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 back to another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny.
Johnny, are resellers all talk?
You're just going to take us away on this.
All of them? No, not all of them.
OK, give me a percentage.
The vast majority of them I would say yes.
Like what? Like I would say it's different for me.
Right. But I mean, you do you're kind of in the spotlight now.
A lot of people reach out to you and say, hey, I want to do this.
I want to do that.
I think if I had a pin a percentage on resellers that are all talk and people
that actually take action, this might sound crazy.
Maybe your number is not as ridiculous as mine.
But I'm thinking it's 90 percent of people are all talk in the reselling space.
That would have been the bottom of my range.
I would have said 90 to 95 percent, honestly,
because I'm in a multitude of groups and I see the people taking action.
And I see. Other people listening to action and doing nothing.
And then I got to account for, OK, at least these jokers are in a group.
So they took some initiative.
But based off that and what I see and hear
and you're more in the Instagram YouTube spotlight,
so it's probably even worse in your vision view of the playing field in mind.
But at least in the groups, I could say a lot of them.
Don't take action or listen to action, but do nothing.
It's easy because it's easier, Johnny, right?
Like, think about it.
It's not like, you know, we have our weekly calls and YouTube membership.
And it's not like we all get together every week, like in person.
We're just sitting here so I can tell Johnny, hey, I'm going to go do this.
I'm going to go do that.
Like, but Johnny never knows if I actually go do it.
And it's easy to like create these huge dreams and reselling and just like,
I'm going to do everything under the sun.
But in reality, like nothing.
And you're right, because it's social media.
You want to seem I still think resellings become more of like a cool club than it
is an actual people that want to build actual businesses.
I think it's more like, oh, I'm a reseller.
Yeah, cool.
Like, come do our secret reselling handshake and we go back and we make zero dollars.
I think that's the trend that it's kind of has been for the past probably two or
three years, it's reselling more more of like a trend than it is like people
treating it as a business.
So, of course, you're always going to have people just dreaming things up.
And it's good to dream and resell.
And it's good to have these lofty goals.
But I'll tell you right now, I didn't get to where I'm at by just saying I'm going
to go, you know, I'm going to go do things and then not do them.
Or like, I mean, you were talking about it before the call.
You have all these applications that pop up like we you're committed to these
things as a business, as a reselling business, you're committed.
But there's somebody else that maybe gets that same phone call in the morning that,
hey, I need you to come take care of this.
They will be like, well, nah, sorry, can't do it.
Yeah, and I'm going to take it back to even a more fundamental level outside
of reselling. People don't like to appear lesser than lesser than they are.
So they embellish and outright lie about their status in life.
And again, that goes beyond reselling.
That's just a general population of people don't like looking lesser than
because it's kind of like going to, I guess, a high school reunion.
What have you been up to the last 10 years?
Well, huh, huh, huh, huh.
I'm a doctor and I teach how to be a doctor at doctor school.
What have you been doing?
I'm a janitor.
No, I run the custodian establishment across the state of Mississippi.
That sounds better, right?
So outright lie outside of custodianship.
But it's like that in reselling.
People don't like to appear lesser than.
I'm almost the complete opposite of that because it's the main feedback I get
from people that like, oh, oh, pay their two ninety nine, right?
They risk their three dollars on me.
And they're like, hey, you know, like you seem like you're really down to earth,
straight shooter person.
So like almost the opposite of what you just said has gotten us of this podcast.
The point we're at today, because I accept the fact I say it all the time.
There's plenty of people in the group that do a whole lot more business than me.
And I'm OK with it.
I'm happy for other people to win.
And you have to just be listen to I was raised in the ghetto of Philly,
like one of the worst neighborhoods in the country, Kensington.
Go look up KNA on YouTube if you don't believe me.
I literally it's bad.
I caught the train at KNA to go to high school and middle school every single day
of my life, it wasn't as bad back then, but like I got nothing to prove to nobody.
I just need my own success.
And I never set out to be like the biggest, craziest bookseller out there.
I just wanted to make a comfortable living for myself.
And I'm I'm all on board with being who I am.
I could care less what other people think about me and people got a problem with it.
Then so be it, because most of the people that do have problems with it.
They're living lives that you know, it's one of those things, right,
where somebody is making a million dollars under like a trillion dollars in debt
versus somebody like me who does, you know, 100K a year, has no debt,
can live comfortably, invest in retirement.
Like you really don't know people's full picture.
But on the Internet, dude, we can be anybody.
Like I can be Michael Myers standing behind me at the hedge if I want to for Halloween.
