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In economics, a market is a place (even virtual) where buyers and sellers meet to exchange goods or services. Economists love markets. It's like all of our supply and demand graphs have come to life. Almost everything you buy goes through some sort of marketplace—your cup of coffee came from trading in the bean markets. Your spouse might have come from the dating marketplace on the apps. Even kids will tell you one Snickers is worth at least two Twix.But sometimes, as we'll see today, markets can go terribly wrong; greed can run out of control; lives can be at risk. That's when the government often steps in and gives the market a little nudge to work better. Today's episode: Market Design.The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Eric Mennel. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Emily Crawford. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Dave makes Snickerdoodles as their name implies: with Snickers. He then brings the...interesting... results to an interview with Samin Nosrat, author of Salt Fat Acid Heat and new cookbook Good Things, and her co-host of Home Cooking and host of Song Exploder, Hrishikesh Hirway, where the trio discusses successful partnerships, perfectionism, and what the future of creative endeavors looks like. Dave finishes with a home food hack: how to make a delicious and dazzling dumpling skirt. Dave also announces the inaugural Ask Dave prize package winner. Send yours in for a chance to win! Send in your Ask Dave questions to bit.ly/AskDaveForm or askdave@majordomomedia.com. Learn more about Samin: https://ciaosamin.com/ Learn more about Hrishikesh: https://hrishikesh.co/ Follow Samin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ciaosamin/?hl=en Follow Hrishikesh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hrishihirway/ Learn more about Samin's upcoming tour stops: https://ciaosamin.com/appearances Check out Samin's new book Good Things: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Things-Recipes-Rituals-Cookbook/dp/1984857789?&linkCode=sl1&tag=majordomotv-20&linkId=93c3c814fceac98da6ed148e9a0e2885&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl Check out Samin's new Substack, A Grain of Salt here: https://ciaosamin.substack.com/ Check out the Home Cooking podcast: https://homecooking.show/ Check out Hrishikesh on Recipe Club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RECn7sAhFsM Check out the Song Exploder podcast: https://songexploder.net/ Check out Hrishikesh's Netflix show Song Exploder: https://www.netflix.com/title/80992997 Check out Samin's Netflix show Salt Fat Acid Heat: https://www.netflix.com/title/80198288 Check out Hrishikesh on Recipe Club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RECn7sAhFsM Check out GoodBoyNoah's Snickerdoodles recipe: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDX07Uwp0gc/?hl=en Learn more about Hillstone Restaurant Group: https://hillstone.com/ Learn more about Bibigo Mandu: https://www.bibigousa.com/collections/dumplings Read The New Yorker profile on Momofuku Ssam Bar: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/momofuku-ssam-bar Learn more about Benton's Ham: https://www.bentonscountryham.com/ Read the Kyle Chayka article Samin and Hrishikesh mention: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/16/the-tyranny-of-the-algorithm-why-every-coffee-shop-looks-the-same Learn more about Kismet: https://www.kismetla.com/ Learn more about Calif Chicken Cafe: https://www.califchickencafe.com/ Learn more about Sarah Kieffer's pan-banging cookie: https://www.thevanillabeanblog.com/pan-banging-chocolate-chip-cookies/ Learn more about the coconut water soup stock recipe Samin mentions: https://food52.com/recipes/78595-yi-jun-loh-s-one-pot-coconut-water-abc-soup?srsltid=AfmBOorwKoG734T0MjFc6sn5fnE23snRZiM4nHUxMzP2St5iNFh2hMiP Learn more about Samin testing her coffee: https://ciaosamin.substack.com/p/some-notes-on-cold-brew-coffee-testing Learn more about the book Hrishikesh mentioned: https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Walter-Murch-Editing-Film/dp/0375709827?&linkCode=sl1&tag=majordomotv-20&linkId=0fc3ede5b2d6402a7d33b4ac3b079157&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl Watch Hrishikesh talk about the poem One Art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylcxKnn32D0 Learn more about Asian Legend Toronto, which inspired the mandu lattice tip: https://www.asianlegend.ca/home.php Subscribe to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedavechangshow. Subscribe to Recipe Club on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@recipeclubofficial. Submit your favorite food moments in your favorite movies to majorfoodporn.com. Join our community Discord on majordomo.com. Free Grubhub+. It's on Prime. *Additional terms apply* Host: Dave Chang Guests: Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway Majordomo Media Producer: David Meyer and Kelsey Rearden Spotify Producer: Felipe Guilhermino Editor: Stefano Sanchez Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mittens and Boo discuss forbidden snacks, their dumb humans and Boo's new book How to Get Everything You Want From Your Human. Catnip and moving services provided by Snickers.Sponsored by Meow Meow Puffytail, feline rights attorney.CreditsJacob McNatt as MittensMelissa Zamudio as BooKristoff Grey as SnickersJeff Callahan as Meow Meow PuffytailEditing by Jacob McNattFully captioned on YouTube.This episode is a tribute to the beloved pets of cartoonist Scott Adams.
On this episode of The Sick Podcast, Scott Bair joins Adam Rank to discuss Caleb Williams having his best day at camp, if there is too much pressure on Williams, Luther Burden III looking like the best Chicago Bears wide receiver and more! Later in the show, actor and comedian Chris Tetito joins Adam to discuss the release of Happy Gilmore 2, his Snickers commercial, his new script sold to Netflix and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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
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
If you're overwhelmed, burned out or just trying to make it through the day without falling apart, this episode is for you.More info, resources & ways to connect - https://www.tacosfallapart.com/podcast-live-show/podcast-guests/courtney-schulnickIn this episode, I sat down with Courtney Schulnick to talk all about mindfulness and how it actually fits into messy, busy, real life! Courtney spent almost 20 years as a high-pressure litigator at a major law firm in Philly. The work was demanding and stressful. When she had her first child, she managed. When her family grew and life threw her fertility struggles and long sleepless nights, she kept pushing through. But she was burning out. Badly. That's when her therapist suggested mindfulness.At first, Courtney was skeptical. The idea of committing to a two-and-a-half-hour class every week, plus daily home practice, felt impossible. But eventually, she realized something had to give. She signed up for an MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) course and it completely shifted how she moved through the world. The stress didn't go away, but her relationship to it did. She started feeling more present, more grounded, more in control. She not only learned to function better at work, she learned to show up for her life.We talked about how mindfulness helped her navigate the pressures of law while raising three boys, and how it ultimately bought her another ten years in a career she had nearly burned out of. She now teaches MBSR herself and helps high-performing professionals find balance without sacrificing their ambition.Courtney broke down what mindfulness actually is: moment-to-moment awareness, without judgment. It's not about clearing your mind or sitting in silence for hours. It can be as simple as noticing your feet on the floor or being fully present while brushing your teeth. And it works. There's a growing body of scientific evidence showing that mindfulness reduces anxiety, depression and even boosts immune function.She also tackled the idea that mindfulness is just another luxury or self-care chore. It's not. It's a way of being, not a task to check off a list. And yes, even busy people can do it. You don't need to dedicate hours to see the benefits. A few minutes a day can make a difference.We also talked about how mindfulness intersects with trauma. Courtney was clear: mindfulness is powerful, but it's not for everyone at every moment. If someone is navigating trauma or deep depression, it's important to be mindful about mindfulness (pun intended) and to have professional support in place.Throughout the conversation, Courtney's warmth and honesty stood out. She shared personal stories, like stealing Snickers bars as a kid, and how her kids now remind her to slow down. We laughed about egg cups, Instagram reels and the ongoing challenge of being present as a parent in a world that never stops pinging.If you've been curious about mindfulness, or if you're overwhelmed and looking for a way to show up more fully in your own life, this episode is a great place to start.
