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 a very welcome into another episode resellers mindset podcast,
Mike next to Johnny today, a fun topic, cheating and reselling.
I think it is a necessity to cheat in air quotation marks.
If you're not watching on the YouTube in reselling to have great
success and sustainable success.
So I guess I'll go first here since I'm already going off my little,
my little tangent of cheating.
And it all comes down to having conversations and turning those conversations
into long-going basically relationships with supply that you need to sell.
So if you think about it in terms of how would I cheat in comparison to Johnny.
So Johnny is a thrift store guy, right?
He's not, this is just hypothetical.
He relies on thrift stores, right?
He's got his, you know, his local stores he goes to a lot of stumble in one day.
And I S I talk to the manager and I say, Hey, you know, I have a huge business
and I'll buy everything you have.
You don't have to worry about sorting it in the back room.
You don't have to worry about pricing it, dealing with any of that type of
overhead costs, whether that's labor or financial, then next time Johnny shows
up, it's all the same stuff.
There's nothing new.
He comes back a month later and it's all the same stuff.
And it's all, it's all, it's all going to me now.
And in Johnny's eyes, he may be pissed.
And I do think there's a lot of resellers that have this mindset of.
If somebody's in the back room, like it's cheating because it's unfair,
but the reality is you have to adapt in this business and the days of just
walking in a thrift store and keep it to yourself and, you know, not having
conversations, I think they're long gone.
So I think that's the biggest aspect of cheating that I think people need to
start doing.
I don't care what you sell.
I don't care if you sell lamps.
I don't care.
You sell shoes, books, whatever it is.
There's conversations to be had so that every single lamp that comes in the
back room, they set it aside for you.
You get a text message and then all of a sudden you at least get to see the
stuff before it even hits the sales floor.
So that's kind of the big one that I wanted to throw out there when it comes
to, you know, people that thrift and feel like there's nothing in the stock
and in the stores.
Well, what if I told you that the stores you were going in, somebody like me or
Johnny was already in the back room looking at everything like, oh, there's
not going to be anything because we're going to take all the good stuff.
Yeah.
I skipped that back room stuff.
I just take it home.
Yeah.
But job here.
There's, there's not even anything in the back room.
Once I go, honestly, and I've done that before, I don't do it as much because I
have other sources that are, well, self comes to me these days more or less.
Um, okay.
As far as a, that was a good one, Mike.
Uh, as far as another avenue of cheating.
So you get a box of books in these box of books and they've been open
and pristine condition.
Now you and I, and the person who sold to you know, these are not technically new.
They didn't come off the printing press, uh, from the manufacturer.
They just never got bought.
They never got read.
They sent the shelf.
There's not even a crease mark in it, not even a tiny one in the corner.
In my opinion, and this is a moral integrity question, look at the Amazon
things and make a call for yourself.
But for me, I would send those items in as new, just like me buying a DVD.
Well, little, little harder to do because books don't come in shrink wrap,
but DVDs and CDs do.
It's got the Y fold in it.
Could send it in as new.
It is technically new, even though you may have picked it up from a thrift store.
Now, if Amazon ever calls your number on it, they're asked you to produce a receipt.
You ain't got it.
Cause the receipt bill want you to provide.
You're not going to have that.
So there is a risk assessment in there.
Um, but most people are going to put even that shrink thing and used or the books
are going to put them in used condition.
Um, but at least for me on the books, I've decided those are new books never
came in shrink wrap.
Nobody can dispute it outside of the book.
Nobody can dispute it outside of Amazon.
Like, yo, where's your receipt?
That's my opinion on that.
That's another way to quote unquote cheat.
Yeah, that's a, that's a good one.
There's basically ways within the categories you sell to get a leg
up or do something different.
I think that's, you know, we could also just saying, you titled this,
do something different because everything we're talking about, it's not the typical.
You know, I'm going to go like the goodwill bins.
We all have the people that sit at the goodwill bins all day, whether you love
them or whether you hate them.
Um, I'm not a fan of it.
I just think it's idiotic.
Why not cut out the middleman of the goodwill bins?
Well, Mike, how do I cut out the goodwill bins?
Well, how does the stuff get to the goodwill at all?
You got to go upstream.
