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 resellers mindset podcast.
Like next to Johnny today, Johnny does not know the topic and.
I did a warning here.
I already have them all riled up before the call here.
I had a cold in my laughter saying the intro today and Johnny today's topic.
I'm going to go first because you don't even know the topic.
You can't even go first.
I don't even know.
This is the end of reselling and I'm saying this in a direct, serious type
manner when I think about it overall, reselling is not what it used to be.
It's not even close to what it used to be.
Uh, I started before the world went crazy.
So I, I guess I kind of a little bit of a realistic look at reselling
and then the world went crazy and reselling went to the moon, right?
Like everybody was doing it.
Everybody was making money.
And I think it has changed so much in the past four years that the argument
that the end of reselling is here.
I think it's, it's more accurate than it's not.
If you just look at the average person that comes in and wants to start reselling,
because we've got two major platforms, Amazon, eBay, Amazon.
It's a race to the bottom.
They don't care about the little guy at all, right?
You just, you just somebody that makes Amazon fee money.
Amazon likes the lowest price for the customer.
So any auto mute buys usually going to go down that price before it sells.
eBay.
I think eBay has got a whole different set of problems with anybody
can resell on the platform.
There's no standards.
Um, and I even have a story that I can relate to that.
I bought something off eBay recently and it sat there for three weeks and I have
to message a seller and I get told, oh, it's, it fell underneath my car seat in the car.
I think that is a huge problem that reselling has as well.
So I think it's not, you know, it is, it does fall on the sellers, but I do
think the overall business model from the platforms to the sellers, to the
standards, to the requirements, to the headaches.
I do think it kind of has us in a direction where reselling is all
but on its way out the door.
What's your, what's your opinion here?
I think it is harder than it's ever been to jump into either platform or both
platforms, the, the fees are higher than they ever been, even the stamps
higher than it's ever been.
Um, cause it used to be on eBay and yeah, even, uh, Amazon, you can make
money off the stamp, but at least you get, get your cost of goods back,
maybe, which is cool.
Uh, you still get a little bit on eBay, started taking a little cut in that.
You still get a little bit on eBay.
And I think you get the full cut still on Amazon, if you're a merchant person,
but the sell through a merchants way lower than FBA.
So do I think it's dying and, or on the way to being dead?
I think no, but I think you need to be settled with, you're going to get
slimmer and slimmer and slimmer margins in order to compensate that year over
year, you're going to have to do more year over year, meaning you, you source
more, you send in more items or you send in less items just with the higher ASP.
But that in turn, your time spent sourcing instead of processing.
I love the process.
I hate to source.
So the thought of me having to source all day discussed me, um, online arbitrage.
That's even slimmer margins.
Right.
So how often are you, are you doing that?
I mean, even if you're VAing it, even if you're prep centering it, you still have
to do it, those people in those automations have to work even harder to produce the
same amount of results, but we don't, we can't sell for the same amount of
results year over year because cost of living outside of the market is
going to be higher than the cost of living outside of our business goes up.
So we have to do more even in those spectrums.
So I think at some point, 10% or 5% margin, if you were doing used goods is
going to be the norm and either you're good with that or you're not good with that.
And it gets me to the point of at what point is it just not even feasible for
somebody for this to be on the radar.
Right.
I'm going to start a hot dog stand, but like that's not feasible.
So like at what point does reselling hit that same plateau where yes, reselling
is a thing, but nobody in their right mind would ever try it because what you
just said is basically a little person kind of gets squeezed out of this because
you have to put more time in, you have to treat it more like a professionally run
business.
We talk about that all the time, treating it like an actual business.
So the hobbyist, the part timers, and I do think, you know, the part timers
already get shafted.
If you look at the eBay algorithm and they want you to be active on their site,
listing items and Amazon has the buy box and you have to send items consistently
to remain by box eligible.
I think we're already working and I don't blame the platforms for doing this.
I listen, I know a lot of part-timers listen to this podcast, but think about
it in the aspect of you are the CEO of eBay or Amazon, how many headaches come
from the little person that does $10,000 a year versus the person that's doing
$10 million a year?
It's astronomically different.
So this idea that they want to squeeze out the little guy, I think it's justified.
I really do.
And as much as it hates me to say it, I think that's where the reselling is going
to die.
It's with the part-timers hobbyists that are trying to make the extra thousand
to $5,000 a month and aren't super consistent with the business.
I think those people are going to be the ones that wind up kind of falling off
the, falling off the, you know, the ledge first.
Absolutely.
Unless the only way it works for those people is you, if you have a skew or an
item that you make, or you're, you're the only seller of is the only way it's
going to work for hobbyist and part-timers, in my opinion, down the road.
So either you're like an Etsy type person making your own thing cool, or you find
something that nobody's aware of that you have access to, and you're the only
distributor of it for the short run.
