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 the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny, special guest today.
Hunley down here below us.
We're going to let her take it away.
She's going to introduce herself, what she sells, where she sells, how
she got, where she is today.
So yeah, welcome to the show.
We appreciate you coming on.
Thanks for having me.
My name is Hunley.
I live in Scotland and I sell car parts, new, mostly new car parts.
Um, I started reselling about four years ago.
Uh, was just on maternity leave.
Didn't want to go back to work.
My husband had some spare parts laying around.
So got into helping him sell those on eBay just to bring in a bit of money.
And then before I knew it, we were building an empire.
So here we are four days, four years later, um, selling car parts on eBay.
Ooh.
So eBay and car parts, what made you go to eBay versus something else?
Or is there anything else?
I don't think there is anything else for car parts.
Um, I think eBay very much holds that niche.
I know Amazon has been trying to branch out into car parts.
They have actually contacted me a few times, but mostly for car parts, if
you're not buying direct from the dealership or direct from like the
manufacturer, the go-to place for car parts is eBay.
Gotcha.
So eBay is the place for car parts.
So when you were getting into this, um, what was the very early stages, first
year, what was the hardest thing for you to be able to do?
So before I started doing this, if someone asked me like, what car do you drive?
My answer was a blue one.
That's it.
That's the extent of my car knowledge I had.
And I think at the time, I just kind of threw myself into it.
And my husband was helping me a lot because he would like take the
pictures and write the descriptions.
And I would just do like the posting and that, and all of that.
And I had zero idea of how eBay worked.
I'm also originally from South Africa and we don't have eBay.
Like eBay is there, but no one uses it.
It's not really a thing at all.
So first of all, I didn't even know that eBay was a thing to start with.
Um, and then trying to sell things, you know, absolutely
nothing about as well on eBay.
So I kind of just got thrown into a very, um, like surreal world of nothingness
and how to just make it work.
Gotcha.
So you had this initial pile of inventory.
So that ran out, I assume at some point after that ran out, what was the play?
So what had happened was these parts were very valuable parts.
Cause my husband actually both track cards and used to restore cards.
And the parts that he had were parts that were very sought after that he finally
decided to work through and get rid of.
This was also literally two weeks before our lockdown happened in the UK.
So our first COVID lockdown happened.
And that meant that a lot of these people with these cars, these project
cars were just sitting at home.
Our government at the time was paying 80% salaries.
So people were earning money with almost zero outgoing, sitting at home
all the time on their hand, the project cars in the garage, right?
We started listing these parts while I was listing, you would hear the
kachings going off, like something would be listed for seconds and it would be
sold and life was good, zero cost of goods, right?
So the parts just kept coming.
I think I made my first, um, 21,090 day all for free parts and we did it
within the first three months.
Um, so when I tell you that it was the good life, it was amazing.
No cost of goods.
My husband was writing the descriptions cause I didn't even know anything about
car parts, so I was just basically doing like the processing to start off with.
Then lockdown started lifting.
So obviously buyer behavior changed.
I don't know if you guys experienced the same in the U S where during lockdown
kind of, or during the pandemic, you could sell almost anything for any price.
It was like the good life, right?
So lockdown started left day, which means people weren't buying
as much or for those prices.
And then I ran out of free stock at the same time.
So now what now?
Exactly.
I don't have these highly sought after big sell through parts.
They're not free anymore.
Okay.
So now I actually have to make a business now.
I, if I want to keep doing this, I now actually have to do something.
And that's where the fun started.
So I had to figure out how to get inventory, something which most people
figure out at the start of reselling.
I had to figure out like six, seven months in and that's when things
started going really bad, like really bad, like just plummeting.
I was buying lots in bulk.
I know you guys buy some in bulk as well.
So I was buying bulk lots, not even knowing what would sell just,
oh, there's a bunch of car parts.
I mean, car parts sell, I've been selling car parts great to say all car parts
will sell, not all car parts.
They don't.
So it was a hectic year and a half trying to figure out what sells, what doesn't sell.
We burned through all the money we'd made trying to figure it out.
Got to the point where the business was in debt.
We weren't making sales.
Things were very bad and we were burning out.
Things were very bad and we were very pleased to just shutting it down
because the pandemic created such a false sense of success and I couldn't make it work.
I'm going to tell you right there, during that bad, horrible time, did you ever think
about giving up or did you think about, no, I'm going to figure this out?
I was in a weird situation where I couldn't give up.
I didn't have another option.
Child care in the UK was so expensive that if I had to go to work, I would be working
just to pay for childcare and I wouldn't actually make any money.
So financially, I couldn't go to work.
Right?
So this was kind of like a, I think a lot of people would have given up when I didn't
because I didn't really have anything else to go with.
And I wanted to know why I can't make this work.
The biggest driving force for me was frustration that other people are doing it
and I can't and what do I not know?
I want to know what I don't know.
That right there, I think is the key identifier of what separates
people who are really going to make it and not, honestly.
So good for you.
Now continue the lovely story.
And so, all right.
So we kept on buying stuff, trying to figure out what sells, what doesn't sell,
turning into a bit of a storage business just with all the stuff we're buying that's not
selling.
We can't figure out how to sell it.
We can't figure out how to move it.
That's when I found tech and the group, which saved us, saved me.
I was getting most of my eBay experience and knowledge off like eBay, Facebook groups.
And I don't know about you guys in the US, but over here, the eBay groups that it's like,
it's a one way street to a closed business.
Right?
So I remember being in these Facebook groups and like one of the mottoes was all buyers are liars.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's the actual like motto and people would repeat it all the time.
All buyers are liars.
So you're trying to build a business, but eBay is bad.
Buyers are bad.
We're up against the odds.
No one can actually do this.
And you're in that constant mentality as well with these people trying to figure out a way
to make it work.
And it was just frustration.
I couldn't figure out why I can't do it.
No.
And that's when I found taking the group and I joined and it was just incredible.
Like the mind, complete mind shift.
I think I was up.
I went, joined the group within four months.
We were back to being out of debt and profitable.
Then I left the group because I was like, I know everything now.
I'm so great.
I don't need to be here anymore.
Like I'm going to save my whatever pounds a month.