Why does every explaining to me, Johnny, why does everybody look at the end of the
line before the stuff is through the, through the incinerator to try to buy something?
Um, because it's cheap and people don't want to pay up, even though they're going
to get the same margins if they were to pay up, no, maybe not the exact same
margins, but you're going to get bigger quantity of higher margin stuff.
If you pay up before it arrives at the goodwill bins, one step away from the
recycler and at the recycler, well, it's doomsday for those items.
They're either getting shipped away or burned away.
Um, but yeah, we got to think about it.
Where did thrift stores get their items?
It's from estate sales.
Normally the leftovers or other donations, people clearing out their house and stuff.
So another contribution on this.
Well, I'm now a donation center.
I literally have a bookstore.
Things get donated to me constantly.
So I don't even need to go to the thrift store because I am the thrift store, quote
unquote, at least for books.
Uh, but we're probably going to be expanding into this media too.
So now I'll have this media come to me because I am again, the thrift store.
I think we have to get away from this mentality that we only want to pay a penny
or a quarter or a dollar per item.
I think that you're only hindering yourself by where you're willing, where
you're not willing to go, right?
You're not willing to go into, uh, an actual bookstore and maybe pay three,
four dollars for a book.
You're not willing to go into Plato's closet and pay, you know, five,
$10 for a vintage t-shirt.
It's like, we can only pay per pound at the goodwill bin because we have no
money because we're resellers and resellers are broke, even though our
margins are through the roof.
I think that whole mentality just needs to be flipped up on upside down.
100%.
The idea, if I told any reseller, you could get better quality stuff.
If you paid more for it as much as I would like to sit here and say, they
all would say, yes, I guarantee you some, nah, I'm fine with, you know, picking
through the dollar trash stuff and not going upstream, but for some reason it's
like their stores are the only way.
Well, the stuff's got to get to the thrift store.
Uh, why not?
Why aren't you that person?
Just look at the junk clean out companies.
Like they, there's so many of them anymore because everybody wants all their stuff
gone, you can literally be a version of that in some way, shape or form for the
items you want to sell and that you get collections, you get better quality
stuff, but unfortunately, Johnny, you can't pay a dollar no more.
You're going to have to pay maybe $2.
I know, dude.
I don't understand the mentality behind the, we were only willing to spend a
dollar, we were never going to spend more than $10 on an item at a thrift store.
I just, I can't wrap my head around it.
We just refuse to do it.
It's like we have, we should have the margin and in a reselling business to be
able to be like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to buy more expensive items.
Or if you come across something, it's not like, Oh man, well, what if I buy
this $50 new in box Sony, you know, VCR, and then it gets returned and then I lose
money like that.
You're just screwing yourself over.
A couple of things here.
I mean, um, paying up, I've mentioned this before, uh, over in, uh, Caleb's
channel, the guy did scout IQ.
They did an interview with the guy and he was talking about him and all the other
booksellers were going to have price books, but everybody was going to the
clearance rack.
He decided one day I'm going to explore the rest of the store and his average
buy cost that day was $15 a book.
But in less than a year's time, he made over a quarter of a million dollars
profit outside of all of his expenses.
And I thought to myself, smart man.
Cause everybody else was at the bargain bin and he went to the rest of the store
where all the books are.
Um, and the other key thing I think you said, cause I've seen it time and time
again, in multiple groups, when we're talking about books and I ask, have you
ever actually been to a honest to God bookstore?
And the answer is always no.
Like why not?
It's a building full of the material you want an entire building dedicated to
books.
It's not just a rack.
It's not just a couple of shelves.
It's an entire building of it.
It's scared.
It blows my mind.
It's the money, dude.
They, you hear a bookstore and you think you're going to pay $20 for every
single book in there.
And you know, you don't know, maybe some of them, $20 books are actually worth
a hundred dollars, right?
But you'll never know.
Cause you ain't never going to go to pay 20 to a hundred.
I, I give you $20 if you're going to give me a hundred.
This is, this is easy math to me.
Another hack.
I mean, Mike's talking about a dollar a book or $2 a book.
Well, if you want cheaper cost of goods, the hack to that is buy it all.
And you're now a bulk person.
You're not going to pay a dollar.
