Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset
podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses
from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord
for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash
used book guy 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 Resellers Mindset podcast.
Mike alongside Johnny.
Here we are in the year 2024.
For the past two weeks on social media,
I've seen that every reseller basically
said they're going to be a billionaire by the end of 2024.
And I'm here to tell you, most of the resellers
are probably going to go away or not see the results just
like they did in 2023.
So me and Johnny are kind of dissect the practices
and mindsets of why we think a lot of resellers
just aren't going to make it in 2024,
even though it's a new year.
I'm not big on New Year's resolutions.
I don't know how you are with this, Johnny,
but I think a lot of it is you just blow and smoke up
your own behind right at the end of the day.
So for me, when it comes to, if I had to pick one thing
why I think most resellers listening to this
won't be listening to this podcast at the end of the year
or still be a reseller,
it's because they don't have consistency
in their reselling business overall.
I mean, you can look at that any kind of way
when it comes to sourcing or processes
or actually listing and shipping,
but consistency for me is like,
it's the kryptonite of resellers.
If I had to pick one single thing,
I think that's really what destroys
everybody's reselling business.
So I'm gonna throw it over to you.
You can take it wherever you want to take it.
Oh, goody.
Since you picked my number one as well,
I will go with my number two.
And that is the ignorance, unwillingness or desire
to change what's not working and keep on keeping on
and hoping for the best.
That's bullshit.
Don't do that.
You need to change if things aren't working.
You can have all the consistency in a failing project.
Does it mean it's going to not fail?
You need to change,
either change your pricing structure,
change the items you're picking up for higher ASP.
And just because they're higher ASP,
they're still sales score zeros
or there's still no sales on Terapeak on eBay's end.
Does it mean you should pick the item up?
Leave it there.
Let it die there.
Let it go to somebody else who's Mike's talking about
who's gonna make a billion dollars next year
and watch them fail hard.
You kind of just blew up my consistency
with your explanation.
I think I'm okay with that.
I don't have any, you know,
I'm not gonna sit here and dial in the consistency hill
because you are correct, right?
And we see it all the time, especially with media.
We spend a lot of time.
And even if you're consistent with that time you're spending,
it is low dollar or zero or negative ROI
basically processes within your business.
And if you have a lot of these or even one of these
you're sinking a lot of time into,
you're gonna lose really, really fast.
And what happens here is when,
even if you're consistent with time, over time,
if you don't get results,
you're not gonna stay consistent, right?
I mean, if you do, like, I try to think about this
because there are people out there, right?
They list 50 items a day.
We'll just use 50 items a day as an arbitrary number.
And they sell, you know, five items a week,
but like they still list 50 items every single day.
And it's like an endless cycle that they continue to do.
So you are correct there because that consistency
is just a waste of time
because you're not doing anything right.
And I think with resellers,
I don't think there is any excuse
when it comes to knowledge.
I think about all the bullos for the most part are out there
in one way, shape or form when it comes to YouTube
or you just doing your own research on eBay
and seeing what's sold, right?
Because Amazon has the software.
eBay is a different model
and eBay takes a lot more work in comparison to Amazon.
I think every reseller will accept that as a fact.
So I think the only excuse you really have
is not being consistent
with the quality of items you're finding.
Would that kind of be how I spin consistency
is like being consistent with a sell through
and ASP, average sales price,
for the stuff you're willing to buy to sell.
I think the most important,
other than the money, the net money going
in your bank account,
the most important number in reselling is sell through rate.
Get it out.
I don't care if you're dealing in $5 items
as long as they're moving every day.
That's great.
You can make that model work.
An easier life, I think is higher ASP model
that yeah, it may sit for a little longer
or it has the same sell through rate as your $5 items
and that model also works.
Now, if you're dealing in strictly long tail high ASP items,
that model works,
but you're gonna wait a while
before you see big results.
It does work.
It's probably the hardest model to do,
but at the end,
I do think it is the most profitable model to do,
but damn, you gotta wait a while
to get the fruits of your labor on that back.
So those three models,
and I know tech and sports has mentioned
those particular models before,
high volume, low sell through rate,
that's a hard life to live could work,
but high volume, highest sell through rate,
that works too.