Like I'm a genius.
I was back two months later because like, and dumped again.
And just with being in that community of people and actually running your business
like a business is where, how I got to where I am today.
I often tell people, oh, you're just in an eBay group.
No, I'm in a business group.
It applies to all.
I don't even, I sell very little on eBay these days because I switch platforms.
I still need it for the business side of it.
It's not an eBay only group.
And that's what people think it is.
It's not.
But we don't just talk about eBay.
Like I talk in the group and with tech and a lot of people about other facets of my
business that I'm trying to grow out.
Like my business, I don't just want an eBay business.
That's not my goal.
I'm trying to create an empire, a generational wealth.
Like people look at me when I'm crazy when I say that, but I'm not here to have a great
eBay business.
I'm here to change the course and the destiny of like my family name.
And that might sound a bit bonkers, but someone's got to do it.
Right.
It only takes one person to completely change the route.
So in our group, we talk about budgeting.
We talk about money.
We talk about business.
It's not just eBay.
eBay is a route to get something.
That's all it is.
eBay is not the end-all be-all.
It's just another step in a route to get you financially where you want to go.
I think one thing that Tech would agree with me on is that he puts the steps you should
take to be profitable.
But at the end of the day, and it's kind of like the same thing in my group, like I can
give you the tools, but if you don't use them and put them in action, like you're never
going to get anywhere.
And then when somebody's like, oh my God, like this works.
And I'm like, it works because you actually did the work.
So as much as people are like, hey, you know, like without this, like, yeah, without it,
but you're the one actually doing the work.
You could have sat in the group.
You could have read the messages.
You could have never did nothing.
And then you would have got zero value out of it.
So the people that actually take action, it's like, yeah, you know, thanks Tech.
And Tech will be like, well, you did the work.
I just gave you the blueprint to do it.
And I'm kind of in the same mindset of, you know, good groups are how you're going to
succeed nowadays, especially with all the nonsense, right?
All the buyers are liars.
That's a good one.
We need t-shirts made of that.
You know, like I think they would fly off the shelves and a lot of there's a lot of
negativity and reselling and especially in the eBay world, the Amazon world, people
usually just go away, right?
They stop selling on Amazon.
They disappear.
The Amazon sucks, whatever they're going.
But with eBay, it's like they just drag themselves along through the torture just so they can
complain about the platform and how it doesn't work.
So when we have people on here that are successful, like yourself selling on the platform,
it's like, I'm like, these people exist.
They're not unicorns.
There's lots of them out there.
You just got to find out where they are and be around like-minded people.
And you can't put a value on that because being around Johnny for the past, I don't
know how many years, it automatically levels me up, right?
Me and Johnny, it's friendly competition.
We like busting each other's chops from time to time.
But like, I can't take a week off and Johnny's going to be like, well, what'd you do this
week?
Nothing.
Yeah, Johnny, I did nothing, right?
You're almost automatically leveled up in reselling when you're in a community like that.
And just give a little bit of insight more like how that affected you because when you
joined, you were basically in the dumps and you were in these other groups that really
weren't uplifting.
And now all of a sudden you join this group and everybody's like, you're probably seeing
crazy numbers in the group, people selling all this money and you're like, well, I can't
sell nothing over here.
So what did that look like when you first joined the group, like until where you're
at today?
I think we live in a world and I was kind of trapped in this as well.
We're a misery loss company, right?
And you feel supported and validated and loved when you're around the same people who are
being miserable about the same thing as you, right?
You feel like it's okay.
It's not my fault.
I don't have to take accountability because these other 20 people are experiencing the
same thing.
So it's fine.
And you get stuck in there very, very quickly and joining a group of successful people or
even just people who are not yet successful, but who once different for themselves.
That's the key.
Being around someone who wants more for themselves versus being around someone who life just
happens to them is two worlds apart.
And what people don't understand is that for me, the most growth I've ever had is when
I was the dumbest person in the room.
Like I grow at the most and I learn the most when I'm the dumb one and I'm around people
who are so far ahead of me and who are mentally so much stronger than me.
And as a cheese so much more than me situations, most people would shy away from just sitting
in those conversations is what got me where I am today.
Being in a group of people who don't let life happen to them, but actually take action is
a complete game changer for me.
That that's what leveled me up.
I had to change my mindset because you can take all the actions in the world, but if
you're still going to love in that negative space, not much is going to change.
Yeah.
And what Mike touched on, it's very much true in our other group there is we ask professionals
to give us advice and they give it to us.
And then we challenge that or resist it.
And then three or four months later, we decide to actually execute the advice that was given
to us.
Then we're successful because wow, the professional people gave us professional advice and it
worked.
Look at that.
I don't know what the resistance is.
And I've been guilty of this myself, to be fair, of taking the advice and just doing
it.
Don't question it.
Just do it.
And that's even true in Mike's group over here.
We give people solid advice.
They don't do it.
They want to noodle on it for months or kind of try it and give up too early.
I don't know what the I don't know what the hesitation is on that, but I think a quality
trait, but you and I share because Hanley and I were in different circles.
I do books.
She does car parts, but we see each other from time to time.
I think something we do share because we have talked a couple of times is we'd rather just
have the information told to us.
We don't need our feelings sugarcoated.
Just give it to us straight.
What do we need to do?
And then we do it and move on.
And I have to hold.
I don't know why I hold back a little bit in Mike's group on that a bit, but I think I
need to do that more with them.
But Mike may say, no, you're too mean, Johnny.
No, you're allowed to be the mean one.
I got to be the nice guy.
All right.
But I do think I think for some reason we look at our reselling business.
I was thinking about this is their products, right?
Like, oh, this is that I'm going to sell this product.
What if we just thought about everything is like a dollar transaction, right?
Like what if everything was like the dollar we paid for it, just a dollar bill.
It's not a book.
It's not a it's not a break pad.
It's none of that.
It's just how much we paid for it and how much can we turn that into.
And we just take all the all the commitments to, oh, well, it's not a
it's not a break pad, it's a, oh, well, I sell shoes or I sell sneakers.
I sell two dollar bills into ten dollar bills or I sell five dollar bills into fifteen dollar bills.
