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That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. If you ever wanted to have a business that worked for you day and night and you didn't have to do a thing but put the money in the bank, well, I have. I'm sure that many of you have also had that same desire.

There are a couple of places that most of us who have that desire will quickly go. Two of them that at least my brothers and I always talked about was vending and car washes. Pretty cool, you can just sit down and do nothing and the vending machines make you money 24 hours a day and the car wash makes you money 24 hours a day.

It's kind of the ultimate dream, right? Well, does it work? Today I've invited Matt Miller who's got a world of experience in the vending business on the show and he's going to share with us whether or not it works. Of course, you like my tease. You got to listen to know how well it works.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me today. Like I said, vending, pretty cool business, huh? Well, even though my brothers and I always wanted to do it, I never really wanted to actually buy the machines and take them around and stick the candy machines in everywhere and go and collect quarters.

So I'm not an expert, but I have found an expert and he's going to share his story with you today. My guest is Matt Miller. I first met him at the Podcast Movement Conference and it was a serendipitous encounter. I hadn't pre-planned to interview him, but after meeting him, I knew that I wanted to bring his story to Radical Personal Finance since it indulges an interest of mine, which is vending.

He's got a very interesting story he's going to share with you about his experience in the vending business, his own personal finance journey, and then how he's actually gone from having a business of doing vending to setting up a business as a franchise or, I guess I would say franchise or a franchisee, as a person who issues franchises for a vending business.

It's one of the cool entrepreneurial stories that I think you'll enjoy listening to, how there can be opportunities that are a slight twist on a proven business model. That's what I want you to pay attention to as you hear his story. Think about the different twists of business models that come out even as he just simply shares his story, how you can take something that other people have done, proven methods, in this case it's proven methods of vending, proven methods of franchising, and then you can translate that into something really cool and special.

Sit back. Here we go. Welcome, Matt, to the show. Matt, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Hey, Joshua. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. I brought you on today to talk about vending. This is probably, for most entrepreneurs I know, people who want to establish a business for themselves and they want to get started and work their way towards financial independence, vending, if they don't pursue it, it's at least one of the things that they consider because the dream of being able to go and buy some candy machines and put them out there and they work for you 24 hours a day and you sit back and reap the profits, it's a pretty compelling deal.

What's your history with the vending business? It's kind of funny. I graduated from the Air Force Academy. I was an Air Force pilot for nine years. I know a lot of people that know me previously, I think, are still probably scratching their heads. But you know what? I got out of the military back in 1998, did some work in the corporate world for about 11 years.

About halfway through that, there were just some decisions made early by my boss that made a huge financial impact on my family, not in a good way. We went from slowly working ourselves out of taking a pay cut to leave the military to being in a huge hole. In fact, I got to a point where I literally got turned down by a payday loan place for a couple hundred bucks that I needed just to pay a bill.

You don't need a credit rating for that. I was going to say, hold on. So this is worth talking about. On what basis did they turn you out? Because you don't need a credit rating, but you have to bring in your last month's bank statements and there cannot be any dings against you.

And I had bounced three checks the month prior. And so I got turned down by that. But you know what? During all of that, I knew that it wasn't me. I knew it was situational. So I didn't take it personally. How did you know that? What gave you that confidence?

Because a lot of people struggle with knowing the difference. I think it was just my upbringing. I think it was the fact that, I mean, let's face it. I went to a school that I was one of a thousand that was accepted out of 60,000 that applied. I had done some pretty, what the world would say, incredible things and accomplished some stuff that most people could never dream of.

I mean, when I was 22, 23 years old, government was entrusting me with multimillion dollar airplanes teaching students how to fly. So I knew it was a temporary thing. It was frustrating though. And during that experience, I realized that I could not put all my eggs in one basket.

And so I was looking. I had done some multi-level marketing stuff. I had sold books on Amazon and half.com and eBay. All those were great and they brought in great money. But the challenge was I had read Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and I had believed it.

And so I was not looking just to create an income stream. I was looking to create a passive income stream. And none of those were. So I had a good buddy of mine from church that had mentioned that he and his young daughters had bought some gumball machines and they had something they could do together.

They had placed them in some local area businesses and he was teaching them about business and about making money and all that. And that really resonated with me. And so as I was still searching, trying to figure out how to get myself out of this monster hole that I was in with a wife and three kids, I remember that conversation with Damon and I was like, maybe vending's the answer because I couldn't quit what I was doing.

I needed something to supplement. And so I went on Amazon. I bought two or three different eBooks over the span of a month's time. I educated myself on vending. There's a bunch of different vending. In fact, when I tell people I'm in vending, most think candy or they think snacks and sodas and that type of thing.

