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 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 to another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike alongside the beard, Johnny B.
Will you ever shave that beard?
Hmm.
I've been thinking about it lately.
Whoa.
He might be a changed man for those watching over on YouTube.
I mean, I don't, I've never seen you beardless.
So that would be, you know, a crazy maybe.
I look like I'm 20 years old if I shave it, cause this is where all my gray is
located, it's in the beard, a little bit in the air now.
I'm starting to get a little in the hair, but yeah.
We're going to be talking about re-examining your reselling business.
And this is important.
I'm not talking about maybe the overall like, Oh my God, I got to change
everything about my business, but maybe revisiting things that you already have
in your business, right?
Like going back and repricing inventory, different types of things like that.
It is super important, whether you sell on eBay or Amazon to have these tasks
in place, and I guess I'll kind of just start it off with Amazon.
You have FBA, Amazon fulfills your items and you have FBM fulfilled by Mike.
In my case is I fulfill my items for you, which is fulfilled by merchant.
You fulfill the orders that you get.
And me and Johnny kind of came to this conclusion probably over a year ago is
you always want to go back and revisit things you have listed to see has
something changed on that listing.
Is this FBM item now good for FBA? Do we need to lower the price?
Can we raise the price in a lot of situations?
So we thought to ourselves, what's a good timeframe for an Amazon seller to go
back and revisit their inventory that they have listed FBM?
And we came to the conclusion about once every two months is probably a good
timeframe, depending on how large your inventory is, because at the end of the
day, Johnny's got thousands of books, right?
It's not like, Oh, I'm going to pop in for 15 minutes and go through all
of these. This is for him.
This is a week, two week task of slowly going back through everything.
So it is important to revisit things here when it comes to Amazon.
And when it comes to eBay, Johnny, I know Johnny has a few things that he does.
So I'm going to throw it over to him and he can give a little bit of insight on
revisiting old things that he's done.
Yeah.
I mean, I've done a lot of, well, let me try this.
I've never done it before.
Let me try that.
I've never done it before.
And then you kind of need to sit on those experiments for the more, the more you
sit on these experiments and let them run their course, the more accurate data
you have now on a shorter time scale, like a month, you can get some initial data
in, but let's just say that was a bad month for that type of experiment given
the world at large or what the platform's doing as far as updates go.
And it may not be as accurate.
So the longer you give it, you can see the long-term effects of that
experiment, like even raising your listing goal as an experiment.
You're not going to see the results of that for a very long time.
If you stay consistent with it.
Um, some things that I've done this year of is I've, I've tried lowering it to
rock bottom to get a higher STR, which is just more turnover because if you sell
enough, you get more money.
I've tried it on the other end where I've raised them to, well, in some cases.
10 to 15 times more than what they're worth to see, okay, I'm selling
less, but I'm getting about the same amount of money that was the result of
that experiment, but then again, You're storing this stuff and it's just gonna,
it's just going to continue to build.
Um, and then, um, where I initially started was I was kind of somewhere
in the middle of these two.
Um, so.
And dialing the knob here, dialing it up there until you've got it fully dialed
in takes an exorbitant amount of time.
It's taking about two years to see everything.
I don't think there's unless eBay adds something in new.
I don't think there's an experiment I can run right now that I have not tried.
Um, it's tough because like what you said, you have to give something a real shot.
I think this, this doesn't even just apply to resell.
I, this is like one of my like life quotes, right?
You can't really quit something if you never really gave it an actual shot.
And an actual shot is actually doing everything you're supposed to do and
give it in a certain timeframe.
And it ain't no day and ain't no week.
It's not a month, especially with resell them.
You have to give things a season, give it three months, give it a serious shot.
All right.
You're going to make this change.
I think what happens, I know, I don't think I know what happens here is everybody
needs the instant gratification.
If I'm going to up my listeners, Johnny, from five to 10, then I immediately
better to be selling double by the end of next week, or this is stupid, right?
That's, that's the initial reaction you get from a lot of people.
