Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube, along with my friend
and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up everybody?
Welcome in another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast here, Mike, alongside
Johnny today's episode is going to be a fun one, unconventional methods of
sourcing in a reselling business.
So we came to the conclusion that this is everything but thrift stores.
Thrift stores is like the easiest, cheesiest way to get inventory.
Everybody's got a thrift store.
Everybody thinks they can build a business off of one thrift store.
So we're going to talk about things that are not thrift stores, things that we've
done, things maybe we want to try and possibly find profitable product.
I'm going to throw it over to Johnny.
He's going to take it away.
I will admit he has a little bit more outside the box thinking
and sourcing strategies than I do.
So I'm going to let him run us off the rails here first.
You just want one or you want me to just ramble a list?
Just ramble on and I'll interrupt when I feel is appropriate.
Okay.
Estate sales and preferably talking to the estate sale owners and
asking to see their warehouse.
They all have warehouses because stuff doesn't sell despite everybody's
belief that everything sells at estate sales.
So getting back room access or back warehouse access is always fun.
Do you wait, do you think it's weird?
Like if you go to a state sale and it's like, because personally I've done this
and it felt kind of weird to me.
Like if the person passed away, you get like a weird feeling when you're in their
source and you're like, wow, like this is kind of weird.
Like this person was alive maybe a month ago and now I'm like
buying their stuff to resell.
No, because every book I see, I know belong to a dead person.
It's just a fact.
They're dead.
Doesn't matter if it's an estate sale or goodwill.
This person's dead.
They don't miss book.
I, uh, I got a funny story.
So somebody reached out to me through, through Craigslist and this person passed away.
They didn't have nobody that they knew of to leave their stuff to.
So the neighbors, so the neighbors decided, Hey, let's, uh, we're going to sell the,
sell their belongings so they can cover the cost of like the, you know, the, yeah,
all that stuff.
And, uh, I don't know, like I brought that belong and it was just weird being in a
house, like where somebody, you know, was alive a month ago and like picking through
their stuff because it was like, kind of like a closed pick.
It wasn't even like an estate sale, like where everything's like price and stuff
like that. It's just me and the neighbor and Deb walking through this house.
And I don't, it was, I don't know.
It felt like I was on that.
It's only weird if the body's still there.
That is a good point though.
Like estate sales are on full transparency.
I don't go to a state sales.
I don't have to.
So there's no point in me adding something and trying to figure out because it is
kind of a whole different ball game, right?
There's usually a line.
You gotta be first in line and then you gotta run.
And you gotta punch people to get the stuff you want.
But there are people, we have people in the discord that just do only estate sales
because usually the quality of the stuff is better, right?
If you know, you're going to have somebody's personal collection, especially
with like electronics.
I mean, the electronics usually work, especially if you're comparing it to go
into a thrift store.
So yeah, I'm curious.
Have you gone to like any estate sales?
You got any kind of tips and tricks for estate sale goers?
Yeah.
I mean, I've been to plenty of them.
I don't do them anymore because I got backroom access when I need it.
They're just give them a call.
Hey, you want me to clean your warehouse out now?
Granted, do I miss out on the stuff that will sell at the estate sale?
Absolutely.
But there's enough stuff left over where I don't care.
As far as tips go.
Yeah.
You always want to, you don't walk up and like, yo, I want backroom access.
That's like, sorry, you don't do that.
You got to make a couple of purchases and once we become a regular, then you can
ask that question or they'll probably ask you that question.
Actually, you can wait for them to come to you on it.
Like, look, I know you buy books every time.
Why don't you come to our warehouse and clear us out?
Cause books, just like anywhere else, they occupy space and they want their
space cleared out as much as they can to put more what they sell on a regular
basis for them.
So you're solving a problem for them.
You're offering a service essentially, even though you're not a regular
service, essentially, even though you're paying to have it.
Now some estate sales will actually pay you to haul them away.
You can charge a service.
You can, after a couple of buys, like, look, if you want places cleared out
after the estate sale, I'll do that for you, but I'll charge 50 bucks, a hundred
bucks and take the stuff.
So you could do that.
That's a, that's another trick.
But you're the take it all guy at that point, even if you're just the take it
all book guy, you can't leave behind nor Roberts and John Grisham.
You got to take them.
And then you got a problem.
What do you do with John Grisham and nor Roberts once you do have them, but
you can have money.
Another tip would be I would carry your large bill.
And I learned this from Caleb carry large bills in one pocket and your
smaller bills in the other and always pull out your smaller bills.
So you look a little poorer than you are when you make an offer.
I like, this is all I got.
And then if a no go, well, I lied.
Okay.
Here now, can we, can we talk some serious numbers?
Yeah.
This is still haggling negotiation technique.
Another big one, I think is just listening, just listening to what they're saying.
Cause you'll hear problems that they have.
And if you can solve the problem, you can get a deal.
If you walk up to them and try to buy just one book, you're not going to get any
deal if you walk up to them or you have a pile of books, like how much for the
entire pile, like how much can I get for it?
I don't want to pay what you're offering.
