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 use book guy to join the channel and gain
access 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 42 resellers mindset podcast, Mike with Johnny B.
This thing comes out every Wednesday, 8 PM Eastern on all platforms and over on
the YouTube channel.
If you want to see our ugly mugs, I got a pretty fun topic today.
Diversification.
This is like, need one word topics, JB.
I'm not going to lie.
Like they're so broad.
Like I, it's just like diversification can't be anything.
Right?
We talking about, you know, uh, your love life.
You talking about your, you know, your retirement portfolio, your reselling
business, like diversification is just, I mean, it's this call could go on for
like endless hours here.
So where do you want to start?
Where do you want to start in diversification?
I want to start diversification on platforms because we have a lot of people
that do bulk and it's like, where does it all go?
It all doesn't just go to Amazon.
It all just doesn't go to eBay.
Where does these things go?
Um, so for me, I, I did some more diversification this year.
I'm doing some yard sales and I have plans this winter to do some more
just diversification on online platforms.
Uh, definitely Shopify is up there because they eat less fees.
Yeah.
There's a lot of setup and yeah, there's some upfront costs of getting
it where I wanted to go and then some SEO development as far as, and
then pushing people there generally.
Um, but that helps grow my business and helps improve the cashflow and
also enables me to deal with bulk buys better, I think in the long run.
So I'm always adding things on, but I do it.
I think I do it at a snail's pace and that's on purpose because you
and I were talking about it.
It's really easy to get scattered brain with all these ideas, all these ideas.
Uh, it really is.
And the self control on that is really hard and being patient.
Cause I want, I want to do these things like tomorrow, right?
But I know if I do that other parts aspects of my business will suffer.
So I tend to do implement these things like once every six months kind of deal.
I don't want to diversify any more than I already am JB.
So I have multiple moving pieces, right?
So YouTube, I got this, I'm helped out with our business.
There's so many moving pieces that go on.
Behind the scenes.
Um, but if I'd never diversified from the beginning, like what if I just
did Amazon and I never started a YouTube channel, right?
Like, you'd be a billionaire.
No, it would look a lot different.
So I do think diversification is like, it's a huge important piece of basically.
I don't know.
It's like multiple streams of income.
Like when I think diversification, that's kind of what I think about, right?
And like to what you were saying in the YouTube, every podcast we have,
go check out Johnny B's eBay store.
Well, Johnny B gets a Shopify store.
Guess what links going there.
It's no longer as the eBay store.
It's going to be shop place really quickly.
And now, I mean, I think for you, diversification is going to
mean something different for everybody for you, in my opinion.
And again, my opinion, not Mike's opinion, just the answers.
No, I can see you getting an employee.
That'd be a diversification, even if it's for YouTube or
somewhere else in your business.
It could be YouTube.
It could be for reselling.
It could be for YouTube just to free you up with more space to do other things.
I could also see you getting a bigger storage unit or like you were mentioning,
you have mentioned buying a home and maybe just no more storage unit working
someplace on your property or your home.
Those are also aspects of diversification, which really don't get talked much in
the community, to be honest.
That is true though, right?
Like, you know, every decision you make in a business, if you decide to do
something different, you're basically diversifying, right?
Whether that's getting more space, getting less space, buying a space,
renting a space, like you're diversifying the funds that are coming in from your
business overall, because all that money now has, you know, some of it's going to
here, some of it's going to there.
And I do think there is a point where, kind of like where I feel that now,
like there's only eight slices to the pizza and I already got eight slices.
Like, and I'm not cutting a slice in half, dude.
That's not even a slice of pizza at that point.
Nobody's eating 16 slice pizza here, right?
Unless it's like a Chuck E.
Cheese toddler party.
But I think like you have to kind of look at it like that because if you just focus
on one solely thing and the biggest diversification thing for me that has had
like shown huge results is not just being the book guy, selling CDs and DVDs.
That's 100% a perfect example of diversification because DVDs have been,
I've been finding tons of DVDs, not so much books.
I still always scan the books.
I still always look for books.
But if you, if I'm not diversified at that point, my revenue is probably down
at 50% on the year, if not more, I'd probably say 60, 75% of the year.
If I just did only books and not DVDs and CDs, that's how much of a difference
my business would basically be out of money.
