Robert Leonard (04:03):
Are you doing the vending machine business and you’re coaching full-time now?

Lakinya Francis (04:07):
No. Actually, I do have some machines. I have about five machines, but I got somebody taking care of those for me because I’m too busy coaching now. I still do have my nine-to-five, which now I’m thinking to myself, man, I’m so busy. At one point I’m going to have to make a decision. I’ve been trying to work around it. And that’s where I really like about vending though. It allows you to do the both, you can work and you can do this as a side hustle as you can essentially set up your own schedule and really make it work for you. And if you want to keep it to a minimum, just get a couple of machines and then you’ll be fine. But if you want to scale it up, if you’re looking to make this a full-time thing, you can too. It’s really flexible. So yeah, I do that. I have my machines, but I have a buddy of mine that’s helping me manage them. And I’m really going hard with the coaching.

Robert Leonard (04:56):
We’ll get into the details of the business, but give us a high level overview. When we talk about a vending machine business, what does that mean? Are we flipping vending machines like you would a property for a profit? Are we wholesaling the goods on the inside to other vending machine providers? Or are you owning and operating vending machines themselves that actually sell the product?

Lakinya Francis (05:20):
That’s pretty interesting that you say that because vending machines actually have a part of it that’s set up like real estate in a way. Essentially, it starts off as buying supplies wholesale and I’m selling them inside of the machine for profit. But there’s different things that you can do within vending too, such as buy the machines, maybe you’ll paint them, or you don’t have to do anything to them and just buy them and resell them. That is really big and you can make a lot of money off of them too. Especially here in Miami. Let’s say like a used machine. You get a snack machine, $400, $500. You can easily get it and resell it for $800. That’s one thing that people do. They buy and flip machines. Another thing that you can do is if you’re a handy person, repair and move them. You can charge someone like $150 just to move the machine from point A to B, because maybe you’ll have a truck and a lift.

Lakinya Francis (06:18):
Again, if you’re pretty handy, you can also do repairs where you can charge up to like $100 an hour to fix a machine. And then something that’s really interesting and it’s really important to the business, regardless of which aspect you’re going at it is locating. That’s another big time business within vending, locating services. Someone who is good with talking with individuals or good at sales, they might get into the locating. That’s actually finding locations for other people. Most people don’t like talking to others. So a lot of people will sub that part of the job out. That’s the most important part of the job. So you have some people that are charging like $800 just to find you a location. It may seem like it is actually difficult, but for some people it’s not. Some people have a gift for [inaudible 00:07:07] good with talking. So yeah, vending machine, there’s a lot more than just snacks and chips.

Robert Leonard (07:14):
You and I were actually just talking before we hit the record button on the podcast about real estate. I’m very thankful my business partner, Ryan, we have very different skillsets. He’s that type of person that has the gift for gap. He’s a sales guy, he loves to talk and that’s what he brings to our team. He brings a ton of value other than just that, but that’s one of the big pieces of value that he brings. People listening might think that’s funny because I host the podcast and I talk a lot, but I’m an introvert by design, I think. I’m a numbers guy. That’s what I’m good at, the numbers. He’s good at the sales. So I technically sub out that part of my real estate business to him and he handles that for me.

Lakinya Francis (07:49):
And that’s perfect because it goes hand in hand. You guys compliment each other.

Robert Leonard (07:55):
Yeah. If I got into the vending business, I probably would say about that, that part of the business as well.

Lakinya Francis (08:01):
A lot of people do, honestly. A lot of people are not really big on calling and talking to people. So they’ll just, Hey, I’ll just pay extra to have someone else do it. A lot of people can really capitalize off of that if they’re not shy and they like to talk to people and stuff. Again, that’s another part of it. But what I do mainly is help people find a product that they want to sell and put it in the machine, at a wholesale price, they buy it at a wholesale and sell it for profit.

Robert Leonard (08:29):
Let’s get into that. Let’s start from the beginning. If someone wants to get into this business, where do they start? What is the first thing they do? Do they look to buy their first machine or do they start somewhere else?