I think that would make a lot of people's hesitation because a lot of people get
caught up, especially with eBay.
I guess I guess I can start bugging you about some of the hot topics of eBay, like
promoted listings and best offers.
Like, what are your thoughts on both of those?
Because they're like highly controversial out there in the eBay universe.
That's funny, because to me, eBay is a game and every game has rules and you've got a player.
And what always what what one of the big mind shifts I made after I had been in a group of
actual people who are doing well is my sense of entitlement always made me fall short in eBay.
So I would list something.
So now I'm entitled to a sale because I listed it and that's eBay's job is supposed to give me a sale.
And it doesn't matter if the item is rubbish.
I listed it.
So I'm entitled to a sale.
But the problem is my entitlement didn't make me take it further and go back.
Actually, does anyone actually want this?
Okay, I listed it, but does anyone want it?
I don't care.
I listed it.
You owe me a sale eBay.
Right.
I listed something.
There's others listed for more.
So mine should sell you.
But actually, there's millions and millions of items on eBay.
And maybe people are seeing other people's items because they're playing the game better.
They may.
Right.
eBay is a game.
That's what it is.
Unless you're selling very rare items or severely underpriced items, markdowns, promotions,
it's a game we play.
It's part of the rules of the game.
The days of listing something on eBay and you're entitled to a sale has never existed
and it will never exist.
And people need to understand this.
Like if you really want to make and all these things like customer service as well, it's so
controversial.
Right.
We having to provide good customer service, we're entitled.
We're entitled to have everything go our way.
We want it on eBay, but we're not.
We're not entitled to buyers.
Having buyers is a privilege in our business.
Having buyers is what builds our business.
We should treat them as sacred as anything else in our business.
But again, we feel entitled.
Now, you're absolutely right.
When I joined, I was during COVID, like right when it started,
like maybe a couple of months before it started,
and I was just listing pretty much any book.
And they were selling.
It was great times.
Loved it.
End of COVID, that was not the case.
And why are my sales so bad now?
And it took me a year of trying and trying and figuring out and really dialing it down
to figure out that books in a general, in a non-pandemic environment,
have a very, very, very slow sell through rate.
Because I joined during a very high sell through rate period.
And then, okay, I want the high sell through rate.
So what do I need to do?
And the ultimate answer actually ended up very little eBay,
more collectible stuff and stuff that's undesirable from the other platform,
which I'm primarily on now, which is Amazon,
which has a very high sell through rate for anything and everything.
Most things, that is.
So I very much agree with you.
And I also felt entitled.
I'm listing this crappy Nora Roberts book.
Why hasn't she sold, Nora?
Why hasn't she sold?
But we live in a world where we're very confused about what our role is
and what eBay's role is.
So I only sell on eBay, so I can only speak to eBay.
But we feel like eBay should get our sales.
eBay has never promised you sales.
eBay isn't there to sell your product.
eBay is there.
eBay's job, what we pay eBay for, is to show our product to people.
It's your job to sell the item.
It's your job to get an item that sells.
It's your job to make the quality listing.
It's your job to get the pricing right.
It's your job to do the customer service.
eBay doesn't promise you sales.
Nowhere does it say eBay's job.
eBay is a marketing platform.
eBay shows your item to buyers.
It's still your job to sell it.
No, absolutely.
I don't know.
And I kind of agree with you because I wasn't in eBay's infancy stage,
where if you list anything, everything will sell.
100% sell through rate on anything you list.
That would be a magical thing.
Everybody would quit their jobs in the world and just,
how much should I list today?
Because it doesn't matter.
But that's not what eBay is.
It's hard for me to...
I don't know what it is because when I started reselling,
maybe just like how I was raised being broke most of my life and in debt.
If you tell me I can just turn a dollar into two dollars,
that's like a life hack.
I'm like, this is an infinite money glitch in life.
I take that too.
It turns into four, four and a half.
That'd be beautiful.
But people, I don't know what it is.
People can't grasp that concept.
And like you say best offer and they're like,
well, you're just going to get a bunch of low ball offers.
And it's just like, I mean, it's crazy to me the pushback
and kind of everything you said.
If we could just get like somebody higher up in eBay to come out
and just repeat the word you just said,
then we can put it all to rest.
Like eBay has announced that you have to do the work.
We are not going to give you sales just because you are selling on the platform.
But yeah, eBay is a different beast than Amazon.
And I say it all the time, eBay sellers work a lot harder than Amazon sellers.
We don't have to pack and ship every individual customer service.
I haven't answered a single customer service question on Amazon
for the five plus years I've been selling.
I just said no response needed.
So it's kind of weird.
But back on to what you sell, car parts.
Right?
I've been thinking, me and Johnny, we're going to start a car part business.
Like, how are we going to get cars?
Right?
So I'm thinking, we're going to need parts.
It's too bad, dude.
You're stuck with me.
Like, are we going to buy like cars that are like the engines are blown out
and we just part out everything else?
Like, am I sending Johnny to the junkyard with a screwdriver and, you know,
a wrench and saying, hey, go pull all the headlights?
Like, you know, I would take my same model that I built for my books
and just do it for cars.
We would have our own car alarm.
All the cars come to us.
We take out the good stuff, put what we don't want out there.
And that is our business.
I don't know where the car parts are going to be sold at, but yes.
Yeah, you just, I guess, because I see the ads all the time,
like the people that buy junk cars for cash.
It's like $600 or something.
I'm just curious, like, you don't have to give away all your secrets of how you source,
but like maybe a little bit of, you know, if somebody wanted to start selling car parts,
like, where would you begin?
Would that be the junkyard or like, what would it even look like?
So I'm too posh for used parts.
They're dirty.
You have to pull them yourself.
Like I'm, I'm, I'm too posh for that.
I started off selling used parts, but only because my husband already pulled them.
I, that's not for me.
Like I have, I have to accept my shortcomings and junkyards is one of them.
So I sell new parts.
I sell new genuine parts.
And I don't think people realize how easy it is to get your hands on genuine new parts to resell.
So most of my, I'll give you like a, a short insight into how I get these parts.