What you got in your little price marker thing there.
So there's a lot of haggling that goes on.
Another good one, I think is getting there early.
If you're going to be active in the state sales, cause if you're there
an hour after it starts, it's gone.
It's gone.
You got to be there.
I would say at least 15 minutes early, 30 is probably better.
Cause you can also, well, can I come in now?
And you get there, it's like front room access, right?
You get to shop before everybody else gets there.
It's like friends of the library access.
Another good one for tips on estate sales would be, do you have, where you
literally go up to them and like, yo, where are the books?
Where are the CDs?
Where are the DVDs?
Cause even if you're standing in line, you can still have that kind of conversation.
So once the gauntlet opens or the flag goes down, you know exactly which room
to go to, or maybe it's all the books are in the barn outside.
You wouldn't have known that.
And even to spend 30 minutes looking around inside for books.
I think it is important if you're going to be super niche down, right?
Say if you only do books, it is, you have to be there first in line.
If you're going to go into this with, oh, I'm only looking for shoes or I'm
only looking for books, all it takes is one other person ahead of you in line.
That's going for that same exact thing.
And you're out of luck.
And we kind of hear it over in the group, Tommy boy, he does estate sales.
And he's multifaceted in what he looks for, right?
That there's a bunch of crazy people that run in for the books.
We'll go look at the electronics.
So there's people at electronics.
We'll look at the DVDs.
I think with estate sales, I think they're better suited for everything
sellers or at least people that are selling in, you know, five to 10 categories,
because you have more options.
And some of these estate sales are nuts.
I mean, people will be out there two, three hours before it starts, which is
crazy to me, because I think to myself, how many places can you go in that time
frame instead of just, you know, bunker and down, sure, you know, there's some
crazy growls that there's photos over for people don't know when I came across
the state sales, I came across them online.
I would just use CT bids.com and they would have photos of everything.
Right.
So if Johnny's, you know, a vintage t-shirt guy and he sees there's a whole
closet full of vintage t-shirts, he's going to be there five hours before it starts.
And anybody else behind him in line is as so well, because he's just running
and grabbing every single t-shirt.
So if you can't be the t-shirt guy, if you're behind another t-shirt guy, you
got to have something else on your tool.
But, but, uh, I do think estate sales are definitely a good way to kind of get
out of there and make more money.
I'm curious auction houses.
I've never dealt with auction houses.
So this is all you, Johnny.
I don't even, I don't even know if I have any around me, honestly.
All right.
I'll get to that a second.
Uh, probably the biggest tip I forgot to mention is bring equipment to make your
life easier, bring a cart, bring things that roll, um, and then ask if you can
bring these things inside or bring boxes or bring tubs or bring whatever.
Cause if you try to arm carry all of this out, that your life is going to
be miserable.
I got a fun tip for that.
Uh, if you buy.
Like I was bidding on bookcases full of books and they want you to take the
bookcase as well as the books.
Well, I'm not taking the bookcase.
So like prepare to have that conversation and like, I'll be like, hey,
what a me and Deb did, we carried them down to the, the like garage
because people would pull up on CT bids.
You, you register for a time, right?
So Johnny comes at three.
I come at three 15.
So there's new people in and out the whole day.
So I would tell the people, Hey, I can't fit the bookcases in my car.
I knew this going in, but, uh, I'll put them down to the curb for you and put
a free sign on them.
And they usually have no problem with that.
Just make sure you have that conversation.
Cause like Johnny was saying, you don't want to be the scumbag person, right?
It's just like, you're not doing what you're supposed to.
You always talk to the people running it and just be transparent about like, I
knew I wasn't fit in the bookcases, but I knew, Hey, whether I give them an extra
$20 and they can keep the bookcase and give it away, or I can put it to the curb
for them, whatever works best for them, because they just need it out of the
house basically.
And if it's free and there's tons of other people coming over the next five
days to pick stuff up, somebody will probably take it.
So definitely be prepared.
And I mean, if you're doing books, I'll tell you right now, um, because online
they don't tell you where they're located and the books are never
located by the front door.
I'm here to tell you this.
I've had them in the basement.
I've had them upstairs, 110 degrees.
The one had a huge driveway.
I couldn't even get my car in the driveway because there are so many people
picking up.
I mean, you're talking, it was like 30 boxes.
I probably walked like five football fields moving that stuff.
So definitely if you're doing something that's heavy, be prepared any way,
shape, form you can, uh, it's going to make a huge difference.
Now moving on to auction houses.
They're very similar to estate sales.
Um, you want to talk to the people beforehand.
You want to talk to the people during, um, basically the same tips we just
gave on a, uh, an estate sales.
Now the question you want to ask, I probably want to ask both in estate
sales and auction houses, do you have any book auctions happening in the next
month that you're aware of or what's upcoming?
And if they say, yes, you can ask, you mind if I just take a look and not
touch it, can I look at what you have coming up that way you have an idea if
it's worth your time or not to even hop online later, because you're already
there, you might as well put in an extra minute or two to save yourself an
extra minute or two at home.
