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 at Johnny, as always, this is the second time we are recording
this intro because I screwed up the first one.
He doesn't know the topic, but here we go.
Does there have to be winners and losers and reselling?
So the way I kind of think of this is can every reseller win at
reselling or the law of nature?
Do people have to lose for others to win in reselling?
I've it's harder for me, right?
My perspective is going to be different than you because I do the YouTube channel
and I want to help everybody make money.
And I have this mindset that if you know, if you just do things the right way,
every single person that joins the group should make money reselling media on Amazon.
So my perspective is probably a little bit more far-fetched and I'm sure you're
probably going to smack me upside the head with the complete opposite, but I don't know.
I feel like if you follow the steps that are laid out, successful steps from many
other people, not just one person, right?
You're not just basing your this thing off me, many other people that have had
success in the same type of business.
Is it almost guaranteed success for that person?
I don't know.
Take me away.
I mean, let's define when and loss is loss giving up and quitting or is loss.
You're not making as much as the quote unquote winner.
Loss is giving up and quitting or just not making money.
Like.
Not making negative dollars or in debt.
Okay.
I think everybody can be a winner.
Even in a saturated market, let's use clothes and books.
Both are heavily saturated.
Knowing what to sell in those saturated markets or part of the market, not the
market as a whole, not to say you can't sell every article of clothing in a volume
game, you certainly could.
You can be successful now.
Depending on your status of living as well.
If you're making $300,000 a year and you're reselling is making $10,000 a year,
obviously you're not outpacing your job performance.
If your goal is to get out of your job.
Now, as far as losers go, or did not win nerves.
If you give up or you don't pivot or you don't adjust to something that does work.
Or you give up too soon.
You didn't give the thing, whatever the thing is enough time to develop,
to win successfully.
Yeah, you can, there can be losers too, but if everybody were to try and follow
what people are saying out there, people like yourself, people like tech, and
other coaches out there that are worth anything.
Now there are some people out there that are worth anything.
Whether some people that give misinformation or courses that aren't really anything
that isn't on a Wikipedia page, to be honest.
I don't think those coaches are worth the course payment or monthly installment.
But if you find the right coaches or the right group of people that have been
there and done that, it could tell you what worked for them.
Doesn't mean it'll work for you, but they can give you their experiences.
And if you copy that, you will have success to a degree, I believe.
Now the question you got to look at it from this perspective as well is everybody
has the best quality eBay listings.
Are the people that are successful now that are doing it right, less successful
because now everybody is doing it the tech and sports way or the, you know,
the used book guy way.
So does as more, if more losers are winners, do the winners see less in return?
That's an interesting question.
I don't think so.
Cause I think there's more buyers out there than there are sellers.
Now the amount of their store may be bigger than the buyers, but I still
think you can be a winner.
You will sell some of your items, even if all things are equal.
Will you sell as most if you have people not doing it the correct way?
I don't know.
We've never seen that in fruition.
I can't really speak to that, but just like video games, there's plenty of
people in the video game industry.
100% sell through rate, everything they list is going to sell.
Everybody's a winner.
There's more out there than people can sell.
Same for clothing, same for books.
I believe now we, you need to work more because you need to put up more items.
Probably.
But in all things equal scenario, I think there's enough out there, enough
revenue of consumer ship to consume it all or most of it.
I, I thought about this and this, this is going to come off cocky.
And I really don't care.
Okay.
I think if you start from nothing today and you took every piece of advice that
I gave you from starting from nothing to say, you know, you want to do $10,000
a month in Amazon sales, if you have a realistic expectation and you put in
the work and you do everything I tell you to do, I do believe any single
person off the street, regardless of what they have to say, they're going to
be successful regardless of what they have going on, could be successful and
would be, and maybe that's just my pompous self saying like, okay, I'm successful
and I know what it takes to be successful, but we talk about this all the time.
Me and you are no different than anybody else.
We're just two average dudes that just work our ass off and have processes
that allow us to scale a business in a way where we can survive off the money
full-time.
And I think that, hey, I can't do this because X, Y, Z.
I think that's out the window because we've seen people in all walks of life
come through the group and many other groups, you know, there's so many
different people out there that see success.
