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
used 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 back to another episode of Resellers Mindset podcast.
Today's topic is a interesting one.
It's kind of like the motivation why we all resell, right?
Why do we do this?
And I mean, there's millions of resellers out there.
And I guarantee you, there's probably
millions of different reasons why people actually
start this business.
I'll go first and make it short and sweet.
I wanted to make more money and do less work, essentially,
because those don't know I work full time in retail.
CBS is a store manager.
It sucked.
I was miserable.
I hated my life.
I barely got to see my wife, my cats.
And those are important things to me.
So I look for a way out.
Reselling just happened to be that.
But you can't just do it.
You also need the money.
So I fully admit, I'm a greedy little bugger.
I used to be dead broke, had tons of debt.
Worked my way out of that debt through reselling.
And being financially stable has taken a lot of stress
off of my shoulders when you go from being absolutely broke,
worrying about how you're going to be
able to cover a vet bill for a cat,
or if you got to get a flat tire repaired.
It kind of has changed my mindset completely about life.
And I know that sounds cheesy.
I'm telling everybody, I'm a completely changed man now.
But it is the truth.
Money does cause a lot of stress in your life.
And if you take the steps correctly
to build a profitable business, you
can see the light at the end of the tunnel
and start working towards it.
That's the initial reason why I started.
I'm going to throw it to Johnny.
I'm sure he's got something completely different.
Yeah, mine was more control freak centric.
Yeah, though as a partner and running my own business,
I wanted something where I was in complete control
and decided the entire pathway.
The problem I had in corporate is in one business,
I had business partners.
So it wasn't all my say all the time.
That was very functional and everything.
The chain of command was very structured, worked very well.
And then on my marketing business side,
I had a very small team there and we had clients.
You're beholden to the clients in that kind of business.
And though I liked and enjoyed and made
a lot of money with those, I wanted something that was mine,
that I could hang my own shingle on and use my business
to funnel into other businesses.
Would it have been possible going the other route?
Probably.
Would I have had the full time to dedicate it?
Not so much.
Not with the two businesses I was running side
by side each other.
And adding a third just wouldn't be possible.
There's not enough man hours, unfortunately.
So yeah, mine was I just wanted complete and utter control
for role domination was my reasoning.
What's one of your, I guess you're really,
I mean, you are kind of around the being in techs group
and our group.
What's like when somebody tells you their reason for reselling,
like what's one of them that gets you excited
about that person?
I'll tell you what mine is.
Maybe I'll steal yours first.
I like when people try to retire,
like their significant other from their job
that they don't like, or like maybe a parent or a grandparent.
I think that's like my favorite of them all.
Like, hey, I wanna make as much money as I can
so that my husband or my wife don't have to work
at a job they don't like, or I can help support my,
you know, grandparent who, you know, social security
isn't enough money.
I like those the most.
What I like is more category based
and that definitely fits into what I'm about to say.
It's one of those categories.
The category is a purpose-driven life that goes beyond you.
And in your case, it was your spouse.
You wanna retire your spouse or you know what?
My kids got leukemia.
I need the money.
Medical bills be expensive, yo.
Or you got cancer.
You yourself have cancer.
There's no way out.
You're gonna die or you need medical treatment.
So you need to, if you do die,
you need to leave debt-free to everybody around you.
Those kind of goals, I'm like, damn, that is the best reason.
That goes beyond you as the person.
I love those reasons that you got into reselling
for the, not really the chance, but you got no choice.
You gotta do it.
You gotta make it work.
And those people tend to be the most motivated people,
including the people that wanna retire their spouse.
It goes beyond them.
That's the beautiful reason to resell, in my opinion.
I do think a lot of people,
the vast majority of resellers
are the types of people we're talking about.
Their why is like, it's an emotional connection.
It's not just, oh, I just wanna make money, right?
And don't get me wrong, I see it all the time.
These crazy, you know, these crazy teenagers, Johnny,
hopping into an OA business and they're just like,
I wanna make as much money as I can
so I can go buy a Lamborghini or something.
I ain't got nothing against those people.
I just think the majority of resellers,
kinda like you said, if you have that important reason,
like why you need to get up in the morning and do it,
you know, I say it all the time.
eBay sellers are the hardest working resellers out there
and you need that motivation or you're just not gonna make it.
I mean, if you don't have any motivation
to get up in the morning, why are you gonna get up?
