Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses
from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord
for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash used book guy
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to the full-length podcast, Zoom call, and private Discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome in episode 41.
I'm back to being able to do it.
Actually, wait, which way should I do it, Johnny?
This way?
We'll do it both ways, and one of us will be right.
Episode 41, Resellers Mindset Podcast,
Mike here hanging out with Johnny B. We got a pretty important topic
here, and just being overwhelmed when it comes to having a reselling
business.
And this has been on my mind all week long,
because I'm going to start to solve with my overwhelming week
I've had of reselling, right?
So it started out the beginning of the week.
I get a text from the library.
So foreshadowing here, I do now have a schedule that I abide by.
I used to fly crazy, right?
I know, Johnny B's all surprised.
If you watch on YouTube, he's probably
about to have a heart attack.
So I have everything scheduled out, right?
I'm not going to one thrift store one day, another thrift store.
I have all my days planned out.
So now, of course, that I have things planned out,
all of a sudden random stuff starts happening,
because we know that is how the world works, when you have a plan
and never goes the way it's supposed to.
So my week started out.
I get a message from the library.
Hey, when you come pick up books, we got books for you, right?
So there's not a set date every month
that I go to the library to get books, because they don't know
if Johnny B's going to show up with his whole car full
to donate books.
So of course, that's my number one priority,
is going to the library, getting those books out of their hands,
just because they don't have a lot of space to operate with.
They got a little back room.
And I always try to make it a point to get out there and get
it all out of the way, because there's
a lot of volunteers, a lot of older folks.
So that was like, all right, there
was my one thrifting day out the window, right?
Because I got to go to the library.
I'm going to have a car full of books I got to deal with.
So all right, one thrifting day out the window.
So hey, all right, I'm booking this in for Wednesday.
Wednesday, I'm going to the library.
Knock this out.
Get it back to the unit.
Well, hey, don't you know, Wednesday
was like the beginning of the heat wave, Johnny?
So it's 95 degrees outside.
So how hot is it inside of a storage unit
from somebody that had storage units in Texas?
10 degrees to 20 degrees more, because it's like an oven.
And I don't miss those days.
I got air conditioning in here.
It's great.
All right, so my plan is Wednesday is the library.
Thursday, I'm going to go out and thrift for 10 hours, right?
All right, I'm in for this.
It's not too bad.
Whatever, I don't get through the library.
I'm having like PTSD flashbacks just you talking about this.
I can get through the library.
I'll be fine, right?
So Tuesday rolls around.
I get a text message.
Well, I don't even text much.
It's a call from my DVD guy.
His name's Mike.
Mike, both DVDs and my phone, right?
I dealt with them all the time.
I don't know where he gets them from, but hey, I'm paying 10 cents a piece.
I'm paying 10 cents a piece.
I never lose out on these deals.
And hey, Mike, I got DVDs, right?
And this guy, he likes to get his money quick, right?
I can't tell him next week, right?
So he's like, these are boxed, fallen off trucks kind of purchases, huh?
OK.
He calls me at 3 in the afternoon.
He's like, hey, you come get these DVDs today.
Well, he lives like 45 minutes away.
I'm like, ah, ain't going to happen, right?
Tuesday, I'm already doing stuff.
Tomorrow's the libraries.
I'm like, maybe Thursday or Friday.
So now I'm like, well, if I do it Thursday, I lose my thrifting day.
Well, needless to say, by the end of it, here I am in the storage unit.
This whole week, I've never been so exhausted and overwhelmed by the moving pieces.
But I think the thing that saves me is I just kind of compartmentalize things.
So it's like, all right, this gets done.
And then I move on to this.
And then I take care of that.
If it doesn't get done right away, it's fine.
You have to kind of, I think a lot of people almost are like, oh, I got to get all this done.
And I honestly used to be like that.
And I still am.
I still have days where I wake up and I'm running around like a lunatic.
That's like, what are you doing?
Chill out.
I'm like, I don't know.