So I still think that every single reseller could be successful if they took
the time to know how to do things the right way and maybe took the guidance of
somebody that, you know, started from nothing and built their business to
what they want to be.
Right. And if I'm an example of this, I did it this year.
I'd make over 10,000 a month, started with zero dollars.
Well, I started with zero dollars in Amazon last year.
And this year I'm making over 10,000 a month.
You see my numbers.
I showed you my numbers.
You're pretty transparent about it to you.
Now that's not to say I didn't have my own advantages, just like anybody
else is going to have their own advantage and disadvantage.
I had the books ready.
I already had the books because of eBay, my bookstore and stuff.
So I was ready to go.
And it also helped that I spent more than a year with your group and the other
group. So I had an experience in reselling in general.
And I'm also kind of doing my own thing in Amazon.
I'm not doing the traditional model, which I've spoken about before,
and I'm still successful.
If I would have copied the pretty much status quo model, I probably still
would have been successful.
And everybody's going to, again, everybody's going to have their own advantages
and disadvantages, their own background, their own experiences in life.
But the possibility of obtaining success is there given enough time.
I think this really isn't category dependent either, right?
Because we're going to have people listen to this and they sell postcards.
They sell Hot Wheels, right?
I don't think this is category dependent.
I think that's the way it is.
I don't think this is category dependent. I think this can be done in any single
category because a lot of the practices are, they're not category specific.
Some of them are, sure.
But overall, the big processes, the sourcing, the processing, the listing,
those all kind of stay the same across the board when it comes to what category.
So the idea, well, oh, Johnny's talking about clothing and books.
That doesn't work because I sell shoes and the shoes is different.
I don't think so.
I think reselling as a business has many facets that are exactly the same,
regardless if you're selling hot dogs or you're selling shoes or you're selling
mugs of coffee, whatever it is.
And like I always sucked at eBay and I would listen to Tech on his podcast
and like I never was going to be like the eBay guy, right?
But I wasn't there for like the eBay information.
I was there for the processes.
Like I never told myself, hey, I want to be like Tech on eBay.
Like that was never ever on my mind.
You get to your shirts.
I want to be like Tech.
By the time I found the podcast, I was like, well, I'm already knee deep in Amazon,
but I like the disguised thought process.
So basically if we have a clear blueprint, I'm not saying text
blueprint, so 100% foolproof.
But if there was a perfect blueprint to be successful, selling on eBay,
selling on Amazon, and you handed this sheet of paper to everybody that
wanted to be a reseller and all they had to do was follow these steps,
one to a hundred to be successful.
Would everybody be successful?
I guess human nature, it would be no, because people would cheat.
They would skip steps.
They wouldn't, they feel like I don't need to do this step.
And then they go from step three to step 10.
So I, I don't know.
It's, it's like a double edged sword because nobody's ever going to follow
everything to a T, even if it's, even if there's a hundred percent success rate
and you hand them that sheet of paper, people are still going to, you know,
deviate from the plan.
So everybody can be winners, but like you said, I don't think there will ever be a
time where there's more winners than losers in reselling.
I think, I think that's always going to be stacked in the favor.
There's always going to be more losers than winners in reselling because there
really is no regulation.
It's kind of the wild west.
You can sell it from your house.
You can sell it from your basement.
You can ship in pizza boxes.
You can ship in nice branded boxes.
Like the there's no, it's just, it's crazy to me that reselling it, you can
just have no experience and start an eBay business today and consider
yourself a reseller.
So I do think everybody can be successful.
Like deep down, I do think when people struggle, no matter what their
challenges and I'm like, okay, well let's troubleshoot this.
There's always a way you can get yourself out of the current situation, but.
How many of those people are actually going to take the action to, you know,
actually get yourself out of that hole or be willing to say, Hey, I suck.
What I'm doing isn't working.
I think that's another big one.
Like me and you all the time, we always come up with dumb ideas and we're
like, yeah, this doesn't work.
Like you're like, why would you waste time?
And I'm like, why would you waste time?
And we're like, we're not wasting time no more.
Like you move on to the next thing.
So self-reflection is another one and like criticism, I guess.
And people can't take it.