Lakinya Francis (08:40):
What I would say for someone who is looking to get into the vending machine business, the first thing you need to do is figure out what type of vending you would like to do. What I mean by that is, are you looking to just get into something small and traditional snacks and drinks? Are you looking to put specific products inside of the machine, such as laundry detergent, laundry supplies? You can even, something that is really popular right now and I do more consulting with this than anything, beauty supply machines. Beauty supply, I’m actually working with someone right now that she’s in Michigan, CBD machine. So you can do pretty much anything. That’s really the first step. What are you looking to do? Once you find out the type of ending that you want to do, that’ll lead you into just shopping in the market for what type of machine you’re going to need.

Robert Leonard (09:32):
That was exactly going to be my next question is, how do we find the specific machine? Because I’m assuming if a machine is going to disperse Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, that’s probably not going to be the same type of machine that we need to disperse makeup or CBD or whatever. So how do we find, or how do we know what machine we need for our product?

Lakinya Francis (09:52):
And that’s what I help people with. So once you figure out what it is that you want, technology is so amazing right now. There’s companies, and I’ve actually partnered with a supply company and they customize machines, literally customize them. Typically what happens, if you want to sell something outside of the ordinary packaging a product like a snack or something, what they would have to do is customize the vending machine for you and make your product fit the core. So if you’re selling something like let’s say different types of beauty supplies, those can come in different shapes. So what you do is give them a sample, you’ll send it to them and they can wrap your machine and customize it with your brand or logo. And they will customize the coils specifically for the items that you want to dispense.

Lakinya Francis (10:39):
That’s why I always tell people, you got to know what you want to do first, so we can know what type of machine you’re going to get. Are you just going to need a regular snack machine? Are you going to need a drink machine? Are you going to need a specialty machine? They’re going to have to configure it for you. Something like that, that’s a little bit more of a higher investment because of course it’s specialty. Whereas the snack machine, you can go on a marketplace and just buy one. So yeah, that’s the first step. Knowing the type of vending that you want to do, and then that’ll lead you into figuring out what type of machine you’re going to be needing to purchase.

Robert Leonard (11:14):
Give us a range on the price that we’re looking at for these types of machines. And give us maybe on the low end, your typical standard snack machine that most people are used to seeing, but then go, maybe give us a price on something maybe more custom. That might be a little bit more of a bigger investment.

Lakinya Francis (11:30):
Let’s say a traditional snack machine. Like, “Hey, I just want to get into it and make a few extra bucks every month or whatnot, a couple of 100 bucks. But I want to make a little side hustle with just a standard snack machine.” They do vary from state to state. For example, you can get a used snack machine here in Miami for about five or $600. Whereas if you go and look somewhere like maybe in New York or something, that same snack machine might cost you about 1,000 bucks. Not sure why, I guess it’s just the market. And that’s on the low end. Now let’s say that you want to get something totally customized. For example, the person that I’m working with, this is a perfect example with the CBD machine. That final amount, I was like, wow, that’s expensive, but it’s completely customized.

Lakinya Francis (12:16):
It has the elevator doors for the product. It’s not just dropping it. It comes with everything that a machine can come with. Even age verification, IDH verification system, where they got to show their ID in order to purchase the CBD products from the machine. But that machine checked out at about 11 grand. That’s with taxes and warranty and delivery and literally everything, display screen so that the user can not just say, okay, I want to buy this topical. They get to slide across the machine, and they get to see the different products and the images like on the computer screen. So it’s a lot of technology going on there. It’s very interactive. And of course, that’s why it costs more. So when you’re talking about something like that, it’s about 11 grand.

Lakinya Francis (13:01):
When you’re talking about a beauty supply machine, that’ll cost you about $6,000 walking out the door brand new. That gives you an idea of, it can go from very normal to an extreme of $11,000. So it’s really good to know what you want to do to know what type of machine you’re going to need and how much of an investment you’re going to need to come up with.

Robert Leonard (13:25):
For a fully custom machine, $11,000 really doesn’t seem all that bad to me. I mean, it’s a lot of money, but I expected it to be more, to be completely honest with you. Now, it depends on what you’re going to get for a return. If you’re only going to make 100 bucks a month, that’s probably not a great thing to spend $11,000 on. If you’re going to make $1,000 a month, that might be a little bit more attractive. So it’s not even just the price itself. It’s what is the return?