But the challenge with that is that equipment is very expensive and I didn't have the money. And that equipment also, the capacity for those machines is very small. So if you get a good location, you are back at least once, if not more frequently on a weekly basis. And I couldn't do that.

I was working full time in the advertising world at the time. But bulk vending, candy, gumballs, toys, temporary tattoos, that type of thing. The machines were very simple. They were mechanical. There was no electricity involved. And they were very inexpensive. In fact, the first machine that I got, I bought on eBay.

It was a two head candy and gumball machine for 32 bucks from a guy that was across Houston that I just happened to find. So I didn't even have to pay for shipping. And so I'll never forget loading up my two oldest kids in my 1998 Honda Accord on a Saturday morning and driving across town to pick up this first machine.

What year was that? Let's see. That would have been about nine years ago. So about 2006 or so. Yeah. And man, talk about a humbling experience. But I was excited about this stupid little candy machine, you know. And we loaded up the car. I found out that the guy had 19 others in his garage that he was getting ready to list on eBay.

And I convinced him to hold on to them and let me come back over the next couple of months and buy every last one of them from him. So I went home and the next day after work, I started knocking on doors and just went business to business to business, trying to find somebody who would have interest in partnering with me, letting me help them raise some money and me make some money as well.

What was the product that that first machine was going to be selling? One head was gumballs and one was Skittles. So the major work of vending, and this is what I've thought about it. I worked with a client of mine when I was a financial planner who talked about who actually had a vending business.

Candy had pretty good business. I mean, he was making six figures with his vending business. It was pretty impressive. And as I've considered the business, it seems to me that the challenge is having the number one, well, it's probably two major things. Number one, having the courage to go through and fight for the locations because there aren't many places I would imagine at this day and age.

There aren't many places that don't have a vending machine that just haven't ever thought about it. And then number two, building a system where you can efficiently keep them full. But it's got to be a tough sales job. Well, anything to order nor is tough. But the reality is you find out that there's a lot of locations out there that no one ever thought of talking to before that did not have machines or they were just too new to have somebody come by.

And so, yeah, I probably talked to 20 different restaurants and businesses in my area to find the first one. But that really wasn't a whole lot different than what I was doing in the advertising space in the years that I was doing that. So I was used to working the numbers.

And so I got that first machine placed, went back a couple weeks later and it was full of quarters, man. And talk about fired up. Because I wasn't there. And so I took that money, took to the bank, and then I called the guy up across town and said, "Hey, I've got some money for two more machines.

When can I come and get them?" And I literally built that business on cash flow over a couple of months time because I did not have the money to do it any other way. So the first machine cost you $32 and then from then on you bought each additional machine based upon the profits from the first one.

Yes. Yes. And then the time to sell and service. Yes. Now, a lot of people could not be that patient, but I didn't have a choice. Now what's kind of interesting, after a while I got kind of bored with just candy and all that. I got a Yahoo'd board that I could be a part of and learned a little bit more about the industry.

And I decided to get involved in the sticker business. Well, I had never bought a sticker. I had never done anything with those machines, but I was hearing people talk about it. And so once again, I went on eBay. I found a gentleman in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now I was in Houston at the time, that had two brand new machines he had picked up at a trade show.

The vendors didn't want to ship them back, so they give them away for next to nothing to anybody who will take them. And he had had them in his warehouse for a couple of years and never done anything with them. Well, I did some research online, found out that each machine was worth about $400.

Well, I got both of them for $350. I picked the one machine that I didn't like the look of. I copied and pasted the photo from that machine onto my own eBay listing. And before I drove from Houston to Tulsa, I had the second machine sold for the amount of money that it cost me for the two.

That's awesome. So my only cost was to drive to Tulsa. And when I got there, the guy was willing to talk to me for about an hour and share some more insights on what he had done. He'd been in the industry for years. And slowly but surely, I picked up and put that puzzle together that has become my knowledge of vending.

Fast forward a year and a half down the road, and I've got 125, 150 locations all across the northern Houston area. That's awesome. And then '07 and '08 hit. And the market tanked, of course, as you're well aware. Less people were going out to eat. And when they were going out to eat, they weren't allowing little Johnny and little Suzy as many quarters to put in my machines.

So I was frustrated, and I was trying to figure out a way to increase my revenues and maximize my return for my time. And at that time, God sent four little kids by my house in the span of a couple of weeks, knocking on my door, trying to sell me stuff for the local schools.

And I was like, "You know, I don't know any of these kids. Their parents weren't with them." And as with a dad with young kids at that point, I was like, "There is something really wrong with this picture." Right, right. So I started to think about, "Well, maybe I could work something out to tie the whole vending thing together with school fundraising and maybe get little Johnny and Suzy off the street." Well, a good buddy of mine came by about a month later.

