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 into another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny over here.
As always today's topic is a interesting one and it's how providing a service as
a reseller can level up your business.
Johnny has a real life experience sitting behind him on his desk.
If you're watching on YouTube, he's got a bunch of books, um, on a little foldout
table, so he's just going to take us away.
We're kind of going to see how you providing a service, no matter what
category you sell in as a reseller can basically grow your business and get
your relationships that otherwise you wouldn't be able to have.
So Johnny, take us away.
Right.
I mean, our job is to acquire goods, to sell online.
How we acquire those goods is up for debate.
And that's the purpose of what we're talking about here today.
But on the focus of the service industry, uh, I heard this from Christopher
Lynn, uh, a few years ago and he, this is an excellent point he made.
There are two things everybody wants time or money.
And if you can figure out a way to do both, you've won.
And he's absolutely right in that.
I've done business with this, uh, idea and concept a lot.
And if I can provide somebody's time, like I'm taking the books away, I'm
doing the work to make them go away.
They're not doing the work I am.
And also giving them money for the stuff I'm taking with I've won.
And usually I can get the better deals that way.
Um, you could do this concept at a library sale.
If you can give them time by showing up an hour early, maybe helping them set up.
If you're signed up for that friends of the library thing.
Um, my case, I've opened a bookstore, so I'm allowing people to buy, sell and trade.
And I don't even have donations up there, but the books that come in here, most
people don't go for the, uh, me buying the books from them route.
They just flat out donate them to me most of the time, even though it's not
something I specifically asked for.
I'm a solution to a problem.
I'm providing a service to them.
And beyond that, um, the next tier up, they trade books.
They brought me books and they're taking away what I've deemed undesirable.
And what they've given me, a portion of those are desirable for my online business.
So they're providing me a service.
That's another point they're giving you, uh, the service of books coming to you.
Um, and then there are other aspects of this, like if you're a solution to the
flea market guy, and most of those guys are storage unit guys, to be honest.
Um, if you make their life easy and they just open the truck and you take the
boxes after you built up that relationship, they don't gotta work as hard.
And I gotta tell you, they appreciate that.
The problem is though, you just hit it on the head.
I think with the service you're going to provide as a reseller, there is a lot
of work that comes with it and a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of resellers.
You know, they don't realize the work it takes to get through some of this stuff.
And the service, you know, yeah, your storefront kind of works for you.
People bring you the stuff, but there's also cases where, you know, you
drive somewhere, you go somewhere, you got to pick up all the books.
And I've always said in all my experiences when I bought or went to a large
pickup of books or CDs or DVDs, they're never just boxed up sitting at the front
door, right? Like I gotta go up steps.
I gotta go down steps.
I gotta weigh the books if I'm paying for them.
There's a lot of work that goes into this, but I do think there's a lot to be
said about when you provide that service, word of mouth spreads.
All of a sudden you're, you're known as like, Hey, you know, this person comes
and does, you know, clean outs and, and they give you a card and then somebody
else calls you.
So the work is the work can be paid off, but it also can sink your ship quick.
And that's why before somebody jumps into like, Hey, that's why we tell everybody
don't start with the crazy amounts of inventory.
Don't buy a truckload full of clothing or sneakers or books to start out because
you don't know what processes look like for your business yet.
But on the flip side, I always tell everybody in the book world, people
complain that, Oh, well, I can't, I go to my libraries and they say, you know,
they don't want to work with me with their extra donations.
The benefit you have is that you can get the stuff before it goes to the library.
Why?
Because those people have to take it to the library versus you showing up at
their door and taking it from them.
You save them all of the work, all of the heavy lifting.
And that's where you can, you know, have an edge on other people.
And listen, I'm an Amazon scanner.
I just scan things.
The only edge I have against the next person scanning is how many items I can
scan.
Right.
There's no difference if me and Johnny are copycat people, we both scan the
soul on Amazon, who's going to make more money.
It's going to be who can scan more items, who's going to put in more time.
And that's all it comes down to.
It's the same thing when you're providing a service, it's going to be more work,
but it's going to give you an edge over your competition.
Now I will say, um, there have been times where I've had donations back to back
to back to back, and it was too much.
I wasn't at that particular event.
Since I'm referring to, I wasn't set up to handle that kind of volume that quick
in that quick amount of intervals.
Um, so I had to, okay, I have to adjust for this.
So I had to design a whole area where overflow donations can get funneled to.
Cause what happened when the tables are full?
Well, I guess we got a floor.
What happens when you floor stuff, you trip over and got to walk around.
It gets in your way.
It clogs up your day to day.
Uh, and I can't have that because it disrupts the entire flow.
And maybe I have to stay an hour to get to the end of the day.
So I can't have that flow and maybe I have to stay an hour or an extra 30 minutes.
Cause if you add up the, it's going to be seconds you walking around.
But if you compound that over the course of the day, the deal with it later pile.
Well, the deal with the later pile makes you stay later is the end of the thing with it.
And then if you let that go beyond today, while you're just screwed at that point.
So yeah, even with my model, I've had to make adjustments and tweaks
that I couldn't account for.
Like who's good?
When are we going to get a mad rush of donated books?
Right.
I had a lady show up in two vehicles of books.
I wasn't prepared to handle two vehicles at a time.
I got through it.
It took my, my agenda for the day got had to get shoved aside.
Cause I had to deal with two carloads of books filled with the brim,
just like a reseller would do.
And I was like, man, there goes my day, but it was good.
Cause there was profitable stuff in there.
That's a bad, it's a good problem to have, but it was still a problem keyword there.
So I have to turn a problem into a non-problem that requires us thinking
as business owners to, okay, if this happens again, what can I do to prevent
this from not being a burden on my business?
Cause it, a good thing can become a burden.
Unfortunately.
Uh, another big thing I wanted to hit on is you have to treat your business
like a business and not a charity.
Right.
So save, you know, Johnny reaches out to me and says, Hey, I see you pick up books.
Okay.
Johnny send me a few pictures.
He sends me pictures.