After a Spring hiatus, Byrd and Matt come back to discuss Jurassic World Rebirth, the newest entry in the Jurassic Park franchise directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla 2014, Monsters, Star Wars: Rogue One). This entry follows a group of mercenaries (led by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali) tasked with gathering dino DNA for medical research by going to an island used for genetic experimentation. Along the way they meet up with a family they save during a Mosasaur attack. We discuss an endless amount of dinosaur chase sequences, the rushed production of the film, Snickers wrappers, Lays potato chips, and the death of the "director as auteur" in blockbuster film making. So how does this one compare to the last few entries? Listen and find out!
In episode 498, the "survival experts" find themselves once again plagued by the return of Dinosaurs. Chris had a bad time on this Island and Jack preaches about the evil of Snickers, the true villain of this film! E-mail your survival suggestions to us at wecouldsurvivethat@gmail.com or Twitter @WeCouldSurvive or find older episode on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXAa8-wNqv1G14ts_DHenkg/feed
What was your go to candy bar in the 70s?
Vores partnere på EM: Snickers & Sparekassen Kronjylland Panel: Kenneth Kretschmer Vært: Arnela Muminovic I denne udsendelse snakker vi de fire underholdende kvartfinaler ned og bager op til Spanien-Tyskland og Italien-England. Havde du bestilt underholdning og intensitet den seneste uge, så fik du i den grad leveret det ved de fire kvartfinaler ved EM i Schweiz. Udover nedtakt af kvartfinaler kigger vi også frem mod de to semifinaler, der står mellem England og Italien, mens Spanien og Tyskland også tørner sammen. Du kan blandt andet høre mere om: - Italien, der spiller som Danmark burde spille - Norge, der bestod og skuffede endnu engang - Hvorfor der bliver brændt så mange straffespark ved EM - Kritikken af Sveriges landstræner Gerhardsson i sin sidste kamp - 1-7-nederlaget til det schweiziske landshold før EM, der nu bliver mere glemt - Tyskernes store holdånd - og Frankrigs manglende samhørighed Og meget, meget mere. Indholdet i Mediano Q er gratis for lytterne, fordi vi har partnere som Snickers og Sparekassen Kronjylland. Relevante links om Mediano: - Hvem er vi: mediano.nu/om - Kom med i Støt Mediano: mediano.nu/stot - Hvad er Støt Mediano - det får man som medlem: mediano.nu/stot - Sådan installerer du kanalen Støt Mediano - se vores nemme videoguide: mediano.nu/guide - FAQ - Oftest stillede spørgsmål til kanalen Støt Mediano og medlemskabet: mediano.nu/faq - Medianos nyt debatmodul, Mediator: mediano.nu/mediator - Få Medianos nyhedsbrev hver uge: mediano.nu/nyhedsbrev
What happens when a high-profile protein bar brand suddenly dives into frozen seafood? Naturally, the industry takes notice—and chaos ensues. In this episode, the hosts unpack David's unexpected launch of raw frozen cod, a move that seems both strategic and defiant, sparking intense debate across the CPG world. They also delve into the debut of Love Potion, a new ready-to-drink espresso martini from “Bachelor in Paradise” alum Justin Glaze, exploring what it reveals about the saturated, and increasingly unpredictable, landscape of celebrity-backed beverages. Show notes: 0:35: Marion Pen? A Slippery Stunt? Wrong Place, Wrong Time? Gold & Pecans. Strawberry Salt! – Mike is OOO, so naturally the hosts wonder if he's back in the slammer. They dive into David's introduction of a new raw, frozen cod product and whether it's a tongue-in-cheek response to critics of processed foods or a genuine product extension. The team highlights upcoming Taste Radio meetups in Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, and London, inviting listeners to connect in person. Ray voices his frustration over the glut of RTD espresso martinis flooding the market, especially a new launch from a reality TV star. The hosts question the staying power of yet another celebrity-backed booze brand, while John shares insights on how emerging products can rise above the noise. Ray also unboxes a quirky PR gift from Snickers and samples Jacobsen Salt Co.'s new Oishii strawberry-infused salt. Meanwhile, Jacqui and John spotlight Bao Blast, a new baobab fruit juice drink, and Ray encourages entrepreneurs to send in product samples for a shot at being featured in future episodes. Brands in this episode: David, Love Potion, La Colombe, Justin's, Gigantic, Harken Sweets, Snickers, Maldon, Jacoben's Salt Co., Oishii, Fly By Jing, Bao Blast, Diet Coke
LEITURA BÍBLICA DO DIA: 2 CRÔNICAS 33:10-16 PLANO DE LEITURA ANUAL: SALMOS 20–22; ATOS 21:1-17 Já fez seu devocional hoje? Aproveite e marque um amigo para fazer junto com você! Confira: A carta do presidiário “Jason” nos surpreendeu, pois nós criamos cachorros para se tornarem cães de serviço, que auxiliam pessoas com necessidades especiais. Um desses filhotes avançou no treinamento, dirigido pelos encarcerados que os treinavam. Jason expressava tristeza por seu passado, mas também dizia: “Snickers é a 17ª entre os cães que treinei e é a melhor. Quando a vejo me olhando, sinto que estou fazendo algo certo”. Jason não é o único a sentir remorsos, todos nós os temos. Manassés, rei de Judá, também os tinha em abundância. Lemos sobre suas atrocidades: reconstruiu santuários idólatras para deuses pagãos, praticou feitiçaria, sacrificou seus próprios filhos e conduziu o povo de Judá por esse caminho sórdido (2 CRÔNICAS 33:3,6,9). “O Senhor falou a Manassés e a seu povo, mas eles ignoraram seus avisos” e Deus chamou a atenção dele. Os babilônios “capturaram Manassés. Puseram um gancho em seu nariz, […] e o levaram (vv.10-11)”. Por fim Manassés fez algo certo: “buscou o Senhor, seu Deus, e se humilhou com sinceridade” (v.12). Deus o ouviu e o restaurou como rei e Manassés substituiu as práticas pagãs pela adoração ao único Deus verdadeiro (vv.15-16). Os nossos remorsos nos ameaçam? Nunca é tarde demais! Deus nos ouve quando oramos com humildade e arrependimento. Por: TIM GUSTAFSON