Um, and you get a better look in person than you would on an online
blurry photo, to be honest.
Um, another one is people don't do this, but I do.
You can be like, I know he wants to sell it for this.
Um, and I know you have it coming in the, or it's currently online on the auction
or you're currently going to run it in the auction.
Here's my offer to buy it right now here today.
Can you ask your client if he'd be willing just to do that right now?
Cash money.
Um, and you'd be surprised how more often than not they'll just take it.
The like it's money today versus money later.
They got to wait on, they don't know what they're going to get.
I'm making an offer right here right now.
And I've done this on the upcoming stuff and I've done this stuff that's been
live, like it's got zero bids.
I want to buy it right now.
I'm here right now.
And I was there for other things.
Um, another one, as far as the bidding goes, if you're going to do a live auction.
Wait, do you want to buy it right now?
Do not say a word, even if you want it, you let everybody else talk or not talk.
And here, here's where I'm getting at.
The non-talking is when they start the bidding at a number.
If nobody talks, they'll lower the beginning number and the lower it again.
If nobody talks, as soon as the first person talks, it's going to go up, but you
want it to start at as low as possible.
So don't just jump on it like $1.
Well, sometimes you can get it for 10 cents.
That'd be me, dude.
$1.
Cause listen, it's a good thing you said that because I don't know no better, right?
If I go to auction house and I, if I, I hear nobody's going to bid on it, right.
And they're like, Oh, you know, going once, going twice.
I'm not thinking they're going to lower the price, but you are right.
Because at the end of the day, the auction house wants everything gone,
regardless of how much it sells for.
Right.
So silence is best in some places.
Now, another thing about auctions is sometimes they pair books with other things.
It's a box full of stuff, books included.
You got to take it all.
Now, what you can do is you can just take the books and be like, I don't want the rest
of this and they will run the rest of it in a different auction.
You can leave it behind.
You don't have to take it all with you.
That's how most of them operate, but some of them are a little weird and they'll be
like, no, you got to take it all.
You bid on it, but you can just leave the junk.
You don't want behind.
Or if you know somebody at the auction, like, Hey, this is what I won.
I know you're an everything kind of guy.
Here you go.
Or here you go.
Flea market guy and get rid of it.
You just want the books.
Well, you said the word flea market.
That is another non-thrift store opportunity that exists.
Now, I think, I think we have to clarify this is what a lot of people run into is
they don't want to have the conversations, Johnny.
They don't want to sit there and say, Hey, nice to meet you.
I'm Mike.
Oh, I'm Johnny.
Oh, here's what we do.
And the thrift store allows you not to talk to anybody.
Right.
You can go into the thrift store, do your thing, leave.
You ain't gotta say nothing to the cashier checking you out.
And I do think the relationships and reselling is how you like, you can 10 X your business
overnight and resell them just by getting one really solid relationship.
So I understand the argument that a lot of people are introverts and they really don't
want to deal with people, but it's more of a business relationship, right?
It's not like this person's going to be calling you every day.
Hey, how's the weather down there?
This and that, right?
This is a business transaction.
And just, just saying a few words, you don't, you don't need a full movie script here.
You say, this is what I do.
What do you do?
And boom, all of a sudden the kind of conversation carries itself.
I don't think I've ever had really a conversation besides being like, Hey, I've seen
you have a Gaylord of books in your back room.
And the old lady basically just said, no, you're not touching it.
But like, usually other than that, there's always something like, Hey, oh,
yeah, yeah, we have some stuff in the back or no, we don't, but we appreciate you
asking, what do you do?
It always kind of turns into a friendly relationship.
And yeah, every once in a while you run into the grumpy old lady, but that's
perfectly fine.
You got to at least be willing to have the conversation and flea markets.
It's the same way, right?
You have relationships, you go to a flea market, you see this person sells book.
I think the big thing with flea markets is it can be an outlet for the stuff that
you don't want, right?
It's kind of like you were saying is maybe you sell clothes or shoes and you
have a bunch of shoes that just ain't worth it to you.
Well, you have this person that's at the flea market every single weekend selling
that type of stuff.
You build a relationship of you can see their inventory before it goes to the
public and you're giving them all your bad inventory and getting a little bit of
change back.
Yeah.
Now, flea market's interesting.
I mean, you got to get there early, bottom line.
And you have to have the right equipment, just like we've said on the previous
things.
Now, the other thing I think is more important on the flea market is some of
these places are large.
You got to have something because you got to go back and forth to your vehicle,
especially if you're hitting multiple places.
So making your life easy, something on wheels, even better, maybe something
motorized like I'm not kidding.
Maybe that hover around rental that you jerry rig the cart to.
I've seen this is a good idea.
I mean, it's laughable.
You look absurd, but hey, I'm telling you, you walk in a mile back and forth and
back and forth and back and forth.
It'll save your back, your time and a lot of pain and misery.
Another good one is we failed to mention this along the way, but every single one
of these, you want to exchange information.
Business cards, get them made up.
20 bucks, 30 bucks.
I mean, stop being cheap.
You need to have your fish hook in as many ponds as you possibly can.