Right, and another reason I've adapted
as I started doing this for myself,
other than do what I wanna do and the direction I wanna do it
is the people that I employ or have work alongside me,
either in a contract, well, not really contract,
full-time employees or part-time employees,
I wanna be able to have the ability to change their lives.
That they would have been worse going to work at Starbucks
than working for me, whether that's me having a conversation
or helping them out, I need to do a house mortgage,
how do I do it, Johnny?
I need to have the capability to be able to do that,
capacity to help them out.
I think it's been very rewarding for myself
in a selfish way, because I like helping people naturally,
despite all the yelling I do.
I do ultimately like helping people,
but I like helping the right people,
because you know what, I fired a crap ton of people.
Those weren't the right people to help.
I think you honestly fire a lot of people
behind the scenes and the groups too, right?
Like they just don't know it publicly,
but like in your book, it's like delete,
oof, when they're going.
Yeah, they're off my, I don't wanna help you
but I'm gonna give you the most mental answer
when you ask me directly that I can.
But if I see a person that literally asking
the right question is literally putting in the work,
yeah, I'll give you the full fledged,
here's a pure outline of what you need to do reason
versus everybody's free to run their business
how they see fit answer.
Such a compound answer, but I love it,
because I know what it means.
So we get back to the idea of you being motivated,
you have a why, no matter what it is,
we all have a why we do this, it needs to translate
into actual work though, right?
At the end of the day, if I wanna be able to cover
the vet bills or like I just got brakes and rotors
on the 2008 Nissan Altima, cost me 800 bucks out the door.
It's like, if I wanna be able to pay for this, Johnny,
I actually have to go source the products
and sell the products to get money coming back
into bank account.
I think this is where we kind of get lost.
Some of us are so strong, I wanna do this
because I wanna quit my job
or I wanna support my significant other.
And then we kind of fall flat
after that initial motivation of here's why we wanna do this.
And all of a sudden, like the plane's going down the runway
and like the front wheel goes up
and then just come straight back down and then plane stops.
Yeah, and I think the motivation of I wanna make money
or I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a year,
that's the number that's tossed around the most
in our industry.
And it's like, okay, what are you gonna do with it?
Like, what's the reason behind it?
Wanting to make money for money's sake?
One, there's probably easier ways to go about that.
Two, you need a bigger motivator.
Again, it needs to translate outside of you.
You need to be building towards something.
Putting some abstract, what sounds nice for others to hear.
I mean, yeah, my goal is to make a hundred grand.
Yeah, that sounds nice, but what are you gonna do with it?
And a lot of people don't have an answer for that,
surprisingly.
Other than pay off debt or upgrade their quality of life,
Lambo style, and it's like, okay,
that's a bullshit reason to do this at all.
You are kind of on your way to failure.
You know what?
I don't see those people after a year.
Well, sooner or later, I mean,
your debt's gonna be paid off.
It just, you gotta make changes in your lifestyle.
Overall, I've been talking about it now for two years.
Me and Deb trying to buy a house.
Every month, money goes into the house fund, right?
And I'm not just gonna jump into a house
just because I'm sitting here telling you guys
I wanna be in a house.
I do, I'm on the third floor.
I gotta carry thousands of books and CDs and DVDs,
up and down steps,
but you have to make calculated decisions across the board.
We're not just gonna buy a house, just to buy a house.
Deb tells me this all the time, Johnny,
because I'm on Trulia every night,
like where this is gonna be the night,
and it just doesn't happen,
but you keep working towards that.
And as long as you see progress for your goals,
whatever that may be,
and we all should have like immediate goals, right?
Like maybe I immediately wanna go get new tires
or have an emergency fund, right?
That's my immediate goal.
What's the next one?
Plan ahead, because once you get this business rocking
and rolling, you're gonna be making more money
than you ever have in your life.
And if that money don't have somewhere to go,
it's just gonna burn up.
You ain't gonna know what happened to it.
So be purposeful about, you know,
once you start growing this business,
what is your plan to do with this?
Because now, yeah, like I've never made,
as much money as I'm making now,
it's the most I've made in my life, right?
Like, yeah, it's not a shit ton,
but it's a lot more than I was making.
So if I was just kind of keep going down the same path,
I wouldn't literally be nowhere.
All right, I'm gonna go on two odds
ends of the spectrum here.
One, for your part-time people or your hobbyist people,
you want extra trip money.
Your goal is to do trips.
Cool goal, love it.
Go on all the trips you want.
