Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up everybody? Welcome into another episode of the Resellers
Mindset Podcast, Mike next to Johnny.
As always today's topic is a fun, but important one when it comes to basically
running your own race.
So what do I mean by that?
I will go first because it's going to be a little bit different for me than it is
Johnny, because believe it or not, we are both running completely different
races in the same space.
So for me, I think about it as the money I make in my business.
Do I compare it to the money Johnny makes?
Do I compare it to the money?
Maybe your favorite reselling YouTuber, maybe, you know, do I want to beat
tech and sports in the race?
Do I want to beat Johnny in the race?
Do I want to beat Mel in the race?
All of these questions may come into your mind at one point in time as a reseller.
And for me, honestly, especially as a YouTuber, because not only am I racing
in the world of reselling, I'm racing in the world of YouTube, right?
I got to get more subscribers and X, Y, and Z, and I got to make more money than
Johnny sitting over here.
And for the longest damn time, I'll be the first to admit I 100% guilty of this
because I have a competitive spirit.
So like, I think to myself, if I'm not doing better than Johnny, I'm losing.
Well, that's completely the wrong mindset to have.
And it took me many, many years, many, many hard conversations.
You can't see her back here.
Deb, my wife, sitting back there, who has her own business, her telling me to just
give it up, you're just wasting energy and mental calories.
So it doesn't make sense.
You'd even compare yourself to other people for me to actually believe
that that is the truth.
And today I look at things in a completely different light than I did say two years
ago, but for me, the big thing were my business and YouTube.
I was always comparing myself to other people.
But at the end of the day, who cares of what Johnny's making, right?
Who cares?
You know, as long as you're making the money you need to make, as long as you're
getting the results you're OK with getting nothing else kind of matter.
I don't know.
What does it look like for you when it comes to like compare comparing
yourself to other resellers or maybe you have something like YouTube where you,
you know, you want to be the biggest local bookstore in your area?
Um, that's very interesting take as far as all booksellers don't care.
So we need to narrow down the scope, in my opinion.
Um, who's doing Amazon?
OK, we've just slashed out.
Primarity majority of all people just do an eBay.
So they're gone out of my equation.
And then who's doing baby bulk?
Because that's what I consider myself.
I don't consider myself the semi truck kind of guy reseller.
So I got to rule those people out.
They're on a different level than I am.
People on the same level as myself doing similar kind of operation.
That's who I have to compare against.
And then are any of them running a storefront?
What are their cost of goods and finding these individuals to be open and talk
about to even know what you're comparing against?
That's a harder task.
So that list is really, really, really, really, really, really short.
That's not to say I don't take the temperature because even you and I compare
numbers from time to time because we're running completely different business models.
And in theory, bulk should outdo cherry picking.
But that's not necessarily the case.
Sometimes you and I were really close one month when we were comparing numbers.
So that means I have to take a stock of what I'm doing and reanalyze.
However, factor in fun variables, because I know you worked harder that month.
You cranked up the capacity that you normally would do.
I didn't. I just did the same status quo because I wasn't really nervous about
Mr. Cherry Picker over there, to be honest.
But we were really close.
Now, should I have kicked it up a notch just to kick Mike's ass?
Maybe. But that's how I analyze it.
But I don't the number one thing to analyze is you year over year and you this month
versus you last year that month, the same month, the month, July to July kind of deal.
Or July comparison to last July's comparison.
Though you're in competition with yourself, in my opinion, you should be doing better
than you were the year before.
And if you're not, if you're analyzing on a month by month basis, why?
What did you do to cause you to do worse or maintain the same?
That's how I look at it.
So I need to know me and I need to track my numbers.
Now, getting the temperature, like I mentioned earlier,
everybody else that's similar to you or in comparison to people you have access to,
that's healthy to do too.
But that's secondary in comparison to you yourself in your business operation,
in my opinion.
The temperature of selling media on Amazon is kind of I just feel like I dictate
the temperature in my own life and kind of those around me because we have the group.
So here's the temperature.
We have the group, right, so you hear things like, you know, sales are down or like sales are up.
