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 into another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
Mike here alongside Johnny B as always today's topic is arguably,
probably could be the most important one we've covered.
And that is processes when it comes to everything in your business.
There should be a process.
I mean, I guess you couldn't have any process,
but like if you were friends with Johnny and you didn't have any kind of
scheduling or processes in your life, like he would probably like.
Ripped it, ripped the hair off his head, ripped his beard off,
because he is a man that appreciates structure and a way that things
actually happen in the business.
And it is, I think it does like, this is more important even to like a small
seller than a large seller like yourself, because you just wind up, you know,
like if every week I came on and you know, for those watching on YouTube,
we see the same books sitting behind you that aren't doing nothing.
They're not moving.
You're not actually picking them up and doing something with them.
Like, you're not making no progress.
So I'm going to throw it over to you and you kind of can just take us
anywhere with the topic of processes.
Well, there's a process of the buy, right?
You go in, you assess the goods, possible goods that are on the wall.
If it looks good enough where you're wanting to make a bigger deal,
because there's a lot of good stuff on there.
And I'm speaking from eBay perspective, if you're a scanner, of course,
you're going to scan and probably first.
And if it looks good, you go up and find an employee could be the manager,
probably an employee, like is the manager on duty?
And they say yes or no.
If they say yes, ask if they could send them over to them.
You're interested in buying all of it.
And like, oh, okay.
And they'll wander off and they'll get them.
If they say no, you can ask for when the manager's in.
Or ask if you could have their number.
I've done that before.
I call them up right up.
If it looks really good, I want to write now for something they can wait.
I'll wait till they're in and come back.
And then how do you get it out?
It's a lot of books, right?
For me, I got tubs and a cart.
So, and they stack.
So I'll bring my tubs in and my cart in.
I always ask permission if I can bring this stuff in because I've only had one
person say no, but I want to be polite and courteous.
So I'll wheel that in and I'll put the tubs and lids to the side, put one
empty lid on the cart, or I'm sorry, one empty tub on the cart without the lid.
Fill it up, pop the lid on, stack the next tub without a lid, et cetera, et
cetera.
I can get about four high and these are 27.
Well, they're those behind me there.
See, they stack all nice and pretty.
Those things are nice, dude.
You got nice totes.
They're expensive, but worth it.
Plastic, gold.
And then figuring out how to arrange them, because I used to just do three
columns up, but only four, but I figured out if I turn one row sideways, I could
have five as my base.
So instead of two and two, it's two and then one, two, three sideways.
So figuring out, well, a little bit of geometry math, how to angle it.
So you can do this empty.
You don't have to be fooled about it.
You can do it in a row.
You don't have to be fooled about how to angle it, so you can do this empty.
You don't have to be fooled to figure this out.
Also, how many can you cram in the back seat if you got a back seat or your front
seat, figuring out the maximum you can take.
Now there are people who just dump the books in the back of their bed or the
back of their trunk.
Nothing wrong with that, but I have a truck, so some stuff's going to be on the
outside.
So I figured out how much I could stack and still be able to drive my vehicle.
And then same kind of process to unload them, but you have to have an area clear
when you get back to wherever you are, whether it's your garage, your storage,
your warehouse, figuring out where to shove it.
That's before you do any processing.
That's just buying.
Yeah, but I mean, that's a process, right?
You know, like you got to have a plan.
And what happens is, right, like I walk into a store and a lot of people, they
get excited, right?
They walk in and there's the books are 10 cents a piece and there's 25 bookcases.
And they're just like, I'll buy them all.
It's like, there's really no, like people will jump to the conclusion of just
going and I'm going to buy everything.
And they didn't even walk over and see what it is, right?
It could be all James Patterson.
It could be all Nora Roberts.
And I do think like it's even more important as an eBay seller, especially
the cause, you know, not a lot of people do bulk books on eBay because the work
that goes into it and the processes you have to have in place.