And I do think there is so much to be said about giving something the right
amount of time to see if it actually works.
Like even in promoted listings, I've cranked the knob on that hard.
And I'll admit, I didn't like what I was seeing as far as dollars back.
And I ended the experiment pretty soon days, not even a week.
And it was like, huh, so I'm getting a lot more traffic, but am I selling
more wasn't looking that way.
So I ended it pretty quickly.
Also the net dollars back wasn't that great.
I mean, I did some number crunching before I pull down that lever because
that does affect my take home money, but actually seeing it, the actual data
and not Excel math data, which is pretty accurate.
It was like, eh, weighing the outcomes.
I'm not really selling more.
It's not really worth doing.
But I didn't give it a long enough shot to be fair.
That was one of the experiments that I kind of wish I get a little bit more
time and I'll be fair, I'll be fair to myself.
And like, I didn't give it enough time.
I, um, I've had a few of those as well.
Um, lots of books.
I tried that route, lot in books up different sets, buying every Harry Potter
I see for under a buck of the thrift stores and building sets.
I think there is a model where that can work.
What for my specific business at that specific time, it's just not worth it.
Right.
And I think this is kind of, you know, what's your time look like, right?
Are you part-time?
Are you full-time?
What interests you?
What are you seeing out in your stores?
Right.
Because I can't all of a sudden want to be the lock guy.
If I'm never seeing Harry Potter's, uh, you know, hunger games books out there.
I, as much as I want to be the lock guy, you have to play to what's available to
you.
You can't just magically all of a sudden, you know, I can't magically be the
video game guy because I don't have the video game.
So like, it's one of those things that's a balancing act where maybe something
interests you.
Maybe, maybe it's a different category altogether, right?
Maybe I sell books and I'm really in the trading cards, right?
I want to be a Pokemon seller.
So where can you fit this into the business to where you're not taken away
from the business that's actually working and making money?
I think that's a huge thing because a lot of people are like, well, I want to
try this.
I want to do this.
And I want to be, uh, the Pokemon guy and I want to be the sneaker guy.
And I think what happens, you just become wishy washy on everything.
And then that's the end of, you know, the used book guy.
Yeah.
And, uh, it even applies outside of like eBay and Amazon, like even my storefront.
Uh, we were very, let's not organize a darn thing and let's let it rip.
But I noticed if I take a few minutes here in there, or I have a volunteer use
her time to organize a little bit, like a prime example of this, we put all the
Westerns together on a shelf once to see what happened.
Well, well, that day somebody put them all in a box.
And they walked out the store, which got me space, which I could put more
desirable per item books out, but there's some labor that went into that.
I think that's a big takeaway with me on the storefront.
I know I'm only talking to one, 100th of a percent of you out there, but, um,
you got to treat every aspect of your business with excellence, even the lowest
profitable thing other than like cutting that lowest thing off entirely getting
rid of it.
Um, but if you're making it part of your business model, you got to treat it all
with excellence.
From the highest making thing to the lowest making thing, because the little
things matter every step along the way that you put in to those things matter
in the grand hole.
Cause maybe one day this becomes more profitable than this thing over here.
If you put in the time today on it, you waste more time doing things half ass
too, right?
Cause I'm going to, I'm going to attest to this right now.
Uh, anybody that knows me, I have the most pathetic eBay store, uh, out there
when it comes to, you know, probably any eBay seller that's on social media or
YouTube, it's got his, you know, 5,000 plus subscribers has a better eBay store
than me.
I'm perfectly fine with that.
And what I realized is Johnny, if I sit down and I say, I'm going to take today
to do eBay, it's the most unrefined slowest process.
And it just, I finally realized this currently is a waste of my time.
I can spend my time better in other places.
In other places in my business and make money now down the road, maybe
something happens.
Maybe I can revisit that, but if I can't sit down and dedicate the time to do it
correctly, it just doesn't make sense to do it at all because what happens here?
I agree with that.
Yeah.
It's a lot of reselling businesses.
