Welcome back to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as a 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 guide 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, the resellers mindset podcast.
Mike as always, alongside Johnny B.
Today's topic is going to be a very interesting one and the real currency
of reselling is knowledge, right?
So I'm going to preface this by saying, well, it's, it's only money, right?
Money's the only thing that matters.
Well, reselling, you should have a lot of money because your ROI should be untouchable.
There's no other business really out there where you can buy something for a dollar
and sell it for a hundred dollars, rinse and repeat that.
So that's why it kind of got me to knowledge needs to be the currency you're focused on.
And I think about this, if I had to start this business again today and not knowing
what I know today, how much of a struggle it would be.
And that goes for eBay and Amazon, because there's going to be things you're
always learning in this business.
And I'm not just talking about like, oh, brands, right?
Oh, well, I know that this specific book or this specific t-shirt is going to sell
for X amount of dollars.
It's also business sense, understanding knowledge when it comes to building a business,
especially if you're by yourself and processes.
So I'll throw out one for me starting out is knowledge that I've developed over, over
the course of selling reselling for, I don't even know, too many years is having a schedule.
And because I think everybody starts out, does anybody really start out with a
super strict schedule as a reseller?
I don't think so.
Besides you, because you're a nerd.
Besides Johnny, I think everybody kind of just jumps into it.
And it's just one of those things where if you have time, you go do it.
If you don't have time, you don't do it.
And for me, I was that way for a while until I started surrounding myself with people
that have schedules like Johnny and my wife, Deb, sitting back there.
You know, she has her own business.
She works from home as well.
You really start to see the efficiencies of having one and how it can basically
multiply your business's success and profits.
So that was kind of a big one for me where something, if I started again today, I didn't
have a schedule, my life would be in shambles.
I'm straight up.
It would be, it would be a mess.
So what do you, what you got going on over there?
I'd say for me, at least in reselling, I was, I'm always good at listing stuff, but
for reselling in general, it's getting the suck out of the way, the first thing,
whatever the suckiest thing is that's on the shopping block that day, doing that first.
Cause as you go out throughout the day, you're just going to get naturally fatigued,
either mentally or physically.
So whatever the hard task or the one you dislike the most, cause everybody's
going to be different, right?
Cause even my employee, she likes different tasks than I do.
So the suck for her is much different than the suck for me.
But I find if I start my day with that instead of end it or try to do it in the
mental, in the middle, I'm much more efficient throughout the entire day.
That that works for me.
And it also works for her.
Well, what's, you can't just say that, you know, you hate something, a part of
your business and not tell us what that I'll, I'll tell you what mine is as an Amazon
seller and I'm very vocal about this.
It's peeling off the stupid stickers and the pieces of tape that these thrift stores
like to put on their CDs or DVDs and their books it's, and I'm like you, I,
that's the first thing I get done.
Right?
Well, I, I mean, I guess I don't have a choice because I got to peel the sticker off.
No, because people are, resellers are crazy.
I'm sure somebody labels their stuff for Amazon before peeling off the stickers.
So for me, I peel all the stickers off and that is like, that is my definition of suck.
I'm sure it's nothing in comparison to the suck you're about to say, but listen,
dude, my suck can be different.
Absolutely. The funny part is she loves stickering books.
That's her favorite thing to do here for the Amazon.
She loves putting the stickers over the things you're taking off.
But for me, the suck is honestly, this is going to shock people prepared to be shocked
listings, getting the listings done.
I don't mind.
I don't mind listings.
It's one of those things, but doing it every day, it sucks.
There's some days that suck more than others.
Especially when you're doing a high amount of listings.
Like when I was doing 50, 60s, getting up at five, leaving at like five in the morning,
leaving at like 11 midnight, 1 a.m.
to get the 50, 60 in every day.
That was brutal.
It was rough.
It was very, very rough.
And anybody who does high volumes of listings, they have the kind of the same mentality.
We do it.
Doesn't mean we like it.
I got a fun fact.
I hate listing on eBay so much.
I don't do it.
I have like one pocket of like eBay energy juju in about every three months of my life.