I just feel like I got to get all this stuff done.
And I don't have any time.
So needless to say, the DVDs are still sitting in the storage unit.
I went through one of the six huge bags.
All the books are gone.
But it has been an overwhelming, exhausting week for me.
So I know you, I want to hear the story of your overwhelming yards, how you did,
because I feel like that kind of sucked the life out of you.
It about killed me, man.
So for those who don't know, let's do, let's go, let's take a little walk with Johnny.
So I had a lot of junk books from my bulk pickup that I've been meaning to do something with for the longest time.
I tried a couple of different things.
So I finally decided to, okay, fine.
None of these other things are really working how I'd like them to.
So we're going to do a yard sale.
It was over three days.
We were literally hauling bookcases of books out the front door, my tubs.
We were stacking up table style, using the lids, made our own made our own little tables, essentially.
The first day, it was a seven hour setup thing.
I started at five thirty.
We weren't finished for another seven hours setting up.
So I analyzed what we were doing wrong or inefficient.
We were taking the books off the book.
Cases and rolling them out and then reloading them, I figured out if I could lift the base up,
because all of mine are on dollies for carpet dollies,
figure out if I can just lift the front wheels out and over it, having sons of guns,
it would be just fine on the back wheels rolling out.
So that saves some time there.
Also, we put everything in the first night.
We left it out the second night and we put bed sheets over it.
That helped with the morning dew.
So second day, we got it down to four.
Third and final day, we got it down to two.
So it's two hours set up and two hour put away kind of deal.
But we started at seven, seven hours, man.
That's what really killed me versus the yard sale itself.
It was blistering hot outside.
I had a volunteer do the whole thing.
Her reward was a box of books.
No money.
I'm going to do that next time.
You can have a box of books and you can stay outside in the Texas heat.
But even my employee, she, I'd never seen her sweat before.
That was the first time I've seen her sweat, not just because of the heat,
just because of her pure physicality over it.
She's not going to let me taking this, but I did break her and myself by telling this joke.
So we had some dollies that she had to literally lift over the concrete slab,
because it was quicker than going all the way around to the thing.
And she could tell I was struggling because these things are like 500 pounds.
So I was like having to deadlift and try to get the wheels on.
But it was like we were like halfway through.
That one was a little heavy and I was already dead tired because I've been I'm getting more tired each day.
This is the final day.
I couldn't get it over. She's like, you want me to try?
She weighs like, I don't know, 115, 120 soaking wet.
And like, no, you'll just shit yourself. And that broke us.
We were in tears laughing and I was going to walk away.
And I'm like, that is the proper response when you shit yourself. Yes.
I do think, though, like it's not overwhelming.
Like if all you did was these like flea markets, it wouldn't be overwhelming.
Right. But people like us, right.
I'm sure your eBay brain is always ticking every day. Right.
You can't just be like, OK, it's yard sale. No eBay. Right.
You can't turn that switch off.
So I think that's where we kind of start to get overwhelmed is when we try to focus on too many different things.
And if you don't have a plan for each thing, it's just you're going to wind up overwhelmed.
And I think that's actually how a lot of people give up reselling is because just you get to a point where you got all the stuff sitting around your house.
You can't keep up with it. You still want to course.
Everybody loves going outsource and nobody's ever not going to source. Right.
But I do think there is a point where maybe buying, you know, a gay lord of books isn't the right approach.
Right. Maybe buying a whole pallet full of clothing isn't the right approach.
Maybe you have to start small and grow it and grow it and get processes in place so that when the day comes and you have this great opportunity to buy a large amount of inventory, you have a plan.
So you're not just like you're not lifting stuff and crapping your pants on Johnny B's lawn. Right.
That's because that's what happens when you try to figure out when you try to work something else into an already packed schedule.
But sometimes you got to do it right. You had to do this.
And sure, it cash flows you, you know, X amount of dollars.
So it's like it's OK to throw these things in.
But you can't you can't just do this all the time and expect to be able to stay afloat.