So that diversification, everything has to be calculated though, right?
Like you've got to calculate these things.
You can't just do it like from the seat of your pants.
You got to think things through.
And it's kind of tough because we're talking before the call, like a lot
of this is just, it's just like you, right?
A lot of people listening to this, like it's just them, you know, there's
really nobody else to kind of be like, Hey, I got this idea.
And that's why I always recommend like getting around like minded people or like
even just getting in a group where there's other resellers, because you
kind of can't balance ideas off of like, I usually always have like stoop,
really stupid business ideas.
And I'll tell Deb or you and just like, dude, what do you think?
And I'm like, yeah, I guess you're right.
I'm probably, you know, way out of my mind here.
I mean, you know me, I'll tell you if it's stupid, but no, I mean, even
yourself, you diversify this year.
There's now an eBay course.
That's no more time out of your pocket.
You're just adding more value to your channel.
And now Max is coming on long.
That's more diversification and there'll probably be other coaches and stuff
that come along throughout the years.
Maybe it's I'm not saying there will be, it's not my channel guys.
It's Mike's, but even your, I think your YouTube presence, you'll diversify
in some way, maybe even content wise, maybe you'll want to add some, a
different arm of your content that you put out currently.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, look at the podcast that was diversifying the YouTube channel.
I mean, it makes sense to get it out to more people.
And it also kind of lightens the load for me because it's one less
video I have to edit.
Right.
So it's everything works.
Every action you take, there's a reaction, right?
You know, everything you do is going to, there's going to be some kind of.
Fall out, but the fallout necessarily always isn't bad.
Right.
When most of the times when we diversify certain ways you get.
It's a, it's a positive basically impact, not a negative.
Sure.
There are times you're always going to step in mud, right?
You're always going to step in crap from time to time, but
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I was victim of this late last year with employee one, who
I've talked about briefly, she did not work out for reasons I've mentioned
before, but that led me on to my batch of employees and then my single one
all star employee.
She's been working the last three weeks with a concussion, by the way, she
took two days off back in, I asked her, you want more time willing to give her
more time?
She has allocated sick and vacation.
She's like, no, I like working here.
Let's get to work, John, you shut up and let's list some books.
I'm like, I can't argue with this.
Let's go.
I think even people that are just reselling and listed into this or watching
this, if reselling is your only thing you need to diversify in the fact that
maybe you have another side hustle that you're not doing this full time, or you
need to diversify the money you're getting from reselling because personally,
I don't want to resell until I'm 90 years old.
Right.
I need some kind of exit plan.
Like, yes, this is a great business.
Yes, I love doing it, but I don't want to do this till I'm dead.
So my diversification looks for me is like, okay, well, what other streams of
income, right?
I can still do YouTube, you know, even if I resell part time, I still can do
YouTube and then even further than that is diversifying my money into retirement
funds, which nobody ever talks about on reselling YouTube.
And you never hear nothing about taking the money you make and investing in your
future, right?
Whether that's real estate or retirement or do you got to have something else?
I don't think you can just be a reseller and you just, all your money goes back
into the business and there's no, there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
Basically.
I have a small group of friends that we talk about this kind of stuff because
we're like you, we're not doing this when we're 90 years old.
You can, as a business person set up a 401k plan, you can give yourself
benefits.
You can set up a IRA.
You don't have to do the real estate game.
Real estate gets talked about the most amongst real estate.
That's solid, but you can do these other things.
You can get in the stock market.
You can, well, do you have a business savings account or a personal savings
account?
Maybe you allocate a certain percentage of all your reselling dollars that come
in and just put it there.
That's safe and simple, right?
Well, you diversified your money.
Other, other aspects is like myself, I am thinking about a brick and mortar.
I'm not clearly counting that as real estate.
I'm counting that as diversification on another outlet of all the contents I
get brought in into my shop and stuff.
It doesn't have to be just real estate.
It doesn't just have to be stocks.
It doesn't have to be money under the mattress.
You can put your money wherever you want.
You could even buy bars of gold if you think the value of gold will go up or
silver, if you are dead set on these things going up and that's tangible,
solid investments.
You can touch your investment at that point.
Everything has a risk though, right?
Everything you talked about here.
There's no guarantee that everything's going to go up, right?
There's no guarantee gold is going to go up.