And I'll sit down and I'll do like, you know, 14 scheduled out listings for one a day.
And I'm like, oh, my God, this is like, it's like literally dragging a kid to do something
that he does not want to do.
I'm kicking and screaming, cursing the storage unit.
It's like a whole.
So I 100% agree.
It's like you there's different things when it comes to understanding knowledge.
And that kind of like a process.
But I guess we'll kind of throw out like the knowledge of understanding and sourcing
and just understanding the stuff you're selling.
So for me, as media, we're scanning thousands of items a week.
Right.
None of this little sissy stuff where I go in and I only pick and choose certain things
off the shelf to scan.
Now, you have to scan everything.
So your knowledge base is always going to be developing if you are paying attention.
And this is kind of another argument I can make when I tell people to to look at their
phones and see what's going on when they're out there scanning is, are you actually paying
attention when you're looking at the shelf?
Me and Doug were talking about this yesterday.
If I'm trying to do a task, right, maybe I'm doing something related to my business bookkeeping
or something and I have a video going and I got a podcast in my ear.
Right.
Are you really focusing on what you're doing in front of you?
And I would argue a lot of Amazon sellers that go out with their earbuds in, you know,
they probably got a podcast in this year and then they're just listening for that green
sound in the other year and they're just grabbing books and they're really not understanding
what's on the shelves that they're even scanning.
Like people don't even know what's going on.
And sure, that that's a way you're going to be faster, but you lose out on all that knowledge
because if you scan that same stupid book five times and you see it's not worth it,
it's never going to be worth it.
Then you have that in your bank that, OK, I'm not messing with that.
That's one I can skip every single time I see it in a thrift store.
And for me, I've become so much more efficient when it comes to scanning because I know the
authors that aren't going to be worth it.
Right.
And sure, everybody knows the common ones.
You know, you're Nora Roberts, you're Patterson, you're Clancy's like we all know to skip those,
but there's a lot of other ones you develop if you're paying attention while you're out
actually sourcing.
That's a very good point.
There's a lot of knowledge that you build up just by doing this business.
There's something to be said trial by fire.
Right.
Because they're books.
Right.
What's worth money?
What's not?
You don't really know.
You're just starting out.
It's just developed over time.
So I would say something that's going to be knowledgeable on is not just authors, as you
mentioned, but publishers.
There's certain publishing houses and I mentioned a few Eastern Press, Folio Society, Heritage
Press, Limited Edition Club.
There's lots of them.
And if you know what they are, they're just immediate pickups for you.
It's the same with some authors.
Like when I see a Stephen King book, I just yank it.
Not that it's worth a lot of money, but I know if I list it, it will sell.
It's 100% guaranteed to sell if your name is Mr. Stephen King.
I got an interesting take right now.
If you think that I knew anything about books, CDs or DVDs when I started this business,
you are 100% dead wrong.
The used book guy, he barely reads.
He keeps one bathroom book and that's about it.
That's all there is to it.
I don't have a huge collection.
I don't even have a bookcase of books.
I maybe have a stack of 20 books that are just personal collections from Halloween and
horror movies and things that interest me.
So the idea that you have to know everything before you start is 100% wrong because I started
literally with no knowledge.
And I literally, from the point I started to where I am today, it was all obtained throughout
the time.
And as you continue, you should always be learning.
I don't think anybody ever reaches a point where they know everything about the category
they sell.
And sure, you might know a lot, but there's always some other hidden gems out there.
I mean, I think about it, like, I'm curious, what was your like, because you got all these,
you're big into these sci-fi books.
Like, were you like a huge reader and collector before you started, or was this something
that you kind of developed over the past few years?
Yeah, I mean, I don't like reading sci-fi.
I like watching sci-fi.
I like reading fantasy, specifically grimdark fantasy, which is everybody you know and love
is going to die kind of books.
Yeah, but like, you know, like, different artists on your books, right?
You tell me all the time, like, oh, this is, you know, this is Johnny B's little brother.
He's a great artist.
If you get his stuff, you know, to sell it.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
When you tell me these things, I'm like, how do you even under how do you even get to that
point of knowing that, oh, this is XYZ's art on this book.