Right. And after all that, between set up times and after put away times, I still had to do even we did some advance work because we knew we would lose some hours during those days.
But it wasn't nearly enough. I didn't account for just the pure physical exhaustion.
I'm like, we'll put this out in a couple of hours day one, seven hours later.
No, no. Still had to do the work, though.
And you're right. It was in my brain the entire time.
Now, as far as cash flow goes, you write up an important point there.
I mean, we did about a grand. But keep in mind, I had a volunteer and both my and my employee had to take set up and put away time out of our eBay time to do it.
Was it cost effective? Maybe at a larger scale?
Maybe if I was to get known for like a quarterly yard sale, it could be. But at face value looking in, no, it wasn't worth the time and effort.
They did liquidate books, which was the goal. And we got some cash out of it, which is another goal.
Sure. But our time could have been better allocated elsewhere, not to say that it couldn't be something down the road that would generate things.
What was. Nice for me to see, though, I did make a network contact out of it.
And I was like, hey, I want to do this. I want to do this.
And I got a call from a guy at a bookstore came down to me.
He's like, hey, I want to deal with you. I want these kind of books.
And he brought me some paperback books. So we made a little swap.
He bought or I gave him about 50 of these things.
You don't know what these are. I see them everywhere.
Oh, yeah. Good old Reader's Digest.
He has some clients held it by these specifically from him because they're crafters. Right.
But they're going to do future deals. So on that aspect, it was totally worth it.
And that would not have come.
Out of me just doing my regular thing.
You saw my Facebook ad and he gave me a phone call because he messaged us on Facebook and my volunteer took the message.
You gave him my number, called me up and like, hey, come on down.
So that was well worth it. That was worth the entire yard sale, not the money, not liquidating the books, making a contact.
I have an idea for you and I'm gonna have to charge you
for this because it could change everything.
What if every time somebody checks out,
you give them, even if you wanna be a cheapo,
and print them out yourself a little,
kind of business card that says,
we also pick up media for free.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
That or pay for it.
I could, I thought about the exact same thing.
Where I could use this as a networking, getting goods,
and or selling goods at the junk, right?
Like, hey, what do you buy?
You buy this stuff, I'll save it for you.
Give me your name and number.
I'll give you a ring every time I get something in.
And or it could lead possibility in making retail viable.
Because the guy I talked to, he does both eBay and Amazon,
but he has a retail operation.
That's how he gets rid of his junk,
but that's also how he gets inventory brought to him
for his eBay and Amazon business.
He doesn't have to go sourcing.
It comes to him, which is great.
Do you think, cause you just said the word,
I think it's almost, it's like, I don't even know how it's,
it's like the kryptonite to being overwhelmed
is being prepared.
Yes. Yes.
If you're prepared to be overwhelmed,
like if you can see it coming
and you make the preparation necessary,
it can limit the overwhelmness
or make it not overwhelming at all, honestly.
And I think it's not even like, you know,
we're kind of just talking about,
oh, bulk buys this and that.
I think it even boils down to like having your eBay,
like listing area set up, right?
Your prepping area, your inventory system.
Like I think when it comes to eBay,
you need those things more than ever,
because if you make it a little bit harder
than it needs to be, you aren't going to do eBay.
Like 100%, like if you make it any harder
than it already has to be to function on eBay
in a way that is time friendly,
you're just not going to do it.
And I think a lot of people,
they don't just have like, you know, like a little desk.
Like I'm not saying you need a warehouse
or you need all this space, right?
You just need probably, you know,
one six-foot table where you can have,
all right, this is where I list things.
This is how I inventory them in a box,
on a shelf or something like that.
I think that could literally,
it would change everybody's reselling business overnight.
I don't think people realize how small my warehouse is.
It's about a thousand square feet,
but I utilize every single inch of it
and I still have room.
I can grow in my thousand square air files,
but I've engineered it smartly.
And the other thing you said was being prepared for things.
So for those who don't know,
well, maybe I should,
I'm going to save this one for the members only.