High volume, medium sell through rate,
just depends how you wanna get your money back.
So it's kinda like stocks.
I mean, there's all kinds of different stocks, right?
You got your dividend type stocks,
you got your REITs and all.
I'm gonna get a little less technical here
and migrate away from the stocks,
but it works similarly,
but all models work at the end of the day.
How much work you wanna put in
and for how much money
and for when, to what extent,
or when you're gonna get your money back.
That's what you really gotta decide on.
I got a question I'm gonna throw at you.
Okay.
I guess it's really not a true or false.
I guess it's a yes or I don't know.
So a lot of fast food places now,
starting wage is $20 an hour.
I wish that was like in my high school years.
But go ahead.
It's funny, me and Deb talk about,
we're going with the rails real quick here.
Me and Deb, when we used to work at CVS,
actually where I met Deb,
we were both making like six and a quarter.
And I remember Deb.
Yeah, 725 here in high school years, definitely.
And Deb talks about when she got certified for Kodak
because she was a photo lab technician.
And she's like, the 25 cent raise
was like the biggest deal to her.
And she had a flight tooth and nail to get it.
But anyways, $20 an hour,
most of us can go out.
My post office is starting at 22 and 50 per hour.
So the argument here and the question I have for you
is do most resellers make less money
than if they would walk out their front door today
and go get a job at X, Y, and Z place,
regardless of what that is?
Regardless what that is?
I think initially, yeah.
I think there's a ceiling on just the regular job
versus in reselling and that's the allure
and why most people get into it.
There is no ceiling technically.
Now, as far as how much money you make on an annual basis,
again, it kind of goes back to the two things
we mentioned right off the gate,
consistency and willing to change.
Now, a lot of resellers either do none, one,
or both of these.
Now, the ones that do both,
I think are the ones making a lots of money.
The ones that do one, not two,
they make what they would make out in the wild
at a regular job.
The ones that do none go out of business
and we never hear from them again.
It's tough for me to kind of decipher this
as somebody that worked in retail all those years.
I've seen kids come and go.
I always encourage any of the high school kids I hired,
like, hey, this is a stepping stone,
like move on to something else.
I try to put that in the mind of reselling.
How long would you give yourself?
This is a good question for me and you now I think of it.
If we were making, let's say,
a thousand dollars or less per month in reselling,
which neither of us can live off of,
how many months would we deal with that
before we decided to go back out and get a real job?
In that scenario, you'd probably be using credit cards
to subsidize your expense costs.
And then when you're maxed out, you're maxed out.
And then right before you file bankruptcy,
that's when you'd have to pull the plug.
And that's if you could stomach going that long,
because you're racking up debt.
You owe this money back, right?
Now, if you can beat it, okay.
So I would say you'd be, if you're making a thousand,
you probably need at least,
let's just say you were a solo operator
and you're doing this full time
and you were on the ramen diet.
You're not even going out for burgers.
You're literally eating ramen every night.
You could probably do that sustainably six to nine months.
I was thinking about that.
Like, I think I would go less than that
because if I was in that situation
and I wasn't getting results,
I'm blowing everything up, right?
I'm gonna change this, I'm gonna change that.
I do think it is important that if you aren't making money,
it's perfectly fine not to resell and move out of it.
I think what happens here is a lot of people
get stuck in this rut of reselling
and kind of do what you said.
And they just run up the debt,
hoping that something's gonna change
when at the end of the day,
you're just spending more money on broken processes
and buying product that isn't selling.
So I think three months would kind of be my limit.
I know a lot of people kind of-
It should be your limit.
You shouldn't let it go to six to nine months,
like the right before bankruptcy level.
I just, I don't know, for 2024,
I was thinking about what should my motto be, right?
And I've come to the conclusion
is you're either in or you're out.
Like the wishy washy stuff, I can't be bothered by.
One week, Johnny decides he wants to be the reseller.
And the next week he thinks he's gonna be on America's
next top model, American Idol.
I think you have to be in or out on this business
because it's a business.
We talk about it all the time, treating it like a business.
And I think what happens here is
a lot of these resellers kind of just fall off the wagon
and they don't do things the right way.
They expect to get results.