Cause once people start buying it, then they could resell it.
Right.
And we're fixing to see a big battle royale, even in Amazon, because they're
they're merging the renewed program and the use sellers into one listing.
And what's unknown right now, are there going to be three buy boxes or they're
going to be one, one that's scary business for those renewed and used
sellers, because that's a, what was low competition for the renewed guys is now
a saturated competition and, and same coming in if you're just the use seller.
Right.
It's like, man, I don't want more people on the listing.
It's hard to it's cutthroat as it is.
So if it is three by, by boxes, let's just confuse the customer even more.
I don't know what's going to happen there on the buying end, as far as a customer
goes, like, what are they going to be looking at?
And can they understand it?
I don't know what Amazon will do.
They'll just keep the renewed and do away with everybody else rightfully.
So, because it's literally what we just said, there's way less people in that
program and those people are big players in the game.
They're not just me or you go into a pawn shop, buying video games and sending them
in, I guarantee you if Amazon has to make a choice, that's exactly how it's going
to play out.
And I think the problem with eBay is, is the content out there, what you said, like
doing something nobody else is doing.
There's so much content out there.
All basically 99% of the Bolo brands are out there, right?
There's huge channels that just literally have Bolo videos of hundreds and hundreds
of items and the market becomes saturated and things happen and there's people are
listening more of it.
And with eBay, I think the big problem with eBay is there's no structure to the
listing process or the customer service process.
You kind of can just do what you want.
And it's great for people that do it right.
But the percentage of people that do things and operate an eBay business seriously,
like a professional business versus those that don't, the big time players suffer
from this because it only takes a few bad interactions like I had with the person
that lost it under their seat for three weeks and I got to message them.
Your typical buyer ain't going to play these types of games.
Me as an eBay reseller for years, I understand things happen, right?
But some lady that just goes through Google, winds up on eBay, buys it and never
shows up for two or three weeks.
That's the problem with that platform.
And it's to blame eBay because there is no standards and it's blame the sellers
because they don't have those standards for themselves or their business.
And with Amazon, the pricing, man, I just, I don't, I agree with you.
It's not going to get easier.
And I do think that the serious big time players are going to survive this, which
is a small percentage of resellers.
If we think about it.
And I think all the little, all the little guys and gals out there who just want to
make a few extra bucks, it's going to get as hard as it's ever been.
People think it's bad.
Now, the platform just, they don't have the capabilities to handle the mass
majority of little sellers that have little problems, little questions that we
can't take the time to investigate ourselves.
So you can't blame eBay for not having a 24 seven call line that you can just
call and you get somebody and everybody complains, Oh, I never get to speak to
an American.
Well, guess what?
How many of you people are calling because somebody left you a neutral
feedback and said, do you look like Shrek?
Well, you know what?
They don't have time to deal with this shit.
They have businesses to run and you got to start getting to know them.
You got to start getting serious about it.
I don't know, man.
It's tough for me because I get the results I get.
Right.
And I see, but I also treat it differently than a lot of other people.
Right.
I don't spend a lot of time in my business, but the time I do every move is
calculated, right?
Every, every damn thing me and you do, it's calculated on the back end time,
money, what, how much time are we spending?
How much money we getting out of it?
Can we do this again?
Is it repeatable?
Is it going to grow our business?
But that's not the case.
I will give the positive out of all of this.
I think online reselling is going to knock out the little guy, the part
timer, the hobbyist people.
However, I think those people are going to still sell, just not online.
We're going to see a big jump in antique booth malls.
We're going to see a big bump in flea markets where they're selling their
goods to people like us that if we're starting to figure out how to maintain
the game, stay in the game, essentially.
So our sourcing things we don't do anymore because we consider bottom rung.
I think there's going to be a premium opportunity there once we reach that
critical mass point, because they're still going to, okay, I have my stuff.
I'm no longer going to do Amazon, eBay.
I'm going to take it to my flea market.
I'm going to take it to my showcase at my antique mall.
And that stuff's going to be gold for people like us, because even the
thrift stores, they've changed the goodwill, they're raising their prices.
So people are going to source higher, I think, at these currently mid tier
to low tier sourcing places more, because the quality is going to go up in those areas.
This is speculation in my opinion, but I could see it going that way,
at least for a short minute.
I agree because I don't want to get into the whole idea of eBay is eBay.
I don't list often.
Maybe once a week for the past month, but every single item I listed once a week,
they all have sold.
So if I tell you, I just list one item a week and every single one of those items
sells every single week within the week, it kind of debunks everything we're saying.
But that comes with quality, not quantity.
And I think a lot of people get caught up with this idea of you can just go
buy anything and sell it on eBay.
I mean, you talk about it all the time.
Them keys are long gone.