No guarantee real estate is going to go up.
No guarantee tornado can come wipe out your brand new house you just bought.
There's so many variables, but you have to start thinking more than just,
oh, I'm just reselling and that's it.
People got to start thinking next level.
What's the next move?
Right?
It doesn't have to, I'm not talking about blowing up your whole business or
like putting all the money you make from reselling into this or that like today,
but you should have a further outlook, right?
You should have a further plan out like, hey, what do you want to do when you
can't lift or you can't go to the thrift stores as often as you do because none
of us are getting younger.
I mean, they may come out with some kind of serum where we can go back to our
younger days, but until that happens, the clock's always ticking here and I just
try to think about what are ways I can get ahead in the long run from what I'm
doing today.
And personally for me, transparency, I have the YouTube is my basically second
form of income and then my third form of income.
Well, it's not really income, but I have a retirement fund that is a pretty nice
retirement fund for where I'm at right now.
So like I'm already planning for the future and I have been and I just want
everybody else to kind of be the same boat, right?
Because the used book guy, when he's 65 years old, like he can't go to the
library and pick up the books, right?
Like we're all going to be like seven years old on the week.
I have arthritis.
We're all going to be seven years old on the weekly Zoom calls like from our
nursing homes.
Like I don't want I want us all to be at the beach, right?
We're all at the beach sitting back, kicked up, retired, you know, and a lot
of people want to retire early.
That's like a huge.
That's also like a huge new thing that's come along, right?
People don't want to work until they're 65.
People want to get out in their 40s, 50.
And like I think to myself, like that's kind of where I want to be.
And that's why like you make the sacrifices today for the time because I
can lift the boxes now.
I can't lift them when I'm 56 years old.
So if I sacrifice today and the future, I'm going to reap all the benefits.
It's kind of my insight on it.
Yeah, I mean, my wrist hurts most days these days.
I don't know what's wrong with it.
I've been sleeping with a wrist brace at night.
My head's been hurting since earlier this year, and that's just from the
wear and tear.
I'm doing my body right now, and that ain't going to get any better as I get
older.
Things take longer to heal when you age up.
That's just one of those things.
If you're listening to this in your 20s, enjoy it, man.
Enjoy it.
But yeah, I mean, what's the end game?
And with all of this comes research, like with the investment stuff.
Again, we're not saying dump it all in today.
When you first got into reselling, did you just do it?
No, you did some research.
You probably went on a binge watching free of some YouTuber or a couple of
them and did some research.
You looked at some articles.
It's the same thing.
Just do your research.
And we're never going to tell you what to put your money in.
That's your decision.
We just made here's a buffet line of options you could do.
Absolutely.
Diversification, though, I think now you got me thinking about it.
It's like I do think diversification doesn't fix your business.
Right.
We'll just take your business, for example.
Everybody knows you sell those old crusty books for a ridiculous amount of money,
but the way you do it makes sense.
For example, if you were Johnny B and he's selling these books.
Well, he's not selling these books.
Right.
So he's on eBay.
He's not selling his books.
Right.
And the first thing that comes to his mind is, well, eBay sucks.
So I need a cross list because eBay isn't giving me the traffic.
Well, like he was saying, if he actually did the research,
you would see that eBay has the second most traffic next to Amazon when it comes to a
reselling site.
So just because you get this thought in your head that eBay is the problem and Johnny B
is now going to cross list to Mike's crappy selling book site dot net.
Right.
Like that's not going to change your business.
So diversification isn't I don't think it's a way out.
In some cases, because a lot of people will be like, well, if I just cross list,
I'm going to see a boost in sales.
Well, not if you're selling the same crappy stuff and taking the same crappy pictures
and the same crappy descriptions.
Right.
I mean, even for me, I was seeing some slow this in sales since February.
I mean, you and I talked about it a bit and I made some changes in adjustment.
It was not the platform.
It was me.
And it wasn't really me necessarily.
It was what the market could bear and realizing that.
So I made the adjustments on several people's advice.
This wasn't really just one person.
And now, now everything's back to better.
But if I didn't take the diversification in my networking, I've networked with people.
I could talk to people.
So, yeah, I'm moving on to your network of other resellers.
I wouldn't have had those options or some of those thoughts even enter my head.