And I'm curious what your take is
because I think a huge influencing factor
in why a lot of people will stop reselling in 2024
is the doom and gloom that's on YouTube.
I'm not even kidding, Johnny, as much as I joke about it,
every one of these doom and gloom videos I see-
I don't even watch those.
I watch nothing that you're talking about.
I know it's out there.
Listen, I call it market research, all right?
As a YouTuber, all the comments are,
this is why I'm not reselling.
This is why I'm stopping.
I think that plays a huge factor because I say it all the time.
If every time I talk to you, you were like,
hey, this sucks, I'm not doing this.
If I talk to you all the time,
I would start to believe that because, hey, Johnny's my friend
and he says this sucks.
And I think a lot of that is what we see on YouTube.
Thankfully, like Tech's got his channel now
and there's some up and coming eBay YouTubers
that are really well and positive about it.
But I do think overall, I think that plays into
a lot of people's minds more than they let them believe.
Now, I hope people from Tech's group are listening to this.
If guys, and this goes to anybody who pays for any group,
it pays, well, I'm not gonna say any group,
to credible groups, you pay for advice.
You ask this person for advice
and you only do 50% of the advice.
You have some success, but not as much as you thought.
Why is that?
Because you didn't do 100% of the advice.
I see it in Mike's group, I see it in Tech's group,
and I see it in Max's group, actually.
They don't listen to the advice that's given to them
and swallow it whole.
They wanna combat or argue or debate about it,
but you're asking the expert.
You pay to have an expert give you advice
and you don't listen to it so you're not successful
or as successful as you thought you were going to be
because you don't do it.
Once you can wash it away and stop thinking
that you're smarter than the other person
or wanna explore all the angles
and stop overthinking these things
and just take the advice and execute the advice,
you'll be tremendously more successful.
And this goes to all groups, not just Mike's group,
not just Tech's group, not just Max's group.
And again, I'm talking about credible groups,
not the incredible ones that are,
you're throwing your money away.
But just listen to these people, please.
They're telling you what to do
and you're ignoring them or fighting them on it
or taking part of it and ignoring the rest.
Please just listen to them, please.
I think, see dude, the problem with that is,
and listen, if you came on and you know,
say if you're somebody brand new to reselling
and you see somebody like Tech or myself, Max,
and you're just like, hey, what should I do?
And we give you this long list of things to do,
you're really not gonna do it
because at the end of the day,
you never really met the person
or you don't really have a one-on-one relationship.
And it's just somebody on the internet basically.
So a lot of people are hesitant to kind of,
because listen, for me, it's easy.
I tell everybody, just scan all the stuff
and then what you find, you send in that week
or every two weeks is the limit I give people with Amazon.
It's that easy, but like you said,
people don't wanna do it.
And yeah, there's reasons,
certain reasons for certain people.
I'm not talking about the people that can't get down
and scan the bottom shelves.
Sure, yeah.
And things like that.
But when I'm out, I do everything
that I tell other people to do.
Text the same way, Max is the same way.
We don't tell people to do things
that we don't do within our business
that got us the results to kind of be where we're at today
with the money we make from our reselling business.
So it is tough, man.
It's 2024, it's not gonna be any easier.
And I think a lot of people are like,
that's another thing I kinda wanted to cover.
Like 2023, the worst reselling year ever.
So like everybody has in their mind,
like 2024 can only be better.
So like let's debunk the fact that just because
the year on the calendar changed
that all of a sudden things are guaranteed to be better
because I don't believe that at all.
I think regardless of what happened this past year,
I can attest to it.
I made more money in 2023
as much as everybody thinks the sky's falling
and people don't have money to spend
and nobody buys CDs or DVDs, I made more money.
So I don't believe in that,
but I do think there is this belief.
I don't know what it is that 2023 was terrible
and 2024 can only be better
and I'm gonna make so much more money
just because the year on the calendar changed.
Yes, I agree.
But thinking about it,
what we're talking about failure and success,
I equate a lot of resellers to restaurants.
How many of them stay in business?
How many of them go out of business?
How many are in business for a few years
and then go out of business?
It's exactly like that.
Why?
Why are we like the restaurant industry?
And the ones that make it,
we can learn a lot from ones that made it.