They don't do it right.
And they just waste time.
And all of a sudden, you know, you didn't do anything right.
So you just wasted your time because if you don't do it right, it's not going
to sell, it's not, you're never going to get the traffic no matter how much
you promote or this or that.
So it was, you know, yeah, I mean, I can go over to Etsy right now and have
a kick ass Etsy store if I put in the time and did it right.
That's the thing doing it right.
And exorbitant amount of time is Etsy is a lot of work to make that look right.
And to get customers.
I have an easier life with eBay and Amazon than I would on Etsy.
Cause if I were to do Etsy full scale, full time, it would be, I would probably
be going bed at like 2 AM every night.
Cause you got to make the lots, you got to do the fancy packaging, got to do
the fancy wording, you got to make it all look nice.
That's easy.
I respect Etsy sellers a lot more.
I know we kind of make fun of them from time to time, the community at large,
but those guys work hard too.
They really do.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that style of business.
As long as that's what you're going to do with excellence, right?
If that's going to be the route you want to go, it's perfectly fine to, I guess
this will kind of take us into like transforming your business almost into a
completely different business.
And this happens a lot, right?
People start selling books and especially on Amazon books are like the gateway
drug and everybody moves on from books to sell something else, right?
And it's, it can be the same with eBay.
Maybe you start selling, you know, books and all of a sudden you're like, well,
you know, I enjoy selling books, but I would really, really enjoy if I
sold vintage t-shirts, if I sold, you know, lamps, something like that.
And there is something to be said about just because you sell this thing today
doesn't mean you can't change and become something else tomorrow, but you have to
give yourself the transition period of, and this kind of goes for like being an
eBay and Amazon seller, right?
Or like going from one platform as your focus to the other.
Yeah.
You got to give yourself runway to get there.
So you don't lose anything from the thing that's making you all the money today,
but you're slowly growing this to replace this thing that you no longer want to
do or the platform you no longer want to sell on.
Right.
I mean, even myself, I took a hard look over the last few months of the two
platforms I'm on now, including the storefront and we'll be making some
changes over here and our end next year.
It'll probably be more Amazon focused than eBay focused.
I won't go into the exact details on it, but knowing your numbers, I mean, we
talk about that a lot looking at it and the scalability of it.
I know the scalability on eBay.
I know it very well.
I know the scalability on Amazon now that I've had a new data set.
Now Amazon could change the rules on us at any point, and then you make an
adjustment and it may be, okay, based off this adjustment, yes, we're keeping
Amazon in, but we're going to put more of our efforts back on eBay.
And then next year it's the reverse.
So it's just kind of a pendulum swinging effect kind of deal.
And let's complicate things.
Like, I mean, I've talked about going into Walmart.
So maybe Walmart's producing the most money after I've had some time.
Again, time, this is all about a time game to examine the numbers and what it's producing.
Oh, Amazon was number one.
Walmart's now number one to me and eBay is at the bottom here.
And then the next year, the musical chair effect happens.
So you got to adjust with, I think it was actually Tech who said this, and
he's like, what platform are you making the most money on?
That's where most of your effort should be going.
You got to examine that.
If you're making more money on eBay, go to eBay.
Yeah. And a lot of it really depends on what you sell.
And I kind of took the approach of, yeah, I have an eBay store, but like I basically do the,
I send my stuff off to somebody else that thinks it's worth it to sell on eBay.
And then I take a cut of that.
So, you know, it's one of those things where there are ways where you can be involved in platforms
and, you know, you just relationships, right?
We always talk about this is, you know, transforming your business is a way to get
involved in the business.
And so, you know, transforming your business can also be based on, you know, a relationship
you find or come across, right?
If all of a sudden I have this relationship with a recycling company and they say I can
get all the books I want for the rest of my life for two cents a pound.
All of a sudden you got to step back and say, okay, I can get an infinite amount of these
products, whether it's books, CDs, DVDs.
What does it make for me to change my business or pivot the way my business currently is?
