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, as always, important one.
You could be the best reseller out there, but if you don't figure out
there's one important part of your business, it doesn't matter
how good of a reseller you are, however you want to define it.
So I think about reselling, think about people that are like, I'm a great reseller.
And the first thing that comes to mind is that they are the best sorcerer in the universe.
They have the best connections.
They got the best hookups.
But the main component of having a business is understanding
whether or not you are making money.
And this is huge in the Amazon space because people like to show off their sales numbers
and even in the eBay space, because they give you the 90 day total,
which is your sales number.
It's not your actual bank account number.
And they do this on purpose.
I think about Amazon and eBay, they they show you your overall sales.
So you feel like you're making more money than you actually are.
And so many resellers fall victim to not understanding the business,
basically monetary behind the scenes, what it goes into actually having money
coming into your bank account and actually making money, not just sales,
the imaginary sales number we all care about.
And in addition to that, I want to talk about the idea that resellers,
we almost live in this world of imaginary money, because if I go to the store
and I buy this phone and I'm going to I look it up and I'm going to make $200.
In my mind, I've already made the $200 for this item.
When there's so much more that goes into it besides just the component,
you got to list it, you got to sell it.
It's got to get to the customer.
They got to keep the item, no refunds.
And then you actually get the money.
I don't know, man. It kind of irritates me when people say,
well, this is so much in profit.
Well, if it's not listed and not sold, it's nothing in profit.
It actually costs you money sitting there.
Yeah. I mean, you can have a $2 million business and spend $2.1.
You make no money.
In fact, you spent more money than your business made.
And to me, that's not success.
That is failure.
There's also people have the false hope they will scale their way
into profitability that goes in there.
And that's why they flash their big numbers,
even though they may be operating in the red.
They aren't even close to the black.
It's like, look at me. I look successful.
And that's probably, I'm going to say that's something psychological
with these people.
They needed to make themselves feel better because they need that
reactant from everybody else not producing those numbers.
But I'm here to tell you that you're probably making more money
than a lot of the people that actually like to flash those numbers.
The people that are doing those numbers tend not to flash those numbers,
legitimately making more money coming in.
They just have, well, A, they probably don't have the time to do that.
And B, they don't have that psychological hold up of self validation
of look at me or look what I'm doing to make themselves feel better, honestly.
Now, there are some people that go outside this realm that do produce
those numbers, make a lot of money and flash those numbers.
We're not saying every single one of the people that flashes their numbers
and big charts or whatever, they're not actually clearing money.
But given me and Mike been around the block a minute,
a lot of them are not making a whole lot of money.
Take it with a grain of salt, I guess, is kind of just because somebody
shows you some crazy numbers, crazy sales numbers.
Just think about how much overhead you listening have in your business
at the scale you're at, right?
Think about you as a solo reseller, how many subscriptions,
how much you pay in supplies.
Well, when somebody shows you these crazy big numbers,
think about 10x, 100x supplies, 100x overhead employees.
There are so many things that don't get taken into consideration.
And unfortunately, that's how a lot of people start reselling
as they fall for the trap of you can make an infinite amount of money today.
And I'm here to tell you reselling is 100%.
You can print money once you get it figured out.
But in the beginning, it's going to be a learning curve.
And finances in a business, I mean, you can be a profitable reselling business
and do a dollar a month in sales and make 25 cents after fees and whatever.
There's people out there that are doing tens of thousands of dollars a month,
like Johnny said, and not making no money.
And that's why I don't get bent out of shape.
I cheer for people that make more money than me, right?
I'm your biggest fan.
I want you to make more money.
But I've got myself to a situation where the money I make
allows me to live comfortably because I understand
the finances of the actual business.
And I guess it is a little unfair because I was a store manager at CVS.
We get monthly P&Ls.
We have to review, where's the money going, the four walls,
how much is going here, how much is going there,
what is getting spent here, budget here, budget there.
But you do need this because you are a small business.
And the smaller you are, the more important it is.
And it goes both ways because I think when you start out,
you're worried about every dollar because resellers don't start
with a lot of money.
I got $100.
Every one of these dollars has to have a purpose and make me more money.
In the middle ground, you get a little bit smarter.
You kind of understand it more.
The money kind of opens up.
But then you get to that higher ground.
And that's the second trap of this business is, OK,
you're making all this money.
Now, all of a sudden, you feel like, well, I can just hire everybody.
I can get exuberant amounts of space I don't need.
And then you wind up right back to every dollar matters
because you're barely breaking even every single month.
Absolutely.
I mean, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago,
I took a look at a brick and mortar book business.