So like as an eBay seller, you almost have to be even more process oriented.
I mean, you got to be at that's a guarantee.
I'll, I'll, I'll state that now.
If you're eBay compared to Amazon, your processes have to be way better on
eBay than Amazon because Amazon has really no, you know, none of the hoops or none
of the quote unquote algorithm you have to deal with.
And it just, it just, I think about this because it's for me, I don't want to
work just to work, right?
Like I don't want to just be like, well, I'm a reseller, so I got to do this
60 hours a week, right?
It's like, and I do think a lot of people like drag out their reselling work just
so they can be like, well, I do this full time.
Well, what if I told you, if you could refine your processes, you can make a
full time income investing a part time time, right?
You give part time time, but you get a full time income.
This is why I think processes are literally the most important thing in
business. Yeah, you got to find this stuff, but I mean, that's also a process.
But after that, everything has to have a destination, a place where it's going to
wind up.
I think what happens here is maybe somebody, you know, walks into a huge
buy, kind of like you were saying, and all of a sudden they have, you know, a
truck full of books.
And what's the next step, right?
Like what's, what's the next step in the process?
You got the books, you take them home.
Like you said, do you even have somewhere to put the books?
Like I used to, I used to, I used to sort my bulk buys out on the sidewall,
literally out on the curb.
I would have 35 different stacks.
The neighbors probably thought I was crazy, but I didn't have people.
I mean, I do have space, but I'm not carrying everything up three flights of
steps.
So it's like, you got to be smart about the decisions you're making.
And it all starts when you buy that initial, you know, amount of inventory, a
larger amount of inventory, because that's when your processes have to be, you
know, great.
And even, you know, it's different if you just walk in and you buy 10 things,
right?
Your processes can kind of be crap.
You probably can get away with it to an extent, but if you're buying large
amounts of inventory, no matter what category, no matter what platform, you
got to have a plan in place from start to finish.
Are you going to need a U-Haul?
Are you going to need this?
Are you going to need that?
Are you taking into consideration all the time?
The money for you to maybe, maybe it's going to be five truckloads, right?
Maybe you got to drive an hour, five different times back and forth to make
it worth your while.
So you got your truck full of books, Jay, what are you going to do when you
get back to the warehouse?
What's the next step?
Put them in the pre-processing area.
I have a little area on the floor that I assigned.
Usually the tubs are there empty, stacked up, but they go there until we
have allocated time to process them.
So let's just say we fast forward.
It's now time to process them.
My tables roll.
So I move the processing table over to the tubs.
There's no sense in bringing the tubs to me when I can just simply
bring the table to it.
And then we just pop a lid.
You can't go more than four high on these.
So there's a little rectangle square area.
Pop the lid on the first one and load them all on the table.
If a process, now that I'm back in Amazon, we'll first put them into
three different piles, one tub at a time.
ISBN, barcode, and that crack the book open to see if it has a ISBN number in there.
And we'll do about two or three tubs, which will pretty much fill up the table.
And then we'll do a scanning pass to clear it.
We'll move the empty tubs over to like where I am now.
For eBay price comping to see if it pops through eBay.
Okay.
Well, hold up here.
Somebody's going to say, or somebody's going to think, well, why do you waste
time separating barcodes, ISBN, no ISBN books instead of just stacking
everything on the table?
It saves so much time because the little two second button toggle
is not time effective.
So basically you got a barcode.
Okay.
It's, it's scanned.
Great.
Move on to your next book.
Oh, it's a book you got to open.
So you got to flip the book over.
Let's just, and let's just say that maybe you didn't even, like you just
say, you threw books on the table.
They aren't even faced the right way.
First of all.
Well, you kind of have to do that to even rifle through them.
But if you're having to rifle through a different way for each and every book,
cause you never know what you're going to get between ISBN barcode and got to crack
the book open and the, the, the switching around, uh, mental real estate's not free
and physical real estate's not free.
So the less movement you make, the better and faster it would go.