Lakinya Francis (13:51):
What is the return? Exactly. And we’ll talk about those numbers a little bit more when we get there, but yeah, absolutely right. For it to be customized, it really isn’t because you’ll definitely make your investment back quickly. And you’ve got to think about it too, the type of product that you’re going to be selling inside of the machine. Okay. For snack and drink, I’m not going to pay $11,000 for a machine, but Hey, I’m selling CBD products or I’m selling beauty supply products or even laundry products, or I’m putting something a little bit more, I’m putting electronics in the machine. You can really go from, they even have T-shirt vending machines. You can do whatever you want.

Lakinya Francis (14:25):
I have a lady that, she sells flavored pickles. And when she contacted me, I was like, “Wow, never thought of that.” Her clientele is crazy. And the way she does business now is people put in orders. People can pick up their orders and they also mail them out to people that order. And she’s like, “Sometimes I just don’t have the time, or I’m not available and people still want to purchase. I’m looking to put this inside of a machine.” So you literally can turn something that you’re already doing, a hobby or adopt currently, and twist it and make it go with the vending machine. It’s possible.

Robert Leonard (15:01):
We talked about how a lot of people sub out finding locations, but if we’re going to do this ourselves, how do we know if we’ll be able to get a machine put in a location that we don’t own? Is this something that we should figure out before we actually buy a machine?

Lakinya Francis (15:17):
Yes. The reason why I said to look at the machine first, and that’s just so that you, while you’re getting your plan together, you know what the initial investment is going to be. Okay, I know my numbers for my machine. Not necessarily that I’m going to buy it just yet, but my suggestion is actually to get a location first. And once you’re secure in that location, then you go ahead and purchase your machine or order it and have it shipped directly to that location. That’s actually going to be the bulk of starting up, is finding your location. Now, if you’re going to do that on your own, you definitely have to have a plan because you can’t go into a business and not have yourself together. So first you need to scout, okay, what type of business would I potentially want to put my machine in?

Lakinya Francis (16:03):
If it’s a snack and drink machine, I’m looking for somewhere that is high foot traffic. Somewhere where there is a lot of people. For example, maybe a school or a warehouse or office building, anywhere there are a lot of people coming in and out of that location. Once you do that and you determine that that location is sufficient, the next plan is to find the right person to talk to. Now, depending on how big the business is, you might get to talk to the owner or maybe somebody that’s in charge, but whoever you’re getting ready to talk to, you want to come with them with a pitch, not just off the top of your head.

Lakinya Francis (16:44):
I typically provide proposals to individuals to take in and look professional. Like, “Hey, I’m Lakinya from iKrave Vending. I noticed that you don’t have any vending machines in here. And I was wondering if you’d be interested in placing the machine in here for free.” You just talk about what you have to offer in your machine and you have your proposal. And honestly, that’s really what it is. That’s really what it is. And that’s if you’re doing it on your own, so that does require getting out there and talking.

Robert Leonard (17:12):
If you’ve come to an agreement with someone to put the vending machine in their business or on their property, how do you structure those agreements? Is it a revenue split, profit split, maybe something else?

Lakinya Francis (17:24):
Don’t offer unless they ask, because you have to think about it. You’re putting your brand new machine or maybe it’s used, but you’re putting your machine in there that you spent your money on and you’re putting it in their business. So it’s supposed to be a convenience. You’re offering them a convenience like, “Hey, this machine is here for your employees, your customers, with a variety of snacks and drinks at a good price. It’s not overstocked or whatever, overpriced, and it’s free. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll keep it up. I’ll keep it maintained.” So typically, you want to approach them to see that, I’m giving you something for free and providing a service. However, a lot of times they will say, “Hey, but what’s in it for me? What do I get out of the cut? Or what about my electricity or something like that?” That is completely normal.