Like I just look to what I have going on.
And I'm like, how can you say I mean, we talked about it, you know, back at the beginning of summer,
I had one or two podcasts about summer slowdown.
And like me and you just sit here and laugh about it because we look at our numbers and we're like,
what is slowing down?
Like there's nothing on this this P&L that's slowing down.
So like we dictate our own temperature.
But the problem is if you let these other people start throwing their numbers around and you start buying into it,
because listen, if me and Johnny are both doing the same exact dollar amount sales,
we're both doing ten thousand dollars in sales month.
Do you know all Johnny's overhead expenses?
Do you know Mike's living expenses?
How much money is actually going into their bank accounts at the end of the year?
So even if you do find somebody that's similar, unless you have all of their life details,
I mean, like a full list of all their expenses, everything they have going on,
you're never going to be able to have an equal comparison.
Sure, you can get close to it.
But I mean, we get so caught up because that's all people talk about, Johnny, especially in the Amazon spaces.
How much they're selling their sales, their sales will mean, you know, sales in Amazon world mean absolutely nothing.
People sell hundreds of thousands of dollars and make tens of dollars.
Yes, tens of dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And honestly, like anybody can do that if you just won't, if you got credit, you just buy it up and spend it.
So for me, it was tough getting over this idea that, you know, I'm never I'm never going to be that
I'm never going to be able to push the crazy number Johnny's pushing, right?
Like Johnny one day will be pushing twenty five, thirty grand plus a month.
And I have to accept the fact that in my business, where I currently want to be,
where I see my future, my business, that we're going to be that guy.
And if you can't live with that, then I mean, you're going to you're going to go bolder than I have already.
And you're going to lose your mind because you always think that you always have to be growing.
And you always want to be Johnny, even if he gets a warehouse.
And I don't want employees. I don't want a warehouse.
Johnny wants employees, wants a warehouse. Like, how can I ever compete with that?
There's just no way. And you got to accept that as sometimes you find the equal liberal in life and you just let it be.
You make a bunch of money, you save a bunch of money.
And if it works for you, so I'm glad Johnny wants to have a huge warehouse so I can take credit for it all.
Right. I mean.
Again, you just got to compare yourself and you yourself have to be doing better than you did the day before.
It is a day by day play, I think.
We learn things every day.
We find problems in our own business that we need to self correct.
We find problems in our processes, our methodologies, our sourcing.
And we correct those a day by day basis, a week by week basis, a month and a year to year basis.
And we should always be doing better.
Now, there are things outside of our control that happen that cause us to do less like fees or the mailing, the shipping label going up.
But we usually get a heads up on that.
We usually know what the numbers are on that and we can make adjustments in our own business to, OK, I'm back to the status quo.
Or here's how I'm going to make more money.
If we know the shipping labels go up and you're charging for shipping either on merchant or on eBay, you can adjust your numbers accordingly.
You not doing that will set you back.
And then no wonder you didn't make as much as you did last year because the fees went up on your shipping labels.
Or maybe it's your box purchasing, your shipping supply purchases.
If you buy in bulk, you can save an average of 40 cents a unit.
That adds up, making plays like that make you a more profitable business.
And there's two things you can make money.
You can sell more units, you could raise your ASP or you can cut expenses.
So there's three things, really.
So if you can do those three things every year until it's no longer possible.
You just keep on doing that till it's no longer possible.
And then, OK, what's my business look like?
Does me adding another employee increase the output of what I'm able to do?
Does me buying in bulk increase the output and or higher ASP items I'm able to accumulate to send in?
These are the things we need to really focus on.
This is the key to our business and selling media.
Yeah, I think you hit it on the head.
I'm not sitting here telling people not to like want growth or anything like that.
But I'm here to tell everybody you're going to get to a point where there ain't no more time left for you to grow the business.
So then you got to think next level.
So you just got to figure out what you want.
And it's a lot harder for new people because we've seen it in the group.
We got a lot of new people to join in like.
You compare yourself to like somebody like me or Johnny.
And I think to myself like, no, like and I always have to relate back to the story when I first started that
I was doing one sending one measly box every two weeks, which is like 35, 40 books.