Oh, there he is.
It's crazy to me how easy we can spin things up and create almost personas
that like aren't true, right.
It's not like you're you. I don't know.
It's nuts.
And.
For me, I would respect you more like, hey, I'm only making 30 grand
in sales, but at least you're honest.
It's not like you're saying I'm making three hundred thousand dollars in sales
or going with just your sales number.
I'm clearing thirty thousand dollars.
Great. Good for you.
Are you wanting to do more than that?
Yes or no.
If they say no, I'm like, cool.
Good for you. You've met whatever.
You've met your monetary goal.
I'm proud of you. And you're honest about it.
Great.
Versus the person who, I don't know,
embellishes better trying to be better than they are or that fear of judgment
from me or anybody else listening, maybe that's a bigger part of it.
Fear of being judged.
I don't think people realize no one really cares and except.
I'm going to take that back.
People want to.
They don't want to be judged, but they also want to appear successful.
And maybe they convince themselves and lie to themselves a little bit.
And.
But they're in this trap of they're wanting to be over here.
They're lie to persona, but they're over here with no aspirations to get over here.
Now, if you're wanting help and you're in this group or any other group
and you don't tell people that you're over here, we can't help you because we think
you're over here because you said you're over here.
You don't need any help or advice.
You obviously want advice because you joined a group.
Right.
So why not get the help you need by being honest?
I will say this, since we kind of been
talking about people that don't take action, the 90 to 95 percent people that do
take action in this business get results, and I'm not just saying that to, like,
you know, sugarcoat anything, but we've seen it in the group all walks of life.
It doesn't matter how old, how young, how small, how tall.
Get results when you actually sit down,
stick to a plan and understand how the business works.
It's crazy to me.
We have such a huge divide, right?
If we just think about life in general,
there's always like, I got to be on this side or that side.
And I do think it exists in resale now where you got the resellers that make money
and you got the people that don't make money and the people that are making money
are a lot less than the people that don't make money.
And unfortunately, a lot of the people that because there's more of them,
it's more noise, right, because there's more people that don't make money.
It's easier to find somebody else who's not getting results.
It's easier to find the negative answer to your question that you're looking for
versus the people that are like, hey, let's do this.
Like, let's ramp it up.
You know, things are going, things are happening.
And it just kind of it gets people stuck in a rut.
So the ones that don't take action,
it's easier to find the reason not to take action than it is to find,
you know, somebody that's going to be like, hey,
we'll just go do this consistently for a month and see what happens.
And they're easy to spot.
And you've probably picked up on this just in this group,
but I've seen it across all groups, the people that are on edge or very
combative or resistant or take in the information given and want
to fight or resist badly and tell you that won't work without even attempting by
those people who are successful telling you it will work, just go do it.
Those are usually people not making very much money.
I agree.
And earlier on, I was resistant to a lot of information.
I was that way and combative.
But once I said, you know what, this person makes more money than me.
I should probably just do what they say.
I started to be more successful.
I think I think the blueprint is there, right?
Whether it's selling media on Amazon, I truly believe.
That if you wanted to start selling
media today, you can make a thousand dollars at least a month within six months.
And that's just following the steps that we have kind of established.
I think it exists on eBay as well when it comes to how tech approaches eBay,
tech and sports, for those who don't know who he is.
We have him on a podcast.
Some people kind of get rubbed the wrong way by him because you need to take action
if you want to kind of get results.
And that's what his big thing is.
You actually got to put in the work.
You got to understand how things work.
The blueprint is there for everybody to be successful.
It's not just because a platform doesn't like you.
It's not because they flip to switch off or this or that.
If you're consistent within anything you do over time, you're going to get results.
I hate to break it to you.
If you want to, if you don't want to get results, then don't do it consistently.
Look at the podcast.
When we first started this, we had zero viewers, zero listeners.
And now, sure, we're not the biggest podcast in the world, but we've grown.
A huge percentage here over the past over 100 weeks we've been doing this.
And it's just because every week we show up, Johnny.
Wow, what a miracle.
We don't we could talk about nothing.
We could talk about rainbows and butterflies.
But if we did it every single week, every single week, we'd have rainbow
and butterfly people in the chat watching, listening to the podcast
because you're consistent with something like butterflies.
Anyway.
Where was it going?
You distracted me with your rainbows and butterflies in the sky.
I can go twice as high.
I hope we don't get copyright infringement.
But that'll be next week's call rainbows and butterflies.
And you give them more burden to come on.
How cool would that be?