And it still sounds cheesy.
I go like business card, like who gives business cards anymore?
Well, you do.
And that's why you're going to get the lead and not somebody else.
I think that's, I think that's so important that we did it, promote yourself,
not in a way like where you're like, oh, here's my business card, right?
Like you're the FBI, but Hey, you know, you buy some stuff.
Oh yeah, here's what I do.
Here's a business card in case you happen to find more of X, Y, and Z.
Right. I've had to stop handing mine out because well, mainly I've stopped
sourcing because the stuff that comes to me now and everybody else,
establishment now all of, and here's the, another reason why I had to stop
handing it out is all these people tell other people and it, then they tell
people and then you're overwhelmed all of a sudden.
So like me, I had to like roll back.
Like I got enough.
I still have more than enough and I'm still trying to work through it all.
But when I'm ready to ramp back up or need more, I definitely business
cards is the way to go.
And I always give them extra ones so they can pass them out.
They're, they're my employee now.
They're, they're doing work for me when they're like, oh, here's this
book guy, you got books.
Another tip on the flea market is well, the stuff there is fairly
expensive as far as the food and drinks go.
You may want to, well, brown bag it.
Honestly, if you're on a budget or have something, carry food and water
with you, because you're going to be walking a lot.
It's not like an estate sale.
It's not like an auction house.
You're going to be doing an aerobic exercise walking everywhere.
So something to recharge and give you some energy while you're exhausted.
Also, if you're in a warmer climate state, well, sunscreen, my friend,
unless you want to end up like a lobster by the end of the day.
It's, uh, it is important.
If you go to the same flea market, you're going to be able to get
to the same flea market time and time again.
Right.
You start to see that there's regulars that sell these flea markets.
Those are kind of the relationships that are going to, you know, boom,
that's a consistent relationship.
And sure, the flea market always has, you know, when I used to do flea
markets growing up in Philly, it was just whatever we had, we sold on the
weekend.
And it's not like we are permanent.
You know, we weren't there every single weekend.
And yeah, you come across crazy good deals from the people that just show
up on the weekend because they need the money and sell all their stuff.
But you can build a really good relationship with somebody that's there
every single weekend, especially if they have a lot, like a quantity of a
lot of items.
I think a flea market's kind of the more like kind of messy and quantity
that they have at their little booth.
Like those are the people you kind of want to hone in, especially if it's
like something that you're selling, right?
If it's clothes, hats, whatever you kind of want to, at least in my
experience, you want to stay away from like the nice flea market stands that
have like retail prices on everything and they got the tents set up and it's
like everything's new with tags.
Like I stray away from that stuff.
I want to go to the guy that's got the back of his van open, right?
There's stuff falling out.
He's got tarps on the ground and it's just crap everywhere.
Now, and I think another good one is once you've done this a few times on
those regulars you're mentioning, like, look, you know what I buy.
And if you forgot, I've made a list for you and pull it out of your pocket.
I want this stuff.
I will buy it all.
Every single time.
You don't even have to put it out, put it in a tub or a box or whatever.
I'll come take it from you every single time.
No questions asked, but you got to pay these people.
No questions asked every time.
You can't be like, sorry, dude.
I can't do it this week.
Like, no, if you make that deal, you got to stick to that deal.
Yeah, that's, uh, that is super important because you're only as good as your word
when it comes to business relationships, right?
You know, like I can't tell Johnny.
Hey, I'm going to buy this from you every single month.
And then, you know, three months, I don't buy it.
And all of a sudden, like, all right, well, that's it.
I'm not, Johnny's not going to continue to waste his time, especially if they're
doing something even as, as stupid as saying, put this stuff in a bag.
All right.
You think to yourself, well, if I don't buy it, it's not a big deal.
They're just thrown in a bag for me, but it actually is to that person.
Right.
It's like kind of how I was keeping the paperbacks for you.
Right.
I got a little Johnny B box onto there.
It doesn't seem like a lot, but when you're actually going through stuff and
you're like, well, is this for this person or this person?
Well, you get to that point where, well, this person isn't going to pay.
So who cares?
I'm not even going to do this anymore.
Money, money is what motivates these people.
And you 100% have to be straight up with the deal regardless of, you know,
whether you got the a hundred bucks or not, you have to continue to build that relationship.
Your word is your bond and your wallet always has to be right.
Yeah.
It's, it's, we're not saying you need thousands and thousands of dollars to kind of find one
of these relationships and be willing to grow it, but you do need some kind of money, right?
You can't go in and be like, Hey, I'll shine your shoes for all the books you have here.
There has to be, there has to be some kind of transfer of funds because that's why these
people are out there.
They're paying for the spot.
They're probably paying somewhat of money to get the inventory.
I think that kind of takes us into the next thing is like, where do these people
get their inventory from?
Right.
So we're going to go upstream here.
So for, for, I'll give the cheesy easy example, because we both sell books, library donations,
libraries have volunteers.
Most of them have severely understaffed, unfortunately.
So that is an opportunity for a service you can provide to help them alleviate all of
the donations they have.
