Crystal Warren turned a side hustle into a money-making business.
Business Insider reports Warren previously worked as a teacher and started a vending machine business with $1,000 in her bank account. The money was used to purchase an automatic-snack machine, which earned $450 in three weeks at a daycare, nearly a 70 percent return on her investment. From there, she scaled to five vending machines in five locations.
Vending Factory
Eventually, she was reaching six figures from her vending machine business, which surpassed her $60,000 salary as a teacher. So, Warren pivoted her focus toward her business, Vending Factory, and she hasn’t looked back since.
“When I started my vending business, I was a full-time schoolteacher. I didn’t quit my job before, because I loved it. I also had workers in my business, so I didn’t have to do all of the legwork, and I learned how to automate parts of the business,” Warren explained to Business Insider.
Since launching Vending Factory, she has lived by the mantra “work smarter not harder.” Now, she no longer owns and operates her vending machines. Instead, she is helping others looking to find success in the sector by selling locations for them to place their machines.
“I got up to five vending machines and five locations, then I learned how to find vending-machine locations for other people,” Warren shared, according to the outlet. “I sold all of my machines and locations for about $5,000 each. That’s when I was able to scale my business, because I was making way more finding locations for people than I was actually owning the vending machines myself.”
According to Warren, she locked in over $242,000 in sales just in 2022 alone.
Although Warren took a leap of faith and found success outside of her 9-5, she isn’t necessarily encouraging everyone to follow in her footsteps.
“I want people to understand that they don’t have to quit their jobs just to pursue something else,” Warren said. “They can have a goal, make good money in that business first, and let that help them decide if they want to quit.”