You're going to pay less than a dollar, but it comes at a price and the price
of stuff that will not sell.
That's another issue to solve.
So if you can monetize, figure out a way to monetize the stuff that does not
sell for me, I have a couple of different ways.
I have certain book buyers that will buy dedicated content that will be
sold to certain book buyers that will buy dedicated kinds of books.
And I have a bookstore.
So I have two outlets to get rid of my junk.
Another outlet to this is people utilize the buyback programs.
That's a, that's just a lower, in my opinion, a lower dollar form
than what I'm talking about.
I get more money doing it my way, but it's, it sits around a little longer.
Again, it's a price I chose to do for myself.
The buyback companies will pay it as soon as you can ship it out.
It's gone.
It's out of your life.
It sits in the bookstore where I got to wait till my little small
Rolodex of persons that buy dedicated things comes in the door.
I give them the box, then they give them the money.
They leave.
So those are two big hacks.
Bulk to get cheaper cost of goods.
And then your junk have a way to profit the junk.
So that not even that is a loss.
And those are ways I figured out for myself.
There are other ways, maybe even better ways I haven't thought of that somebody
else is doing and keeping it to themselves and hats off to them.
I think, I do think thrifting will remain feasible for the next, you know,
infinite amount of time, 10 years plus.
But I do think the margins go down.
And the problem with that is, is all the resellers that aren't efficient today
when the margins are super high, right?
Like if you're not going to get out of bed to list something that you paid five
hours for, that's going to sell for 50, like as the margins go down, you're
definitely not going to get out of bed when you pay 10 bucks and it's only,
you're only going to make you 20 bucks.
I think that's the way we're headed.
And the people that are going to win are the people that have the processes.
So even though the margins go down, right?
Like I know I can still get X amount listed in the day, right?
I know I can still source X amount of dollars.
And as you go down in margin, currently today, the sell through on this stuff
should go up, right?
So if I'm going to pay 10 bucks for something that's going to sell for, you
know, 20, well, it better be a guaranteed sale.
And I think there's a knowledge gap in reselling that kind of hinders people.
And that could be cheating as well.
Like how many different brands or like trends are currently going on that, you
know, the majority of resellers are not aware of, like we have them all the time
in media, we had Dolly Parton, Jimmy Buffett, Toby Keith, Taylor Swift.
Like these are trends that most people think nothing of, but I guarantee every
time I see one of those CDs out, I only got to look it up.
The other group they're talking about, Martha Stewart, she has a book that's
really popular right now because there's some documentary out about her.
And it's good money in that.
So if you're aware of these trends, like he's saying, the quote unquote
once garbage book, no longer garbage, big money.
So yeah.
It's the same with, you know, it's probably, I mean, it's, it's a lot, it's
more important if you don't sell media, because think about like clothing trends.
Uh, what's what famous people are wearing, right?
What shirts, what brands, things like that.
You have, you can't just, just go into a thrift store blindly anymore.
And I'll admit when I first started, I didn't know nothing about nothing.
Do I go in, I have my phone out.
I'm looking everything up, trying to see what it's worth.
And now I've developed a knowledge base and I think all the knowledge is out
there now, no matter what category you sell in, or you can just do the research
yourself, you know, God forbid, if we just sit down for 10 minutes of our day
and just look at sold listings of, you know, uh, vintage t-shirts, uh, Sony
DVD players, you could, you instantly level up instantly.
Right.
I'll give a prime example.
Cause I did this just yesterday.
Um, it's all gonna apply to people actually watching the video.
So you should subscribe to the used book guys.
So you can see where my hands are pointing and what I'm pointing at.
Again, that is the user we just spoke to.
Anyway, I had about seven stacks of these that were fails, uh, for Amazon
that I needed to then look at to see if they were good for eBay or not before I
put them out in the storefront.
Now I could have looked every single one of those ones up on eBay, but I've been
doing this a minute and I know what I don't need to look up and what I do need
to look up and what I don't need to look up that I already know that sold or will
sell, uh, cause there were a couple of Stephen Kings in there immediately did
the eBay pile don't even need to look it up.
Uh, but some bulk mass produced religious books produced in 2019,
immediately go into the storefront.
And then I had a very small stack.
I think I had seven books leftover.