And for some reason, we hang on to this idea of eBay just being that.
And it's not that.
And we can't get past the initial.
And I do think another reason, you know, the social media YouTube community,
I mean, we have to take some blame in this because a lot of us started our channels,
you know, well over four years ago before the world went crazy.
And like we've all come a long way and we all grown our businesses to where we are.
Businesses to a point where it does appeal to somebody that's brand new to it.
And you're like, wow, look what look what this person's doing or look, look at this.
How much money this person's making.
And you don't realize that it's years and years of processes and refining things
and relationships to get to that point.
So I do think we are to blame as well in a way, shape and form, because a lot of the big
YouTubers out there have been doing this for a long time.
And compared to where they were now, they're in a much better place financially, mentally.
They have the bells and whistles.
They had the real estate property.
They have the huge warehouses.
And the idea that you can start reselling today and be the warehouse person in three months.
This is completely unrealistic.
Absolutely.
And a third avenue, I think we're going to see pop up when it reaches that critical mass point.
And I forgot about it.
So I can't really say they're going to go strictly offline.
I think a lot of them will also try to have their own website.
That is the biggest mistake.
That's going to be a mistake.
That is.
But I'm going to see it happen.
We all are going to see that happen.
They're going to do the website.
They're going to do the farmer's market, the antique and flea market thing.
We're going to see a boom in those three places.
I'm predicting.
I'm going to give you a real life equivalent of having a website that these people would do.
You opening a website today, johnnyb'sgoods.com,
whatever it is.
That is the equivalent to you just having, you're not even having your door open,
just having a little business card size sign on your door that says, I sell things inside.
And people down the road are driving 60 miles an hour and will never see it.
There you go.
He finished the analogy.
People think I'll just get my own website that these are, but next to nothing,
there is so much marketing ad spend that has to go in for you to even get it seen a click,
not even guaranteed someone's going to buy something.
But I do agree because I have seen that popping up more and more like
just do your own website or, you know,
There's less fees.
Yeah.
But when nobody's buying the fees don't matter.
Well, we'll start our own reselling website.
That's the thing I've been seeing too.
Like it's not that simple.
It sounds glorious.
Me and johnny can sit here and go on and on about the reselling
marketplace we're going to create,
but it means absolutely nothing on the back.
It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to do something like that.
So it's don't ever just go to your flea market.
You're way better.
I'd be better off and you'll spend less money.
Yeah.
Just do a yard sale and put it on.
Oh, yard sale.
Yeah.
There you go.
Like your weekly yard sale.
Yeah.
Something like that.
I mean, it's brutal out there right now.
A lot of small people are hurting sales are down.
They're not getting the sales they used to.
But with anything, you got to understand the market we're in.
All right.
There's always outside factors.
That's why everybody thought reselling was great.
2020 through 2022 because everybody had the free money.
Everybody was getting the checks from the government,
the unemployment because they couldn't go to work.
Of course, things are going to be great, dude.
Now like time, this is it.
This is really reselling right now.
Like this is real time reselling.
This is what reselling really is before the anomaly that we went through.
That wasn't reselling.
That was just you go outside and you just go in your yard and pay for gold
and you're going to pull gold every single time.
That was the furthest thing from the reality.
But that's when reselling took off.
So the majority of people that started then think that, well,
if we're not doing what it was back then, then hey, what's going on here?
Like this is the end of times.
It is the end of times for you, not for me.
Right.
Like call the ambulance for you, not for me.
So we've given all the red flags and flashing lights we know how to give.
So I'm going to try to shift the conversation, if Mike allows me to.
How do you stay in the game?
What would enable you to not go sell at the flea market or go work at Uber for your spare cash?
And especially if you're a part-timer person,
like what do you need to do today to prepare for tomorrow kind of deal?
And I hope Mike finally gets my Ant and Grass grasshopper analogy
that I said many moons ago, but I think he does now.
So Mike, what would you do if you were a part-timer?
You do put in part-time hours.
I'm part-time, dude.
How are you going to stay in the game?
How are you going to stay in the game, Mike?
You have to be smarter every single aspect of your business.
Sourcing, listing, pricing, maintaining that inventory that isn't selling,
basically keeping up with it.
You do a much better job than me at going in and manually repricing.
And I have realized over the past two months that
manual repricing on Amazon is like, it's worth its weight in gold.
Like you spend one day a week and go in and manually reprice it.
I think, you know, we have our mastermind call once a month.
And, you know, for me doing the numbers I do, I'm like, we had Rob.
He's like, yeah, I did $20,000.
I work a full-time job.
And the big change he did was he upgraded his quality of goods
and the quantity he was getting.
So we talked about reaching out to, you know, companies directly.
And that's what he did.
And he went from being thrift store guy to the state sale guy.
And his quality of goods went up and boom, he shot through the roof.