Lakinya Francis (18:13):
In vending, we typically will say, “All right, well, we can give you 10% of the profits each month.” A lot of times they’ll go for that, depending on where it is, they may ask for a little bit more and it depends. Hey, if it’s a really good location, so a lot of people there, then maybe you can go up a little bit more, maybe 15%. I always tell people to just tweak your price a little bit, to compensate for you having to share some of your profits. And then other places like a mall. They usually charge a rental fee rather than a percentage. And that really varies depending on where you go. I’ve seen as low as 200 or up to 500 a month to have your machine inside of a mall. That’s pretty much how that goes as far as getting the location and then profit sharing.

Robert Leonard (18:58):
In real estate, one of the oldest adages in the business is location, location, location. Sounds like it might be the same thing with vending machines. Would you say so?

Lakinya Francis (19:10):
Absolutely. That is the heart of the business. If your machine is not in the right location, it’s a waste of time. Because the idea is that you want people to use the machine to buy the snacks, to buy the drinks. But if you’re putting in in a business where there’s not enough foot traffic, then you just got product that’s sitting there and potentially can go bad. So it has to be in the right location. And depending also on what you’re selling, it needs to be appropriate to that audience as well. For example, like a beauty machine, who’s going to use this beauty machine? We need to put that in the appropriate place. Maybe a hair salon, maybe a nail salon, possibly a mall because that’s where you’re going to get the most foot traffic. But you probably wouldn’t put a beauty supply machine at a doctor’s office. That doesn’t make any sense. So it has to be appropriate, the location, and it has to be a lot of foot traffic.

Robert Leonard (20:03):
I really like how you said it has to be the right, not even just the right location, it has to be the right product for that location. And that reminds me of real estate because you can have an amazing property, like a property that would perform extremely well. So take that as a product in the vending machine business, it could perform very well, but if you put it in the wrong location, if you put the right property in the wrong location, that’s not going to do well. If you take the right product to put it in the wrong location, it’s not going to do well either. So there’s a big similarity there with real estate.

Lakinya Francis (20:31):
Really huge. And another thing, Robert, to the product, even with snacks and drinks. That’s something I had to learn as well. Living in Miami, our demographics is mostly Hispanic. So when I first started, I didn’t realize, “Hey, you have to adapt to your demographics, to the individuals that are going to be utilizing this machine, making sure you’re putting the right thing in.” So, yeah, absolutely. Right product, right place, right demographics, location, it’s all the same.

Robert Leonard (21:04):
I’ll probably continue to relate this vending machine business to real estate throughout the entire episode, because it really reminds me of rental properties, or you said you could even flip vending machines, you flip properties as well. But with real estate, you often have many avenues that you can go with a property if plan A doesn’t work out. Is it the same with vending machines? What if we can’t find anywhere to put the machine or we realize we put the right products in the wrong place once we’ve bought it? Is there different avenues that we can do to get out of the bad situation?

Lakinya Francis (21:34):
There is, and this can be good and bad. Because we got people out there and they’re in business and they’re there to make money and make deals. Another thing that people do is they will get a vending machine and put it in a location and sell it like that. In charge, let’s say I put one machine and I have it inside this auto shop. And they’ll list it maybe on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace or offer up and say, “Hey, I’m charging $3,000 for this machine. It’s already on location.” And people will pay that because they’re like, “Hey, I don’t have to go and look for the location. It’s there already.” So oftentimes people will sell locations. But you have to be careful with that because you don’t quite know what the machine is making because vending, it’s a cash business.

Lakinya Francis (22:24):
Of course, people use credit card readers, but it’s a cash business also. So you don’t really know what that machine is doing only by what they say. So you could be buying into something that’s really not as great as it seem, but that’s one thing that people do. Hey, they get out of bad situations or they’ll say, “Hey man, I paid $500 for this machine. It’s still sitting in my garage. I can’t find a spot for it. I’m going to go ahead and sell this for $800.” That happens often too. That’s how you can get out of a bad situation and get your hands off of the machine or the location honestly, and sell it.