So doing that initial work upfront, the, the sorting, the sorting to sort,
um, is such a time saver.
I mean, you could say if you're doing a lot, you can literally save hours,
if not like half an hour.
I, um, I want to run something by you and get your opinion, something
I do for disc media, right?
I buy a whole bunch of CDs and DVDs.
Um, I do the same thing as you, right?
Barcodes, non barcodes.
Um, one thing I do not do is check the cases for the disc until it's an
except somewhere that it's winding up, right?
I'm not, you know, opening everyone as I'm stacking them.
I'm stacking them.
If it's an except for, you know, Amazon FBA or FBM, then I open it
up and see if it's there.
You agree with this method?
Yeah.
I mean, there's no point in, there's no point looking for the disc if it's
just going to be a dud anyway, right?
Like, Right.
I mean, there's, if it's a dud, there's no, I don't pop it open and
check for scratches either, um, until it's necessary.
Yeah.
You only do what's necessary first.
If there's a secondary step rate, then it's a necessary step at that stage.
You got to do it one stage at a time.
All right.
So you got, you got your books out on the table.
You got them separated.
You scan for Amazon.
Then you look for things for eBay.
Um, do you have like a, a, a pile, like a junk pile, right?
Like books that are either just damaged or you know, ain't worth nothing, right?
That Nora Roberts that comes through.
Sorry, Nora, if you're watching, you know, we probably have a
pile that's just like, okay, you know, this is just junk that I'm going to
get rid of recycle, re donate, whatever you do with it used to be.
I put them in a, I don't know what to do with you until later pile.
Um, later has now come as I have a very small brick and mortar store.
So if they're junk, either water damage or spine slanting,
discharging, whatever, you know, you're going to have to do that.
So if they're junk, either water damage or spine slanting to such a degree,
they go outside in the black racks.
I don't even care if the weather gets to him.
And I sell those books for a dime to locals.
Now, if they're in better condition, they come inside with the air
conditioning on some bookshelves.
And that's where they sit until somebody comes in and buys them.
Um, I don't do, I could do the, um, buyback programs, but I've
created my own buyback program locally with my brick and mortar.
And I offer box deals, man.
I I'm the cheapest bookstore in like 300 miles.
You literally are like the epitome of like, I try to tell people like,
make it seem like, you know, you save every single book.
And like, you literally make sure every single book is going somewhere.
Like, even if you give it away, like somebody else is going to take it away.
Right?
Like you're not taking it to the dumpster ever.
Somebody else can take it to the dumpster for you.
And the best part is I'm not worried about shoplifters.
Yeah.
Yeah, take it.
I don't care.
Take as many as you want.
We don't care.
Yeah.
But I do think like processes are, they're going to make or break your
business.
Cause I think about like, imagine if every time you had a bulk buy or
something, like you just didn't have a plan.
Right.
And unfortunately the reality is a lot of resellers don't have a plan when it
comes to where, how are they going to store their inventory?
How are they going to sort their inventory?
And then you just wind up with a whole bunch of inventory.
Nothing's listed.
You're making no money.
And then, you know, you call it quits.
That's just the reality of it.
Like I try to think about like the Amazon process for me.
Right.
I literally, I scan it for Amazon.
That's the end of the line.
If it's an antique book, I'll take a picture, send it to Max.
That's the end of the line.
If it's in a good condition, you know, I'll take it to second and Charles get
some store credit so I can do some Christmas shopping, but other than that,
a lot of my books, I just have to accept the fact that in my business model,
they're not worth nothing.
Sure.
You have plenty of shelf space over there.
Right.
You could, you know, if I look closely, you would take everything.
Like you would just say, yeah, give me it all.
I can put it out and sell for, you know, 50 cents a peach.
You'll take all James Patterson, all that stuff all day long.
But for me, I think the hard pill for people to swallow is when you buy lots
of quantity, there's just, especially if you're Amazon and I would even argue
eBay to an extent, just because you have it, you shouldn't be listing it.