Er Jurassic World Rebirth det endelige bevis på, at franchisen burde uddø?Jacob Ege Hinchely og Rikke Collin er tilbage i Betacritic-studiet med en spoilerific anmeldelse af Jurassic World Rebirth, den nyeste film i dinosaur-franchisen instrueret af Gareth Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) og skrevet af David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible). Filmen er optaget i blandt andet Thailand og London, og byder på en række intense scener med både nye og gamle dinosaurarter, men også et genkendeligt plot, der for mange ligner en blanding af Jaws og tidligere Jurassic-film.I centrum står Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton, Fellow Travelers) og Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story, Black Widow), men hvor stærkt står castet egentlig i forhold til effekterne? CGI og visuelle effekter fremhæves som veludførte – særligt i enkelte sekvenser – men spørgsmål om karakterdybde, karisma og produktplacering (hej Snickers!) fylder også i snakken.Derudover løfter Jacob og Rikke en debat om biografkulturen anno 2025. Hvordan skal man egentlig opføre sig, når man går i biffen? Må man tale undervejs? Klappe? Kommentere? Der deles både oplevelser og holdninger – og der bliver ikke lagt fingre imellem.Billetterne til Betacritic: Det store Dellemisshow er nu til salg! Showet finder sted den 29. september på Hotel Cecil i København, og Jacob og Rikke glæder sig til at tage jer med på scenen. Sikr dig en plads her: https://www.hotelcecil.dk/datoer/betacriticTusind tak fordi du lytter med.
Today, on From the Pasture with Hired Hand, we visit with Lindsey Monk located at her ranch, Big Sky Livestock in south central Montana. Lindsey, and her husband Ben are fourth generation to live and work their ranch. They've had various breeds of cattle throughout the years and maintained a love for ranch horses. Lindsey talks with Molly about the importance and value of a good neighbor, how they deal with their extreme weather and their love for Snickers candy bars. Tune in today to hear all about Big Sky Livestocks passion for their animals and how they raise them. Big Sky Livestock: http://www.bigskylivestock.comSend us a textFrom the Pasture with Hired Hand:Hired Hand Websites (@hiredhandwebsites): https://hiredhandsoftware.comHired Hand Live (@hiredhandlive): https://hiredhandlive.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/hiredhandwebsites/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HiredHandSoftwareTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hiredhandwebsitesNewsletter: https://www.hiredhandsoftware.com/resources/stay-informed
Ey yo bunky, I’m gonna make some UK Garage, jailhouse style. Just need a Snickers, coffee creamer and some cold toilet water. You in? Bussin’ B Listen on SoundCloud Watch on YouTube Track list Skappakam – High Disperto Certain, GOVERNADE – IM FREE cva beatz & ogasawara – Tonight (cva 70%, Oga 30%) holybones – […] The post Bussin’ Garage n Bass – Episode 432 – Bumpy UK Garage with DJ BrainZ appeared first on UK Garage n Bass From DJ BrainZ.
An eclectic mix of snacks this week as You Tried Dat?? samples Snickers Hi Protein, Pekopeko Chocolate Fujiya, and Uncle Al's Lemon Ice Cookies. They also discuss a Mexican food tour before once again learning about some strange world records. Follow us on Instagram to see pictures of the snacks @youtrieddat.
Vores partnere på EM: Snickers & Sparekassen Kronjylland Panel: Luna Gevitz og Azad Corlu. Vært: Gisle Thorsen 0-1, 1-2 og 2-3. De to første nederlag mod Sverige og Tyskland var ventede, men det var det mod Polen i aftes ikke. Danmark forlader EM i Schweiz uden et eneste point, og det var skidt farvel, at Andrée Jeglertz tog med dansk fodbold. I denne udsendelse analyserer vi svenskerens sidste kamp som dansk landstræner og får bundet en sløjfe på både Danmarks skuffende EM og Jeglertz' tid som landstræner. I studiet er: - Luna Gevitz – EM-sølvvinder fra 2017. Luna nåede 25 landskampe, inden hun for halvandet år siden stoppede en karriere, der inkluderede ophold i både fransk og svensk fodbold. - Azad Corlu – fodboldtræner med UEFA's A-licens og en fortid som professionel fodboldspiller i blandet andet Brøndby. Azad nåede 35 ungdomslandskampe. - Vært er Gisle Thorsen. Hør i denne udsendelse blandt andet om: - En horribel dansk første halvleg - Signe Bruun som førstevalg i front - Betydningen af Pernille Harders skade - Nadia Nadims indhop - Danmarks EM - 25 kampe med Andrée Jeglertz - hvilket aftryk satte han? - Rød-hvid identitetskrise? - Hvad der skal ske, hvis dansk kvindefodbold skal kunne følge med konkurrenterne - Jakob Michelsens opgave som landstræner - Og meget andet... Indholdet i Mediano Q er gratis for lytterne, fordi vi har partnere som Snickers og Sparekassen Kronjylland. Relevante links om Mediano: - Hvem er vi: mediano.nu/om - Kom med i Støt Mediano: mediano.nu/stot - Hvad er Støt Mediano - det får man som medlem: mediano.nu/stot - Sådan installerer du kanalen Støt Mediano - se vores nemme videoguide: mediano.nu/guide - FAQ - Oftest stillede spørgsmål til kanalen Støt Mediano og medlemskabet: mediano.nu/faq - Medianos nyt debatmodul, Mediator: mediano.nu/mediator - Få Medianos nyhedsbrev hver uge: mediano.nu/nyhedsbrev
Could plastic packaging be the next target on MAHA's hitlist? Have we reached peak chili crisp? Has Dubai chocolate already jumped the shark? The hosts dig in and debate, then spotlight a new $450 million fund that's fueling emerging food and beverage brands. We also sit down with Tara Lindley of High West, who talks about how the revered whiskey brand balances innovation with market demand. 0:35: No Ski, Just Apres. A CPG Hub. Bright News, Big Money. Dubai Snickers. Hoarding Crisp. THC Bs. – John is back home and in the studio, though he's still craving the Guinness from his recent travels. Jacqui dives deep into Nombase's new Data Hub, while Ray and Mike shine a spotlight on snack brand Sunnie, which just landed $1 million in fresh funding. They also break down the details of Shore Capital's massive third fund. In a segment meant to be rapid-fire, “Buy or Sell” turns into a spirited debate. Does Dubai chocolate still have momentum? Are plastic bottles a new target for RFK Jr.'s supporters? And has chili crisp finally hit its saturation point? The crew also taste-tests Like Air's latest opus, before Mike rounds things off with a few sips of cannabis-infused beverages. 