So knowing and talking to people and making those friendships and connections,
even if they're just business friendships, can pay you huge dividends when you're struggling.
So there's diversification there.
Expand your audience of people you socialize with as far as your business goes.
I will say another headache that comes with diversification is the reselling content you see.
I just remember when I first was trying to sell stuff and I only felt like there was a handful
of resellers on YouTube.
I remember it was the college picker, bonafide hustler, Raekyn Prosely.
Hustle home mom, Raekyn, Roemer.
Yeah, there was just a core group.
I don't know, maybe it was just more centralized content for me.
But I just feel like somebody today that just goes to any platform and puts in reselling,
they're going to get bombarded with all kinds of crazy content.
And if you just, you can't do it all.
I'm here to tell you, you can't do it all.
You're not going to be able to sell this.
You're not going to be able to sell sneakers, use clothes, use books, DVDs, CDs, vinyl records.
It's not sure you can and you'll get some results, but you're not going to be able to scale that
business and you'll plateau out pretty quick just because you're going to get burnout from like,
your eyes are always looking at anything and everything around you all the time because
you're like, well, I can sell anything and everything.
So I do think that diversification of content is like, it's a blessing because if you're some
person that's in a specific niche, you only want to sell vinyl records.
There's somebody out there for you or you only want to sell sewing machine parts.
Like there's somebody out there for you.
But I do think it's to a point now where there's just, it's just system overload for a lot of
people and they don't know whether to go left or right.
Right.
And then there's also the diversification of your sources.
Let's say you've only gone to thrift shops.
Well, have you tried yard sales?
Have you tried estate sales?
Have you tried church rummage sales or just church sales?
Have you gone down to just your regular store outlets to see if they even carry books for
your dollar generals?
There's books everywhere.
There's CDs everywhere.
There's DVDs everywhere.
But knowing where they all are and what kind of shops that sell these things are, I mean,
there's even, well, there's Facebook, there's Nextdoor, there's Craigslist.
You can try to find these things there too.
That's a different kind of sourcing.
That's a different kind of sourcing, diversification.
And then for you Amazon, mainly Amazon sellers, which is most of your audience, to be fair,
have you tried searching on eBay to put it on Amazon?
There's diversification right there from the comfort of your own couch.
It'll come to your door.
I don't think you should diversify just to diversify.
Right.
Like kind of what you're saying, like your sources, like I think about this all the time,
like get it all the time.
Right.
Mike, when you're taking me to the garage sales and the library sales, guess what, suckers?
I don't got to go to them.
I already got my sources lined up.
Right.
So until something happens and a link in the chain breaks, there's no need to pivot.
Right.
So why am I going to try to add something completely different into a system that already
works?
I think what happens here is like, say, for example, right, you're selling X amount of
dollars every week.
Well, you have two or three weeks, maybe a month where sales just aren't there.
Right.
And all of a sudden your wheels are turning.
Right.
You're like, wait a minute, like what's going on here?
And like, maybe you decide to make a decision that just doesn't make sense because all of
a sudden you have a slow dip.
And I think a lot of resellers, that's kind of where we're at.
Right.
Because everybody's comparing it to the boom, the boom time, right.
The past two years when like you could list anything and it sells right away.
Well, that's not reality.
So now it's like people are like, oh my God, like this, I need to go this way.
I need to go that way.
And I think you can get yourself into a lot of trouble and waste a lot of money and time
if you don't think these steps out, these diversification routes you want to take.
Right.
I really agree with that.
Like I think I, I don't know if I mentioned it when we were talking before the call or
on the call, but I already mentioned it again.
I make a change about once every six months to add something in.
And if it's too much of a distraction, I'll drop it for the time being.
Because things need to get settled down where it wouldn't be a distraction.
Like for me, I took a, I took a tap out on Amazon this year, but I plan on getting back
into it next year.
I think I'll have the bandwidth and my eBay business is probably better than it's ever been
with processes and systems and sales.
And as far as sources, I don't think getting goods is ever the problem.
I could, I could fill up this shop beyond its capacity within a day or two, but that's
not needed.
Like you were saying, you don't need these other sources getting, getting better sources,
trading up, swapping essentially for better, for better goods.
That's a thing you could work on.
Certainly.
I would cause some hesitation for knee jerk reactions and try 10 things at once.