Robert Leonard (23:01):
That’s really interesting, you mentioned not being able to verify how much income that vending machine is actually making, because we often run into that with rental properties. So I’m bringing this back to real estate again, because you’ll go to buy a property. And sometimes if you’re buying from a mom-and-pop investor who’s not necessarily running it like a business, maybe they collect cash for rent. That’s what they do. They collect rent and cash. You’re not going to really have great records of that. They could really make whatever records they want. Whereas if they use a software to collect rent electronically, you have records of everything that way, just like if you’re using credit cards to buy product from the vending machine. So it’s really interesting. There’s the same dynamic in real estate as there is in the vending machines.

Lakinya Francis (23:39):
Yeah, it is. And I always tell people when I get on a call with them, I’m like, “Hey, sometimes you got to think about it. If it sounds too good to be true, maybe it is. So you got to be careful with buying vending machines already on location.” My recommendation is buy your machine and go find your own location. Just tough out the hard work of finding a location. But yeah, certainly that’s how we get out of maybe a bad situation and trying to flip it to a better, as a seller.

Robert Leonard (24:08):
Hoe do vending machine operators compete with the people or companies that have the newer, higher tech vending machines? Do they have different target customers so they’re not really competing, or are they going head to head?

Lakinya Francis (24:22):
Here’s the thing. When you’re starting off, a single person and you’re average person with a regular old job and you’re not backed by investors and you don’t have all this money for the latest technology because it can get expensive, I always tell people to start with local businesses like your mom-and-pop business. Go to your local barber shops, go to your local auto shops, go to private schools. Because if you try to compete with the county schools, you got to go through a bidding process and you can’t compete with them. That’s how you stay in your lane until you grow up. And sometimes it’s interesting, people sometimes acquire locations because, let’s say they go to a school and they see that this school has a vending machine, but the vending machine is really, it’s old.

Lakinya Francis (25:07):
Sometimes people will say, “Hey, are you happy with your service? Because I have brand new machines and it’s ADA compliant. It has credit card reader. We can do all of these things.” A lot of people lose locations that way too, by not being up with the latest machines and such. So in that case, you can get the machines with technology. There’s ways you can get a brand new machine and finance it. There’s people that do that. I don’t really recommend that just off the top, unless you have this awesome location that is really going to perform, that you don’t want to get stuck with a bill. But back to the question at hand, how do we compete? We compete by staying in our lane. So you’re going to start off with going to local businesses and trying to get into those. You’re not just going to jump up and go straight to Walmart. That’s typically how that goes, and that’s how you can get your feet in and break in the industry.

Robert Leonard (26:03):
I’m sure the answer to my next question is, or can vary wildly based on the products you choose, the location, et cetera. But in general, what types of returns are you able to get from vending machines, both in a dollar amount and as a percentage?

Lakinya Francis (26:21):
Let’s take a combination machine for snacks and drinks. A combination machine is where you have snacks at the top and then drinks at the bottom. That’s very common for individuals to get those machines because it’s having to have one and most location want those anyways, because of space. Something like that would hold up to, let’s say 217 snacks, 217 items and like 137 drinks. I actually have someone that, and this is pretty cool, this is a really good example of a great location. She has that same machine that I’m talking about. It’s a brand new one, and she spent about $312 in product. And that’s on chips, sodas, juice and water, just basic stuff, chocolate. She made about $465. So when you do the math there, that’s what? A profit of $153. So that’s like what? Like a 49% ROI. But she did that in two days. That is amazing.

Lakinya Francis (27:30):
She filled up the machine on a Monday, by a Wednesday, it was empty and she needed to restock. That is a perfect example of being patient and scouting the right location. So this location is actually, it’s a school, has about 90 kids at about 29 staff, but it’s a Christian school. So they go to school during the week and they also have church service on the weekends. So it’s a good location because the machine is being used, not just for school, but on the weekend too for their other activities. That’s just a perfect example of how… I mean, she wasn’t there. You load the machine up, that probably took 30 minutes. You leave it, you let it work by itself. You come back and you take your money out and you made a nice little profit and you just do it again.

Robert Leonard (28:22):
Is this a business model that can really be scaled while continuing to be passive. Are there managers for these types of businesses like there are property managers for rental properties?