You're providing a service, right?
You're not going in.
Like Johnny said, you're not taking out this one, that one, this one, that one.
When I show up in my libraries, I'm taking everything.
I'm not looking in the boxes, Johnny.
I'm not like seeing, oh, am I taking this box?
I'm taking that box.
It's all, it all goes in the car.
I'll deal with it when it gets out of there.
It's a service you provide to them.
So I try to think about like some other businesses, like rag houses for like clothing, right?
That's one that, you know, how many clothing sellers even know rag houses exist?
I mean, it's just one of those things where you don't think, oh, there you can, there's
millions and millions of pounds of clothing out there that you can go dig through if you
want to dig through it and pay next to nothing for it.
So here's a fun, I got a fun story and then it's going to turn sad and dark real quick.
So, well, one of my library sales, I did not know this.
They had started giving my information out to the general public that comes in there.
I was getting these random phone calls of book pickups that I squinted, but I did them anyway.
The last one I did though here, which is great, more business, right?
I didn't, it didn't expect this, didn't want this, but I'll do it anyway.
My last one here, it gets dark and sad.
Her husband had recently died and she had us come out and get her books.
So we do all this, we get them back to the shop.
You know what this couple had done?
They put little love notes and how we'll be together.
Oh, dude.
Almost every single book and me and Cecilia both looked at each other.
Can't cry.
This is not a crying day.
We got to get to work.
But it was like crammed in every single one of them.
We'll live forever, blah, blah, blah.
It was the most sad thing I've ever done in this business.
Hey, you were busting on me earlier for talking about
being in a dead person's house, picking through their stuff.
I know, right?
Right.
But these were long drawn out letters, man.
I read a couple of them.
I had to stop.
It wasn't good for my mental health.
You do have to be prepared if you're going to go down this route though, right?
Because we're talking large amounts of inventory.
If I go to a thrift store, I can go thrifting probably for two or three weeks
and not find as many books as just one library pickup.
So you also have to be aware, self-aware that if you walk up to a flea market
and you say, I'll take all the hats you got.
And all of a sudden, they're like, oh, I got a whole dump truck full of hats.
You're going to take those two?
That's how these situations happen.
And you can easily just run yourself right into the ground.
Like I said, there's a reason I stopped hitting out my business card.
It's like turning a faucet on.
The sink can overflow sometimes.
Oh yeah, for sure.
And especially with the libraries because the libraries don't have big spaces
to store their donations.
Most of them don't even take donations anymore
because there is no space for them to store the donations.
So this library was probably like, listen, if we don't got to deal with bringing the stuff in,
we can just give Johnny's number.
So be it.
Johnny has a space to take the stuff, right?
That's kind of the big difference of him and me is he has a space.
Yeah, I have a storage unit, but storage unit life is no life for anybody to lead.
I think about this all the time.
When I first got a storage unit, I'm like, I made it, dude.
I'm a reseller.
I got a storage unit.
You don't want to be living in a storage unit, especially.
I was out there the other night scanning through the library stuff.
The sun's down at 445.
The wind's blowing.
It's freezing.
Yeah, get it inside one, Mike.
Well, then you got to go up the elevator.
Hopefully, nobody's using the car to wheel up the boxes.
The storage unit life is nothing to brag about.
So if you do go down this route, think about what are you going to do with all the stuff?
Where's it going to go?
What am I going to do with all the stuff that isn't worth it?
Because even if you say I'm going to take all the hats,
all the hats ain't going to be worth it.
So you have to find out another outlet to hopefully be able to get rid of the stuff you don't want.
Another one.
This one's probably the hardest one to do.
Antique malls.
There's usually a person that runs the facility itself,
but every single stall you see is a different individual, unfortunately.
But what I do sometimes, and this is basically when I was just trying to look for inventory,
I had mixed results with it.
You can walk up to the owner of the place with your stack of business cards.
Look, I want to buy everything that's book related on all of the carts here.
Can you give all these people my name and number?
And we can negotiate a flat price or can you call them right now and be like,
he wants to offer cash money right now for everything at a lower rate than a per piece item?
Because these guys are trying to make $5 or $6 a book.
Good for them.
I'm not paying $5 or $6 a book.
They're like, look, I'll do $1, but I'll do the whole cart.
I'll do all of your inventory right now, right here today.
Cash money.
Notice I've said cash money.
Cash tops.
Cash is probably another big tip.
I'll tell you what, I'm going to do cash.
Another big tip.
Always have cash on you.
Yeah.
Where I want you to check.
People don't want your credit card.
They want your cash money.
Listen, people ain't trying to Venmo money out here, right?
They want cold hard cash.
I will say this antique balls.
It's funny because I went to look at a booth this past week and I'll go around and I'll scan stuff.
I found some stuff that I'm sending in this week, but I will say this.
Everyone I've been in, they have a community board.
What goes good on a community board?
A nice little flyer that says you buy bulk CDs, DVDs.
As stupid as it sounds, flyers, business cards will get you leads you thought you could never get.
That's a great point.
My grocery store has one.
My hardware store has one.
