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Hottest Vending Machine Home Based Businesses

A few years back, I worked retail at a paper store. Needless to say, there were many days on which hours would go by without anyone coming in under the extreme duress of needing to purchase a ream of paper. And right between the register and the door was a full-size soda machine and a small candy machine that had m&m’s, Runts, and roasted almonds. I can’t even tell you how many times I emptied that almond canister, popping in quarter after quarter after quarter in pursuit of that savory, salted goodness. And I wasn’t alone; everyone and their business partner managed daily to scrounge up 25 cents in spare pocket change and push it into that coin slot.

Oh, almonds-now I want some again. But that wasn’t my point in telling my silly story; my point is that candy vending is an amazingly profitable business, precisely because the average American can’t avoid dropping a quarter into a machine for a tasty treat-after all, it’s just a quarter. And though a quarter doesn’t sound like much, when all the quarters are added up, some reports estimate that the average vending machine distributorship makes a little over $70 an hour, which is no small wage at all. But before everyone goes racing out to start dropping off vending machines around town, it’s important to choose your vending franchisor wisely. Here are what we would consider the big, trustworthy names in the industry.

Truth be told, most vending franchises are pretty similar, which doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out: machine, candy, and owner pretty much sum up what any vending outfit looks like. Still, there are some that carry an added punch that makes them worthy of a little extra attention. Uturn Vending is one such business, set apart from everyone else by their machines, which are some of the best in the industry. More interesting than the average vending machine, these «money machines»-as the company likes to call them-pivot around a central post, making 8 compartments available where a stationary machine would only have 4. And aside from the increased choices, the machines are some of the most sturdy available.

The machine, though, isn’t the whole story to a successful vending home based business. Of as much importance is the actual stock; what kind of candy do you have? If what your equipment is sporting is a knock-off brand of gumball or-heaven help us-something healthy, no one in their right mind is going to give you their hard-earned quarters. That is why Vendstar also makes the list as one hot vending commodity, providing only brand-name, recognizable treats. Although, there is something to be said for selling a new product as well. All of us like trying something novel-as long as it’s good-and few candies are more novel than the newest creation sold by American Vending Systems work at home franchisees: Buzz Bites. Though I will admit that it sounds like something you’d find at a bar, it’s really much more benign than that. It’s a tasty chocolate chew with a caffeine equivalence of a cup of coffee, and who doesn’t want one of those?

Not all vending machines sell food products, though. In fact, there are three great business opportunities in the vending market that specialize in not selling food, but rather selling everything from DVDs to lobsters-yes, seriously. If what you want is something original in your machines, one of these is for you.

First, the DVDs. The concept has made a huge splash in Europe, but it is just starting out in the US, and that idea is the automated DVD vending kiosk. DVDNow is leading the way in this country, renting out movies without the use of employees or storefronts, which keeps prices drastically lower for both owner and customer. And on the way home from renting a video, the consumer in question could very well stop off at a local supermarket parking lot to visit someone else’s Polar Ice Express franchise, which is prefect because the shopper doesn’t even have to leave her vehicle to use the machine. The ease of use for her is only beaten by the ease of ownership for the franchisee, who merely has to run periodic clean-ups, refill the ice bags occasionally, and keep up relations with the owner of the establishment he is renting parking space from. And finally, if this particular lady is feeling especially culinary, she may want to stop and get some lobster from a Love Maine Lobster Claw vending machine inside the grocery store. I’m not sure how many people actually manage to snag a lobster from the tank, but this machine makes money like no other, off of sheer oddity, because there is nowhere else that a person can actually work to grab their lobster of choice from the tank with the use of a small crane. They all may seem a little out of the ordinary in terms of the classic concept of vending, but DVDNow, Polar Ice Express, and The Love Maine Lobster Claw are all completely legit and well worth the investment of your investigational time.

All in all, there is a lot to be said for vending business opportunities. Kids always manage to get their parents to drop that quarter into the machine, hungry employees will always sacrifice a quarter to tide themselves over until lunch, and the rest of us appreciate the ease of getting a DVD without the trouble of human contact; as a culture, we cannot stay away from either candy machines or other kinds of vending machines. Anyone smart enough to get in on the business can certainly make a pretty penny. All they have to do is choose the right company to go with.

Is Your Investing A Business Or Just A Hobby?