I'm just saying, Barb, we'll have you on.
I promise you'll never watch this, but we'll have you on.
So like now that you're more of a prominent figure, you exist in these
groups where people can reach out to you.
I don't need like direct examples, but I mean, I guess I'll go first.
Some examples like I run into or somebody to say, hey, Mike, I want to hit X, Y, Z
targets I want to do.
I want to make usually some monetary figure, right?
Because resellings about money.
People want to make a thousand dollars.
I'll make two thousand dollars.
And I can lay out a blueprint of, OK, well, you got to send X amount of units
every single week and every category you sell in.
Do you get frustrated when you give people advice and then you, a, never
hear from them again or B, you see them like chatting in the general like.
So they direct message you, right?
And I'm like, yo, Johnny, I want to make a thousand dollars this month.
And you give them the advice.
They don't take it.
But then you see them in like the general chat being like, hey, how can I make a
thousand dollars a month like the next month?
I used to.
Now I just don't give a flying insert.
Explicitive here.
It's hard not to be bothered by that, even slightly still on a subconscious level.
It does bother me, I guess.
So I, but I just try to ignore it these days.
And I also don't respond as much as I used to, because unless you're proactive,
like I'm seeing you on the calls, you're asking good questions.
I'm just well, sorry, Mike, I don't respond to everybody from your
group that messages me.
I just don't because I know I'm not a good person.
I just don't because I know it'll waste my time.
They aren't going to take my advice.
Now, if they, if they change their tune, I have seen a couple very rare, but it
does happen.
I've seen people take a 360 and change the way they do things and they're
willing, like I, like I was resistant.
I said, and then I like, okay, no more resisting.
When I see that, that's when I'll start corresponding with them.
And like, look, this question you asked me six months ago, here's how to do it.
Blah, blah, blah.
Here's the outline.
Just go do that.
Um, and usually at that point, yeah, they'll go do that point.
They'll be a little bit more successful than where they work.
Um, it's hard when you're in a group, we, everybody wants to help each other, but
now everybody wants to listen and everybody wants to give their two cents.
And some people's two cents, I don't necessarily agree with.
And I'll even say that, but I'm a little bit more Kurt than most people.
Like, I don't agree with what you just said.
And if it works for you, great.
And everybody's free to run their business how they see fit.
Yep.
Um, it's, it's tough, man, because I agree.
And it's a little bit, I have to respond, right?
Like, you don't have to respond.
I'm not paying Johnny to respond to your messages.
Never would I, there's no monetary value.
I could even pay him for, uh, him to make them respond to all the messages.
So for me, I kind of approach it the same way as in I respond to everything.
Johnny doesn't, because he's not obligated to, he's not the used book guy on YouTube.
Right.
Um, but after I see somebody that just keeps beating their head against the wall,
after I've given them one, two, I mean, I've had the same conversation with people.
Four or five, six times I've become more apparent of just being like, well,
there ain't no saving them.
And I guess, you know, my saving grace is I have Deb who sits behind me and listens
to all these podcasts and all these one-on-ones and, uh, you know, sees a lot of the things I do.
So she'll be like, there ain't no point wasting your time or your energy.
And I'm like, you're right.
I started to sell on Amazon because I didn't want to deal with crazy customers all day long.
And, you know, it's, it takes a lot out of me to try to develop a business plan for everybody.
It's, it's possible, but it's a waste of time because not everybody's going to listen or take
the advice I give.
I can give Johnny if there's this plan.
He'd probably laugh in my face.
I'd probably make them go to a thrift store.
I don't know.
Anything outside, anything outdoors.
That's just be, what am I going to do this month?
Be outside.
That's all it would be.
You could just wander wherever you want it, but you don't got to take my advice.
But if you ask for it and I have a proven track record, you know, like I put my numbers out
there every single month, everybody in the group knows how much I'm making.
Like it's not hidden anywhere.
Right.
And you want to see results like that.
I got it for you, dude.
Just, you know, you got to do it.
Here's a fun thing.
Everybody, yourself included, myself included, speaks from what's worked for us.
So again, our advice has made it differ, but Mike's successful in the advice he gives.
So he's giving the successful blueprint, as we've been calling it, to you.
Me, I've been successful in different ways and I'll give you my successful advice.
Now, you as the listener, it's up for you to decide.
And again, I'm not being silly this time and this isn't meant as a put the screws to you.
You're free to run your business how you see fit, legitimately.
Choose.
If you don't like one path, well, I got this piece of information.
Let me try this other path.
They're both work.
