Today we’d like to introduce you to Selam Getachew and Helen Woldemichael. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Achieve your goals by first having the vision to see them.
When we both started this journey of becoming successful businesswomen, we didn’t know exactly the amount of time and dedication we would need to invest. All we knew is that money rules the world, so we started saving our coins. Before we go into that let’s first talk about what brought us together.
Selam immigrated with her family from Ethiopia in hopes of finding an opportunity. Helen is the daughter of immigrants from Ethiopia. We are both first generation of our family in the US chasing the American Dream. Unlike the typical 9-5 American, our family members are all entrepreneurs. Helen’s mother currently owns and operates a beauty supply store and Selam’s father owns and operates a transportation business. Both have run a successful business for over 25 years. To see them work hard every day showed us the amount of effort we needed to put into something to see it grow and flourish. It also opened our eyes to the amount of work required to keep a business successful, especially a business tied down to one location. A 12+ hour workday is a regular day for both of our parents. We both understood the importance of hard work and began manifesting ideas to level up while still respecting our time. The vending machine business gave us that opportunity because we are making passive income.
Helen:
Although we are from very similar backgrounds, the journey that we took to get here today was vastly different. After high school, both of our journeys went in opposite directions. I went straight into college at Baylor University with hopes of becoming a Children’s Doctor. I realized I was chasing my parent’s dream to become a doctor, so during undergrad, I changed my major and gained my bachelor’s and master’s in education. Postgrad, I came back to Dallas deep in student loan debt and jumped straight into corporate America. At the time I was naive and thought that the one 9-5 job would help me reach my goals that I had in life. As soon as I started working, I realized how much of my schedule I gave to my job. I quickly discovered that you don’t automatically get a good job just because you have a degree. This became another reason to put money aside to figure out the next move. Eventually, I married and I now have 3 beautiful children. My husband, a manager in corporate America, and I decided that the benefits of me staying at home to take care of the kids outweighed me continuing my corporate job. His long hours at the office often motivate me even further to find financial solutions so that we have more time together as a family. While I was still working, our American dream was full of time spent apart and not together and we wanted to fix this.
Selam:
I attended a local community college for two years but quickly dropped out since I didn’t see the value in getting a degree at that time and how it would benefit my future. Money has always been the motivation so much so that back home, they used to tell me that money grew on trees in America. My dad likes to tell the story of how I was searching for a money tree my first day in the country. I decided to jump into corporate America and chase the bag. The hustler in me got me working three jobs, with one being overnight. I always knew increasing my income would lead to endless possibilities and relieve stress. Then everything changed in my life when I gave birth to my beautiful daughter at the age of 22. She motivated me to figure out a way to succeed. Even as a single mom I have always been a hustler and corporate America was just another ladder to climb. I got pretty far up without a college education in IT working as a project manager. I even had one job that paid for not 1 but 2 of my undergraduate degrees. However, I always knew in the back of my mind that I am just another employee and could be let go at any moment. The American dream that I was chasing didn’t seem like a reality I wanted to pursue.
Both of our parents worked so hard and still struggled paycheck to paycheck. They were maintaining a lifestyle but lacking the financial knowledge to make the money they earned work for them to build substantial savings. In corporate America, we began feeling that we were spending all our time working and no time advancing ourselves financially. That is when we decided to pool our savings together in a mutual account. We didn’t know exactly what we were saving for, but we knew that we wanted to be the ones in control of our futures.
With one common mission, reshaping our American dream, our savings started growing over the years and so did our ideas. We would save different amounts monthly depending on what our expenses were like that month. There was still no plan, but we were in it together and we knew that the right plan would come along eventually. The point of saving up in advance is so that when a business opportunity comes around, you have the capital to take the risk. Money in the bank with some room for any unexpected expenses made our business more stable and less stressful.
The vending machine idea came along, and we were ready because we had money in the bank. After weighing the options of different businesses, we felt that this was a business that fit within our schedule and lifestyle.
We spent months learning and searching about vending machines on Craigslist, Facebook, Offer UP, etc. Eventually, we landed a great deal and bought 15 machines at once from a previous owner. Most machines were already placed in a location, so we were making money from the beginning. Such a sweet deal! As time went on, we continued to purchase more machines. We are now up to 23 machines. Our goal is to add as many machines as possible we can to hit a monthly goal of 10k. We made 55k our first year, 88k second year, and projecting 100+ this year. We will then possibly go into other business adventures. You can’t stop us!
We both work an average of 10-15 hours per week. The great thing is we can do it on our own schedule. Sometimes, it’s the weekend and other times its midday.
We help Businesses/Offices, anyone, that needs a vending machine.
We also help other entrepreneurs who are interested in the vending machine business get started. We feel extremely blessed to have this opportunity and want to help others as well
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
COVID impacted us for a while, but we spent our energy not worrying, instead giving back to the community. We started feeding the homeless. We spent one day every other month providing breakfast for the elderly along with lunches and dinner for the homeless in our community. We even partnered up with other nonprofits organizations to provide essentials and help to our community. Even though we weren’t making that much money in our business due to the impact of COVID, we stuck to the grind and focused on other avenues of our business such as teaching others on how to run a vending machine business. We enjoy our job and want others to succeed as well. We’re working on launching a new e-book and courses in the future. We currently have coaching calls to help answer questions and guide people towards the right direction. Now that everything is going back to normal, we have seen a growth in our business and revenue we never saw before which is helping us come back stronger than before
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs, or other resources you think our readers should check out?
We both understand the power of knowledge, reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad, 5 AM Club, The Richest Man in Babylon, etc. This book taught us a lot about saving money, understanding the power within ourselves, and how we have to change our mindset in order to accomplish greater things in life. We both love watching YouTube videos about successful people and how they achieved their success. (Dave Ramsey, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, and Les Brown). Before getting into the vending world, we watched countess hours of videos to understand the full scope. Once we knew that this business fit our lifestyle we jumped in and never looked back.
However, we were ready to take the risk since we have been preparing for it for several of years. A wise man once said, “stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready.” When the opportunity emerged, we had the funds and knowledge to act and take the big leap.
Contact Info:
- Email: vending@getatit100.com
- Website: https://getatit100.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/get_at_it_100/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/getatit100
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