Like this wasn't what I'm doing.
You know what I'm listening today and yesterday.
My business is completely different when I started.
But nowadays, when people start, they just want to I want to be like this person.
I want to have this much of sales.
And I always try to explain people like Amazon.
Six months is like the beginner entry level.
After you get past six months, then you're kind of in the intermediate level.
And six months is a long time for people to kind of commit to as, quote unquote, a beginner in my eyes.
But that's the reality of it.
And yes, sure.
Strive for goals, set goals for yourself.
Sure.
I want to sell as much as X, Y and Z, but have a plan to get there and realize there might come a point in time where you're just capped out.
And it's OK if you're making the money and you're getting the results.
Sure. If I was doing this, you know, my my three days a week and I wasn't getting the results and I need to spend more time or I need to find something else to do.
Right. You can't you don't just keep dragging it along.
But if you get to that equilibrium, kind of like where I've fallen into where spending less time and my money still going up, that's perfectly fine.
I don't need to go jump to get a warehouse.
I don't need to think about all of a sudden.
I want to hire an employee.
I just think to myself, OK, well, how about that?
How can I spend maybe a little bit more time and keep the 10 X money coming back in because I still have time to commit if I wanted to?
It's it's a tough balancing act.
And so many new people, man, you just fall into this trap of like, I want to be like tech and sports and sell all these clothes and be the number one clothing.
So and I'm like, we the plane hasn't even got to the runway yet.
Like they haven't even guessed up the plane for you to take off.
So a bunch of friends and I have been discussing we're calling business acquaintances, I don't know for friends or not.
And like, are you business acquaintance or a friend?
Who knows? Anyway, to my point, though, the there is an argument for low cost, no cost versus
paying up on something you really don't want to pay up on, let's say it will call it a reprise or we'll call it buying bulk shipping supplies or we'll call it buying the annual subscription to save you money.
Money and time are our biggest detriments in business, I'm going to call it.
And sometimes we focus on I don't want to spend money right now.
But other times it makes sense if you're tripping over books in your home and you're walking sideways, how much time have you lost restacking those stacks of books or DVDs or CDs or video games versus, okay, it's just time to upgrade the facility I work in.
Because tripping over things constantly rearranging piles, that's an issue.
It may not even cost money may cost you shelving.
Let's get some shelving to solve the problem.
And then once you run it, once you do that problem occurs again with shelving, maybe then it's time to upgrade your space.
If you think along those lines, how can I save time?
Maybe it is me spending more money to work on making more money in my business with those minutes I've gotten back and that compounded hours that compounded days.
Things like that we need to really be focusing on even on a smaller level.
Are our high level calls recorded or no, because I want to out somebody if they aren't.
Like our next level calls.
Yeah, the next level calls.
Yeah, they're recorded and on YouTube world.
Okay, so I'm going to add him.
Mr. Rob has found a way to work about 20 hours, maybe 25 hours a week, and make some big numbers 10 plus 10,000 a month for those that can't do math, that's 20,000 on 2025 hours a month.
That is utilizing his time more effectively.
I took a look at that.
I heard that he is working way less than me and making more money than me.
Then that caused me, okay, I need to relook at my business.
What did he do?
And he said what he did, he changed his sourcing.
Something as simple as that working the same amount of hours to make significantly more money.
And he told us his numbers he was making before that as well.
Things like that can fundamentally change your business.
Or they can break your heart because I'm a very listen, I talk about my results and me doing over 12,000.
I'm basically a carbon copy of Rob just in a different area with a different sourcing strategy.
And when he dropped the fact that he did 20K in a month, I almost fell out my chair.
I said, hold on here buddy.
You two worked the same amount of hours.
The first question I had is what the hell are you doing because I need to get in on the secret sauce.
But it is crazy to think, right?
We're talking about somebody who's working part-time hours doing $20,000 in sales on Amazon selling media,
one of the most oversaturated junkie categories out there.
I mean, you're right.
It was, I opened it for me too.
And I'm sure it was for you because I know you ain't pushing that number yet and you're working double what we are.
