Welcome back to another episode
of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses
from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord
for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash used book guy
to join the channel and gain access
to the full length podcast Zoom call
and private Discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny.
Mike doesn't know the topic.
Today, Johnny has one hidden away, so I have no idea.
So without further ado, he's going to lay it on us all here
all at once.
Go ahead, Johnny.
When to prepare versus just winging it.
Ooh, see Johnny, he's always got these well-thought out things.
He's just like, you know, he's probably been up all night
writing notes down on a whiteboard,
crossing things out, erasing them.
When to prepare, when to wing it.
That is, that's a good thing because a lot of people start
and they just wing it, right?
And I think in the beginning, it's all you got
because you don't know nothing.
You don't even know what to prepare for at the beginning.
You're just like, here I am out at the thrift store.
I got to wing it.
I got to find something that's going to make me some money.
But them days are long gone for me and Johnny.
Winging it is fun though.
I do like taking risks and kind of just seeing
where things go.
Like for me, I guess winging it would be going
to new thrift stores, maybe spending a day,
driving a little bit further, hitting some new thrift stores.
It's not, I mean, winging it, I just, I'm risking my time
and I'm like, something better come through.
But being prepared is 100% the way you have to be
in life in general, not just your reselling business.
But I'll let you take it away since it was your topic.
Sure. I mean, he's right.
There's very little winging it these days,
but early on deals come along and it's usually too big
for your britches.
And you're like, I'm not set up to do this,
but I'm going to do it anyway.
Let's go.
Like one of my first early on buys was the contents
of an entire house.
I won that.
It took me three days in middle of July
with the AC turned off in this house.
And they just sat on a couch and watched me work.
This was a mistake.
One, cause I didn't know any better
and I was still being an everything seller.
Two, it was really hot.
Three, I did not have the tools.
I was literally just filling up the bed of the truck.
Everything was kind of, well, it was loose.
Even glassware was loose, man.
That kind of went inside the truck.
I wasn't completely naive,
but if I had to do it over again, two things.
One, I would have taken a pass.
Two, I would have had the equipment and set up,
ready to go to do that kind of stuff
where it would take me hours instead of days.
Cause it was, it was a lot of work.
I will probably remember that forever.
Wake up screaming sometimes.
No, not like this.
And then there are other times where, hmm,
this is more than my storage unit can contain.
I'm going to buy it anyway.
And I will have to deal with the aftermath later.
Cause getting a new unit where I'm at was not easy.
The ladies there like three hours a day
at a random three hour interval,
God just catch her the right time.
So what am I going to do?
Leave the stuff in the hallway, camp out until she gets here.
Well, luckily on that time, well, she was at the office
in her brief little work window that she does.
And I'm going to say I've had some breaks
when it comes to winging it, to be honest.
And then other times, like my Florida connection
that I've mentioned before, that was a wing it,
but I kind of wanted to do it on this middle ground prepare.
So I was like, I'm going to take a flight out.
I'm going to bring an employee.
We're going to see what's up.
We're going to try to teach these people
what exactly I want.
Cause setting up that kind of relationship
that's not local to me, it's States and States away.
I had to go down there because of my OCD,
want to protect my business kind of brain
and make sure all the T's and I's are crossed
before I did it.
But I could have flown down there.
It could have been a hot mess.
And then we would have flown back
and I would have wasted travel money essentially
before anything, but that was another, for instance.
It's tough, man, because you sound,
I sound like a grumpy old man.
Like, like you don't like to have fun anymore.
I don't think that's the case.
I think, cause I've had some situations like Johnny
where people, you know, they had a house full of books
and it took me three or four trips
and I really didn't make much money.
But at the time, you know, as somebody that was newer
to the game, it was exciting.
And looking back, like I was a complete fool
for even doing it because it was all like fiction.
You're running the mill, trade paperbacks,
but I didn't know better.
But I will say it's like, it kind of,
it kind of wears on you as you grow your business
and you become more experienced.
Like the idea of just buying a storage unit unseen, right?