And sure, there's variables.
Well, COVID happened, tornado happened, ice storm happened,
flood happened, hurricane happened.
Okay.
Some of those people survived all of that.
How?
That's what you need to ask yourself.
Why are they making it?
Why am I struggling?
Why am I operating in the red?
Why am I not successful?
What are they doing that I'm not doing
that I should be doing?
You need to ask yourself these questions.
And if you're unwilling or you're ignoring,
I'm sorry, you're gonna go out of business.
Actually, I'm not sorry.
I'm glad you went out of business.
You don't deserve to be in reselling.
That's, I mean, that analogy as a reseller
to like a restaurant owner,
I think that's like so spot on
that so many people start something
they never have experience in, right?
Cause I'm a fan of like the restaurant TV shows
where like they go in and they save the restaurant
and they flip it and everything.
Yeah.
And so many people like reselling,
they don't have experience in reselling.
They see the video, they wanna start it.
But I think, all right,
I got a hot take coming in here.
I think new resellers in 2024 will see more success
than people that are like kind of wishy washy
that had been in reselling over the past,
three to five years,
because I think you kind of hit it on the head
in the beginning of this with,
you're not willing to change anything.
And you still think the Baby Yoda Christmas mug
is worth $50 that it was back when Baby Yoda first
was a thing, when in reality today,
this mug's a dollar at any thrift store.
So I do think like new people will see more success
than people that maybe didn't see the results
they wanted to see last year.
As crazy as that sounds to me,
I just think when somebody's new when they first start,
they have a little bit more pep in their step.
And I think the people that are gonna suffer the most
are the ones that kind of just fall into the,
okay, today I resell, tomorrow I don't.
Maybe tomorrow I will, I don't know.
We'll see how it goes.
I'm in every group under the sun.
I listen to every YouTube video,
but I really don't do anything.
I just think it's cool to hear people talk about
how they make money and how I can make money,
but I really don't put any of that into action.
Right, and I'll admit, when a new person comes along
in one of these groups and has some information
that they're wanting to share,
I kind of squint at it like, who are you?
You're new, what makes you think you know what you're doing?
But I really have to remove that mindset
and listen to the words and information they're giving
and formulate my own decision based off what they're saying
or ask them some questions to clarify some fuzziness on it
where I've tried it before, it didn't work,
but you're seeing results with it.
Why, again, why?
Why are you seeing results with it?
How are you getting success with it?
Because when I did it, it didn't work.
I wanna know why and how it works for you.
I think when you've been reselling for a while,
I would rather have like a hundred brand new resellers
throw their business models and their successes at me
or questions even than people that have been doing it
for like between three and five years.
Because I feel like the new people are like,
maybe they're trying something outside the box.
They're going crazy with it.
They're trying all kinds of things.
Yeah, and there's something to be said about
not just copy and paste and what everybody else is doing.
Anybody can go well.
Now, I was like that.
Like when I, nobody was doing paper.
Yeah.
Like nobody does this, why?
And then I tried it and I figured out
these kinds of things work and those kinds of things don't.
But nobody, there was no information out there about it
or very little, hardly any.
I mean, especially with Amazon,
I mean, there's really, we're all copy and pasting, right?
We're all on the same listings raising to the bottom.
But like, if we think outside of Amazon
and even outside of eBay, right?
There's so many untapped market niches out there
where you can make a whole bunch of money.
So I'm open to new people trying different things.
I actually kind of welcome it versus,
maybe the conversation I had 50 times
of why I have X amount of inventory and it's not selling.
Because those conversations are the same, right?
It's funny when we had Tekon, he was talking about,
he gives the same answer every single week
to the same exact questions.
And I feel like that's kind of all there is to it
because there's no magic wand.
There's no big difference in the business.
If you're gonna do exactly what somebody else is doing,
here's the proven way to do it
because this person already did it, right?
If somebody comes to me and says,
hey, how do I make 100K a year selling media on Amazon?
I have the exact processes.
It doesn't change person to person.
It doesn't change situation to situation.
Here's what you need to do, step by step.
There's nothing new and different to it.
So like, if you, what most people do, most resellers,
they go down a path somebody else has already walked.
There's really not many paths that people haven't walked
when it comes to reselling.
