Feeling Quite Content

I'm feeling quite content tonight. I've just come in from watching a beautiful sunset. I'd headed out onto the balcony just as the sun touched the western mountains and was snuggled by the 80 degree perfect temperature. I let the tensions of the new job slide away and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Pretty awesome.

I'm now a week and a day into owning the Snack Master vending route. Let me tell you, it's a job. The day-to-day manual work of loading the machines is a bit tougher than I expected. The first day, my back, legs, and arms were sore from all the lifting. But as the week wore on and the patterns grew similar I have determined that the soreness was just the beginnings of long dormant muscles. Today I feel only minor aches and also can feel some muscles growing in my arms. I had hoped that this job would also help get me into better shape, and I now know it will. Not a bad side bonus.

I've been going around mostly with the son (Travis) of the former owner. He's a 23 year old kid, but is of the same stock as his father - honest, caring and real down to earth. I can tell I am lucky to have bought a business from such good people.

I have had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 4AM. I drive 45 minutes to Travis's and we head out at 5:15AM. This is certainly not my choice, and when I am done with the two weeks training, I will certainly move it back to a reasonable hour...say, whenever I wake up. We then go to all the locations on the days schedule. At each location, we hop out of the truck and head to the machines to take an inventory of what each machine has in it. With this, we can go back to the truck and pull out all the product that is needed to load the machines. We then go back in and load the machines. Oh yeah, and we also collect all the money that has accumulated into its own little bag.

The money. Here's something that is fantastic about this job. Every day you come home with a bunch of little bags of money. Presents. In this job you really do get an honest days pay for an honest days work. I get to flip through the bags, estimate the total, and know how much more money I have today than I had yesterday. I love it. As part of the purchase I have acquired a coin counter, and when I move into my new place, I will finally get to count up all the proceeds thus far. But just from this first week, I can tell that the numbers from the business are going to be at least what I expected.

Another nice thing about this job is that though I've gotten up early every day, I've been done early. The latest it's been is noon before I was heading home for the day, and one day we started at 5:15 and were done by 9:15 AM. And I'm still very slow at it because I'm learning. Travis said some days he's done by 8 AM. When I get a good bit better at this job, I believe I could cut a whole extra day off each week.

Unfortunately, when I've been done with the day with Travis, I have been busy late into the night with other work related crap. I have been inundated with tons of business info. I spent hours organizing and eventually filing all of it. Besides getting business cards and an address stamp made, I've also been working with Mom and Dad to pull together some work clothing. Bewick's embroidery business will be expertly producing some golf shirts with the Snack Master logo, and I may order up a few baseball caps because the sun out here can be brutal and I don't want to turn into a prune. But the most time consuming thing I've been doing is an eternal amount of data entry. Because Travis' computer broke, I have had to manually enter all the information into the MS Vending Management software. This has been a huge task. I've probably spent about 75 hours inputting each and every location, product, machine and individual slot in every machine. It's been a beast. But as dad said "Do the work upfront, so you don't have to do double later." Now that most of it has been entered, I know it will make the work much easier in the future.

I decided I needed to get this blogged now because I will continue to be swamped for the next few weeks. I will have a new address next week, the fourth one in a year. Next weekend I'm moving the business into it, and during the following two week, I will need to move all my personal stuff out of the rental. I certainly feel that I have overloaded the schedule with all that is going on.

But soon enough, I will be at home in my new rental house. The first house I've lived in since living with my parents. Running my own business, driving my own box truck, on my own schedule, bringing home little presents of money. With my two car garage filled to the brim with all snacks, sodas and candy you can dream of. As a kid, I had always wanted to get locked up in a candy store for the night. Well, now I will have that store in my garage. Pretty cool!

Snack Master Scott

The New Beginning

Tomorrow I start my new job. I don't think of it as a new career, because I don't see myself doing this for the long haul. But for now, I am an entrepreneur having officially bought the Snack Master vending business. Escrow went smoothly, and no real issues came up. I handed over the biggest check I have ever written, and the deal is done.

I will be doing two weeks of training with the former owners, and I am excited and nervous. Because I don't have a place to run the business out of yet, I will be travelling for the next two weeks down to Tempe early each day. I have a lot to learn, but I don't think there will be anything too complex about what I need to know. The majority of the job will be a matter of going to the machines, filling up what needs to be filled and walking away with the money that has accumulated. Learning where all the machines are should be pretty easy, but I would have a heck of a time trying to find them without the previous owners showing me. It's not like you just show up to a place and the machines are at the front door. In one school I will be servicing, I have to walk in a certain door, wind my way through the halls and find the teachers lounge.

One of the tasks that will be important to get right is the purchasing of product. I will be buying the sodas from Costco or Sam's Club and the snacks from Vendco (which services most of the venders in the area). If I buy too much, it can expire and have product loss. Or if I buy too little, I can lose sales because of not having the right product in the machines. It's important to get it close to right. But then again, this isn't rocket science (or computer programming), so there is a good bit of leeway with respect to mistakes.

Right now, I'm a little bit nervous and a little bit excited. The last time I started a new job was about 15 years ago and I'm chomping at the bit. It's sort of like the day before I set off on the Road Trip, but then I was a lot nervous and a lot excited.

I also have an update on where I am going to be running the business out of. This morning I signed a lease on a 2 Bed Room, 2 Full Bath, 2 Car Garage house that should work out nicely for me. I am disappointed that I will be losing the spectacular views and sunsets that I currently relish. The house is in a more residential area than my current place, but it is central to the route I will be working. The last time I had a house for a residence was when I lived with my parents. It's been all apartments and condos since then. I move in on the 15th.

CuzJoe's visit was great and we ended up doing a nice hike up Pinnacle Peak before he headed back to the cold northeast. I think he really appreciated Phoenix, particularly the weather, and I expect hi to return often. Now that I'll have two bedrooms, I will easily be able to have guests, so start making your plans.

Wish me luck!

Snack Master Scott