We'll circle back to that.
I'm going to write myself a note.
Members only get this piece of information.
I do think though, like you said like,
oh, if you can be prepared for it, right?
So the first, probably six times I got books, right?
I'm on the sidewalk.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
I really have no plans.
So this is something like,
you're not going to have it all figured out
the first time you do this, right?
Kind of like you just said,
with your weekend sale every day,
you're refining a process to make it easier.
So you can't expect yourself if you walk into a great deal
or a whole bunch of free items that you're going to sell
to have systems in place,
but you have to, why you do this,
why you go through this process,
you have to be taking mental notes
or even writing them down for some people
of how you can better handle this amount of inventory
next time it comes your way.
Because honestly, as reselling,
that's how you get overwhelmed.
You have a lot of stuff that needs to get listed
and you just don't want to do it.
You don't know where to start.
But for some reason, people just love sourcing so much
that they can't say, okay, I have a Gaylord full of books,
but I'm still going to go to the thrift stores, right?
My thought process now is,
all right, I don't need to go get inventory
because it's sitting right here, right?
I already paid for it.
Or it's already free.
I have this, this is stuff I need to process.
And I know, hey, the library is going to hit me up
at least probably once a month.
So when I get the library stuff in,
I can't let it sit there for two months
because where am I going to put it?
I'm out of space, right?
So you start developing things like,
all right, I got this pickup.
I need to get through it in case somebody hits me up tomorrow
or the next day or the day after
to have this space to keep the cycle going.
And you don't need a source.
A lot of huge sellers, the inventory comes to them.
You don't always got to be out of a thrift store
chasing this crazy nonsense
that really doesn't exist anymore.
You're lucky if you can hit these home runs
that people see on social media all over the place.
They are far and few in between.
And that's coming from somebody that's in, you know,
over 50 thrift stores every single month,
probably over a hundred thrift stores every single month.
Now, here's the fun fact.
You don't need to have a huge space.
I just mentioned I didn't.
I learned a lot of my tips and tricks
from my storage unit days.
And I'm going to pitch this over to you
because you are in it right now.
How many times have you re-engineered
the interior of your storage unit
just to make it more efficient in that,
I don't know how big your storage unit is.
I'm only 10 by 10, right?
10 by 10, right?
Yep, 10 by 10, I got three Target bookshelves.
I have one large of those Lowe's plastic shelves
for my packing supplies.
And you have to figure out what makes sense.
You got it when you first, you know,
you first build all this stuff and you're like,
oh, well, this can go here, this can go here.
And then you get a bulk load put in and you're like,
well, this bookshelf really does not work here.
Like I got to figure out somewhere else for this to go.
So there's always tweaks you can make.
And I think it's just, once you start getting through,
going through this stuff, and you're still always,
there's always going to be times you're overwhelmed, right?
Like that was me this whole week.
I'm still overwhelmed to this day because I got, you know,
yesterday I packed up all my Amazon boxes.
Now I got four boxes.
I got to carry down four flights of steps
to get them to the car.
And then I still have the DVDs that I still got to go
throughout the storage unit.
And you just have to understand that it's not the end
of the world if you can't get everything done today.
A wise store manager way back in my days,
his famous words were working for CVS,
which is like terrible company to work for.
I'll say that all day long, is live to fight another day.
And that week, this week, this past week,
I was living to fight another day, right?
You know, like I'm texting them at six o'clock, like, hey,
I'm headed home, right?
I could probably stay out there for another two hours,
but it's a hundred degrees.
If I've run myself into the ground today,
I'm not going to be able to do nothing tomorrow.
And she even told me yesterday, she's like, hey, listen,
I know this is, you know, one of your days,
you're scheduled to be out there working,
but you just need to cool it off.
You just need to take a day and just recharge your batteries
because what happens is you wind up hurting yourself
or, you know, you're doing things the wrong way.
You're trying to cut corners.
And I do think that plays a lot, you know,
just being overwhelmed is knowing when it's okay
to live to fight another day.