Like yourself, you did the science fiction
trade paperbacks.
I mean, you're flying blind there basically,
which is a good thing because nobody else is doing it.
I figured things out of myself.
No one to tell me anything.
Yeah, so it's like, if you're gonna walk in the steps
of somebody that's already successful, proven success,
and they say, hey, Johnny, you wanna make this money?
Here's exactly the steps you need to take.
Right, it's generic.
Now he couldn't tell me how to do paperbacks,
but how to do eBay in general, spot on,
just follow that formula.
And then there's the options within that formula,
like the ones I mentioned.
You want them to sell fast,
you want them to sell kind of fast and okay money,
or you want them to sit for a whole long while,
and then you clear more money in the long run,
but that is a very long game to play.
If we're all gonna be the same type of reseller,
and there's a proven track record of XYZ works, right?
I mean, the records are the records, right?
You can see what we all sell
on the different platforms we sell on.
If you decide, I'm not saying it's not okay to stray
from that basically process in place,
but if you decide to stray from different processes,
or like Johnny said, 50%, 75%, even 90%,
you're losing 10% of that productivity.
Productivity is gonna catch up to you at some point.
And I think it just goes back to consistency.
It's hard work being a reseller, dude.
It gets downplayed so much.
We talk about it, you know,
basically every episode it's like,
you have to actually do work.
The money isn't just magic.
You don't just walk into one thrift store,
and you have a business relying on one thrift store.
If you look at people that rely solely on thrifting,
unless they have huge thrift stores in their area,
you're talking 100 thrift stores on their routes.
At least for me, I'm close to 100 thrift stores in total,
no matter which way I'm going.
But that's really not conveyed out there, right?
Like there's no conveyance of,
hey, you can go to thrift stores and make a living
if you have 100 thrift stores you're willing to go to.
So I wanna get pretty doom and gloom here
on our New Year's episode here.
So if you ever been to a graveyard
and looked at a tombstone,
there's a dash for when you're born,
and the dash, and then when you die.
Now I've heard this analogy put,
what are you going to do with that dash?
Now I'm gonna re-spend it here.
How much money are you gonna make with that dash?
Your hopes and dreams within that dash,
and honestly, it costs money to do those things,
whatever those things are.
And you have a limited amount of time.
And that's why when I hear the $100,000 number,
are you accounting for your golden years in that amount
and within that dash?
Maybe you really need to be making $200,000 a year
to account for your golden years.
You need to reassess that.
Or maybe if it's not just a reselling,
maybe use it reselling money to do investments
or open up different businesses or invest in it.
You gotta really think about this,
because I hear that 100K number thrown around everywhere.
In my opinion, if you're doing this full-time,
it's a little bit different if you have a full-time job
and you're making 100,000, sure, that also works.
But I'm speaking to the people doing this full-time.
I don't think the 100K a year is gonna do it.
You need to aim higher, go higher.
In my opinion, if you're really doing this full-time,
there is no cap.
You make as much money you can
with the time given to you.
And it definitely, in my opinion,
needs to be above $100,000.
Because I hear that everywhere, in all groups,
in all YouTube videos, making $100,000.
That's an easy number to remember.
That's a buzzword on YouTube videos.
But it needs to be more, guys.
It simply does.
Six-figure, dude.
I'm a six-figure Bonanza seller, the first of its kind.
I'm basically an alien from outer space.
But, I mean, hey, I do think there is room
for lots of success in reselling.
But I think the biggest wins are gonna come from categories
where people are doing things different.
I just, I've said it so many times this past year.
The upside for innovation in reselling is astronomical.
And we all still choose to go scan books.
We all choose to just do the same thing.
Oh my, it drives me nuts.
Even in my Amazon business, I'm doing something
slightly different than most Amazon people,
the majority of them, honestly.
It does, I don't care if you're on eBay,
you're on Etsy, you're on Amazon, you're somewhere.
Do something slightly differently,
but copy a model that has proven success
within those differentials.
So be a little bit different,
but follow a pathway that does work
within those differences you've decided
to do in your business.
I'm still doing a traditional boat game Amazon business,
but I'm doing it a slightly different way.
I say it all the time.