I'm not going to like lay out the strategy, but networking, speaking to body shops, dealerships,
you'd be surprised how much parts get written off and need to be taken care of.
I like you things you don't even think of speaking to body shops.
Like there's rooms with parts in that you don't even know exists.
Oh, I'll let you in a little secret.
There's rooms of books in those car part places.
Cause I've been there and bought all.
Yeah. I bought those.
I didn't even think of that.
So you don't even have to deal directly with like, you know, I don't want to have to deal with,
you know, Nissan, you just go, okay, that's smart because they probably don't use a lot
of those parts.
They buy them for whatever reason.
And then they, wow, that's a great.
I'm willing to share is a lot of body repair shops, repaired cars through insurance,
which means the insurance provides the parts, right?
A lot of the times, not all the parts need to be used to fix it, right?
The insurance just as a standard list of what parts need to be provided.
A lot of the time, most of those parts don't get used.
So it's like an Ikea bookcase.
There's always parts left over.
Exactly.
And so the thing is they could send the part, they're supposed to send the parts back to
the insurance.
That doesn't always happen or whatever.
There's rooms of parts waiting.
And the best thing about that is those are the parts that are actually being used and needed
because those are the parts for the cars that are currently on the road that are getting damaged.
Right?
So these parts, my best sell through parts I get from the body shops.
Right.
And those guys didn't pay for those parts, right?
They were already paid for.
So they want the space back.
I can give you the space back.
Plus, I can hand you a little something for it.
Right?
Absolutely.
And I think the biggest one you said there, it applies to even our businesses and everybody's
business.
It's networking.
That's where some of my best deals are coming from is networking or some word of mouth.
Somebody mentioned they did a great deal with me.
I know you're in the same situation.
It comes back to me.
That's so critical in the reselling business as a whole and even beyond reselling, just
business.
You have to become known as the person that solves this problem.
Yes.
So if I can become known as the person who solves this problem for body shops, which
is a very specific problem to have and a problem most people don't even realize exists.
So the more I can become the person who solves this problem, you get some cash for it.
You get your space back.
I move all this stuff out of the way for you.
The better I can do and the more phone calls I get.
I feel like maybe I'm wrong about this.
Yes.
I feel like you have when you started this business and probably even today, like, all
right, if I'm going to go talk to an old lady to buy her books, I can talk about my cats
and I'm kind of in the door, right?
Like all ladies have cats.
So yeah, sure.
This old lady loves me being a female in the car part world.
Maybe I'm completely wrong here.
I'm not making any kind of judgments or anything when it comes to being sexist one way or the
other.
I just feel like you probably have a little bit more of a challenge in some of these situations
or does it work out in your favor being, you know, probably one of the few female sellers
in your or buyers in your area that, hey, you know, I mean, they probably think to themselves
when you first came in, like, what's this crazy lady doing?
Want to buy these car parts in the back room?
I think in reselling, like on Instagram and things, it's interesting.
People like to see a woman sell car parts.
I think trying to network.
It's very hard.
But I'm also not oblivious to this.
And I'm going to be very honest.
I'm not trying to be a trendsetter and like break barriers.
I just want your parts.
So I get my husband to do a lot of the talking.
My husband works out in the business with me.
He's still working full time.
We're hoping to change that soon.
But my husband does do a lot of the networking and a lot of the telephone calls.
And I also live in Scotland where accents are quite thick.
I am foreign as well.
So I'm a woman, I'm foreign.
I don't know about cars.
It's hard for me to have a conversation about your baby that's in the garage that you've
had for 40 years because people want to share that car part.
People are talking people, right?
So my husband plays that role very well because he's a car person.
And he's one of the biggest assets we have in the business where I'm very business,
business, business.
I take care of the processing, everything.
And he goes and waffles on with them and gets us good parts.
So I do play a role in setting it up.
But when it comes to the actual building of the relationship, my husband tends to do that
just because it works out better for us.
And people are more comfortable talking to him about their cars than they are to me.
And that's not to say that they are biased or sexist.
That's just it's natural.
A man likes to talk to someone who knows about cars.
If I knew more about cars and I could carry a conversation about a vintage car right away,
that would have worked.
But I don't.
Gotcha.
So the dichotomy between your role and your husband's role, was that a hard adjustment
with you guys running the business or was it just pretty natural because you guys were
married and it was just the same, just attaching money to the daily workload now?
So I used to do all the sourcing.
I used to be responsible for all the sourcing.
And we were doing all right.
We were doing great.
We were doing all right.
We weren't doing fine.
We were doing all right.
And then at one point he'd made a contact with someone and he started talking and he
started doing some sourcing and we just started excelling the business.
So it became naturally fell into place where as soon as he started doing it, we were doing
better.
And so it was much easier for me to step away and say, that's fine.
I don't even need to talk to people now.
I can just say a homeless man, when, when, right?
He does all of that.
I think he naturally, he's very good at that.
That's his strength.
He's not very detail orientated when it comes to the other things I am.
And I think one of the biggest hacks in life is having that supportive person that you
can build stuff with and we can both fall into our role and just grow together.
I think without him, it would have been a lot more of a struggle for me to build these
solid relationships we have now, because after he builds a relationship with them, I speak
to them as well.
Like they know who I am.
We can have a chat.
We can have, but the relationship stemmed from mutual interest between the two of them.
It's interesting because you pretty much said what I've heard from most people who are
doing it with their spouses, that there was no official meeting of you do this, you do
this.
Like, okay, we figure out what we're good at and you guys just do it.
There's no formal meeting.
It just, it kind of falls in place at some point during the journey.
There was a conversation about who's the boss, because there has to be a point in which a
line has to be drawn.
There has to be like, and I think it was, I wanted to say we decided together, but I
don't want to like, this is public.
So I don't want him to like hear it and then go like, that's not what happened.
But because I run a full time, I kind of have most of the same, because I'm the only one
who uses eBay.
So he does the sourcing, but he doesn't actually list or photograph or work on like on eBay
itself.
So I think another thing that's very important when you're working with the spouse is there
has to be someone in charge.
Yes.
Otherwise it becomes a constant battle.
There has to be someone who has the base for the business in mind and they have to be able
to do the final say in things.
So I let him have a say in most of the sourcing.