It's all like microwave cookbooks.
Like you have to walk away from these types of situations and not be like, well,
I'm going to just go do it because they need the books gone.
So many resellers are like, they let themselves get taken advantage
of in some of these situations.
And if it doesn't feel right, if it doesn't look right, if it doesn't seem right,
100% walk away, you are in control of the situation.
You are the one providing the service.
Don't feel like, well, this, you know, old lady reached out to me.
So I got to go get the books regardless, even though they're all, you know,
moldy and fall into pieces, you have to understand everything you do is a
business transaction and you provide a service.
So you control where the conversation goes when you have this, because we tell
people, Hey, have a flyers business cards, everything you possibly can.
And with that comes you being in control of where the conversation goes.
You want photos.
Why?
Why do you have a thousand DVDs you're getting rid of?
Right.
Like probing questions.
Why do you have, you know, all these sneakers you want to get rid of all
of a sudden, you have to make sure that the opportunity makes sense for your
business because the service is a lot of work.
And if you are providing a service, you should always be basically getting
a better price than just going to a thrift store, right?
Well, I'm not going to go to somebody's house and buy all their books off the
shelf for two or $3 a piece.
It just doesn't work like that way, even though you might feel obligated to,
or somebody gives you a sob story.
Like I have four cats and they're starving.
And can you please give me X amount of dollars for my stuff?
When clearly it says in the ad that you pay X amount, don't feel obligated in
any way, shape or form to give more because of sob stories.
And honestly, everybody's got some kind of story out there and the world is,
you know, as shady as it's ever been.
I have a perfect example of what you're talking about.
So I did a library pickup.
Great.
And it led to a few weeks later, I started getting calls for me to pick up.
And I don't give out my number these days too much.
I get my library had the number.
And after the third one of these, I'm like, how did you get my number?
And they're like, oh, the, my library that I dealt with gave me your number.
And so I turned into the pickup guy for a minute and I was like,
I'm not the pickup guy for a minute, which I didn't plan on doing,
nor did I want to be the pickup guy.
I did them.
And then I lightly explained to the library, I just want to deal with just you.
I understand what you're doing here, but because I live in the middle of nowhere,
these pickup places were 45 minutes here, 30 minutes here, 20 minutes over there.
The one lady I did, she was great and fantastic.
And I actually was kind of, I felt kind of privileged.
I mean, when she had passed away and she honestly wanted to get rid
of all of her husband's book, because she didn't want to.
Have that mental thing with her.
And I, I kind of felt bad because they were really good books
and she just wanted a matter of life.
But I was providing her a service to move on with her life kind of deal.
Versus the lady who had 20 books and wanted me to pay for these books,
but one also need to drive 40 minutes away to pick them up.
I managed to find a couple other deals in the area to make it worth my time.
or gradually did it, because that's the other thing.
You don't want the word to get out
that you refuse stuff too.
But then you're handcuffed into,
gotta do every single pickup if that happens.
But if you kind of do what I did,
you politely explain it to the library,
I'm not set up to do this kind of business.
I'm set up to do business this kind of way.
They'll completely understand
as long as you word it to them properly,
and they'll stop handing out your number.
Yeah, I mean, the libraries I work with,
I'm definitely not telling them to put my number out.
Because what happens here is what you just said.
Instead of the people feeling like
they gotta drag it into the library,
and then you get it afterwards,
you gotta go to them.
And that's when, oh, I want no parts.
And some of the libraries-
20 books here, five books there, no thank you.
No, and some of the libraries I work with
are a little bit further away,
like you're saying, 40 minutes.
So that just wouldn't make sense
if I had people in that town calling me all the time,
like, hey, I got books.
It's just like, well, I'm not driving 40 minutes
for a box of books, even if it's-
That's one way 40 minutes too.
You're talking over an hour of your time
just to do the travel.
Yeah, but I mean, you didn't know that until you really,
and most people don't, right?
That's the whole thing of when you're providing
these services, you learn as you go what works for you.
And I used to be the person that would jump,
somebody texts me, hey, I got books I need picked up.
I'd be like, all right, today I'm going.
And it's like, no, now it's much more calculated.
It's gonna be on my terms, my time,
when it fits into my business.
And I was stupid.
I was, I should have tell you,
I was the most inefficient picker-upper service provider
there was.
And I finally realized from Deb being like,
hey, what are you doing going all this way
to pick up books when you should be thrifting?
And then I kind of realized like, okay,
where's the money coming in from the business, right?
You can make great money on providing a service
and doing pickups or buying in bulk, right?
Cleaning out a thrift store or this or that opportunity
that comes along.
But you always have to stay true to what your business is
and fit this in, in addition to what you have.
That's the big takeaway.
You can't sacrifice a sourcing day
to go deal with a free pickup or bulk buy,
unless you know it's gonna be super profitable,
then it makes sense.
But even then, I would caution you on the side of
why is somebody getting rid of a truckload of
holo shirts or Nike sneakers?
Make sure things are vetted.
If it's too good to be true, it ain't true.
That's one thing I've come, I've had one case
where I went to a free pickup
and the dude had all Stephen King first editions.
That's, it was one of those things where, you know,
I was kind of new.
So like Steve, I know Stephen King's worth money,
first edition's worth money.
But looking back now, like that was my best deal I ever had.
And like, if that popped up today, I'd be like,
there's no, there's no way somebody's walking away from,
you know, a 50s first edition Stephen King's.
But his new wife wanted the stuff he got
when he was with his old wife gone.
And I just happened to be the guy.
I paid 15 cents a pound and I probably made like $2,000
just off Stephen King.
And I probably should have kept some of them.
Like I probably should have kept like the Stephen King
8th edition.
I know.
But listen, you live and you learn with this business, right?
It probably never happened again,
but I understand now that there are situations that
are really good, whether you're paying or whether it's free,
you know, you're like, oh my God, this is great.
And then there's times where the last free pickup I did was
the books were in the basement and I go down there
and it's like, I'm not even kidding.
It was like three IKEA bags full of microwave cookbooks.