So, I mean, it's crazy.
I mean, so I compare myself to Rob still kind of sort of like I hope for one day to be there,
but like I'm happy for him.
I'm not like, oh man, I got to go with do exactly what Rob's doing.
Sure.
You don't need to know exactly what Rob's doing.
It could be something upping your sourcing general doesn't have to come from his exact kind of sourcing places.
So you are two in the similar lane.
You're working the same amount of hours.
You're both working the same amount of hours.
You're both cherry picking.
He just changed his sourcing for you.
It may be doing something like, okay, I'm using these libraries.
If I can trade up in a more profitable library area or I know you're you've pretty much maximized your thrifting bubble.
So I don't think it's in the thrifting route.
It would have to be something along the libraries or state sales or get into private collections that you find on Facebook and Craigslist.
I think we the next place for you and then you can compare.
Okay, I've maximized the sourcing my area.
I'm still doing three thousand less than Mr. Rob.
I've done everything I can.
However, how do I get up to Rob's level?
Here's how I would go with it.
Okay, what expenses can I cut?
Is it like a example I used earlier was buying bulk shipping supplies to save myself 30 percent for the year because I want to buy these shipping supplies throughout the entire year.
Okay, I've now saved three thousand.
I can now add that into my total.
Now I'm up to Rob's level.
I just went about it a different way.
But I'm still on the same plane or maybe you kick his ass.
You're able to save six K.
Now I'm three grand above Rob.
So things like that you can go along the route they went or figure out things that get you to the same end result that aren't on that same exact pathway.
So cutting expenses again was one of the methods I mentioned to raise your all overall annual thing for the year.
Everybody should be figuring out how can I cut expenses on the low cost?
No cost kind of mentality.
How can I get my time back, which I then reutilize to make more profitable money either changing your sources, adding sources is another thing.
So maybe you maybe you just work one extra hour more if that's what it takes.
If you have this goal in mind that one extra hour a week times 52 weeks.
So that's like getting yourself two and a half three weeks back of extra work and that puts you above Rob or on par with Rob just doing things like that.
There's all kinds of ways to do it, folks.
All kinds of way.
There's no blueprint methodology.
This is how you do it.
No, this is how Rob did it.
This is how Mike did it.
This is how Johnny did it.
Take a little from this and that maxing out the best of your ability.
And then, okay, I'm capped.
Why am I capped?
What can I do to make myself uncapped?
That's all you have to do.
You don't have to increase the hours or maybe you do or maybe you don't.
You just got to figure it out.
I printed a photo of Rob.
Every time I go out to source, I throw a dart right on his head.
Boom, boom, boom.
That Rob's a good guy.
I mean, he's been in the group for well over a year, probably over two years now.
So I'm glad when people are doing a lot better than me because I know the money I make today.
I'm comfortable making, right?
But still, I want more money, dude.
Like Mr. Krabs, like it needs to be raining dollar bills on me.
I want to be selling Krabby Patties all the time.
So like I think to myself, I see it as potential.
When someone hits me with something crazy like that, I'm like, wait a minute.
Like this unicorns exist.
Like I just seen a leprechaun.
Oh, he's right outside right now.
He's actually and he's got a pot of gold and it's right outside.
He's got a pot of gold and it's real gold.
It's not the chocolate candy gold.
So like it's just proof of concept.
I guess when you hear some of these people and you know, like their numbers and they're
open about it, but I never get to a point where I got to go one for one with Rob.
Like he's on my hit list now.
I'm like, okay, well, what can I do to keep growing?
I'm going to keep growth going, growing and get my time back.
I don't want to be doing this 40, 50 hours a week and kind of just go from there.
And even if we make the comparison to like me to Rob, right?
Like kind of you said, I have other streams of income that Rob doesn't have, right?
Rob doesn't do YouTube that I know of.
He doesn't do the influencer program.
So there's a lot of other things you have to take into consideration when it comes to
what you want, what you have going on when it comes to business opportunities and direct
comparisons at the end of the day.
They will they're good for about a day and then after a day, you're it's just going to
you're just going to eat yourself up about it and you're never going to get to the point
where you're happy because guess what?