I’m constantly teaching and sharing the concept of building a business around your wealth. What does this mean? Let’s start with a little background. Historically, all great fortunes have been built in business. Whether it was Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, all great fortunes have business as their foundation. You really don’t hear about great fortunes being made by investors. Ever wonder why? It’s because business done right provides the most leverage, greatest velocity, and least amount of risk of any money-making activity. Why do some businesses grow and grow while others seem to hit a ceiling which they can’t grow? The answer to this question lies in the foundation of the business. Small businesses stay small when the owner spends his or her time running the business. Effectively, these people own their job. They have no time to work on the business because they are always working in the business. The key is how to get the owner out of the business operations and focused on the business growth. The answer is for the business to create a strategy and a set of systems that implement that strategy. Then, and only then, will the business owner have time to grow the business. When the strategy and systems are in place, the owner only has to manage the systems, not the people. The owner isn’t doing the work, the employees and other team members are doing the work. What does this have to do with investing? I have discovered that the business principles of strategy and systems can be applied to investing. Investors who create a business of investing, by developing a strategy and implementing systems, can enjoy the same results enjoyed by a successful business owner, i.e., higher profits, more growth, less time spent on investing, total control over their investing and less risk. Is your investing a business or just a hobby? Think about your investing. Do you run it like a business? Or, do you run it like a hobby? Investors who run their investing like a business have: A clear written strategy Mission, vision and values Systems in place to make investing fast, efficient and in line with the strategy A team of advisors Reporting to tell them their net worth or cash flow at any given minute Both informal and formal agreements with their customers and vendors The list goes on and on. How does your investing activity stack up? Are you ready to build a business around your wealth?

How To Pull Off a Successful PR Event

As public relations (PR) covers all the relationships an organisation has with its various stakeholders (‘publics’), PR events can take many forms — from product launches and exhibitions to team-building events, training courses, sales presentations and annual general meetings.

As with all planning, the devil is in the detail and PR professionals must have an eye for every aspect of activity ¬’ as well as the bigger picture — if they are to pull off a really successful event. As with most things in the marketing sphere, presentation is key and first impressions really count.

The big 6 questions Planning a PR event — particularly one with a large audience — may seem daunting but, in reality, it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it and the first step is to break the project down into manageable parts. To do this, I recommend looking at the 6 big questions ¬of why, who, what, where, when and how. If you can write a couple of lines in answer to these key questions on one side of A4 paper, you’re more than halfway towards a successful PR event. Let’s look at them in turn.

Why? Now, this is really the crux of the matter. Why do you need to talk to one of your ‘publics’? What is the real objective for your organisation in staging this PR event? Is your objective important enough to justify the costs involved? Of course, this question will be closely linked to…

Who? Which particular people are you wanting to address, either internally, externally or both? What is the audience’s view of your organisation and what issues are of interest to them? You need to identify the people who matter to your aims and ensure that you don’t waste valuable resources by targeting the wrong people. Each event will have limited spaces, so you want those attending to be the people who really matter in terms of achieving your objectives. Once you know your audience, find out which media they use and trust, as this will be useful in planning your promotion of the event.

What? What kind of event will work? This depends mostly on the profile of your audience. Are they mostly men or women? How busy are they and how far are they willing to travel? Would a sporting theme or other hospitality angle be a good hook for them to attend? Of course, the size of your budget will be an important factor in deciding what kind of event you put on. There may be revenue opportunities such as sponsorship, but there will certainly be considerable expenses such as printing, advertising, insurance, speakers, security, food, drink and accommodation.

Where? The kind of venue will be largely determined by the answers to your ‘What?’ question, but the exact location of the venue can vary enormously. Yes, the sales conference needs to be in a large and swanky hotel, but should that be in Birmingham or is the message important enough to warrant a trip to Barcelona?

When? The best time to hold your event is an obvious, but often neglected, consideration. Of course, you should pick a season that suits the kind of event you’re holding ¬’ only die-hard golfers will take to the greens in November — but you must also think about other demands on your audience. Ensure your event doesn’t clash with any industry exhibitions or awards ceremonies, for example.

How? Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty of planning your event. This question covers all the logistics on the day. It’s a good idea to form a planning team, as colleagues can help you to brainstorm the minutiae of the event. For your guests to come away with a positive impression of your organisation, you need to ensure that they have a hassle-free time. That means that you need to plan every aspect of the event, from parking and refreshments to toilet facilities and hotel rooms. And if you can be creative in the extra touches — for example, giving the delegates the day’s presentations on custom-printed USB sticks to avoid the need to take notes ¬’ you’ll make a lasting impression.

When implementing your plan, never underestimate the importance of good communication with your team. This team may, for each event, include people outside of your organisation — for example, the hospitality staff at your venue. Make sure that everyone understands what is happening when and where, not forgetting why! If you’re inviting VIPs, for example, ensure that everyone knows who they are and just how they should be treated.

If you want to hone your planning skills over time, you must have a full, post-event debrief with your team to understand what worked and what didn’t. This should cover both the objectives and the logistics. In terms of your event’s aims, try to get feedback from delegates on how useful the event was to them and how it changed their perceptions. When it comes to the logistics, every venue and event will throw up its own problems, of course, but, over time, knowing what didn’t work will give you the experience to avoid the common pitfalls and make your next event even better.