He is an elementary PE teacher. And he and his wife came by for dinner one night, and we got to talking. And he and I had done some business together previously. And I told him what I was doing, or thinking about doing. He said, "Matt, let me talk to my principal and my PTO and just run the idea by them and see what they think." And he called me back two weeks later, and he said, "Matt, you're approved.

Bring a machine." So we set up our first machine. We cobbled together custom stickers for that school with their mascot and everything for that first location, customized the machine with the signage and all, and began a test. And the numbers were phenomenal. And the acceptance at the school was amazing because every bit of fundraising they had to do was active.

They had to get the kids involved, or the parents, or the faculty, or whatever. And this was the first passive fundraising they'd ever done. And so we had done this test for several months. We're excited about it. And I was like, "Okay, well, I've kind of validated this. Let's go and start to find some others." And I went back to what I was used to, which was knocking on doors.

And I literally went school by school by school in my area, trying to find other administrators who would be excited about our program. And they all kind of patted me on the head like a cute little puppy dog. None of them were early adopters, and that's okay. Most of them, that's not their personality type.

But I got frustrated again because I had this great idea, but nobody really got it. Went online, just so happened that the Texas PTA was having an event two and a half weeks later. I contacted their main office. They were doing exhibiting. They did have space. And in two and a half weeks, I scrambled to get a logo together.

We bought some cheesy t-shirts, someplace that we could get them turned around in a couple of days. We showed up, we had two spirit stickers, which was our claim to fame, right? Customization. We put it on that table and we gave it a whirl. My buddy that got me into the school, Jeremy, and then another friend, Shane, that I'd done some business with, I shared with them what I was doing.

And I taught Shane traditional bulk vending in the previous couple of years. And I said, "You guys know my idea. Would you guys be willing to split a table?" I couldn't afford to do it all by myself. It was like 800 bucks. And they said, "Yeah, sure." So we all showed up.

Had no clue what we were doing, really knew nothing about the PTA. And we gave it a whirl. And we had 10 PTA moms that just could not fathom not having our program in their school. And now, we are in Texas. There was only three of us. But when you do an event like that, they come from everywhere.

So I was thinking, "Well, the event's in Houston. They're going to be right in Houston." No, no. Two were from Austin, three were from San Antonio, and five were from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Wow. Well, I had a decision to make. Are we going to make this work or what?

So my buddy, Shane, who was out of San Antonio, took care of the San Antonio and Austin. And then I took care of the Dallas-Fort Worth schools. And I just fit my servicing schedule in with time off and that type of thing. And we just kind of got that ball rolling and it snowballed from there.

How long ago was that PTA meeting? That was seven and a half years ago. Wow. October next month will be eight years since I put that first machine in. It's crazy how time's flown. So do you have machines all across the country or just in Texas? Where are you now with your personal business?

Well, we've grown a distributor model for years, but we're now a franchise. We have a team of about 60 different families in about 24 states right now. And we're in about 1,800 or so schools. Are you making money? We're doing all right. My wife says it keeps me out of trouble.

And this is your full-time deal now? Yes. A couple of years ago, I walked away from the corporate gig in the advertising world. We bought our first house. I moved five hours away to Central Texas and I quit my job all at one time. And we haven't looked back.

That's awesome. Well, you've moved from the left side of the quadrant to the right side of the quadrant in Kiyosaki's cash flow quadrant. So that's awesome. It would seem to me that the problem in the vending business, which is why you turned to franchising, which sounds awesome, but it seems to me the problem in the vending business is scale and reach.

Some businesses could easily expand across multiple states across the country. But in the vending business, if you're going to actually manage your machines and you're actually going to manage your employees, you've got to be able to have contact with them and you've got to find people that you can trust.

You've got to put systems in place to handle the money. So it's not a business that scales across multiple states very easily, right? Well, but you know what? I'm on the board of directors of our national organization and I run with a lot of the big vendors in the country.

And there's a lot of them that cover entire regions of the US. But I don't know if you remember ever seeing the Donnie Deutch show on CNN called The Big Idea. This was probably eight years ago or so. Anyway, he had the CEO of the company Coinstar on his show one time.

I don't even know the guy's name. It's not really important except for the fact that he showed up on the show. He was dressed to the nines, cuff links, suit, all that stuff. And I saw that and I made a conscious decision at that point that I did not want to be that guy.

Because you can be a hundred million plus dollar company. They've got all the red box machines and all that stuff now. But my guess is the guy works 80 to 90 hours a week. And I bought into Kiyosaki's lifestyle. So I was looking for something that I did not have to own completely and have all the headaches and hassles of.