31:12: Interview: Tara Lindley, Director of Sensory QA & New Product Development, High West – Utah's first legal distillery since 1870, High West crafts distinctive whiskeys that represent the culture and terrain of the American West. Known for its award-winning portfolio, High West is especially celebrated for its limited-edition releases like The Noble Share, High Country American Single Malt, A Midwinter Night's Dram, and Bourye. In this interview, Tara talks about how High West balances innovation with market demand in a competitive and evolving spirits landscape and the collaborative relationship between product development and marketing. She also discusses how consumer insights shape new releases, and why strategic storytelling and education are essential for building loyalty, especially among younger, more selective drinkers. Brands in this episode: High West, Guinness, Sunnie, Lunchables, Chia Smash, Just The Fun Part, Snickers, Kit Kat, Cholula, Tabasco, Heinz, Jala-Lujah, Momofuku, Capitana, Somos, This Little Goat, Hidden Valley Ranch, Fly By Jing, Masala Gossip, Masala Bliss, Hot Pot Queen, Homiya, Gloria Shito, Like Air, Plift, Squier's, Goodmellow
Join Ro and Nick from NickFlix Podcast as they discuss the latest entry in the Jurassic franchise, Jurassic World Rebirth. Hear our thoughts on characters, plot points, snafus and Snickers bars...yes, you heard it right. Have we seen this movie before? Director Gareth Edwards crafts a very competently shot summer blockbuster this summer, but will the word of mouth be good enough to push it towards that new modern billion dollar bench mark? We shall wait and see. Join the discussion. Have you seen it on the big screen? Are you tired of dinosaurs? Give us your own hot takes. Give us both a follow and interact with us on all the socials. The Scarif Scuttlebutt Podcast are founding members of the Red5Network. Look for us out in the world and say, hello there! That's the scuttlebutt!
Jurassic World Rebirth: Episode 352 - We return to a property that society can't help but return to as we cover the 7th (??!?) film in the Jurassic Franchise - it's Jurassic World Rebirth on Normies Like Us! We discuss the film and the burning questions it left us with - like, why the hell would anyone keep going back to this island? Tune in to find out, only on Normies Like Us! Welcome to Normie Park! Insta: @NormiesLikeUs https://www.instagram.com/normieslikeus/ @jacob https://www.instagram.com/jacob/ @MikeHasInsta https://www.instagram.com/mikehasinsta/ https://letterboxd.com/BabblingBrooksy/ https://letterboxd.com/hobbes72/ https://letterboxd.com/mikejromans/
The gang of thugs dons their most practical jungle gear and reluctantly boards the biotech boat for Gareth Edwards' Jurassic World Rebirth. Scarlett Johansson leads a mission to harvest dinosaur DNA in what Universal hopes is the beginning of a new trilogy—but does this franchise still have life in its genetic code, or has it gone full dino-extinct?In this episode, Pete Wright, Steve Sarmento, Tommy Metz III, Justin “JJ” Jaeger, and Mandy Kaplan unpack everything from ADR overload and missing velociraptors to why this script might have been written by a chatty AI trained exclusively on soft reboots and midday sarcasm. They examine the film's visual flatness, its confused tone, the tragic misuse of Mahershala Ali, and the shocking absence of smart kids—the emotional compass of the good Jurassic movies.There's plenty of laughter, frustration, and jalapeño cheddar popcorn as the panel debates whether the soul of this franchise can ever be resurrected. Spoiler alert: if dinosaurs had a peanut allergy, this movie would be their Snickers bar.Film SundriesWatch this on Apple or Amazon, or find other places at JustWatchTheatrical trailerLetterboxd Learn how to support our show and The Next Reel's family of film podcasts by becoming a member. It's just $5 monthly or $55 annually. Learn more here.Follow the other podcasts in The Next Reel's family of film podcasts:Cinema Scope: Bridging Genres, Subgenres, and MovementsMovies We LikeThe Next Reel Film PodcastSitting in the DarkJoin the conversation with movie lovers from around the world in our Discord community!Here's where you can find us around the internet:The WebLetterboxdFlickchartCheck out poster artwork for movies we've discussed on our Pinterest pagePeteJJOceanSteveTommyAndyWhat are some other ways you can support us and show your love? Glad you asked!You can buy our movie-related apparel, stickers, mugs and more from our MERCH PAGE.Or buy or rent movies we've discussed on the show from our WATCH PAGE.Or buy books, plays, etc. that was the source for movies we've discussed on the show from our ORIGINALS PAGE.Or renew or sign up for a Letterboxd Pro or Patron account with our LETTERBOXD MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNT.Or sign up for AUDIBLE.
This statement is false.Or is it?This week we geek out about the seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statements or propositions that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true. It would have been better if we could have a Snickers bar as well, but….. whatever.Today we ate ice cream of Dad's Root Beer Float.Intro and Outro music by Stockmusic331 on Pond5Send us a text
In this touching and visionary episode, we explore Celestis, a Houston-based pioneer since 1994 in “space burials”—the practice of sending small portions of cremated remains (or even DNA) into space. We'll unpack how Celestis works, what it offers, and the rising popularity of this futuristic way to memorialize lives.This Week's Featured Hashtag#WhatMakesMeHangryFor More About the Memorial SpaceflightsVisit Celestis WebsiteVisit The Exploration Company WebsiteWatch A Celestis Memorial ServiceOther Interesting ThingsBetty White's Super Bowl Commercial for Snickers (2010)Send a text to The Ebone Zone! Support the showIf you have questions or comments email ebonezonepodcast@yahoo.com Follow the Ebone Zone on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OfficialEBZLike the Ebone Zone on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ebonezoneofficial/Visit www.ebonezone.com for more content!