Like that doesn't appeal to me anymore
because I know the work that comes in the backend.
And maybe I'm a little jaded because I cherry pick.
So I go to stores, I only take the good stuff.
I'm not taking everything.
So I know I can just go to a thrift store instead,
leave with all the stuff that's good for my business
and leave all the work, the other work behind,
all the junk behind.
And winging it is usually, you just go,
you get a whole bunch.
I feel like winging it kind of relates to bulk pickups
or picking up a lot of items where you don't know
exactly what's in the lot.
So for me, it's, I guess I'm just a grumpy old man
where I don't wanna wing it no more, dude.
I kind of wanna just take what I need to take
and leave the rest behind.
Yeah, and the year before my Florida trip,
I had that California trip.
That was local pickup only, no returns.
He already got my money.
Again, employee and I hop into the truck
all the way to California.
There could have been a giant sign
at the end of that location that said sucker.
Yeah, that would have been, dude, that would have been great.
But luckily it was straight up guy
who's actually a teacher at the high school
that was like right across street from him.
And he helped me load.
He gave us water.
It was hot there.
I'll admit that, hot for California, I suppose.
And the other times we wing it is,
remember the good old days of Frankenbox it, Mike?
Like, we don't know how the heck we're gonna pack this thing.
We're gonna figure it out when it sells.
And then you spend too much time figuring out
how to pack that thing.
Them guitar hero guitars, dude.
I used to make killing on those.
And I finally got to the point where I was like,
even I had access to the boxes at CVS, right?
As a store manager, I can take whatever box
we'd only use in the back.
And even those things, you still had a Frankenbox.
And I was just like, this is too much headache
for 15 bucks profit.
But I mean, they were in every thrift store back then
for like $2, right?
You get them at the Goodwill.
Every Goodwill's got a guitar hero guitar out for $2.
Them days are long gone, but I used to do so well on those.
And that was winging it because I didn't have a box
ready to go by no way, shape or form.
And when it sold the next day I went to work,
I said, okay, well this box kind of looks like
them might fit the guitar.
And then I got to bring it home.
I got to cut it down.
Oh my God, I don't miss it.
Dude, I had a whole storage unit, a 12 by 10,
but nothing but boxes.
When I get a new box, if anything, from a pickup,
I throw it in there.
And then when I needed a box, I dig through it
like a ball pit, essentially, trying to find the right thing,
getting box burns and cuts here and there.
And it was, I still remember,
I still remember it being fun throwing the box in.
And I always remember it being a pain in the ass,
trying to find the right box to fit my thing
or whatever item I was selling.
And then I took it a step further.
I was like, okay, no more of this.
I'm just gonna order a lifetime supply from USPS
because I can't.
This was also a wing it dumb thing I did,
but I learned because I had all the right boxes
that should fit pretty much anything.
Then eventually I was like, I'm going to standardize
what I use in shipping.
You know what?
Returning those things, I had to go to four,
yeah, four post offices.
Cause they'll say they'll take it all back,
but the volume I had, I had three pallets
worth of boxes, pallets, people.
They don't, they'll take a little bit here and there.
I had to drive to Tyler.
I followed the chain of steps to,
I'm gonna stop at this post office
cause it's closer on the way back.
Yeah.
Eventually ended up Tyler for the day.
We're like, yeah, we'll just take it all.
But I didn't know that.
I thought my local post office would take it all.
No, they were stacking it in their bathroom.
The certain boxes they have trouble getting
at their location.
But I had to actually go to one of the gigantic
post offices for them just to take it all.
That took up hours and hours of my time.
I do think winging it though,
it's like gambling.
I want to think about it because
the payoff could be a lot higher than,
I guess I look at it this way.
If I'm winging it, I got an ad out there.
I'm buying in bulk.
I'm buying bulk CDs, DVDs.
Somebody reached out to me and says,
I got 10,000 CDs.
And I'm just like, okay, I'll pay X amount of dollars.
You have no idea what you're walking into.
You know the quantity, but you don't know the work,
where they're at in the house,
how you're gonna get them home.