If I do beat Rob, there's going to be somebody else that's a little bit bigger than Rob.
And all of a sudden I'm going for Rob senior and then after Rob senior, there's Rob senior
senior.
Like there's there's only somebody else you can compare yourself to.
Like it's a never ending trap.
Well, here's the thing.
Rob's the only one I know working that kind of hours pushing that kind of money.
And it's like, who does he talk to?
How does he compare himself at Rob's level?
How do I do how do I go from 20 to 30 working 25 hours a week?
He's got to figure that out himself.
There's nobody that I'm aware of that he has access to compare himself.
It's like, where do you go from here?
You got to do the hard part.
And those people that are at that stage have to do the work themselves to figure out how
they can maximize another five thousand a month or two thousand or ten thousand extra
a month.
They have to try and experiment things.
And some of those tries and experiments may not work.
It may set them back.
I mean, two or three thousand dollar investment may be a negative because of whatever reason.
But going back to more simplistic or not simplistic, just a different way to do it.
Like how you ignored kids books and cassettes for the longest time, but you've now added
into your business.
And I'm going to assume that's increased your business revenue overall.
So simple things like that.
Like what have you been ignoring or we'd ever put the research into to really have a direct
answer to make our business better.
I got CDs and DVDs behind me.
I'm a book guy.
Right.
Why the hell do I have these things?
Well, I know they complement my business and add extra revenue to my business.
And I run a business.
I don't run books for books sake.
I like money.
And then Johnny, why don't you do video games?
Well, there's applications that come with that.
Or why don't you do furniture?
Why don't you do this, that and the other?
I mean, I got to do what's right for me and comfortable for me right now.
CDs, DVDs and a little bit of cassettes and books is comfortable for me.
May I add these additional things on later?
Maybe or maybe I don't.
Mr. Krabs and SpongeBob, he sold Krabby Patties and then once upon a time he started selling
Krusty Krab pizza.
Right.
So like sometimes you got to switch it up and add different things to the menu, but
you can't get crazy with it.
And you know, I do agree that cassettes and even sourcing methods, you kind of already
hit it on the head.
I've been sourcing at better locations.
We talk about them in the group all the time, like places I never would even think about
stepping into two or three years ago.
You know, like record shops.
You know, that's one nobody even thinks about.
Like they got the best quality stuff, even if you got to pay up a little bit for it.
They have thousands and thousands of things besides records.
So imagine, imagine that.
I'm going to hit a little bit on the because we live in such a social media centric driven
world, YouTube world.
I know you're not big into social media, but you've kind of been in marketing roles in
your past lifetime.
So I think a lot of people get caught up with how many followers they have, how many subscribers
they have, how many likes a video gets, especially in the reselling world.
And I think that's a main driving force because people start reselling on YouTube and they
think, well, I'm going to make a whole bunch of money off it.
And a lot of people are going to watch my videos and I'm living proof that that is not
the case.
I mean, we're talking, I don't even know how long I've been doing YouTube, probably over
four years, thousands of videos.
And like, I don't make any decent money where I could just stop, you know, my reselling
business and live off the YouTube money.
So I can understand the struggle.
And when you see maybe your, your favorite reseller isn't posted as much or they stopped
posting altogether, that's the reason why, because they're probably comparing themselves
to somebody else.
The bank account isn't going up because you spent all this time doing YouTube videos and
you really don't make no money on the back end from it.
So it's tough to be like, all right, I don't care how many subscribers tech has.
He just started his YouTube channel.
I'm going to do a direct one right now.
Tech is for us.
You just did his YouTube channel.
I think at the beginning of the year.
Yeah.
It's got like 10 times the amount of subscribers I do.
Right.
And it enables him to more subscribers than somebody like me who's been doing it for five
years.
Well, he built an audience outside of YouTube before he started and just making the comparison
just doesn't make sense because somebody falls into the category of reselling.
Like I understand that my niche reselling media on Amazon, it's only so big, Johnny.
There's not a, there's not 10 million people out there.