We're playing the same game,
but I'm playing it a different way
than any other media seller out there.
I'm doing things nobody else is doing.
And that's why I make a lot of my money,
because I'm not just doing the cut, paste, copy, paste thing.
Yeah, you can make money doing that,
but there's different paths for everybody.
And leveraging these different ideas you have,
trying out different things,
or I think with reselling,
I think there needs to be more passion
in what you're reselling.
And that's coming from somebody
who could care less about reading books.
I want passion in what you're doing,
because that's gonna motivate you,
that's gonna interest you.
If you're really excited about shoes, your sneaker head,
then resell shoes, right?
Don't resell vintage t-shirts if it don't interest you.
Don't resell coach bags if it don't interest you.
Think what happens here is a lot of us,
I guess it kind of goes back to the everything seller, right?
That's another downfall of the everything seller.
And I can admit to it, when I used to sell everything,
I didn't feel like listing a toaster oven
from the good old that I could get-
Yeah, buying the toaster, a lot of fun.
Selling the toaster, not a lot of fun.
That's what I'm saying.
And I think that's a trap that everybody starts out in is,
okay, I'm gonna go buy everything I can make five,
10 bucks on.
And then you get home and you're like,
I don't feel like listing these Dan's Co shoes, right?
I'm never gonna sell another Dan's Co pair of shoes
in my life.
But it's so cool that you bought them,
but not so cool to sell them.
eBay said I would make $20 if I sold them.
I think a lot of people kind of get into that trap
and you lose your passion for reselling.
And I do think there is this excitement
about going out and finding stuff.
I think for me, it's kind of changed over the years.
I went from excitement to finding stuff
that I'm excited about the money I make in my business.
So it's not like I'm out at a bookstore and I'm scanning
and I'm like super excited about looking at the books
and seeing what they have.
I'm excited the fact that I'm in a thrift store,
spending a dollar and some of these items
I'm gonna profit $50 on.
I guess the monetary excitement affects me more
than to treasure hunt, but a lot of people starting out
or that are kind of stuck in that middle path.
It's just the excitement of going out and sourcing.
And really that's kind of where it ends
because I used to be that person.
Like dude, I would sell all kinds of stuff, man.
Toaster ovens, VCR, shoes, shirts, pants,
everything under the sun.
And it was some of that stuff, dude.
I buy it, I get home.
Church lady hats and dress shoes, cowboy boots.
I hated listing that stuff, man,
because it didn't excite me.
I remember having to buy a mannequin head for the hats.
I think a lot of people get caught up with that.
A lot of people buy stuff and they get home
and they realize, hey, okay, cool.
It said I would make 20 bucks,
but now I actually gotta list it and take photos
and do a listing.
I think that's a hole that a lot of people fall into.
And a lot of people will continue to fall into that
because the eBay death piles, right?
I mean, death pile shouldn't even be a thing.
You have a queue pile, right?
Any big seller that does volume has queues, right?
Okay, we have X amount queued up for this week.
That's not a death pile.
Death piles are everywhere in eBay businesses.
And I'll tell you what, it drives me nuts
and I see it all the time.
Welcome back.
I'm gonna go ahead and do a listing queue.
Listing queue.
Hey, welcome back to my eBay YouTube video.
Here's my huge garage or basement full of junk
I don't have listed.
Like, why are we outsourcing?
Why are we even making YouTube videos?
And we got probably five, 10, even upwards of that
in profits sitting there behind us.
It's crazy to me.
The overbuying, that's, again,
we're talking about the new guys.
The new guys also fall, and not even the new guys.
I'm gonna say the first three years,
you're going to have that overbuying habit
unless somebody swats you around your nose
with a newspaper and goes, no.
And I see that to a lot of people that come in text group
especially, they're just overbuying.
And that, and again, I think that's the reason
why they come into that group
because they're not making a lot of money
because they're not listing what they're buying.
And once they change that to list what you buy,
oh, look at that, we're start making money.
Imagine that.
I think to wrap this call up here,
consistency with proven processes that work.
If you're gonna do something somebody else has done,
and this is exactly how you can get to 10K a month,
15K a year, 20K a year, whatever your goals are,
if you're gonna copy a business model,
do it the right way and be consistent
within those steps across the board.
