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 the Resellers Mindset Podcast, Mike,
alongside Johnny, and we have a special guest today,
James on YouTube known as Bold Finds.
He's gonna kind of give us an insight
on his reselling journey, his business.
We're excited to kind of see how it looks different
from us because he's not over here
in the States like me and Johnny.
So James, give yourself a little bit of an introduction here
and kind of take us away.
We'll just walk through everything.
Well, first of all, guys, thank you for inviting me on.
Super privileged.
Yes, I'm James known as Bold Finds over on Instagram
and YouTube, as well as eBay, full-time eBay reseller
here in the UK.
Started as a everything seller
where I think most people do start their journey
as an everything seller, a lot continuous at.
And in the last, I would say six to eight months or so,
I've decided to niche down into clothing,
which is something I had zero interest in doing
when I started reselling funnily enough.
So yeah, that's a little intro about me.
That's clothing of all the things that choose, dude.
I think you're, I mean, that's pretty crazy.
If I had to choose a category again,
clothing probably wouldn't be in my top.
But then again, it's like different for everybody.
Like, is there a little insight to why you decided
to choose clothing and not toys or not books
or not shoes?
Yeah, so making the decision was really difficult
because I had gone from selling your Nerf guns,
your books, your Furbies, loads of random stuff,
anything and everything guide sold,
the electricals, the gaming side.
And when I used to go out and source items,
I would buy everything other than clothing.
So it wasn't like clothing was ever part of the plan.
So I've done a complete 360.
And the reason I chose clothing is what we speak about
in the group all the time is plentiful.
Every single sourcing opportunity I go to,
every car boots I will go to,
every store has some clothing on it.
So I knew sourcing stock was not going to be difficult.
What I probably didn't realize when niching down
is sourcing good stock is slightly more difficult.
So that's the reason I went with clothing
plus the people I surround myself with.
A lot of the resellers who I speak to on a day-to-day basis
from the UK, they're doing clothing
and they're smashing out the park.
So I was in the mindset of they can do it, I can do it.
And just a little background.
We talked about this a little bit before the podcast.
The only reason I really know James is last year
I was the only crazy American to be up really early
before our group's morning call.
So it would be me, James, the UK guys.
I knew James back when he was a bookseller.
He's transitioned to things when we talk about things
and help each other here and there.
So thank you for coming on James, it's a pleasure.
No, thank you.
And I remember them early morning starts
when for us it was super early.
Now we're talking six, seven, eight o'clock
our time in the morning.
So for you, Johnny, what was that?
Two a.m., three a.m.?
Yeah, something like that, three or four a.m.
Something like it was really early.
It'd be me and the UK guys for at least a couple hours
and the morning call would start.
Yeah, yeah, good times.
So clothing, I need more details.
You sell baby clothing, you sell men's, women's,
you don't care what kind of clothing it is
as long as it's worth money.
Yeah, so when I started, I was strictly,
right, I'm gonna be a men's clothing seller.
I don't want to do trousers.
So I just want to do jumpers and tops
and keep it as simple as that.
Then I tried some trousers and trousers started selling.
So I thought, let me add trousers into it.
Then I met a supplier who was getting more women's than men.
So I thought, let's try women's as well.
Let's add that into the mix.
Probably never gonna touch women's again, honestly,
because the amount of measurements you have to do
on women's clothings compared to men's
is horrendous amount.
Plus, love the women out there.
So when I say this, please take this with a pinch of salt.
There are a lot more, I'm gonna use the word fussy,
fussier than men.
Us men, if it doesn't fit,
we kind of put it in the wardrobe and we say,
you know what, I'll lose a bit of weight
and I'll get into that maybe three years later.
Women, they need every single measurement.
If it's not perfect, that returns coming back to me.
So yeah, predominantly men's.
I do like my vintage stuff.
I'm trying to learn it a bit more.
Now the vintage banties,
I'm really starting to get into a bit more.
But what I'm realizing at the moment is
as a clothing seller,
you don't need to know every single brand
to an inch of its life.
You just need to know the nuances within the brands
that are actually worth picking up.
So yeah, I'm gonna try and stick to men's,
but I'm not against picking up females' jumpers
or tops or blouses.
Two measurements and two measurements.
It's really funny you say that
because I'm thinking about all my clothing
and shoes purchases.
Have I ever made a return?
And the answer to that is no.
I'll put it in the closet
or I'll throw it away at the end of the day.
On the same, if you get an item,
you kind of wear it and you'll say,
oh, it's all right.
It'll fit one day or it's a bit too baggy.
So that allows me to eat a little bit extra next month
to fit into it.
But yeah, I can't remember the last time
I returned an item of clothing itself.
It just goes in.
Right, you can wear shoes.
I'll just shove them in the closet a year later.
Okay, they've been in the closet a year.
They're going in the trash.
Don't care anymore.
Your feet ain't gonna shrink or grow
that much in a year.
Or they didn't fit right when I tried them on
or I didn't like the way they looked or something.
Because I get shoes as gifts sometimes from people.
But no, fair point.
And the other interesting thing,
I'm glad James is on,
he'll use a little bit more of an acular
that's local to him than us US guys.
I mean, what do we call trousers?
Just pants over here in the US, Mike?
Yeah, everything's pants to me,
unless they're pajamas.
Yes, our pants are slightly different in the UK.
And it does make me laugh in the group
when I hear people say, what size are these pants?
And I'm thinking, well, no, we call pants underwear
in the UK.
And it's funny, you had Tom on the last podcast
and they refer to fongs as in flip,
we call them flip flops in the UK.
Like fongs are shoes, fongs are shoes in Australia,
but fongs for us in the UK is underwear.
Yes.
It's quite funny to refer to things as fongs.
So it's just funny how we all have different words
for different things and it's all the same really.
No, it is actually fascinating.
So being a UK seller, are you allowed to sell everywhere
that is Europe or where does the UK start and end?
Cause I'll admit it, looking at a map,
I can't tell you what's what on there.
Yeah, so we have in the UK, we have England,
Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
That's the five areas in the UK.
But with eBay, with GSP, we can ship anywhere in the world.
So we can ship in Europe, we can ship to America, Canada,
you name it, we can ship there.