So your goal is very achievable.
I'd say it's probably the easiest of all goals.
And I'm not downgrading that.
That's your personal goal.
Cause either you have retirement or pension,
probably if your goal is just extra trip money.
That's fantastic.
You don't have to,
and our friends, Hunley and Sam did an interesting one.
Everybody has a different type of mountain
they're trying to climb, right?
I think that's a perfect analogy.
And I'm gonna steal it.
And I hope they listen to this and hate me for it.
I really do.
Or what kind of trail do you wanna go on here?
My analogy is better.
How long is your trail, right?
How long do you need to keep on walking
to get to where you need to go?
And some people's paths are rockier than others
or some people are, there is no trail.
I have to make my own, your trailblazer, right?
Ha ha, better analogy, I win.
Anyway,
go into the other end of the spectrum
where your goal is so high.
They are there before they know it.
They don't even realize that they're there.
If your goal is so out there,
cause you work harder, cause it's never enough, right?
There's people that it's never enough for,
I think get to their goals way faster
because it's just so monumentally high.
But our business is reselling, right?
In my opinion, reselling is,
enables you to do, cause to go off in other things,
to do other businesses or other ventures
or other investment opportunities.
Cause we always say this all the time.
We can't be doing this until we're 90, right?
So you have to use your reselling money smartly.
So yeah, pay off your bills,
do those extra trips you wanna do.
But then you gotta start piling your money into
what's the exit, how am I exiting?
There's so many different ways to exit.
And that's gonna be based off the individual
and what and how they wanna do things.
Like me, I wanna do stuff you can't buy on the internet.
That's sustainable to me.
Cause I don't need the internet, e-bomb hits,
nothing works.
You know what?
My doors are still open cause of things I've set up
to being able to supply the world in case of the apocalypse.
So there you go.
Oh my God, dude.
Conspiracy theorists.
I wanna catch Bigfoot as well, Johnny.
So get in line.
I do think though it's important
because we get so caught up.
I know a lot of resellers work crazy amounts of hours,
right?
Like way more than I work.
And you don't know like when your ticket's gonna be pulled,
right?
Like when you're gonna be sitting
in front of the pearly gates.
And unfortunately, you know,
we can't predict these things and life happens, you know,
whether it's you or somebody that's close to you, you know,
today could be your last day.
Do you wanna spend it reselling 16 hours a day?
No, like, I mean, I know Johnny will get flack
and I get flack about talking about not wanting to do this
when we're, you know, of retirement age,
but I honestly think you've gotta enjoy life
and you gotta have a plan to enjoy life.
So why not bust our ass today?
So when the time comes and me and Johnny are so old,
we just keep repeating ourselves on the podcast
and like, you know, we got like one listener
and it's like, you know, it's our great grand cats
and like that's the extent of it.
I think we have to start using today
to better ourselves in the future
when it comes to reselling.
And I know it's easy to say,
but we're working for a better tomorrow, right?
We really are.
But we don't, sometimes tomorrow comes sooner than later.
Cause as you said, eBay, Amazon can issue us pink slips,
right?
We aren't in control of our business.
And again, that goes back to my earlier point.
I'm a control freak.
I want complete control.
So that's why I got to use this to funnel out
to other avenues I want to go.
But what if your ticket gets punched too early
and you've thought about these things that,
hey, I'll invest in my online portfolio
or I'll venture into other avenues
that I don't need eBay and Amazon for,
or hey, I'm just buying bars of gold
and putting it in my safe, sure.
If you don't ever start when those inevitabilities come
or you get a chronic disease like Huntington's,
you aren't prepared.
Be prepared.
Start today.
Start thinking about it.
Just put all your crazy, what you could do ideas
and just start, okay, once you got your idea list,
start doing your due diligence,
research this stuff and make the right decision for you.
I'm never ever gonna get somebody financial advice
unless it's named my,
but anyway, make it for you.
Yeah, yeah, and another thing is,
we're not telling you to be miserable today, right?
Like me and Johnny aren't miserable.
I mean, I don't know about Johnny,
but I'm the furthest thing from miserable, right?
And I do enjoy the fruits of my labor, they say, right?
Like if I wanna go do this or pay for my breaks
or like, I don't have to think twice
about going to look at my bank account
seeing if there's money there.
Or if me and Deb wanna go out to eat
or we wanna go here, we wanna go there,
we can get this, we can get that.
You have to enjoy while you're in it.