Like, yeah, he was doing good numbers before, but I mean, anybody
out there that's listening to this, you tell them you do $20,000 in sales
part-time in addition to a full-time job, it sounds so scammy, but like that.
He's the person that's going to survive.
Like if there's a definition of a part-timer, like that's it.
And that's how I have to be.
That's how you have to be even as a full-timer.
You don't get complacent, right?
You don't just sit there and you don't just do the same things, the same things.
You always have to be bettering yourself.
And with that is your business because this is the money me and Johnny live off of.
So bettering ourselves, our businesses included, and me and Johnny talk all the
damn time about different things we're trying, what's working, what's not working.
You have to be in that mindset and get around people.
Even if it's one other person that's in the same line of business of you
that maybe is getting better results or is working a little bit harder than you.
To kind of see, all right, well, what makes sense?
What is this person doing that I'm not doing?
I think those people, you can't just be this person that's like, well, I did it
this way and I'm never going to change how I do things.
You have to adapt today more than ever.
I don't think your business should look the same season to season.
You should always be doing something different.
So I'm going to mention this as well because some of our listeners are very,
well, they're just that.
They just listen.
They don't contribute.
Here's the issue with that.
And I'll address the not contributing.
There is a legitimate reason not to contribute.
So if you give everything secret sauce at all, it's no longer secret sauce, right?
It's public information.
And I get why you need to protect some of that, but does it mean you shouldn't say anything at all?
There's some stuff, the secret sauce stuff.
Yeah, keep to yourself.
I don't reveal all ever.
There are some things I will never talk about because that I need in my business not to happen.
But everything else I'm pretty open about, even my repricing strategy,
that can always be tweaked or adjusted or if I sit down for a couple hours,
I can build a better mousetrap.
That I don't mind sharing how I'm sourcing to an extent.
I will talk about that.
If you are just closed off, you will never grow.
You can only do so much.
Other people around you help you look at things in different perspective.
A lot of it you will just ignore, but those few things you don't ignore
will drastically increase your business, revenue, profits, and the way you conduct business in general.
So we all need to share information.
And yeah, some things you're not going to share, I get that.
But for those that just listen and aren't around like-minded people,
you're going to grow slower than you want to and you're going to get frustrated.
So you need to come out into the light, contribute a little bit here and there,
not everything, just a little bit, baby steps.
We'll do it in baby steps.
But I think that'll make you and everybody else around you better.
And that's a happy place to be.
I put it all out there just so Johnny can debunk everybody else.
Johnny's the drill sergeant of the group.
He's much more tougher.
I don't even think that's proper English, but whatever.
He's much more tougher than I am with people.
So when I put stuff out there, I just think to myself, well, this is another bullet in
Johnny's little gunslinger, Texas holsters he has, because anytime somebody comes to
him with a reason why they're not getting results, he can be like, well, it's out there.
I tell you exactly how I reprice.
Mike tells you exactly how to list the stuff, how to source the stuff, how to contact the
companies, how to...
It's an endless supply out there.
So when somebody comes along and they just ask this asinine question or have this stupid
excuse, Johnny just, he ain't got time for it because he knows every single answer is
out there.
And I do think when not putting the secret sauce out there, I can put it all out there.
And I know 95% of people, probably higher than that, ain't never going to do it.
I talk about it all the time.
The amount of money I made on doing certain little things different than anybody else,
the only people that do it are people that I guess never comment on the YouTube channel
and should be thanking me for all the money I made them, or people over in the group because
we get crazy results from people doing this part time just by doing things differently.
And those things I talk about openly to do differently, anybody can do it, but nobody
does it.
All right.
I'll give an example of this.
And Mike, this isn't to hurt your feelings, make you feel bad.
But I had told Mike some things that he's then made public information.
And I was like, oh, no, end of the world.
It's not the end of the world.
It is not.
And I used to think like that and keep a lot of things more protected than I do.
But over the years, it doesn't matter.
Because again, I can build a better mousetrap if I put in the effort.
It doesn't matter, guys.
And I don't think anything I put out there or Mike's put out there dams either one of
us.
It doesn't put us out of business.
We could tell every little thing about our business today, exactly how to get to where
we got.
And the majority of people won't even listen after step two.
It's just the reality of it.
I mean, think about it this way, Johnny, look where you're sitting today.
You are sitting in your warehouse where you sit every damn week.
We have this call, we get off this call, you hop on the next weekly call we have, and then
you work, right?
Like I'll be the first person to tell you like Sundays usually are my days off.
So they're not really days off because we record this, we got our weekly call, I got
one on ones, things like that.
But usually in the afternoon, I'm like, all right, I'm just kick back and relax today.
Well, if I want to make a little bit more money, Johnny, then I got to both pick up
today.