Sometimes I'll say, no, I don't want that.
That doesn't work for me.
But I'll let him have the say in that.
But in everything else, I kind of have the say and we have to respect that.
Otherwise, there's issues.
So it's kind of like a department head of you're in charge of sourcing, you have full
autonomy there, but any other aspects of the business, you're kind of making the final
call that there is a final call to be made.
100%.
And I think that's how you avoid a lot of breakdowns as well.
There has to be a point where both of us can understand that this is your job, this is
my job, and that's it.
Right.
No, that's wonderful.
I think that's the way it should be handled because even businesses do that.
We have project managers that are in charge of the project.
CEO isn't coming to micromanage the project manager.
They may look at the monthly report, numbers are down.
Why?
So all he does is ask questions.
And he hopes to get a good answer.
So we figured out the sourcing.
We've joined and rejoined the group, decided to stay in the group.
So we're getting stuff on a semi-regular basis now.
So what's next on this journey?
Making more money or figuring out sourcing better or where we at at this stage of the
game?
So right now, we're quite captive at the minute because my husband is still working full time.
We're at a point where we can get more stock and we can now excel and grow and start really
putting everything towards us.
But we have to wait until he's able to join the business full time, which for other reasons...
Oh, he's going to transition into the business full time.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
So the plan is for him to buy the start of next year, be in the business full time.
Yeah.
There is some other things in the background which doesn't allow us to do it right now.
But for right now, we're in a hold where we just have to sit strong and make sure that
the systems are unbreakable so that the day he walks in, we can smash out of the park.
Now, when he comes in full time, is his role, do you sourcing more or is he taking on additional
roles when he comes in full time?
He'll be taking on sourcing and shipping.
And shipping, okay.
And then I'll be taking on customer service, photo listing, and the other administrative
parts of the business.
But he'll be running the warehouses, shipping, and the sourcing.
So going on to shipping, since you're dealing in new parts, and I'm going to assume, I don't
know, that they're all not uniform.
They're not all the same size.
So how do you tackle shipping when you're dealing with objects that are of different
sizes?
Because most of mine are all the same size within margin of error.
Yours, probably not.
I'm going to guess.
It's a lot like cardio.
There's a lot of like, it's hard going.
But I got it to a point now where I could do about 60 in two hours.
And my parts will range from headlights to tiny seals to door trims.
So I've got all shapes and sizes, which is kind of the heart of my business.
But you just got to get in there and attack it like the gem, if I'm honest with you.
You're like, there's a pile of parts.
Just do it.
And I can't wait for it to be over.
It's honestly the biggest pain I have in my business is shipping.
But my heart in my business is shipping, where for someone else, their heart might be sourcing.
So they might spend five, six hours a day trying to source.
I don't source.
My parts are all there lined up.
For the next two months, my parts are already in the warehouse.
So if I spend a bit more time on shipping, that's okay, because I don't spend time on sourcing.
I think everyone's business has its own heart.
And you just kind of got to choose the heart that works for you.
And for me to be able to sell car parts, my heart is I have to package the car parts.
That's the worst.
You know what's the worst thing about eBay?
That you actually have to send people what they buy.
I just want money.
That's all I want.
How can we just cut it off there?
Like I'll list it, you pay for it, and then we're done.
You can sell on Amazon.
That's true.
Listen, Amazon is no world for car parts.
eBay does promote car parts pretty heavily over here in the States.
It's funny when I scan a book and I forget to put it into zero,
because it's one of those weird ones, we get a car part.
This is true.
We get a car part when we're looking it up.
And it's like, I have a book in my hand.
It's not a car part.
There's something with the SKUs.
They're like one number off.
So if you forget that number, you'll get a car part.
It's just really weird.
I get commercials too for eBay.
eBay commercials are always car parts related.
Find the perfect part for your car.
So I guess they're pushing it heavily.
When it comes to shipping though, I personally, I have bought headlights off eBay.
I've tried to replace my own headlights.
It didn't work out.
I didn't return the headlights.
It was my fault.
It was my error.
It is what it is.
But you got headlights.
You list the headlights.
And then you got a little door seal or something.
How do you store these things so that you can find them when they sell?
So inventory is a fun game of car parts because the sizing is different.
There's no one size fits all.
You can't fit it all into a specific inventory system.
So I stack.
Yours don't stack.
Mine doesn't stack at all.
So I have to run like a hybrid model of like three different inventory systems.
So I have crates which are numbered crates.
So like crate one, two, three.
And then they have the smaller parts in it.
Then I have bays like shelf bays where box parts, bigger parts will go on and they get skewed per bay.
And then I have crates, large crates which take my trims because the trims will be large and long.
And like you can't fit them on a shelf either.
So it's a hybrid model of you kind of have to try and cater for every size.
You can't unfortunately car parts, you can't niche down to a size.
But it just you won't make money.
So it's definitely like you just got to find the one that works for you and your warehouse
and how you want to set it up.
But most car parts sellers, a lot like toy sellers, we use a hybrid model when it comes out of inventory.
So do you, I know you're in car parts, but do you sometimes feel like you're an everything seller
even though it's just all car parts?
Because they have the same issue.
They have different sizes.
They have a whole room of different size boxes because they don't know what they're going to need
on any given day.
I think the only thing that's actually niched down in my business is like I'm listing it all
in the same category because I can go from like we say a headlight to a sensor to a seal
to a door trim to a seat cushion to an air freshener to like I genuinely feel like the
only thing that's niched is like where I list it in what category on eBay and the rest is just
like a freefall.
You might as well just be selling like anything and everything when it comes to the sizing.
But that's where the money is in my category.
I can't for the sake of convenience, I can say I'm only going to sell seals because they're
easy, but there's no money in that.
So on the listing side of it, do you have like today's headlight day and tomorrow's bumper day
or how do you do the listings?
So I do process the stock just because I have the hybrid inventory model.
It's easier to put things in the inventory.
So if I can sort all my stock and say this all goes in crates, this all goes on shelves
and that all will go in.
So it's by the storage device it's going to go into is how you're going to.
Yes.
So I try to sort it into those and then I go, okay, today I'm going to list this pile which
will go on that crate and then today I'm going to do this pile that will go on that shelf.