I don't, I don't have the magic formula here for me.
It's once every six months for you, maybe once every three months or once a year.
It's your business, you know yourself.
There's also the external distractions of friends, family, social commitments, real job.
If you're a part timer.
So don't hinder yourself by picking this, picking that, because you're, what you're
focusing on may perform less or you'll have lower performance.
All these additional things need to be the key word there.
Additional with this maintaining the same and or growing while you're dealing with this
external extra thing.
For sure.
It's kind of like, it's kind of like everything I kind of did with YouTube, right?
Like I make the commitment to have the group, right?
And I'll be honest with you.
Like I knew it was going to be a time sync.
Like I remember you're like, Hey, I can make the discord.
And I'm like, Johnny, like the discord is going to suck the life out of me.
Right.
And you're like, well, I can do it.
So like I 100% attest to like the discord only exists for this guy sitting here because
I don't know how to set up a discord.
I don't know the first thing about it.
So it's like, there is every, every decision you make is taking another piece of your time.
Almost.
I think that's kind of like the big takeaway here.
It's like, okay, well, if I'm going to do this, how much time am I going to lose?
Right.
It's, it's the balancing act.
It's like, people always say, are you a YouTuber or a reseller?
Yeah, I'm a reseller.
The majority of my income comes from reselling, but YouTube would, I mean, I could argue here
that I've, I've probably spent the same amount of time on YouTube, like editing and doing
and doing things in the group and the coaching calls, the weekly calls that I probably spend
more time on the, on the business model that makes me less money today because I don't
make nowhere near as much on YouTube as compared to Amazon.
But I, I see the long-term play as being my YouTube channel is going to be able to carry
me further down the road.
Right.
You know, like when you start it, when you start anything, you can't expect to get crazy
results.
So it's like, I'm putting the building blocks and pay plays for this other, you know,
diversification of my business to have it grow down the road, kind of like a retirement.
Right.
You just put money in compound, it's compound and interest.
Any, any, you can look at business like that.
Right.
You start today, you start from one item, it goes to two, it goes to four, it goes to
eight.
You keep compounding that and you get results in the long-term.
I mean, I really think reselling isn't a, it's not an overnight like success, right.
It's, I think anything when it comes to reselling, even though you might hit like a lucky,
a lucky Bolo, right.
You walk in a store and they have, you know, 30 of something that you're getting for a
buck and selling for a hundred, but that's not maintainable.
Right.
I mean, even with the discourse, as you brought it up, like every,
about once a month you get somebody asking, we need a channel for this.
We need a channel for that.
And diversification is great in discord, but what I generally say is when we're a
little bit larger, when we're a little bit larger, because there's no need for it,
it's excessive.
And I just recently added one new channel.
And we were about the right size for it.
And it's kind of going on for those curious.
It's beyond the lookout for our channel.
Yeah.
Really exciting stuff.
I know.
But you guys are using it and it looks pretty active.
That's pretty cool.
Nothing I see here.
I would buy Mr. Lego grateful dad ATX, but that looks really cool for you.
I do think on the topic of that, it's, it's something where for me, I'll admit, right.
On my phone, I had discord, YouTube, Facebook, like Instagram, Twitter, like you can easily,
easily lose your reselling business.
If you, if you're trying to maintain all these social media apps.
And I will attest to it today that the only time you're going to catch me on any of these
is if I'm at my computer, which is in the morning, usually before I go out, before I
cut Deb's fabric for her orders for the day.
And then late at night, while I'm feeding the cat.
So I, I personally made this decision where, Hey, I'm going to have this group.
I need to be in the group, right?
I can't just have a group and like, not even in there, right?
It's like my responsibility to be in the group and offer insight.
But I do think if you make a decision to diversify, understand that no matter what it is,
it's going to take more time out of what you're currently doing.
Unless you know something where you can diversify and it doesn't take any more time.
Like, I don't, I don't think there is anything besides like, besides just putting money into
a retirement account because it's just money going in and it works itself.
But other than that, like if you're doing another business model or another idea,
you're going to lose time every single time.
Yeah.
Unless you have a single person to do it for you.
Like when I offered to do the discord, if I had a personal assistant and be like, yo,
go do all of Amazon for me.
Cool.