You know, like I'm never going to be able to do like this squid games like Mr. Beast
of like Amazon FBA sellers.
There's not enough people out there.
So you accept the fact that, okay, this is my niche.
I'm only going to be able to grow this maybe one day.
If I'm lucky, I'll have like 50,000 subscribers.
Right.
So like sooner or later, it caps out.
Right.
I can't, I don't have this endless infinite money mindset when it comes to YouTube and
you got, you got to just be fine with that.
And I think there are ways, even though you're not the biggest channel, right.
We have the membership, you know, you helped me along the way with that.
And that, that puts a little bit of extra money in your pocket, but there's other ways
to think outside the box to stop comparing yourself and grow your results.
Well, and I don't want to, to our young YouTubers that are growing their own channels, I don't
want to dishearten them for, oh man versus both.
It's going to take years.
Now there are some of the benefits of it.
Like you're been able to network and I assume come across deals that you would normally
not have had access to by not doing YouTube.
Plus you got to meet starling individuals like myself over here, there is that.
Oh man, dude, email the trade off.
The trade off.
If I had to go back and choose, I don't know, man.
I like, I don't, I don't want to throw you out to the wolves here, but like if I had
to go back and choose at the infliction point and I knew what the progress would look like,
if they said here, Mike, here's what it's going to be in 10 years.
Here's all the time you're going to work.
But then here's the good that's going to come out of it.
It's tough, man.
It's a tough choice.
I'm going to be straight up with you.
Like I know I've helped a lot of people.
I've built amazing friendships.
The podcast itself has helped a lot of people, but the time that it takes, the effort that
it takes, it is a million times harder to be a social media influencer, guru, YouTuber
than it is doing this business.
It's not even close.
It's night and day.
The amount of time you could spend on this and get no results versus, I mean, think about
we're going to be on our hundredth episode, right?
We should be rich and famous by now, dude.
It's crazy to me, but consistency.
So even if I have the shittiest business, the shittiest YouTube channel, if I'm consistent
with sending inventory in, consistent with uploading videos, you will see growth.
It might not be the crazy viral growth you expect, but if you're consistent, no matter
what you do, you will get results.
Even if you're not the best at it, even if you suck at what you do, even if I suck at
video editing, like I said, edit my own videos, they were terrible, but it was the consistency
of always uploading, the consistency of always sending boxes to Amazon.
It's the only way I ever got to 4,500 items in inventory was the crappy little boxes I
sent along the way.
It wasn't one week where I just sent 4,000 items.
It was consistent growth across the way.
All right, absolutely.
Now that's why I was so happy when you said I could just show up to these things and not
have to do any of the work.
I was like, I want to help people, but I don't want to get involved with the constant Q&A.
And you're like, no, I'll do that.
I'm like, okay, good.
And then I'll just show up.
Because otherwise I don't think there would have been a podcast here.
Too much.
It's too much.
And I realized that.
And then you jokingly, somewhat seriously, sometimes, Johnny, why don't you start your
own YouTube?
Hell no.
That's a A, that's a grind.
B, I have no desire to do that.
I like helping people, but I have no desire to make a whole YouTube thing verse to do
that with.
And the extra work that would deviate me from my core business, which is reselling, I'm
not a fan of that.
So this was a healthy compromise where I do get to help people from time to time do these
podcasts because this is a good outlet for me to talk about reselling outside of a grouped
kind of session.
And I think this is the best thing I could do.
May I do something social media on down the road?
Maybe probably not.
And I'll probably hire somebody to puppet me and pretend to be me and all that.
That's probably the best thing I will do along those lines if I even do that.
But now it's a lot of work doing what Mike does over here.
Think about all the emails, all the private messages he gets across many platforms, not
just one, because Mike is out there on multitude of social medias.
You got to be.
Discord.
Yeah, you got to be.
And then there's these calls that he's got to do.
It adds up.
So he could pump those same hours into his reselling business, but I think he's satisfied
with the amount of money he's making and being able to help people is why Kase Do It.
And I just throw it out the door, throw it in the trash can rather like I'm done with
it.
No more.
May that change in 10 years, 15 years?