I hang some.
Well, I don't hang signs anymore, but when I did, I made sure I always made my rounds
and put it up once a week.
Had those little tear off things with my contact information with the general bulk of the flyer info.
That works great, honestly.
We actually have...
It's like a Spanish hardware cafe place.
It's what we have in town.
I did fantastic there.
That place is weird.
I'm going to talk about it for just a half second.
They have on the back wall, all these phone prepaid money, visa card things.
They can call back over across the pond.
It's just everywhere, all this kind of stuff, as well as everything that suits their needs.
It's just culture and lifestyle.
You'd be surprised because those people have, like you said, it's a community, right?
But the Spanish community, they network like nobody's business.
They talk to their cousins, their second cousins, their third cousins, their fifth cousins,
Auntie back across the pond in Israel.
It doesn't matter.
They network.
It's amazing how those guys do it.
I would say another one on that flyer note is your neighborhood, your neighbors, honestly,
because you don't know.
You can offer a clean out service.
You can offer a...
What do you call it?
Declutter and just a rehoming of books.
You got to word it weird these days, be a little bit politically correct.
If it was just me and I was not trying to be a charming individual, I just want your books.
Yeah, for sure.
But you got to be like, I'm saving them from landfills.
But you did bring up another topic I want to get into here.
And I guess they kind of go hand in hand.
It's clean out companies and storage unit, people that buy storage units.
Yeah.
Them too kind of go hand in hand.
They go in.
They get in.
They go in, they get paid to remove all the stuff.
Sure, they come across.
Most of these companies, most of these people that do storage units
are looking for certain things, certain collectibles, higher dollar items in the storage unit.
And what happens here is they have to pay somebody else to remove everything because,
listen, at the end of the day, nobody wants to deal with a thousand pounds of books.
Nobody wants to deal with X, Y, and Z, old electric.
Everybody's going to be different.
This isn't like a clear cut thing where if I go talk to 10 storage unit guys,
exactly what they're keeping and what they're willing to just give up for nothing,
the answer is probably going to be different, like eight out of the 10 times.
So this is a huge opportunity we have.
People in the group, and I have run into this where, hey, my cousin buys storage units.
He doesn't deal with DVDs, movies, no kind of CDs, vinyl, anything like that.
Work with him.
Whenever he buys one, if it's stuff sitting there, then, hey, give him X amount of dollars
or per unit and it's yours.
So you don't have to actually participate in buying the storage unit.
You just wiggle your way in there to be a facilitator and making their life easier.
A couple of things on that.
One, I've thought about doing and have not done because I don't need to right now.
I thought about making the storage unit route circuit and doing that for a straight month
and not bid on a single unit and just meet people and be like, okay, once I've established
who comes repeatedly, I have a talk with them.
Like, I want the books and all the units you buy.
Let's come to an arrangement.
I've not done it because I don't need to do it because it would take a month of my time
to do that because they're not going to deal with you if you're just the guy that shows
up one day.
They're going to forget about you.
But if you're a regular for a little bit, they'll remember you, especially if you talk
with them.
It's more of an extrovert kind of strategy.
But if you're not an extrovert, I guess you would never do this.
But for me, being a big old extrovert that I am, I totally do that.
But again, it would take a month of my time to do that.
It's crazy because you're sitting here telling us you sell media and you have so much supply
that you have to stop putting up flyers, stop handing out business cards.
And I think to myself, how many people out there in the reselling world say, I can't
find enough inventory for X, Y, Z reasons.
If I told you that one or two of these types of flyers, business cards, relationships
would give you almost an infinite supply because I think about this way.
It's an infinite supply.
The libraries I get stuff from, as long as that library is open, brand new libraries
are not going nowhere.
I'll be long gone from planet Earth.
I have an infinite free supply of inventory from a few little relationships.
Like, it's crazy to me that we always just want to run to the thrift store and try to
get the lowest hanging fruit and complain when there isn't nothing where you can have
one conversation with somebody.
It's either an awkward conversation because you're both kind of in the same business.
And all of a sudden, you don't even have to worry about thrift stores.
And I say this all the time.
I made a video about it not that long ago.
Do we really control our business if we rely on thrift stores?
The answer is no, because we don't control the price.
We don't control the quality of inventory that comes in or the quantity of inventory
that comes in.
They basically decide how much we're going to pay and what type of items we're going
to find.
So anybody out there that's thrift and you don't you don't control your business.
If you only thrift, I'm here to tell you that what happens if the thrift store closes?
What happens if the prices go up 10 X?
All the videos, Goodwill is charging, you know, forty five dollars for X, Y, Z, Z,
Y, Z.
Well, hello.
That's what happens when you don't control.
They can charge whatever they want and you have to pay it at the end of the day.
Those not aware, I have a bookstore now of all the trash I've accumulated by doing all
these fun things we've talked about on this podcast.
I need it.
It was either that dispose of it like trash it, burn it or donate it.
I decided to open a bookstore and monetize it.
Doing a lot of these models.
