Ethan Kohan 🍫

Just signed our 10th franchisee!!! 🎉 Hayden, 23 years old (and our youngest franchisee), is based in Charlotte, NC and crushing it in real estate wholesaling. Now he's adding vending as a complimentary business he can actually scale. His plan is to scale to 20+ machines in year 1, hire an operator to run those locations, then focus purely on sales and growth while the cash flow compounds. Rooting for you Hayden. Let's get it man!!!!! P.S. looks like someone really enjoyed his Terry Black's 😂🥩

things worth every penny: > AI Agents: Instinct & Grok Bot > blank notebook time > gym membership > learning Spanish > guitar lessons > stretching > A+ talent

i spent $500 on an LED topper so a Pokémon machine can scream “sold here” from every angle. but beyond making the machine look sharper, i would argue the most important thing in physical retail is NOT the product inside. it is whether a stranger walking past even knows you exist. i know everyone obsesses about what to stock and how to price it, but the more abstract side of attention is the part most vending machine owners skip. if sales increase by 10% or more, every machine gets one. if they do not, we kill it and keep the lesson.

at a stage in this business where I hope I never get used to this. new machine live in Austin, TX.

one of my machines did about $1,000 in a single day. it was Spider-Man opening night at a movie theater in Chicago. the lobby was packed and people were already in line for merch and snacks. my machine was sitting right in the middle of that traffic. a normal day at that spot looks nothing like that. (the screenshot below is that night's sales) i keep a short checklist for nights like this. where the machine sits, what I stock when the building is already going to be full, and what I skip on a quiet week. A few honest lessons from that night: 1) a good location still needs a reason for people to be standing there. 2) stocking for an average day is the fastest way to run out on the biggest one. 3) cultural timing is inventory strategy, not a nice surprise after the fact.

last month, i spent five days at Tony Robbins' Business Mastery in Palm Beach. i almost didn't go. i run every fire in my company. being unreachable that long sounded like the least responsible thing i could do. THAT was the reason to go. what five days out of the business actually looks like: > long days, on purpose > the slow realization that you're the bottleneck > a room built for people who already have something working i've built this far by being in it. that worked right up until it started costing me. // i don't have a clean lesson from the week yet. what I came home with is a list of things that only happen because I do them. if you've taken a week like this, what did you actually come back and change?

another epic month in the books! my biggest Ws from August: - signed a campus kiosk deal - locked in our first machine in LA - wrapped two grocery-pilot machines - on track for $300k/month by Dec 31 - one machine did $1,058 in a single day - trampoline parks lined up for the fall - a few national retailers in active conversations - spent the weekend in Martha’s Vineyard for an epic wedding - spent a week at a Tony Robbins business mastery seminar in Palm Beach - Rafael and I flew to our Texas warehouse to prepare 31 machines to ship - machines averaging around $2,500/month, roughly a 7 month payback - opened a $500K raise to fund the 77 locations I already have signed plus many others I'm probably missing! now, of course I also had some Ls. here's a few of them: - pulled machines back out of locations I said yes to too fast. I should have held out for high traffic only instead of taking every yes that came in. - left margin on the table with suppliers. I didn't negotiate hard enough early and I'm still cleaning that up. - stocked way too Pokemon-heavy at the start. One Piece, Magic, and sports cards were moving and I wasn't set up for it. now, enough about me. what was one of your biggest Ws from the month? let me know below, I'd love to know! (and if you want the deck on the $500K raise, DM me your email.)

if I learned anything from scouting vending locations, it's this... dwell time beats foot traffic. every. single. time. anyone can find a spot where 10,000 people walk by. but very few people count how many of them are standing still. nobody buys anything while they're walking somewhere. they buy when they're stuck. the best location doesn't feel like a busy location at all. it feels like a boring one. so next time you're looking at a spot, stop counting people. find the place where they're waiting. and put your machine there.

when people think about landing a big-name client, they usually focus on just the revenue from that vending machine. which would be huge. but there's also: 1. referrals from people inside the building, because the person who answers your email usually isn't the person who signs off, and he'll hand you the name of whoever does 2. suppliers who stop screening you, which makes sourcing come to you instead (and gets you product your competitors can't find) 3. faster meetings from cold outreach, because one recognizable name in your first email does the trust-building for you i recommend just about every operator chase one recognizable name before they chase volume. and most other people too. the benefits are endless.

