Placed my first machine!

It's been a slower process than I had first expected, but I am starting this business with no real capital to speak of. We've been living paycheck to paycheck, so finding even a few extra dollars is tough, but in the last couple of weeks, I managed to get business cards (they look a little something like this:)

I also got matching labels to identify my machines and had some flyers printed up as well. Got them all done at http://www.vistaprint.com/ and if you play your cards right and read the fine print, watch out for their "gotchas", you can get a pretty good deal. The shipping cost more than my business cards, labels, flyers, and oh yeah, the custom pen.

I also bought candy to fill my first machine. I checked out prices at our local wholesaler, Cash & Carry, also Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, and a few others. Ultimately, I ended up going to the bulk food section of our local discount grocery because I could get a good price for the quantity I needed without having to buy more than I needed or jump through membership hoops.

So I've been networking (but not nearly as much as I should, although having business cards to hand out will help!) and my wife has gone out to quite a few locations trying to pitch them on hosting one of our machines, but the first machine was placed by dear old mom! Yep, she contacted her sister and asked if her brother-in-law would consider letting me put a machine in his used records/CDs shop. It's not likely to be a dynamite location, but it IS a start, and perhaps he knows other business owners who wouldn't mind hosting machines. That's how networking works, after all.

More soon...