And so that's the other thing.
If you have two good pieces of advice, you don't like one.
Switch the other one.
Or if you're able somehow some way to do both, great, because you're going to be successful
down both paths if you're willing to walk down both paths.
That's going to be a lot of work on your end.
But take all the information and try what sounds the most appealing to you first,
because what sounds most appealing generally is you got to trust your own personal instinct
and or gut.
If you don't like it, switch it up.
And if the thing that you don't like the most makes you the most money,
well, it's one of those either suck it up, buttercup or choose the other path that makes
you less money.
I you know what?
I know this grind some people's gears that I don't even care.
Right.
The people that love books and they decide they want to start a book selling business
and they find the used book guy and look, he's making money selling books like I'm ready
to go.
And then they keep hearing the used book guy say he doesn't care about books.
And I know inside it like hurts their heart like, oh, please, if we could only make Mike
learn a little bit about books, learn how to pronounce it, a few big words and they're
like, but damn, he's actually making the money and getting the results.
So like it kind of twists them both ways because they're like this guy, he doesn't even care
about books.
He don't know who wrote, you know, Alice in Wonderland, which one of them is.
Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz.
But he's making damn money.
He's making over six figures a year.
So like they're like, well, he's got the business plan, but he doesn't really care about the
stuff that he sells.
But in our category, there's so many people that are like passionate book people, right?
Like most people that sell books enjoy reading books.
They enjoy collecting books.
They have favorite authors.
They have favorite series.
Not this guy.
And I know it just kind of digs deep in a few people in the group that are like, man,
Mike, I wish you would just care about the books.
I'm like, it's never going to happen.
I care about the money.
Okay.
I've seen this before and very rarely have I seen the what I want to call collector be
successful.
The person who loves and adores books and actually has a personal book collection of
their own.
Like they cherry pick stuff for their own collection and they sell the rest.
I've seen very few.
I don't care if you're a book seller, a CD seller, a DVD seller, a clothing seller, or
whatever seller be successful because they're too busy trying to have the collector's mindset.
And that takes up their majority of their mental real estate.
And they have very little left over for their business real estate mindset.
I do have a gentleman I hope to bring on the podcast who's both and he's successful.
And he's successful.
But they're very few and far between.
The collector has a squirrel mindset and everybody's out for themselves.
Sure.
But you need to be out for yourselves with a monetary goal in mind.
Their mindset is generally just about accumulating things that they personally want.
And I'm not saying that as a negative, but if you're going to run a business,
treat it as a business and have no emotional attachments,
when you have emotional attachments, it's much harder to be successful in my opinion.
I got a hot take here and I don't know, you can maybe spin it off a little bit different than me
because I'm not going to have the best words to describe this.
But if you were the person that takes action and is funding this business with cash you
have readily available, no debt, no matter what action you take, if it's consistent over time,
you will see results 100% of the time.
Yes, I don't care if it's a marginal success or a big home run success,
you will see success if you take action of some kind.
If you're the guy or girl that likes to plan meticulously in a three ring binder
and you don't do anything in that three ring binder, you're going to be unsuccessful.
If you're the person who just sits on YouTube and needs to know all the information,
there's more information than you can get through in a year.
And you don't do anything other than gather information.
You are not going to be successful.
You're going to learn a lot more and I'm going to rub people the wrong way here,
by just doing, you do it.
I don't care if you have all the information or you have the master plan blueprint.
Yeah, one way is going to be a lot easier, but I'm going to tell you in round two,
you're going to make adjustments to that blueprint you made for what works for you.
And guy or girl who had no plan, you're going to make all the adjustments in the world how
to make your life easier for round two.
Or you're going to say, okay, this isn't for me, I'm out, which is fine.
But the person that decides to make the adjustments in either scenario,
it's going to be more successful and more successful as they continue to refine
their processes and stay consistent.
It's both, it's refining how you do things.
So it takes a shorter amount of time and doing it consistently.
Those two things together are so powerful.
You got to be, not only take action, you got to be intentional with what you're doing.
You're not just saying take action as like, oh, I want to thrift three days this week.
Well, where are you going?
Have you been there lately?
How are those sources?
That's action that's not productive action.
Anybody can just be like, I'm going to go do this.
And then you have no idea what the outcome is.
I'm so glad you brought that up.
And I'm sorry to cut you off here.
So if you go to only your, I don't know, your three thrift stores around your area,
I didn't find anything.
Well, you were just there yesterday.
No wonder you didn't find anything.
How about you go 45 minutes and hit everything there?