Maybe that's a price point, right?
The big thing with eBay is we want to list things for me that are at least 20 bucks,
right?
I'm going to not listen to anything that's under $20.
So maybe if you have this infinite amount of cheap books or even free books, you can
lower that a little bit if you're fine with putting in the extra time on the back end
because as you lower that, you know, ASP, you're going to have more items that you're
going to have to prep, list, customer service, pack and ship.
So there are balances to kind of changing who your business is today into something
else.
So like, let's kind of go down a rabbit hole here, right?
So you got to pivot out of books altogether, media altogether.
Where are you going and how are you doing it?
So no books, no media.
I would probably go, I wouldn't do clothes because even though that's abundance.
I wouldn't do unclothes, no shot.
I'd probably go something more commodity based upper end, but it's still like desirable,
like maybe not antiques either.
It would probably be the equivalent of like maybe I have a pocket watch seller, but my
pocket watches are $200 ASP.
I wouldn't be doing the bulk game anymore or maybe I am and I still end up with a lot
of junk watches.
What do I do with those junk watch, junk pocket watches?
Or maybe I go tools.
I know we have a big tool time seller in our group actually.
And maybe I'm just the tractor tool guy.
I would go something higher end that people buy, but it's not everybody that buys those
things.
It's a smaller buying pool, but a bigger margin for those buyers.
That's the route I'd probably end up going because right now I'm in the bulk game.
I have low cost of goods, but my rate of return is huge, but I'd probably go the other end
of the spectrum if I were to not have access to media anymore.
So let's take a look at this.
Right.
So you decide starting in December, you're going to be the pocket watch guy and it's
day one.
So what does that look like for you as your transition begins?
You're going to continue to do everything that you currently do in the book business.
And now you have to find a way to fit in the pocket watch business.
So just like, what do you think you would do if that was the real case scenario?
Well, based off my book business, I know I've never seen a pocket watch outside of auction
houses.
So I would be creating a list of auction houses and then seeing what's available to me
right then, right there.
And then because of the book business, I would look at lots online, eBay lots or Macari lots
or Etsy lots, whatever.
I'm like, okay, if I'm paying up because I'm in the pocket watch game, I know I'm going
to be paying up opposed to books.
What do my margins need to look like?
What do I need to clear?
Is my goal to clear $50 every time or is my goal to clear 50% every time, 50% of what
I put in?
So basically I would have to come up with an online Rolodex of sourcing because it's
no longer me going out to the thrift store.
Because if you're finding pocket watches, thrift stores, I'm more power to you.
And I'd like to know where those are, but I know I can't go out and get them.
I have to order them.
The inventory has to come to me in this scenario.
Honestly, I might, this is going to sound horrible.
This is something I probably would do.
I would call funeral homes.
What do they do with that stuff?
The leftover stuff or places that deal with dead people, not necessarily funeral homes,
the police stations and stuff, the lost and found stuff.
What do you guys do with the pocket watches you come across?
Does it go somewhere?
Where does it go?
So basically I'd be full on investigation mode because this is a new thing.
They're not like books.
They're opposite of books.
I think you kind of hit it on the head.
It's like, if you have this idea of something you really want to do and switch your business to,
you can spend the time today to get the knowledge and maybe iron out some of the logistics of maybe
chasing this dream of selling in this category you're so passionately want to sell in.
And this happens a lot because a lot of people start reselling.
And like you said, maybe they do clothes and then they realize I got to do all the measurements
and things like this and they want to get out of clothes and they don't know where to go.
I think do something that you're passionate about.
It's going to be a lot easier and you're going to be a lot more motivated to sit down
and gain the knowledge.
If you're really into pocket watches, you don't have no problem looking up sold comps on eBay
for pocket watches, going on the internet, trying to find who's selling pocket watches.
But if it's something you're not interested in, and I think this is super important,
if you're going to pivot your business completely, it has to be something you're interested in,
you yourself.
Johnny can't tell me, Mike, I really like pocket watches.