I can.
Yeah.
I was about to say people can't hack that.
They don't, but, but, but no, there's no buts.
You're just doing it wrong.
And people don't respond well to that.
And you try to say it in a nicer way of have you tried doing this?
I mean, it works for me.
And they're like, no, I don't think it'll work, but it's working for me.
Why wouldn't you at least try?
Why wouldn't you give the attempt?
But even, even in techs group, it's pretty, pretty militaristic over there.
Sorry, tech, if you're listening to this, it is.
Brass tacks and just get it done.
But a lot of the people can't, or they come up with a reason why they cannot.
And they don't have a reason for their reason other than it just happened.
And the answer is usually the same.
Well, what steps can you do to prevent it from happening again,
where you can be consistent?
Cause the key to this business and all businesses, I truly believe is consistency.
So once you unlock that, you just, you just, you just, you just, you just,
you just have to figure out a couple more things to make it better and better
and improve and prove and more money in the bank again and again,
and compound it over and over again.
But if you truly can't get that fundamental, even if you were selling hot
garbage, but you were consistent with selling hot garbage, I think you could
have some success with that, not, not huge success, but very light success.
And then you, you would have to figure out, oh, I am selling garbage.
I should not sell garbage and keep the same principles I had to
develop while selling garbage.
That's that's development of a business owner.
I believe, I believe.
I don't, I don't know.
It's just, I see so many people come and go, or they're, they're stuck and
they're capped off and they can't get over some hurdle and they get advised.
They try it, they say it doesn't work.
Did it really not work?
Or do they really try or do they try it not to what it was explained to them to try?
I don't know truly.
And only they know that.
But then again, I see other people just knock it out of the park.
The first couple of months they're here.
Um, what's what's why and why not?
Right.
That's the question we're really asking here.
Uh, I believe it's people following directions, to be honest, and embracing
it fully and not reinventing the wheel or they're out of the basics because
there are basics to this business to be fair, but once you get that, those
learned, it should be staircase model or rungs on a ladder.
You should be climbing up.
If you're not, you're stuck.
You need to be talking to people in the groups or you need to be sitting down
with a notebook, figuring it out for yourself, why or why not?
And the pros and cons and weighing all the things us business owners
really obsess over, to be honest.
I think this is kind of off the rails a little bit, but I do think the reason
a lot of people don't succeed is they fall into the thrift store trap.
What is the thrift store trap?
It's a brand new idea.
I just invented Johnny people that solely rely on these thrift stores.
Instead of building relationships everywhere, but the thrift store.
I, that's me.
I tell you right now, 90% of my stuff comes from thrift stores.
So don't sit here and tell me that this isn't a real thing because I'm in
thrift stores 20 hours a week, basically.
And I see what's going on in the thrift stores.
You become so reliant on the thrift stores, the end of the line for this
stuff that you can easily, I went to four Goodwills, the thrift stores,
this past week, I got the most items I got out of a single Goodwill was three
items out of four Goodwills.
Three was the most I got.
Out of one of them though, it came from one.
Yeah.
Yep.
So it's, it's easy to just, I guess, quit on yourself.
I guess it's a, it's a lot easier to be a loser than a winner in this game.
I think that's the challenge we have.
Like it's so much easier to find a video saying, or find a podcast saying that
reselling stocks and it's a scam than it is to find a podcast that says, Hey,
you want to make a hundred K this year?
These are the steps to do it.
And when you easily get sucked down that rabbit hole, when YouTube recommends
you, when Instagram, when the social media platforms recommend you all this
garbage about reselling, that's it, dude.
You just start with a towel right away.
If, if me and you came and complained all day, every day, and we would have
nothing but people that quit reselling, listening to this or like on the verge
of quitting and it'd be the same on the YouTube channel, everybody would just
agree that, you know, Amazon is ripping us off and eBay's hiding my listings.
It's a lot easier to go down that route.
Yeah.
Than it is to be like, you know, we just had Han Leong, like she, she accepts
the fact that you're not entitled to anything, right?
Like that is the mentality to have just because you make a listing doesn't
mean you're entitled to a sale.
Like, uh, hello?
Like what more do you need to hear?