How about you go 50 minutes, two hours, across the state lines?
The people who just try the same things over and over again, well, that's just called insanity.
And it doesn't work.
That's just called insanity, essentially.
You're running an insane kind of business and you will go nowhere.
I'm glad we kind of, over the past year, we've kind of phased out the idea that people can't
find profitable media to sell.
So like nobody ever brings it up anymore.
Like nobody is ever on the calls or like in the group chat, like, oh, I'm going to go
to a press conference and I'm going to go to a press conference, right?
So I'm glad, at least in our group, I know it's hard for us to do, wasn't it?
It took years.
I know it blew my mind.
Like, how are they having trouble finding inventory?
Go outside.
And it falls on me.
But that was the thing we had to talk about it so much consistently that it finally got
through to people that are like, oh, what's happening here?
We had to talk about it so much consistently and it finally got through to people that are like, oh wait a minute.
All I got to do is send an email.
All I got to do is have a conversation and us talking about it and showing it right.
Like I'm showing what I'm getting from the libraries, the bulk pickups in the group.
People are showing the crazy scores are getting for next to nothing.
Then all of a sudden you start to believe it.
But if you're not in that small circle, just because you see it on YouTube and the YouTube resale is so skewed with some of the junk that's out there.
Yeah, you got to be weary of it and understand that it's going to be different for you just because Johnny goes and picks up a library and he gets, you know, a thousand profitable books doesn't mean when you get one that you're going to get 10 profitable books.
That's just a reality of it.
It's good to take the action, but understand when you're starting something new, when you're taking action upon it, it's going to be a learning process and we can't be afraid to learn on our own because when I started, it was the biggest blessing I had.
There was no use book guy on YouTube.
I knew nothing about Amazon.
I just know you put in a box, send it off.
Money magically flies back every day, you know, a little five dollar bills sitting outside the window that I grab and I knew nothing.
And sure, there were some content creators back then, but it wasn't like super in depth stuff right now, especially in the Amazon space.
There's so many different damn software's people are trying software's every single week.
And I'm just like, I have been using the same software's since I started over five years ago and people are like, well, what do you think about this?
I'm like, don't know, don't care.
This works.
This has been consistent within my business.
I'm not going to change it.
That's the funny thing. Whenever I change something, I tend to make less money for that change when it comes to software, at least.
There's only one software I haven't tried and it's the most expensive one.
And I know that one will work.
I've just been so resistant to it.
But again, it's me not listening to people that make more money than me.
Johnny, just pick up the bigger software.
Johnny, just pick up this.
I don't want to spend that kind of money a month.
That's a lot of money.
But they're right.
At the end of the day, they're right.
And it's me swallowing my own pride or my own resistance to spending a lot of money.
But as you were talking there, it's also the fear of failure, I think, is a big play in people's success and not success.
Like you and me, we try things that honestly fail.
But it's the things that we try and are successful at that we keep in our toolbox to do continuously.
But if we don't try new things, like my whole Amazon experiment this year, that's a big old let's try it and see what happens.
It's the first year I've been able to send pretty much unlimited inventory.
There's no cap for me.
It's silly.
None.
Whether that works or not, I will see by the end of the year.
But I could tell you it works marginally.
Whether it works more than marginally, I have to wait out the Q4 cycle to see.
If it doesn't, I'll make adjustments.
If it does, I'll still make some adjustments.
It's just how much of an adjustment do I really need to make?
But that's a waiting game for me.
But everybody I talked to about what I was doing, they're like, sounds good on paper, but we don't know.
Sounds good on paper, but we don't know.
You may have some cash flow issues with the fee stuff.
You may have some issues with the liquidation thing.
But nobody had a definitive outline, template, blueprint.
We tried it and here's our results for me.
So I was like, OK, it's up to me to produce the results.
It literally was on me to find out the answer.
And sometimes that's the case.
If you talk to everybody in your circles and they have no clue,
but they'll give you your two cents of what they think, think and know are two different things, my friends, two different things.
You then have to decide, OK, I'm going to try it to get the definitive results.
Me, I'm definitive answer, yes, no kind of person.
When there's not one, well, I got to do it.
I got to take that on myself.
I see some of the people that have been in a group that have gotten results.
You know, we've had people that have been disabled.
We have people that are well over the retirement age.
You all know who I'm talking about because I bust on you all the time and they make a healthy living,
not doing a lot of work on Amazon, but they're consistent within their business models.
And it's crazy to me that, you know, I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's just a work ethic of, you know, a lot of these people that are retired.