You gotta enjoy yourself
while you're making progress towards your goal
or you're not gonna do it, right?
Because if me and Johnny are telling you,
oh, work 80 hours,
we're not telling you to work 80 hours a week today
so you can have all, you know, in 10 years.
We're saying refine your business today,
enjoy what you're doing today,
but always have that plan
that you're not gonna be always doing this
because at the end of the day,
everybody wants to retire, right?
Like, sure, reselling's fun, you know,
selling the crap we sell is fun.
But like, if I had, I mean,
anybody out there listening to this,
if I said, hey, here's enough money
so you don't have to do this no more, right?
There's no point in continuing to do it.
Go enjoy life, plant a garden,
travel the world, do something else.
And if you don't enjoy yourself in the moment,
you're not gonna do it.
Yeah, I'm gonna sit with reselling if it's a grind, right?
And that's what it turns into.
So then your why really doesn't mean nothing
because you're miserable all day.
Who cares what your why is?
If I got to get up at 6 a.m. and be a miserable person
and go list stuff on eBay that's not gonna sell,
then it don't matter what your why is.
Right, and like for myself, I love business
and I love pumping hours into this.
I actually do, it's not work to me.
It doesn't feel like work.
The only time it really feels like work
is when I'm moving books from point A to point B
and it's a lot of books I'm moving from point A to point B.
That's the only part it really feels like work to me
or boxes at least.
Everything else is enjoyable to me
and if you're not that person, that's fine.
But figure out your plan and here have a visual.
I like marker boards, some of you may like chalk boards,
some of you may like, I don't know, paper and sticky notes,
but put it in your face.
Look at it constantly as a reminder.
This is why I'm doing this.
We're more than five minutes in.
Bullshit, because it is bullshit.
We do a lot of bullshit every day.
It's true.
I think you should just have a picture of me as your why.
Maybe you can do it only back there on your whiteboard
so it can be seen for those watching over on YouTube.
But you're right though, you gotta,
sometimes you need a reminder of why, right?
Especially if you have a crappy day, we've all been there.
Things don't go your way,
you don't find anything at the thrift store,
you gotta go pick up a thousand pounds of books,
it's 150 degrees outside.
You need to be motivated because if you ain't the judge,
you ain't getting done or you're not going
to the next thrift store.
And I talk about it all the time in my videos,
like when I run my thrifting routes,
we start at the furthest thrift store
because if you go to that first one,
there ain't nothing, dude.
That's it, your day's job.
I love that.
I'm the same way.
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do the crappiest task first.
Whatever it is, I don't wanna do it.
I'm gonna get out of the way first.
And then the easiest tour by the end of the day.
Because to me, and I guess to you as well,
getting that out of the way makes the rest of the day
so much more enjoyable.
If you wait till the very end,
it's like doing your homework, right?
Or cramming for an exam.
It's exactly the same way.
If you just did it when it was assigned
or when you found out it's coming up,
instead of chewing the all night cram session
and staying up till like four in the morning
with Red Bull and coffee,
you're just a glutton for punishment, honestly.
Another thing you have to realize is
as you're going along, right?
Listen, if you don't thank me and Johnny for this,
don't thank me and Johnny have been down in the dumps.
You're dead wrong.
Me and Johnny have conversations weekly basis
about what we got going on.
And some weeks suck for us,
some weeks suck for me, suck for him.
So we're not sitting here telling you
we're the most bubbly, is amazing,
happy, jolly, is resellers out there.
We deal with the same thing everybody else deals with.
It's just a matter of we see past it, right?
And it is important to have somebody or community
around you so when you are in the dumps,
somebody can lift you up, right?
That's why we try to stay away from all the nonsense,
whiny, crying, reselling, this is the end type material
because you can easily get sucked down that rabbit hole,
especially in the world of social media.
Everybody's got every platform.
The most popular stuff is usually the negative stuff
and it can easily pull you down.
So don't think me and Johnny are like always
like the jolliest resellers out there.
I'll tell you right now, like I try to,
those that don't know, me and Johnny had a bet
who could have more in sales in July.
And if I won, Johnny would have had to shave that beard
on his face and I lost.
And I honestly, I took four or five days off this week
just to kind of recharge my batteries.
And I still sent some stuff out.
I went to the thrift store, I did some shopping for clothes
because I lost too much weight.
So now like none of my cool clothes fit me anymore.
So I'm a cheapo.
So I go to the thrift store,
I'm just not buying myself at the thrift store.