So I intentionally took the direction that I did because I know owners treat things completely differently than employees do. And I only had to teach people our system one time. And once they learned it, then they were on their own to grow at whatever pace they chose. All I had to do is create an environment for them to win and have a proven system in place for them to do it.

And the franchise model is definitely the true owner lifestyle model, which is so cool. I mean, you prove your concept out and then you build the franchise. And as the franchisor, you get to enjoy the leverage of many people's businesses and they get to enjoy the leverage of your proven system.

Franchising is an amazing concept and I'm so glad it exists. I want to clarify because I don't fully understand how the stickers relate to the kids. The kids are just simply buying the stickers or they're selling the stickers? The kids are buying the stickers. Just for their own personal use?

For their own personal use. Like when we sell NFL stickers, you'll oftentimes, believe it or not, see the dads lined up at the machine when they're coming to pick up their kids because they want their NFL team sticker or whatever. But it's primarily geared towards the kids. Okay. And then so then you just split the revenue with the school.

And so in exchange for having the machine in there, they take a percentage of it and that raises money for the school. And then you deal with the hassle of servicing it, filling it, making sure everything's up to date. We do everything. They just have to cash the check every month.

That's awesome. Do you have to keep the stickers fresh? Do you have to swap them out all the time or does the same sticker sell continually? No. We have to constantly change out the product. One of the things that we learned early on is the fact that a lot of the vending industry, the product that they offer, they're trying to straddle two different worlds.

They're trying to straddle the world with the young kids, but they're also trying to straddle like the tween teen market as well. And so because of that, in most series that were produced, there's always that one or two designs that was just edgy enough that we couldn't run it.

So we had to establish exclusive relationships very early on to where I'm a part of the art direction of 90% of what we sell. I'm not the artist, but I have ultimate authority on whether we run something or not. And everything is geared towards little Johnny who's five years old.

Because if mom and dad complain, then we're potentially out of business. And so everything has to be geared to that and most of our product is created specifically because of that. So you've spent a lot of years working your tail off. Yep. What prompted you? What has been giving you the energy to do that?

Because it's not easy to work a full time job and then to walk away. You had kids and a wife and then not be there at night while you're out knocking on doors of businesses. What's driving you? I believe that American dream that we were all taught, that we've all heard about.

The rags to riches story, we weren't necessarily rags, but I came from real humble beginnings with my family in Illinois, outside of Chicago. And man, I've always wanted to live that life. I've always wanted to have total control over what I do, to do what I want to do, not what somebody else tells me to do.

And the only way for me to do that was to figure out the money side of things. And today, the reason why I continue to work so hard is number one, I believe I owe that to my team to continue to push the limits, to continue to strive to do better, to continue to provide more for them because they've entrusted me and the leadership and the direction of everything that we do.

So the speed of the group is determined by the speed of the leader, right? So that's why I'm here, because the only way I get better, which helps me be better for my team and the families that we now support with our business is by me continuing to push forward and not being satisfied.

We have a mantra in our team is that we're all green tomatoes. You know, a red tomato is dead. A green tomato is alive. And so we want to focus as much as we can on being a green tomato and not a red tomato. And so that's what my life's about, is learning more, getting around guys like you that can make me better, that are smarter in areas with talents that I just don't have.

And in some cases, learning by osmosis, in some cases, having the opportunity to develop significant relationships over time and really get to help one another as we live this life, you know, live the live, the fight, live the challenge. It is it's we're not made for sitting down and doing nothing.

You know, rest is needed, but rest is needed to get back in the battle. And and I, I enjoy the fight. I enjoy the struggle. I enjoy the the challenge. If you're doing something that you believe is worthwhile, then you can really enjoy the the struggle. I would much rather climb into bed at the end of the day, just exhausted and fall asleep knowing that I gave it everything, then just wander through the day and not bother with anything.

And then you come into the bed and you're disgusted with yourself if you don't do something. Now, it does, again, not to say you don't need rest. We all need rest. Not say you don't need a vacation. We do, but rest is not the goal. It's just simply the tool to help you reach the goal.

Yeah, my my parents are both artists. My dad is is an amazing woodcarver. He could take a picture of you and he could carve a bust that looks exactly like you. Wow. None of this, you know, woodland stuff. I mean, he's amazing. My mom's a painter and a she does stained glass.

She does quilting. She's incredible as well. They're both teachers and their earlier years before they retired. I did not inherit a lick of that creative ability on the artistic front. What I inherited is creativity in the business sense. And I am most alive when I'm helping create something. You know, when I'm when I'm coming up with a new idea and then working through the process of launching it and and and creating something new.