What if they even have covers or,
if they're just all in those little folders
where it's just a disc.
There is a higher upside to that,
but there's also a much lower downside
versus the prepared person that
maybe you're buying from somebody
and they know what they got.
So you got to pay a little bit more,
but you know the quality of the stuff's going to be better.
So it's like the safe road,
or are we going all in on black or red
and just letting the ball spin around the roulette table
and hope it lands on ours?
Because I've had crazy, crazy pickups from,
just basically going in blind.
I'll just bring it up again.
That Stephen King first edition lot,
I didn't know it was all Stephen King's first edition.
I paid 15 cents a pound for it.
And I went and I had no idea.
I was just going to get the books
because back then I'm flying by the seat of my pants.
I'm not prepared for nothing.
I just say, can it fit in my car?
Yeah, it'll fit in your car.
I show up, what they got, what they got.
That could have been all Nora Roberts
instead of first edition Stephen Kings.
And I just wasted all my time, all my gas.
And then you're kind of stuck with all the junk.
So it is, I mean, I do,
I guess I do kind of miss it a little bit, right?
The thrill of not knowing.
It was exciting, yeah.
Yeah, because you don't know what you're going to get into.
You can stumble upon a gold mine or it's all junk.
And at least for me, the junk,
I have stories to tell people, right?
We all can kind of laugh about it.
Like, what a joke.
Like I showed up and it was all Nora Roberts
or all romance novels.
It's one of those things.
You grow in business
and you take more calculated risk,
if you want to call it risk,
but we're definitely more prepared than we ever been.
I'll tell you that right now.
Like I need photos.
I need to know how much you got,
what your expectation is,
how we're getting it out of that house,
where it is in the house.
Like, I don't, I don't, I can play that game.
I just, I don't know, over the years,
I've kind of wisen up and realized
my time is better spent cherry picking
than just loading my car with junk
and figuring out how to get rid of all the junk.
And speaking of that,
that was something I was unprepared for.
I didn't know how to deal with for the longest time,
storing the junk, the stuff I didn't know what to do
with like nowhere around here would take it
in the volume I had at any given time.
And I just let it pile up and pile up and pile up,
forget too much.
Like I remember one time I was almost a tub short
because the other tubs were occupied full of junk.
So I was like, okay, the junk's gotta go.
And then I did, I did the stupidest thing.
I had a yard sale and that took up three days of my time.
Again, all these bad things seem to happen
in the middle of Texas summer.
Did it for three days.
I swear I lost like 12 pounds in water weight.
It was like frosty, the snowman dying, just melting away.
And I made money,
but it wasn't the most profitable thing per hour for me to do.
It did way better than I thought it did.
And then after talking around with some people,
I decided to just open the store front
to deal with the junk.
And that was the smartest thing I ever did.
But if I had taken the time earlier on in my career,
how much more of my time
and how many more profitable books would I have gotten
if I did that way sooner than later?
I kept delaying this thing and was winging it for years.
And I think about all the money I lost
in books that would have come in.
I think of all the time I would have gotten back
with people just taking the junk and revenue
from what the store front produced.
That kicking myself where it's still, honestly.
Yeah, but I mean, as long as you learn
from the crazy experiences you have in reselling
and you're smarter for it in the future,
that's all you can do.
Because I mean, we've left hundreds of thousands
of dollars of profit behind over the years
we've been doing this.
What are you gonna do about it now?
There ain't nothing.
As long as you know what to look out for
next time it comes along,
not to burn your time to kind of find the better items.
That's all this comes down to.
But being prepared is,
you can't be fully prepared when you start, right?
Like you're a brand new seller,
you don't even know what you're,
you're just going into the store,
hoping to find something you can sell
for more than you pay for it.
So I think it's detrimental to the person.
It's kind of like the paralysis by analysis.
Like you just need, everything needs to be so calculated
when you first start.
And I'm just here telling you,
go scan some items and send them into Amazon
and we can build your knowledge base as you go,
because you gotta take action to get anywhere.