That's literally the whole thing of reselling.
You're just because you list, doesn't mean you're entitled that just because
you source it doesn't mean you're entitled to that money.
There's so many more steps to go into it, but it's a lot easier to just go way
off the wagon and be, you know, a Debbie downer than it is to be like, Hey, let's
get out there, let's crush it this week.
Now here's a fun one.
It's along the same lines.
And if you put an undesirable item by the trash can with a free sign on it,
there's no guarantee somebody will pick that up and you're still going to have
to dispose of that worthless item somehow, some way.
So if you continuously put undesirable items, uh, into Amazon and, or your eBay
store or some other online platform, not everything is guaranteed to sell even
your garbage.
Um, so if you put less garbage out there, obviously it's not going to be next to
the trash cans in the first place.
So having desirable items, both in Amazon and eBay and Amazon, it's a little easier
to tell a desirable item eBay.
You could still tell with Tara peak and, uh, last 90 days solds.
If you don't want to use Tara peak, you could tell if an item is desirable.
You literally have access to information of items that will sell.
It tells you it's sold and on Amazon, it shows you the last six months of sold,
how frequently it sells.
That's even better.
We have the information, leave the garbage behind.
If it doesn't sell, don't take it.
If it's a question mark, maybe you leave the question marks alone or come back
with the Rolodex of information.
When you figure out it's no longer a question mark, do some research.
We all, we all got these.
And for those who can't see me on the podcast, cause you're listening, I'm
holding up a damn cell phone.
You have a computer in your hand, Star Trek, bad word style.
It's, uh, it was hard for me for a while, right?
Because I have the mentality that we all can succeed at selling media on Amazon.
You know, if I just had one person at a time start from nothing and I trained
them for, you know, the six to 12 months, it would take Rocky style.
Yeah.
I think they, I think everyone would be able to do that.
I think they, I think everyone would be successful.
So it's, it's tough for me.
I think everybody can be successful, but I also realize that, uh, people
aren't going to listen and I can't save every single person and being somebody,
you know, that has a YouTube channel, social media, the emails, the questions
I get, uh, all the information is already out there.
So I've realized that it's just negligence as bad as this sounds, right?
Like if somebody asked me like, Hey, uh, what repricer do you use or what,
what this do you use?
How do you, and I have like 10 videos covering the topic.
The first thought that comes to my mind now, and I guess I'll attribute some
of this to like, uh, my wife, Deb, she'd be like, don't you have a video on this?
Like, and after she said that like 50,000 times to me, now I just realized people
want everything handed to them.
And even if you hand them the information to be successful, that doesn't mean
they're going to follow a damn thing.
And that doesn't mean they have any higher chance of being successful than somebody
who just goes out there and starts from nothing and knows nothing.
Right.
I mean, I'm probably going to put Mike on the spot here, but I'm pretty sure by
now him and I both tell who's going to make it and who's not based off the types
of questions and or conversations they choose to have within our group.
Um, I'm right, like 99% of the time on that.
And if it proved me wrong, great.
You made it.
I want everybody to make it, to be honest.
I may come off as a jackass at times, but a, because I am, uh, but B I've been
around a minute and I know who's, who's worth the time investment in me taking
20 minutes to explain an information piece of information and who's not.
And if you're not asking the right questions, um, honestly, you may want to.
Mike's probably gonna hate me for this one.
You may want to reconsider your chosen career path, honestly, of reselling.
Um, but I do agree.
Everybody has the potential, but potential is there to be successful in reselling.
And again, I want everybody to be successful, but if you're not willing
to ask the right questions and, or execute on the advice given to you.
You're helpless.
And just like Mike said a moment ago, it's hard to help the helpless,
even though we try, we do.
If somebody asked me a question, I will answer them, even though I
don't think they'll make it, I will answer their question.
Absolutely.
Um, but I have little faith, um, in a person who doesn't really want to think
for themselves and, or ask the right questions or ask questions in general.
Don't just be sitting there lurking in the background.
You can, you could take some notes, I guess.
And if you execute the information, great, you're a successful person.
But if you want to be more successful, in my opinion, be better than successful,
be in the top echelon of successful people.
You need to get involved.
You need to interact.