Apart from there's a couple of banned countries,
I think Russia, we can't ship to at the moment.
So yeah, we do have, although we're quite a small country,
we do have access to actually sell worldwide as well.
The only difficult thing with GSP is the postage costs.
So if you're buying something from America, from the UK,
a five pound T-shirt might cost you an extra $20
to get it shipped to you.
So they've got to really want it to buy them.
Now, are you kind of like Tom,
where they only have like two parcel sizes
if it fits at ships kind of deal,
or is it something different over in the UK?
Yeah, we're slightly different and we're quite blessed
when it comes to postage because ours is all based on weight
and the price doesn't change that much.
So anything up to one kg, and apologies,
you might have to convert it into, you use grams, do you?
Do you guys use grams or?
One kg.
Okay.
So yeah, so one kg, we can ship a parcel,
which is probably a pair of jeans and a T-shirt
to give you an idea of weight.
That's gonna cost us about two pounds 95 pence to ship
anywhere in the UK.
And then if it's double that,
you're only looking at an extra sort of 50 pence extra on top.
So about three pound 50 to ship it.
And if you have up to 10 kg,
you're only looking at about six pounds,
as in English pounds,
I don't wanna confuse all the pounds and stuff.
So our postage is really cheap in comparison to Australia
and you guys in the US.
I can't believe when you're talking
to ship a pair of trainers, it might cost you $9.
That blows my mind.
Yeah, one kg is equivalent to 2.2 US pounds
for all you US listeners out there.
So I mean, that's a lot of weight
for that little bit of money.
Now, when it comes to sourcing and brands,
cause you're a clothing seller, I'm curious,
are the brand trends kind of the same
that you see in the US
or maybe do some US brands do better over there
and vice versa?
Yeah, so we get a lot of the US brands
actually do end up over here,
but they are a lot harder to find.
And it's quite funny,
some of our UK brands are probably not so popular
here in the UK and we can't sell them.
If they were in the US, they would sell really well.
So we get lots of things like Patagonia is a prime example.
We see that quite a bit in the UK
and it demands really good money.
But some of the other brands
that I hear you guys speak about,
like I think there's one called Phyllis and or Phyllis
and I think it is,
we don't tend to see that as much in the UK,
but if you do find in the UK, it still sells very well.
But it's very much like for like,
but some things demand more money here
than they will where you guys are.
And also vice versa, in the US,
there's some brands that we can't sell for life
as in the UK and you can get good money.
So yeah, the brands we do find very similar,
but there is some ones we can't just find here.
All right, so give me a breakdown
on where you're sitting at.
It looks like some kind of like storage shed kind of deal
that most resellers wind up like maybe eventually getting,
whether that's a garage or storage unit like myself,
like where are you at?
Is this like your workspace?
How does it operate?
Give us some insight on that.
Yeah, so this is where I started day one.
So this actually is a shed built down the end of my garden.
So for me to start work in the morning is great
because I can never have the excuse
of I've got to travel into work.
I literally go downstairs, make myself a coffee,
open the back door, walk five seconds down the garden
and here I am ready to go.
So what we've got here is my garage
and let me see if I can show you a little bit.
This here is my photo setup.
I've got my lights here.
I don't wanna show you too low because it's a bit of a mess
and I know if tech watches is back,
he's gonna tail me off for that.
Anyway, it's the photo set up there and I work from here.
So all of my listings and everything gets done by here.
Then what I've got is two offsite garages
which are a couple of minute walk down the road
where I store all my clothing items,
which are run on racks and use the numbers box system
to actually store the items in.
But before when I first started,
and if you go back and watch my first YouTube videos,
what you'll see, the racks used to all be behind me
and to the side of me.
So I used to store everything in here.
I just hit the point of not being able to grow anymore,
which why I needed to go and get some external storage.
So you're full-time now.
So tell us about before you were full-time,
what was the trigger factor to,
yes, I wanna do this for a living to move into full-time,
whether you're a part-timer hobbyist doing it for fun.
Yeah, so the reselling journey is so interesting
because I don't think any of us when we're at school
ever think to ourselves,
do you know what, one day when I grow up,
I wanna be a reseller.
It's one of them jobs that you just discover.
And the journey and the passion for reselling started
probably when I was five or six years of age
without realizing,
because my dad used to take me to the car boot sales,
which are your flea markets.
And I remember we used to have to get up really early
and he would just go and buy for home,
buy for himself, not to resell.
But there'll be certain items he would want
and they might ask 10 pounds.
And he would send me over to the store with five pounds
and try and bargain them down.
And they'll see a little kid with five pounds
and that's all the money I've got,
please can I have this?
And most of the time it would work.
And a funny story, I haven't really mentioned this,
but I used to have a red, when I was young,
you used to have a red puffer jacket, unbranded.
And that was always known then as the sorry coat
is how we used to call it.
So people would feel sorry for me
because I've got this really cheap coat
that he would put me in and send me off to.
So that's where the passion for reselling
really started without realizing.
And after college, I went into recruitment.
And for 13 years I was in recruitment.
And I discovered resellers in the UK on YouTube,
first of all, and a few US ones.
So I think Cincinnati Picker and ShedFlips
were the first two in the US who I came across.
And from the UK perspective,
I was fascinated to feel like,
are these people actually doing this
and making a full-time living doing so?
I didn't think that was a thing.
Anyway, so I watched YouTube resellers for about three years
while I was in recruitment, just for fun.
And during the first pandemic, during COVID,
I was made redundant from my job.
They offered me a settlement,
which was a nice bit of money for a bit of security.
And I said to my wife, I said,
I would love to do reselling as a full-time job.
I don't like recruitment anymore.
This might be the perfect opportunity
to try and grow my own business.
And she was all for it.
And the story is I actually went
and accepted another recruitment job.
And I was there for four days.
And I rang her at one lunchtime and I said,
I don't want to do this anymore.
It's soul destroying.
I don't want to build a career in recruitment anymore.
I'm gonna give it a go and look,
worst case scenario, we've got six months of savings.
If it all goes to pot,
I can go back and get another job.
And I've been reselling now,
I wrote this down the other day actually,
since January, 2021.
As a full-time reseller.
So I didn't start as a part-timer hobbyist.
I just went full-time from day one.