And I know this, you know, this artist, that book's going to sell just because of the cover
art.
Like, how did you ever get to that point?
Well, before I started reselling, I did work at a book publishing house and we made RPG
books and we worked with a lot of artists and we bunch of nerds, we like the older artists.
And so for artists, just like writers, they'll write for different publishing houses, just
like artists will make art for different publishing houses.
And I've seen a lot of the older art.
They also not just RPG books, they went on fantasy books and fantasy.
So I was familiar with a lot of those are older artists because I've seen their work
before.
For those who don't know about cover art on books, usually they'll have their little
signatures somewhere on the image itself.
It's usually in the corner somewhere, somewhere out of the way.
It's very faint, but you can see it.
Also, sometimes they actually mention the illustrator like around the copyright pages.
But even before that, I was always into reading.
And I think cool art's cool.
So when I see it, I like it.
And I was an active reader.
I still am an active reader.
I'm not reading any book at the moment, but I pick up a couple, I don't know, maybe 20,
30 books a year that I read.
It's mainly for pleasure reading and occasionally some educational reading as well because I
like business.
So sometimes I'll pick up a business book here and there.
My primary reading is for enjoyment purposes.
The line I should have started this podcast out with was how much are you willing to pay
to know every brand, every Bolo in the niche you sell in?
You can't put a monetary number on this, right?
That's why we say knowledge is the currency of reselling, not the money you make.
Because if you had all of the knowledge, the money you make would be infinite.
You would know every single brand when you walk in a store.
You know every single style, every single publisher, every single thing that's going
to make you money.
And we kind of get carried away with chasing the low dollar stuff.
And we really don't pay attention when we're doing things in the business and that there's
so much money we've all passed over in thrift stores because we just don't have the knowledge
base to understand that.
And you can develop this over time.
So for me, like if I had to say, how am I gaining knowledge today, right?
Like I'm sitting here saying that I'm getting smarter as the days go by.
Well, every time I'm out thrifting, I'm paying attention to everything that's on the shelf,
right?
This isn't just me going in, zoning out, goofing off, not paying any attention to anything
going on.
And I think a big thing that kind of has elevated my knowledge is you surround yourself with
people that are smarter than you.
And for me, it's not hard to find people that know a lot more about books than I do or I
did a year ago, right?
And a lot of people, they're hesitant to maybe, I don't know, reach out or get in a group
where they can be surrounded by people that have a lot of knowledge.
Because listen, if you're not willing to accept that you're the dumbest person in the room,
it's hard for you to get in a group where everybody seems to be smarter than you.
And I think it is, I don't even think it's, for me, I could care less.
If I'm learning from Johnny, there's plenty of other people in multiple groups that have
so much more knowledge than me.
I'm perfectly fine.
Listen, I'm here to learn as much as I can.
It's going to make me more money in the long run.
But I'm here to tell you a lot of people don't want to be the quote unquote dumbest person
in the room because a lot of people feel a certain type of way.
I'm the complete opposite, thankfully.
I don't know nothing about this, but lay it on me.
What do you know?
I can soak up as much information as possible.
So for me, surrounding yourself with like-minded people and paying attention when you're out
in the thrift stores is how you're going to grow that knowledge base.
And as Amazon, it's different than eBay, right?
eBay you can, maybe you can spend 20, 30 minutes a day looking up sold comps, different brands,
things like that.
And it might not seem like a lot, it might sound cheesy, right?
Because to me that sounds like, oh, why am I looking at eBay sold listings when I could
be watching Chucky on TV?
It's like a 30 minute scroll on eBay looking through different brands, sorting by what's
sold that you're just instantly leveling up your brain, right?
And it's not, not everything's going to pay off.
You might never find that item you've seen on eBay, but you know, if you come across
that item, hey, you're grabbing that thing right off the shelf and it's not even up for
debate.
You know, all right, this one's going to make me probably a hundred, $200.
What he just said is probably one of the most important things that he's probably said on
this podcast.
You don't need to be the smartest guy in the room.
Having access to the smartest guy is good enough.
And honestly, here's the other part of that lesson, knowing what questions to ask.