Otherwise, I'll be running around like a crazy person.
This goes in a crate, that goes in a shelf.
So I try to sort my stock into like inventory based models.
That's smart.
I like that.
And then that day I just have to work with the crates or just the shelves or whatever
the case is.
So I'm curious because I do mine slightly differently.
It's by publisher and theme.
So it's not all headlight day.
It's all what's going to fit in the bay day.
Do you then sub sort it by the archetype of headlights, bumpers, horns or whatever?
No, just whatever comes in next in the crate.
It doesn't make a difference.
It's not like I have to go research.
Car parts are so different and varied that you can have two bumpers that look the same
and they fit two different cars that you can't really by looking at something say, oh, well,
these are going to be similar in research.
I can have three sensors that look exactly the same and fit three different models in
four different decades that need three different research strategies on them.
So I can't really go, I'm going to do all of these today because the research will be
similar.
But with car parts, everything has a part number on the box and you put that little
car part number into your program and it tells you exactly what it's for.
So I don't have to go that far and wide for my research either.
So I'm able to just do any parts together quite quickly.
So what on the listing itself, what is your average listing time for an item?
I think it was like a minute and twenty five.
The other day, I think it was like a minute and twenty seconds or something, just under
one thirty, I think.
And a lot of that was because I'm finished with the listing before the Fritos load.
So I just actually need faster internet and then I'd be a lot quicker.
Do you do like the quad monitor thing, like you're loading four sets of photos and you're
trying to play that racing game, like you have four listings at the same time?
No, I do them one by one.
Okay.
But then I have like my software on the one where I'm looking at my parts and then I do
my listing while the Fritos are loading.
And then at the end, you've got to wait.
Right.
Because if you save that before it's finished and all the Fritos fall away, you will start
over.
Right.
Because that's what I've heard where people, they'll pull up two different listings and
while they're waiting for the first one to load, which is normally the photos,
they're starting the second one.
So they just they minimize the windows and they're working side by side.
That's that's too much for my brain.
I'm like a one track person.
I'm doing this now.
Like get this done.
Stop it, Johnny.
That's too far.
Okay.
All right, so you go, why you got to take it so far?
We don't always have to overcomplicate things.
We just do what we're doing.
So it doesn't take me that long.
I'm currently doing 50 a day.
I'm listening 35 and I'm drafting 15 because I'm off Saturday, Sunday, because I do have
a family and three kids.
So I don't do Saturdays and Sundays.
I do 50 a day during the week to make up for those days.
And I can do my 50 in under two hours.
So does that include photos or not include photos?
No.
So I do my photos.
My photos are a lot quicker.
See, car part photos are so quick.
You don't have to measure anything.
You don't have to flip through anything.
It's literally angle, angle, angle, angle.
Done.
What's the worst thing to list?
Like you got to have something in the car part world you hate listing, taking photos
off, hacking.
Panels.
Oh, panels.
They're like the bind of my existence.
Is any type of, I don't even list them anymore.
Like I've refused.
I'm done with this.
They take, do you know that way when you're listing something and while you're listing
it, you're thinking to yourself, how so be such a pain in the ass pack?
I hope it doesn't sell.
So many times I would sit there and list something and I'm like, I really hope this doesn't sell
because I don't want to package that.
And then I decided, well, what's the point of listing something?
And sometimes I'd even price it too high because I don't want it to sell.
Like I just don't want to package it.
And then I was like, what's the point even?
So I'm not even listing them anymore.
It's not, it's not to sit and wrestle with a bumper.
I think the places me and my husband ever got to divorce was when the two of us were
trying to wrap a bumper together and it was just absolute carnage.
So I just don't do it anymore.
So you're in Scotland and so you're selling in the marketplace that is the UK, correct?
And Europe.
All of, is it all of Europe or just part of Europe?
Um, mostly all of Europe, I would say.
I sell quite a lot of JSP.
I would say about 35% of my orders are JSP, most of which is going to Europe because it's
cheaper for us to send things over to Europe.
So I sell mostly in the UK and Europe.
So how much of the, of your orders go to the United States, if any?
Um, I would say less than 5%.
Less than 5%.
I do sell to the U S but, but, um, the problem we also have is that you have left-hand drive
cars and we have right-hand drive cars.
You're special.
It's only the, it's only the, that really rare parts that'll go to America just because
they don't all fit.
Not all parts will fit on left and right-hand drive cars.
So, um, that's the obstacle I have with selling to countries that have left-hand drive.
So why a lot of my things go to Europe, there are a lot of left-hand drive countries in
Europe as well, but for the most part, we're right-hand drive.
Gotcha.
So the right side to drive on hence why it's called right-hand.
And this is why there's an ocean that separates us.
Cause I agree.
So I'm sure you've thought about this.
Have you ever thought about if we just picked up and moved and we're based in the United
States or whatever other country would my business perform better in that country?
I think I could crush it anyway.
I mean, of course, I would crush it more if you were in a different locale.
100%.
I think one of the biggest things about my business is I am limited in the UK is very
small.
That's a fact.
So my sourcing opportunities are a lot smaller.
I don't even if I look at my yearly sales in my category, I was talking to someone in
the group the other day and they looked at their yearly sales with a category in the
US compared to my yearly sales, my entire category, it was dismal.
Mine's like a quarter because my market is just that much smaller.
And so oftentimes I think about how to expand my market and how to try and grow that because
there is such a vast market, let's say in the US, where there's a lot of people that
are in the US, but that also comes with its own challenges.
Where over here, I have a smaller market, but I'm also one of the only ones doing it.
My shipping is cheaper.
So I think each thing comes with its own con.
But I think what's beautiful about learning eBay and the business and being in a group
is that I now know how to do business.
So I think even if you take my eBay away from me, I can be successful in anything.
Right.
I keep slightly, not even slightly, I just tell him flat out,
Tom, you just moved to the US, you would do quadruple the numbers easily.
And he's like, nah, I'm like, okay, man, do you?
No, dude, I'm not moving nowhere for the business.
The business will work wherever you're at.
Sure, you might not be able to be a trillionaire selling that where you're at.