And if you're always worried about being,
having everything perfect,
everything's gotta be perfect for me
to go to the thrift store.
It's gotta be 5.55 in the afternoon.
The sun's gotta be exactly this many degrees in the sky.
You're never gonna get nowhere.
You're kind of just stuck.
And those people never even,
they never even give themselves a real shot
versus the person who's brand new is just like,
hey, I'm gonna go see what happens.
I'm gonna get out there.
I'm gonna find some stuff.
I'm gonna source some stuff.
I'm gonna list some stuff and sell some stuff.
And then kind of grow from there.
I had a recent one that I'm still like,
you're smarter than that, Johnny.
I did a library pickup and she sent me some photos
and half of it was boxed up.
It was like, we're boxing the rest of it.
Is that cool with you?
I normally like to do pack myself.
Like, okay, they boxed it.
I can work with that.
I'll just tie it down.
I get there.
They didn't tape a single box, not a single one.
I'm looking at this and I didn't bring,
I was already on my way.
So I had tubs in the back of my truck.
I'm like, well, I can unbox all these things.
What I should have done was tell her no in the first place.
I needed to unbox it or not.
So I decided not, which was probably stupid of me again.
And I taped all their box.
I asked if they had tape and luckily they did.
So I ended up taping all their boxes.
Some stuff I had to take out of the boxes
to cram in my truck because it got to the point
where boxes would be too high above the trucks,
put as many as I could inside the truck.
And it's like, well, I'm kind of full.
So space distribution was not a thing here.
So I had to rip apart boxes and put them in loose
just like you normally would
when you run out of containers.
So much time was lost versus me doing the smart thing
and sticking to my standard prepared way
to deal with bulk.
I decided to deviate from my prepared way
to deal with bulk and I paid a terrible price
of time being lost.
There's a lot of little things too.
Like I give you an example.
I, this was probably about a month ago,
drove out one of my routes about an hour, 10 minutes,
one way drive to get out there, right?
So I get out there, I'm in the store scanning
a little, for those watching on YouTube,
my little Bluetooth scanner here dies, right?
I'm like, all right, whatever.
I'm just gonna go to the car.
I got my battery pack and we'll have it here with me
and plug it into my battery pack.
The battery pack's dead.
All right, here we go.
Wonderful start to the morning.
First store I'm at, hour five minutes away.
I got no scan, my scanner's toast.
Thankfully, the reselling odds shined down upon me
and I walked to Goodwill and I drive in 2008 Altima, right?
There's no like USB ports in this thing, right?
So like, what are the odds that I stumble upon
in the Goodwill?
A cigarette lighter USB-C charger, right?
Oh man.
I got saved that whole day by that one little thing
because if I don't have my scanner,
you know how you're up the creek without a paddle, right?
Like this is not gonna be-
What's your alternative using the Amazon app?
My alternative would have had to be,
find a, maybe I probably would have went
to a local gas station and seen if they had one.
It was out in the middle of nowhere too.
So there was not like, there was like a five below
or like a cheap store where I could go in
or like even a cell phone store didn't exist out there.
So I got so lucky.
You did.
I still got, I keep that thing in my car now.
So I never have to worry about it again.
I got my little cigarette charger lighter.
And fun fact, I had to Google where my cigarette lighter
was in the Altima because I didn't know these things.
It's like, where do I even find this thing?
It's like buried in the center console.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, yeah.
I thought I was prepared.
I had my charger banks and actually I had two charger banks
and they both were dead.
It wasn't even just one, two different charger banks,
both dead, but you know, I should have checked these things
before I went.
There's been times I've driven out, Johnny,
and I left my scanner at the storage unit
and I got to drive 30 minutes back to get it.
The other day, I was gonna, the video I recorded this week,
I'm like, I'm gonna go to the storage unit,
record the video.
I had a million different things going on, right?
Deb's packages gotta go.
We got other stuff going on.
Get to the storage unit.
GoPro is sitting at home on the desk.
Oh.
I still suck at being fully prepared.
I just, now like after it stings you,
after you get bit once, you're a little bit more weary.