We're like, I don't know.
So I need to look these up, but eventually even though seven over time,
just because of knowledge, that seven becomes three to two to none.
As time goes on, the longer you do this, which very much backs up what Mike's
saying, if you have a knowledge base, you're going to do less work and save
more time and time is money.
You at least in my stores, I hear it all day.
I go into Goodwill and I hear the stupid eBay dinging of people looking everything
up in the thrift stores, like you're not making no money.
I guarantee it. Like if you have to sit here and look up every single item, you
pick up first off, are you really retaining that information?
That's the first thing I would argue.
If you just scan something and say, Oh, $10 is selling for it.
And you just put it back.
Like, are you really retaining the information of what you just picked up and
looked at to even know what brand it is after the next three things, you just
scan mindlessly to see if it's worth it.
No, you're not.
There's, there's no chance.
And back on the topic of cheating with relationships, like, you know,
like we have to have conversations about what we do in the places we are going.
I used to be on the fence where you could be like, well, you kind of could
just be, you know, the, the lone ranger and keep to yourself and go in and get
out and really not talk.
I think it's the complete opposite.
I think that people that survive this long-term are going to be people that
have, you know, supplies coming from the bathroom with thrift stores.
And I know it's one of the things where I ask every single time and I never
get in the back room.
Well, then keep asking because clearly you don't have a problem doing it.
But if you don't think there's people out there that are in the back rooms,
you're 100% wrong.
I mean, look at the people we have over in our group, goodwill, dollar trees,
savers, salvation armies, mom and pops, anywhere and everywhere.
We have somebody in the back room.
Like that, that's crazy to think about the advantage you have when you have
one of these connections.
And I can attest to it because I have a few of them.
You pay less, the quality is better.
It's all fresh donations.
Nobody's touched it.
Nobody's looked at it.
You can never lose in that situation.
So I have another, another key example of this.
I had a woman come out to buy a large amount of books for me, uh, cause
he's a books.
I didn't really want to listen to my eBay story.
They were valuable.
So I decided to do a wholesale deal, more or less, just to get rid of them and get
some space back.
She came in here.
She knew she's new to bookselling kind of.
Um, but I gave her a table of books to start with and I had multiple
more things to give her.
So she brought out her laptop and she was literally price comping them one by one,
looking them up.
And I'm like, I gave this two hours.
And then I finally told her, you can do this, but I'm not going to
do this right now, but I know you're only going to be here for three days.
You're going to take X amount of books and be 100% correct.
Or you can look at them, make a call, move on to the next book.
Um, she heeded my advice and she left with the mini band full of books, um,
and she's making good money doing that.
And, and I told her, in addition to that piece of information, yeah, there,
you may be wrong, but the amount of times you're wrong versus correct
doesn't matter.
And you can put the wrong ones together and make a lot out of that.
you're gonna lose money on even the things you were wrong on,
if you play it smart.
And I think that's the thing,
you gotta think about cheating.
How do you get your time back?
What gets you your time?
I think that is our most precious asset
other than cashflow.
Cashflow is the king,
but beneath the king, there is your time.
And that also is adjacent to cashflow.
Because if you can get your time to reinvest
in more profitable things on a minute by minute,
hour by hour, day by day basis,
you're going to make more money,
which produces more cashflow, honestly.
And these are things I constantly run through my brain,
like moving a pad of paper on my desk
versus having it in a storage cabinet
that I gotta walk to.
Those are seconds saved.
I think about in those minute details,
because all those minute details add up to me at least.
Maybe my brain's broken, but that's just how I think.
It's true, right?
If you, I guess it's cheating,
if me and you do the same task,
but you have like this little hack
where you save X amount of time over me every single time,
like, of course I'm never going to, you know,
be able to pump out the same amount as you.
And I guess that coincides with going back to relationships.
It's not just, you know, thrift stores,
it's other people in the reselling community.
Because I thought about this when I first kind of
took the plunge into YouTube and everything,
like if you message somebody,
nobody's going to message you back.
Like if you have a question, nobody's going to answer you.
And I think it's the complete opposite.
I think everything is out there that needs to be out there.
Every content creator, no matter how big or small,
you ask a question, you're going to get a response.