I might not be able to be a trillionaire selling books in the US, but I'm not moving
for the hopes just because the market share is bigger.
It's kind of like she said, there's going to be a lot more competition.
You're going to have to rebuild all them relationships.
And if they're already established, it's kind of like if somebody moves next door to me
and they want to sell media, right?
They're kind of screwed, right?
I've talked to every thrift store.
I talked to libraries.
It kind of dead in the water to begin with.
That's why it can't be neighbors, Mike.
We can't be.
We got to live on opposite sides of the country for that reason, because there's,
you know, yeah, there's a lot out there, but there's also a lot more people
looking for it.
There's a lot more people, you know, trying to do these types of businesses.
What do you think the future of eBay is for you and the platform?
So I know there's a lot of talk in the minute in the UK about the eBay platform,
but there are some other rival platforms that have come up for some of the other categories.
I think eBay car parts is still the greater place.
I think it's going to be the greater place for a very long time.
They have the backup and the systems that run it.
When we talk about compatibility for cars, people were able to use their registration
numbers to find the right parts.
There is no other platform that in car parts offers what eBay does.
I have been contacted by Amazon.
I know they are trying to get it off the ground.
Car parts, they definitely recognize.
But if you haven't looked at, I don't know about in the US, but eBay motors in the UK
is massive.
The amount of money being spent and the push being made by eBay for motors.
eBay, I was speaking to someone who had said that 40% of their marketing budget they spent
on eBay motors.
eBay motors is massive.
And I don't think that will easily in the near future be trumped by anything else.
I think like a lot of the things, there's generational changes that come.
And maybe in the next generation, that's one of the changes that will come.
But not for me and my category this year.
I think eBay still very much hold dominance in a lot of categories.
You don't want to do what not for car parts?
Can you imagine?
I have a headlight.
Any takers?
This is a door panel I don't want to list.
Please buy it.
But how would you even make sure you get that person with that car that has that problem?
Like in a book or a t-shirt, you can go like, oh, that's nice.
And it's cheap.
I might get it.
You're not going to buy a radiator just because it's cheap and it looks nice.
If you don't have the car, you don't have the car.
So I think eBay...
They buy enough parts, they can eventually build their own.
That would be fab.
But I think eBay is and will be the place to be for my category for a very long time coming.
Would you ever consider, in addition to eBay, doing Amazon in your neck of the woods?
eBay UK, I think it's called.
Or Amazon UK, sorry.
I would.
I think Amazon are trying.
They definitely are trying to put it out there.
I'm not against Amazon.
I'm not against any other platform.
I just went where the easiest money is.
If that ever changes, if there is ever money in Amazon for car parts, I'm not against that at all.
I would 100% give that a go.
I don't think we necessarily need to limit ourselves to one platform.
That's maybe somewhere I'd differ with some people.
I think it's okay to go wherever the money is if you've got the system in place.
And I would be happy to branch out if there was somewhere else for us to go.
Gotcha.
What are your thoughts?
Because this is more done in media, I think, than any other category.
But what are your thoughts about cross-listing?
Selling the same item on multiple platforms at the same time?
If there was software that did it for me and didn't add too much to my day,
I don't see what the problem is.
I understand that there can be an issue with defects if the software fails.
I also think we live in a world of technology where that doesn't happen as often as people think it does.
If there was another platform that gave me the money and there was software to do that, I would do it.
Cool.
Why not?
Johnny doesn't trust software.
No.
I'll do it.
I'll cross-list, but I'll do it myself.
See?
Do you? Every single one?
Mm-hmm.
See, my time is worth more than that.
Yeah, that's right.
I also have an employee.
I also have an employee, but no, it's more of an issue finding the right software.
And the software I would use, they want a piece of the company to use it, so I may just develop my own.
The problem is with car parts is the listings is a lot more technical than just photos in a description.
So there's a lot more technical information.
There's fitment information.
There's...
So with car parts, it's a lot more...
That part will only fit that.
Yeah.
And you need to make sure that you can convey that properly to try to get software
to move all of that technical information, because e-mail motors is built on that technical
information.
To find software in another platform that can take all that information is what's going to be the problem.
I will be shifting to software, just so you know.
But right now, because the software we want to switch to is very expensive,
and or I just may develop my own, we're going to do it on a manual basis.
But I do like cross-listing.
I'll say that.
It's fun.
I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
If you manage it correctly, that's fine.
If you are willing to accept the risk you take, because there is a risk.
There is a risk of defects, right?
If something goes wrong and you don't unlist something.
But if you're willing to mitigate that risk and know that that might happen,
then like anything else in life, it's fine.
Just work with it.
Right.
A risk right now is human error.
Absolutely.
So yes.
But that's one of the biggest risks there is.
You should have the sales anyway if you're cross-listing, right?
It's not like you're cross-listed one item a week.
So even if you have defects in your cross-list, then your sales velocity should be able to
cover it up anyway.
Yeah.
Car parts.
What's the what's you already said you sold a bumper.
Have you ever like, is that the biggest item you ever sold was like a car bumper?
I sold a Nissan Micra bonnet to the US once.
The whole bonnet.
What is what's a what's a bonnet?
I'm lost here.
I'm clueless with cars.
Oh, I didn't really.
You guys call it a hood, I think.
Is it a hood?
Oh, a hood.
A hood.
Right.
So we call it a bonnet.
So it's covering it.
That makes sense why they call it bonnet.
Got it.
So I sold the whole hood once.
It went GSP.
I actually put in the listing that it weighed 500 grams.
So because then my people get cheaper GSP.
Don't do this, guys.
This is not don't do this.
That's just what I do.
And then someone bought it through GSP and I shipped the whole hood to America.
I think that was the biggest thing I've seen.
I don't think he was very impressed, but they didn't say anything.
So it's fine.
Yeah, got there safely, right?
People get all worried when they ship some of these items out.
You're selling new parts.
Do you test any of these?
No, they're all new in box.
So if there is a fault, which happens very rarely, it's a manufacturer's fault.
And that's just a risk I take.
And then I'm quite happy to have a back and refund and move on.
Have you sold a whole car or thought about selling a whole car instead of just the parts?