Well, now when I get in the car, right,
I open the scanner box to make sure the scanner's there.
Now I got the cigarette lighter charger,
so I don't have to worry about the charger banks
being charged.
It's, you're always learning, I guess.
I will say winging it is always in our toolbox,
but it's buried down deep in there.
We only pull it out when we have to.
I think what we're getting out of the,
as we're talking through this,
is we wing it at first to prepare later
for a lot of circumstances.
I mean, Mike and I, Tech and Sports and other groups
talk about how to be prepared,
how to do things procedural-wise.
But even amongst all this,
there's these one-off scenarios
that have never been covered before.
It's very particular to your circumstance,
and you gotta figure it out.
And that's where winging it gets pulled out of that toolbox
and off you go.
But I guarantee you, once you have done that,
you are now better prepared for the next time
that one-off circumstance may or may not happen again,
but you know what, you've learned from it.
That's why companies like AAA exist.
Had them for years.
How many times I had to use them?
Maybe once or twice over, I don't know, 10 years.
But to me, that's that peace of mind
where if something happens, I don't have to wing it.
I don't have to try to change my tire
on the side of the road.
I don't have to call a tow truck company.
I just got one little number on my card in my wallet,
dial it up.
So it's like, you pay for a peace of mind with that,
so you don't have to be in a situation
where you have to wing it because that's 24-7.
They take care of whatever you got going on.
And I do think I am in a position now
where it makes sense for me to pay for these conveniences
so I don't get in a situation where I don't know what to do.
I don't know how I'm gonna solve the situation.
And there's been times I've been in thrift stores
and I go up my DVDs and they're like,
hey, we got more in the back.
You wanna come back?
And I go in the back and there's like tens of thousands
of DVDs and CDs.
And I think to myself, well, I was not expecting this.
My whole day was planned.
I was coming in here.
I was getting out of here.
You have to pivot and kind of make it work
into what you have going on.
You can never fully be prepared for anything, right?
You can have everything planned.
Here's exactly how it's gonna go.
I promise you, something's gonna go sideways
no matter what it is.
I got a perfect example of this.
So, earlier on this year,
I was prepared for my employee to come into work every day.
And then one shiny day, she gives me her notice
and that threw me off for a while.
She did offer to do two weeks.
I told her, no, I need to figure it out myself
because you're a bandaid once you're gone.
And then I'll have to figure it out then.
I'd rather figure it out right now
to figure out what I need to know to do a two-person job.
Because I had planned on being a two-person job
my whole year and then you taking off on me
and respectfully to her.
She gave me notice.
I had the option to keep her on to buffer me a little bit
but I consider that buffer a crutch
and I need to learn for myself how to do the new procedures,
create the new status norm for a single operation.
And Johnny, why didn't you keep her on?
Well, again, it was to learn it myself
because at the end of the day, it's gonna be me.
Well, Johnny, why didn't she get a new employee?
What I do here takes more in training to do
than you could possibly imagine.
Plus I was planning on the building thing
was still up for grabs and currently I'm moving out.
I didn't want to hire somebody and then,
hey, you wanna move with me?
Probably not, okay, see ya.
That would have been a waste of my time.
It was more advantageous for me to do what I did,
remain solo for a little bit until I fully relocate,
which is in the relatively near future.
I think it's important when you think about like winging it
and like being prepared,
I think that also comes down to not just like sourcing,
but your actual business profit and loss statement,
what you have going on,
being prepared financially within the business,
you can't wing that side of it.
You can't wing taxes, you can't wing your P&L,
you have to have some type of understanding.
And I think it's kind of lazy for people to say,
well, I never really had a business,
so I don't know what to do.
There's so many great videos and mentors out there
when it comes to finances and small business finance,
where you can just go watch videos
and have an understanding.
I think that is the most important thing we got
is being prepared to run the business.
You can't wing the financial side of this,
whether you're the reseller who just looking
to make an extra 100 bucks,
or the reseller that wants to do a million dollars a month,
because if you lose track of that,
you could sell as much as you want in this game.