And yeah, I've learned so much during that time.
I think you should, at the end of this year,
I think you should bring the red puffer jacket back out
when you hit all your goals for the year.
And I kind of want to jump into that.
You had a really good YouTube video talking about
the reality of your business and where you need to be
for it to make sense for you to continue reselling.
And I think, I mean, I can't emphasize this enough.
People like James say, okay, here's what my numbers are.
Here's what I need to make.
Is this making sense?
James can sit here and say, okay,
if I'm not making the money I should be making,
then that's fine.
I walk away from reselling.
I think it was one of the best YouTube videos
I've seen in a while when it comes to overall accountability
of yourself in reselling.
So like kind of give us a quick little synopsis
of this year, what it means to you and reselling
and whether or not you continue with this journey.
Yeah, absolutely.
That video was, it kind of just hit me
that I needed to speak about that
because I think it'd been playing on my mind
without realizing for a while.
And I kept burying my head in the sand,
especially the back end of last year,
feeling like, you know what?
It's a bit slow at the moment, but it'll come.
It'll work.
It's gonna work out.
It'll be fine.
And then we had a phone call with our mortgage advisor
when we come to remortgage on the house.
And they said, you know, the rates have gone up in the UK.
It's gonna go up.
We're like, yeah, we expect it.
And then she dropped the bombshell.
500 pounds a month has gone up by.
And that really hits home where you think
if it's an extra a hundred pounds,
you kind of say, I can find it.
We can make it work.
500 pound is a lot of money.
So it kind of made it click with me to say,
you need to really dig into your business
and work out your numbers
and work out whether you're just doing this for fun
and you like the lifestyle
or whether you're actually making it work as a business.
And I was on a podcast with my friend, Luke.
He does a podcast as well called Bold Clobber
where we get together every Monday.
And he was speaking about something
and I was sitting there
and something was just clicking in my head.
And it just told me like,
you need to really look at your business
because it's not working right now.
And I spoke to a couple of people,
spoke to Mel back from burnout,
spoke to the guys on the UK call in text group,
spoke to tech.
And I released that video the day after speaking to them guys
basically saying, this is do or die for my business.
If I do not turn things around,
I am gonna have to go back to a job that I don't want to do
to make reselling a hobby business of anything,
which I did not want to do.
I love doing this.
From that moment there,
I feel like it's changed for me.
I think the way I look at reselling has changed
from actually admitting that it wasn't working before.
I'm focusing a lot more on ASP and sell through rate
because I think for years
I've ignored sell through rate especially.
I will look on the eBay app and I will see,
oh, okay, I brought this item for five pounds and look,
oh, there's a couple that are sold for 40 pounds.
And I probably ignored that out of the two
that are sold for 40 pound,
there's 80 listed that haven't sold.
And I would still be like,
yeah, but this is gonna be 40 pounds.
So I'm focusing a lot more.
I'm digging a bit deeper when it comes to buying.
And I use the term on that video about being a busy fool.
So I would sometimes,
and Johnny's probably seen this from the group,
there'll be times sometimes at midnight,
I'd be listening, listening, listening away
up until three, four in the morning,
feeling like that's the only way to run a business.
And then I speak to other people in the UK who say,
I start at eight in the morning, I'm done by 11 o'clock
and they're making five, six times the money I'm making.
So you start to realise actually doing all this work
is great, but you need it to pay off financially
and where my business was, it wasn't paid.
Very interesting.
We have very similar backgrounds
because I had a year of saving, well,
I had a buyout which became my savings
to give me a whole year to make or break reselling.
And also I've also come to inclusion,
ASP is fantastic,
but sell through rate matters much, much more.
And I think ASP only model can work.
And I even text mentioned this,
it's just how long do you wanna wait for it to start working?
It very much can work, I believe.
And I was seeing that in my business,
but the sell through rate was just horrible.
And I had to make some adjustments on my end
as far as the books.
Hello, Amazon, thank you very much.
Yeah, and I'm still able to run my eBay store
how I wanna run it with that slower moving stuff,
but anything else just goes straight into Amazon.
That was the way I was able to figure it out
and stay in books.
Because I was kind of like you,
it was like, I can stay in books
or I could do something else.
And I really wanna stay in books
because I do have a passion for it.
Yeah.
So here's the fun part question I have for you, James.
Do you love clothes?
This is the part I'd never thought I'd honestly say,
because when I first started, zero passion for clothing.
And that was part of the reason why I picked it as well
in a strange way,
because when I got sourcing,
the amount of times I've brought things
and I've said to myself,
oh, I wanna keep that myself,
wanna keep it myself.
And we're resellers, the odd thing's okay,
but when it turns out you've been to a car boot sale
and out of the 10 things you brought, you're keeping four,
it doesn't make sense.
And so with clothing, it was always that thing of,
I don't care, it doesn't matter
whether it's a vintage 1970s t-shirt
that's worth 500 pounds to someone else.
To me, it's just a bit of rag.
And within about two months of doing clothing,
that's all changed.
I now find clothing cool
and I never thought I would before.
So I showed you earlier,
but an item I got the other day was a Guns N' Roses
vintage tee from 1991.
Now, beforehand, I don't care for that,
but when I got that and when I sourced that online,
I was super excited.
Not as excited to say I'm gonna keep it for myself,
but more excited to say there is clothing out there
that is worth hundreds of pounds
that people do not know the value for.
So my passion for clothing has gone like sky high,
but I wouldn't say I'm a clothing enthusiast.
I don't get excited with new fashion.
Honestly, Johnny, I get excited by money.
There you go.
And that is, I think as a reseller, what you need to be.
I get excited when I hear the kaching on the phone,
not excited to feel like I've got a vintage tee
sitting in my storage, I've overpriced it,
and how cool is it I've got a tee?
So yeah, money is the real excitement.
Absolutely.
I love books, but I love the money more.
Yes.
And then I think Mr. Mike down here,
I mean, he said it before, do you love books, Mike,
or do you love the money books?
I am literally the carbon copy of James
in the book category.
I love the money books make me,
and the knowledge that comes with it is exciting, right?
You learn as you go, but I'm the same boat as him.
I come across something and I'm like,
okay, yeah, this is cool.