And I'm not even lying about this.
Like I first both pick up on a Sunday in probably three years.
You got to want it at the end of the day.
And we talked about it, having a why in your reselling business.
And it doesn't have to be like, you know, you're going to have to have a reason to do
that.
You know, it doesn't always have to be some crazy story, emotional story.
I just want to make a little bit more money so I can just buy a bigger house or just buy
a house in cash.
That's all it comes down to.
I just think the little the little people have to get on board.
And you know, hustle and grow made a video a while back.
And he said, like, you part timers and was like, you part timers are just in the way.
I think he hit it on the head.
Like, it's tough to come out and say that, especially on YouTube, like, because my audience
is a lot of part timers, right.
But is it true?
Probably.
Right.
Like a lot of people don't know that they go buy the Beanie Baby.
And this Beanie Baby is actually worth $300.
And you you go and list it for like 50 bucks.
And like, you got a thousand of these things like you just destroy the market for that.
A lot of it is just, I guess, ignorance of knowledge.
So here's the thing.
I say this a lot, but I don't think people know what I mean.
And I put it in the simplest forms as I can.
Maybe you can do a better spin on this, Mike.
Work harder.
Did I say work longer?
No, I said work harder.
Same amount of hours, but work harder in those hours smartly.
So work smarter and harder in the same time frame.
This is work.
I don't care if you do one hour a week or you do 120 hours a week, those hours are work.
So work harder.
And again, emphasis, I didn't say work longer.
I got a hot take and a lot of people might not like it, but I think it does translate
to your your life.
And I think a lot of people try a lot of different businesses and none of them ever take off,
right.
Every month is a different business idea.
Every month is one month is a hot dog stand.
Next month it's reselling.
Next month it's live selling.
Next month it's this.
It's that.
Unfortunately, those people that can't, you know, it's just not going to magically happen
because you change this business you have, right.
It's going to take you actually taking the business seriously for anything to change.
You can jump to whatever you want every single week.
None of it's ever going to work out for it.
That's just the reality of it.
If you suck at being an entrepreneur, like then you suck at it.
And can you change?
You don't always have to suck, right.
Like you can, you know, understand P&Ls, take a profit and loss.
I mean, it's all out there for free.
Like you can become a better business person so fast nowadays.
You don't got to go to school anymore.
You only need an MBA in business.
You just got to find a few people that, you know, can talk common sense.
And it's the same thing with taxes.
Like people get bent out bent out of shape.
Well, I got to pay taxes and how much money are you really making?
Well, if you understood the tax code or hey, maybe if you don't want to understand the
tax code, you find a really good tax person that loves the tax code and you pay them money
and you save a bunch of money on taxes and that big scary dude, it drives me nuts.
I still hear from time to time people don't want to resell because well, don't you got
to pay taxes on that?
What a limiting belief in life.
Like holy smokes.
So what if you make more money, Uncle Sam takes his little cut, but at the end of the
day, you're still left with more money than you had by not?
Where's the fucking logic?
I think the struggle we have, Johnny, is we're at where we're at, right?
Like we started from nothing.
We built it to where it is today.
We're going to continue to grow these businesses that we have.
And the revolving door of re-selling, it's like, you know, like huge doors and like New
York City hotels and they just keep spinning and you got to walk through.
Like that is what reselling has become because the fad of reselling took off.
And now I think a lot of people, they get in the door and they don't even get out the
other side.
They just walk completely around and then leave right away because I think that is what
we're headed towards.
And I do think, you know, there are benefits to it.
The person that does want to take this seriously and treat it like a business, even part time,
I do think it is beneficial.
We talk about it, you know, we used to say, well, do we ever get to a point where there's
less bozos selling on Amazon?
Right?
Like, and we've come to the conclusion that every time one leaves, there's another one
showing up.
So it's like, we'll never get to that point.
Hopefully one day we won't have to deal with the people selling their stuff for a loss that
we have to compete with.
But honestly, that day may never come.
And if it does, it benefits people like me, you and whoever's listening to this.
It's like, hey, I really want this business to be something.
I really want this to be an extra thousand dollars a month into my bank account, my retirement,
my cruise fund, whatever it may be.
Those people survive.
But the whiny majority crybabies you see on YouTube and social media, and these content
creators that talk about it every single day, that the platform sucks.
It's easy to get around those people and we all can whine together.
We all can have a whine, they resell on wine crews, not the wine you drink.
We all can just sit there and cry about how reselling sucks.
It's going down, but you don't have to be aboard the cruise ship.
Maybe we get in the helicopter that takes off right before the cruise ship hits the
iceberg and everybody's got to get in the light boats.
You got to start thinking ahead of the curve here and just be out in front of everything.
And no, there's still money to be made.
But the majority of people you're going to see and hear talk about reselling, it's the
end of times and rightfully so.