for the first 6 months of building my trading card kiosks… i had a lot of "wtf am i doing" moments. i knew adding a new product category would be tough. but what I underestimated was how bad it would feel day to day. three things i got wrong: 1) sourcing. i didn't negotiate hard enough. 2) location vetting. i said yes to everyone. 3) product mix. it's not just Pokemon. there were nights i wondered if i'd messed up a business that was already working. turns out, i wasn't failing. i was just in the flat part. i came across the below startup-curve graph that maps what most people experience when they build something new - a business, a product line, a new market, even a career change. initial enthusiasm. then reality sets in. then a long stretch of experimenting and pivoting. then (if you stick it out) it starts working. that slow, quiet, expensive stretch? totally normal. and honestly, those 6 months have been the hardest since i started this thing. but i kept going. one thing that helped me a lot during the low points was a daily brain dump: > what I'm avoiding > what I'm excited about the most important part? making sure I ended on what I was excited about. starting a new category is hard. ending the day on a positive really matters. sharing this in case someone else is sitting in the flat part right now. it doesn't mean you're failing. you're just learning.

weird things I did to build a $1M/year vending business: (lessons from 7 years of running specialty vending machines) 1. bet the whole company on Pokemon this helps you sell into demand that already exists. so you become the only option in a category people love. 2. pitched 100s of locations before anyone said yes this lets you build the reps. you can practice your pitch stress-free. 3. built a 100,000+ audience with $0 spent on ads 6,000+ applications to run my machines. 200+ locations getting signed this year. 38 states with machines live. this helps you stop starting every conversation from zero. i did these weird things only for 1 reason: i wanted to build a really damn good business. don't just ask "What business makes money?" Ask "What are people already obsessed with?" what's something weird you've done to excel at what you do now?

extremely underrated habit for every founder / CEO: take at least 100 customer complaints yourself. when I started Pod Plug, w answered every customer message myself. w did it out of necessity, but I'm convinced it's also why we grew as fast as we did: 1) you get up close and personal with customers standing in front of a machine that just took their money. 2) it builds the muscle that became one of our biggest strengths: fixing things fast. when you're the one absorbing every complaint, you stop letting problems sit. 3) it allows you to build real relationships with customers. a ton of the people i've refunded went right back and bought from that same machine the next week. 4) the more painful the feedback, the more urgency you feel to fix it. as we scaled, we brought on a team to handle requests and refunds (who are great) and I mostly stopped taking them myself. then last week i jumped back in, and wow. you forget how much you stop seeing when you're not the one reading these. a girl paid for a Pokémon pack for her little brother and the machine never dropped it... i refunded her, then asked whether the spiral spun at all. it didn't. the cord attached to the motor got unplugged during freight and nobody knew. i own these machines: and if I'm not the one asking, who is? so I'm going back to basics. a few requests every week, straight to my phone, just like the early days. 🫡

the people confidently saying "the Pokémon bubble is about to pop" clearly have no idea what they’re talking about. yesterday, one of my machines just did $1,058 in revenue at a movie theater in Chicago & I'd still classify Pokémon vending as "just getting started." 7 years running this business. I've never seen one machine do that in a day. here's what actually happens inside a real vending route: > the upside is wildly uneven. some machines do steady, boring numbers. a few of them go nuclear! > placement is the whole game. a movie theater lobby gives you all-day foot traffic and nothing else in the room to spend money on. > it's easy to buy a vending machine. much harder to put it somewhere that does $1k+ in an afternoon. i've been pushing hard into Pokémon & squishy vending machines for 5 months now. i’m going to install another 100 of these machines by the end of the year. i just haven't seen anything that suggests this category is slowing down anytime soon. in fact, I'm raising $500K over the next 60 days to pour gas on it and fund the 75+ locations I already have signed. i think automated retail in the hottest collectible category in the world is the best bet I've made and would bet on this to continue. if you want in, shoot me a DM and let's talk.

"Ethan, how do I get more foot traffic into my store without spending a dime?" i've talked to 120+ business owners in the last 6 months about foot traffic, and they've asked me a similar question because they ALL suffer from the same problem: THEY HAVE DEAD FLOOR SPACE AND NOTHING PULLING NEW PEOPLE IN. and not just that, but they don't know what would actually work either. but when they try to think of what to put in that corner, their mind ALWAYS comes to a blank because most options are either: 1. something they have to buy, stock, and babysit themselves 2. another machine nobody stops to look at over the past year while scaling my specialty vending company, @podplugvending, I've landed on a conclusion: the best thing a store can put in its entryway right now is a collectible kiosk in the hottest category in the world.

does anyone else struggle to actually unplug? i honestly can't remember my last real vacation. and after thinking about it: i'd probably be terrible at one anyway. it's not that I don't trust my team. it's that I care too much to step away. too many things in motion, too much momentum to gamble on. even my "time off" never really counts. just this month: > 10 machines going into Regal Cinemas this week, Sky Zone parks to follow > grocery launches locked with Sedanos, Fresco, and Smart & Final > on track to hit $300k/mo by Dec 31st on my last actual trip, I spent my birthday emailing store owners from a travel center because I "loved the location." not sure if that makes me driven or a little broken. probably a bit of both.