I know it's worth $500, I'll buy it for a dollar,
but there's not a single thought that comes into my mind.
Am I gonna keep this book for myself?
I had huge buys of Stephen King first edition,
every single Stephen King first edition,
and anybody out there, everybody comment on YouTube channel,
oh, keep this for yourself.
I'm like, care about Stephen King?
These books are like $100 bills, get them out of here.
Give me the money instead of the stuff.
So I'm the same exact way.
And I think you're right.
And the business sense to just look at yourself
in the mirror as a reseller,
I think that already put you ahead of like 99.9% of resellers
because at the end of the day, let's face it,
a lot of people were you selling,
they say they're part-time full-time,
but they don't treat it like a business.
And they don't even know the beginning of the numbers
to kind of understand if it even is a feasible business.
So I'm excited to see.
And when your backs against the wall, dude,
it's like all of a sudden, there's a new James,
all of a sudden things are kicking,
you're finding better stuff magically
because you're putting in the time.
There's no luck in reselling.
You create your own luck and I think in reselling
by putting in the work and the effort.
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead James.
No, I was just gonna say,
I think what you said there about treating it as a business,
I think you're spot on with that Mike,
because I think a lot of people don't see it as a business.
They see it as like a hobby lifestyle,
especially when you're doing it full-time.
And I've been guilty of this.
And to be fair, even as the backend of last year,
I probably still treated it as just getting by
instead of actually building a business.
As long as I've got enough to pay the bills,
like I've got a good lifestyle.
I could do my YouTube on the side.
It's great compared to seeing as a business.
And when I first started reselling what you said there,
I used to have like a hundred pound eBay day
and that'd be it.
I would go inside, I would put Netflix on,
I would chill out and I would say,
I'm winning at life a hundred pound day and that's it.
And then you start having the 30 pound days
because you're not putting the effort in
and the 20 pound days and you have a blank day.
And you start saying, oh, why is eBay punishing me?
Well, that's why.
So now I don't ever look at my numbers
on a day-by-day basis anymore.
For me, that was soul destroying
because eBay can be so up and down.
Now I look at the weekly numbers and I say,
was this week better than last week?
And if so, why so?
If it wasn't, what more could I have done?
Have I dropped the quality of the items
I'm putting into the store?
Am I not actually concentrating
on making sure everything hits my metrics?
So that's been a real big change for me now
to actually focus on it and look at it as a business
and not a hobby lifestyle
because you can have it as a hobby lifestyle, I think,
but then you've got to have income coming in
from somewhere else to allow you to have that hobbyist.
I haven't got that.
So I meant to ask this to Tom, but I'm gonna ask it to you.
So in our group, I've noted,
how hard was the transition jumping in a group
full of Americans, I guess, the best way to put it?
Because again, we use words like,
everybody can understand each other mostly,
but sometimes there's a couple of words here and there.
It's like, I don't know what it means,
the whole context of this conversation.
Yeah, I put it off for ages
and I discovered the group when it was obviously Chris's group,
Daly or Feynman.
That's when I first discovered the group.
And it's really funny,
tech was an unknown thing to me at that point,
because you'd heard his name.
And the reason I joined the group actually is,
I used to drive to the car booths on a Saturday
and on YouTube on the way,
I would listen to the podcast for the first half an hour.
And they would always cut off and it would say,
if you want more, basically join the group.
And I thought, what am I missing?
What more is there?
This is great, but what more is there?
And on one of the Wednesday lives,
I saw someone from the UK who's not in the group anymore,
his name's Tom, I don't know if he's resigning anymore.
And he was from the UK and I reached out to him and said,
it's an American group.
Are you getting value as a UK person?
And he said to me, it's great, come and join.
Because although it is mostly American people in the group,
a lot of it is relatable to the UK.
Yes, there's sometimes in calls where,
a lot of the stuff we cannot find in the UK
and it's not relatable,
but lots of the processes and nuances around business,
it doesn't matter, I believe what country you're in,
you can make it into your own thing.
So I joined the group and yeah,
I've been in the group now over two years.
I've been in the group and I've learned so much.
I've made lots of friends,
I've made lots of business connections.
And now I host the UK call and I co-host the YouTube call
with Mel back from Burnout as well.
So yeah, I love being in it.
I love the fact that you can go in there
and reselling is a very lonely job.
I think a lot of people find that
you're in your own head space.
And for me going from working in the business,
speaking with hundreds of people on a daily basis
in recruitment,
managing recruitment process for a big company
to then coming down my little shed and sitting here.
There's only so many podcasts and Spotify
and YouTube you can watch.
So I like going in and just having that interaction
to be able to ask questions.
So yeah, I think regardless whether you're from America
or anywhere else, there's value in the group,
regardless of what country you're in.
So I'm gonna ask this question to both of you
because it doesn't really apply to me
because I don't really have my own YouTube channel
outside of appearing on this of course.
So how is the reselling balance,
the family balance and then the YouTube balance,
how does that work for you guys?
I'll go first James,
cause then you can kind of lead us into your YouTube journey
and everything.
For me, it's YouTube,
it's not a money making tool by any means necessary
out there.
So anybody that resells and does YouTube,
if you think it's going to be another income stream,
it's possible, but we're talking years and years,
hundreds, hundreds of videos.
It does require you to have a schedule that is airtight
because as a full-time reseller like me and James,
if we're not making money from YouTube,
but we're making money from reselling,
we can't trade off reselling time for YouTube time.
It's all a balancing act.
And I think a lot of it is sight unseen
when it comes to YouTube, you just think,
oh, we just recorded this video, uploaded it right away,
no editing, no behind the scenes costs.
And YouTube pays you thousands of dollars a month.
Here to tell you that it's not the case,
but it is very interesting.
James, like give us a little bit insight
why you got into YouTube.
What does the future of YouTube look like for you?
Is it something you're going to continue to do?
Yeah, so take us away on your YouTube journey.
Yeah, Mike, you're spot on there.
I think a lot of people see YouTube as a bit of a quick win,
get rich quick scheme kind of thing.
And it's really not.
YouTube takes so much time.
And I say this now from someone who now creates
compared to where I used to watch videos,
because when you watch a 10 minute video,
you don't appreciate that 10 minute video
might have took that creator six, seven, eight hours
to put together.