But that's a specific amount of trust, that's a specific amount of training,
a specific amount of this, that, and the other.
But then I would have my time back as far as Amazon's good to go over there now.
Now, another one that's fun is diversifying,
undiversifying.
Let's put it that way.
Undiversifying the people around you.
That are full of negativity.
Right.
Like myself, I had a bajillion YouTube channels.
A lot of those guys were pretty negative or didn't know what the hell they're talking about.
So I unsubbed from a lot of them.
Once I figured out what I was doing, it can go even to your, I want to get too personal here
because this is a personal call, but like your friends who are always telling you,
you're never going to make it.
You're never going to make it.
Or you're never going to make it.
Or your family who's telling you the same thing.
It's not worth your time.
That's just a hobby.
Well, maybe you talk to those people a little less and talk to the people that encourage
you a little more or get some people in your life that actually do encourage you.
So reallocating, diversifying who's around you.
Because you can get so discouraged and you can buy into the negative stuff so easily,
you don't need it.
You really don't need it.
You really don't.
The negative stuff is everywhere you look.
Do you always, the videos that do the best on social media is all the negativity, all
the crying and whining and stuff.
And you're 100% right.
And I agree with it 100%.
You have to have people in your corner.
That's probably the main reason I decided, all right, let's do this Discord thing is
because there needs to be a beacon of hope.
The resistance, right?
We call ourselves the resistance from now on.
This can be done.
We're all living proof of it.
And there's different people at different walks of life.
And if you just tell your family and friends what you do, it's just like, they just think
you're a joke.
Let's be real.
I'm like, hey, I sell media on Amazon.
And the reality is, I mean, I don't say this, hey, I make X amount of dollars.
But if you just tell people you're a reseller, it's like you almost get joked at and laughed.
I mean, I know people laughing at me behind the scenes.
But yeah, you were probably laughing at me when I had 10 subscribers on YouTube.
You were laughing at me now.
I only got 4,000 subscribers on YouTube.
But it's like, you don't see the end game.
And for me, I'll test.
A lot of this has come from Deb because Deb's a lot more stern, right?
I'm more of a sucker.
Like, oh, yeah, she's got me.
She's kind of changed me in the way that I can be like, OK, this person, this isn't a
good relationship.
You need to remove yourself from it.
Even if it's a family or a friend, you have to set boundaries.
And if somebody is just nagging you about negativity and what you're doing, your business
or your job or your career or your life, and you're enjoying what you're doing and you
see the potential and maybe you're at where I'm at where you're actually reaping the
benefits of it, you've got to cut these people out.
I mean, it's just the reality of it.
I understand it might be a close friend or a family member, but you really have to consider
yourself and in my case, the person you're in a relationship with, because at the end
of the day, if I'm miserable all the time, right, and I'm blowing up Johnny's phone all
week long and like every day, it's like, hey, Johnny, sales are down, dude, this sucks.
What do we do when we need to do something else?
Like, Johnny B is going to be like, bro, shut up, or you're going to make the list and the
list is your block.
I mean, that's just the reality of it.
Like, I don't have time for negativity and I see it all the time.
And that's why I always try to be like positive and uplifting because reselling is a lonely
job for most people, right?
Most of us are one people operations, one man, one woman, part time, full time.
And you can easily get down in the dumps.
And I just want everybody to know that like there's light at the end of the tunnel if
you just, but you can't be around, you know, the boogeyman all the time, like my shirt
says, you know, if Michael Myers is living upstairs and he's looking down at you every
single day, like you're going to get to the point where you're like, all right, I give
up, dude, you win.
Like you're here every single day, like leave me alone.
And then you just, and that's it.
Well, here's one out of my personal life.
I don't talk about my personal life too much, but here we go.
So my pops is my biggest critic.
He laughed at me, called me a fool and told me I was wasting my time when I left my big
fancy corporate job, my other business I had started up.
And he says, you're, you're screwing up bad.
And he didn't really change his tune until I got in this warehouse.
He didn't really change his tune until I got the first employee, stable employee.
He was like, you're doing a good job here, boy.
And I'm like, fuck you old man.
I had to deal with that for about a year and a little over a year, but it was total
negativity along the way.
I didn't, I started talking to him less and less and until recently, probably last
six months here, but they don't see the end game.