If you're selling trash, you're listing trash, you don't understand your business, you've
got trash business sense, then unfortunately you're going to wind up in the landfill with
all the other resellers.
And I hate to say it, it benefits people like me and Johnny who treat this like an actual
business and understand that at the end of the day, our income is our business, which
is reselling.
So we got to take it seriously because if not, me and Johnny got to move in together
underneath the underpass somewhere in Texas.
I want buck beds if that's happening.
And here's another hot take for you.
If you like the trash or accumulate trash because you're trying to do bulk and you're
doing these buyouts, put it on marketplace and store it in your rock for attorney.
Don't even bother with eBay listings or your Instagram.
I think Instagram is the other one that has a store you could do.
Put it there.
But I think you better off just tossing it and messing with the stuff that's actually
worth money.
But if you are convinced to monetize it and you don't want to build your own website,
you don't want to go to the flea market, you don't want to do an antique booth, fine.
Do Facebook or Instagram.
Be done with it.
One post, move on.
And when it gets to the point where your garage or whatever is full, take that shit to the
dump.
The dump.
Yeah, literally.
And then start again.
You've tried to monetize the trash.
It didn't work.
Didn't sell.
Literally take it to the dump and be done with it or donate it, I guess, making somebody
else's problem.
But again, stop messing with the junk.
Never had a way to monetize the junk.
Sure, I'm all about that.
I have my own brick and mortar store that's all junk, though I just rescanned it and I
pull it out a lot and not junk because it came back in season or popularity, whatever.
I'm talking in Amazon terms.
You guys got to work.
Again, you got to work harder.
And again, I don't mean long hours, but the hard work means smarter, not doing the same
thing over and over again, expecting a different result because that's the definition of insanity.
But work smarter by working harder, but do it smartly.
That's all this game comes down to.
Or else, well, get your applications ready because I hear Starbucks and Uber are about
to have an influx of part timers.
I'm going to be 100% here.
If I had to build the same business I have today on eBay versus Amazon, I don't think
I got it in me.
You tell me right now, Johnny, that you need to go list over 4,000 books, CDs, DVDs at
eBay prices and have an inventory system and do all the stuff eBay requires you to do as
a seller.
I straight up ain't got it in me.
I'd be back in the workforce or I'd figure out another side hustle because that ain't
the life for me.
And those people that enjoy that, I see it all the time.
There are some shining stars out there in the YouTube world when it comes to eBay reselling.
And those people survive because they enjoy it.
They like having all the moving parts, the inventory system.
They're A-okay with making a little bit of money all the time instead of trying to hang
on to this stuff forever and trying to get the most money out of it.
When you said margins are going down, I agree.
We talked about it yesterday.
$5 ain't what it used to be.
When Amazon, okay, 10% cut year after year, cumulative, at what point can you no longer
sell $5 items?
Same with the stamp.
People that are offering free shipping, how long can you sell that item before your shipping
price is more than the actual item?
What happens to those items then?
They go in the trash cans.
What happens to those items?
And this idea that, well, I just want to, even if I sell something at a loss or like
it boosts my eBay store, I get a feedback, right?
Like I ordered, Deb was trying to complete a set of cards that she wanted and like it
gets delivered the same day.
And I got people like bugging me through eBay messages.
Can you leave me feedback?
I'm like, I bought a $1.50 card from you.
Like the feedback is not going to change your life here, but this is the reality.
We think these things that are important, they're not.
I hate to break it to you.
The feedback on the $1.50 card ain't all of a sudden going to change your reselling business.
And that's my biggest gripe with eBay being a shopper.
The pain in the ass.
I hate dealing with sellers.
Selling is really not that bad for me because I don't sell in quantity.
But like if you did, you have to set out time for customer service, right?
You know this.
When you were knee deep in eBay, you got to have literally time blocks for customer service.
I do think part-timers will succeed those that take it seriously.
I think full-timers are going to reap the benefits.
As long as, you know, prefaces, you have to be selling stuff that people want on a platform
where people are shopping.
They go hand in hand.
My media business is a tenth of what it is if I took everything from Amazon and put it
on to eBay.
Like my Amazon business would not translate to eBay in the slightest way, shape, or form.
So not only do you have to go to the platform that makes sense for the category you sell
in, you also have to find items that people want.
You have to sell things that somebody is going to buy.
Nobody cares about your Susan Boyle CDs, your stupid lots you waste way too much time making.
Oh, I'm going to just do lots for duds on eBay.
And then when it's all said and done, you spent two hours and you made $10 and you think
you actually made $10.
Like you got to be out of your mind.
And these are things that I've tried.
We talked about it.
What are things that we have tried that have failed?
I've tried lots.
I've tried disc only.
I've tried multiple things out there.