Filming from editing, from the audio, from the cuts,
from everything that goes involved into it.
And now I realize that more so on the True Crime Channel,
I'll speak about that shortly.
But the reason I got into YouTube is,
I wanted to kind of share and just put it out there
what I'm doing, because I watched a lot of the UK YouTubers
who've done reselling.
And I thought there's a gap in the market.
There's something else I could offer to that community.
And the reason I started it honestly,
was because I was a bit bored with just doing eBay.
I wanted a hobby alongside eBay.
And that's how it started.
And I was quite fortunate on my channel,
because I had a video early on the journey that went viral.
It was a car boot sale video.
When I recorded it, didn't think anything of it at the time.
The first couple of days was just normal views.
And then it gained, I think about 130,000 views
in just over 24 hours.
It literally went from normal to blowing up.
And it got me monetized.
That one video got me monetized on YouTube,
which is great, because then you start earning money
from your videos.
But it was probably the worst thing
that could ever happen to me, looking back now,
because after that video, I sat there and I said to myself,
YouTube's easy.
Why aren't everyone smashing on YouTube?
You put out your next video, performs as normal.
Put out your one after, performs as normal.
Oh, okay, YouTube's not that easy.
But I also made the mistake of what you said there, Mike,
as well, it's really important for anyone
who's thinking about maybe starting a channel.
I then went to 90% of my time was spent on YouTube,
10% on eBay.
And you'll spot on what you say there,
YouTube does not pay the bills.
I've done a video on my channel actually showing people
how much I earned from YouTube in my first year.
It's nowhere near compared to what you can earn doing eBay.
But why do I continue it?
Because I get that question a lot, because I love it.
I think you've got to be passionate about it.
I think you've got to commit the time.
And what you were saying there, Mike,
about where you put your energy.
I watched a great podcast the other day
with someone in the UK called Stephen Bartlett.
He goes by the diary of the CEO.
And he was speaking about chips
and how you have 24 poker chips, eight are taken up by sleep
and where did the rest of your chips go?
And I started to look at my own chips and say,
well, actually, these go to eBay, these go to YouTube
and then a small amount is left over for myself,
my own physical health and mental health
and also family type.
Like half a chip maybe.
So that's again, something I'm trying to change this year
to actually say, I've got enough chips to spread out,
but to try and be a little bit selfish of my own time
so I can make sure I'm the best version of myself
for everyone in YouTube land as well.
Because I think when it comes to making content,
if your passion is not there for it, it shows in the videos
and the audience isn't stupid.
I mean, this is very interesting perspective to me
because I thought about doing YouTube.
I never told you this, Mike, but then again, I look,
I know how much time it takes
because I've worked with clients helping them
with their YouTube channel.
I talked to Mike about how long it takes him.
I just can't squeeze it in with my reselling life at all.
And then I also think about on personal level,
the amount of hours I'm working now
and still continuing to work,
as far as a future family goes,
they would have to be very tolerant of me
and very patient of me or I gotta give up
a little give and take there, obviously.
So it's very interesting hearing from you guys
who are doing all three.
I can't imagine doing all three
at this stage of my journey, honestly.
It's, I guess it also motivates us,
at least it motivates me.
I can't be on YouTube if I got no sales, right?
If I got the lamest business, right?
I'm not gonna do YouTube if my reselling business sucks.
So I guess it kind of holds me accountable to others.
Because you get people that, long-time subscribers,
I have the membership, tons of people over in the Discord.
It's like accountability and I don't know,
like motivation when you're around other resellers
because I don't wanna be the crappiest used book guy, right?
I wanna be at least a half decent guy
that falls somewhere in the middle.
So that's also kind of an aspect of it
and helping others, right?
We both work jobs where we didn't like.
I'm curious about that.
Did you put in a notice
or did you just quit on that lunch break?
Yeah, it's a funny story.
So in the UK with regards to notice periods,
for your first three months,
you are on the probation period
where either party gives a week's notice
and that's it, if it doesn't work out.
So yeah, I went into the office and I said to them,
look, really not a joining.
I wanna be honest with you.
I don't want you guys to spend any more time
wasting training me.
And they said to me,
well, we're just gonna get you to do the mundane tasks
then for the next week.
And I was like, but I don't want to be here.
I'm just in a way, I'm not gonna show up.
And they said to me,
well, you're not gonna get paid for the week.
And I was like, no issue whatsoever.
Because I'm one of them who,
I always said to people as well when I hired them
and when I used to do HR meetings,
the moment you wake up in the morning
and you look in that mirror
while you're brushing your teeth and you say,
I don't wanna do this anymore,
it's time for a change.
It's time to find a new job.
It's time to find something you're passionate about.
So I said to them, happy to work the week notice,
went in for the first three days.
And in the end, they just said to me, just go.
And I said, no worries.
And they were like, we're not gonna pay you for the rest.
No worries, I don't want paying at all.
It's not about the money, it's about the happiness for me.
And yeah, I came home and literally it was,
that was on the Thursday.
And I think it was the Monday.
I was just like, right, I'm a full-time eBay reseller,
sat in the shares and I said, what do I do now?
So yeah, it's one of them.
So a lot of our listeners are Amazon listeners.
So can you tell us about the UK experience dance?
Because in Australia, it's not really as big here in the US.
How is it in the UK there?
Huge, huge in the UK.
I would say even myself as an eBay reseller,
95% of my purchases are from Amazon over eBay.
I don't really shop on eBay as a buyer.
And the reason being is, with our Amazon in the UK,
probably similar to US,
I could order something this morning at 10 a.m.
and it could be with me on some of the items.
It could be with me this evening by 10 p.m.
And I think we're living in that world at the moment
where we all want things yesterday.
So I know with eBay, I do same day dispatch
because as a buyer myself, if I buy something,
I wanna get it as quick as possible.
So yeah, Amazon's super popular in the UK.
I haven't sold on it personally.
I don't think, I mean, used clothing is not a thing
really of Amazon in the UK.
But other categories is really popular.
I know when I was doing books,
I did consider using,
filled by Amazon and sending the books in.
But our book market in the UK is so saturated
because we've got companies like World of Books
who just kill the market with low prices.
So when I was doing the books,
eBay was working well with the bundle side, you know?