You can sell a million dollars a month,
but if you're spending a million five,
you're still losing money.
And unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there
that aren't making money and they have crazy sales numbers.
Yeah, we have a little fun acronym
in the reselling community.
It's called GTS.
It literally stands for Google That Shit.
Seriously, the information is out there,
especially when it comes to going over
any kind of financial things.
Even taxes, it's a little harder to Google,
but it's still doable.
So there's putting in work into the business
and there's putting in work for your business.
I consider taxes, knowing your numbers in your business,
every little number, your cost of goods,
how much it actually costs to ship a package,
includes the tape, includes any kind of stickers
and or the container, the items going in,
and the average cost of the label.
Knowing all of these numbers where you can spout it off
without pulling it up.
That's what you need to get to the point of.
You do all this hard work,
so you can have it in your memory bank.
So you can make decisions quicker, quicker, quicker,
quicker when you have it all memorized, right?
It's doing anything repeatedly,
enough times you just know it.
Like typing, I haven't lost the ability to type
because I just take a day off from typing, absolutely not.
To me, that's the equivalent of knowing
your business numbers, honestly.
You always know how to do it.
I think a huge example of this,
people that wing it in the financial side of it,
specifically the taxes,
are all these people that haven't been paying taxes
and they keep talking about this new rule
that'll probably never happen,
so these people will still get away with it
when they lower it to $5,000 or whatever
for the IRS to report it.
Those people are whining about,
oh, the government just wants a little guy's money
because they wing that side of their business.
They don't keep track of receipts,
they don't keep track of business write-offs,
so all of a sudden, you go from,
well, I'm not held accountable for anything
on this side of the business to now, it's the tax man.
You don't pay your taxes,
it comes right out of your bank account,
the whole nine yards, your paycheck,
whatever you have going on,
and that is the biggest example of winging it
in the reselling community,
and I just tell everybody, get ahead of the curve.
We always can plan for the future, right?
We always can plan to better ourselves, better our business,
so why not get on some type of,
okay, well, here's what I want for my business.
I'm gonna start doing this,
here's my timeline, exactly what I have going on,
in case XYZ happens.
You always gotta have a backup plan, too,
when it comes to being prepared.
You gotta have some kind of,
okay, well, if this doesn't go the way I want,
well, what's the next step I'm gonna take, right?
If I'm paying for ads for this,
if I'm paying 20% on eBay in promotion listed
and it's not working,
why don't I go to 30 and see how that works?
There's so many different things we can prepare for,
but just realize, have a one plan.
Like, you can't just be all in on this one thing,
because you have to have a contingency plan
for when things don't go your way,
because not everything's gonna go your way.
The majority of the time,
things are never gonna go as you have planned.
Absolutely right, and this goes
to the prepared part of the section,
but it's exactly what Mike's talking about.
I have hours buffered in my week
for things not going planned.
There is unplanned circumstances that will arise
that take up hours of my time,
but I've made my schedule to accommodate those hours
of taking up time,
and then when those things go above and beyond that,
I have to readjust my schedule,
but I gave myself some wiggle room there
just by having static hours,
waking up at the same time,
going to bed at the same time to accommodate that.
And if those things don't happen,
you know what does happen because of this preparedness?
I get extra work done,
and because of that, I make extra money.
That is what preparedness does for you.
It enables you to make more money,
and that's what we're all here for.
I mean, some of us are probably out there
in podcast land listening for entertainment
or still noodling on it,
but I'm telling you, all the little extra things
you're able to do out through the course of the week,
month, and year, add up.
It's like cash back, right?
It just adds up cumulatively,
except what we do in reselling
makes cash back look like a joke.
It really does.
Yeah, it's true.
And I mean, I've kind of,
YouTube entertainment and podcast entertainment,
kind of go off the rails here a little bit.
I'm prepared to learn things about business
when I sit down and consume content, right?
Like the days of me just winging it
and watching somebody go throughout their day
and what sold, like that doesn't appeal to me anymore.
I wanna learn processes.