You need to network.
And, and Mike already hit it on the head earlier in the podcast,
relationship building, even within your own groups, relationship build.
I I've gotten connections because of the podcast and people in the group.
I've gotten invaluable information from this group and all the other groups
I'm in because I'm involved.
I ask questions and I'm given opportunities and access to information.
I normally wouldn't be because of that.
Now, for you people who are a little more on the introvert side, um,
we have chat communication.
It doesn't have to be a confrontation on a voice thing.
If you're just banging away, awesome questions and discord.
Cool.
Great.
I'm glad you're wanting to get involved.
I want people to get involved.
That I believe that is how you're going to be successful and better than successful.
Yeah, I agree.
And I will say this.
That's why me and you are like Peavis and butthead, because you're definitely
more stern when it comes like you, you will straight up tell somebody like, yo,
this ain't it for you, right?
Like it's time to move on a greener path.
I will say I've gotten better at this.
I used to be like, I used to just sugar coat everything and now more.
I actually had a coaching call the other day and it just wasn't working for the
gentleman and I was just like, here's your options.
You either got to switch your whole business model up or you go back to just
work in a job that you had previously where you were making good money.
And if you would a year ago, Mike, I never would have told somebody like,
Hey, make the change or like this ain't going to work.
But I do think I give people a fair shot.
If somebody runs into headaches, they're not getting the results they want.
Okay.
What's the problems?
Can we troubleshoot it?
What's the timeframe?
Give yourself those three options.
All right.
We're going to do it this way.
If it doesn't work, then like Johnny said, unfortunately, you got to move
on to greener pastures because it sometimes, you know, I don't, but can
you, can you ever blame reselling?
Like, can you ever blame reselling for why you quit or is it always
your fault if you quit?
It is your fault.
If you quit, you were not willing to compromise on something you were
doing and make an adjustment to be successful.
In my opinion, you were doing something you were getting in
your own way, somehow some way.
I can't tell you.
An exact because we're talking abstracts here, but I guarantee you
the person who quits wasn't executing the right things or asking the right
questions to execute the right things.
They failed on one of those two angles.
It's, it's crazy to think about.
Like we literally are sitting here saying that every person that ever
quit reselling and the history of reselling, it was their own fault.
Right now there is, there is a gray area here.
Hey, I got banned.
What did you do to get banned?
And then why didn't you pivot to some other platform and be
successful there if you did.
So again, you got in your own way, somehow some way.
Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, yeah.
You know, if you don't count those types of things or, you know, you, you
get ran over by tractor trailer and, you know, life besides the life
happening from the business, your hands fall off.
Oh, well, I mean, yeah, like from the business side, every single time
somebody quits, it's due to their own demise or their own lack of being
willing to put in more time or change something that doesn't work.
I think that's why there's always a lot more losers than winners.
We talk about it all the time is people don't want to make changes in their
business and I, I, my business model has changed so, so much over the
past six years selling on Amazon.
It's like, it's almost with the seasonality.
I stay in the same category.
I'm doing the same type of things, but every once in a while, you got to,
you got to sprinkle something on, right?
You got to, you got to change something, you got to do something a little bit
different.
I think that's why I've seen the continued success, but there are also,
you know, situations like, you know, tech and his used clothes where he has
this set parameter and it stays the same and everything is copy paste,
copy paste, copy paste.
So it works both ways, but they're just some people that are so stubborn
and they just never want to change.
And it might not be today.
It might not be 2024 might not be next year, but eventually.
The times are going to catch up to you.
I mean, it's just the world changes so fast anymore and business changes
so fast, right?
Just look at all the AI stuff that's popped up on these selling platforms.
Now, like eBay's got, you can hit the AI description.
Etsy's even got one now where it does like a summary of your reviews on Etsy.
So it's just like an AI generated thing that it's, it's only going to get more.
Things are only going to change faster.
I guess.
Things are only going to change faster.
You would agree, right?
With these reselling platforms and a resale overall, things are going
to change faster moving forward.
Absolutely.
And you got to, you have forewarning, make the adjustments now.
Don't wait around for you to be put out of business because you
didn't make adjustments.
You're putting it off.
Why are you putting it off?