Right.
Like you're not going to list, like even yourself, you're not going to
list a $4 book on eBay, right?
It just doesn't make sense.
So like if you didn't have the brick and mortar and you get all the three,
$2 junk, like what's your plan for that?
Like what would you do?
You know, pre brick and mortar Johnny's got, he's got all these James Patterson,
Nora Roberts.
I tried a couple things that did not work or it worked to not worth my time.
I tried going to the flea market and making a deal with the book people.
They weren't interested.
They can't even get rid of their own junk.
Right.
I tried donating to some local bookstores or trying to do an exchange for
currency in store currency store credit, more or less.
They're really weird about it.
That what I noticed, I don't know if it's like this in your area is for
for trading, they won't even give you full trading percent.
It's like 65% trading credit, no cash ever.
But it's all like partial trading credit, which is really weird.
So at checkout, your credit is like 65% and then you pay the difference in cash.
And that's more than one place and in different cities, that seems to be a thing
in my area that I had no idea because I never, I never bothered with that.
I always just bought books from these places.
I didn't even care about the trading fair at the time.
But when I came time for me to liquidate my junk, I started to pay attention and
like, I don't want to pay money to exchange books out.
This is stupid.
Yeah, I've actually, I've heard of that.
I've actually heard of that.
I personally have never ran into that.
Um, but I'm just curious, like, so I can bring in stuff to trade into your place.
Right.
Like if I showed up today.
Yeah, I offer, I offer different things.
I'll pay for books flat out 15 cents a pound.
I'll weigh it.
Uh, they could trade book for books.
So it's kind of like one of those library things, which I've had people do.
And surprisingly people just give me books, just flat out and give me books.
So I'm now the, the trash can for where all books go in my area.
Cause people hate my library.
Cause they're open like three hours of the day during like lunchtime
when people are at work too.
It's dumb.
So they don't have a place to really donate books.
They come to me now.
I do think it is beneficial to like people will give you books because they see
like you're not charging, you know, $8 for a Stephen King book.
Right.
Like they, if they come to your shop once they see, oh, 10 cent rack.
Oh, the books are four for a dollar.
Oh, a box is $5.
Like, all right.
They get in the mindset.
This guy's not out here price gouging.
Right.
So it's like, you're going to get those, you're going to get more and more of that
as you continue to grow, like the brand of the brick and mortar, which is kind of cool.
And like, I really never thought about it like that, but yeah, you'll get people
like, Hey, we know Johnny will take the books, right.
Just taking down the Johnny, you know, dump them outside and they're gone.
You know, they'll wind up in somebody else's hands because, you know, as you
gain traction, people will come in there and probably buy crap ton of books
because it's so cheap.
I mean, you spend 20 bucks.
I mean, I'm selling more boxes than I am single books.
I even have a buy 10, get one free deal.
But once they got 10 bucks in their hands, they're starting to get heavy, right.
They're looking down at those boxes.
Yeah, it's smart.
So like back on the topic of like processes with Amazon, you just have to,
you got to keep things moving.
I keep, I say it all the time.
You got to keep the inventory moving, right?
It's almost as if you look at your business as a Q and a failure bell.
It's the inventory is always has to be going and winding up in a destination,
you know, whether it's here, there, anywhere.
What problem, the problem is a lot of people just start, well, Johnny, I got all
these books, they're not worth it on Amazon.
So I'm going to list them all on eBay, even though they're five or $6 books.
I still need to get money out of it.
And I've had a few coaching calls recently and a lot of them kind of revolved
around processes because we almost create, we create unnecessary work
in our reselling business, right?
Like why are we spending five, 10 minutes listing a four or $5 item?
If you start multiplying that all of a sudden you're in the red, that's not
including, you know, value in your time, you're packing materials, putting it
on the shelf, this is just listing this junk, right?