And my ultimate vision is not just sticker vending machines in schools. My ultimate vision, quite honestly, is to reinvent the fundraising process completely so that the educators in this country no longer have to worry about the fundraising. They work with companies like my own, where we have a whole stable of entities that they sign on with us.

We come in and do our thing behind the scenes and they spend their time doing what they're experts at, which is educating our kids. And we come in and employ our expertise on their behalf so that they can do that. You mentioned a number of failures in a number of very difficult years where you're just really struggling.

And then over time, you know, things have changed. The trajectory has changed. Are you able to identify anything in you that changed that made a difference or anything that you did that you were doing previously that you stopped or anything that you weren't doing when things were down that you started doing when things went up?

Oh, man, a lot of stuff. I don't have enough time. I used to be an arrogant jerk for one thing, you know, a typical pilot, you know, kind of the whole Tom Cruise Top Gun thing. Right. I mean, that was me. And I hung out with those kind of guys.

So humility has been a big thing. Another big thing has been patience. I am inherently very, very impatient. I don't know if you're familiar with the disc model of personalities, but I am an off the charts D. So I'm a driver. And so relatability and empathy and some of those things are not my strong suit at all.

But one thing that has allowed me to learn patience, as silly as this sounds, is now that I have some time to do what I want to do, one of my passions is gardening and to plant that seed and then watch God grow it over a span of weeks or months and to have to be there just as the one that's tending it by watering it and pulling the weeds and all that has really been huge for me.

It's been therapeutic. I get a chance to spend probably four hours a week out in the garden, especially right now where we're harvesting tomatoes and squash and all that stuff like there's no tomorrow. But that has really kind of leveled me as crazy as that sounds and has made me a lot better in the process.

I also believe that I was put through what I was put through to prepare me to be where I am today. You know, a lot of people look back on their failures or their lows in their life with regret. I don't regret a minute of it because I don't think that I could be doing as successfully what I am today without having been through those lows.

If you look at a mountain, I went to school in Colorado at the Air Force Academy, had the beautiful mountains right outside my window. Well, there's nothing growing on the mountaintop. It's all growing in the valley. And that's where growth occurs in each and every one of our lives as well, is in the valley.

And so I'm grateful for those times. I don't wish them on anybody, but then again, they were necessary for me to be where I am. And that's one of my biggest struggles today as a parent is to make sure that I don't rob my kids of those struggles because if they don't have them, they can't grow to become who I believe God has meant for them to be.

What else? Did you change anything as far as in your daily practices or in your habits? Did you change? I've had to become, I mean, I was pretty disciplined already, but I've had to become even more so because when you have total control of your time, as you know, it's real easy for time to get away from you.

And I've wasted my share of time just like anybody, but what I did learn is that just being idle, there's no satisfaction in that whatsoever. I mean, tomorrow I'll go and I'll just kind of do nothing most of the day just because this has been a pretty intense weekend with a lot of relationships and a lot going on.

But man, I'm going to be ready to jump right back in the saddle again and figure out how I can help the people that I've run into here and figure out ways that these relationships and this knowledge that I've gained here in these last few days can be leveraged to take things to a whole new level and in the process make things better for my team, make things better for my schools that I serve and improve things hopefully for everybody.

How did you, let me rephrase. Are you passionate about vending? No. I'm passionate about, see, I tell everybody our business is kind of the unbusiness model, meaning I took everything that I liked about corporate America and the military and I kept, but everything that I hated I got rid of.

They always changed the rules in corporate America and they were never to my favor. I was always asked to go to events like this or whatever, but it was just me and my family was left at home. So in our business, we have another one of our mantras is that families are our foundation and we encourage families to be involved, actively involved at all levels of what we do.

My son Zane is a great example. When he was 10 years old, I started my company and I realized graphic design was going to be very expensive and that my business was going to require a lot of it. So I bought an iMac, I bought the Adobe Photoshop or the Adobe suite and Zane spent two hours working in the art of my good friend Jeff Smith, who's a trained graphic designer and Hollywood commercial editor in exchange for two hours of training on Photoshop and Illustrator.

Zane at that point became the beginnings of our graphics team. Today he leads a team of multiple adults who are all freelancers working for what we do. He's 19 and he's a sophomore in college and he's had literally nine years of experience as a graphic designer. And to have the opportunity to allow him to grow at his own pace to do that has been huge, but also to see the same thing happen with the kids in a bunch of the different families on our team.

We've got the second generation now that's getting involved, that we're helping their mom and dad build up their businesses and got excited about the opportunity of doing the same thing for themselves and now they are getting started at 18 and 19. And in the process we're creating a multi-generational business that is impacting families, it's changing the family tree of families.