How to Launch Your Business Success Anew

Copyright (c) 2009 Linda Feinholz

In a meeting last week with one of my Platinum clients, Brian, reviewing the goals he had achieved since we began work in January, he shared an «Ah Ha!» he’s had.

«Linda, when you kept steering me to simplify my Vision, I didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t ready to. But, wow! Once I heard you, once I followed your process and created that simple vision — it’s all taken off like a rocket!»

Now, prior to this, Brian had been having difficulty getting his team on board. He couldn’t get all their activities pulling in the same direction towards the same goals. When we took a look at the reasons for the weak results, the confusion behind it became apparent. Everyone on his team had a different understanding of what the objectives were.

For the lack of a clear vision, all their time, intelligence and energy was having minimal results. Instead, the was lots of wasted time every day, by well-intentioned professionals…

A real shame to have all those resources wasted. But that didn’t have to be the way they operated for the long-term.

What do I mean by ‘simplify’ your vision?

The reason this is so helpful is that simplicity and clarity at the beginning, from the top, becomes the starting point for every activity in your business. ‘Simplify’ your vision.. and you can make it easier to identify your ideal target market. Simplify your ideal target market… and you can focus all your marketing efforts so that you’re easier for them to find. Simplify your marketing… rather than trying to be all things to all people… and you make yourself easier to understand and an easier solution to buy.

Moreover, while it becomes easy to see the impact that your Vision’s simplicity has on your external presence in your chosen market, it’s as important inside your company.

Why?

Because you can simplify your operations. Simplify the solution you’re trying to offer and you can simplify your delivery of that solution. Your time and that of your entire team, gets used doing the right things at the right time, without needing to spend time straightening out confusion, conflicts, and plain old inefficient time wasting by everyone.

That in turn means you can simplify your systems, the processes you use to get work done, which leads to simpler results, that are simpler to measure and track, and simpler train new people to produce. And so on.

That doesn’t mean thinking flies out the door. On the contrary, it means each person can ask «Is this in line with our Vision?» for themselves, to help keep the entire company’s efforts pulling in the same direction towards the same goals.

Each person becomes a Visionary and Brilliant Problem Solver for your business.

Whether you are heading a major organization, or a division, or your own small business, the result is the same.

As you set a clear vision, it becomes apparent what is out-of alignment, wasted time and effort, busy work for busy sake rather than the best path to deliver solutions to your customers.

Of course, setting a new Vision, or a cleaned up Vision, or your first one ever, often makes people fearful. The most common reason I hear from my program participants is that «I’ll have to stop doing a lot of what we’re doing here.»

Indeed, that is the exact choice that Brian faced, that I face, and that you will face.

But I ask you, in this economy, do you want to be putting all that time, energy and intelligence into doing things that are expensive busy work, or put them into focused, high payoff activities that are simpler, targeted, lower cost, more highly profitable?

You have the opportunity, right now, to step back. Step out of the business of habit and ongoing activity and take ten to fifteen minutes and look for the simplest vision you can hold, that humms and excites you.

Or, you can keep yourself very busy, and delay achieving the goals you say you want.

My vote? SIMPLIFY your Vision.

Keeping Your Small Business Going by Avoiding Financial Crises

Having a superb product, soaring sales and stupendous customer service are undoubtedly some of the things which go into making a successful business. But all of this is irrelevant if you suffer a financial crisis. Without a sound stable financial position the slightest shock can be enough to send your business crashing to the ground.

So what can you do to ensure that all your hard work is not in vain? What can you do to make sure that a financial crisis doesn’t rock the boat or even sink it? Let’s take a look at what can cause these jolts and, more importantly, what you can do about it.
Poor Record Keeping and Administration

Business owners are usually not good record or bookkeepers! People who start businesses are the ones who have great ideas, see a gap in the market or have the personality to sell anything. They are not people who jump out of bed in the morning and say «Great, it’s a VAT and paperwork day today!»

If you are to keep your business on the straight and narrow then you have to accept that there are going to days like this; you can’t avoid it. You must keep records of your sales, your purchases, how much you have, how much raw material or finished goods you hold.

Without these records you will very quickly lose track of where you are. You won’t know:

•    What you have spent your money on

•    You won’t know where your cash is going

•    You won’t know where all your stock is — has someone stolen it? Who knows?
You are effectively working in the dark and this is not conducive to financial stability. So what sort of records are we talking about? Nothing sophisticated. It can be as simple as a book with one page for your income and another for your expenditure. At least once a month total it all up to see how money you have made (I hope!). There’s a saying. ‘The people who keep records are the people who break records’ — so true.

Not Watching Your Bank Balance

Do you know exactly what your bank balance is today? Why is it important? Because if you are going to write a cheque you must know whether you have the money on your account. If you don’t that nasty Bank Manager may just bounce it.