Mike is really good about asking questions and here are the six questions and knowing
what order to put these questions in.
Who, what, where, why, how, and to what extent?
With that, you can solve any problem, but knowing which order and who to ask, if you
can't come up with an answer or only part of those answers that takes, that takes time
to master.
But you may want to rewind that to write down those six questions, but those six questions
will solve any problem.
Even if you need to go ask somebody to get the answer to one of those six questions.
Listen, you're going to, you're always going to have the wise remarks from these know it
all resellers that are going to be like, wait a minute.
You don't know how to combine items when you ship an eBay order, right?
To the same person, right?
You're always going to have some idiot out there.
That's just going to be sarcastic.
That's the reality of the internet, but somebody out there is going to give you the correct
answer and a quick and easy tutorial on how to exactly do what you're doing.
Don't be afraid to ask questions and understand, you know, what's working for other people,
right?
Like what is Johnny selling a lot of?
What is Mike selling a lot of?
And it's all out there.
I mean, there's nothing to hide when it comes to reselling anymore.
Sure.
There are still a few business models that are kept under, you know, lock and key, but
for the most part, every Bolo is out there.
I mean, I think about like that tech video he put out a few weeks back, it's got, he
just walks around with this, this, this, that is literally walking around randomly.
Yeah.
That is what I strive to be when it comes to media.
I want to be able to walk in, look at shelves and say, this is not going to sell for X,
Y, Z reason.
This is going to sell for this much for X, Y, Z reason.
There's so much that goes into it.
And I can relate to this because I've been, I've been finding a lot of Jimmy Buffett and
Taylor Swift and the thrift stores do the CDs.
They're just popping up everywhere.
And if you don't know no better, right?
You would think, Oh, Taylor Swift, she's super popular stuff.
Isn't going to sell for much Jimmy Buffett.
You know what happened with him?
Suzanne, Summers just died too.
Things like this, there's trends in the market that are going to boost the value of these
items.
And you have to be connected to what is actually going on out there and understanding, Hey,
all right.
Well, Taylor Swift, the hottest thing on the market.
Yeah, this was, you probably could buy this CD for $5 two years ago, but now it's a $30
CD.
Same with Jimmy Buffett.
Doesn't matter what CD it is, you're going to get 30 bucks for it all day long.
These are things you have to understand and when you see, you know, and especially if
you're one of these people that doesn't have a lot of time or maybe you're a part-timer
where your time is the most valuable thing you have.
So you can't afford to walk around the store and look everything up on your phone.
You need to have the knowledge base.
I would almost argue if you're part-time, you need to be on the eBay sold listings more
than somebody that's full time because you don't have the time to spend in the store
to look everything up.
Coming off of that, how do you get the time to get the knowledge if you're the person
without the time?
Well, that 15 minutes you're standing in the CVS line to fill a prescription, you could
be listening to a podcast like this one.
The 20 minute car ride to CVS in general.
Well, you can be doing the same kind of thing.
15 minutes before you go to bed, maybe you watch a YouTube video or read some forums
or do some research on like a publisher I mentioned in that podcast while you're waiting
for that, for your prescription at CVS.
Maybe I mentioned Eastern Press and you spend that 15 minutes to look up Eastern Press stuff.
What's valuable on that or do eBay sold comps.
15 minutes when you wake up, you can get the knowledge over time.
You're not going to cram like in college for an exam, but you can squeeze in five minutes
here, 10 minutes there, 15 minutes here.
You can do this.
There is time in the day figuring out how, hey, one of those key questions to utilize
your time and when you can answer those questions, you can figure this all out as time goes on.
Eventually, you become an expert in what you're doing.
Every niche on reselling, in reselling has bolos, has brands that are valuable, has brands
that aren't valuable.
Like I'm trying to think like every single category that's out there, there's stuff that's
really expensive and there's stuff that is dirt cheap.
No matter what you're selling in, media, clothing, shoes, jewelry, cards, you're always going
to have the junk stuff and you're always going to have the valuable stuff.
The more knowledge you get where you can see the valuable stuff through all of the junk
because most of the time, there's a whole lot more junk than there is valuable stuff.