We I don't think so.
There's more money in parts.
I think also there's a lot of rules and regulations here about selling cars.
I'm just not willing to get into.
And I think cars, car parts are a lot more manageable.
I think they're a lot more sought after.
There's enough places to go buy a car, a whole car.
Car parts, the opportunities I've created in it is just the better thing for us to do.
So that's interesting to me.
So if I had, I don't know, this year's Mustang parked outside, I would get more money parting
it out than selling it in an already built state, you're saying.
In the most cases in the UK, yes, I don't know what the car market is like in the US,
but in our cases, a lot of the times you can make a lot more money by parting it out than
you can by selling a whole car.
That's interesting to me.
That's very interesting.
There's a lot more people that need just one part off of it than that want the whole car.
That's the thing, that's what you're playing to.
You're playing to the fact that there might be 10 people out there who already have the
car who just needs this one trim compared to someone who just wants to buy the whole car.
Do you sell tires and rims?
I do sometimes, yeah.
You sell it all?
I think you sold every part of a vehicle in your career already.
I've actually sold an engine as well.
I think I have actually sold the whole spraddle.
You lifted it yourself?
Those things are heavy.
I guess on those engines, do you have machines to do that stuff for you?
Yes, my husband has an engine lift.
Okay.
Most of those were collection only.
You can't put them on a pallet, but that was still part of the youth parks that we did for
his stuff.
Those are collections of the guy.
Car parts are still part of the youth parks.
Car parts guys have everything they need.
They'll show up with the whole shebang in the back of the van.
I don't think I've ever posted an engine.
That's a bit like a lot of parts of it, but I won't do the whole engine.
You get some stuff that you just sell locally only kind of deal?
Yes.
So there are, like I said, the bumpers and the stuff that I can't bother to be packaged
anymore, we'll stick them on Facebook sometimes or try to sell them off that way.
Then people just come and pick them up.
Johnny's in his park.
I'm not trying to put a big ass poly bag over his engine block.
He's shipping across the country.
Come down the seams and you tape them together and eventually it'll be one gigantic poly bag.
There is a point where it's not worth the effort in my opinion.
So yeah, for sure.
I agree with that.
I always try to tell people to value your time and kind of how you moved away from the
panels.
Some people just continue to beat their head against the wall and just like move.
There's plenty of other profitable items out there even within your niche that you can
sell.
So that is a good point to, you know, of course you start out, you're going to try selling
the panel, right?
You're like, I never sold one of these things.
And then after like a good, a perfect example I've dealt with in my reselling careers, when
I sold everything on eBay, Guitar Hero guitars.
So they're basically like electronic guitars and there's no box perfect for these things.
So I worked at CVS.
So I'd be in the back like digging through the boxes and then I got to cut the box down.
I'm like, I made 20 bucks, but I just spent like an hour of my life trying to get, and
I never touched one after like the fourth or fifth one.
That's like the line I drew as well.
It got to a point where I had to understand that that's not for me.
And if I, if I'm making 50 quid on a part, but it's taking me three hours to Frankenstein
a box together to fit it in and then try to pad it.
It's not worth it anymore.
I could wrap four other small things and make the same kind of money.
And that's where you have to have the sense of sometimes volume is a bit better than higher
profit.
If you're going to spend all your time trying to do that.
So in your global empire that you're building, are future steps employees or no, just going
to be you and the husband and maybe the children at some point.
I think eBay for us is very much a stepping stone.
eBay is not what I want to necessarily grow the empire on.
eBay is what's going to fund the growth of the empire.
So for us, for, I think me and my husband can build the business to the point where
we can put away enough money to start doing the other things.
We are already putting away quite a lot of money just with the way we're running it now.
And when it comes in, we can definitely double triple that.
And that gives us the finances and the stepping stone to get into the other things.
And I feel very much like the more successful you are on eBay, the more of a bit of a
president becomes.
And that's just how I feel you are president to shipping times to listings to customers
to and in order to have a successful eBay business, you need to be putting in that full
time work, which is not part of my empire plans necessarily.
But I definitely need to use eBay as the bank.
Gotcha.
So maybe on the eBay front, not the empire front, are you thinking maybe both plain small
engine parts in addition to your core business?
So I think I've actually just embarked on a bit of a different way.
So I'm trying to grow the business, but I cannot necessarily list more at the minute.
So I'm going to focus on multi quantities.
I'm going to try to take a turn in the business and go into multi quantities a bit more
because I've been avoiding it.
Because if I pay X amount of money for 400 of the same parts, that's only one listing
a day and I'm listing 35.
So the capital you have to lay out for that was kind of in my head.
I couldn't wrap my head around the maths, but I've gone and sat down.
And I think for right now, the fastest way to grow my business is to go into multi quantities
where I can do the same type of input, less the same type of day.
But now I'm listing 35 with maybe 200 opportunities to sell.
And I think that's a much smarter way for me to grow the business than trying to learn
a completely new nation transport.
So I need to completely tap out this niche I have before I look at expanding into others.
But in fantasy future land, if you had a choice, you're going boats, planes or small engines?
Motorcycles, motorcycles, motorcycles, motorcycle parts and motorcycles.
Because those are the enthusiasts, right?
That's why you get good money for it.
Those are the people who just need the car to get to work every day, which is my current
customer.
Motorcycles, those are your enthusiasts who's willing to pay more.
This is their baby.
This is something they saved up for their whole life.
This is so I 100% if I had to expand into something else, motorcycles.
It's smart.
I like it.
Yeah.
All right.
And it's small enough like motorcycle parts are small, right?
Yeah, you can ship a whole motorcycle.
You can find a box big enough.
I know.
For the same size as like an engine.
So I think motorcycles is such like an untapped niche.
I agree.
Yeah.
Oh, it would be you could make so much money.
All right, Hunley, we're going to wrap it up here.
We appreciate you coming on, spending your day off.
We are recording this on the weekend once she's supposed to be off.
Unfortunately, I don't know.
Johnny talked her into coming on, but we appreciate all your great insights this episode.
Your links will be down below your Instagram.
So make sure you go give her a follow over on Instagram.
And yeah, we'll talk to you all in next week's episode.