Absolutely. I mean, sometimes I get behind,
because like you mentioned earlier in the call,
things come up that mess with your schedule, right?
I do as much as I can till the end of the day.
I'll stay up later to account for some of the variances
that came up, sure.
But if I stay up too late, that'll affect my next day.
And I'll get even farther and farther behind
because it just all cascades forward, right?
So there's a cutoff time for me, like a 2 a.m.
where no matter what, I'm going to bed.
I need at least four hours sleep minimum.
And whatever I got done, I did as much as I could possibly do
because I know if I stay up a minute later,
I'm just gonna ruin my next day
and just dig myself a deeper hole.
Now, what a lot of people try to do,
they try to make up for it the next day.
Don't do that. Just reset the day.
It's a brand new day.
Go forward from there.
Realize that happened, make plans for whatever that caused,
that chain of convince to mess you up, not to occur again.
That's what you do.
You don't try to play a huge catch-up game the next day
or over the next week
because it'll take you maybe a month
if you keep playing that game just to get back to even.
Don't do that. Don't do that to yourself.
And I think it's kind of good that I've started
to kind of get on the schedule that that made for me
because it allows you to adjust properly
instead of just, like you just said,
you're just gonna the next day,
I'll just do it the next day for 16 hours
when it's supposed to be an eight hour day.
You have to, I think part-timers,
we've got a lot of part-timers in the group
that are successful at what they do.
And I think they are like the quintessential example
of understanding what am I capable of?
What am I gonna do?
Here's the amount of time I have to get it done
because they're only doing this part-time.
A lot of them wanna stay part-time and they say,
all right, I have three hours.
Whatever I can get done in this three hours
is what I'm gonna do.
If they don't go, they don't get crazy, right?
They're not out there looking for
huge amounts of inventory.
Sure, if there's a great deal that comes up
once in a blue moon, so be it.
But they're not always chasing this huge haul.
I think a lot of people, like probably 95% of resellers,
like if I said, oh, I have a free, you know,
you haul full of whatever item you're selling,
you're gonna be like, I'll take it
without even knowing anything.
Like people just want it for no apparent reason.
You don't even know what you're gonna do with the stuff.
And it happens.
People go away because they decide,
well, I'm gonna get, you know, a truckload full of books.
And then it's the first thing they ever did.
And then I never hear from them again.
And I'm just like, I wish people would just understand
a lot of this is baby steps to grow in your business.
I'm just knowing, right?
I can't take it.
If the Tracted Trailer showed up with books,
I can't take it.
What am I gonna do, Johnny?
I'm one dude, right?
I got no forklift.
I got no pallet jack, right?
And these people would be like, yeah,
just throw them out the back of the truck
and I'll deal with them.
And it's like, no, you can't handle that.
And I think understanding your own limitations
plays a huge role in not being overwhelmed.
Right, I'm gonna say it's the equivalent of,
if you've never moved before,
you decide not to hire the moving company and move yourself.
That's the equivalent of bringing in a truckload of books.
After that, you'll decide never again,
or you'll think about it long and hard
and how to do it better if you decide to do it again.
Now, if you move every year,
you get a custom how to moving,
it's no big deal, right?
You could do it, yeah, let's do this once.
We'll do it every six months even.
This is fun, I love it.
Moving's a great time,
because you know how to do it then,
because you do it so much.
You do it once the first time,
you're just gonna never move again, I promise you.
You're done.
I got a great story for this, right?
So, I had 23 Lowe's boxes full of duds, right?
Fully scanned for Amazon and sell back your book.
So, none of it's worth anything to me, right?
So, I throw it up on Facebook Marketplace yesterday.
Within five minutes, I got like 30 people.
It's still available, it's still available, right?
So, first person doesn't respond.
So, I go to the second person and I'm like,
hey, you wanna come get it, lives an hour away,
shows up, storage unit.
And he's driving a Dodge Charger, right?