So not the individual books as such,
but bundling up authors was doing really well for me.
That's what I was gonna ask
because I do know you've resold books before.
If you ever tried to sell books on Amazon or not.
Yeah, no, I haven't done it on Amazon.
All the books I'd done were solely eBay.
Gotcha.
Sounds like the dark side
is right behind that curtain behind you.
And one day you're gonna open that curtain
and you're gonna come right on over to the Amazon.
The smiley face of Amazon behind the curtain there.
You know what?
Someone said to me on my live the other day,
they were like, are you in the women's changing room?
And you know when someone says something
in your comments on your live and you sit down,
I read the comments twice and I was like,
women's changing room.
And then everyone else said, yeah, the curtain behind you.
This curtain behind me actually hides
some of the mess I'm dealing with at the moment.
So I'll pull it across to make it look like
I'm really organized.
But if I open it up,
it's just stacks of clothing that need processing.
See, Amazon, they got all my stuff at their warehouse, dude.
I don't need curtains, although I do have
a fake background behind me.
But yeah.
I can't tell if we're soft selling
or hard selling Amazon to him right now.
Is he sponsored by Amazon, this podcast?
They sent us to convince him.
They got the money for it.
Like convince this guy to sell on Amazon.
He's got a YouTube channel.
We need more publicity.
Plug more Amazon, there you go.
So your YouTube career, you like helping others.
Now you're doing this true crime stuff.
I personally love true crime.
I'm like unsolved mystery, true crime every single night.
That's like what puts me to sleep.
So give me a little bit insight on that.
And like why you decided is,
I guess the overall thing is,
do you want YouTube to be another stream of income
to supplement reselling as well?
Because you can, we talked about it.
You can get it there.
It's just a lot of work and effort.
Is that kind of like what you're working towards?
Yeah, so the reselling channel for me was never,
it sounds really weird to say this.
I was never interested about making money
from doing the reseller channel.
I never expected to gain 10 subscribers,
let alone what I've got at the moment.
But my passion outside of the reselling world
and outside of my job has always been true crime.
I think part of me always wanted to be
like that forensic person,
but didn't want to actually put the education
into go and do it.
So this is kind of the next best thing.
And I guess if for me, I watch so much true crime,
it's unbelievable.
Probably a bit like a serial killer myself
for the amount I watch.
But I fall asleep listening to true crime
because I'm one of them weird people
who can't sleep without any noise
and the wife hates the TV on.
So now I've got one headphone on,
fall asleep listening to true crime, wake up
and like a podcast might be still going on.
So it's constantly on my mind.
And yeah, I'm super passionate about growing my own channel.
And the great thing with true crime,
there's no ceiling to the channels.
So I feel with reselling channels, especially in the UK,
the best channel in the UK subscriber wise
is a guy called Nick Hills.
And I think he's on about 50,000 subscribers
and he's been doing it for years.
Some of the UK true crime channels,
they're on like 1.7 million subscribers
and they release a video and it has like 500,000
in 24 hours view wise,
because it appeals to such a wide range of audience.
So yeah, I have aspirations and goals
for the true crime channel to grow it to a point of
having to make a decision when it comes to eBay.
Now that's not stopping completely,
but it might be a case of instead of listing 15
or down eBay, I'm gonna drop down to list five a day
because all my time needs to be put into recording
for the crime channel.
But a lot of the true crime stuff,
I will probably outsource when it comes to editing,
when it comes to fun now design, et cetera,
because as I said to you before the podcast,
some of them true crime videos,
and if I record a 15 minute true crime video,
I could be editing that one for about 20 odd hours,
putting the pictures in,
make sure the cuts work really well.
So yeah, I'm learning a lot on the true crime side
because it is so different to reselling.
And it's not as easy because with the reselling videos,
I just record what I do in my day to day life.
True crime, there's a lot of research that goes into it
before you can even start recording and building a video.
Back on the topic of eBay, some hot, I guess, topics here
that I usually kind of ask all the eBay sellers,
promoted listings, do you need them?
Do you use them?
Are they a scam?
Like what's your take on promoted listings?
It's so controversial in the UK.
A lot of people think it's a scam.
I use them myself because I still wanna gain the edge.
I started at 1% and then eBay changed the rules and said,
no, no, no, you've got to start at 2%.
So I stuck at 2% for a while.
Then I jumped to 5%.
Then I went to 10%.
And then I made a decision a couple of weeks
before Christmas to drop down to 7%,
but on the dynamic rate.
So the max I'm ever gonna pay is seven,
but sometimes I get lucky and it's 2% or 3%.
But yeah, I believe in the UK.
I'd rather promote and give eBay
that little bit more money to get the sale.
Now it's very interesting
because it's not only controversial in the UK,
I think it's in the US as well.
I think it's a worldwide conspiracy theory.
eBay is just taking your money
and you're giving it to them.
Or hey, you're actually making money with it.
Now I've experimented with promoted listings left and right.
It does work as far as people viewing your item.
Now my only question mark on the whole thing is,
who is eBay showing my item?
I've never been able to prove this and you can't prove it.
Is it showing it to Billy the librarian or Sarah the dyslexic?
Sarah dyslexic is gonna have no interest in my book,
but Billy over there totally will.
But as far as it showing people your items,
yes, it does that very well.
Now, as far as percentages go,
I kind of drank the Kool-Aid on the 10%,
then I got greedy and bumped it up to 15
without realizing or me asking the question,
you can't go back from that really without some
suppression in traffic or lowering it
becoming the new normal.
But on some of my slower moving items,
I go as high as 35 just to get them out of my store,
make them gone.
So I'm a full believer in promoted listings
that it does work myself.
Amazon takes 50%.
So like anybody crying about giving eBay
an extra five or 10%, like come on over here.
We'll give all your money to Amazon.
So it is, personally for me,
I got a funny story about promoted listings.
Buckle up here because I sold an item on eBay.
And it was because I went in the other day
and on my mobile dashboard, it said,
I guess for some reason,
I didn't have like 13 of my books promoted.
And I just went in,
I just promoted whatever they want.
It was like 12%, 10%, 11, whatever they recommend.
And I sold one the same day, dude.
I'm just saying like, and I don't list,
I list once a week for a YouTube video,
one item once a week.