I think you can make a whole bunch of money.
You should become the pocket watch guy.
I'm going to tell Johnny to go pound sand and people should do the same.
I know you see these other people, right?
Vintage t-shirts, Johnny, oh my God, there's so much money to be made.
And they get in their head that, well, forget cleaning shoes and selling shoes.
I want to do vintage t-shirts because look how much they're selling for.
You shouldn't base your decision based off of somebody else's successes.
Just especially the successes they're only showing on the internet.
Like that's really no matter what the business is,
they're not showing you the downside of selling vintage t-shirts, selling books, selling stuff.
Now, it'd be fun and I would have no way how to do it.
How do I sell precious metals?
Because that price does not change.
The listing price is what the listing price is.
Well, I'm not going to say that.
It can go up and down based off the value of the precious metal.
If I sold platinum online or gold online or silver online,
that would be amazing.
But where the heck do I get that stuff?
I have no idea.
Well, I mean, an idea is going getting all scrap stuff and melting it down to produce it myself.
Sure.
Or again, maybe I hit the auction houses and get all the little gold coins that aren't worth anything
and melt them down to make gold bars.
That's how I would right now today.
That's my only idea of how to start a business like that.
I think a lot of resellers, probably 90% of them,
would be happy-go-lucky little bunny rabbits out in the field
if they just sold stuff that they were passionate about.
Regardless of how the market was, the comments come in and hit the earth,
the fees are going up.
If you're really into what you sell, it's so much easier.
And for me, because everybody's like, well, Mike, you don't even read books.
Well, guess what?
I'm literally Mr. Krabs.
I enjoy money.
And if a book is going to make me the money and I can easily get them,
they're in my area and I understand how the business works,
that is my motivation.
It's not so much the, oh, I'm really passionate about books.
I'm an avid reader.
If you are and you're selling books, you've got one leg up on me
because you're more motivated to go out and maybe find your rare book
that you want for yourself or you see cool books, signed books, things like that.
You should definitely be more motivated than me, who's just after the dollar,
because this is something that interests you.
No, I agree with that.
I like books.
I read books.
Not every book I list, I like that book, but I do like books in general,
and I do read, and I agree with you.
If I didn't do that, I probably wouldn't work the amount of hours.
I would probably switch niches at this point if I wasn't into books.
I really would.
Yeah, I think everybody would be more happy if they just sold on a category
they actually had some interest in and with anything, right?
Interests come and go in life, right?
Maybe you're really into this right now and you'll be into something else,
but we kind of just laid out the plan for you.
You can always pivot your business as long as you do it the right way
and understand everything that comes with it, right?
So we have the experience of selling large amounts of books.
How does that translate to something else?
You put the same principles in place, understand it's going to be the same exact business,
just a different type of product you're more passionate about,
but you can't get blinded by the fact that just because you're passionate about something,
you can make it into a business.
That doesn't work 90% of the time just because you have this passion to cook egg sandwiches.
You can't just go open a food truck and spend X amount of dollars
and think you're going to be successful.
It does not work like that no matter how excited you are to sell something.
Right. I mean, there's a person that I think you nailed it right there.
There's a person that may have all the passion in the world,
but they're not a business person.
They don't know how to do business.
It's like somebody buying a stadium and trying to run a sports league.
A lot of the time they fail.
A lot of the time they fail when they do that because they're just passionate about that thing.
Because they bought a stadium, they got some money behind it.
So they have some business knowledge, but most of them don't do so well.
Or it's like, I don't know, what was it?
Michael Jordan going to play golf or baseball.
I mean, he did all right, but he tried to translate he's an athlete.
Doesn't mean he's an athlete in every sport.
He is athletic. Yes.
I do think with these transitions you have on your mind,
or maybe you're thinking about switching categories today,
I think it is super important that you cash flow that business from the current one you have.
I don't think it's smart to all of a sudden tomorrow, I want to be the pocket watch guy.
And I have a business line of credit that I'm going to take out
to just jump headfirst into this whole new business,
because you think it's going to be successful as the one you have today.