I was on the Dave Ramsey show and I know that you think a lot of Dave and got some of your start from listening to him. And I had an opportunity about a year and a half ago to ask him a question on his show. I was at an Entree Leadership event and I started out my question just letting Dave know, "Dave, I wanted to publicly thank you because your message has completely changed my family tree." And that's my hope, that's my prayer, is to be able to provide an environment and to provide some insights and some knowledge to some folks that maybe because they're not wired the same way had all the tools to go out and start something on their own, but could in a safe and proven environment like we've created.

But in the process to give them more security over their finances, to give them a lot more options. Many of them have chosen to do this full time and are living successful lives with our program. Many this is just a supplement to allow them to pay some extra bills or to put some kids through school or whatever.

But for each family to have an environment where they can take what we've done and make it what they want it to be and be a blessing for them and their family along the way. It's definitely a privilege and I guess that would be your answer to the passion question.

I think this is something we don't talk about enough. A lot of times I talk a good bit on Radical Personal Finance about passion businesses and lifestyle businesses, do what you love. It's quite the mantra. I mean a gathering like this is over a thousand people here this weekend and I would say 850 of them, 850 of us are wannabe motivational speakers saying go out and live your passion.

Problem is I don't believe that passion is the only ingredient that you need and I don't believe that everybody can make a living cooking cupcakes because that's what they love to do or driving Corvettes because that's what they love to do. I think some people can but I think some people can make a living driving a race car and some people can make a living working on a race car and some people can make a living practicing law and racing cars on the weekends and that's not the determinant of happiness.

Passion is not only expressed in the hobbies and in the fun things and frankly, myself having had some fun jobs, I realized I don't really necessarily like fun jobs. I learned, I'm so thankful for a summer, two summers, I taught wakeboarding and water skiing and it was the quintessential fun job.

You show up to work in a pair of board shorts and you drive a boat around the lake and here I'm a high school kid and you got girls in bikinis all around and you're teaching them the wakeboard. That's a fun job and I hated it because by the end of the summer, it was the same thing over and over and over and over and I hated it.

I learned that fun is not the measure of enjoyable. Fun is not the measure of passion and you can develop a passion around an activity, sure, and for some people, they're able to do that. You can also develop a passion for how you do an activity and you can just be enjoying the process of becoming the best and then you can also develop a passion for the results of an activity and that pushes a lot of moms and dads every single day when they don't feel like getting up and they don't feel like going to work and they don't feel like parenting and they don't feel like loving their spouse.

That pushes them because they love the results and in my mind, I'm sure there's many other things that can drive the passion but we spend, and I probably am guilty of it, but we spend too much time talking about pursuing the fun passion and not enough time recognizing the fact that life is not all about fun and the most fulfilling times of life are not necessarily the most fun times.

I like to stand on a beach with my wife and snuggle as we watch the sun set but I'll tell you the times that have been the most meaningful in our relationship to me have often been very difficult and they've been difficult for various reasons but those are the times where our relationship has deepened and I think we do a disservice if we set the expectation to people that the only way to be passionate is to pursue fun.

No doubt about it. My passion really is making a difference. My coach Aaron Walker, which I think you've had a chance to meet this weekend, his whole motivation today is teaching men to go from just success to significance, to having a meaning in the world and in the people around them and that's what drives me more than anything, not only with our business team and our schools but because I now have control over my time, I work with an organization, I'm on the board of directors, it's called Kids Across Cultures and we do a lot of work overseas, primarily in China right now, working with a people group called the Hani that is one of the poorest and most remote groups of people on the planet and to go and to be able to spend time with those people and to be able to pour my life into them and help others do the same and to be able to take my kids with me.

I took my son Zane two years ago, I took my daughter Sarah this last year and I'll take my youngest daughter Rebecca this coming year and for them to go and have an opportunity to share with some that will never have the opportunity that we have here and to shed some light in a really dark part of the world is worth it all.

Have your other kids been involved in the business in any way similar to how Zane has been? Oh yeah, I mean before we moved to where we live now, we lived in a 1200 square foot house in Kingwood, Texas which is on the northeast side of Houston and we literally for years, our living room was a vending machine assembly area.

Our kids would help collate the stickers and they'd help put labels and stamps on postcards that we were sending out. My daughter Sarah, the second in line, is now doing a bunch of graphic design work. She's even more artistically talented than her brother. Zane has the computer, the tech talent but she's applying her talents now having learned some of the basics of the Adobe products.

My youngest, Becca, she helps out with a lot of other things. She helps me keep organized, she helps me keep my office clean. I've got somebody coming and she'll help me straighten up because my office is kind of organized chaos often times. She'll help me with some collating and that type of thing and she's expressed interest in doing some design at some point too.