That sure, maybe if I gave it more time, maybe six months, maybe a year, I could get results.
But in the immediate, I'm not lotting nothing up, dude.
I don't care if I got a hundred Agatha Christie trade paperbacks sitting behind me in one
box.
I am not lining that up.
It is going to the dumpster before I lot it up on eBay.
We can't get over the idea of, well, it's just it's gone.
We already made our money, right?
Like think about this, we do a bulk buy, we scan it, we make our money on the premium
stuff, the cream of the crop.
Why are we chasing pennies to try to wring out every little penny we can from this stuff?
When if I told you, if you just went and bought another lot and left the junk behind, whoa,
all of a sudden you got more premium stuff.
Junk goes away.
You buy another one.
It's out there for everybody.
We sell media, the most saturated thing.
You would agree that there's an endless supply of it out there.
There's one thing we talk about all the time in the group is there's an endless supply
of everything we sell.
If you open your eyes and look past your front door, you could find media for next to nothing.
So why do we waste time listing a $5 book on eBay, a $6 book on a $10 book on eBay?
Why do we wait?
Why do people waste time listing a $10 book on eBay, Johnny?
Because okay, here's a perfect scenario.
I talked about it with Jack numerous times in his video games.
They bought a pile of books.
They have a book in my hand.
Well, I bought it, so I must sell it.
That's the mentality that goes into it.
It's like, okay, I must sell it.
I can't list this as a single item.
So let me try lotting it.
That went okay.
But if I were to not waste, well, invest time, we'll say that instead, instead of waste,
but I've invested time making this lot.
I've sold it, but where are my dollars per hour?
Does it make more sense for me to even create that lot in the first place or just go find
more profitable items to send in?
If you did not guess the latter, you're fucking wrong.
My goal is to have a podcast episode where you don't bring up dollars per hour.
But I do think it is valid.
Okay, half dollars per hour.
How about that?
Half dollars per hour.
If there's good stuff out there to be had, then why do we waste time?
Nothing is free in this.
You go free curb alert, Johnny, my freebie alert app pops up, free box of the books on
the curb.
Well, it's free, Johnny.
Well, did you factor in?
You got to go and drive there and there's gas.
Do you factor in?
You actually got to take time to list the items.
Nothing is free in reselling.
Unless you're like, I mean, nothing's free in life, honestly.
So get this idea out of your head that everything you get, you have to sell and you got to squeeze.
That's the whole holdup, I think, with everybody.
I have it now.
It is mine.
I want to sell it for money.
Stop it.
No, leave it alone.
Make it go away.
Somehow, someway, make it go away.
No, I have standards.
Now, sure, if you're a huge operation, right, if we just translate this to like a warehouse
or you have multiple employees, sure, you can wring out the dollars and the quarters
out of your stuff.
But me as one person, right, I'm not going to waste time to list an item.
I'm going to make $2 on Amazon, $3 on Amazon.
Sure, somebody else's business model out there will get excited about the $2 item.
But for me in my business, that is junk and it's getting out of here, right?
It's gone.
You just hit the nail on the head.
Unless you're a huge volume seller, those $2 to $3, you can make a beautiful business
off $2 profit items if you list hundreds and thousands of them.
Because last I checked, two times 100,000 is $200,000.
Great.
But that does not really translate to the smaller time seller who has limited hours.
Your hours need to be valuable.
See, I said it without saying it.
Your hours need to be valuable.
And how you assess that value usually is in the form of money.
See, I didn't say it.
I said it differently.
It's true, especially when there's always better stuff out there to be found.
It's not like these are the last, I like this bulk buy is the last bulk buy I'm ever going
to do today.
So why am I trying to hang on to the 2,000 CDs I'm going to get today when I know there's
another 2,000 CDs where there's 400 quality CDs I can get out of there?
Get rid of the junk, turn and burn.
I'm going to bring it up.
The person that watches the YouTube video and they buy that Gaylord because they heard
they should buy that Gaylord, they process the Gaylord, they have their little small
table, small table, maybe a TV tray size table of books they can send to Amazon.
Then they have the whole rest of the Gaylord over here and they think, what do I do with
it?
And that's where they forever, well, I'm not going to say forever.
For a period of time, they try to monetize the gigantic leftover Gaylord pool.
They do.
Hey, you're right.
Like I can see it now.
You got your James Patterson pile of books, your Nora Robert pile of books, and then you
got some sci-fi books you're going to try a lot enough, some romance novels you're going
to try a lot enough.
When if I just told you just to wheel it out to the yard and burn it and go buy another
Gaylord, you'd be better off, people can't swallow that pill.
I get it.
I kind of used to be the same way, but I also used to do flea markets.
Me and Deb would drive around the rich neighborhoods, scoop up trash, trash.
But I did flea markets.