You should act now you have, you have the memo that gave it to you.
It's live.
It's there in your face.
You're aware of it.
Ignorance is not bliss in this situation.
You're, you're, you're non ignorant, you know.
And the other thing, yeah.
Amazon changes the rules.
eBay changes the rules.
Any platform changes the rules.
This is a game.
We play the game and if their new rules come out, we can't change them.
We have to embrace them and follow along.
And if it cripples your business model because of a rule change or fee change,
which is a rule in essence, you make adjustments for that ladies and
gentlemen, you don't just cross your fingers and toes and stare up upon a
Twinkly star and will it to work when it clearly is not mathematically.
That is foolish.
I will call you a fool.
Oh, it's so true.
And I guess it's a men like how much of this is mental, right?
Like how much of it is your mentality behind the business?
Because people give me crap, Johnny, whenever Amazon raises their fees.
And I say that the line everybody hates, it's the cost of doing business.
And people will blow up the comments and say, well, it's ridiculous.
When is the cost of business?
Not the cost of business that doesn't exist.
You either do it or you don't.
And you go away.
Like there's no other options.
Like what else am I going to do?
But that gets us back to where we were earlier.
It's a lot easier for me to complain about the 5% Amazon fee increase than
it is to just tell yourself, well, I just got to raise my buy cost by 5%.
And then all of a sudden it's like nothing happened.
Like, wow.
Oh my God, what a miracle.
It's the little things that we turn into these huge things that literally can be
solved if you just think about it for 10 seconds and implement something different.
Right.
And in my favorite company line, when somebody is in disagreement with me,
whether they're right or wrong, I'm wrong.
I'm right.
But anyway, the company line is everybody is free to run their business.
How you see fit.
Cause I I'm not going to waste my time into somebody who's not going to listen
to what I'm saying when they ask me for advice, it's literally the fuck off of
reselling and I say it a lot because they're not listening.
If you ever see me saying that line, if you replace those words in our
group with fuck you, that's what that means.
It's the politest fuck you and reselling.
I think when you say those words, like I know, like just cause I know you on a
personal level, like I know when Johnny says that I'm just like, he's just, he
is real nasty right now, the inside, but this is just how he's going to say it.
And he's going to keep his anger inside and he's just going to go back to his
little hole and everything's going to be okay.
But it is like, I've erased you from existence.
When I gave you these lines, you were no longer a person to me and I'm
going to get back to work.
Oh, it reminds me of, Johnny tells all, I thought he was being nice.
No, it reminds me of, uh, one of George Carlin's skits is he's got an address
book on his computer and when people die, he drags them into the recycling bin.
They're their information and it's the leak.
That's the equivalent.
You're the only one who's going to get it.
I love what you're doing, but it's tough, man.
It's tough.
I do think as a reseller who's not involved in a specific community of
people that are doing things the right way and uplifting and cheering each other
on, it is brutal out there.
I, I it's, it's bad, man.
And I know you're not like probably as engraved in the, the YouTube reselling
world, but that's, that's all it really is.
And it's unfortunate and it's just something I have to, you know, it's
as somebody that's, you know, uh, influencer, if that's what you want to call it.
I have to accept the fact that this is the reality out there.
I can, I do feel like I can help every single person that wants to start this
business, but I do also know that there are times where the majority of people,
it's just not going to work out.
Yeah.
I mean, I hate to say it.
I mean, there's lots of people in our group.
There's lots of people in techs group and other groups.
A lot of them aren't going to make it in the long run, um, for various reasons.
And again, Mike and I really want everybody to be successful.
We truly ultimately do.
I mean, I come off rather brash, but I honestly want people to be successful.
People helped me out early on.
People still give me advice.
Um, I listened to a lot more of it these days, cause I was, I was always
in the, I'm a pretty smart guy and it's hard for me sometimes to be like,
they're smarter than you.
They're successful, more successful than you.
You need to listen to what they're saying versus me having a novel idea
and try to reinvent the wheel.
Um, a lot of the times I just needed to listen to what's in front of me.
And once I started embracing that a lot more, I was a lot more successful.
Um, I'm going to throw you on a hot seat real quick.
Sure.