I wanna learn maybe a different side of the business,
even if it doesn't relate to me, right?
Like I could care less about eBay,
I could care less about this,
but if somebody has a good business model,
like, and they have processes that I can learn from,
I'm all for it.
So you gotta, I don't even know.
I think, I mean, I guess I'll talk about it.
You can't wing who you listen to
in the space of reselling
because there's so many resellers out there
and there's great information
and there's completely bad information.
I've seen it over the years
and people that are transparent,
willing to respond to your messages,
those are the people you need to have in your corner.
And just overall business, being prepared, I promise you,
I used to be the fly by the seat of my pants guy
every single week, every single day.
I don't know what store I'm going to.
I don't know how many stores I'm going to
and changing that mindset has allowed me
to get back my life and grow the business in a way
I didn't even think was possible,
spending the little bit amount of time I do,
because if I was still the guy that was just every day,
who knows, I'm out five days a week.
Instead, I'm out two days a week,
completely get back three days of my life
just by being prepared, understanding where I'm going,
what I'm doing, getting in and out,
the same approach when you should have
when you go into a thrift store.
I'm looking for the media, Johnny.
I'm going right to the media section.
I'm scanning my media.
I'm getting in and out of that place as fast as I can.
I'm not going around the thrift store,
looking for stuff for myself,
looking for items I might be able to sell on eBay,
toaster ovens, Guitar Hero guitars.
It's a focused, prepared approach
when I step foot in a thrift store.
And I'll tell everybody,
it's not as fun as it used to be.
When you do this for years and years and years,
you look at it as a business transaction to make you money.
It's not like, hey, we're going on a thrifting adventure.
It's like, hey, I'm here to make money.
How much money can I pull out of this place?
And your mindset changes over time.
But if you're the new person, wing it,
but learn from it and don't just think,
hey, this is how it's always gotta be.
It's gonna be fun in the beginning.
It's gonna be super fun.
You're gonna lose some, you're gonna win some.
You'll probably win a lot.
You'll probably lose a lot.
As long as you learn from those experiences.
So the next time somebody reaches out
and has a book pickup,
you know that it's not gonna be all microwave cookbooks.
And that's happened to me.
I'm guilty of that.
And it happens if you don't ask questions
and you're not prepared,
you unfortunately will lose out.
And it's not the other person's fault.
They're not obligated to tell me,
hey, it's all microwave cookbooks.
They just say, hey, I got six boxes of books.
It'll be out on the porch.
Here's the address.
You drive 30 minutes, you show up,
there's six boxes of books,
but it's microwave cookbooks.
But you're entitled to finish in your side of the agreement.
Yeah.
Well, I like this, which you kind of handed out agreement.
So how do you be prepared for agreement?
Because there's usually two sides.
You agree to do something
and they agree to do something.
And if you're prepared to what you don't agree to,
I think that's the thing we fall into,
I guess is why I'm doing this all excitable like,
is we tend to say yes,
because we don't know anything at the start.
And we say yes way too much.
And then we shift over over time
because we've learned from these agreements that we've done,
we trial and error,
what not to say or agree to,
or say yes to and not agree to.
And so right off the gate,
you're either doing it or you're not,
but you know what to do and what not to do
given a course of time and experience, honestly.
I think that's one of the best tools in the toolbox.
And I think even Mr. Tech and Sports
has mentioned this once or twice,
the ability to say no,
I say no more often than I say yes.
Because I can tell you,
me and Mike get solicited about stuff to buy all the time.
I can't even imagine what Mr. Tech and Sports
gets solicited to.
He's probably just going through his email,
has a standard little red button of no, no, no, no.
It's a snap decision,
but that comes with experience and time
and understanding what your business model is.
I'm not gonna go buy the vinyl records
because I've never sold one.
I don't want no parts of it.
I have looked into it to see,
well, how much of a headache is this?
Too much for me.
I accept the fact I'm not gonna be the vinyl record guy.
Absolutely not.
I agree with that.
There's a period of time like,
huh, I wonder if there's money in this.
I wonder if there's money in that.