So I want people to almost get in the mindset of, okay, what can I cut out my
processes that's going to give me my time back and in turn, it's going to make
your hourly wage basically go up as a reseller.
So like, give me some tips and tricks here that like, maybe you cut out your
business previously, like for me, I'll give mine first is I should do book
buys and I would scan everything for Amazon and I would scan everything for eBay.
And I learned pretty quick after like three or four that scanning everything
on eBay after Amazon, I wasted my time, but I had to learn that the hard way.
So like, if that's what you're doing right now, I'm here to tell you, do not do that.
I scan thousands of books for eBay after I scan them for Amazon.
And I probably, I know for a fact that came out with under 10 books, but I
came out with under 10 books for eBay that were worth selling for over 1299.
Like that's just the reality of it.
So give me, give me one that you would probably think a lot of people run into
or maybe something you cut out that made sense.
I mean, I'm more of a vintage seller.
So if I get stuff that I could tell is before the vintage area, I don't even
bother because I know it's pretty much worthless.
Now there are exceptions to this rule, like textbooks.
If I come across a textbook, it didn't price comp for Amazon per se.
I'll definitely look on eBay because sometimes the marketplaces are a bit
different as far as the price arrangement.
Other exceptions to that rule would probably be stuff I've sold before.
And that's a learn as you go kind of thing.
Like I've sold it.
It sells every time.
Like Stephen King, no questions asked.
He just goes in the yes file and Rice same deal.
Now, Nora Roberts, I don't care how new the book looks.
It's still in shrink wrap.
I ain't even bothering.
So there's that internal Rolodex you build over time.
But if you don't have that internal Rolodex, I would go, you can eyeball it.
Look at the paper.
If it's sparkling white, like there's one behind me there.
It may not be worth your time.
If it's a little more yellow, like the one beside it, that orange one,
maybe you should look it up because that usually is a good indicator that it's older.
The paper has aged slightly.
Also, as you do this, you become more familiar with publishers.
If you see a publisher logo that looks different or odd, like Berkeley is a
good instance of this.
So it's pocket books.
If you see the logo and the same name, but it looks really weird and different, you
should probably look it up because either that's usually an indicator that's also older.
Now outside of old books for newer books, what you should look for is granularity.
And what I mean by that, it's one thing to talk about Chevrolets, but it's a different
thing to talk about Chevrolet cars from 1957 that are painted blue.
The more granular it is, probably the more valuable it is.
Other things, people, how-to books, readers' digest, not usually worth it.
Now there are some how-to books that are worth money and there's the occasional
readers' digest that's worth money, but by and large, they're not even worth your time.
I got a process I want to know about that you haven't done yet, but it's going to come
to it, it's going to come one day or another.
Stuff that sits out on your brick and mortar shelves for X amount of days.
I don't know if you have, I don't know, we haven't talked about this.
I don't know if you have a plan.
Like if you walk in for the next five months and you see that same stupid
book sitting on that same shelf, do you have a process to either switch that out
for a new inventory, like do you have like a fresh inventory process so you
keep things moving so if I come in once a week, I'm always going to see maybe
something new, maybe something different on the shelf.
I'm not going to see your 35 bookcases of James Patterson every time I come in.
I have two things for that.
So my bricks and board bookshelves, which are over there, which I can't
really angle for you guys, they're much like this.
So you can put rows in front of each other.
So old stuff gets shoved to the back.
New stuff goes in front of those older books.
That's one way.
Second way is we do a quarterly outside sale, which was my yard sale, but
that's them all spread out.
And so whatever doesn't sell, we'll throw them before we bring them back in.
The ones that are left over, we're going to check for underlining and highlighting.
Those are going to stay on the black rack.
So we missed them the first go around.
So that circulates them out there to go away.
But when we bring them back in, they're all going to get shoved to the back.
And anything new that we've been waiting to put out, that's going to, again, go
in front of those things, but I guarantee you my outside sale, a lot of that
stuff is just going to move.