So you basically could sell anything for anything at a flea market.
So I would just grab the stuff that looks half decent.
Flea markets are still the quote unquote eBay of today.
You can sell anything there.
It'll sell.
It's the right price.
It'll sell.
It's the current eBay analog form of eBay.
Yes.
But selling online is not like that at all anymore.
You need desirable items at desirable prices and you need to get stuff sent out quickly.
It's just a completely different game.
I do think reselling will see a...
All right.
I guess when I say reselling dying, I think the number of resellers is dying.
I still think the business and profitability is going to continue to rise for people that
take it seriously and continually upgrade their business sense, their business models,
how they operate.
I think the profitability will continue to increase for those that are serious about
reselling.
But I do think the overall number of resellers is going to take a huge downswing just because
it's easier than ever to find a reason to quit.
Like, how many did we just bring up?
My stuff's not selling.
The algorithm hates me.
I can't get the buy a box.
It's so easy to quit today and justify it in your mind with some lame excuse.
But I do think there's tons of money to be made even though reselling's on the decline.
We have an interesting coach in Tech's Group.
He's totally different than everybody else.
He sells only on Facebook Marketplace and he makes over $100,000 a year doing that because
he did it in a very smart way.
He has systems in place.
Everything in Tech's Group, all those methodologies, instead of on eBay, he just applied them to
Facebook and he's making a lot of money doing that.
So those people that take away from the end is nigh off our little podcast here.
It doesn't have to be.
You figure out a way to do it smarter.
He does it part-time too.
But if you want to start building your flea market empire, your Facebook market empire,
your antique mall empire, no better day than today to start that, honestly.
I mean, we're forecasting for you.
That's the whole point of us here because we see the trend of fees going up, stamps
going up, our mailing label going up, cost of goods going up.
But if you're already getting super thin margins, maybe it's time for your pivot.
We mentioned pivoting a lot in our podcast.
Why wait?
Pivot today.
Start today.
Yeah, you're right.
I'm going to wrap it up here.
My last final thought is me like you out there that is the part-time reseller, we should
be much more efficient than this guy, Johnny, sitting next to us here today.
I have the time too.
I have other things going on.
I talked about it yesterday openly.
How much can I scale this to?
I have nothing to hide when it comes to my business.
Can I put in more time?
Sure.
Do I want to put more time?
Depending on what it is, am I going to get my bang for my buck?
First, you have to work smarter and essentially harder in a smaller timeframe than people
like Johnny and the huge players out there in the game.
There is no reason part-timers should be selling items or listing items that have crappy sell
through.
It just does not make sense.
Low dollar items, you are part-time.
Why are we wasting the little bit of time we have on these low dollar tasks, these low
dollar items?
I don't care if it's free.
I want to take more time back from throwing it out and going to find better items.
The majority of part-timers are the ones that are going to go away.
I am here to tell you, me as a part-timer, I don't plan on going away.
I am going to continue to scale my business.
If it means putting in more hours, so be it.
The opportunity is there.
Unfortunately, for the majority of part-timers, I think, and a lot of full-timers too that
are just stuck in their old ways, your days are numbered.
You are committed to a business model or a platform with a business model that goes hand
in hand, sooner or later the bubbles are going to burst on you and there is nothing, no one
else to blame but yourself.
You have to actually be willing to change and see what the future is and know when things
are going bad for others.
It does not mean it is bad for everybody.
We have endless people on here with successful eBay businesses.
If you went on YouTube and searched, is eBay reselling worth it?
90% of videos on the first page will say eBay is dying.
You are not going to make no money.
How is it that we come across all of these unicorns that magically do six figures on
eBay every single year?
That justifies me.
I talked about earlier how I justify Johnny by putting out secret sauce so he can blow
up anybody's excuse.
I have people on that are successful on eBay.
That is like me blowing up any eBay video content creator that says, hey, reselling
is dead on eBay.
I am like, no, it is not.
You want this person's name?
Go message them and tell them that.
You have a whole list of previous guests that are primarily eBay sellers.
Primarily eBay sellers crushing it.
This idea that eBay sucks and you cannot make money?
No.
They sell desirable items.
They operate their business like a real business, not just as hanky panky because reselling
is cool.
Get out of here with that nonsense.
We are going to wrap it up here.
We will talk to you all the way.
Really?
Bonus little segment here.
If you like what you heard here today, please like and subscribe on YouTube or whatever
you do on the podcast platform of your choice to make us more well known because we have
lots of things to say.
We want to tell everybody.
OK, now, Mike, you can do your outro.
I think maybe I have to start paying you to do like a podcast read or like I'll write
up some really cheesy ad and you can do it in like that cheesy ad voice.
You do got like a good ad voice, though.
Like I can see you doing like radio or something.
All right, more off the rails.
We'll talk to you all next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
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