And I think a lot of people, you could be misconstrued that,
well, if I'm successful selling books, Johnny, then I can be just as successful
or more successful selling sneakers because I love sneakers.
I think that's 100% a trap. Yep.
That's the trap you're going to fall into because you think you have success in one category.
And you can't just pivot and switch to something completely different.
And especially depending on what you're selling.
Right. My wife, Deb, she sells cat and dog toys on Etsy and Shopify.
So she can't just wake up and decide that she's going to sell skunk toys.
Right. Like you have a customer base.
You have built these processes specifically around this.
You can't say, well, I'm going to take a loan.
And all of a sudden, I'm going to be the skunk toy seller.
Right. It don't work like that.
Right. I mean, going to shoes, man, that's a transition because there's cleaning.
The photos are all different.
If you're doing this on eBay, if you're doing on Amazon, whatever, I guess.
Can you sell you shoes on Amazon or is it just new shoes?
I think it's just new.
Yeah. So there's no cleaning.
So you're looking at online arbitrage or RA arbitrage at that point.
So do you have box stores you can go to to even do RA or not?
Or okay. So now you're in the OA game alone solely if you don't.
And now you've got to figure out how to source faster
and better than anybody else is doing OA shoes.
How do you do that?
So you get your little slash the pie.
I can tell you right now, me trying to do that today, like if I said, okay,
no more books, I'm doing shoes, I would struggle.
I would struggle hard for six months before I figured anything,
got any competitive edge at all.
I think the biggest takeaway that we talked about today is
if you take your time and your transition and you see things aren't working,
but you're still maintaining that main business,
that gives you the opportunity to wash your hands and say,
okay, this experiment was fun, Johnny.
I tried it for two, three months, maybe even a month, maybe even two weeks.
Maybe this person decides to sell shoes like you're saying.
And they go buy a pallet of shoes.
They get it home.
And all of a sudden they realize I got to scrub, clean, wash these things,
every single pair.
And you quickly realize that this isn't going to be the life for me.
By maintaining that business you originally had, you can easily walk yourself back
and rethink maybe, okay, this was a mistake I made.
I paid $300 cash.
I'm out of that money.
It was worth a shot to see if it was something I was into.
But the problem is people don't look at it like that.
They need to jump from books tonight to shoes tomorrow.
There's no transition period of seeing if these experiments work.
And I think that's so weird because if we look back, me and you talking years ago,
we always had some kind of weird experiment going on in the background.
Okay.
We always had like...
We used to call each other every other day.
It was good.
What are we trying here?
What are we trying different?
How long are we going to give it?
Or I need that reality check from each other.
That was another thing.
Is this stupid?
And I'd be like, yes.
Or no, that's great.
You should run with that.
Yeah.
Or if we're on the fence, we're like, well, give it a shot.
See what happens over X amount of time and then we can go from there.
There never was something like, oh, I'm going to change all this overnight
because I would say it was stupid.
Or you'd be like, no, that's stupid.
Don't do it.
Why are you making such a rash change?
But I think when people don't have the results they want,
they're more inclined to just jump in sight unseen.
Who knows if there are sharks in the ocean?
I'm just going to jump in because I'm not getting the results I want.
I do think that's wrong because you can revisit your business and tweak things.
And all of a sudden that same inventory you have sitting behind you on the shelf
is now selling.
So there's a lot to be said about changing your current business
versus trying to completely go to a new one and all of a sudden
change your whole identity overnight.
Right.
Look at my brick and mortar store.
That was a huge experiment.
Very great experiment.
But if I didn't have good eBay inventory and good Amazon inventory
walking in my door probably on a daily basis,
we're not talking truckloads.
Well, sometimes we are.
But not having truckloads of stuff dropped in every day,
I probably would have shut it down and like,
okay, I'm getting my storage back.
This didn't work.
Nobody ever came in or I get one customer a week.
There are some issues going on with this experiment
because I'm pretty sure more books are coming in than are leaving.