And he had posted his numbers in an interview article
he did about two years ago, so 2022.
His top line, his amount in sales, was $2.5 million.
And then in that same article, because I pay attention to the finer details,
he said he had 27 employees.
I don't know how much they got per hour, but I was kind
and said on an annual basis, they'd probably get $36,000.
So $36,000 times $27,000, that's $972,000, almost a mil, out of his $2.5
right then and there.
Then, well, he has a gigantic space for his brick and mortar.
The cost of cooling alone in this gigantic space
is almost 30,000 square feet of bookstore, right?
It has to be astronomical.
And that doesn't even include the rent.
I don't think he owned the building.
He might have.
But even then, you tack it on your rent cost.
And then let's just assume your cost of goods,
because he, like me, has books coming into his store as well.
Plus, he'll order some, just like me.
He doesn't do a whole lot of online.
He's clearly brick and mortar focused.
And what's left for him out of that $2.5 million
is not anywhere close to $2.5 million, I'm here to tell you,
because expenses just add up.
The people that have the gigantic warehouses and the gigantic crew,
outside of the building costs, employees are usually
the next highest cost and expenses.
And that doesn't include those gigantic one-off purchases.
The cost to get a forklift, the cost to get a conveyor,
if you're doing the conveyor.
Just your shipping supplies, the inbound, outbound shipping,
getting the raw material to come in, process the raw material,
and then ship it out.
All these things, all these things add up.
That's not to say scaling is unprofitable.
That's not what I'm getting at here.
What I'm getting at is what's in front of you,
what's visible to you and I, is not what's behind the curtain,
my friends, not the Scrooge McDuck money you may think it is.
Yeah, and I mean, we've had people on here
that are single person entrepreneur resellers
have six figures, seven figures, and it's possible.
And just because money is not going to get you
to where you want to get in reselling.
It can be used as a tool to help you get there.
But having a business sense and growing and realizing,
well, maybe I don't need an employee, right?
Like there's one people operations out there on Amazon
that are doing seven figures and they don't,
you never need an employee.
Just you don't need one, you never need one.
And you just kind of scale it that way.
But finding what's comfortable for you
and what works for you is the first step of this.
And figuring out your finances from a basic level.
Because if I decide I want to add an employee,
well, all of a sudden that's $40,000, $50,000 a year.
I'm coming out of my business and you have to make that.
What's the good rule of thumb if you hire an employee?
Like how much more you're supposed to make?
Like 10X, 5X?
I mean, any X above one is profitable.
Profitable.
Profitable in quotations.
In quotations, exactly.
But if you're not making 10X, like mine,
I pay him $5 an hour and he's an as needed person.
And so I just have him shipping.
So every hour he spends shipping,
and he can usually get a box and change done
and spending five additional hours
while I'm over here processing.
So he's generating for me, I don't know,
like after cost of goods and all that,
he's probably generating me about $800 an hour
for the five hours he costs me.
I don't think it's rocket science either.
I'm not sitting here telling you you need an MBA
and you need to have this crazy degree.
I'm a man of simple math.
If it makes, if it maths, it's maths.
If it doesn't math, you can't, the numbers are the numbers.
So unless you're willing to change the numbers
in one way, shape or form,
the equation is still gonna be the same,
whether you try to tell yourself or convince yourself,
the number is a concrete thing.
So if you spend more than you make,
then the negative number is always gonna be negative.
Whether you decide to do X, Y or Z,
you have to change the numbers by taking action
and doing something different.
Right, and to circulate to the original question,
I think anything 10X is good.
Anything above and beyond that's fantastic.
And again, if you're doing nine X, eight X, seven X,
that's still pretty good.
But anything above 10X, I think is where you need a target
if you're able to do that.
And if you can't figure it out,
I don't think you should be having an employee
in the first place.
Now, that's not to say people don't gamble.
And again, try to profit scalability
and they hire a bunch of employees and hope for the best.
So very few of those people make it.
The ones that do, you knew your back end numbers,
you had your sourcing lined up
and you're just waiting to collect.
Good for you.
But a lot of people that didn't know their numbers
and decided to wing it like that,
we did a podcast on winging it,
maybe this gets released further and now I make no sense.
But you will,
odds are you're gambling and house always wins.
Yeah, you're correct.
And when I talk basic numbers, I'm talking basically,
are we accounting for everything
that we're paying for as a reseller?
And I've always thought about doing this, right?
Because we use software and you can put in a buy cost, right?
How much is your buy cost?
Now, what if, for example,
you wanted to take all of your overhead into consideration?
This is 100% possible.
What software are you paying for?
What subscriptions do you have?