I usually usually the retired people hate me, Johnny, because I said I want to carry stuff when I'm their age.
But I'm here to shout them out because a lot of them get results because they were almost raised
in a different lifetime where you had to work for everything.
You got to work for every single thing you ever got in life.
And even though they are retired, they still want to do something and stay active.
And they actually are crushing the Amazon game behind the scenes.
And none of them will ever put their numbers out there because yet again, they were raised differently.
They don't want to, you know, kind of put somebody else down by what they're doing.
But I'm here to tell you, they are out here absolutely crushing it.
And I'm like, you guys, you know, you got to figure it out, but you're putting in the work.
Right. I mean, usually the quiet ones, they make the most money, usually.
Not 100 percent. I'm just saying on a usual basis because, you know what?
They're listening, they're executing the information giving to them and they're working really hard.
That's the secret sauce right there.
Listen, execute and work really, really hard.
That's all this is no matter how you slice it.
But that goes into, again, refining, consistency, being willing to do what most will not.
That's the kind of person you need to be, being willing to do what most people will not do or unwilling to do.
If you're that person that's willing to, you're going to be very successful.
It's crazy because I have a lot of like one on one students behind the scenes.
And I always can relate back to like the early conversations we had with some of these people.
And I'm like, you know, where they're at today, they're making, you know, 15 acts what their initial goal was.
Because everybody starts out, they want to make a thousand dollars a month.
And all of a sudden they're doing twenty thousand dollars a month and they're always looking to keep growing.
And I always relate them back to like where they started.
Like, remember when we first sat down and you were like, I just want to make an extra thousand dollars a month.
Look at how far you've come.
All you have to do is keep compounding the things that have gotten you this far to continue to grow.
That's all there is to it. You figured it out.
And what's funny is, yes, once once you've been successful and or you plateau in your area.
People tend to want to go higher than their initial goal.
They just want to keep going.
I'm sure there are some people that have dialed back their scale because they're like, well,
I don't really need this much money and I'm good.
Or I kind of like the plateau playing field.
I know Hunley and Sam, they did a podcast with some mountain analogy was a good one of you got to kind of mountain or kind of path on the mountain where you want to end up at.
But I think for some people, it just never ends.
They keep on going when there's there's no more.
When they reach the top of the mountain, well, let's go find a higher mountain to climb or let's add some rocks to make our mountain higher.
I mean, yeah, I mean, different strokes for different folks, I think.
There were me and you were living examples of this.
You want to you want to warehouse.
You want to be a manager.
You kind of want to step back and have a crazy big operation.
And I am like, I want nobody.
Johnny's like, when you want to hire somebody like, I just called it in pickup.
Sorry, Johnny. Maybe next year.
Right. It's you don't have to run somebody else's race.
I guess you don't have to climb somebody else's mountain just because they want to be the biggest seller.
Good for them. That doesn't mean you got to try to, you know, say next to them or like, I don't know.
It's it's comparisons, man.
And that's the reselling space.
It's so toxic when you're always comparing yourself.
But honestly, if you want to be the biggest one, if you're willing to take the action and stop yapping about how you're going to make three trillion dollars maybe next year, then you can.
You can be whatever you want.
That's the crazy thing about reselling.
You can be as big as you want.
Right. You can be the biggest reseller if you're willing to put in the time, take the action and know what's going to take time to get there.
Right. And we'll go back to tech real quick.
His goal is to be number one.
And he didn't know if he was number one.
So he just kept on going.
And I think that was an edge up for him until eBay land decided to release these reports.
Right. And then he knew it was definitive because he always thought there was somebody bigger and larger than him out there.
And who knows how many years there absolutely was not.
But he treated the business like that until he had a definitive answer.
And he has all these other businesses, whatever.
I won't go into that.
If you want to go into that, he has his own channel.
Go go watch them.
And then there's people who I think you're right.
They compare themselves to other people that they see that they can talk to, like on these calls.
I want to be them or better than them.
And that drives them.
That's a driving force.
And if you embrace that driving force, cool.
If you decide I don't want to be like Johnny, I don't want to be like my.
OK, fine.
I don't care if you don't want to be like me and Mike, I don't think if you care, people want to be like you.
Not real.
Yeah. Go work.
Don't be a lazy bum like me.
And I don't think less of you if you don't want my lifestyle.
And Mike probably doesn't think less of you if you don't want his lifestyle.
And is it the work in lifestyle is what I'm referring to.
It's OK.
You don't have to climb our mountain or try to chase it up up the mountain kind of deal.