So, okay, I got a Sonata, right?
So, I'm like, all right, I'll respect this, right?
So, Deb's there with me and she's like,
there's no way we're fitting 23 Lowe's boxes of-
Maybe the straps on the top and the hood and the truck.
Believe it or not, the trunks on those things
are actually pretty big
and the back seats are pretty big, right?
So, we're piling it in.
The bucket kind of seats, all right.
And then we're piling it in.
We're piling, it's only two-door, piling the stuff in.
Are you doing the boxes or you take the contents
out of the box and then in the car?
We'll get to that here shortly.
Oh, God, yeah, all right.
We're just, I'm talking to the guy, whatever.
What are you gonna do with these, blah, blah, blah?
I explain, hey, they're not good for Amazon,
it's not gonna work.
He's like, oh, I see all these people
with side hustles online, right?
And if something's free,
you always can make money on it, right?
Okay, all right.
23 boxes of duds out the door.
So, we get it to the point where
we can't fit no more boxes
and we still got like five boxes, right?
He's like, all right, just start throwing loose ones in.
So, cut open five of those boxes, CDs, DVDs,
any cracker, for evidence, in that Dodge Charger
had a dud DVD or a dud CD inside of it.
And we drive out of the storage unit
and Deb's like, man, this guy's gonna regret this.
And I'm just like, yep, you are right.
Just because something is free,
doesn't mean it's good for you.
And a lot of the times,
it's gonna turn out to be the opposite.
You're gonna do a whole lot of work
and you're gonna make a little, little bit of money,
but that's it, right?
Somebody sees something, hey, it's free,
you can flip anything online.
I'm gonna go fill up my car with DVDs and CDs
and I'm gonna sell them for $5 a piece.
When in reality, I mean, it's gonna be a lot of work, sure.
Maybe if he does a flea market,
he'll be able to make a grand, maybe that.
If he bought his flea market for the year, sure, maybe.
But like, you're talking, you know,
he got home and he had to unload the 20 boxes
plus the 500 plus loose DVDs and CDs out of his car.
And it was a thousand degrees yesterday.
So it's like, holy smokes, like there ain't no chance
this is gonna be worth the free pickup
when it's all said and done and it's all gone.
I think there's a huge difference between opportunity
and didn't think things through all the way.
Yeah, I agree.
So we're gonna wrap up the overwhelming topic here.
It's just try to be as prepared as you can.
Johnny B said you're never gonna be prepared
for anything, right?
He wasn't prepared when the power went out,
but now you better believe he's got one of those SOPs
that says, hey, this is how we operate
when the power goes out.
You're never gonna be prepared
for some of the deals that pop up.
And we always recommend having a little bit of money
set aside for, hey, if something good pops up
and it's gonna cost you a little bit extra money
than what you're used to spending,
it's perfectly fine to do that.
But refine your process now, right?
When you don't have 10,000 items you have to list,
when you only have 100 items,
maybe you only listed one a day, two a day.
Even if you have that process down,
it's gonna translate to when you have
a thousand items to list a day.
You're always refining your processes.
I always say it all the time, right?
You can know everything there is to know about sneakers,
but if you don't have the process of how to handle them,
how to clean them, how to photo them, how to list them,
the description if you're selling on eBay,
none of that matters, right?
Your processes are more important
than actually understanding basically what it's gonna be,
right, what it's gonna take at the end of the day.
So what's your final thoughts on overwhelming here?
One thing at a time, don't try to do everything all at once
because you'll get nowhere and you're spinning your wheels.
So it's like, how do you handle an elephant in the room?
One bite at a time.
And just remember, if you're overwhelmed,
it's fine to take a step back.
Live the fight another day.
That should probably be the total of this podcast
is live the fight another day
because you get overwhelmed and what happens human nature
is just to shut down and turn it off for a month, two months,
and then you wind up with a garage full of stuff
and all the garage sellers are out there buying your stuff
because you just got to a point where it turned into too much.
So we will talk to you all in next week's episode.
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