I don't care.
And I guess that the moral of the story is like,
you're not always gonna be able to go on a thousand percent.
Like I know that's what you see, right?
You see the videos and Deb even tells me this all the time.
I'm watching a video and I'm like, I gotta go do work
because I don't feel like I'm working because look,
this person's working right here on the screen.
That is not the reality of reselling.
You're not always gonna be out there hustling and busting.
You need days off.
I don't care if Johnny tells you he works seven days,
every day, open to close.
That's a okay for him.
He can, he's got that figured out,
but the average reseller like myself,
I'm gonna tell you, you need days off.
We even plan this podcast now that me and Johnny
have a weekend off from reporting the podcast.
So we plan ahead, planning ahead.
We've kind of been talking about this the whole time.
What's your future?
What's your why?
Planning ahead.
What do you want it to look like?
If you start doing that within your business,
then you can have time off.
Then you can go on the vacation.
I think it'd be cool to go on a vacation, like just,
and it's all paid for.
You just show up.
I already paid all my cash
and everything's just keep feeding me,
keep giving me the booze,
whatever we got going on on the cruise,
on whatever kind of vacation you want.
Like that's motivating.
Then, no, I don't knock anybody's.
We got a lot of part-timers.
You kind of hit on it.
The part-timers, they can have the craziest whys, right?
Like we always mess around.
We got Tommy Boy, University of Michigan alumni.
Like we always just say he donates his money
to the University of Michigan.
And who knows, he might, right?
Like he might just donate all of his money to the college,
but your why can't be anything
as long as it motivates you to get out there
and get results.
And don't worry, the beer's still up for grabs.
I got two other bets with two other people.
I'm probably gonna lose both of those, to be honest,
but I love that.
If me shaving is your motivator
to work your business harder, fine, so be it.
I'll shave for you.
But I think that's in a healthy way.
You need something to drive you a bit more
than just doing the day-to-day,
whether it's a friendly bet with a colleague,
like I've done with apparently three people
and I'm one for three so far.
We'll see if that holds, doubtful.
But I think friendly competition's healthy
because last month was one of your better months, yeah,
because you were semi-motivated.
I mean, you were gonna do the work anyway,
but maybe you did a couple extra boxes, but it paid off.
Debbie even told me,
but I said, I'm taking the rest of this week off.
She said, that's because you lost to Johnny.
I'm like, yeah, you're probably right.
He crushed my soul into oblivion,
so I was forced to take four or five days off
and they really weren't days off, right?
I still packed a box every single day.
I didn't go thrifting.
I had inventory here to send out.
So I think we're at full blown days off,
but you gotta focus on today to get to your future.
If you're miserable today,
the future ain't never gonna exist.
If you're just the person that's miserable today,
you're never gonna get to those end goals
because you're not gonna last, right?
If you hate what you do,
Johnny hates sitting in that chair and doing this podcast.
There's no way we'd be at 90 something episodes today,
right?
Like if we didn't enjoy doing this, it wouldn't exist.
Sure, it would exist for a little bit.
And I think this is what happens with a lot of people
is they start something.
You see a lot of it with YouTube and resellers on YouTube.
You'll see a new reseller.
You'll start watching their videos
and then they kind of fall off the platform.
The people that stick around are the ones that enjoy it,
right?
I'll be the one to tell you.
You don't make no money reselling on YouTube.
You think I make any type of money,
I'll make 150 bucks in ad revenue a month on YouTube.
I pay my editor more than that.
So if this wasn't something,
if I wasn't motivated to help other people
and see the results I got and the situation I got out of
and wanna see other people do the same,
this whole thing would not exist.
There wouldn't even be a chance of doubt
because there ain't no money in it, right?
Maybe if I wind up with a million subscribers
a thousand years from now, I'll make some type of money.
But today, my motivation is helping other people.
That's why we have the group.
That's why it's only 2.99.
I know I should raise the price, whatever shameless plug.
Yeah, you should.
But it should be,
if I don't have the motivating factor
of helping somebody else get out of a situation,
my YouTube channel doesn't exist.
This podcast doesn't exist.
This group doesn't exist.
Johnny as a person in my life doesn't even exist.
I'll exist just without you.
I don't exist just because you do.
It's like snap my fingers like Thanos and you're gone.
You just turn the dust away.
But I mean, if you think about it, right?
Like that's the motivating factor for this YouTube channel
for this podcast is to help other people.