You don't have to do that.
I the only thing I compare myself to is my bank account.
I honestly I'll be the first one to admit when I first started reselling YouTube, I was the comparison guy.
I wanted to have X amount as I want to have more subscribers in this person and that person.
Them days are long gone.
My goal is retirement, house buying, bank account.
That's the only three things that matter to me.
I have no comparisons in this business right now.
Sure, me and Johnny bullshit our numbers before these calls just to see where we're at.
But like I'm not actively with a picture of Johnny's face and every morning I throw a dart at it.
Right. Like he I'm going to crush him this month.
Like that doesn't motivate me.
What motivates me is saving more money, changing my life for the future and the better so that I can take a step back from the business.
Continue to do things I enjoy to do and live comfortably because most of my life I was dead broke.
I was worried about where the next dollar was coming from.
So that is my only comparison.
I seriously don't compare myself to it.
It's crazy that I really think about this.
I used to compare myself to so many other resellers and now I have no comparisons.
There's nobody that I'm like out to beat or out to get and you know, I keep a small circle of resellers that I communicate with.
But that's about it.
Dude, my bank account, my future, my time.
That's all that matters to me.
Absolutely.
So go ahead and paraphrase our topic for today.
What was it again?
Our resellers all talk and no action.
And we said 95% of them are all talk because it's an internet based community, right?
Like anybody can be anybody on the internet.
And it's cool to say that you know, you're going to make or you made 100k this month when in actuality,
there's no verification to this.
It even exists on a lot of YouTube channels.
You hit on a little bit where the reselling world talks in sales.
It's only nothing.
You can have a billion dollars in sales and your bank account could be going into the negative every single day.
So like it's tough to weed your way through it and kind of be the person that takes the action.
But Johnny's right.
How many people aren't on YouTube?
How many people aren't comment and that are absolutely out there just destroying the game?
Just take it all in and then they go do it.
The smart ones do the ones that don't decide to have podcast every single week and calls that post videos and answer questions
because they have all that time to put into their business.
Right. Like here's an example of Tom.
We've had on the podcast.
He's got some huge humanitarian aspirations.
I have none of that.
However, I what I do have is I genuinely do like helping people that do like that's why I do these podcasts.
That's why I'm in most of these groups, even though as far as the book information, there's very little line.
That's new to me, right?
Oh, I didn't know that or this is how you should be business.
There's very little.
There's very little of that.
That's new to me.
But the reason I'm still in all these groups is I like helping people at least the ones that deserve it.
I don't like people that don't deserve it.
They can they can go unsubscribed.
Anyway, everybody has different chords.
I like to play the pure pure business owners of sponge guys who take it all in and just absorb it and go just run their business to the moon.
Right.
I'm impressed by those people because that they have a singular focus me.
I'm a little squirrel is I like to help people and run business.
So but if I was just that one other person, I wouldn't be on any calls.
I'd be a background character camera off never interact, but I'd be there listening and taking notes.
If you if I'm talking to you right now and you're listening to this good for you and good on you.
But going back to the talk and no action, the what I see a lot is in January of every year, there's a new batch, at least in touch.
Oh, God, it's coming, man.
It's it's almost here.
Right.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do that.
I'm going to be the biggest reseller this that and the other three six months roll by.
Half of them are gone.
The end of the year rolls out.
There's like 10 percent of them left because everybody likes believing in that dream.
Right. They like seeing the in their minds.
They're at the end result already.
They're all jolly and happy and cheery.
We're going to go do reselling.
Yeah, I'm going to be just like these people I've seen on YouTube.
I'm going to be just like Mike.
Oh, man.
And then, yeah, it's like college, right?
If those that went to college probably know what I'm talking about.
You start with a large class and then the time your four rolls around.
How many of those people are left?
Not me.
I'm going to do it.
I didn't make it.
Oh, man.
It's it's tough because I think about taking action and I think a lot of resellers think when we say take action,
it's it's just about getting out there and sourcing items and it could that could be the furthest from the truth,
whether you have an eBay or Amazon business topic.
I had two topics in mind.
The almost topic was we got to do a full episode of this, but you don't get paid until an item sells.
I don't care what you're talking about or what you went and got that's worth X amount of dollars of imaginary money
because until the money is in the bank account, it's worth nothing.
It's literally costing you money until it sells and you get paid for the item.
So my big thing at Amazon is taking action.
What I always tell everybody is send in your first box, send in one box every two weeks.
It's not that hard.
We're talking 30 to 50 books.