If you're doing the bulk game, you're going to have to figure out a way, even if you're
not even if you're a cherry picker guy, you're going to end up with an overflow of stuff
you didn't want.
You just had to do it to get that one or two things you want.
You got to come up with a way to monetize or get rid of the stuff you don't want,
which leads me into the fun one we have not talked about.
It's probably the most obvious one.
Bookstores.
An actual, genuine bookstore.
And I mean, you can relate that to any other things, right?
You know, like Tech Scott, you know, his his clothing shops where the lower value stuff
goes into.
So this doesn't, you know, it doesn't.
It's not just the media guys.
It's anybody out there.
If you have an outlet for it, I do think it is important, though, because listen, Johnny,
this is another one of those reselling things where I'm going to open up a thrift store
and I'm going to spend tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I think starting out, you have to be smart.
And I think Johnny played it 100 percent correct is that it's his warehouse slash bookstore.
So it's a work and play type area here.
It's a combo deal.
He didn't go down the block and get a huge space just for specifically books.
The stuff comes in.
He makes a decision in the back.
Does it go out front or do we send it off to Amazon or listed on eBay and put it on
shelving? I think that's super important.
But I mean, just talk about, you know, the your start of having your bookstore and kind
of the doors, it's open up.
I think it's great.
We probably you know, you probably should have did a long time ago, but I was trying
to avoid it before I go to that.
What I meant by the the dud stuff, though, was take it to a actual bookstore for store
credit or an exchange, or maybe they'll just buy it for cash money.
That that's a way to not necessarily monetize your data.
But exchange duds for goods.
Get rid of it.
I mean, the biggest thing is whether you get money or not, you can't have this stuff
sitting around for more than a week, dude.
You go nuts.
I used to be that person where I would just let it sit there when I didn't have a storage
unit.
What else am I going to do with it?
It's got to go, whether that's donating, whether that's burning, whether that's selling
to someone else.
You have to move this stuff as fast as possible or or you'll just you'll give up.
But going on to my bookstore, I mean, it was an interesting endeavor.
I'm not going to go into the back story of this was my last on my list to try and do,
but which is a fun story.
But here's here's basically what I did.
I went as cheaply as possible.
I think one of the I had bookcases I was already using or that I had left over because I had
switched over to a brick and board model as far as my storage unit.
So, OK, we'll use these for the book.
We already got them.
And then because my bookshelves are double sided, we decided this wall here, that will
be part of the store itself.
And we have a marker board with all the pricing variants there are because our prices for
our outside books.
Yeah, we have outside books.
I'll get to that in a minute versus our inside books versus our kids books all outline for
them.
We have like 15 million deals on there.
It's buy 10, get one free, get a free book every day.
Oh, wait, there's a filler box option, too.
Now, very few people have figured this combo out.
They do the filler box.
If they bother to count 10 items, they get an additional book free.
They haven't figured that out.
They haven't figured it out yet.
They could do it.
And we also have we buy books, we accept donations, and we do trade as well.
Yeah, trade out books.
Bring in new books, take out the junk and these new books you traded for, they could
be gold, right?
Or I'll flat out buy them.
Or if you just want to drop them off.
And that seems to be the majority of what people do.
They just donate.
They give me books.
So that's always fun.
So you're getting new inventory.
That's more value to me than what the store generates.
Now, what the store generates, and by that, I mean cash money because we are a cash only
establishment here.
Basically, honestly, what I do with the cash, I just slide it over to my employee.
This is coming out of your paycheck.
Make the notes.
Basically, it subsidizes her paycheck.
Now, I could do it for the rent.
I could do it for the net.
But I decided, well, instead of me paying you once a month, you could have a little
bit injected here and there over the course of selling.
And she likes that.
She likes getting money every day.
Sometimes she walks out the door with $30, sometimes $100.
We had a person come in.
She dropped $100.
She bought, I don't know, 40 boxes of books as well as the other.
So she walked in Monday morning with like $200 sitting on her.
She's like, what is this?
I'm like, well, it's what the store did the weekend.
I don't have to tell you.
We treat ours very much like a liquidation outlet.
I mean, our books are only like $0.50 on the inside, quarter for kids' books.
We got a dime.
I'm not kidding.
We got a dime rack outside.
Actually, we have four of them.
And they are the underlined, highlighted, water damp.
They should be going in the trash, but you know what?
People buy it.
I can't believe it.
These are in horrible.
Some of them are missing their front covers and stuff, but at a dime, people are thinking
they're getting a deal for these horrendous books.
And I'm glad to give them to her while selling to them.
I think a big takeaway here is Johnny's already at his bookstore slash warehouse.
So like, if you have to, like, how are you wording it?
Is it a warehouse bookstore or is it a bookstore warehouse?
For me or would I tell the public?
For you, for you.
Like it's a warehouse bookstore.
Definitely.
I mean, outside or the storefront, I just considered that storage because, hey, maybe,
and we've already done this once, we'll go back and rescan it.
We'll pull out, I don't know, a couple of shelves worth of stuff.
Hey, this is green all of a sudden.
Look at that.
Didn't have to use Kepa.
Just had to wait a minute.