If we didn't enjoy helping other people,
then we won't waste our time.
If me or you were miserable doing this, we won't do it.
I make more money by not helping people.
Truth be told, I just work more.
It's the truth.
If we think about, I know for a fact, right?
I spend a lot of time, I know you spend a lot of time
in the groups helping people.
We got our weekly calls every single week.
Even with the YouTube memberships,
I would 100% make more money
if I just fell off the face of the earth.
I just focus solely on reselling.
One, there's not a single instance out of 100 instances
in the Marvel universe of different dimensions
where Mike makes more money on YouTube than he does reselling.
It doesn't exist.
Like it just doesn't exist, right?
So we're here to help.
That's our motivating cause.
It's not even monetary.
We just want to help people
because we see the power of having a business,
the power of having a little bit of money in your pocket,
especially if you haven't ever came from any type of money.
I think about the days, like $700 for breaks, dude.
Like it's going to take me months to try to find $700, right?
And now it's in the bank account.
And that's my motivation.
I'm not money hungry, but I enjoy having enough money
to where I'm not going bald or faster than I already am
because I ain't got no money.
So I want to touch on something you briefly mentioned
or semi alluded to.
So after the month was over,
you were kind of defeated and or exhausted
from the efforts you put in and you fell a little short.
You were really close to me, to be fair.
But extrapolating this to anybody's goal,
when you didn't meet your goal, whatever it was,
or you fell short, rather than giving up.
And I didn't say you gave up,
but just to the person thinking about giving up,
you need to ask yourself, what caused me not to reach my goal?
What was the inevitability of why?
Or maybe you saw it early on
and you didn't make the adjustments.
And I think that's it.
What adjustments do you need to make in your business
to make sure you hit your goal next time?
And I'm going to give everybody a lesson
I very much learned in grade school
that I still apply today.
It works pretty much every single time.
There's six basic questions you need to ask for most decisions.
And it's who, what, where, why, when, how, and to what extent?
And I'll give an example.
The order of the questions kind of matters
depending on what solution you're trying to solve.
Like, how am I going to afford a trip?
So who am I going with?
If it's just you, it's you.
What am I going to do on this trip?
That'll help you assign the numerical dollars that you need to raise.
Where am I going?
Why am I going?
Maybe you just need some mental recuperation.
When am I going?
How am I going to get there?
Am I going by plane, bus?
Why am I walking?
And to what extent?
How long am I going to be doing the trip for?
So I'm going to reapply this to reselling.
Let's say I need a renewed source because my source dried up.
So who do I need?
So list all the things of the people you could contact.
What are the things I need to require if you're multifaceted to business?
I need to, I need Eastern Press books.
I don't just need books.
I need particular kinds of books.
Where am I going to get them from?
Well, that kind of stems from who.
Why am I needing this?
I want to improve my ASP.
When do I need to have, when am I going to start this?
Am I starting tomorrow?
Am I starting now?
Am I starting next month?
How am I going to do all this?
Do I have enough money?
Is how I'm going to do this.
And how long am I going to do this for?
Am I going to give it a year?
Am I going to give it a month?
Am I going to give it two weeks?
So it really applies to anything.
And again, depending on your question,
you need to re-label those six questions or the problem you're trying to solve.
That has served me well in life.
And I learned this crap in middle school.
And I just kept that one with me.
Yeah, I agree.
It's hard to be a good sales person,
but just because you don't beat Johnny in a month of sales.
Am I salty? Of course, I'm salty.
It's me and Johnny.
We bullshit all the time.
I'm going to be salty about it.
But at the end of the day, Johnny had a lot of advantages.
All right.
He had the employee help them get to,
pumping these crazy numbers into Amazon, even though he is solo now.
Maybe we revisit this in five years.
After he's been doing this by himself for five years, like I have.
video. She helps you out from time to time. That was like four years ago, dude.
Them days are long gone. There's video evidence, sir.
I do think though, you gotta understand what your goals are, how you're gonna get there.
You can't just be like, well, I wanna be a millionaire. Well, how do you plan on even
getting close to that and baby steps, even if you don't hit those goals, as long as there's
progress and progress just isn't financial. I think that's kind of the biggest misconception
in reselling is like, you always have to be growing your business. You always have to be making more
money. I like the idea of maintaining the money I make and getting my time back more than the idea
of always making more money because time is our most valuable asset. I know you resellers don't
care about time. You just like sitting in your smelly basements all day. Fair enough, not me.