So it's how do I make them leave on a more frequent basis
just because I have finite space.
So it's either get another space or figure out how to make them leave.
So current experiments can be tweaked to make the final experiment a reality.
And again, that all comes with time and learning
and trying new things out, failing at those new things
and trying another new thing.
The dumb idiot, Johnny B. reseller in an alternate universe
that wanted a storefront wouldn't went down to the local town
and rented out a retail space for $3,000 a month for a three-year lease.
That would have been the equivalent of what we're talking about.
Right?
He said, okay, I have the space.
How can I make this work in the current space that I have?
How can I see if this actually makes sense,
if I'm actually going to get results without spending all this money?
But the reality is most people are going to walk downtown,
rent out a space for three years,
and then they're not even going to be able to cover the rent three months in
and that's the end of it.
I think you're bleeding yourself dry at that point.
If this produced enough to work, if I had a standing line every morning
when I roll up to the shop, which I don't,
okay, maybe that retail space makes sense in alternate universe,
Johnny B. number three.
But number two, number one, well, number two, try it.
He failed.
He's out of business.
Number one over here, he's in business still.
Number three, he's making Scrooge McDuck money.
I wish to be that guy.
You can always try to find ways to implement your new ideas
without putting everything on the line.
You don't have to take these crazy risks to see if something works.
Yeah.
You can easily try something on the side.
And listen, if you're passionate about it,
I say this all the time because there's a lot of part-timers that either sink or swim.
And I think the ones that swim are the ones that are,
well, I want to get out of this job and I really enjoy what I do.
So I have no problem after working a 10-hour day,
go into the thrift store or list in some items.
And the people that don't survive are the ones who are just like,
well, I don't know, I really kind of just want to make a little bit of extra money.
I really don't care what I sell if I don't sell anything.
Like you have to be willing to, if you're passionate about it,
you got to put in the time, right?
I built this business up while I was at CVS, 50 plus hours a week.
I got it to a point where I was making the same money reselling as I was at CVS.
On the side, there was no five days a week going out and thrifting.
This was, well, I just worked all day.
Let me see if I can talk Devin to actually go into the thrift store with me,
even though I worked 50 hours this week.
So it's like, if you're really passionate about something, you can make it work.
And that's how you kind of can tell if it's something you really want to do.
And are you willing to put in the crappy hours, the crappy time,
give up some of your free time?
You know, maybe you don't watch Netflix,
maybe you don't play as much video games, this or that.
That's really going to be the test for you personally to see
if this is something you really want.
Right. I mean, I was running two businesses when I started eBay.
And then once I figured out what I really want to do with eBay
and I saw the money coming in and the compounding effect it had,
I left my two other businesses.
I could have stayed.
I was making good money.
I took a little bit of a haircut when I started,
but I quickly did not after a period of time.
But I knew what it was doing and it was repeatable.
That was the key. It was repeatable.
It wasn't a one-off month where I made a lot of money.
It was several months before I made my decision to give my notices, essentially.
All right. We're going to wrap it up here.
I think the big takeaway is you can always reinvent yourself as a reseller,
whether that means reinventing the current inventory you have
or switching to a whole different category.
There are ways you can get out of being down and about,
maybe you don't enjoy what you're selling.
You can transition to other categories.
Just make sure you lay out the same plan that you had
when you built your initial business up.
Right. How does it translate to that other business?
What can I do? What kind of timeframe?
We talked about giving yourself a real shot.
A week, a month is not a real shot at a new experiment.
No matter what platform you're selling on,
we're looking at three months, maybe even six months,
depending how crazy your idea is, to see if this makes sense.
But you have to maintain your income over here before you jump over there.
This still has to exist for you to be able to try this other thing out
and try this other business.
So as always, we appreciate you listening,
or if you're watching over on YouTube,
and we'll talk to you in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes
are available to all YouTube members,
along with the weekly Zoom call and private Discord.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash to use book guy
and consider joining for as little as $2.99 a month.