He's already there.
And I think that's the huge advantage with what he's done is that he's already at this
place doing his eBay and Amazon work.
His store is self-service, right?
He's got a big whiteboard.
It's got everything.
You know, he's not out there taking money, giving change.
You got a little lockbox.
You ring a bell if you need something.
It's super smart and it's ingenious how it works, right?
Because he tells me all the time, people just donate stuff.
Even though he says, hey, I pay for it.
They're just like, here you go.
Because guess what?
They come in, they can get a free book, right?
He promotes, you come in, you can just take a book and leave.
You can get 365 books free for the year if you just come here every day.
It's like a book club, a free book club that he runs down there.
It's ingenious.
It's ingenious and it is a way to kind of, if you have the space, to make it make sense.
There's people out there that do this.
Maybe you have a garage and you do weekly, you know, garage sales, yard sales, and it's
just your overflow of inventory.
So it is super smart.
I do think it is important to kind of start thinking outside the box with sourcing overall.
So final thoughts here, Johnny, on thrifting.
Well, not thrifting, everything but thrifting.
Gal, your last piece of advice to avoid thrift stores.
And just by the way, guys, there's a gigantic list.
We didn't even get through it all.
I know.
My last piece of advice, look around just in your daily life and listen to conversations
just as you're going by.
You'll think of places that could have books, might have books.
Oh, I forgot they have books at this kind of place.
Keep your ear listening on that kind of stuff.
And there's always a way to get inventory, always.
I promise you.
Even if you're on the introverted side, I mean, some of the ones we didn't talk about,
it's probably more suited for the introvert kind of people like online shopping.
There's that's a whole another network.
That's a whole another ballgame.
We'll get to it in another episode, probably.
It can be done.
I don't care if you live in the inner city or rural Alabama.
It does not matter.
You can get inventory.
Yeah, you may need to drive.
Okay, you don't have a vehicle.
Okay, you probably know somebody that has a vehicle.
You can make an arrangement to go shopping.
You ride a bus line.
Great.
I know they got a bike rack.
You can probably hang your sack of books on or something.
I got to be done.
I got a funny story about a bus line.
Deb tells a story all the time.
Like she was in high school.
You live in Philly, right?
Dude, there's buses that run around.
You don't need a vehicle.
You can live your whole life in Philly and you don't need a vehicle to go anywhere.
A couple blocks away.
Yeah, everything's a couple blocks away.
And if not, there's a bus that runs every 10 minutes going down every block in the city.
And she tells a story all the time when she was in high school.
She had to go buy a printer from Kmart.
And it was one of those huge like fax printers.
And she had to carry it like three miles to the bus stop.
Get on the bus with this huge printer.
You know, she's like six foot two, 110 pounds, soaking wet.
So you got to get on the bus.
And then she's got to get off the bus and carry it home.
Like there's always an option to get inventory if you're willing to just put in a little bit of time
and effort and think outside the box.
Don't think any of this stuff handicaps you, right?
I don't have a vehicle.
Well, source online.
How many businesses, reselling businesses, just look at every online arbitrage, eBay to Amazon business.
They never leave their house.
You can sit at home.
You know, you just order food too.
You didn't even got to go get food anymore.
You never sit in front of your computer all day and have a six figure reselling business.
All right.
Just real quickly, I'll ramble on a few of them.
There's things called book conventions where they sell books at these conventions you can go to.
That sounds nerdy, dude.
I ain't going.
There's RPG conventions.
Now we're getting nerdy.
All RPG conventions have books because that's how they play their games.
There's yard sales.
There is the little beach shops.
They all have books by local authors in them.
Some of them are worth big money, actually.
Same for mountain towns.
Same deal there.
Just local authors and stuff.
Like you said, book clubs.
There's those little library exchange trade areas.
Now there's a questionable morality thing by rating that thing.
But hey, you should have dubs to backfill it.
You're going to take everything from the little library, backfill it with all your junk.
Joanne would.
Yeah, she would.
She would just dumpster dive in.
Oh, dumpster dive.
There's another one.
Yeah, dumpster dive.
I mean, even for books, you can go outside some of these bookstores.
They got a dumpster.
You will be amazed.
And guess what?
The buy cost is zero.
You might stink a little bit, but buy cost is zero.
Take a shower.
It'll be fine.
Yeah.
And that's all I'm going to say for now because we're running a little bit over here.
We actually have to get somebody on here that does dumpster diving.
I'm going to have to do some research and find somebody.
You're going to find a dumpster diving YouTuber.
I'm excited.
Do this, please.
I'm telling you, they're out there and they make a whole bunch of money.
I mean, they do.
No shame in that game.
It pops up my YouTube feed every once in a while.
And I always click through because I mean, that's like a treasure trove.
You never know what you're going to get when you open up those huge plastic flaps of the dumpster.
Right.
Cost of goods.
Oh, let me check.
What's the price of gas?
Just have a little bit of money in your bank account in case you get arrested.
So that's going to do it for this episode.
We appreciate you listening or watching over on YouTube and we'll talk to you next week.