Let's do it.
Somebody like yourself, how many hours you work in a week?
Oh, over a hundred easily.
All right.
Well, that's just psycho maniac shit.
So, um, so when somebody, I mean, I don't know how many people come to
you for advice because I know you're, you're out there, you're in text group,
you're in my group, but if somebody comes to you with a problem and say
they're only putting in, you know, somebody like myself, like 20 to 30 hours a week.
Um, is that always the first thing you go to is you just have to put in more
time or like, because I mean, you gotta be like a little bit salty that I only
work 20 hours a week and you're putting in a hundred hours.
So like, is that like your big, like, I don't know, salt on the wound if
somebody's not seeing success and they're not putting in the hours.
No, because I have different goals in mind.
I want warehouse and the whole multiple employees, probably a
assembly line of stuff in the future.
So this is why I work that because the biggest hack in this game is more time.
That's simple as fact.
Now, again, to what's your exact question is somebody like you comes along.
I say, great.
Are you currently meeting your financial goal, whatever that goal is.
Okay.
Uh, after I analyze their schedule and see if we can move some things around
to either give them more time or put time in money-making things.
Cause I spoke with somebody, I spoke with Ross, it's recorded for all, all
the seat, she was putting a lot of time into research and learning, which is
good, but she was putting more time in that versus the money-making task.
So it was like, why don't we just allocate more hours to money-making
tasks that should in essence yield you more dollars for your time.
Cause if you're spending X amount of time, but you're only putting one hour
in a money-making task and eight hours into things that may or may not generate
money or lead into making money task.
You need to put more here if you have a bigger goal in mind.
So the biggest question, if a part-time or somebody just starting comes to me,
it's what's your schedule look like and what are you doing for the money-making
hours?
And once I know the answer to that, I can give them better advice.
Now, if the answer is I'm putting all hours into money-making hours, and
yeah, the answer may be, well, you just work more or you need to trade up in
items, you need to switch the inventory around, get better quality goods and
work the same hours, which will yield you more money.
And the other thing is, okay, I have money, but I want more of it, but I
could put more in on time in and my goods are as good as they're going to be.
One of two things there.
One, get staff to get even better quality items.
I don't know how you don't know how yet, but you need to figure that out.
You need to come up with that solution.
So that's really how I evaluate somebody.
And I could only do 20 hours a week.
That's all I was expecting you to be more pissed off about us slackers who
only work 20 hours a week, but it really, it doesn't seem like about it.
I'll be honest with you earlier on in the group I was, but then I came to
reality and it's mainly hanging around you.
Not everybody has the same goals as me.
You didn't word it to me like that, but I don't want to worry about employees.
Johnny, they're part-timers Johnny, they're hobbyists.
And that finally clicked for me one week.
And I'm like, he's right.
They aren't their aspirations.
They don't share my aspirations.
And that is fair.
That is perfectly fair.
I can't be Johnny at 20 hours a week.
Like that's not possible.
I can't have 15,000 pieces in inventory.
I can't have a warehouse like that doesn't work in that model.
That's why I was curious, but yeah, it doesn't, I tell right now, it doesn't
bother you at all how many hours people work.
So yeah, that's a, and I think, you know, time when it comes to work,
time when it comes to winning and losing.
It's it's negligent because there's people that outsource every
single part of their business, right?
Especially in the Amazon world.
And even in the eBay world now, there's people that have like fulfillment centers.
You can send them your stuff and they'll sell it on eBay for you.
So like it's become more, I hate using the word passive, but it's so clickbaity.
I have to, it's become more passive in the past three years than it ever has
been due to, you know, prep centers on Amazon, right?
I can buy something on eBay to sell to Amazon.
It goes straight to the prep center.
The prep center checks.
It sends it to Amazon for me.
You never even see the products now.
Never touch it.
It's never in your hand.
Yeah.
So it's, it's tough when it comes to the time argument of winners and losers, but
I do think everybody listening to this can be a winner.
I do think a lot of it is surrounding yourself around like-minded people that
aren't, you know, miserable and you know, that had have some success and have almost
kind of a blueprint, a path you can walk along.
And there's always going to be losers, unfortunately, just avoid them at all costs.