I mean, it's crazy to me that we have all the resources
at the palm of our hands,
and we still find ways to not succeed.
Like we're like the bane of our own existence
for some reason, we can't get past ourselves
to actually get results.
And I think a lot of it is you just think you know it all,
or you think your process is the best,
but there's always a way to improve upon that.
And I'm not saying your process today sucks,
like what you do, you suck at reselling.
I'm not saying that at all.
I'm just saying, how can we get smarter?
There's always improvements to be made in the business.
And I'm the first one for it.
If it's going to save me time, time is money.
So you're saving me money and it actually makes sense.
There ain't nothing wrong with hopping
on somebody else's gravy train.
I'm all for it.
Listen, anybody listening, commenting,
I'm all for your secret sauce.
Lay it on me because if it's going to make me some more money
and save me some time, so I'll change everything up.
I don't care.
Yeah, and since he's already made this publicly known,
I'll mention that Mr. Tech and Sports,
we've had on the podcast before,
runs the reseller greatness group,
which I'm also a part of.
He was very successful, but he was very lone wolf.
He didn't level up his business multiple folds
until he started networking and talking
and coming into the community.
He said that, that was the biggest thing
that impacted his business that he did.
I mean, he would have been just fine,
just staying as is in the back.
He would have made good amount of money just doing that.
But when he came to light and started talking
to like-minded individuals,
or even us lessers down here like myself,
that he said publicly before
that that was the level up change for him
because you get new pieces of information.
He listens to every single call,
even the niches that don't apply to him in his own group.
There's like 30 calls.
There's a lot of calls to listen to.
But if you immerse and embrace yourself and saturate yourself
and knowledge about the reselling market as a whole,
again, that's a good hack
because you can pull something from a jewelry seller.
You can pull something from a toy seller.
Now don't make that too expensive doing no work.
Have it on in the background
and your ass needs to be working
while you're listening to all of this.
But knowledge is power, very much so.
And you can apply, I have applied methodologies
like storage systems from other people that aren't in media,
but it applies to me as a reseller
because I have to deal in storage, but in my own way.
So I could take that knowledge, reverse engineer it
and make it applicable for myself, I win.
And that's what we got to do.
We got to become winners.
You make it sound so easy,
but the problem is anybody can start a reselling business.
So like the majority of resellers have zero business experience
or like business management, I guess.
Like I kind of got lucky working in retail
and being a store manager at CVS for 10 years.
Like when you're knee deep in it,
you kind of understand like a company's expectations,
at P&L, like how much are you,
like how productive are you being with your days,
with your time?
But the reality is most resellers are just,
we're a bunch of ragtag bandits
that go around thrift stores and scalp things.
And we really don't have the business sense.
And I think you got to have the business sense to win.
I think the days are just walking in thrift stores
and just sniping 500 items every single day
you go out and thrift or go on.
So like you have to be understandable
of like business numbers, what's working for you,
how much are you making, what's losing you money,
what's wasting time.
And I got a big cheat one is,
I still forget how the saying goes,
take the quick penny over the long dime
or whatever the hell the saying is,
take the quick nickel over the long quarter.
It's something along those lines, Johnny.
And every time I say-
I'm not helping you, this is fun.
Yeah, yeah.
If you can take the quick money,
you got to take it every single time in this business.
I'll stand by that.
Unless something is really collectible
and there's a really limited amount of these out there,
and you know, eventually it's going to sell,
all this junk we sell, especially us media sellers.
And you know, it applies to any category, you know,
use clothing.
If somebody is going to send you an offer on eBay,
take it every single time.
I don't think there's any other way around this.
I think that, oh, I don't have offers
because I get nothing but low balls.
Like you're just, unfortunately, if that's you,
then like you're just crybaby
and you're never going to get sales.
And because I care more about the audience than you,
it's actually the fast nickel and the slow dime,
is the quote.
And that's very much true, sell through rate.
You can have a whole shelf of grail items
and you're going to sell maybe two a year,
or you can have a $30 less store
and sell out your entire inventory every 30 days, 90 days,
whatever your metric may be.
I'd rather do the former model,
even though that grail store sounds cool and fun,
I rather make money consistently than inconsistently.
Now, if you marry the two, there's a good deal right there.