Who knows?
Yeah, that's what it comes down to is what are you comfortable with today?
It doesn't matter what I'm comfortable with.
It doesn't matter what Johnny's comfortable with.
Doesn't matter how many items I'm sending this week.
It doesn't matter how many items are you sending this week?
What are your goals?
What are your, you know, where do you want to get to when it comes to your business?
And when you get there, what is the next step?
Do you maintain or do you continue growing?
A lot of people in the reselling world, they always got to be growing.
I got to list five a day.
I got to list 10 a day, 15, 20, 20.
It's like it never, you never ever really reached the end of the road because you're
always moving the goalposts.
It's like, relax.
It's perfectly fine to maintain where you're at.
If you're making the money you want to make, you don't have to continually.
And a lot of these people, unfortunately, chasing these numbers, you can just run yourself
straight into the ground and what happens?
Not only do you not hit your next goal, you start to go backwards and that's the big trap
resellers fall into.
You always want to be growing.
You always want to be making more money.
But at a point, I think of myself, if I was miserable doing this, I'm also just go get
a job, right?
Where they're going to get full benefits, retirement benefits, and I can just show up
five days a week, be a zombie.
And then when I'm not there, I don't have to worry about it.
The whole point of doing this is to have financial freedom and personal freedom.
That's all it comes down to.
And if you don't got either of those right now, then they need to be on your little goal
planner here of how you're going to get closer to one or the other of them pretty soon.
Yeah.
I mean, even me, I've been reanalyzing now that I'm in Amazon.
Maybe I don't have to work seven days a week, but that's a hard thing to ask me when I had
to work seven days a week.
I don't know.
I think I can have some more flexibility than I do.
But I also realize I'm not at the point where I want to take a day off or two days off a
week with my Amazon business because I am wanting to grow right now.
But once I have employees and or a bigger space, I may dial it back on my own personal
hours I pump in, or maybe I work from home instead of the warehouse on those couple of
days and just do some light work.
But I'm at home, right?
In my own quote unquote.
Well, not a quote, just a fact.
Home environment, right?
Versus the warehouse environment.
When I compare myself, like when Johnny just says he works seven days a week, first thing
that comes to my mind, it ain't that I got to go work seven days a week, it's that he's
a crazy SOB.
And I'll tell you right now, you're not going to be able to get this guy day off.
Like I got a full teeth just to have, so we have one podcast recording weekend off because
it just goes, goes, goes.
So when you hear people like Johnny come along and like, oh, this guy's working seven days
a week, like how can I work five, six, seven days a week?
I think the opposite.
I'm like, Johnny, I'm trying to work one day a week, dude.
You're nuts.
Like you're off the rock.
And it's not even just with Johnny.
It's like when I hear these people doing these crazy things and working these crazy and driving
it, driving across, you know, country and source and stuff.
I'm just like, you're crazy.
More power to you.
I hope it works out.
But like, I'm, I'm working in the opposite direction.
I just, you know, want the books to magically grow wings to all the profitable books float
up to my third story window.
I got a little net, just catch the net and listen, I want it to be as painless and as
a little bit of time as possible.
And I mean, it is what it is.
I want to work less and make more.
And I might sound greedy.
I might sound like shallow, like, oh, resellers, you got to be in your business all the time.
Well, the whole reason I got to where I am is because I didn't have that mentality from
the beginning and call it, I don't even know what you would call it, like greedy, short
sighted.
The fact that I don't know what would you call it?
The fact that I didn't want to work as much, but I wanted to make more money.
Like there's, there's some kind of negative adjective that goes with that.
And I was like, what the hell with it?
That's what I want to be.
That's who I want to be.
Nobody else out there saying they want to work less and make more money.
Well, I want to be that guy.
Complacently lazy, maybe.
There you go.
100%.
You know, I don't want to be out in the stores five days a week.
I figured, well, it's possible, right?
Because there's businesses, business models out there that do it not in the context of
like thrifting, but like, you know, online arbitrage, virtual assistants, things you're
kind of talking about.
There's ways you can do it in that business model.