I enjoy being outside, long walks on the beach that I don't have in central Pennsylvania in the park,
going to the movies and doing things like that. It's not all about money in life. Your stress
levels, your kind of quality of life outside of reselling has to exist as well. Now, there's
definitely something to be said if you're gonna just go in and bust your ass like Johnny has with
Amazon this year. Just, all right, my life's gonna suck for the next 12 months. But after that,
then I can start looking at refining different things because the money's gonna be coming in.
And then I could start making bigger decisions for my business. But you have to take into
consideration your mental health, the stress levels you have at home. Me and Johnny talk about
it all the time. We're just two dudes. I got a wife and cats. We really don't have these crazy
obligations that a lot of you have. Kids taking care of other family members, all kinds of
situations that are much more stressful than we have. And I think to myself, yeah, the money
is good. But I guarantee you people in those situations will give any amount of money in the
world just to not have to worry about X, Y, and Z or not have to worry about this certain thing
that's kind of weighing on them heavily. So the money can be motivating, but realize your
happiness, your mental health has to be forefront always. No, I 100% agree in that. I'm gonna throw
something out there to maybe have people think about money slightly differently. And for those
hate analogies, go ahead and end the podcast now. So money to me is a tool in the toolbox. And
there's different piles of money that are different tools. Some tools I use every day, like the phone
bill. That's a tool I use every day. So money is allocated there. It's kind of my go-to. I use it
for a lot of things. Now my Netflix tool, that ain't so useful. It kind of just sits there. I
never really pull it out of the toolbox. Maybe I can get rid of it and reassign that tool's money
somewhere else to some other pile. But if money's just a tool to you for a vehicle, it's not just
some number in your bank account. It's not just some number in your wallet. These are abstractions
to what is the money gonna be used for? What kind of tools do I need the money for? And if you
assemble the best tool in your personal toolbox, I think you'll be very, very well off. Then you
just throw in weird stuff. I don't know what this does, but it's in the toolbox. I have it for just
because. I'm talking about cutting expenses. I'm talking about reevaluating where you're investing
your money in personally, your personal investments, and where you're reinvesting your money in for
your business. And what kind of new tools are you thinking about putting in your toolbox? But maybe
you need these other tools to get that super tool that does everything, right? So there's the end
of the analogy. And the people are already told to leave. You're not gonna hear this, but you can
come back now. Is this where you sell us like a timeshare or like some crypto coin you just came
up with? Because that's what I feel like. No, dude. Having me listening, I'm selling you a
goddamn toolbox. I was just saying. 59.99. I'm ready to buy, Johnny. You put your cash out. I'm
sending you money right now. I'm gonna be the first investor. A reseller toolbox. This is gonna
slap a sticker I got from China on there. I guess we have to have a disclaimer here as well that
if you resell not to make money, then unfortunately this podcast for you isn't for you. Because at
the end of the day, we talk about all the time, right? Like I'm the used book guy, but like our
group isn't about collecting books. We're about having a profitable business using the carrier
of media, books, CDs, DVDs, everything else to have a profitable business. And I think this idea
that, oh, reselling is just fun and hanky panky and I'm gonna lose money. Like who resells to lose
money or even come close to breaking even? Sure. There might be people out there on the internet
that are gonna put in the comments like, hey, I'm reselling and I just have a fun time. It keeps me
active. Well, if you're losing money, you can just go for a walk and be active instead of reselling
and spending money. So like it doesn't even make sense. I'll never understand that argument.
I do agree, right? You gotta stay active. We got a lot of people that are retired. It keeps them on
their feet, but they also like the little kickbacks of money that come in so they can go to the casino,
spend some penny slots, buy a slice of pizza while you're at the casino, maybe even a large
fountain drink and it's through reselling. So you gotta make money in the business. If not, you're
long gone. Right. And what I kind of find somewhat infuriating, I stay off social media mostly these
days, but I do see it in the groups from time to time. Hey, look at this cool thing I got. I only
spent a dollar. And then I'm thinking to myself, I know this individual, I know they make no money
because of the way they run their business. So what? That you found this thing for a dollar,
it's worth 500, but I know your expenses are 10K a month. That thing is a drop in the bucket.
Unless you can find a whole trash bag, more of those things, you're SOL. You're going to go out
of business. It infuriates me. The flash game, I don't get. Now, do they might say I don't list
something cool from time to time? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the people who do that
and do it a lot. The people I find that don't make any money, they post that stuff a lot. And it's
like, why? Because everybody knows they're making no money. No, see, you don't get it.