You have to be able to be like, okay, all right, this is a one second decision.
I'm flipping through.
You have an infinite supply of whatever you're selling in and you only have a certain amount
of time to get as much as you can.
It's almost like those cheesy game show things where they put you in the cage and you got
to grab all the money while it's flying around and you only got 30 seconds.
I want you to be able in those 30 seconds to go through as many items as you can and
make the most amount of money.
That's basically what this whole knowledge game is.
You being able to save your time and pick out the big winners because we all pass off
tons of valuable stuff.
I didn't even know what are they called?
The nice gilded books you were just talking about, the Franklin libraries, the East End
Press.
Yeah, East End Press, Folio Society, Limited Edition Club.
Some of them aren't gilded by the way.
They just go off shiny pages.
Most people you ask, how much money do you want to make with reselling?
The most common answer is 100 grand.
100 grand divided by 365 days is $273.97 profit.
If you do it to the day, your goal is to get $273.97 a day in net profit back to you.
It means you got to farm out at least $500 a day worth of stuff to you.
Now, there's some wiggle room here.
Let's say you miss a day or you only want to do this on the weekend.
If you miss a day, well, that means you got to divide it out by the rest of the week.
You can do this.
If you want $100,000 a month, you can do it.
There's a little bit of math I just did for you to figure that out.
$273, it means you're going to at least need double that when you go out sourcing a day.
A day, yes.
There is a lot that goes into the overall idea of knowledge and growing a business and
processes.
It's not just BOLOs.
You can have all the BOLOs in the world, but if your thrift store sucks and you're not
willing to build a relationship with somebody at a flea market, then you go bye-bye.
That's just the reality of it.
Knowledge is a lot more deeper than, oh, I just know XYZ sells and XYZ doesn't sell.
It's about building your business the right way with processes, having connections, building
relationships that way.
Usually when you build a relationship with somebody, you're going to get something from
the relationship besides just product.
In most cases, unless it's just like you're plain old supplier, you're going to be able
to understand, hey, what is this person doing in their business?
Everybody has a different set of BOLOs in their mind.
No two people are the same when it comes to their BOLO list or what they're looking out
for.
That's a good way to look at it and wrap up this call here before we jump over to the
members part is no two people have the same knowledge in reselling.
You have a normal conversation.
I can go in any reselling group and say, hey, what are the top five things you've sold that
I should be on the lookout for?
I highly doubt somebody will give you the same five items and you could probably could
ask an infinite amount of people.
Nobody's going to give you the same five exact items that they look out for, that they've
sold for a lot of money in reselling.
I mean, what do you think?
You think somebody would ever give you the same five?
I don't even think it's possible.
You can get me, Max, and Caleb in here.
We tend to deal in the older stuff and I guarantee you all three of us are going to have a different
list, all three of us.
Yeah.
It's a cool way to look at it that every single reseller you're around has a different BOLO
list than you.
All it takes is a simple, hey, what's been working for you lately?
What are some brands that are working for you lately?
People are hesitant to do that.
I just want everybody to get out of their shell and surround yourself with people that
are smarter than you.
If you're the smartest one in the room, you're always going to be learning.
It's all right to throw out some bones to us peons down here that don't know nothing.
Hey, Johnny, give me something, Johnny.
I don't know what I'm doing.
I got no problem asking.
If Johnny sells a little trade paperback for $100, he better tell me what it is.
He knows he don't have a choice and I'm like, all right, well, this is the reality of it.
Me having Johnny and I tell Johnny what sells for a lot.
Johnny tells me what sells for a lot.
I mean, we all live happily ever after.
This is a magnet of a very expensive book I have.
It's magnetized on my trashcan.
For those listening to the podcast, if you want to know what I'm talking about, you need
to subscribe to the used book guy.
This book right here is $400 every time you find it.
Max has sold this and I have sold this.
Again, come to the YouTube channel and subscribe if you want to find out what this book is.
It's Ebola for you.
All right, we're going to wrap it up here.
We appreciate everybody listening.
We'll talk to everybody in next week's episode.
Welcome back to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as a 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 guide 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.