Like you were saying, they don't see where it's going until it's visibly in front of
them.
Cause as far as their standpoint, and I get it, you're, you're, you're leaving a
safety, comfortable thing for an unknown and uncertainty.
And I can, I can understand that, but when you truly believe it and then you put in
the work to make the belief a reality, that's all that really matters.
But staying the course on that, when every single person around, even my
colleagues said I was stupid for my previous job, everybody I knew, cause all
corporate people, all the do people, even my friends and family, but fuck them.
Yolo dude.
I know it's like a cheesy thing.
Like, oh, yolo, like, well, that was cool in like 2010.
Well, guess what?
You only live once, right?
You going to work.
Am I going to work for CVS and get disrespected every single day?
Work 60 hours, get paid for 45?
No, I walked out the front doors and I never looked back and I never second
guessed myself one single step along the way.
Because listen, if you're not happy with what you're doing, there is nothing,
there is nobody, unless you're, unless you're locked up in prison, which I
can't get you out of, right?
If you're listening to this in jail, you probably shouldn't have a listening
device in your cell anyway, right?
So, anybody else, any kind of situation you can remove yourself from, and this
goes way past just business relationships, things like there's some, there's so
much toxicity out there.
And I just want everybody to know you can always make a change for the better.
Right?
Sure.
You might not make the same amount of money right away, but you can always
tough it out for a little bit more.
We talk about it in resale all the time.
People are so quick.
Like, I want to do this only.
I want to do this only.
Well, listen, you've been miserable at CVS for 10 years.
So let's build reselling up to a point where we can quit and we know we're
going to make the same amount of money, if that more, if we devote full-time
hours to the business, but you have to be smart about this stuff and you have
to surround yourself and you've got to be willing.
I think you've got to be willing to take some kind of crazy risk at some
point in your life.
Like, I think it's just, I think you just got to do it.
If you want to, if you want to see results, you got to take a risk one way
or another, whether that's moving, whether that's leaving a relationship,
whether that's starting a new business, whether it's this, that, this, or that.
You've got to take a big risk some point in your life.
And mine was moving out of Philly, right?
Like I could have just easily stayed in Philly my whole life.
My family's down there and everything.
And I said, you know what, let's get out of here, right?
Somehow I talked Devin to, you know, leaving the city.
We were both born and raised there.
Everybody we knew was still in the city.
Every family friend that we ever had was still in the city.
And I took the risk of moving out of the city.
I got laid off from Toys R Us.
And I said, okay, this is my chance, right?
I get laid off.
I can collect unemployment, which wasn't much at the time.
I think it was like five, five something a month, or five something every two weeks.
So I was getting like a thousand bucks every two weeks living at home.
And I said, this is it.
We're going to take this thousand dollars every two weeks.
We're moving out of here and we're going to start fresh.
And it was the best decision I ever made.
And I literally remember all we could take.
I had a Chevy Lumina.
I love that car, right?
That thing was huge too.
There's no way I could parallel park that thing today.
And we said, whatever we can fit in the Lumina is what we're going to take with us.
And that's it.
And we moved three hours outside of the city and it was the best decision we ever made.
But that was a huge risk.
Like what a psychomaniac.
You have no job lined up.
You're going to rely on this little bit of unemployment money.
And you're going to move away from everything you've ever known in your life.
Live free, die hard.
Love that.
I don't know, man.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, the friends and family, that's the tough one.
Removing yourself from a toxic environment or situation.
That's really tough as well.
And I think what really helped me during that whole transition process is like joining your group,
joining the refinement group where I had people that were below my level,
on my level, above my level.
And you could see, you could visually see the progress from beginning to end,
not just some crazy cockamamie idea in your head.
And like you, loading up the Lumina there and driving on, that's a visual we're doing this.
I think that's so helpful to people.
Yeah, it really is.
So I think we're going to wrap it up here when it comes to just diversify your business,
diversify your future self.
All right, I think that'll be kind of the end quote I have is diversify today for your future self.
So down the road, you're not going to have to be out of the bins when you're 90 years old with your
cane like beating people, like get off my stuff.
That's my stuff, right?
Think about the future today.
And even if it's baby, baby steps, start taking those steps today
for just what you want to see from yourself in the future when it comes to diversification.
So we will see you all in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
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