What groups are you part of?
You can get a total number,
divide that into how many on average items you sell a month
and you can kind of come to a roundabout number.
But for some reason, we just,
it's like the idea that people are signed up
for like 30 streaming services, right?
You got Netflix, Paramount Plus, MGM,
you got every streaming service.
It's the same in the Amazon space
because there's so many softwares,
there's so many groups, it piles up.
And I'm here to tell you,
I'm one of the cheapest cheapos out there.
And I guess I'll just always be this way.
And I'm always looking to cut expenses.
I don't know, like expenses to me can eat into your profit.
Every unnecessary dollar I spend,
I think to myself, well, maybe that's another item
I can find and resell and make a whole bunch of money off of.
Right, like maybe that dollar I spend on expenses
is possibly a $20 profit item I'm gonna find and resell.
So it's not just a dollar, right?
It's a dollar that's hit my bank account,
but it's potentially 10, 20 X that in profit I can make
if I spent that dollar in a better way.
And just to give some perspective here,
just in subscriptions, paid groups that I'm in,
I pay between the three groups on an annual basis,
about $720 for three groups, honestly.
So right off the gate, just in knowledge consuming
and community, I'm paying a cost of $720.
And that's before we even get into any softwares.
That's before we get into any cost of goods
and packaging supplies and or labor costs
and or warehousing expenses.
So the expenses truly do add up.
They don't seem like it, like this group,
I'm paying like 120, I think.
Yeah, why don't you just downgrade to the $290 and $290
and downgrade to the $299 tier?
Well, I feel bad about that, Mike.
I mean, I pay you monthly.
So like why you pay, why you give me 10 of it back?
Just go down to the $299 one, don't feel bad for me.
If anything, I feel bad for you
that I don't pay you to sit here on the podcast.
Well, I'm trying to drive people to the $1099
or the $999 tier by my one little sub, I'm holding strong.
And then Tekken Sports Group, that's 33.
And then that paper goal group, that's 20.
All those things that I just said, 33, 10, 20,
they don't sound big, but through the course of the year,
it adds up to about $720.
And I don't even think I factored in taxes here
because they all charge tax.
So there's probably more,
probably closer to $750 all in, even closer to eight.
But I think it's another thing I wanna hit on
while you're on the topic of like,
expenses and your subscriptions.
We have like an advanced call every single month with a,
it's a smaller group with more advanced people
and the one guy, Roy, he brought up a good point is,
financially, we as resellers think we should just buy things
to write them off and like that,
we're just gonna get the full tax benefit of that.
Yeah, that's, that seems to be the norm, just write it off.
I hear that everywhere as well, just like he does.
And you still have to spend that money to get that right off
and you would have been a better off financially
versus not spending versus spending it
for a write off purpose.
If you're gonna use it, sure.
If you're buying supplies,
you constantly use over and over and over again,
you wanna do a lifetime bulk order purchase
just to get a bigger, well, because you need it.
And it just has the added benefit
of being a bigger write off for the year, sure.
Again, key word, you need it.
It's not because you wanna do a write off for write off sake.
That's what tends to be what people think to do.
Oh, I'll just go to Mickey D's by the goodwill.
That's a write off, yeah.
You could have just brown bagged it
and saved yourself so much more money humanely
through the course of the year.
Honestly. Yeah, you're literally better off
keeping the money and not paying the 30% tax
and spending the money.
You literally just taxing yourself just to do it.
Yeah, it's foolish.
It is, it is.
And it's hard for me because I'm a math guy.
I sucked at reading.
Anybody who's watched my YouTube videos,
I can't pronunciate 75% of the dictionary correctly.
But math was my thing.
And the bank account has to be going up.
The business has to be maintaining or growing
in a way where I'm not just magically spending
more and more money.
It's okay to spend more money.
There's times where you're gonna spend more money.
I source in places now like record shops
where you gotta pay up for the items,
but they're better quality items.
You're still making money on the backend.
You're not just keeping that same mindset.
Well, I'm gonna spend more money,
but I'm just gonna boost my sales number
because I'm here to tell you,
if you got $100,000 and you spend $100,000 to sell,
you should hit on $1,000 in sales.
You can be any number if you got that money to spend,
technically speaking, if you're just buying items
where you break even.
Yeah, I mean, I got an item sitting over here.
I think it's already packaged ready to go.
I mean, sold for $1,700, that sounds great, right?
But I could tell you,
I spent way more than that to get this item.
But what I haven't told you is I got, I don't know,
4,000, 5,000, other additional items.
That kind of just paid for my air flight
and my hotel costs essentially,
and probably the food expense as well.