Just like, you know, shit, I'm here.
I got to get rid of their books.
They're in the basement and I'm just carrying IKEA bags
full of microwave cookbooks that I know I'm not even going
to take out of the trunk.
That I'm just going to have to donate somewhere else.
Just leave the truck open and hope they fly out.
That is the reality of it though.
It's all a balancing act of understanding and vetting
better, right?
I probably should have asked for more photos of exactly what
they were getting rid of and just been a little bit more
detective work on the front end.
So you know, you're not getting skunked on the back end.
I have a similar story.
I think we're just exchanging stories at this point.
This is fun.
It was on our call actually.
My landlord came in.
He just got back from a storage unit thing and he said,
hey, they got books up the road if you're interested.
I'm like, no, I was on the calls.
I don't really want to leave the call.
I guess I'll go look.
Okay guys, I'll be right back.
I go up there.
I didn't even bring tubs.
I was playing just to look around and leave.
I was dumb.
Anyway, I get there and they have books kind of lined out
of the storage unit.
It's an outside unit area.
And then they had some more on the inside.
The outside ones were okay.
I go on the inside though.
It's a table full of horror books.
There are Stephen King there, but it's all horror
in my old vintage paper bags.
I'm like, how much do you want for it?
My eyes light up.
And they're like, I don't know.
What do you think?
Would you take a hundred bucks?
Yes, their eyes light up.
Like, okay, I'll be right back.
I come back.
I type in the call, guys, big score,
but I got to go pick it up.
I'll be right back.
And I get there.
I get my tubs out and there's a whole family of them.
There's moms, dads, uncles, or whatever.
One of their relatives died.
This is his locker.
They pack it up for me.
Even grandma's packing stuff up.
I'm kind of just standing there blown away
that they're packing it up for me.
They're hoisting my tubs up there.
The guys at least, the girls are rolling out,
packing the tubs and rolling my, they took my cart from me.
I'm like, what's my cart?
But they're doing all the work for me.
And I'm just standing there.
I should have paid up for what they were doing,
but I gave them what they wanted.
They were so happy.
I don't know the last time this fan,
they look poor, honestly.
I don't know the last time
this family had seen a hundred bucks.
So to them, I was providing them,
not necessarily a service.
They were definitely providing me a service,
but it's kind of an exchange of,
I don't know how to put it, Mike,
an exchange of mutual benefit to each other.
They're getting money and they're getting their time back
because if you're trying to sell books yard sale style,
if you have to put that stuff away at the end,
your back's gonna hurt.
They were probably very excited to see me
knowing they wouldn't have to do the end of the day work
because I was taking it all.
Then I got back and then I had to do the work.
They weren't with me.
When I did my little yard sale, my books,
it was a dollar, then two for a dollar, and then free
because I didn't want to lug them back in.
Yeah, nobody wants to lug them back in at the end.
That's the other thing.
That's another thing of service.
If you're doing the garage sale bit
or the estate sale bit, great.
Call me when you're done
and you don't have to do the put away.
Same for library sales.
I'll do it, just let me take them all
or at a very low, low, low rate.
So that is a service you're providing them
and you have a bargaining chip there.
You can get out of the backbreaking work
that I know this to be
if you give me a discount or a deal or free.
So I show up, my library sale,
I show up with donuts and coffee and munchkins.
I help set it up.
We set up all the tables, all the books are in banana boxes
in this little room they have
where they take the donations.
And then I shop the sale, go through, scan everything.
And then afterwards, everything that doesn't sell
after fill a bag day, I go clean out and take.
So, and I don't pay for the stuff that's left over.
I pay for, every time I go to get donations, I pay.
Bring the donuts, you gotta bring donuts, right?
They appreciate it.
They're like, oh, you know, yeah, we appreciate it.
And then I'll shop the sale, I'll pay full price,
whatever their library sale prices are that year.
I'll pay full price for the stuff I take.
And then I get everything left over for nothing.
And it is a lot to be said,
but I do think you hit on a good point.
You can't, okay, I go in and I see a bulk buyer.
I'm going in and I'm paying 15 cents a pound
or maybe I'm even doing free.
And for example, the Stephen King lot, right?
Like that dude stuff is worth way more than 15 cents a pound,
dude, like that's like,
and I kind of knew that at the time,
but you can't sit down and try to be all square
with every single piece you get.
It just, I understand the mentality of, whoa, you know,
if it's a $50 book, why are you giving them 15 cents?
Okay, well, I would challenge somebody that said that,
well, you go through every single book
and you pay them whatever you think's right.
50%, 50%, whatever.
I'm here to tell you what happens
you come across a thousand dollar book,
you're gonna give them $500 for it.
Most of you aren't gonna do that.
So that argument's out the window right away.
Your price and your service is what it is.
Don't feel like, oh, like Johnny, like, yeah, okay.
Well, a hundred bucks, he knows, you know,
the Halloween book sitting there is a hundred dollar bill
alone, everything else is profit,
but they just need the stuff gone.
And if you can give them the money that they need
in that situation, cause everybody should,
maybe that hundred dollars turned their lights back on
or, you know, fed them for the week, right?
Like everybody's situation is different.
And I think that's where like resellers get a bad rep.
It's like, well, you're ripping people off
because you're buying something for a dollar
and selling it for $50.
It's just arbitrage.
It's just supply and demand.
And you can't be the person that's always like,
well, I'm gonna give them as much money as I can.
You won't make it as a business
no matter what category you're selling them in.
Right, now with my a hundred dollar offer,
I would have, I had the expectation of them countering
and they didn't.
And then after they accepted, I just went into,
okay, I need to get this done as quickly as possible.
Cause I know it's gonna take a lot of work.
After all that was done, taking a minute to stop
and think about it, I probably should have paid him more.
I would have paid him more.
But once they accept, it goes into your other business mind
of getting the work done as quickly as possible.
Cause you got even more work to do when you get back.
You don't take a second to think.
It's not, we're trying to screw people out of money.
We just get in go, go, go mode.
And there's something to be said there.