Lakinya Francis (28:33):
There are vending management companies. But the thing about that is if you’re starting off small and you’re trying to grow like, “Hey, I have two machines and I really want to get to five by the end of next month. That’s my goal. And then by the end of the year, I want 10 machines.” That’s fine and dandy, but most of these companies are going to require that you at least have 20 locations. So they’re essentially designed for companies that are really doing pretty good and they’re up and running. Now, for someone who is trying to scale their business and they might not quite be there yet, it definitely can be done. However, you definitely have to put some processes and systems in place to be more efficient. That way you can have time to scale and get to the next level.

Lakinya Francis (29:22):
Something that a lot of vendors are bad with is really keeping track of proper inventory and just all those bookkeeping things. I would suggest someone that’s trying to scale to possibly use a data software that can help them manage their machines and their inventory and their locations. So that way they can really break down all the numbers and really see what they’re making and see where, Hey, what products are selling the most. They’re really taking everything into account in order for them to be able to go to that next level and, Hey, let me add on more machines and be more efficient and make more money and just keep on growing till I get to that point, till I can hire a company to come in and manage it for me and I just get paid and it can become completely passive. That’ll be my suggestion to someone trying to scale it to the next level.

Robert Leonard (30:12):
What are some of the other biggest or most common mistakes that you see people make when they’re just getting into the vending machine business?

Lakinya Francis (30:20):
One of them would be not really evaluating their location properly. Some people are so excited about getting into business. Anybody that says yes, “Yeah, I got a location.” But the thing about it is how many people are coming in and out of that place a day, or how many employees do they have? Is this a new business? Is this business already established? So not doing enough thorough research on the location because it’s really pointless if you put a machine somewhere where there’s not a lot of foot traffic, because at the end of the day, you’re just wasting your time. So not really properly evaluating their location prior to placing their machine.

Lakinya Francis (31:00):
Another thing, and this is something that I’m guilty of and learning along the way as well, is buying the cheapest machine that they see on the market. Sometimes cheaper is not better. Sometimes it’s good to buy a good quality machine from a company because on a long haul you have repairs and things that’s going to come back and be a bother. And another thing that a lot of people don’t know is that if the vending machine is way too old, it won’t be compatible to support a credit card reader. You really need one of those to really get to that next level and scale and make more money. Sometimes the seller won’t tell you that. And you might think like, “Oh my God, I got a great deal of $500 machine. It looks good.” But it can’t support a credit card reader because it’s too old. That’s another thing, just not properly assessing their machines, not properly assessing the locations.

Robert Leonard (31:50):
I’m going to relate this to real estate again, because you talk about how people make the mistake of just trying to buy the cheapest vending machine. And people do that in real estate too. They often say, “Well, all right, now I want to be invested in real estate. I don’t have a ton of money, but I want to get started. So I’m going to go buy the cheapest property that I could find.” In the real estate world, what that leads to is maybe it’s a bad property, maybe there are things that the inspection doesn’t catch and you need a new roof, or you need foundation issues that don’t pop up in the inspection, or there’s just something wrong with the property that is overlooked. That could be probably a best case scenario. Usually what happens is it’s in a horrible location, you have a very bad tenant base and it’s just an absolute nightmare property. That’s typically what happens, and same thing with vending machines. It sounds like-

Lakinya Francis (32:38):
It’s a headache in the long run. You think you’re winning upfront when in reality it’s like, “Man, you know what, I should have took my time. I should have did a little bit more thorough research.” Sometimes it’s okay to invest a little bit more to get better return on the back end. So, absolutely.

Robert Leonard (32:53):
Exactly. On paper, they look great. When you run the numbers on these cheap properties, they look amazing because you’re assuming that everything goes perfectly. If that’s the case, then sure, it’s going to be a fantastic property. You’re going to have huge returns. But the problem is, it’s probably not going to go exactly to plan and you won’t actually get those return numbers. So what seems to be an amazing deal ends up not being so.

Lakinya Francis (33:15):
Wow, so amazing how vending machines really relate closely to real estate. I never really thought about that, but it’s quite interesting.