Ian and Hannah review the biggest new films and bingeable shows on UK streaming services for the week beginning Friday 27th June, including:An LAPD officer joins a secret task force to investigate a suspicious murder, but uncovers a sinister plot that putting millions of lives at stake in Amazon Prime Video series Countdown.When an arson investigator begrudgingly teams up with a police detective, their race to stop two arsonists ignites a twisted game of secrets and suspicions. Taron Egerton stars in Apple TV thriller series Smoke.An engine fire leaves 4,000 passengers stranded at sea without power and plumbing in this wild Netflix original documentary about the infamous "poop cruise" of 2013. Part of the Trainwreck series.Egomaniac Liv must fix a supermarket PR scandal that's outraged the trans community - but she's having fun first, of course! Transaction is the wickedly funny new sitcom on ITVX.Follow Bingewatch on all major podcast players for your weekly rundown of the best binge-worthy shows across Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and more.Remember to leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser and Goodpods AND you can now show your support and leave a tip for Ian and Hannah.You can also stay in touch with the team via Twitter AND if you like Bingewatch but you're looking for a specific review, check out BITESIZE BINGEWATCH, our sister show making it easier to get the bits you want!For ad and sponsorship enquiries, email liam@mercurypodcasts.com now!
Fed-baas Jerome Powell is nog bijna een jaar de baas van de Amerikaanse centrale bank. Maar Trump zou deze zomer al 'de nieuwe Powell' willen benoemen. Volgens The Wall Street Journal mikt 'ie op september. Dat is veel eerder dan gebruikelijk. Iets waar beleggers van schrikken.We hebben het er deze aflevering over. We bespreken de kandidaten die genoemd worden, maar ook het risico van zo'n schaduwbaas. En of de angst van beleggers terecht is (en wat die dalende Dollar voor gevolgen heeft).Over centrale bankiers gesproken: we hebben het ook over de ECB. In Frankfurt hebben ze een bijzonder onderzoek gedaan. Ze hebben namelijk gekeken of ze ChatGPT kunnen inzetten voor hun onderzoek. Het korte antwoord: ja!Verder bespreken we de hype rondom het aandeel van Nvidia. Dat maakt ineens zijn comeback en dat heeft alles te maken met een aandeelhoudersvergadering en een enthousiaste topman. Al lijkt het er steeds meer op dat de aandeelhouders enthousiaster zijn dan de topman zelf... Ook gaat het over: Shell. Dat mag (omdat het geruchten over BP ontkent) nu niet op overnamepad. Jeff Bezos. Die probeert, nu Elon Musk weg is, te slijmen bij Trump. Ikea. Dat gaat de prijzen met 50 procent verlagen. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What do I Write Sins Not Tragedies, Love Wins, and Worst Way all have in common?They were all directed by this week's guest—renowned filmmaker Shane Drake.With a 20+ year career spanning music videos, commercials, and feature films, Shane has shaped the visual world of artists like Taylor Swift, Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, and Keith Urban. He won MTV's Video of the Year for Panic! at the Disco's I Write Sins Not Tragedies and has brought his distinct creative vision to major brands like Google, Ford, Snickers, American Idol, and The Voice.In this episode, Shane opens up about:The creative process behind directing unforgettable music videosHis wild behind-the-scenes story from his first VMA winHis unique journey from actor to directorHow his theater background shaped his cinematic styleHis latest projects, including Rising Star and his upcoming feature film Cold Dead HandsShane's storytelling is bold, thoughtful, and deeply inspiring—making this a must-listen for creatives, filmmakers, and fans of country and pop culture alike.Episode out now on all streaming platforms.
Host Jodi Katz sat down with two women at the forefront of redefining health care as we know it: Liz Josefsberg, Founder & CEO of Target 100 Inc and Sarah Pesce, COO of stealth-mode wellness startup Radence.Despite wildly different paths—Liz went from Broadway star to Weight Watchers executive, while Sarah pivoted from nurse practitioner to health-tech builder—both share a mission: to help people move from “sick care” to well care.Liz's early career was center stage—literally. She spent years performing in Showboat and Les Misérables, all while privately battling weight fluctuations. That struggle led her to Weight Watchers, first as a member, then as a team member, and ultimately as their Director of Brand Advocacy. She helped build programs, consulted for the CEO, and guided celebrities like Jennifer Hudson and Charles Barkley through their own wellness transformations.But Liz wanted more than just the Weight Watchers playbook. She authored Target 100, a behavioral weight loss book that evolved into an app platform connecting hydration tracking, biometrics, and movement. Her mission? To give people a simple, evidence-based way to understand their bodies—and stay in the game without guilt or shame.Sarah began in cardiology, treating patients already facing chronic illness. It didn't sit right. She saw an opportunity to move upstream—to build better systems for prevention. That led her to advanced degrees, hospital innovation work, and eventually to launching wellness labs that deliver “digital twins” of users through biomarker testing, wearables, and environmental data.Now, at Radence, Sarah's team is developing a member-based preventative screening experience backed by a powerhouse science team. Her focus? Making cutting-edge longevity care accessible, personalized, and understandable—without needing an advanced medical degree to interpret your own labs.Liz and Sarah agreed on nearly everything: that bio-data is only helpful if it's explained clearly. That technology is outpacing consumer understanding. That shame is a sales tool used too often—and that emotional support is what most health programs are missing. Whether it's using AI to build “Liz in your pocket” or designing a membership that meets people where they are, their north star is clarity, context, and compassion.As Liz put it: “No woman has ever come to me and said she doesn't know an apple is better than a Snickers. The problem isn't information. It's behavior—and how we stay in the game.”
The You Tried Dat? crew tastes 3 chocolatey snacks this week: Snickers Butterscotch Scoop Bars, Chocxo Cookies and Creme Cups, and Twix Milk Chocolate Bark. Which will take home the chocolate crown? They also discuss strange behavior at a graveyard before diving into the world of weird art installations. Follow us on Instagram to see pictures of the snacks @youtrieddat.