I didn't even think, see, I mean, he's already got a process in place.
He's already thinking to his next sale, probably two or three months from now.
It's like that you get the mindset of almost, cause I think the thing is once
you break it open, like once you do that one process that gets you your time back,
all of a sudden you start thinking about other things, right?
And I can, I can admit like I suck the processes.
Like if I didn't have you and Deb like making me refine the way I look at things,
like I would be just a hodgepodge mess.
Like I would always be trying to chase the dollar, the $2.
And like Deb is a huge proponent and like valuing your time and your business,
especially, I guess it's because she has a handmade business, right?
Everything she does, she makes herself.
So like your time, you have to value it at the end of the day.
And for me, I'm just like, well, what else am I going to do today?
Johnny is 95 degrees out and I don't have nothing else to do.
So like cutting out that stuff where it's just like, you feel like you
have nothing else to do.
There is something else you can do.
And I guarantee it.
You, I'd rather you sit online, book for a bulk deal.
Then then just list off, just to list off.
And I think with eBay, like, because a lot of it is like, oh, you got to list
25 a day, 30 a day and people just, they're in this mindset of, well, I got to go
list this junk on eBay every single day because that's what a reseller does.
It's like, so I can tell you right now, I did that.
I tried listing my junk until I had my brick and mortar at about, this is back
when I was doing almost 60 listings a day.
We don't do 60 listings today.
We're more like a 35, 40.
Because of that, I have 4,000 units in my store.
They will not sell at my price point.
I'd like, so I'm having to roll back the dollar value on those just to get them
out, run sales on them every day, just to clear them out.
Because when they come in to my store or through promoted listings or whatever,
I want them to land on a winner, not a loser.
I got a bunch of losers in my store.
I need to cycle out.
And I'm paying a terrible price for that right now.
Because a lot of them are losers, but now the losers are marked down to such a degree
that they're slowly moving out.
I'm about to pull the trigger on something that'll get them out really fast.
But my time and my employees time we took to list those
unvaluable items was not worth it today.
Thought it was then took some advice I shouldn't listen to, like just list it all.
Johnny, you're a bookseller.
It'll sell.
That's the way it works.
I'm here to tell you that's not the way it works.
At all. Learn from my mistakes.
Don't do it.
Don't list the junk online.
You need to list whatever your dollar, Deb's right, per hour is worth.
It ain't going to be $5 Nora Robert books.
Or, Hey, I got Nora for sale for $2.99 plus shipping right now.
She still ain't moving, man.
Don't do it.
I think I'm going to wrap it up here before we jump into the members part of this with
a, with a good, you know, I think you brought up here.
Not only do you waste your time today by having broken processes.
Johnny B has to waste his time three other times with the markdowns.
And then if it sells, he makes no money.
You're not only losing that time today.
Don't think about it.
Well, I just going to take me 10 minutes today to list this item.
Well, you got to go put it on the shelf.
If it sells, you got to go find it on the shelf.
You got to pack it, you got to take it to the post office.
This is why I think everybody needs to take a step back.
Look at your process from sourcing.
Are you walking in the thrift store?
Did a little battling around doing shopping.
Oh, look, a nice little, uh, you know, blender.
I need a blender, you know, like I'm in, I know exactly where I'm going and I'm out.
You get all, you get all this stuff that shows up at your front door for free.
All right.
Hey, I'm going to go back to the front door.
All right, hey, is it good for Amazon?
Is it good for eBay?
If not, see you later.
Bye.
We're not chasing chasing the garbage.
I mean, you, we just got to get out of this mindset.
So think about your processes moving forward in your business.
Everybody has something they can fix when it comes to their processes.
Even me, even Johnny will think of something down the road here and be like, Whoa,
why wasn't I doing this before?
It's always changing.
You're always looking at your business in a different light.
So we're going to wrap it up there.
We appreciate you all listening and we'll talk to you in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
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