So I'm here to tell you, promoted works.
If I can sell stuff through promoted listings,
anybody can sell it.
If I can sell stuff through promoted listings, anybody can.
And it's just, you just build it into the cost, right?
As resellers, we get this stuff for nothing.
It's not like we're going out paying retail,
we're paying pennies on the dollar.
If you can't give up an extra five, 10%,
and it's every platform, it's not just eBay,
Amazon fees, Etsy has offsite ad fees, right?
They automatically enroll you.
My wife Deb, she's full-time Etsy seller,
and they don't even tell you, they just say,
hey, we charge you $5 on this order
because of an offsite ad.
Who knows?
Some guy is just like, well, Etsy needs an extra $5 today.
Let's dinger up for five bucks.
There's really no analytics behind it,
but it's just the cost of doing business, honestly,
on any platform.
You're not going to be able to sneak away from it.
Maybe Bonanza doesn't,
but then ain't nobody buying stuff on Bonanza, so who cares?
Yeah, and that's the other conspiracy with eBay, isn't it?
With the promoted listings.
Truth be told, none of us know.
None of us know really whether that was
from a promoted listing.
Or like you say, eBay said, right,
he's had 15 sales there.
Let's make sure half of these are promoted listing
to get us a bit more money, but I'm the same as you.
I'm very much a case of, if I was to build my own website,
how much money am I going to have to spend
to drive traffic to the website?
So giving away an extra 7% or 10% to eBay,
whenever it gets me an extra 1,000 sales a year,
take my money.
So I got a two-part question for you.
The biggest lesson you had to learn
during the whole reselling process
and the one piece of advice
you'd like to give everyone listening about reselling?
Biggest lesson, funny enough, has been recent.
Know your numbers.
Know exactly what you are buying items for,
how much you're selling them for is only one part.
How much money actually hits your bank account
when you've sold them items.
That is the biggest lesson I can give you
because for ages I used to think,
I'm buying an item for a pound, I've sold it for 9.99,
oh, I'm making great money.
When you take out everything,
when you take out your time, your costs,
when you take out the VAT we have to pay in the UK,
if you're tax registered as well,
you have to pay all of them fees.
And then you've got your promoted listings.
And by the time you work it all out and calculate it down,
that one pound item that you paid,
you're only maybe making two or three pounds from it
and you've had to ship it to a customer,
you've got to pay for that, the poly bag, et cetera.
And funny enough, what I'm finding
is them customers are the ones who will open up a return.
When I'm selling stuff now for a hundred pound,
hardly ever comes back, very rare.
But these three nights in iron items
I'm looking to clear from my store
are the ones where the customer's not happy,
they wanna open a return or they leave you negative feedback.
So yeah, tip number one I would give to anyone,
know your numbers and do it as early as possible.
I made that mistake.
It's funny you say that,
I had a conversation with somebody about this
just yesterday, it was like,
why am I getting so many questions?
Why am I getting so returns?
I asked him, how much are you selling your items for?
He said, 599.
I'm like, well, that's exactly why.
They may not have 599 and they're living paycheck to paycheck
or they're buying stuff on credit.
So if there's any issue, any mistake with that order,
they need that money or the item to work as intended.
So, and with all due respect,
when you're selling to the poor who need the money,
if you're selling to the poor customer set,
it's gotta be perfect every time.
Now the guy spending 30 or more bucks doesn't care.
He's got 30 more bucks to blow.
The $10 or less crowd questions all day long,
returns all day long.
So that's another reason to kind of move
toward a higher ASP model is you're just gonna have
less issues.
And I think that's just a demographic global thing.
Cause I like that you said that,
cause it's not just the US market,
apparently it's the UK markets that way as well.
What is your goals?
Like, I guess your overall goals were reselling
and YouTube in 2024.
It's only January.
So you still got 11 months here to kind of get things
ironed out, but you know, on the topic of you deciding
whether or not you continue your reselling journey,
do you have a specific number in your mind where you're like,
okay, I gotta make at least, you know,
I gotta do at least $80,000 in sales or $100,000 in sales
for me to continue.
Yeah, absolutely.
I spoke to tech about this and tech asked me the same
question the other day.
Now I set my goal at 100K is what I set my goal for this
year, which works out, I've got it on my notepad X,
we've 274 pounds a day in sales,
what I need to hit, to hit my goal.
But someone from the UK, Lee also said to me,
set it at 120K.
And I couldn't get my head around out first.
And now it makes perfect sense.
And the reason you do that is because every day is not
perfect.
So set in 120K, you can account in returns,
counting them days where it is a bit slow,
counting them days with finding stock was a little bit more
difficult and not everything hit your metrics or you didn't
hit your listing goals, it wasn't good enough to put in
the store.
So now I aim for 328 pounds, 78 pence a day.
But I also appreciate the first couple of months of this
year, it's not going to be that because I've changed the
whole model of actually concentrating on the higher ASP
and higher sell through.
So I've noticed quite quickly,
eBay doesn't reward you overnight.
It takes that consistency and the consistent build to start
getting them sales in.
So the goal for reselling is 120,000 for this year.
The goal for YouTube, I used to always set goals for,
I want to hit X amount of subscribers.
And I quickly realized that you can't control that.
If you put out content and people enjoy it,
they will subscribe.
You can't force people to click that button.
We can ask and we all do, but you can't force it.
So my goals for YouTube this year is consistency,
two reselling videos every single week this year,
one true crime video every single week of this year.
And that's consistency.
And if I do miss a week and I've only done one video for
the reselling, it just means the next week needs to be
free videos.
So yeah, what's a hundred and four reselling videos for me
this year, excluding lives and then true crime 52,
true crime videos.
So I'm going to say something maybe controversial to those
lists in the audience.
I think a hundred K is too low.
If you're 30 years of age or older,
I think you need to be pushing more towards 200 K.
Now, if you're younger than 30 years of age,
you probably want to aim that goal at 300 K.
Now this is over the course of your reselling career.
I'm not saying year one, you need to be making $200,000.
I'm saying that is probably the goal,
bare minimum you need to make to account for retirement,
children, college education,
any other lifestyle changes you want to make.
Now, if you want to be living the yacht style life,
that's a whole different model.