i couldn't possibly be any more bullish on collectibles and TCG vending right now: > our machines average around $2,500 a month (7 month payback), and the grocery side is signing faster than we can build > we're installing machines in 10 Regal Cinemas this week, with Sky Zone trampoline parks to follow this fall > Albertsons, Menards, Dick's Sporting Goods, and Winn Dixie are all in active conversations to bring kiosks into their stores > Netflix hits are now launching their own trading card lines (KPop Demon Hunters is the latest), launching on strict order deadlines > college stores from Oregon State to the Naval Academy are reaching out to put card kiosks on campus & people are still only just waking up to how big of an opportunity this is. that's why I'm raising $500K over the next 60 days to pour gas on it and fund the 100+ locations we're signing. if you want to back it, DM me your email and I'll send the deck.

we're raising like crazy at @podplugvending. few key details: 1) the raise: $500K over the next 60 days to pour gas on it and fund the 75+ locations we have lined up. 2) want in: if you want to back this unique automated retail business going all-in on the hottest collectible category in the world, shoot me a DM and let’s talk.

fun reason every founder should keep emailing the people who ghosted them, even if they never replied once: i stopped at a random travel center on my birthday this year. loved it so much i emailed the owner about putting a machine in before I left the parking lot (on my birthday. this is my idea of a day off). he never wrote back. neither did most of the convenience chains I'd cold-emailed back in April. so instead of giving up, i put every one of them on a list. months later, i sent that exact same list one email. not a pitch but just an update on what we'd been up to: > installing 10 machines across Regal Cinemas this week > September grocery launches locked with three chains > on track to hit 600 machines by year end by the time they replied, they already knew the whole story. the result: deals I'd written off months ago back on the table, and I never sent a single pitch. if you're wondering whether you should keep updating people who never replied (you should), that quiet follow-up list is the most underrated tool I've got.

i'm 5 months into building @podplugvending around Pokemon & viral collectibles vending. this is the fastest-growing chapter of anything I've built, and I've never been pushed harder. here are all the lessons and reflections I’ve learned since day 1: 1. the collector market is a sneaky cool place to build. Pokemon demand is exploding, the buyers already know exactly what they want, and almost nobody is putting fully-stocked machines in front of them yet. 2. i am soo freaking grateful. Nothing tops making memories with my family & friends. but getting to build something real with people who out-work and out-care everyone else, while having full control over where this goes, is winning the entrepreneurial lottery. 3. "Vending machines are passive income" is both real and mostly garbage online. the machines print. but the "passive" part is a lie. someone is still out there maintaining and restocking every machine. we do the work. 4. the best businesses copy 90% and innovate on the last mile. vending has existed for 100 years. our last mile was the product (Pokemon, TCG, viral squishy toys, and whatever's hot next) and how we pay operators (profit share, like they own it). 5. i've never spent a dollar on paid ads. i've built an organic 100K+ audience across my socials and driven 6,000+ applications from people who want to run our machines in their city. 6. the proof is already on the board. $6M+ in lifetime vending sales, machines across 16 states, and 65% gross margins. 7. capital is the fastest way to compress time. it’s either slow growth and bootstrap or raise and scale fast. we're launching 26 machines this month alone, and inventory, freight, and new markets add up fast. so I'm raising $500K over the next 60 days to fund the 100+ locations we're signing. $50K minimum check sizes. if you want to back a unique specialty vending business going all-in on the hottest collectible category in the world, shoot me a DM with your email and I'll send over the deck. 8. i want to build something big now so the family I'll have one day never has to wonder if it was worth it. it's really freakin' hard. But it's possible. 9. the great operators treat the vending business like an art, not a logistics game. which machine, which location, which product mix. It's deeply creative. 10. if I'm good at one thing as a founder, it's my ability to eat shit thanklessly for years on end based on the irrational belief that success is inevitable. hope this resonated with anyone reading this!

5 months ago I went all-in on rebuilding Pod Plug around Pokemon & viral collectibles vending. it's been the craziest chapter of anything I've built. a longer post with reflections and lessons to come, but I wanted to share a highlight reel: - machines live across 16 states at 65% gross margins - built an organic 100K+ audience across my socials with $0 spent on paid ads - drove 6,000+ applications from people who want to run our machines in their city - a lean, high-horsepower team plus a growing bench of local operators who out-work and out-care everyone else - went all-in on the hottest collectible category on earth: Pokemon, TCGs, and the viral squishy toys people are actually chasing it's such a privilege to build something real in a category people genuinely love, and the work only gets bigger and higher-stakes from here. now I'm raising $500K over the next 60 days to pour gas on it to fund the 100+ locations we are signing. if you want to back a unique specialty vending business going all-in on the hottest collectible category in the world, shoot me a DM with your email and I'll send over the deck.