You'll sell the cool stuff every now and then,
but you'll sell consistently,
this lower $30 stuff or less.
But with the numbers and inflation and fees going on,
that $30 less store then becomes the $40 less store
than $50 less store.
We also have to keep these minds with the changing market.
I went to the grocery store, I bought a gallon of milk,
an eight pack of those Nestle ice cream crunch bars
that had the chocolate at the end of the cone,
which are super delicious, and a bag of chips.
Cost me $19.98 for three items, 20 bucks.
And I remember when I was a little boy,
those same three items would cost you under 10.
So 10 years later, 15, 20 years later, we're almost double.
That's ridiculous.
Three items, three for 20 bucks.
Many, many moons ago when I was an everything eBay seller,
if something was sitting around for more than like a month,
like I don't care if any offer came through Johnny,
even if I like barely broke even, I'm taking it.
It wasn't even up for debate.
Like how do people let this junk sit in their house,
in their garage, in their storage unit
for months and months and months and never make the effort
to run markdowns, send out offers,
or even have offers on to begin with.
At some point, it's worth getting the dollar you spent,
just getting your dollar back, right?
You just take your same money.
Yes, you tried, it didn't work out.
But in the majority of the cases,
if you have any kind of knowledge when you're thrifting,
the majority of the items work out.
But like he said earlier, you gotta get rid of the stuff
that doesn't work out.
But people will just keep things listed.
I finally sold something after it was listed
for three years, I think to myself,
like you had this thing listed sitting in your house
for three years, like that's crazy talk.
Here's a prime example, because I had,
beginning of the year, I had 11,500 listings.
Now I've sold stuff between now and May 12th
for the people listening.
So January, 11,500 items in my eBay store.
So between sales and us ripping out items
to either go to the storefront,
because I've listed some junk myself earlier on,
because I was learning, and or go to Amazon.
As of this recording, and it's only gonna shrink
because we're not done yet,
we are at a glorious 7,115 items.
That's how small my eBay store is now.
And we're not done gutting it,
because I'm getting rid of junk,
I'm getting rid of stuff that won't sell,
because my eBay model is changing drastically.
And we do put very little work into eBay days,
outside of, can it go to Amazon?
Yes, no.
If no, goes to the storefront.
Is this a item we know we'll sell at our eBay store,
now that we have a better understanding of our business
and how eBay works?
Okay, we'll leave it alone and leave it into eBay.
If it's not good for eBay, not good for Amazon,
to the storefront, that little critter goes.
And that's where some country town folk person
will hopefully buy it.
So, to Mike's point, what do you got on your shelf?
How can you get rid of it and still get a little bit of money?
Because the storefront, I get a little bit of money.
I do.
I get my money back.
It's exactly what he's saying.
Get your money back.
Don't take an L and burn it or donate it,
unless you absolutely need the space
that's preventing you from an opportunity over here,
then sure, get rid of it then.
But if you got the space, figure out a way, find somebody,
maybe put all your junk into a lot,
and put those lots cross-listed on a Facebook marketplace,
Craigslist, and good old eBay.
First one to buy it wins, and you win, because it's gone.
So, what are you buying?
I mean, we talked about this a little bit yesterday
on the high level call.
Re-examine what you're buying, even in bulk.
I have outlets now.
When I first started, I had just had bulk,
and I had tubs of junk over there.
It took me a while to figure out
how to resolve the junk issue.
And once I did it, it was probably the best decision
I've made, personally.
I'm done rambling now, Mike.
You may have the microphone back.
I got another eBay story from my eBay days,
and it's funny because I seen a pair of these shoes
in a thrift store the other day,
and I took a picture and sent them to Deb.
When I used to sell everything on eBay,
there was this brand of nursing shoes,
they're called Dan's Ghosts.
And we used to sell a lot of these,
and we used to be able to pick them up for cheap,
because these things, new, some of them go for well over
$100.
And I was in a thrift store the other day,
and I seen a pair,
and there's a bunch of knockoffs and everything now.
You really can't tell the difference
unless you flip them over and look at the brand.
And they were Dan's Ghosts, and they were only six bucks.
Like, if you're selling shoes, they're a real nice pair.
It's probably like a $30, $40 pair of Dan's Ghosts.