You're targeting probably a million or more.
And this is after tax and all of that,
after all fees and whatnot.
I think that is a healthy goal.
Now the hundred K I've heard that in multiple groups,
no matter where I go,
that is a digestible number that everybody can swallow
and understand.
So I get why people say a hundred K,
but for me personally, to people listening,
I think it's too small.
You need to aim much higher,
just like James, his friend mentioned to him,
aim a little higher.
Yeah, absolutely.
And this hundred K thing for me is the benchmark
for this year.
I do not want the second year.
And it's really weird to say this,
because I've been recently now three years,
and in a weird way,
I feel like this year is like my first year.
And I think it might be
because I've completely niche down now
and I am following now a sensible model to grow.
And I understand my numbers more,
but I completely agree with Johnny there.
For me, a hundred K is like the lowest I want to be hitting.
Next year, I completely agree.
It should be 150, 180, 200.
Because although YouTube money doesn't pay that much,
I still want both channels to be arms of the business.
So I can say on eBay, it was X amount,
Prime channel brought in X amount,
the reselling channel brought in X amount,
and look at it as a whole collective.
But yeah, I always say to people,
have that stretch target as well.
I think that's really important.
Have to target where, do you know what?
I'm gonna hit this, it's gonna, like you said,
just pay the bills, it's gonna get me by,
it's gonna keep me in the job,
and then have to target to say,
this is gonna allow me a nice two week holiday
with the family, and it's gonna allow me to upgrade the van
or whatever it may be.
So yeah, I'm like you, I set these stretch targets
and stretch goals, and I do have a stretch target,
but I promise myself, I'm not going to talk about,
I've actually got it, I've got it in an envelope sealed,
which I'm actually gonna reveal at the start of next year
on my channel to actually pull out and say,
this is what's in the envelope, this is what I've done.
Am I gonna hit that target?
Who knows?
That's to subscribe to find out.
Your plug.
There's a plug, I like that.
True YouTuber here with the clickbait on the same way
when it comes to YouTube, that's how you gotta get the views.
But it's like you think about 100K,
I think more or less when it comes to, I hear $100,000,
I think of processes.
What processes are gonna get you to that?
You might not be making the money today,
but do you operate as the same as somebody
who's making that and more?
I think that's the bigger thing with reselling
because you just get lost in the sauce.
Like you say, one day you're just like,
I don't feel like doing this,
I'm gonna sit on the couch today,
I don't gotta do nothing, right?
I look at Amazon, oh, I got all these sales,
I don't gotta pack this stuff up, right?
It's so easy to just kind of be like,
meh, whatever about reselling.
And I think the processes for me have been so huge.
Like if I look at my year over year revenue,
last year compared to 2022 was about the same.
If I just look at my overall sales on Amazon,
but I made more money last year because I had a higher ASP,
so I was getting paid out more from Amazon.
And in addition to that,
I worked a whole lot less last year than I did to 2022.
So I know like the numbers are like,
oh, I wanna hit 100K, but I always tell people,
like especially with Amazon,
because these Amazon gurus, listen,
they show off how much sales they have.
And if, you know, if us three all went
and bought $100,000 in merchandise
and sold it on Amazon for $100,000,
we made no money, but it'll be cool to show off our phones
and be like, hey, look, we're six figure sellers, right?
So understanding the numbers is all that matters
in reselling.
And I mean, once you figure that out
and once you start taking it seriously,
because listen, when we all start out,
we can't be like super serious, you know,
we're not gonna be like every number, every cent matters.
But as you decide, hey, this is my business,
this is what I wanna do,
you have to get to a point where you just stop and say,
okay, what exactly is going on here?
Am I making any money?
Because you only see the sales on eBay and Amazon.
And I think they do it on purpose
so that you think you're doing better
than you actually are, right?
It's not like when you pull up your 90 day on eBay
on your phone, it shows profit, it just shows sales
because you're like, oh yeah,
look at all these sales coming in.
The good insight for me on that as well
is I've never felt my bank balance grow.
I've always got to the end of the month
and I've always paid myself a basic salary to pay the bills,
to put food on the table, et cetera, et cetera,
and to then start the month again.
And I've never noticed suddenly when I paid myself,
I've looked in the bank account and said,
oh, there's an extra 4,000 in there.
Like, where's that come from?
It's always been not back to zero,
but back to three, four, 500 pound
ready to buy more inventory.
So that's something else I'm looking at this year.
I want to get to the end of the month
and not change my lifestyle.
That's another important thing as well.
Not suddenly feel like I'm a high roller now,
let me go out for dinner every night,
but to actually see that bank account have money left in it
once I've paid everything I need to pay
and then to continue to build on that as well.
So yeah, I think that's another indicator for people.
Like you're saying there, you can look at your 90 day,
it doesn't tell the whole picture.
Have a look at what money is actually in your bank
each and every month.
Yeah, I agree.
So we're gonna wrap it up here.
James, we appreciate you coming on, hanging out with us.
I mean, listen, if I'm a betting man here,
I guarantee you're gonna hit 100K.
That's just, I mean, I've known you for an hour now.
I get to see like the determination you have
and understanding your numbers,
that alone will get you there.
The inventory will come with time, the knowledge you have,
but I for sure believe you're gonna hit the 100K.
Johnny, any last remarks for James?
Go trousers.
It's all like that.
Yeah, go pants.
No, I appreciate you guys having me on.
And hey, look, if I don't hit the 100K,
it's gonna make a good YouTube video with I quit eBay
and it's not click bait.
No, it is.
People love failure more than success.
They do.
It's funny because my video coming out tomorrow
is like it's click bait failure stuff.
So it works, but I mean, it'll be pretty crazy, right?
Like my last, I quit eBay video
and it'll be the one you make the most money on, right?
It'll be so backwards.
YouTube is gonna pay, but that's it.
So yeah, hopefully we're not making that video anyway.
But yeah, so James YouTube, Bold Finds,
Instagram Bold Finds, it'll be linked below.
James, we appreciate you hanging out.
And maybe, you know what?
I'm gonna bookmark it.
Next year in January, we will have the same exact chat
and we'll see what your goals and targets are there.
So we appreciate you.
Appreciate you guys.
Thank you so much.
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