And then, like I remember A-Tracks came in a box one time,
I don't know anything about these.
They're worth the books.
I'm gonna price compliment.
And was it terribly?
I felt bad even price comping them.
I'm wasting time here.
I was like, there's that hope.
There's gonna be that one gem in this pile of junk.
No gems at all.
Yeah, and I guess that kind of leads to the idea
of there is opportunity in some of these categories
where it takes a little bit more
to kind of learn and understand, right?
Because there's people out there crushing the A-Track game.
There's people out there crushing the record game.
We just understand that.
That's not us, right?
When you leave it for the next guy,
you focus on what you're good at, what you know.
That's how you grow your business, become more efficient.
No, absolutely.
I mean, there are money in A-Tracks,
just like there's money in VHS,
just like there's money in LaserDisc.
But I agree, that's a much harder field of study to master.
Not only that, it's getting the stuff.
How do you get?
I don't, that's bleh, my mind is blown.
Books, easy.
In my opinion, books, easy.
CDs, easy, DVDs, I think DVDs probably the easiest one.
Yeah, DVDs are everywhere.
Yeah, I think we're gonna wrap it up here.
You kind of hit it on the head.
You start out, you're gonna be winging it.
But as you grow your business,
as you progress as a entrepreneur reseller,
you are going to understand more and more
about who you are, who you wanna be.
And that's why you kind of hit on
being an everything seller is such a challenge
because you have to be an expert at everything.
That's so hard to do because there's so much.
We're talking everything.
You sell any category, anything you walk in, you wanna buy.
Nishing down, figuring out who you're gonna be,
why you wanna be that person.
I promise you, your results will 10X
because you're laser focused on that category,
that platform, what they expect, what you need to do.
And then you just run it up.
And like Johnny says, what you're saying again,
you're fit to run your.
Everyone is free to run their business how they see fit.
Yes, and all we're saying is it's fun to wing it,
but as you learn, as you grow,
as you're in this longer and longer,
there's still opportunities to wing it.
I love buying a mystery box.
I see a mystery box.
It's like, ooh, man, I'm rolling the dice
with my $40 mystery box.
It's just because I'm to the point now
where sometimes you need a little bit of adrenaline
pumped into you.
Oh yeah, I mean, look at the people that break card packs.
That's totally gambling.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's the same thing with resale.
When you buy a bulk lot, when you watch Storage Wars,
that's the reason it got as big as it is
because you don't know what's there
when you lift up the door.
It could be an empty 10X10
or there could be gold bars, right?
Like it's.
And on that stuff, and I'm assuming people who gamble
as an everyday occurrence in their life,
that they only remember the wins.
They don't remember how many losses they had to get through
to get the one win, right?
It's all about the shiny, right?
It's never about the, eh, forget about that.
That happened 10 months ago.
It's fine.
Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
I don't gamble as much, nowhere near as much
with my time as I used to.
Time meant nothing to me previously.
And now it's like, my precious, right?
Like I don't wanna give time up for nothing.
I was just like, it's gotta be a calculated risk
that I'm gonna take.
Even if I have the money, it's still gotta make sense.
I'm not just handing it over and just want to hope
and a prayer that I actually make out at the end of the day.
Right.
I'm just like you.
I value my time way more than money these days.
I like money and I like getting as much of it as I can.
Do not get me wrong here,
but the amount of stuff I do for the business
and even side stuff like this podcast here,
I value my quote unquote free time and or work time
to get more money,
much more than actually do the money coming in.
I mean, that is very important,
but just a mental shift in that aspect
has happened over a period of time as well.
Exactly like winging it to being prepared.
Yeah. All right.
We're gonna wrap it up here.
Remember you can wing it.
It's fun to wing it.
Just make sure you learn from it.
Everything's not gonna be a home run and reselling,
but as long as you're always growing as a business,
as a individual,
playing things in the business besides sourcing,
it's not just sourcing, it's your business,
it's your financials.
And yeah, you guys will be a okay, we promise.
So we'll talk to you all in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the resellers mindset podcast.
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