Life wasn’t always easy for Justin Gilmore, the founder, and CEO of ATMMachines.com. His childhood wasn’t smooth by any means, and he struggled throughout it while he tried to find his place in the world. Justin failed both sixth and seventh grade, which resulted in him retaking both grades and widening the age gap between himself and the other students. Once his first semester of the ninth grade rolled around, Justin got expelled, leaving him 15 years old with no school or job.
At the age of 16, he began a full-time job to help support himself and his family, who struggled with poverty. During this time, he was reading every and any self-help and entrepreneurial book he could get his hands on to maximize his skill set. He also began buying many courses on sales and real estate, most of which were scams, but it still taught him important lessons.
Once he was 17, Justin decided to begin his own entrepreneurial journey. He set up a deal with a pizza place in a dodgy part of Atlanta, where he’d buy 40 to 100 pizzas at once for $2.50 each, before filling his car up at 10:00 in the morning and going around selling them tax-free and for double the price. Office buildings were his best bet in ensuring sales. He’d start at the top floor and work his way down, selling out by the time he got to the bottom.
Justin’s sales pitch was that “Sitacom,” a company he made up, had ordered a bunch of pizzas but canceled the order last minute, leaving him to unload them all for a discounted price. He never used the word ‘sell,’ which he picked up from one of the sales books he had read when he was younger. After a few hours of this, Justin would be out of stock, leaving him the entire afternoon to focus on his other source of income: selling old newspapers on eBay.
Though Justin tried a range of different business ideas, those two were the only ones that offered him a steady income. But soon enough, it didn’t satisfy him, and he wanted to do something more. He had grown up poor and troubled, causing his mother to lose hope for his future, so he wanted to prove to everyone that he was more than capable of reaching his goals of building a passive income.
As he made his way into adulthood, Justin learned about ATMs. He found out that banks don’t own them and that anyone who wanted to could buy their own and make money off of it. So that’s exactly what he did. Justin first went around Atlanta finding business owners who wanted an ATM in their establishment, and then when he had that list, he worked on getting things set up.
Two years later, when he was 21, he was making over $10,000 a month from just his ATMs. Soon enough, he had set up an account with the Georgia Dome, but six months into that three-year deal, things fell through. Justin didn’t have the resources to keep up with the high traffic area, and the machines were always running out of funds. The business took a hit because of it, but it didn’t faze Justin in the slightest.
The Georgia Dome deal was by far the most significant failure Justin had faced in his life, but it was also the biggest success. It showed him that fully committing and putting in hard work pays off. While it’s true he lost the deal, the fact that he even got it in the first place was an impressive feat.
Now, almost 14 years later, Justin has bounced back and become one of the most successful names in the ATM industry. His business continues to grow, and sales continue to soar. He’s also working on a program to help others find success with ATMs so they can reach the levels he has and generate a passive income of their own.
If you would like to keep up with Justin and his company, find him on Instagram at @atmmachines_com.