I know that sounds like lame, but people will drag you down.
Like I won't hang around Johnny if he was just like always crying about something.
I don't want to ever hang around.
Dude, it used to be like that when I was a store manager at CVS, like, uh, some
people were like, ah, drinking the Kool-Aid.
That's what they call it.
Right.
Like you're drinking the Kool-Aid, Johnny, because you think eBay is the greatest.
Like CVS is the greatest.
I'm going to work here the rest of my life.
Like if you hang around somebody like that, you start to believe that too.
Right.
But then there's also the other side, people like me that are like, Hey, CVS
sucks, like we got to get out of here, dude.
And I had a few store managers I was closer with and I'm like, dude, we
got to find something else like this.
And like, here we are 60 hours a week texting each other, we're miserable.
And it's, it's polarizing both ways.
It's like too little, the devil and the angel on your shoulder of reselling.
And if either one's talking one day, you can be like, I'm going to be the biggest
reseller ever.
And the next day you're like, well, I'm done with reselling.
I got a return.
This is the end of the line.
Yeah.
I mean, if you're miserable doing it, I love it.
Um, I love money.
You love money, which means you love it in essence, cause it gives you money.
If you're not in love with those things, again, two different approaches here.
You may want to reconsider.
Don't, don't waste your own time.
And more importantly, don't waste my time.
Well, actually the other one's more important.
Probably don't waste your time.
Stop, stop being miserable.
Go do Uber, go do Uber eats, go work at Starbucks for part-time.
That's okay.
Um, it's not meant for you.
Now, if it's meant for you, embrace it fully.
Take a look at your business, ask questions, network, be social, get engaged,
somehow some way to be more successful.
I want to clarify, like, I don't think it's considered losing.
If you realize this ain't for you and you knowingly say, okay, I'm no longer
going to do this because the, what I thought it was, isn't it.
And you it's self-realization that this business doesn't work and it's not going
to work.
I don't consider that person a loser in this spectrum of winning and losing.
I think that's just, I mean, that's the kind of mindset and mentality you have
to have about everything in life.
Sure.
Give it your best shot.
If you give something your best shot and it doesn't work and you step away from it.
Hey, okay.
You can sleep with your self.
You can sleep with yourself at night knowing that I was never going to be the
huge eBay or Amazon seller.
I did everything I could for X amount of time.
And you just move on to the next thing.
But a lot of people just leave that out on the table.
They really never give it a chance, especially with Amazon, because we, you
know, when you talked about earlier, you're looking at six months to get some
kind of traction, like who, who wants, who sees reselling today, the flashy
reselling of basically selling gold bars and making thousands of dollars a month.
Who's willing to tag along for six months to possibly get some traction and see
results it's a percent of a percent, man.
Oh yeah.
I mean, the wherewithal, the stomach that when you're wanting to succeed
success day one is hard.
Um, I'll be honest, it's probably one of the hardest things and hurdles to get over.
And then once you're over that hurdle, it's like, how do I get more?
You get greedy.
Um, and sometimes people try to reinvent the wheel and they screw their
business up and then they give up.
Or they just try to do more of the same and they're more successful, or they
figure out a couple more things and they're more successful.
They maybe make a connection where it improves their whole quality life.
Maybe they're going out less, staying in more box and up more, putting up more
eBay listings or having better goods to send into Amazon or better quality items
to list on eBay or whatever you're selling at.
This is platform generic here.
It's the same thing though.
It's all business, the business of reselling at least.
Um, but I think what's critical, crucial, fundamental is consistency, sticking
through it, um, and those that can.
Good for you.
Those that can't, um, Starbucks applications over there, I guess.
That's all I got for you.
All right.
We're going to wrap it up here.
Me and Johnny do believe everybody can be winners, but human nature will not
ever allow that there's always going to be losers in the reselling world.
But if you come to either of us and you have problems in the business, we can
give you solutions that could possibly fix your business.
Sure.
We are not to cure all.
There is no exact solid blueprint to this, but if you're not willing to make
changes, you're never going to be a winner in this if you're already losing.
So as always, we appreciate you watching over on YouTube or listening, and we'll
talk to you all in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube
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