re: Credit Card Rewards and Points Discussion

Honestly, I was kinda thrust into this business. My uncle passed away years back and had no kids so I was left a couple stores. I added a couple more on my own, but my background is in finance, its what I worked in before I got into this business suddenly. The reality is, this is a tough tough business. Its low margin, high employee turnover. Ive mitigated that alot by buying alot of cheap homes and renting them to my employees stabilizing them somewhat. Its allowed me to build a nice portfolio of high cap rate rental homes with easy rent collection, I simply take weekly pay out of their payments. Anyways its not really a passion of mine or anything and realistically I see electric cars being an issue in a much longer time frame.

I imagine gas stations were a good business before credit card fees but today, its just a war where you're fighting everyone around you and with the volatility in the market there's many times you lose ALOT on gas bc you buy a load and the price falls 10 cents over night then the guy across the street pays less and you have to lower to compete. Its just nasty and realistically with the land I have, I can get 8 figures total for all 5 branded stores. I make a great income, but the headaches are incredible, dealing with minimum wage employees is the worst thing you can ever imagine.

Ideally I own 4 properties in houston that are sizable( 25k,56k,77k, and 96k sq ft) and I have a good friend of mine who is a developer and we've discussed potentially building shopping centers, apartments, and just other options which would generate great returns without the 24/7 headache of the convenience store business. The business you'll notice has a lot of foreigners in it, and having gotten to know some other owners in recent years I understand why. These Indian/Arab families are very tight knight units. They all work in the store, it cuts labor costs and headaches out. Youll see the parents and kids and aunts and uncles all working there. You have no idea how hard it is to find employees. Everytime I post a job listing 90% of applicants have serious criminal history. I cant hire you to run a register if you're a convicted thief lol its just tough out there man. I respect those in the business but ideally you need much more help than I have and for me, that help is expensive management for each store vs having kids and a wife working with me.