Rand Fishkin joins Ross Hudgens to unpack the latest acronym craze—GEO, AEO, LEO—and why none may be necessary. They explore the origins of SEO, the rise (and fall) of inbound marketing, and how marketers can avoid falling into the trap of trend-chasing. From naming conventions to the real value of brand clarity, this is a conversation for anyone navigating search in the age of AI. Rand also shares a bold bet on AI's impact on jobs, reflects on his early days in the “promised land of SEO”—and discusses why “SEO for AI” might be the clearest path forward. Plus: Cooking games, Snack Bar Studios, and whether creating a new marketing category is ever worth the effort. Show Notes 0:08 – Why SEO has too many new acronyms 0:44 – The wild origin of SEO in Bend, Oregon 1:29 – Danny Sullivan, Circuit City, and the OG SEO crowd 2:54 – Who coined “zero-click search”? 3:29 – Why naming trends like GEO can hurt clarity 5:00 – Is GEO catching on because A16z backed it? 5:59 – Should we name this shift at all? 6:37 – Why "SEO for AI" is clearer than new acronyms 8:09 – Organic digital vs SEO vs paid—don't confuse your client 9:33 – Naming things doesn't always benefit the person who coined it 10:13 – Why SEO isn't in decline (despite the narrative) 11:07 – Google is still orders of magnitude bigger than any AI tool 12:34 – Rand bets $100K AI won't take half of all jobs 13:39 – “SEO for AI” has 100% clarity, unlike GEO or AEO 14:58 – GEO and AEO should be considered tags under SEO 16:07 – Simplifying your services for buyers: SEO still works 17:11 – SEO can carry baggage—but it's still foundational 18:20 – Organic growth as the category; SEO as the tactic 19:03 – The Snickers bar analogy for misaligned category tags 20:01 – Why HubSpot had the power to rebrand with inbound marketing 20:54 – Applying lessons from game tagging at Snack Bar Studios 22:16 – Final thoughts: ride the wave if you're Mars; otherwise, keep it clear 23:07 – Rand's AI/job displacement bet explained 24:53 – Revisiting his blockchain bet with Dharmesh from 2016 25:21 – What worries Rand more than AI? Government decisions 26:14 – Elon, politics, and the future of tech influence 26:22 – Snack Bar Studios: magical boars and carbonara 26:56 – Sparktoro and “Search Everywhere Optimization” 27:03 – Tagging the cooking game: chill action, story rich, 2D action 27:51 – Geraldine's writing brings it to life Show Link It's Still SEO (SparkToro Blog): (https://sparktoro.com/blog/its-still-seo-search-everywhere-optimization/](https://sparktoro.com/blog/its-still-seo-search-everywhere-optimization/) a16z: GEO Rewrites the Rules of Search: (https://a16z.com/geo-over-seo/) Rand's Game Studio: (https://snackbarstudio.com/](https://snackbarstudio.com/) Subscribe today for weekly tips: (https://bit.ly/3dBM61f](https://bit.ly/3dBM61f) Listen on iTunes: (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174) Listen on Spotify: (https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM) Listen on Google: (https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA) Follow Siege on Twitter: (http://twitter.com/siegemedia](http://twitter.com/siegemedia) Follow Ross on Twitter: (http://twitter.com/rosshudgens](http://twitter.com/rosshudgens) Directed by Cara Brown: (https://twitter.com/cararbrown](https://twitter.com/cararbrown) Email Ross: (ross@siegemedia.com](mailto:ross@siegemedia.com) #seo | #contentmarketing Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: ross@siegemedia.com #seo | #contentmarketing
The Sounds of Nouns & Food News - Red Tostitos & Snickers PuddingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Madison and Griffin have been dating for about eight months after first meeting each other in college. Madison tells us that she and Griffin were in the same friend circle and finally started dating last year. For the most part, Madison says things have been great, but last Thursday she noticed that someone used her unopened box of Tampons she left at Griffin's place. Madison also saw that someone left a Snickers wrapper in the bathroom even though Griffin is allergic. At the same time, Madison wanted to see what was going on so she staked out at Griffin's place and saw his coworker Amber walked into his place even though Griffin never mentioned Amber coming over. We call Griffin pretending to give him a free bouquet of flowers and when we ask him who he wants them sent to, Griffin says he has nobody to send flowers to. Find out what's really going on in this week's War Of The Roses!
Madison and Griffin have been dating for about eight months after first meeting each other in college. Madison tells us that she and Griffin were in the same friend circle and finally started dating last year. For the most part, Madison says things have been great, but last Thursday she noticed that someone used her unopened box of Tampons she left at Griffin's place. Madison also saw that someone left a Snickers wrapper in the bathroom even though Griffin is allergic. At the same time, Madison wanted to see what was going on so she staked out at Griffin's place and saw his coworker Amber walked into his place even though Griffin never mentioned Amber coming over. We call Griffin pretending to give him a free bouquet of flowers and when we ask him who he wants them sent to, Griffin says he has nobody to send flowers to. Find out what's really going on in this week's War Of The Roses!
Snickers With Nuts (Episode 287) by Moose, Ceaz, Dona, & Joz
Michelle Razavi, the co-founder of Elavi, pulls back the curtain on how the brand landed a $1 million order from Costco just four months after the debut of its protein brownies. The hosts also discuss Chobani's purchase of Daily Harvest and Via Verde Valle's acquisition of A Dozen Cousins and how the latter may reflect a new paradigm in which founders favor strategic exits over prolonged fundraising Show notes: 0:45: Pass The Brownies. Sample Your Wares. Fundraise Or Sell? Justin Time. Phony And Fantastic. – The hosts munch on Elavi's protein brownies and heap praise on the brand's co-founders Michelle Razavi and Nikki Elliot. They also highlight sampling opportunities and retailer buyer access at BevNET Live Summer 2025, before diving into recent industry M&A activity, including Chobani's acquisition of Daily Harvest and Verde Valley's acquisition of A Dozen Cousins. They discuss how these moves reflect shifting strategies in CPG, where founders increasingly favor strategic exits over prolonged fundraising. The team also reviews a variety of new products, including Justin's new better-for-you candy bars, Campari's non-alcoholic spritz Crodino, and the standout Phony White Negroni by St. Agrestis. Other notable mentions include energy-infused gum, crypto-themed sparkling water, and functional tea and coffee drinks. 29:09: Interview: Michelle Razavi, Co-Founder, Elavi – Michelle talks about how Elavi spotted whitespace in the protein snack category, the brand's journey to retail readiness, including key learnings from Costco roadshows, and how strategic packaging design and in-store execution have fueled velocity at scale. She also discusses buyer relationships, proving value as an emerging brand, and the internal resilience required to lead a mission-driven company through rapid iteration and distribution. Brands in this episode: Elavi, Olipop, Chobani, Polar, Daily Harvest, A Dozen Cousins, Verde Valle, Snickers, Gigantic Candy, Harken Sweets, Justin's, Campari, Aperol, Crodino, Crush, St. Agrestis, Instant Energy Gum, Rekt, Fktea, Fuzzee Coffee, RXBAR, Caulipower