Like even you, you probably would have paid up more
if they countered.
Same for me.
That's the expectation.
But if everybody is in agreement, that's the thing.
It's a contract, a verbal contract.
Everybody agrees.
We can't stop to,
to feel bad about it.
Even though we do as human beings, we are humans after all.
Some of us aren't granted,
but most of us are human beings.
We're decent people.
And it's business at the end of the day.
It's not personal.
We tend to make it personal sometimes,
at least the good humans I've mentioned.
And we have to just go about our day.
However, if it's a repeat person,
maybe we put some good karma back up
and we know we kind of should have given
a little bit more last time.
Maybe I'll pay him up a little more this time
for this thing.
Just as a, hey man, this is great.
Just take the extra 30 bucks and keep it.
It's fine. It's cool.
You can counteract something if it's on a repeat person.
Those people up there, I'll never see them again.
There's no way for me to give them an extra 50 or something.
There's not possible.
Yeah, that is true because I've actually done that.
I used to buy DVDs at 20 cents a piece.
I had a DVD guy.
I was paying him 20 cents a piece.
I got like two batches from him in a row
that were just terrible.
And I was like, listen dude,
it's gonna be 10 cents a piece.
And then the next batch I got from him,
it was like, this stuff was golden.
And then next time he reached out, he's like,
hey, can we do 20 cents a piece again?
I'm like, you got it, dude.
The last one was good stuff and he appreciated it.
But this is an ongoing relationship that I have.
We only do the ongoing ones.
Now there has been situations where
I've ran into some collectors.
Both times it was with the CD people.
One was like an ex radio personality
that had a bunch of CDs.
And the other one was just like this huge music lover,
collector, rich guy.
And I show up and they're aware that it's 10 cents a piece.
But if people think they have certain pieces
that are worth more money,
I'm perfectly open to being like, hey,
and you kind of know the situations, right?
I knew where I was going to pick this stuff up.
It's an affluent area.
This guy's got lots of money.
The house is like a million dollar house, right?
I'm rolling up in the 2011 Sonata before it got totaled.
And I'm like, all right, I go in and this guy,
he's got surround sound speakers playing.
It's like I'm in some kind of concerto, right?
And he's like, yeah, I got all these CDs.
I'm a huge collector.
So we're just talking.
The guy was like a huge Bob Dylan fan.
He's like met Bob Dylan and all this.
He's telling me all these crazy stories.
I was hanging out with Cyndi Lauper
and Bob Dylan.
I'm like, all right, dude.
I'm like, this guy's got good stuff, right?
You know it.
So he's like, you know, like some of the stuff
might be worth decent money.
I'm like, well, do you know like kind of what you think's
worth decent money?
And we looked at stuff up together right there
on my phone on eBay and I paid up for some of it.
I think it's all right to pay off for some of it.
If people feel like they have something
that's really worth it,
but there's anything wrong with being like,
hey, all right, we can look it up together.
Some of the stuff he picked out, it was junk, right?
I'm like, ah, this ain't worth nothing.
He's like, all right, well, what about this set?
I'm like, oh yeah, this sets, you know, $60 set.
I'll pay you, you know, 10 bucks for it.
And he's perfectly fine with that.
He doesn't feel like he's getting only the 10 cents for it
because it's worth a lot more than that.
But there are situations where you can pay up,
but you can't get carried away with this.
You can't be like, all right, every book we gotta look up.
Like you'll be there for 10 years.
Right, and here's another instance of that.
There's a gentleman I see from time to time.
He doesn't really buy much from my store
because he is a collector of books.
He wants high end premium stuff.
He's a retired teacher.
And if you don't know those guys,
they don't make much money.
He comes to my shop one day with these pair of books.
I instantly know they're very, very valuable,
mainly because of who he is.
And I recognize the books in question.
They are signed first edition,
special deluxe edition Michael Crichton books,
$100 bills or over each.
He walks up to me and he's like, I need to sell this.
I need Christmas money for my children.
I'm like, oh good God, okay.
He's got you reeled in already dude.
He probably don't even have kids.
No, he does, he does.
Did you ask for proof?
Show me your kids.
Pull out your wallet.
If you ain't got photos, me ain't doing business.
So I go look him up, I'm like,
do you need this money?
And I know I could get a really good deal,
but the human in me, not the business owner,
the human in me walks these books back out.
How much do you want for them?
He's like, well, I want this.
He spits out the retail price.
He already knows what they're worth.
I'm like, I can't do that, John.
I'm in there to bait, but he's like,
I know what's the best you can do?
I'm like, you don't want to know what the best I can do is
because it's a bad number.
And he's like, what's the best you can do?
I really need Christmas money.
I'm like, John, you're going to take your books back home.
You're going to look around for a part-time job
and keep these books because you and I both know
these are going to triple in value over the next 10 years
and you really don't want to sell them.
He kind of sighed at me and said, you're right.
Thank you.
I didn't really want to sell them.
I know you take these books out of here right now, sir,
and go get hit to job hunting.
He's like, okay.
And he did actually.
And he ended up getting his kids Christmas presents.
I was like, good.
Because I would feel really bad buying them
for what I was going to offer, like terrible.
Like it was in the middle of December too.
You should have said you can take some books.
I mean, if he's a book collector,
they should be fine with getting books from the,
you know, their dad or grandpa that is avid about books.
Right.
Like, dude, you need to pass these on to your kids.
They're going to be worth a fortune
to some other reseller they sell them to down the road.
Yeah, that's, it's crazy.
The situations you find yourself in
when you put yourself out there, right?
Because we were talking about it.
We have a lot of coaching calls behind the scenes.
And just being a thrift store person,
I think the days are numbered.
It might not be days, it might be years,
but I think as more stores scan stuff
and the prices are going up, right?
You have to start thinking of other ways
to get the inventory to come to you at a price that is,
and the best thing about providing a service
is the price you can get the stuff at, right?
You know, paying 10 cents per DVD, CD,
like you're never going to lose,
even if they got 10 million of these things,
like you're always going to win.
And with books, you know, free pickup,
all you're investing is your time,
but you still have to make sure it's worth it, right?
The quantity's there.
There is so much that goes into it besides just,
oh, I'm just going to be a thrift store reseller
and sooner or later, you're going to get to a bottleneck
where you can't like continue to scale your business.
And it's, what do you got there?
What is that big coffee table book?
I had some examples.
I was waiting until you were done,
but I'll go ahead since you called on me.
I've seen a shiny big blue book
if you're watching over on YouTube and it distracted me.
Yes, so this is from yesterday's donation
and I'm going to give an example of what comes
with donations.
So the Art of Murahasoda, the very fancy anime book,
it's about 30 bucks, I already scanned it.
It was the first one I scanned when I saw it,
like, oh, that looks expensive.
But it's a decent book, but this, again, this was free,
but you're also, what happens with donations?
You're going to get stuff like this.
This came in the same batch.
None of the, there's nothing alike with these two books.
And I can tell you right now,
I don't even need to scan this Debbie McComber
small town Christmas book, it's worthless.
This is going straight to the storefront,
I'm even going to waste my time.
But when I get stuff like this,
I need to look this up right now.
This looks like money and it was money.
And then there's a mix of it over here.
But that's the other thing.
Again, you're providing a service,
you're going to get really good stuff
and you're going to get really terrible stuff too.
You just have to roll with the punches on that.
And the terrible stuff, as we always talk about,
you need a solution for this terrible stuff.
Oh yeah, yes you do, yes.
Finds a storefront, yours may be a donation thing
or a buyback program or hell, maybe even eBay lots.
If you got enough trash,
you could maybe turn into some silver pieces.
I got enough trash and I refuse to even attempt
to turn them into silver pieces.
I think that's a good point to kind of hit on too
is when you provide a service, you have to take it all,
which means you have to have an outlet for everything.
And in the media world, just as reference,
for those that don't sell media,
you're probably looking at a 10% accept rate
on like a good day, maybe 15 if it's a really good day.
But a lot of the times you're gonna be at 5%.
And in my last video, I posted,
I got one IKEA bag full from the whole carload
of donations from the library.
So just imagine a full car,
I'm talking there's no space besides the driver, right?
I got the passenger seats, got boxes,
the trunk, the back seats, the floors.
I got one IKEA bag full of books
from a full car of free books.
So what are you gonna do with the rest of them, right?
Because clearly you still got a carload of stuff
you gotta get rid of.
And that's just as important as,
even thinking about going down the road of being like,
hey, I'll take it all, right?
Everybody wants to be the take it all person,
but what are you gonna do with it all?
What are you gonna do with all the stuff that ain't worth it?
And if you get caught up,
with John just said, trying to list a Debbie McComber,
next Christmas books, trade paperback books,
you ain't gonna make it.
Mm-mm, you have a better solution to that.
I mean, you're better off taking it out back and shooting it.
They make a good point.
I mean, that same library that was giving out my number,
that pickup, we were filling up, we brought two vehicles.
We honestly needed to do a second trip
and or bring a third vehicle, but there was only two of us.
But we ended up filling both cars to the ceiling,
under the seats.
She could not see out the back window.
You shouldn't do this by the way.
She couldn't see out the back window
and she getting in there and starting up my truck.
She's used to driving it by the way,
but she's like, I can't see.
I'm like, good luck.
That's bad business.
We should have made a second trip,
but it's like 45 minutes away and then do that.
Dude, I'm the same way.
I'll just make sure I can see my side mirror
through the passenger seat.
Yeah, she can see out the side mirrors.
That's what I told her to do.
Just use your side mirrors, go slow.
It's okay if you go slow.
We're not in a rush to get back.
The job's done.
If people wanna pass you, that's fine.
Just get over on the side, let them pass you.
Don't care.
You go as slow as you wanna go.
Remember, you provide the service,
which means you say you take everything and you show up
and there's a lot of junk that they didn't send pictures of,
but it's still books or it's still clothing
or it's still shoes.
You still have to take that.
You can't be the person that's like,
well, I'm not gonna take this stuff.
Maybe it's me, Johnny.
Maybe I feel like your word is all you have anymore.
I don't know, trust is the big thing.
If I say I'm gonna go do something, I'm gonna do it.
I'm not gonna get there and be like,
well, I can only take this.
Now it's different, right?
If my car is filled up, I can't take them.
They can see that I can't take them.
Physics don't apply here.
Yeah, and you know what?
It sucks when I'm down in the basement
and I'm loading up the microwave cookbooks
that I know were worth nothing,
but that's part of the handshake deal we did virtually.
Like, hey, come get rid of all this stuff.
And with the microwave cookbooks comes the anime books
and comes the first edition books.
So it's all a balancing act,
but you can't be that picky person.
Like, well, I don't wanna take this.
Can I, that doesn't work for me.
I'm gonna leave that behind.
And then like, I don't know.
I just feel like bad news spreads fast,
especially word of mouth, especially with media.
It's a lot of older folk.
A lot of people are retired and active in the community.
So like, word spreads real quick.
Hey, don't give this,
don't have this guy come pick up your books
because he ain't gonna take it all.
Right, and there's something we said.
Again, there's a lot of repeatable sourcing
that is only specific to them.
If you're doing a repeatable source,
and again, like your junk DVD thing, libraries for me,
I tell them, I know I cleaned out everything last time,
but my business model has changed.
I only am doing this kind of stuff
or I'm only doing paperbacks now.
Can we renegotiate?
You do that.
You do run the risk
and you accept that you run the risk of them.
Like, no, we really need a pickup guy
and you'll lose that source.
That's just the breaks.
But if your business model has changed,
you need to stick to that change.
You can't make exceptions in my opinion
or else you're stuck doing the work
you're trying to get yourself out of by making,
what's the word I'm looking for?
Exceptions, exceptions to your own rule.
But it's okay to modify your business terms
and your service terms if your business model has changed.
But you have to have a polite conversation
and also let yourself accept the fact
that you may lose that connection
because of that change in your business.
And then you'll have to make new connections
to replace them.
That's what happened with the libraries that I work with.
It's, they used to,
the thrift stores that they would work with,
they would come and get the books.
Well, all of a sudden the thrift store said,
we're not coming to get the books no more.
You gotta bring them to us.
So now the library has volunteers
loading up their personal vehicles,
taking the books to the thrift stores to drive them off.
Well, what do you know?
Library finds my ad,
hey, this guy's ready to come pick up our books.
Boom, that thrift store just lost that library for life.
I mean, I could literally, if I stay in this area, Johnny,
every month I get a free car full
of freshly donated books forever.
It's like, you know, it's scratch to scratch also.
It's like a thousand dollars a week for life, right?
Like that is the possibility
of getting into the service business.
And I know we kind of talk about
like a lot of the downfalls of it,
but the upside is astronomical.
A few of these sources,
well, you won't even have to worry
about thrift stores anymore.
I think myself, if I had five,
maybe 10 libraries that I dealt with,
I wouldn't even have time to be in the thrift store.
And I would pay next to nothing for my inventory.
It would literally explode your business overnight.
So as much as we're like, hey, you know,
there is a lot of things that come with providing a service,
buying in bulk, if the opportunity is there,
it can change your business overnight.
And just like Johnny said though,
if you start walking back on your word,
somebody like me comes along and I ain't going nowhere.
Like I got this locked down for life.
I mean, as silly as-
Johnny will take it all.
Mike's picky.
I like Johnny, he's less problems.
Yeah, or like, you know, you're doing the service.
And then it's like when they hit me up on the phone,
hey, we're ready for a pickup.
I'm like, unfortunately,
I need you to bring it to me this month.
Like that's not gonna work.
And unfortunately, if you think it is,
there's gonna be somebody else that comes along
like me or Johnny, and it's gonna be like,
hey, I'll take it.
You don't gotta worry about loading it up.
And all of a sudden, you know, boom, you're in.
The deal's done.
You never have to worry about anything else.
We were talking about this, my media call,
but we were talking about my other group
and then Max's group.
There's a gentleman that also runs that group.
His name is Cody.
He has a brilliant service industry thing going on.
Basically his business model is to put Gaylords
in the back of like mom and pop shops.
Like, look, all the stuff you don't want, put it in here.
Call me when it's full.
He'll come in, back his truck up,
or somehow some way they get it out the door
and just pop it on his truck.
He'll drop up an empty for them to continue doing that
while he'll take the full and just keep on going.
He has multiple connections like that.
I'm like, you are running a pickup service industry model
and that's good.
He also has a barn because he lives out in the country.
So he has a facility to process this huge quantity of books.
I think that's a great business model.
If you wanna be the pickup guy in your area
and slowly expand your bubble as your business grows,
you're gonna do phenomenal.
And he is, he's doing great.
But he is the business.
He has to go pick it up.
He has to do the negotiation.
And in the media call, we kind of took it a step further.
Like, okay, but if you're the business,
can you really send an employee to do the pickup?
Because you may lose out an opportunity
or that employee may say something that offends the people
that you as the owner would never do.
And whether the employee realizes or not,
they may have cost you that thing.
So there is some risk being the pickup only guy.
Is it always you 100% of the time or not?
I mean, there are plenty of people that run industries
that send employees out to do work, sure.
But you gotta do it very carefully and very safely
if you plan to grow that service industry with employees.
Yeah, the only pivot to that would be
just having donation bins where they're just in parking lots.
And there's validity to that.
But I'll tell you right now,
I used to have Better World's Books,
one of the biggest booksellers.
They used to have bins all over the place, Johnny.
There's like six in my immediate area I can go to.
I'm down to one.
They've gotten rid of the other five, right?
So we try to decipher why,
if they're getting this stuff for free,
maybe they pay a small fee to have their bin
in the parking lot.
Why would they ever have less donation bins?
Well, what happens here is you get a lot of junk, right?
You got donation bins,
people probably throwing dirty diapers in there
and God knows what else, right?
Even though it says books, books only, right?
People don't read, they don't care.
And usually these donation bins,
there's other donation bins buy them, right?
They got the clothing and shoes donation bins,
all the different donation bins.
So they went from six bins
and now I have one measly bin in my area.
So it's not all,
oh, I'm gonna go buy donation bins and I'm gonna get rich
or I'm gonna put Gaylord's in the back of thrift stores
and I'm gonna get rich, right?
You have to understand those sources
because what happens if you partner up with a thrift store
and say, hey, here's your Gaylord, fill it up.
It takes them two years to fill up the Gaylord.
Right, they never call you except once every two years.
Yeah.
It don't work.
Yeah, and back to the bin pickup thing.
We got one guy, I'm convinced it's one guy in town.
There's one right beside my shop at the gas station.
There's a donation bin,
that thing is always full, always overflowing.
There's six more in town.
I've looked at these things just out of curiosity.
It's got the same branding.
So I assume he picks up from these places.
Again, I'm convinced it's the same guy.
I see him come out for the one that I'm next to
and that thing is like full
and he's doing these trash bags.
But to your point, I see what gets dropped off there too.
And I'm telling you, a lot of it junk, a lot of it is.
Unless it's a nonprofit thing, I'm convinced it's not.
It's some very smart reseller who,
hey, let me not deal with the inner city.
Let me deal with smaller towns.
I'm gonna get better rates to put my bins on
because it's a rental thing.
Because I've called about book bin donation thing
because I was like, that guy's genius.
I'm gonna do the same thing with those books.
It's expensive out here.
Well, it's not, I think it's expensive.
I don't know the rates in cities,
but out here it'd be $50 per thing.
But it's based off the owner, what they're willing to do.
But I called around a few owners
and the average down about 50.
So you're paying a rental fee to these pickup.
You're gonna get a lot of benefit
more than you're spending, of course.
Trust me, you get a lot of junk
and they can renegotiate terms.
Usually on those, it's a month to month, right?
Like, you know what, 50 this month,
next month rolls around, it's 150.
Triple, why?
Because I can.
Things can break.
I mean, what happens if you have,
like you said, resellers in your area
that go dump all their duds in your bin?
There's one outside the daycare center, I guarantee you.
There's so many unspeakable things in there.
I mean, that's what you run the risk.
And that's why I think you do have a benefit
if you go down the route of, okay, hey,
send me a few photos.
People should have no problem sending you photos
before you go do a pickup, right?
No matter what it is.
Should be, hey, send me a few photos
and you can make a decision based on that.
Don't feel like just because they reach out to you
that you're committed to this relationship, right?
If you don't have the photos yet,
you don't know what's going on.
Just because they said, hey, I have books for you,
that doesn't mean you're guaranteed to go pick them up,
right?
That's not sealed in stone at all.
You're not committing to that immediately.
You're gonna ask for more information and imply
and try to get, dig a little bit deeper.
And when it comes to buying in bulk
and providing a service for, hey,
we're this huge company that has all this excess inventory.
Kind of like, you know,
like you're talking about daily refinement, right?
He's just all new with tag stuff, excess inventory.
That opportunity is there, but you understand, okay,
well, this is what I'm getting.
This is how much I'm paying.
And then boom, you just move on from there.
Understanding every situation that's different,
every brand that's different, and in his case,
and us, every category that's different,
there's gonna be different nuances
and you're not gonna be perfect.
You're always gonna be learning.
You're always gonna be, you know,
refining your process of providing the service
to a company or another person, right?
Because sometimes it's a thrift store.
Sometimes it's a brand.
Sometimes it's a single person that's got a lot of stuff.
Every situation kind of involves a different temperament
and a different structure of the conversation.
We had this fun discussion maybe a couple years ago.
It's probably one of the more fun discussions I remember.
What if you were the pick up everything guy
and then you had like a once a month sale,
a gigantic space, right?
You just charged a dollar for everything in there.
You took whatever your business core model is,
and this place is just like a dollar a piece thing.
Doesn't matter how many pieces you take.
You want the full furniture set, it's X times a dollar.
That would be the, I think you would take over
the reselling world as the pick up guy,
but man, you're gonna have so many issues with that.
You're gonna need a guy.
I think we came down to, yeah, it'll work brilliantly,
but you're gonna need a guy at the door with a gun.
That's the bottom line.
And you would need, I mean, at the end of the day,
a lot of these, you know, clean out companies
that take everything,
they always wind up having multiple people, right?
So, and even both booksellers,
John Muscarello's side hustle experiment
before he switched to online arbitrage,
he told me to get rid of his duds.
He had somebody that would come take craft books,
somebody that would come take children's books.
So like, there's more pieces to the puzzle
than you just taking everything
because you have to have an outlet for everything.
And I feel like it would be the same way.
If you went into somebody's house and took everything,
right, you don't know what to do with this stuff.
So you probably have like an antique person,
maybe a media person,
maybe a furniture person like Jameson, right?
Come take all the furniture.
So there's a lot more headaches that go into being
the everything person.
Especially if you're gonna take everything.
I want no parts of this.
I mean, I won't even take-
My furniture's heavy, especially the older furniture.
That stuff weighs more than your vehicle sometimes.
But no, it would work, but man,
you're gonna have so many logistics to figure out
and so many problems.
And if you want to go on this endeavor,
you're gonna make a lot of money,
but you're gonna be very sore, very tired,
and always busy.
More busier than even me.
Yeah, and then, what was the other,
oh, the clearance guys.
The guys that do the target clearance sales,
they can usually get better deals
than what it says on the ticket clearance.
I think those guys are providing a service
to those bigger box stores.
And that's why they're able to get stuff like 98% off.
Because they're willing, again, willing to take it all.
Like I know a gentleman who deals with Lowe's,
but he'll have to take the tractors if they're tractors.
He'll have to take the saw blades, the hammers,
the saw horses, all tools that are on clearance
to get the premium deal he has.
But again, it comes down to that logistical nightmare
of having to take it all, all odd shapes,
from tractors on down to little tiny screws.
Yeah, and I know there's people that source at Olly's,
and they'll go in and if they see a product,
they gotta buy every single one the store has
to get their special discount.
So you have to, if you're gonna play this game,
you're gonna have to pony up some money from time to time.
And not every buy is gonna be a great buy.
But there are opportunities.
We just had Olly's and Lowe's, right?
Even your retail establishments or your clearance,
your secondhand stores like Olly's,
you can still cut deals behind the scenes.
It's just, they're not gonna cut you a deal
for buying five shampoos.
They want you to buy the whole pallet of shampoo.
Yeah, again, you're providing a very much service.
Service, yeah, because they want it all going, right?
Right, they want it all going.
They want their space back.
Just like we're always fighting space and media,
they want their space back because they have the same issue.
Because they wanna roll new stuff in that'll sell.
They don't wanna wait around the next summer
for when this stuff will sell.
So they pass that on to people coming in to do those
take it all deals.
Or the little bit of stuff the average Joe
picks up on the clearance rack.
But they're hoping a non-average Joe walks in,
all right, solved my problem, we'll cut you a deal, 98% off.
But then again, to do that kind of stuff
at one of these things, that is very capital intensive.
You're gonna be writing a big check.
You're gonna make a whole lot of money, don't get me wrong.
But you're gonna be squinting at your bank account
as you're writing that check is, here you go.
What was the other one we were mentioning
while we were talking, online service?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that was the other one.
I'll let you lead on that one.
So online service, it's kind of a balancing act,
but I realized there are opportunities, right?
Like CT bids, I bought things from CT bids.
And usually, they just take a picture of a bookcase, boom.
Like the one Johnny's got behind him, boom,
bookcase starts at $0.
You win the auction, you show up,
you have conversations with these people, right?
It's in a state sale company,
and you can build relationships
and they just want the stuff going, right?
That's why it starts at $0.
It's not like they start the bookcase off at $50
and they're trying to be greedy.
They literally are like, we don't care
if somebody wins this for a dollar.
I've won bookcases for well under $5,
multiple times.
They don't care what they get.
It's the idea of the service that Mike's gonna show up
and take the stuff off the bookcase
no matter where it's at in the house.
And they usually don't tell you where it's at in the house
and it's never close to the door.
It always is.
Yeah, and it's like, but yet again,
that opens up a whole new door for you to go in,
have a conversation.
Hey, what are you doing?
Why are you buying all these books?
What are you doing with this?
And that's how you evolve your business
from the goodwill prices are going up
and my reselling is dead because I only go to the goodwill
and I don't talk to nobody and I'm a loser reseller.
That's, you can't, you're not gonna survive no more.
Unfortunately, I'm just here to tell you this.
You need to level up your game.
You need to start networking,
not like talking to me and Johnny.
Talk to people that got stuff to give you
for next to nothing.
Those are the people you gotta get in your corner.
And it only takes a few.
If I told anybody, listen to this,
that you could get a car full of basically
next to free inventory once a month
by having a stupid conversation of,
hey, how's it going today?
Oh yeah, I got an online bookstore,
an online clothing store.
I support my family with it.
And then as a bookseller, I always bring up my cats.
Everybody loves cats.
You got books, you gotta have cats.
So it's like, all of a sudden,
conversation evolves into something.
Then you're in the back room.
Then you get an infinite supply of fresh inventory.
The fresh, non-picked over, the gold inventory.
I had an interesting one that I didn't think about
just now that very much goes to service.
So I had a gentleman message me on Facebook.
I run an ad for the store every now and then on Facebook.
It never really goes away.
It just gets buried deeper in Facebook's algorithm.
So he messaged me on one of my older ads.
It was my cheap outside book ads.
He's like, look, I got an Airbnb.
I'm looking for some book staging books.
Are the prices really what you say they are?
Because I guarantee you,
there's not many people with ads for 10 cent books
or 10 for a dollar outside books out there.
So he was looking for cheap books just for house staging.
I was providing, I was offering a service,
well, was I offering a service?
I guess it's a weird pseudo service thing
that I never would have thought in a million years.
I mean, I know I could sell stuff on eBay
and some of that stuff goes to like stages for Hollywood
or Airbnbs or home decorator real estate people,
but I never would have thought
they're gonna come to bookstores to do this too.
I didn't make that connection until he messaged me.
Oh really, wow, I am providing you a service
for your Airbnb, I guess.
And so that has my headspace noodling
and other things along that lines.
Like really, maybe I should contact everybody in Airbnb.
I got the cheapest books in town, yo.
It's important though,
because everything's online anymore.
And it doesn't take much work to put an ad out, right?
I always tell everybody, if I can do it,
if I can create a Craigslist ad, then do it.
It's, I will say this, if you do go down the route
of putting your information out there online,
sure, you're gonna wind up with a lot of people
that flake out a lot of conversations, it's time wasted,
but there's also a big benefit to it.
And what I realized is the easier it is
for them to contact you,
the more hits you're gonna get, right?
So I put a picture of myself in my ad now, right?
It's not just a robot, it's not just text.
Be personable, I think that's another thing
that comes with providing a service
is the more personable you can be,
the more comfortable the other person
on the other side feels, right?
Because they don't know who they're talking to.
If I don't have a picture of myself,
they don't know who they're talking to.
The next unsolved mystery case is about to happen.
And in these cases, make sure you're just being safe,
I guess, overall.
So Johnny, final thoughts on providing a service
as a reseller and how it can level your business up?
I'm actually gonna give everybody a freebie one
that they could do that I would refuse to do
because it gives me the heebie-jeebies.
You can, if you so choose, again,
this is just a personal conflict for me personally,
but you can go to funeral homes
and offer to be the clean out guy
when the family comes there to handle the service.
Again, if they'll hand out your car like,
look, this is the book clean out guy or the whatever.
If you're not going through a state sale company,
contact this guy.
It gives me the heebie-jeebies for reasons I can't explain.
I choose not to go that route.
A state sales is my line
when it comes to death in the family,
but that is an opportunity for someone listening out there.
Those are my final thoughts.
I get to end in creepy, Mike.
I'm gonna tap onto that
because I watched a show called Extreme Cheapskates,
and there was an episode where this girl,
she sold vintage clothes,
and she did exactly what Johnny just said,
and I was literally mind blown,
like there's no way I could ever do this.
So she would pull the obituaries from the newspaper.
And you go to-
Yeah, see, I just can't do that, yeah.
And she would go to the house, knock on the door,
and yes, yes, I'm telling you, look it up, look it up.
No, I believe you, I'm just shocked.
And she would have a conversation with the son
or the husband or the daughter, whoever's there,
and be like, hey, I have a business where
I sell vintage clothes,
and I think it would be great if we could get some of
your grandmother's clothes into other people's hands.
And believe it or not, some of these people
would invite this lady right on in,
and she would go right to their closet
and pick out vintage pieces that were probably worth
God knows how much money.
But whatever floats your boat, I could never-
I could see her upselling it to like,
look, you can use the money to subsidize
some of your funeral expenses.
It's, there's a million-
But I couldn't do it, man, I couldn't do it.
There's a million different ways to provide a service,
and just the lowest hanging fruit
is just posting a free ad.
I don't pay for none of my ads, you know?
It'll only take you five minutes to do,
and then you just renew it every week, every two weeks,
and you'd be amazed at the opportunities
it creates for your business, whether it's media,
clothing, shoes, video games,
a lot of the huge video game sellers, you know,
they thrive on buying collections, right?
You can buy collections online, you provide the service.
Why would Mike wanna sell his Halloween collection?
Because he needs the money, or, you know,
the ex situation happened and it needs to be gone.
Like, maybe I'm moving, and I ran into that as well.
Somebody's moving, they need everything gone.
They're moving to Florida, and they're not gonna take
their 5,000 pounds of books to Florida.
So just understand there's opportunities.
You're a reseller, but you also can capitalize
on providing a service, so that's gonna be it
for this week's episode.
We'll talk to you guys in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
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