Freesound is hip, trendy and cool nowadays. It is trendy and it is hip and cool. Why Mike? Why?
Because you go to a thrift store and you spend a dollar and you can find the iPhone that you can
sell for 500 and then you can tell the story every year around the Thanksgiving dinner table
about how that one time you found the iPhone for a dollar and it was worth 500. That is the hip
coolness of it. And you as a boomer businessman, who is only about business, you could care less
because you see past that one idol. Right. And also I've noticed this is a thing that's happening
now. It's not only resellers doing this. They're starting to shop at Goodwill and whatever now.
And they're like, Hey, I got this for a dollar. Instagram click. They have no intent of reselling
this thing. It's going in their personal collection. Yeah. They aren't resellers doing it now. Now we
have the resellers doing it. Now we have, I don't even know what the new generation of kids is
called these days. We're just calling them kids or doing it too. But hey, the kids got a why. Me and
Deb, the day we went to thrift new clothes for ourselves, we got there like five minutes after
open two kids, probably late teens, early twenties got in right after us. They ran straight back to
the clothes. Deb said, Oh, I bet they're reselling. They got, you know, vintage t-shirts on. Don't you
know, they went back there flipping through the clothes. Like it's a whole different breed out
there now. And yeah, Hey, it don't matter if you're 80 years old or if you're 18 years old,
if you've got a why and you're motivated, you can run this thing out pretty fast. Absolutely man. And
why are you doing this? That's the question of the day, right? That's the whole theme of our podcast.
And again, I think the people really going to make it the why transcends themselves,
but their goals are bigger than they are. Like the goal doesn't need to be a surrounding individual
or you affected personally. Well, you are affected personally, not having a spouse or
a disease or something, but your goals and aspirations are so high. That is the purpose
that transcends yourself. If the goal is just to make the bank account go up. I mean, that's great
and all, but what's your exit strategy for that needs to be the goal. Like, why are you doing this
in the first place? Is it to have, take a long vacation ever work your day in your life and go
on vacation five times a year? Okay. That's that, that really is the goal. The number or the tool,
that's the means to get there and how you get there and make more money. That's what makes you
a business. I know we come off sitting here saying, Hey, you need money to get to these
wise, right? Most of our wives are motivated financially. And I know it's like, well, you
only care about money. Well, I already told you that your mental health is the most important
thing, right? You, if your physical and mental health doesn't exist, like then, you know,
we were talking about one day you could be here next day you can be gone. So like
money can be the motivating factor, but you also have to account for your mental health.
It's the motivating factor, but you also have to account for yourself, what you have going on,
how you're feeling about doing this business. If you don't, if you don't enjoy it, go do something
you enjoy. I tell people all the time, like, if you don't enjoy what you're doing, there's no point
doing, I'm not going to do something that makes me miserable every day. Even, even more than one day
a week, I'm not going to do it if it's going to make me miserable. But some people get enjoyment
out of different things, right? Like I'm sure that the, I would say even then the guys come around
trash. I'm like, that's a crappy job, but maybe that guy enjoys the workout and throwing the
bag to trash into the back of the truck and make it $25 an hour. And he's a okay with that.
It's different for everybody. I read an article, I believe it was Forbes one time,
second generation Latin American family. They had five children. Their goal was to send all
five children to Harvard law. Mom and dad didn't work any great jobs. In fact, they had multiple
jobs. The kids would come home, they do all their homework and study and or read once a week, they
would watch an episode of Star Trek. That was their, their social life. All five kids went to
Harvard. They didn't have a car. They had bikes, all of them. They didn't, they, they threw away
the car expenses just to go there. Most of them got full scholarships or partial scholarships.
They made it work because they had a goal that was beyond them. It was for the entirety of their
family. All kids graduated and their doctors and lawyers now making boo coos of money. And guess
what? They're taking care of their mom and dad. And that's a beautiful thing. Again, it transcends
yourself. Yeah, we're going to wrap it up here. My final sentence of this podcast, besides thank
you all for listening and watching over on the YouTube realm is if there is a will, there is a
way no matter what the business is, you can get it done. And we will speak to you all in next week's
episode. Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast. Today's full
episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube members, along with the weekly zoom
call and private discord. Head on over to youtube.com backslash to use book guy and consider joining for
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