Stupid News Extra 5-22-2025 ...He Wanted to be Buried in a Snickers Themed Coffin
Rankin Carroll is the Chief Brand Officer at Mars, having joined the company in 2002. Mars is responsible for some of the most well-known advertising in the world, for brands including M&M's, Twix, Snickers, Skittles, and more. Jon speaks to Rankin about long-term brand building vs. performance marketing, how to get the most out of agencies, and what it takes to build a portfolio of incredible brands.Timestamps00:00 - Intro00:52 - Rankin's career journey05:49 - How the Chief Brand Officer role works at Mars07:37 - Marketing mix spend at Mars – can you implement a fully earned strategy?13:27 - Brand building vs. performance marketing15:13 - How Mars stays so consistent with their marketing19:06 - The power of consistency and longevity at Mars24:55 - How agencies can get the most out of their clients32:09 - How Twix became a $1 billion brand38:41 - Own Goal Snickers AI campaign explained40:43 - The dominance of M&M's advertising in the System1 database44:40 - The power of the M&M's characters48:04 - Rankin's advice to young marketers
Imagine driving over 1,000 miles each week for work, surviving on nothing but gas station snacks and fast food from whatever drive-thru happened to be nearby. For traveling salesman Luke Saunders, that was often his reality. But rather than accept it as his new normal, he saw an opportunity: What if healthy food could be just as quick, affordable, and accessible as grabbing a bag of M&Ms from a vending machine? After months of planning and plenty of trial and error, that idea became Farmer's Fridge. Today, Luke shares the challenges he faced figuring out how to store fresh salads, parfaits, and sandwiches in refrigerated vending machines—and why it was all worth it now that Farmer's Fridge is in over 2,000 locations nationwide, including major airports, hospitals, and universities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Weezer Bassist's Wife: Scott Shriner's wife Jillian Lauren was recently caught up in a police shooting but was this premeditated? A look into her history shows that this lady craves attention. Palette Cleanser: An Easter attempted muder of your parents cleanses the palette of the Weezer concubine. Park Freakout: A humble mongoloid tries to hang out at the splash pad and smoke weed, hilarity ensues. Also a guy has a talent for talking shit to police. THE BEAR!, FUCK YOU, WATCH THIS!, VIAGRA BOYS!, MAN MADE OF MEAT!, MIKE!, WRESTLING!, LVL UP EXPO!, MATCH!, STREAMATHON!, HORIZON!, HOURS BANKED!, WEEZER BASS PLAYER!, WIFE!, SHOOTOUT!, POLICE!, HIT AND RUN!, SCOTT SHRINER!, CHASE!, ESCAPE!, JILLIAN LAUREN!, VIDEO!, BODYCAM!, BEHOLD THE MONSTER!, TRUE CRIME!, PEN PAL!, SERIAL KILLER!, SAMUEL LITTLE!, SOME GIRLS!, MY LIFE IN A HAREM!, JEFRI BOLKIAH!, SULTAN!, BRUNEI!, CALL GIRL!, A PUNK ROCK CHARIZARD!, DRUG ADDICT!, CONCUBINE!, AVENGE ME!, EASTER!, RESURRECTION DAY!, STABBING!, HANGRY!, SNICKERS!, FREE COUNTRY!, MONGOLOID!, SPLASH PAD!, FLINSTONES!, FAT!, SHIT TALKING!, F SLUR!, CONEHEAD!, ESCALTE SITUATION!, FIGHT!, SLAM!, FREE SPEECH AUDITORS!, BET!, STORM!, RIVER!, LOU!, SWEPT AWAY! You can find the videos from this episode at our Discord RIGHT HERE!
You're used to saying "stories are soul food" -- this episode discusses why Nate thought kids in our time especially need to read stories about corrupt institutions failing them, and how to reconsecrate an institution in its own rubble. This takes courage, strength, and determination. It takes having stomach for the fight. It takes a leader who refuses to sabotage himself by turning around. It takes becoming immune to the stress of conflict... but also being willing to let love cover it when it doesn't matter. And, it also takes a thorough knowledge Nate's First Law of Meetings (listen to find out this key piece of advice). Because the truth is that any institution that loses sight of the mission is decaying in front of you... and if you notice the Snickers wrapper on the floor in the classroom, you need to pick it up. All of these themes are things you may have noticed in the Ashtown Burials series. You'll also get a few bonus SASF musings on whether Trump can continue his strategy of nonstop wins or whether he'll run out of steam; SASF for Canada and Canadians; and much more.
Episode 975 (15:18) In this episode: What does it mean to be a sheep for our Shepherd, Jesus? Snickers as a visual aide; How to properly receive communion in the hand and on the tongue, and how not to receive Related Web Sites: My Website Podcast PageAll Previous Episodes
We're diving into Day 3 of our epic Disneyland adventure—and this one's all about next-level snacks, classic attractions, and one magical nightcap. We kick things off over at Disney California Adventure with an Impossible™ Breakfast Sha-Warm-Up from Shawarma Palace (plant-based goodness wrapped in flavor), plus a super cool Captain America Shield Sipper. The morning rides include a hot take on Mission: BREAKOUT!—featuring “Give Up the Funk”—and WEB SLINGERS, followed by some Disney classic ride charm with The Little Mermaid and Toy Story Midway Mania.Then it's snack time, and we don't hold back! We cover everything from Baja Breeze seltzers and all-beef hot dogs to standout festival eats like Smoked Hawaiian Pizza, Dole Whip Cheesecake, Garlic Cream Cheese Bread, and a Watermelon Cucumber Mojito. We also dig into lemon pepper wings, birria mac & cheese, and the creative California Wine Cocktail. And of course, we couldn't skip the Mickey-shaped SNICKERS macaron.From there, it's off to Toontown for Runaway Railway, and a quick bite from Maurice's Treats before taking a well-earned break. Then Rhonda and I jump into a classic attraction tour: Adventureland Treehouse, Haunted Mansion, Pinocchio, Snow White, Storybook Land Canal Boats, and Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin.Later, we unwind with drinks at the Broken Spell Lounge and then head to the Craftsman Bar for an unforgettable setting and experience including a inventive mocktails, Sticky Chicken Wings, and a the Charcuterie Pizza.We finish the night with Alice, Mad Tea Party, fireworks viewed from Galaxy's Edge, drinks at Oga's Cantina, a thrilling ride on Big Thunder, the always-amazing Fantasmic!, and Pirates of the Caribbean.This was one packed day—and we're breaking it all down, one bite, ride, and story at a time.We're excited to introduce Balanced Weather — your go-to source for smart, reliable weather updates tailored for Walt Disney World and all of Central Florida.CEO Alan Gerard, a meteorologist and lifelong Disney fan, has been providing weekly weather reports to the Main Street Magic community for years and will now be bringing you weekly forecasts, plus answers to your questions about weather for your upcoming Disney, Universal, or Florida vacation.Visit balancedweather.com/wdw-weather to learn more and get the latest updates.MEI-Travel – Expertise. Ease. Value.No matter where you want to go, our trusted partner MEI-Travel, will handle the planning so you can focus on the memories. They offer free vacation planning services and have nearly 20 years of experience creating memorable vacations. Visit MEI-Travel for a fee-free, no-obligation quote today!Follow Us on Social MediaFacebook GroupFacebook: @MainStMagicTwitter: @MainStMagicTikTok: @MSMPodcastInstagram: @MainStMagicVisit Us Onlinewww.MainStMagic.comwww.MainStreetShirts.comGet Dining Alerts!Find last-minute and hard-to-find Disney dining reservations with MouseDining.com! Get text and email alerts when popular theme park dining reservations open up. Get last-minute seating! Get the next table! Set your alerts now! Get the next reservation!Visit our Partnerswww.MSMFriends.comThanks to TFresh Productions for our theme song