So, I remember when I closed my everything eBay store,
I had this pair of Dan's Ghosts, dude,
probably for two years,
and it was the greatest feeling ever,
just donating those,
because I was to the point where I'm like,
this is a good quality brand.
I relisted it multiple times.
It just didn't sell.
I think that myself,
I only had like a few bins full of stuff.
I think of some of these eBay sellers that have garages full,
thousands and thousands of items,
like how many dead items are sitting in people's eBay stores.
It's probably a lot more than we think,
because how many people are going back, Johnny,
and looking at what's the market right now for Dan's Ghosts, right?
Like, that could have been it.
Maybe the price,
maybe the market has just completely tanked on that brand.
I don't know no better, right?
I'd just go to the thrift store,
and I look it up, and I list it, and time passes.
Like, things change, and how much, I mean,
what do you think the percentage of somebody's eBay store
that has a thousand plus items is dead inventory
that's just not going to sell?
Twenty?
I think it's higher, man.
I think we're somewhere south of 40, honestly.
Because you just hit the nail on the head.
There was something that was a consistent seller,
but all of a sudden it's not.
So they had good items,
and then those items transformed to not good items,
or a trend took off, and this is out of fashion again.
Speaking on a clothing perspective,
because this happens in clothing, because I hear about it,
because I'm in a group with primary clothing sellers,
but then it'll have a resurgence at some point.
But that period of time between that resurgence,
and you don't know when that resurgence is going to be,
it's just sitting there,
and it's not going to sell or sell very little,
and that's occupying space that could otherwise be occupied
by things that will always sell, or what's in trend today.
You don't have enough time in a day to go back
and revisit every single brand you have sitting in your tubs either.
So at that point, you just have to mark things down
and kind of blow them out.
I don't know.
We're going to wrap it up here when it comes to cheating and reselling.
Have relationships, have conversations.
And it's funny when Tech and Sports goes to these random flea markets,
and he's got hookups, because all he said was,
hey, you got any more Lululemon?
And it was like, yeah, come back.
Like, wow, what a life hack.
Backroom access to the flea market is what that is.
Oh my God, my brain exploded.
He asked somebody if they had more.
He's just insane.
Like, I could never do that.
I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?
Even my library, I went to.
I'm like, same deal.
I can go pick stuff out of the storefront that's not part of the sale.
Yes, sir, you can.
How about the back room there? Yes, sir, you can.
Great.
And I'll take everything that hasn't sold to the library sale.
Thank you, ma'am.
I'll see you next in six months.
Listen, I'm no...
Who's like the sexiest man alive currently?
Like... David Hasselhoff. Paul Rudd.
Deb said Paul Rudd.
All right.
I don't look like no Paul Rudd at the end of the day,
but I'm still willing to at least have a conversation
with whoever I'm checking out with.
And listen, the Goodwills are probably going to tell you to pound sand,
but Johnny B's little bookshop.
All right.
All of a sudden you start giving them some money.
They're selling stuff they had no intentions or probably could ever even get to
because the amount of inventory some of these places have,
you instantly level up.
And I know it sounds stupid,
but you have one of these supplies that has thousands and thousands of the items you're looking for.
And I've had it work out where some of my back room locations
actually get the stuff from the back room of a larger thrift store that I would go to.
So like all of a sudden I had this whole connection of just reliable supply
and then you automatically win.
So don't think like you got to walk in there and you got to look like Paul Rudd
or you know, whatever hot the sexiest woman alive is.
Deb, you got a sexiest woman for us?
She don't know.
Johnny?
Tina Turner.
You don't got to look like Tina Turner or Paul Rudd to have a conversation.
Tina Turner in the 60s.
I will say this though, right?
Don't go in there like a scalper, you know, being all pompous and rude.
Hey, you know, I got a small business.
I sell things online.
That's kind of like, it's a reasonable way to start a conversation.
And once you have one of these libraries, one of these thrift stores,
you'll be like, I need more of this because now I don't have to rely on coming in and rolling the dice every single time.
I hope when I find something to sell.
So that's going to do it for this week's episode.
We appreciate you watching it on YouTube, listening anywhere where podcasts are available.
We'll talk to you in next week's episode.