You can't be consistent with sourcing
and lackadaisical with listing.
You have to be 100% across the board with everything.
And I do think there is a lot of upside in 2024,
but I just think, unfortunately,
a lot of people reselling 2024 will kind of be the year.
And listen, I'm gonna throw another hot take out there
before we wrap this one up.
A lot of you little part-timers, hobby sellers,
y'all ain't paying your taxes.
That guillotine hasn't even fallen yet, Johnny.
And I'm telling you right now,
I've been saying and everybody out there that's like,
oh, the taxes, the taxes,
the government just wants your money.
Guess what?
That's the way the universe works.
And if you haven't been paying them to this point,
when that guillotine falls, personally, bring it on,
because I pay taxes whether I hit this stupid threshold,
whether it's a dollar threshold, 200, 5,000, 10,000,
100,000, you pay your taxes.
And I've paid mine over the past years,
regardless of I hit those thresholds,
that's another guillotine that's waiting around the corner.
And I hope it comes sooner than later.
So I think there is a lot of upside in reselling in 2024.
And I think there is opportunities
to think outside the box.
I'm just throwing a crazy one out there, right?
I thought about it all the time.
Just sell the dust jackets.
Just sell dust jackets of books, that's it, right?
Give me a crazy idea.
Like give me a crazy reselling idea
that has a chance of possibly working
that nobody else is doing.
Dust jacket one is really good.
I like the safe one you had with the books.
Oh yeah, yeah, the Etsy crafter stuff.
Yeah, the book safes are pretty cool,
especially if you make them decorative.
You know what?
I'm gonna say it,
because I've been dealing with a customer
and you've seen his pictures in the discord there.
Damaged books, selling damaged books
that are beyond repair, have highlighting underlining.
Decorative books is what we're gonna call them
because they're meant for be decoration.
The gentleman I mentioned,
I'm not gonna mention his name
because he may not want me to.
He's just buying damaged books.
He doesn't care about the inside of the books,
especially if it's got ripped off spine
or tears or gashes or water damage
is for the aesthetic reasons.
It looks cool when you make a whole bookcase
out of this worn nasty stuff.
It looks great for movie sets and people that stage homes,
but he's doing this for a personal art project in his home.
He showed photos of it in our discord the other day
and it actually looks pretty snazzy.
He's not done with it.
He's still got a lot more books to buy,
but there's a market for that, obviously.
Hey, I've seen photos of people.
Deb showed me one of somebody that had a Christmas tree
and it was all made out of books.
Yeah, my volunteer showed me that.
You wanna do this in the bookstore?
I'm not gonna do it.
You're the volunteer.
If you wanna do that, go for it.
But imagine somebody out there
that sells little book Christmas trees.
That's all they do, right?
You're gonna make, there's nobody doing it, right?
It's the same with like,
I've even seen like coffee tables
where the legs are books, right?
End tables where the legs are books.
There's so much innovation in the world,
just like, I'm gonna be the next tech and sports
and sell used clothes.
Or a lamp.
I might actually buy that if it was like a lamp
and then you had a light bulb on top
and even the lampshades are made of dust jackets or something.
So much, we just came up with all these great ideas
that nobody's ever gonna try, right?
Because reselling is just,
everybody wants to go out and find the thousand dollar item
that somebody famous on YouTube sold.
I do think there is a lot of innovation.
I do think there is a lot of success to be had in 2024,
personally for me, for you, and new people starting,
people that have been doing it for a while,
maybe make a change.
And I do think there'll be a lot of failures
with anything, right?
And don't just assume that it's a new year
and things are matched,
because you're gonna be different
just because it's a new year.
If you don't change yourself,
I'm 8% less and I'm making no changes.
Things are gonna get better.
Yeah, right.
But that's, dude, that's the thought of it.
And what happens here is we get nine months through 2024
and all of a sudden 2024 is a replication of 2023, right?
Where, well, this was one of those years
people didn't have money to spend.
And it's like this same excuse we roll over and over.
You gotta make a change.
And I do think there's a lot of upside in reselling still.
I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.
Get a little bit smarter, work on your processes
and just refine your business overall.
So we appreciate you 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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