Obviously this can have a negative effect on your reputation; your credit will be damaged and you may struggle to get support from your Bank and suppliers in the future. All because you didn’t check what your balance was.

To avoid this make sure you keep a running total in a cash book of what you have on your account. Why not sign up for Internet Banking? These days all the High Street Banks make this facility available, so there is no excuse for losing track of where you stand.

Poor Cash and Credit Management

Closely linked to keeping an eye on your Bank balance is how you handle your cash flow. There are 3 aspects to this.

1.    Don’t be tempted to keep too much at your home or on your business premises. You could lose it to thieves, fire or flood
2.    If you are doing ‘business-to-business’ sales then you may be faced with having to sell on credit. If so then be disciplined in chasing up any outstanding payments. You can’t afford to be embarrassed about asking for a cheque. If you have agreed 1 month credit, why wait for 3 months? Chase as hard as you can because remember you have your own debts to pay!

3.      You may be lucky to have a period of credit granted by the people you buy from. If they give you one month’s credit, then stick to it. If you decide to hold onto your bills before paying you may be faced with a Solicitor’s letter. Don’t ignore the problem and hope the phone calls will go away  — they won’t!
No Cost Controls

To keep yourself in a strong financial position shop around for purchases you have to make. Compare prices and specifications. Have an upper limit beyond which you will not pay. Always be on the lookout for a good deal.
Spending On the Wrong Things

Running your own business can be a very powerful feeling! You may be tempted to spend on anything but the business — a new car, flash clothes, a new kitchen. Well, you have to look the part don’t you??

During the early years and even when you are established make sure you spend your hard earned cash on the right things. The trappings of success may not be right at this stage of your business life. Your business, in order for it to grow, needs cash. Remove the cash and you remove the life blood which keeps your business alive.
You have to be disciplined in your expenditure and ask yourself the question, ‘Will this cost add anything to my business?’. Don’t act on impulse; go away and think about every large expenditure. If the answer to the question is no, then you should think twice about spending.
Failing To Make Cuts in Time

Failing to make the necessary cuts to ensure the survival of your business is something you cannot afford to do. If you spot you have a problem do something about it! Don’t sit back and hope things will get better; the chances are it won’t.

If you have product or service which is not performing and it’s costing you money don’t try and dress it up — be ruthless and cut it out. Make your decision quickly; don’t hang about. Not acting fast will only compound the problem.
Depending On a Small Number of Customers

Having a small number of customers is not a problem when everything is going well, but if one or two leave you or fail to pay up on time, then this can cause problems.
If you depend on 3 customers and one of them leaves then you are faced with a 33% reduction in sales. Unless you can replace him immediately you may not be able to cut your overheads quick enough to avert any crisis.

You cannot afford for your business to be held to ransom. Try and diversify as much as you can. Get out there and get new customers.
The same applies to businesses which rely on only one or two products. A shift in public tastes can leave you high and dry with unsold stock and no business!
Not Having a Budget

One good financial discipline is to have a budget. At the beginning of each year sit down and, based on your previous year’s income and expenditure, set new targets. Look to see where you can cut back in expenditure or even what to cut out all together.

Armed with your budget you will have a guide to work to. This will be a second check before you make any large unnecessary purchases.

Having a budget will provide discipline to your expenditure. At the end of every month up date it by including your actual income and expenditure then compare your budget with the actuals. Going through this exercise will give you more focus and what your business is doing. It can help you put things right by highlighting the problem areas.
No Contingency Plan In Place

Bigger businesses need to have a contingency plan for all parts of the business. A contingency plan is basically a plan which answers the question, «What would we do if this happened …?»

What is your «if»? What if you lose your premises? What if your computer goes down?
For a small business the biggest risk is you! What would happen to your business if you fall ill or even die? Most small businesses are totally dependent on the owner. You do everything!

If you are ill enough for one or two months that you can’t work who will see to the customers? Who will get new ones? Who will see to the paperwork? Who will collect the money owed to you?

These are important questions you must answer now. You have to identify someone who could fill in for you if you are to avoid a potential financial crisis. Your next step is to write a manual on how your business works, and outlining all the key processes. If something does happen then at least there is a path to follow!
Not Talking To Your Bank Manager

As soon as most people see a financial crisis looming the person they try and avoid most is t
heir Bank Manager! If they see him walking on the same side of the road they will cross to avoid bumping into him.

The Bank Manager is usually the first person you should speak to. Bank Managers like to be kept up to date with what is happening in your business. They don’t like surprises. It’s when they are kept in the dark they make decisions that can have a major impact on your business.

You must resolve to talk to your Bank Manager the moment you suspect there is a problem. Who knows, he may surprise you by offering to do something to help!
Financial problems can usually be avoided by taking a step back from the business and thinking about what can go wrong. Once you know that, then you can take actions to put preventative measures in place before it’s too late.