If you're doing only books, you're mixing in CDs, DVDs, maybe got a box of like 60 DVD CDs.
You're going to send it.
That is the action I expect from a brand new Amazon seller.
Or whether you're doing this season and you're not getting results.
The only way we can make more money if that's what you're looking for, right?
Because most people, they want to make more money in reselling.
They don't really have the mindset of me where I'm trying to get back time while maintaining money.
So it's like you got to send more items.
So what does that look like for you?
Is that an extra two boxes a week, three boxes a week?
But if you don't take that one step, it's the same way like I guess the eBay comparison is creating a quality listing for the item after you buy it.
Because that's the only way the item is going to sell.
So if you don't create a good listing for that desirable item that you sourced, it never happens.
So the action can't just be one part of the business.
It can't just be, well, I'm going to go source more.
Well, if you're not listing more and you're sourcing more, you're just creating a death pile for yourself.
Just because that's simple math here that I just came up with on the fly.
If you buy more items to sell and you don't list more items and you're just going to have a bigger death pile, you have to it has to be throughout the whole business.
And yes, I just say send a box, send another box, but that's going to require you labeling another box, prepping another box, taking another box to UPS.
But then you also got to go find the box of profitable items, which is going to take more time out of your life.
And if you're in the dismedia part of it, you're cleaning, case swapping, all of these things exponentially add up to your time that's taken away.
Everybody's got the same 24 when they wake up.
It's how they use it kind of deal.
I heard that from somebody.
I don't remember who and I apologize.
So if you're a listener and you've said that before, I have now stolen it.
Yes, I'm not giving up my my hour of dog to bounty hunter at night, dude.
I'm not listing.
I'm not cutting dog out of my life for for this Amazon.
I mean, if you did, how much more money could you make a year?
I mean, yeah, yeah, but then I'd be miserable, too.
I do this to be happy.
Money makes me happy.
But OK, money makes me happy, too.
But I got enough of it flowing in right now, so I'm still kind of happy with where I'm at.
But it is action is there and those that take it get results.
I don't BS people when I say, you know, I work a little bit, I do and I make the money I make.
And I don't BS people when I tell you these stories of people that are in these different situations and they're absolutely crushing the game only because they took action to understand what the business wants from them.
Maybe that's maybe that's the overall action you have to take is understanding what the business and platform wants from you.
And you cannot be the person that is doing Amazon, doing eBay, doing whatnot, doing Bonanza, doing flea markets, doing garage sales.
You have to focus your number one action should be find out who you are today as a business and 10 exit.
Yes. And speaking of that, as far as action go,
I think what we didn't touch on and this could be its own episode to the wrong kind of action.
If you're doing repeatable action yields very little results, your actionable task needs to change.
I don't know if that makes any sense, but here's what I mean.
So if you are if you're buying something for four dollars and selling it for 10, you're making very little money.
You may be grinding and working really, really, really hard putting in a lot of hours and doing this continuously.
However, if you were to buy something for four and now get twenty dollar items, that's a lot better action than what you were doing with before.
So if your goals aren't being met again, it's okay to try things and they don't work.
But take a step back. Maybe every maybe once a month, once a quarter at some point during the year.
Take a step back. Hey, is what I'm doing what I am I getting out what I'm putting in?
Am I having the results that I set out for being met? Yes.
No. If no. OK, back to the drawing board, my friend.
How can you fix it and or change because something needs to give and that's on you to come up with or go to a group, ask them for their advice.
And not only that, try the advice that they had given you.
I got a new action we all should try as resellers starting in October.
Well, when you guys are listening to this, it'll already be October.
When we go into thrift stores, we bring a little boombox that can play CDs.
And before we start sourcing, we play the cotton I Joe and we do the cotton I Joe before we source for good luck.
And then we'll find more profitable inventory and then we can just continually take our boombox with us and we can thank Cotton I Joe for all the money we make.
You know that that song is about syphilis, right?
No, I don't care. I heard in the movie last week, so I'm like I'm on the cotton Joe.
It's a catchy song about it. Don't get me wrong.
I'm just saying there you can make whatever crazy action you want.
But hey, as long as you're out there doing something right and you know, there you do have to be intentional with it.
But yeah, I think you kind of summed it up. Good there. We're going to wrap it up here.
We'll talk to you wrap it up on.
I know, dude. I need to get up and do the cotton I Joe here as like a takeaway.
We'll redo the intro and outro.
It just be me and you should leave it at the cotton I Joe doing like on like a green screen.
We'll have whatever crazy background behind us.
All right. 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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