100 dudes vs 1 gorilla—who wins? We spiral from that cursed thought into a full breakdown of horse fights, edible candy bars, forgotten movie comedies, and what it means to be a Three Musketeers in a Snickers world. Thank you all for Listening! Follow Us: Podcast pages - https://linktr.ee/reydarpod https://www.instagram.com/reydarpodcast Rian Reyes - https://linktr.ee/rianreyes Josh the Producer - https://www.instagram.com/imjoshuabenjamin Support the podcast: Patreon - https://patreon.com/reydarpod Merch - https://www.etsy.com/shop/RiansMerch Legacy Teas and Spices: https://legacyteasandspices.com Use code: rian20
Send us a textWelcome to another savage Daily Drop where Jared sifts through the Pentagon's greatest hits — everything from the Air Force shoving 31 more fighters into Korea, to Space Force getting table scraps for a budget, to the shocking revelation that 66% of the Guard and Reserve are apparently auditioning for "My 600-lb Life: Military Edition."Along the way, we roast the Signal App scandal (spoiler: everyone uses it), laugh at the "makeup room" conspiracy (Hexeth allegedly turned the Pentagon green room into Sephora), and wonder why America still thinks tanks are cooler than satellites. Also: a reality check on why Uber is cheaper than ruining lives with a DUI.Buckle up. This one's loaded with bad decisions, hot takes, and a gentle reminder that if you can't save someone from drowning, maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't be rocking that uniform.
What do candy bars, couches, and car dealerships have in common? For Andrew Glaser, they're all opportunities to understand how real people make decisions — and why most product teams get those decisions wrong. In this episode, Andrew shares his journey from hedge fund manager to product strategist, and now founder of Swizzle, an AI product built around Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) thinking. He opens up about how false positives, feature bloat, and over-reliance on personas lead teams down the wrong path — and what it really takes to make something customers will hire. We get into the guts of JTBD, from how to know when you've hit causality in an interview, to why understanding tradeoffs is more useful than knowing demographics. Andrew shares practical frameworks and surprising stories — including what Snickers can teach you about product-market fit, why most sofas don't sell, and how Intercom 15x'ed revenue just by reframing how they talked about their product. Whether you're building software or selling furniture, this conversation will challenge how you think about customer insight — and give you tools to sharpen your product bets. Inside the episode… Why false positives in customer research can wreck a strategy How JTBD helped turn around a billion-dollar furniture retailer The 4 real jobs behind buying a sofa Snickers vs. Milky Way: A JTBD breakdown of context and tradeoffs What most people get wrong about customer interviews Why personas don't drive decisions — and what actually does How Intercom used JTBD to grow from $5M to $75M Using AI to support high-consideration decisions How to know what your product is allowed to suck at Why survey data without context leads to bad bets Mentioned in this episode Andrew's Startup Swizzl - https://swizzl.ai/ Andrew's cofounder Bob Moesta - https://therewiredgroup.com/about/bob-moesta/ Clay Christensen's HBR article: “Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done” - https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done “Demand-Side Sales” by Bob Moesta - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544509987/?bestFormat=true&k=demand%20side%20sales%20101&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k0_1_12&crid=8C2BLR9H1HF6&sprefix=demand%20side%20 “Competing Against Luck” by Clayton Christensen - https://www.amazon.com/Clayton-Christensen-Competing-Against-%E3%80%902018%E3%80%91/dp/B07KPWQQY3/ref=sr_1_2 Unlock the full potential of your product team with Integral's player coaches, experts in lean, human-centered design. Visit integral.io/convergence for a free Product Success Lab workshop to gain clarity and confidence in tackling any product design or engineering challenge. Subscribe to the Convergence podcast wherever you get podcasts including video episodes to get updated on the other crucial conversations that we'll post on YouTube at youtube.com/@convergencefmpodcast Learn something? Give us a 5 star review and like the podcast on YouTube. It's how we grow. Follow the Pod Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/convergence-podcast/ X: https://twitter.com/podconvergence Instagram: @podconvergence
This week on Page 7, Jackie and MJ are joined by LPN's very own political papa Travis Irvine! MJ asks Travis how he deals with the politics right now and not wanting to die, and Travis reveals his secrets! Stanley Tucci got asked by delish if he could only dine at one chain restaurant for the rest of his life and he said "I'd rather not" cause he hates 'em all. Tina Fey was a guest on Amy Poehler's podcast and brought up how much it bothers her when rich people have side hustles that are just cash grabs and erryone is talkin' bout it. A dying man got his wish to be buried in a Snickers inspired coffin that say's "I'M NUTS" on the side, and Jackie learns of a startling new study on hot dogs. A List full of weird fears, the Blinds, AND GET YA CRUNCH ON WITH JACKIES SNACKIES! Plus so much more! Want even more Page 7? Support us on Patreon! Patreon.com/Page7Podcast Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.
In this episode, Josh Mills and Wayne McCarty are joined by showrunner Luke West to discuss how one Florida Man invented a new disease by eating feral hog meat, while another Florida Man was arrested for stealing shrimp and a Snickers bar from Publix. The boys celebrate Luke turning 25 with a "Luke Quiz" before diving into the legendary Miami hip-hop group 2 Live Crew and Uncle Luke. Each week, the Florida Men on Florida Man podcast blends comedy with the fascinating legends, lore, and history of the wildest state in the union—Florida. To learn more about the show, visit our website: www.fmofm.com.
The #1 Super Bowl ad? Snickers in 2010… because Snickers acted like a Freudian therapist.Waffle House is charging a 50-cent-per-egg fee… but we tell ya who to blame for Egg-flation is.New tariffs just hit Shein and Temu… hand it can all be explained with Barbie dolls.Plus, the newest job in America is “TikTok Coach”... because there is an “i” in “viral.”$CALM $MAT $SPYWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: “The Best Idea Yet” — The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. From the McDonald's Happy Meal to Birkenstock's sandal to Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It's The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It's The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.