So I talked to myself, well, there's got to be a way we can do it over here in the thrifting
life because I'm not sitting at the Google bins.
I'm not sitting at the stores all day long.
And you kind of develop your plan and build it out.
And not everything's going to be successful.
I made plenty of missteps along the way and I'm still always refining things, but I don't
compare myself to no one.
I'd like to when you're doing things nobody else is doing and you're getting results,
like that's like the secret sauce.
I was talking about like, you're not going to find another one of me.
You're not going to find another one of Johnny.
We're not going to find another one of you out there wherever you are right now in your
business.
So capitalize on your strengths and what you want from the business and build around it.
If you don't want to work all day, don't have to don't say I'm going to have this business
plan of where I'm going to be working all day.
Like that just doesn't make sense.
Like be real with yourself.
Like what do you want out of it?
Right.
And a person like myself who wants gigantic warehouse, wants giant staff and all of that,
those fun things and then multitude of businesses even outside of that.
My exit plan or the growing plan is to plug somebody in who moves boxes from point A to
point B, packages the boxes.
And my personal workload will become less and less and less over time.
And or the workload I actually do is me just click on a keyboard all day, maybe listen
to some tunes while I do it.
So the grind becomes less of a grind and it's just more money making tasks.
And even how many of those money making tasks do I need to do a year and a week in a day?
I think that even becomes less and less and less over time with the direction I'm wanting
to go.
For a person like Mike, maybe he just has loads come to him and his whole thrift route
is gone.
He no longer has these horrible.
Well I know he thinks I'm horrible, horrible drive times.
One hour.
Oh my God.
I drive six hours one way, dude.
You're a loser.
I'm like, yeah, sure.
Whatever.
Yeah.
And it just comes to him and he processes somewhere or he has his minion process for
him and he just oversees.
So improving your quality of work life, I think comes with time and building your business.
And to Mike's point of constantly grow, why don't you do like two years of growing one
year of maintaining?
Unless they're maintaining, you're not beating the inflation rate, but you'll figure out
ways to beat the inflation rate.
I promise you even that one year maintain.
So you take two years.
Okay.
We upgraded to warehouse.
Great.
We're maintaining this for one year.
Next year comes along.
Now we're plugging in staff into the warehouse.
Do that for two years and then one year maintain.
And then the next year, okay, we're good on staff.
The space is perfect.
Let's upgrade equipment and tools for everybody.
Get all the redundancies in place.
Have backup computers.
So you do that for two years.
And then the next year, I don't need anything else.
Maybe it's time for me to get a manager and then I just remove myself from the equation
and collect a check and maybe attend a once a month meeting with said manager to make
sure everything's above board or hey, the numbers are down.
Why the hell are the numbers down manager?
Explain this to me or I'm going to get a new manager.
All right.
I'm going to wrap it up here.
We are going to do a members part of this podcast, Johnny.
So buckle up here.
Once I wrap this up.
It's been a while.
Yes, it has been, but I got a lot to say on this and I like being more direct with people,
I guess.
But to wrap this up, this podcast episode up, I'm running, me and Johnny, we're athletes.
We're track stars.
I'm running the 50 yard dash.
Johnny's running the 5k.
You put me on Johnny's track.
I got no chance, right?
I hit the 50 yards and I'm done.
I can't run no more.
Johnny's just coasting along, you know, doing his little steady jog here.
That is the equivalent of what we're talking about today.
Your business is your business.
You don't have to worry about what other people are doing.
If you get results and if you're not getting results, how can you get the results you want
to get?
If you get there, is it okay to maintain?
We have a lot of people over in the group that are just like, hey, I want to make my
goals and make $500 a month.
Well, then they get there and all of a sudden I want to make $2,000 a month.
There's lots of changes that have to come into place for you to get to that next number.
So just have that in mind.
It's okay to compare yourself to an extent, but don't let it eat you up.
Don't let somebody else control your business because that's basically what you're doing.
If I compare myself to Johnny's business, then I'm letting him dictate whatever his
number is, dictates what my number has to be.
And it should not be like that at all.
So we'll talk to you all in next week's episode.