My goal is for them ultimately to have a skill set and to have an opportunity to pursue their giftings so that when they get to the point where they're out on their own, they can choose to work for somebody if they want but if not, they've been given a lot of the tools and the environment that they've grown up in to go out and make their own way and to do it their own way without us having given it all to them which I think is a real struggle for a lot of us but we really work hard to make sure that they understand the importance of hard work and all that because nothing comes for free in this world.

It's a lot of responsibility to have that many lives depending on you. Employees, franchisees, children, not easy is it? No it's not and that's one reason why I started working with a coach, Aaron, and why I've been coming to events like this for the last number of years because I have to stay plugged in and you're really a sum of the books that you read and the people that you hang out with and so I really strive hard and long to regularly be out of my comfort zone by getting myself around people who make me uncomfortable because they're that much more successful or that much more knowledgeable in an area that I'm not and in doing so, it allows me to continue to grow and it allows me to continue to earn the opportunity to serve the people that I get a chance to serve.

Take a minute, tell us about your company, website, your franchise. I know you're not allowed to talk about details necessarily but your franchise because that's your main focus now is building your franchisees to replicate what you've done here in Texas. Correct. Talk about that because it might be something that would be helpful for any listeners of this show.

Yeah, I mean what we're looking for first off is folks that are maybe a little discouraged with their full-time career, kind of like I was, who are looking for a way to take some more control and maybe on down the road potentially exercise some more freedom financially. Our business, one of its strengths is the fact that it requires a very small time commitment to get started unlike most franchises that are going to expect you to step off the cliff and you are 100% having to work within your store or restaurant or what have you.

Here someone can start our business on just a couple days a month. It's very inexpensive to get started, $15,000 to get started. That's franchise fee coupled with everything you need to get your first five schools up and running. We're looking for people literally in just about every state except for Texas today in some way, shape or form.

Our school-facing website is schoolspiritvending.com and though I started the company originally to create temporary tattoos and all that for the high school and junior high market for athletic events and all, they didn't respond to it. We do most of our work with elementary schools today. Like I said, we're growing like a weed.

We really have found a need and are filling it and schools have responded because of that. I think the franchise model is definitely something that many, many people should consider. I just read E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber where he talks about the structure of a business. I've experienced as an entrepreneur when I was with Northwestern Mutual, I was an entrepreneur but I was almost an entrepreneur with a franchise.

I had a contractual agreement with Northwestern Mutual that was similar in many ways to a franchise agreement. I was able to represent their products and their services and I also worked with other companies and I was able to represent their products and services but I was given a system for success.

I wasn't just sent out. I was told, "Do these things. If you do these things, you will get these results." That was such a beautiful thing because I always knew what to do. Now, I could decide whether I wanted to do it or not but I couldn't be surprised about the results that I got or not.

The results were directly tied to doing the things. It's no problem if somebody says, "I just don't want to do those things." Okay, that's fine. You don't have to but this one is not going to work unless you do these things so you've got to do these things. That's very different than this business that I'm in now with Radical Personal Finance.

The challenge here, I don't know what things to do and nobody knows what things to do. That is tough. That's where you are as the franchisor is in developing this, you're on the side of saying, "I don't know what to do. I got to figure it out. I think I want to go here and let's see if this works.

Well, let's see if temporary tattoos work. Nope, that didn't work. Let's see if stickers work. Nope, that didn't work. You try this design. That one didn't work but this one does." That is tough. Some days I long for the days when I knew what to do every day. If I go in, do these actions, I get this result.

Life's not like that anymore. There are a certain number of people. I enjoy it but it is challenging. There are a certain number of people I think who should go out and just do their own thing and set something up. Those people can take inspiration from what we've talked about.

There are other people who can look at what they're doing and say, "There are some attributes of this job, attributes of this business that I don't really love. I can see some other things." The thing about franchising is, my goodness, pick up Entrepreneur Magazine and you'll find your franchise magazine.

Just find Franchise Opportunity Magazines. As you start to read through them, they can give you exposure to many different types of businesses, whether it's a mobile dog grooming business or a selling stickers in schools business or a selling candy in restaurants business or a rug cleaning business. You can start to think, "Would I enjoy the attributes of that?

Is there something about that?" And then you can filter through it. If appropriate, you do your research on the franchise or you make sure the business model you do carefully, which you do due diligence. At least when you sign up, you should, if you've done your due diligence, you should have a model that works.

And then you just simply don't have to figure it out how to do it. You just simply sit down and do it. It's powerful. Yeah, and we've got eight years track record with what we're doing. There's no question that it works. Ultimately, it's a question of will that individual work it.

