America is the lowest it's been in years which we guess is a big win for the Leftist public school system. Cuban Americans have been breaking with Hispanic immigrants from the beginning. What makes Cuban immigrants different?Get 30% off sitewide thru Independence Day weekend at CrowderShop.com.Get your Socialism is for F*gs shirt now! https://crowdershop.com/products/socialism-is-t-shirtSave 50% off your first month go to http://puretalk.com/CROWDERDon't miss the 4th of July sale! Visit http://cbdistillery.com/ and use code RUMBLE for up to 50% off!GUEST: Josh FirestineLink to today's sources: https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/sources-july-1-2025DOWNLOAD THE RUMBLE APP TODAY: https://rumble.com/our-appsJoin Rumble Premium to watch this show every day! http://louderwithcrowder.com/PremiumGet your favorite LWC gear: https://crowdershop.com/Bite-Sized Content: https://rumble.com/c/CrowderBitsSubscribe to my podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/louder-with-crowder/FOLLOW ME: Website: https://louderwithcrowder.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/scrowder Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louderwithcrowder Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stevencrowderofficialMusic by @Pogo
Sherri Papini, the California mom who orchestrated her own kidnapping in 2016, is now on a media tour promoting her new memoir, Sherri Papini Doesn't Exist. Sherri pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI after telling authorities she was abducted by two Hispanic women. Investigators would discover that she was with an ex-boyfriend the entire time. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod