Welcome back to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as a used book guy on YouTube, along with my friend
and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guide to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up everybody?
Welcome into another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
Mike, not alongside Johnny B today.
Today's topic though is an important one.
Figure out who you want to be and be the best version of that business and of yourself.
Right.
So for those wondering where Johnny is, he's been filling in for me the past week or so
I got wisdom teeth removed.
So you guys just have me today.
I gave Johnny off this week and I think this topic is super important because in
reselling every season, there seems to be another flashy type business model out
there that almost it lures you in.
It sucks you in and you're like, wow, man, I can make how much money doing this,
how much money doing that.
And I'm guilty of it, right?
I always tell everybody have multiple streams of income, but when it comes to the
core part of your business, you have to accept that's who you are.
That's who you're going to be and refine those processes to get your time back.
In my situation, I live off thrift stores.
I've I'm literally sitting in the parking lot of a Goodwill right now.
So I accept the fact I'm not the guy buying truckloads of inventory.
I'm not the person dealing in, you know, large quantity bulk sellers, whether that's
books, no matter what category you sell in, right, there's not truckloads being
dropped off to me.
So me accepting that I rely solely on thrift stores means I got to accept a few
things. First thing is you're going to do a lot of driving, right?
And that just comes with having a thrift store reliant business model.
There's nothing wrong with this.
You just have to be OK with driving long distances because if you're going to make
a real shot of this, you're going to have to drive to probably over a hundred
different thrift stores.
And this could vary basically from, you know, if you live in a major city, maybe
it's only a 45 minute area.
Somebody like me, we're talking an hour, hour and a half one way just to get to
your sources.
That's the first thing you got to accept.
The second thing and the bigger thing, in my opinion, and those watching over on
YouTube, you're not going to find like lots from every store.
We got one DVD, two for six CDs from this whole Goodwill.
Seven items.
You are at the will of the thrift stores.
So can I cry about it?
Sure. All of you out there listening, let me cry for a second.
I can't find things.
My thrift stores don't have stuff.
My thrift stores are scanning stuff.
OK, I got my whining out of the way.
Now back to accepting the fact that you are a thrift store business.
Well, you know, you're not going to find bags and bags full of items all the time.
And I know this is a hard pill to swallow for some people.
And that's why in the thrift store model, we need to be getting in the back room.
We need to be doing things other sellers aren't doing to find the profitable items.
Get into the stores early, right?
If you're in a real competitive area, if I had tons of scanners around me, I would
have to get to the thrift stores before everybody else so I could scan the fresh
inventory. These are things I personally am a OK with getting seven items from a
goodwill. It's a part of my business.
That's the reality of having a thrift store reliant business.
And if you look at it from another way, hey, you deal in bulk.
Well, bulk sellers, everybody knows you got to get rid of the junk.
If you're going to be the bulk person, you need the processes in place to
completely get rid of everything.
The good stuff you're going to sell, the damaged stuff you can't sell, the stuff
that's just not worth it.
And the problem and the whole reason I decided to cover this topic is not only
do we get caught up in different categories, right?
Maybe I sell media, but I also sell toys.
Then all of a sudden I'm split 50 50, right?
I'm losing knowledge every single day because I'm not solely focused on a
category. And for all of you, everything sellers out there, that's a little bit
of a different business model because you have to have so much knowledge and you
you're never going to know everything when you're in thrift stores.
So it's tough to say, hey, I'm going to be an everything seller.
You know something about a whole lot, but you're not an expert on any single
thing or any single category.
So within reselling, you have the business model, understanding who you are.
And then you also have what you want to sell and what your focus is inside of the
business.
So it's not just understanding, OK, I'm going to be the thrift store guy.
I'm going to be the bulk person.
It's understanding.
Well, what do I want to sell?
What do I have available around me?
For me, it's media.
I can't tell you all how many times I've had people ask me, hey, when you're going
to transition into doing away, right?
Because it's kind of like everybody starts selling on Amazon and everybody starts
with used books and then the graduation, they call it is moving on to online
arbitrage.
And now you have eBay to Amazon, Amazon to Amazon.
I mean, listen, right there is four different, completely different business
models.
They all require a completely different skill set.
If I just say, I forget thrift and I'm done.
I'm going to start away today.
Sure.
There's resources out there to get me started, but in no way, shape or form.
Am I going to be as much of an expert in a way that I am when it comes to thrifting?
I enjoy thrifting.
I see it as a fun chance to get out, maybe find some really good stuff.
And I treat it as a business transaction, but I also build relationships.
It's not just I walk into a thrift store and that's the end of it.
I go into a library.
I look at their free little section and I leave.
You need to have conversations no matter what category you sell in to develop
relationships.
I can't tell you how many back rooms I'm in, how many libraries I work with.
That's what allows me to level up my business and be more efficient.
And this is just the overall business talk, right?
We're not even talking processes because the process from OA to thrift in to not
selling media, to selling shoes or selling shirts, it comes with a whole new world
of processes you have to refine.
You have to get better at over time.
And what the problem here, a lot of people start with books on Amazon.
And before they fully understand how Amazon works, how the platform works, they
immediately jump to the next shiny thing, whether that's eBay to Amazon, whether
that's online arbitrage, whether that's retail arbitrage, understanding your
platform is so huge.
And that's why a lot of people start with books on Amazon, right?
Because it's cheap.
You can make mistakes cheaply, but the problem is people don't stick with it
long enough to make the mistakes.
And then they go buy $5,000 of Snickers bars to sell on Amazon.
And they don't.
And they realize, wait a minute, I can't send it in.
There's, there's a meltable period where you can't send in items that are going to
melt.
These are the mistakes you can learn at a cheap expense if you sell media.
And I just want people to kind of understand and stop chasing every single
shiny business model, every single shiny category that comes along.
It's literally seasonal anymore.
How often new categories or new business models pop up on eBay and Amazon, right?
It's not how many people go from, well, I'm tired or selling shoes on eBay.
You know, they've been doing it for three months.
So now I'm going to go do, you know, shirts and then they get rid of all their
shoes.
They probably lose money.
Then they do shirts for three months.
And it's probably like, well, I don't want to sell shirts no more.
I want to sell perfume.
And it's just like, I understand, right?
Like thrift stores, CDs, DVDs.
It's, it's not exciting, right?
It's you, you just compounding dollars, but that's the way you succeed is you get
your processes down to a minimal time, expenditure versus how much money you
make.
You refine things as you go.
And the only way you can get as close to as efficient as possible as you can, as
if you stick with something.
If somebody starts today, reselling, somebody wants to start selling books
today, of course, you're not going to have the processes that I have.
Of course, you're not going to have, you know, the sources, the relationships,
but if you stick with it for six months, a year, two years, I'm, I don't even know
how long I've been set up five plus years.
That's when you start to win.
And the picture that's painted is almost the opposite.
The picture that's painted is, Hey, you can start today and you can make a whole
bunch of money real fast.
It's just not, it's not how it works.
It's not how reselling works.
Yeah, you can hit a few, you know, diamonds in the rough.
You might flip something for a few hundred bucks, but that's not the reality of it.
The consistency, the meat and potatoes, they say of your business, refining those
processes.
So you can list more of that stuff, sell more of that stuff.
Those are the people that win, right?
It's not the people that find the gold bar and the goodwill bins once a month.
That business model is not reliable.
And I want to understand that you need a process and a business model that has a
future.
You have a plan to grow or even maintain and cut back your time, right?
You don't always have to be growing.
That's a whole nother misconception and reselling is, man, I got to keep growing
my business until I'm a 55 trillionaire.
Me, you know, all that nonsense.
That doesn't have to be the case at all.
I have plenty of part-timers.
I know plenty of part-timers over in the group that are perfectly fine with
maintaining where they're at and trying to get some more of their time back.
And I'm kind of the same way, right?
Full-time income, part-time hours.
I'm in the same boat as these guys and gals.
I'm like, hey, I'm trying to be working around the clock here, right?
I could if I wanted to.
I can if I have to.
If an opportunity arises, sure, I'll go work, you know, 70 hours a week.
If the opportunity is there and the money makes sense.
Yes, I'll do that.
But you don't have to be the person that's always like, oh, my God, I got to be in
this eBay business, this Amazon business, 60 hours a week.
That does not have to be that way.
And understanding who you want to be and deciding, hey, I'm going to be that guy
or girl, and I don't care what nobody else says.
Anybody else comes along.
I mean, that's just me.
The used book guy, when am I going to graduate onto OA and RA and ETA and ATA
and ABCDEFG were sounding like a Sesame Street show.
How many letters and acronyms?
And it's like it reminds me of CVS.
CVS always had an acronym for everything, right?
It's like CVS is an acronym itself.
And every little new project they came out with to push on to us as store managers.
It was always like ACT.
And then the A meant something, the C meant something, the T meant something.
And that's what reselling has become.
It drives me crazy.
And especially people that start with media.
Media is the cheapest way to make a decent amount of money on Amazon.
So what happens here?
We have the expectation of, hey, I can spend a dollar and turn it into 20.
Well, then you get to the mindset, well, I don't want to spend more than a single dollar
because I'm a cheapo and I sell media.
Well, what happens here when you go on or maybe an opportunity pops up
that you got to spend a thousand dollars, maybe you got to spend five thousand, ten thousand dollars.
You think to yourself, well, there's no I'm not doing this just because that initial number
kind of like scares you away.
You're like, there's no way I'm going to spend ten thousand dollars on books.
Well, if I told you, you know, first editions, Eastern Press, Sign, Folio Society stuff,
you know, for ten thousand dollars and there was a whole warehouse of it.
The big boys are going to take that every single time.
And as a small fish in a big pond, you shouldn't be afraid to spend more if it's justified.
Right. But then again, you got to have the capital to be, you know, spending this.
I'm a firm believer in having a debt free business like all around.
That's just how I lead my life.
I don't push that on anybody else.
I just think it's safer.
You think smarter when you're using your own cash.
So not leveraging debt and being prepared for an opportunity.
You also got to be willing to spend, spend a pretty penny from time to time.
And that comes with, you know, maybe it's equipment, software, storage.
There's so many different things you can spend money on in the reselling business.
So it all goes back to, OK, well, who are you going to be?
You watching this right now.
If I asked you, hey, who are you?
Who are you as a reseller?
And the generic answer that I'm not willing to accept is I'm an eBay reseller.
I sell on Amazon.
I want more in depth from each and every one of you.
Who are you?
Do you specialize in DVDs?
Do you specialize in shoes?
Do you specialize in vintage tees?
Is that your focus?
Because what happens when you focus more on something, the results skyrocket.
If you decide today to stop selling everything, figure out an issue, really enjoy selling,
find ways to get the product to you.
100 percent, your results are going to be tenfold.
That's just the way it works.
That's just the way of business.
When you're passionate about something, when you're focused on something,
you're always going to get better results.
I mean, it's hard for me to understand the idea of one month I'm an Amazon seller,
the next month I'm doing retail arbitrage, the next month I'm doing online arbitrage.
And it's a never ending cycle.
So what happens with those people?
Well, we all know what happens, right?
They don't last. They don't stay around long enough.
Sure, one out of every hundred people say, all right, well, I'm done with thrift.
I'm going to do online arbitrage.
They do online arbitrage and they're successful and they stay with that.
I'm not saying you're stuck, right?
I'm not. No means necessary am I saying you're stuck
when you make the decision of who you want to be.
Who are you? I'm not stuck selling these books.
If I wanted to go do online arbitrage, then 100 percent I could easily do it.
So don't feel like you defining who you are as a reseller.
It means you're stuck forever.
I'm stuck forever being the used book guy.
When I started, I'm literally the perfect example of this.
When I started, I sold only used books.
All I knew, all I cared about was used books.
Went into thrift stores, straight to the book section,
didn't look at anything else.
So I went from being an everything seller on eBay,
where I go in, you know, like the majority of YouTubers you see.
And I look for anything I could flip to make a buck, right?
I mean, it's a whole thrift store. You're going to find stuff.
And I said, wait a minute, this Amazon road seems nice.
Let me go down this road. Let me take a shot.
All right. So I went from the everything eBay seller to
I'm going to sell used books on Amazon because I seen some crazy videos.
I still remember the one video I seen.
It'll never leave my mind that kind of made me start Amazon.
So, like, I mean, I don't want to give these two guys credit
for, like, my whole business, but it inspired me to at least bet on myself
and give it a chance.
And it was an interview that Roemer did with
Roemer, the Roemer did with side hustle experiment,
John Muscarello.
And John lives 20 minutes from me, right? Like.
Literally, he was doing the same thing I was.
And the video was, you know, making thousands of dollars selling
used books in central Pennsylvania.
Wait a minute. That's me. Stop. Stop. That's me.
So that kind of got me onto it.
So what happened was.
I juggled both.
I'm juggling both eBay, everything, and then the Amazon books.
And what I realized over the first few months was,
well, the Amazon takes a lot less time and I'm selling a lot more items,
in turn, making a lot more money and spending less money
because media is super cheap.
So I juggled them both probably for.
Well, I mean, I sold on eBay for years, but the time frame
where I juggled both was probably about six months to a year.
And then I finally said, OK, I'm all in on Amazon.
So I know more selling everything on eBay.
And sure, I walk in a thrift store when I'm selling just books
and I see that VCR and I'm like, oh, the VCR, Mike,
you sold so many VCRs for over 50 dollars.
You got to get it, man.
Don't let it's like the little devil and angel on your shoulder.
Angels like, no, Mike, go scan the books.
The devil is like, you better not leave that 30 dollar bill behind.
And that was what I struggle with.
And I think that's what a lot of resellers struggle with,
especially since we all kind of start selling everything.
You go in a store and you see all the stuff and you easily get distracted
instead of just focusing up on that main specialty that we all have.
You can be a bookseller, you can be the used book guy, the used Nike guy,
the used Adidas guy, the used depends guy.
Sure. So use depend.
You can be the used anything, the new anything.
You can have any acronym in your name you want to be.
You don't have to, you know, settle down on one specific thing
because somebody else does it.
So I decided, hey, eBay, I'm not getting as much bang for my buck.
I'm working full time trying to build a reselling business on the side
so I can quit my job.
So I committed to Amazon selling used books.
All right. I'm selling used books.
eBay is basically dead to me.
So I'm just rocking and rolling. Right.
I'm focusing on the books.
I get it to a point where I can quit CVS.
So I'm still only selling used books.
I only sell used books on Amazon, probably for the first time.
I've been selling for the first three, four, four years, give or take some.
I said, well, wait a minute.
Everywhere I look and there's books, there's also CDs and DVDs.
So back then, it cost a pretty penny to get ungated in CDs and DVDs.
It wasn't like it is nowadays where you can get away spending, you know,
50 bucks and get ungated in these categories.
So I thought to myself, gosh, maybe I should try this. Right.
It's all together in the same spot in the thrift store.
I'm just scanning the stuff.
So there's really no different process.
I understand the software I'm using to scan the books
and it just translate to CDs and DVDs.
It's pretty straightforward.
Sure, there's going to be hurdles in the road.
So I said, OK, well, the used book I now sell CDs and DVDs.
Best decision I made in my Amazon business, besides starting it
ever. So now I went from being the book guy
to the book CD DVD guy.
Now you probably think, oh, Mike.
Now you're kind of defining yourself in more than one way.
The only argument I have for that is all the stuff is located
in the same part of the thrift store.
For the most part, it's usually all together.
It's not like, you know, how the clovens on the other side of the goodwill
and the media is in the back corner.
It's all together in these thrift stores.
So I added something to my plate.
But it didn't cost me more.
It cost me more time in the terms of scanning.
Right. We're just scanning items with our Bluetooth scanner.
But overall, it was.
Yeah, it's going to be a learning curve.
But all these items are in the same place.
I see a lot of these items in my area.
So sure, let's take a risk.
Scan some DVD CDs in addition to books.
See what happens.
All of a sudden, you know, I'm getting thousands of items
sent into Amazon, I'm making thousands of dollars.
And I kind of have done the same thing for the past two, three years
ever since I got ungated.
Nothing's changed.
I scan the media.
I build relationships.
I've refined my processes.
I've refined the routes I'm going to.
And I accept the fact that, hey, as a thrifting media seller,
I'm going to be able to probably sell between 10.
And like if I think like if I just had to throw a crazy number out there,
like as a single person, if I was doing this like 50, 60 hours a week,
you probably could sell between 10 and like 25 K a month in media,
just doing cherry picking from thrift stores.
So I accept the fact that that's a OK.
Now, what comes along with that?
How much money do you need to live?
How much money do you need to survive? Right.
God, it's different for everybody.
Depends where you live.
Depends what kind of debt you have.
This is different for everybody's circumstance.
So if you're the person that needs to make
thirty thousand dollars a month or, you know, clear 15 K
in profit every single month, the thrifting media business ain't for you.
And that comes to self reflection and understanding.
OK, here's what I want to make.
Here's what I need to make.
Where can work?
What are the possibilities of this business you're about to get into?
Or if you're already into it and you're not making the money you want to make?
That's when you reevaluate.
All right. I need to make 20 grand a month in profit.
I've got to pay five thousand dollars for the Lamborghini.
The penthouse cost 10 K a month. Right.
If that's you, then you need a business model that's going to make you that money.
And you got to sell in a category that's going to make you that money.
Thrifted media.
As a one person, thrift store operation.
Good luck, Larry, in 20 K a month in profit. Right.
You have to be in thrift stores seven days a week around the clock. So
it's situational to the extent of how much money do you need to make?
What is the upside of the business?
That's why I try to put videos out there.
I don't, you know, when it comes to like numbers, like,
I don't like pushing numbers in people's faces and things like that.
I think the number talk is kind of, you know, played out.
But I do like doing like transparent videos on how much you can make in a week,
how much you can make in a month, how much you can make in a in a year. Right.
Because those videos are important for somebody that's thinking about starting.
And they see, OK, well, Mike, yeah, he's working 20 hours a week.
He's doing 10 K and sells a month.
He's making, you know, right around five K in profit every single month.
Does that work for me?
Like, is that a building block you can build off of to make the money you need to make?
So a lot of it is situational, but accepting the fact that, OK,
I'm going to be the Nike sneaker guy
and I don't care what else comes in front of me.
If you spend the time building relationships to get the Nike sneakers
versus wasting time looking up Chucks, looking up Adidas, looking up Reeboks,
your business will only go up because you're building better relationships.
You're an expert in Nike.
Sure, you're going to leave some money behind initially.
But as your business grows, as your Rolodex grows,
as you know, your knowledge grows, you're going to start hitting way bigger home runs.
You're going to start being way more consistent.
You're going to understand everything you see in front of you. Right.
I go into a store, I look at the shelves of media, CDs, DVDs,
books, I know what's crap that I'm not scanning.
It comes with experience and it comes with staying in my lane.
Basically, I know, hey, Mike's the used book guy.
He thrifts, he sells CDs, DVDs, books.
That's what you all get out of me.
That's what you got out of me from day one on YouTube.
That's who I am. It took time to get to this point.
But staying focused on this instead of pivoting halfway through.
Got me to where I'm at.
Nothing wrong with pivoting.
Most booksellers do on Amazon.
They pivot to OA, they pivot to RA, ETA.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But just understand you're starting back from nothing.
And there's a lot a lot of changes that come with it. Right.
Go even from platform to platform.
Maybe you're going from selling on Amazon.
You want to sell on eBay now. Right.
You got to look for different types of items.
There's a whole change that comes with your business.
And the idea of just shooting from the hip.
For those watching on YouTube, I'm shooting from the hip over here
with different business models on a monthly basis, on a two month basis,
three month basis.
Oh, my God.
Just stick with something.
I don't even care if you stop watching my channel because you don't sell media
no more, because now you're crushing it in OA and you love OA.
And you just, you know, OA is your thing.
I am happy for you.
I want everybody to make the most amount of money they can reselling.
And defining who you are,
what you need from the reselling business, becoming an expert
in what you're doing.
This is another reason why just scanning, right?
You know, people people give Amazon sellers crap because we literally
we just scan things with our little scanner and you don't
a lot of people don't retain information.
Maybe you got a podcast in one ear, you got your earbud in the other.
You're just scanning, looking for the accepts.
You're not even looking at the books in front of you.
Get out of that mindset.
If that's you today, start looking at the books you're scanning,
understanding what what seems to be selling, what authors are good,
what genres are good.
Be able to almost not need a scanner.
I used to solely rely on a scanner.
I'd keep my phone in my pocket and I would never look back.
I would literally just scan.
I heard I hear the green and I throw it in the car.
And that's and that's the end of the story.
And that's the end of the discussion.
Nowadays, I'm paying attention.
I'm aware I'm super efficient at scanning.
I'm super efficient at understanding these things.
And it translates to anything.
If I was the use vintage T-shirt guy, I would know, hey,
here's the list of tags I'm going to look for.
And I see these people on a search search.
They go so fast through these these clothing, these shirts.
Like I go over there.
I'm like, hey, let me see if I can find a shirt.
I'm like one shirt, two shirts, three shirts.
These guys are flying through the racks.
Why? Because they've been selling vintage T-shirts for years.
They know what tags to look out for on the shirts and they stay with it.
That's how you win in reselling no matter what category you are selling in.
Defining yourself and, you know,
betting on yourself that you can turn any category into a profitable business.
That's how we survive and we thrive.
And you make more money over time with a more focused approach.
I'm the used book guy.
You're the used book girl.
You're the used shoe guy.
Whatever you are, accept that and be OK with not focusing on all the bells
and whistles around you, all of the different business models that pop up
from time to time, all of the fancy software with Amazon.
Do what's best for you and your business.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Don't try crazy things when you don't have to.
If you're making the money, things are good.
Build upon that.
Don't try something.
I'm going to completely change my business model.
No, no.
Stick with what works.
Consistency within consistency is how you win in reselling.
And it's so hard.
Consistency is like the hardest thing for people to do.
And I understand it like it's, you know, it's tough coming out
the thrift stores all the time, finding seven items like I did today.
But I go to the next seven thrift stores.
Maybe I find a hundred items and every single one.
Right. And all of a sudden I'm sending in $10,000 in profit in one week.
That's how you win consistency within the business.
Understanding who you are as a reseller, what you need as a human being
when it comes to finances and what type of business model supports that.
I guarantee you figure those things out and the sky is the limit.
So that's going to do it for this week's episode.
I will talk to you all in next week's episode.
And I promise Johnny will be here.
It won't just be me, but hey, Johnny needs days off and you can't
ask Johnny about having a day off.
If I'm like, Hey, Johnny, you want a day off?
No, the dude's just a workhorse.
It's ingrained in him being an eBay seller and having such a huge eBay store.
He just always needs to be doing something.
So I'll talk to you all in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube
members, along with the weekly zoom call and private discord, head on over to
youtube.com backslash to use book guy and consider joining for as little as 2 99 a month.