Robert Leonard (33:23):
What do you think this type of business is good for and who might it not be so good for?

Lakinya Francis (33:29):
I would say, as I said in the beginning, this business is designed for someone who wants to create some extra money but don’t have quite the time possibly to go get another job. So you can essentially spend one or two hours a week handling a pair of machines and making some good extra money a month, maybe like eight, $900 a month off of a pair of machines and you spent maybe six hours for the whole month as far as keeping the machine up. So someone who works a nine-to-five, that’ll be ideal for them. Someone who’s already entrepreneurial. I deal with a lot of people that already have successful businesses. They’re just looking for other ways to diversify their investments and they come to vending. Someone who has other things going on, someone who already has a job, maybe even a parent, a lot of parents come to me and they say, “Hey, I want to have my kids start from a young age to learn financial responsibility and such.”

Lakinya Francis (34:31):
It’s pretty awesome because I also try to connect in and say, “Hey, you guys can also use this as a family bonding tool.” Like you use your one day and say, “Hey, this is our day that we’re going to be going to do this as a family.” So pretty much anybody who has limited time, but they want to make some extra money. But it might not be quite good for someone who may not have the ability to lift things or maybe they’re up in age a little bit. And the reason why is because it can be a little bit demanding because you have to think about, somebody has to go shopping for the stuff. Even though a lot of people shop online and get things delivered home, you still got to go and take it and pick it up and take it to the location, unless you hire someone out.

Lakinya Francis (35:13):
So someone who’s not maybe physically fit, it probably wouldn’t be good for this. And possibly someone who you have to be able to commit some time, it’s not 100% passive. So if you’re looking for something that’s completely hands-off, then this won’t be the thing for you. You do need to spend at least two hours minimum a week to maintain it. It’s not a lot, but still some involvement. So it’s not 100% passive. So if someone is looking for a super passive business model, not quite it.

Robert Leonard (35:45):
I really like that family component because I have a two and a half year old son he’ll be three soon. And of course, I’m super passionate about business, real estate investing, all of that. So I want to teach him as he gets older, I planned on doing that with real estate, probably when he’s a little bit older, I’ll buy him a property that he can understand and we can do it together. He’ll help me with all the tenants and the numbers and everything and he’ll learn that way, but maybe I could do it on a much smaller scale with just a vending machine.

Lakinya Francis (36:15):
Yeah. Well, kids, they have their own candy machines. You get their candy machines with the Skittles. One of those machines make like 50 bucks a month. Some people even do that full-time instead of vending machines. They just get a bunch of those and they have them everywhere and they get into all sorts of things, even the toys with the teddy bears. That’s a sector of vending as well, it’s very lucrative and most people, they want to win and they just keep putting their dollars in. That’s another avenue that people go into. That’s something good to consider like, Hey, get them a candy machine and teach them a thing or two.

Robert Leonard (36:52):
Yeah. I really like that. Lakinya, thanks so much for coming on the show today and talking about this interesting business model and I’d argue, alternative way to invest in real estate, almost in a way. I’ve had a good time learning about it. I really hadn’t considered it before. So thank you for coming on and teaching me and the audience all about it. Where can everyone listening go to learn more about you and what you’re working on?

Lakinya Francis (37:19):
First of all, thank you guys for having me. And if you want to learn a little bit more and just follow along the journey and just look at the daily tips, my social platform that I’m most active on is Instagram. So it’s, iKrave Vending, so I-K-R-A-V-E Vending, V-E-N-D-I-N-G. You can go there to catch me, or ikravevending.com, which is the website. If you inquire on there, I will get back with you. I usually answer those within 24 hours. If you just want to watch the different tips I throw out there every day, it’s pretty cool. The different types of vending that you possibly get into, or if you just want to follow along the journey, iKrave Vending on Instagram is where you can find me.

Robert Leonard (38:04):
I’ll be sure to put a link to those resources in the show notes below for anyone interested, Lakinya. Thanks so much.

Lakinya Francis (38:11):
Awesome. Thank you.

Robert Leonard (38:13):
All right, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro (38:18):
Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin, and every Saturday we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.