Like you said, if they're willing to follow our simple recipe for success, what's really cool about this is the fact that I've seen person after person after person after person who is duplicating that to whatever level they choose to. And it's cool to see it. I loved being an instructor pilot in the Air Force because I could watch this student who knew nothing about flying before they sat down at my desk that first day.

And in a matter of a month and a half, they're going solo in a supersonic airplane. And a couple months after that, they've gotten their wings and now they're going on to learn to fly whatever airplane they're assigned to. There was a lot of gratification in that. And this duplicates that a lot for me, is to be able to see that growth, to see that change and to provide an environment for people to win.

Not to do it for them, but to provide the environment and then to watch them grow and change and become with us just being a little part of that process. When you have some of the things in life that are important to you, when you've got Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when you've got the basics of your life squared away, then some of the things that are for other people are more gratifying than some of the things for yourself.

I mean, from time to time, I get an email from a listener that says, "Joshua, I want to thank you because of you, here's what's happened." I love those emails. They're so important because I rejoice in many ways more with them than often I do with my own successes.

It's easier in many ways to rejoice. In the position you're in, it definitely, I think, can be a cool place where you can rejoice when you see other people able to change from something that's not a good fit to something that is. You mentioned your school-facing website, School Spirit Vending.

I don't think you mentioned your franchise. It's SSVBusiness.com, School Spirit Vending, SSV Business. And Matt@SSVBusiness.com. Awesome. If folks have interest in talking a little bit more, I would love to talk. Or if they've just got some questions about vending or whatever, what you'll find with me is this is a very low-pressure deal.

If it makes sense to you, great. If it doesn't, that's okay, too. I tell folks my Rice Krispies will be just as crispy tomorrow. And in the process, there's no pressure. This isn't some hard sell. So if it makes sense and you want to talk, I'd love to do so.

And then check us out and decide for yourself if what we stand for and what we do makes sense for you and your family. Awesome. Matt, thanks for coming on. Thanks, Joshua. And I appreciate what you're doing, man. Of course, we just met yesterday, but I got a chance to listen to a couple of your shows early this morning.

And man, I'm excited about what you're putting together. One of these days when I can get it done, I'm going to do some shows about some of the cool financial planning tricks you can use when you're using your kids in your business. Because there's some fun things that you can do.

If nothing else, I don't know if you contribute to your son's college education, but pay him. And it is deductible. I mean, there's just some simple little technical financial planning tricks that you can do. And when your kids are involved, the rule with kids working in businesses is pay them for actual work they do like you would pay anybody else.

And that's good for everybody. That's good for you, and it's good for them. And it's also good to be able to use the tax law in your favor. The only time it doesn't work is when you pay your nine-year-old daughter $100 an hour for collating the papers in your office.

That doesn't work. Thanks, Matt. Thanks. How does the saying go? It ain't easy, but it's certainly worth it. That's the sense that I get from Matt's story. Love hearing people's stories of struggle and ultimately their triumph. Not every struggle ends in triumph, but it's cool when they do. And I think that the way to guarantee that your struggle doesn't end in triumph is to give up.

If you don't give up, well, you're still in the struggle and ultimately it's going to end. So, give up and try again. Hopefully, maybe some of you who are listening for whom Matt's vending business opportunity could be a perfect fit for you, might help you to build your own little entrepreneurial thing on a proven system.

Check out, after the interview, Matt went ahead and set up a special landing page. It's linked in the show notes. But check out ssvbusiness.com/radical. He sent me that over after the show. And he's giving away, to entice you to go there and give him your name and email address for his marketing process, he is giving away an e-book entitled, "Live Your Dreams, The Top 10 Reasons Why You Need to Start a Vending Business." So hopefully that can be packed with useful information for you.

So ssvbusiness.com/radical. Do your own due diligence. Think carefully, of course, through whether or not it makes sense. But I'm sure after listening to this interview, you've gotten a good taste of Matt and what he's doing. If the vending business is for you, check that out. If the vending business is not for you, learn from Matt's story and just think about how, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, you can do exactly what he did.

Take something that works, make a few little tweaks to it to adjust it for a changing market condition. Who knows what can happen? Obviously, he's still in the middle of building out the franchise business. But it sounds exciting to me. Sounds like a good product fit for many people at a perfect time.

Matt, let me know how you're doing as time goes on. Thank you all so much for listening to today's show. I just had a brain, my brain went blank there. Patrons, patrons, patrons, thank you to especially the many of you who support the show on Patreon. That's how the primary way that I pay the bills.

That's what gives me the ability to have all of my emphasis and my allegiance directly to you, the listening audience, where I'm not beholden to advertisers. I'm not beholden to just simply support their deal and make, where they don't call the shots, you call the shots. If you're not supporting the show, please consider going to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron and sign up to support the show.

I thank each and every one of you. (upbeat music)