So that one item made me break even.
All the other little stuff,
they'll sell for far less than that item.
That's probably the most expensive item from that haul.
That's where I'm gonna start getting profitability
from those smaller end items.
But if I didn't have that item,
I'd be looking at maybe three axing, five axing
my investment.
Here, it makes it more closer to the eight X, nine X mark,
which is great.
And that's through the course of time, right?
Because it's a time delay.
They're not all gonna sell day one that they're listed.
So you're waiting to recoup your costs.
Now where people fall in the trap is,
again, like Mike said, they don't know their numbers.
So they're praying and hoping that their sell through rate
and the dollars they will get through the sales
will beat their costs
before the credit collectors come a call in essentially.
So I had a, we'll just go do a kind of wacky example here.
So Johnny sold that book for $1,700, right?
So Johnny gets the book, it's worth $1,700.
In his mind, alternate universe, Johnny says,
well, this is $1,700 I have coming into the bank.
So I can just go spend $1,700 before the item even sells.
I know this sounds crazy to a lot of you,
but a lot of resellers, they do this type of stuff.
They see the estimated profit of the book there
and they're like, well, I'm gonna have $1,700.
So I can go spend $1,700 today.
And then when that sells, I'll just, it'll be an even wash.
And what happens here, it's like the girl math idea
where you just spend the money before you got it.
And it just doesn't make any sense.
And that's $1,700, how long did you have it listed?
Since March.
So there you go.
Johnny makes a YouTube video back in March and says,
I made $1,700 off this book and this exists.
I see it all the time.
And all it is is people talking about what they sourced
and this potential imaginary number
they think they can get for this item.
And it gets you back to, okay,
you don't get paid until it sells.
That's how your business has to operate.
It can't operate in potential profits.
You could potentially go buy a lottery ticket
and win trillions of dollars.
Potentially, are you calling yourself a millionaire today?
No, you're not.
It's crazy to me, this mindset we have as resellers
that that's $1,700 book, I sourced it today.
I made $1,700 today.
And I know it's gonna take six months to sell.
But today I made $1,700, nah, you didn't.
You know where else I see the same kind of mentality?
People who have money in the stock market.
Their stocks are valued at this.
Great, that money ain't in your bank.
Those stocks can tank tomorrow or within the next hour.
They could all go to zero.
And then you have, well, zero plus zero or times zero
or divide by zero is still zero
no matter which way you slice it.
Just like listing a bunch of inventory
and you're seeing the number on eBay and or Amazon,
your inventory value is blah.
It's some outrageous number, right?
It's not all gonna sell all at once.
You have, and it's only the money
that goes in your bank that matters.
And that's, I don't know what the huge disconnect is there.
I never had a problem with this.
I don't think you ever had a problem with this.
But people out there can't make this connection
and they think they are not rich, but well off.
And they're not, they're spending more money,
like you said, than they can make it.
And this is a case of inventory rich, but cash poor.
They have no cash.
They're broke as a joke,
probably maxing out the credit cards left and right.
And I don't know, if you're one of these people
and you're still not connecting,
please message Mike, subscribe to the use my channel.
Message Johnny, don't message Mike.
Oh my God.
He'll help you a lot.
No, in all seriousness,
if you can't make that fundamental connection,
you need more than our help can probably give you honestly.
Cause what you will require is huge amounts of training
and I think you should honestly go
to a different career path.
You're not cut out for business
and you can't understand that simple concept.
I agree.
Me and Johnny talk about it all the time.
We're not in the business of talking books
and collecting books and being book aficionados.
We are in the business of helping you
have a profitable business and making money
through the pathway that is used media.
We know there's no collectors section in the discord.
We don't have a collector's call every single month.
We have business related calls.
And I got a question for you.
Is the reselling business growing
if the person's sales is going up,
but their actual revenue isn't?
So they're spending every dollar
they're getting back into the business,
but their actual money into their bank account
is not going up.
Is that business growing or is that a business
that is just, I don't think it's growing honestly.
Because if you're not making the money on the backend,
if you're not making more money,
isn't that the definition of growth is making more money?
Right.
And this is probably a case
of what I like to call reseller inflation.
And that's because the fees go up either,
well, any or combination of the following.
Your cost of goods have gone up.
You're buying the same stuff, the same stuff is selling,
but the just general cost of acquiring these items
have gone up.
Your platform fees have gone up.
And again, you're buying the same stuff.
You're listing the same amount
or you're boxing the same amount.
And then finally, we had the post office fees.
So, and or, and here's the last one.
People don't think about your external expenses,
your storage unit cost and or warehouse cost,
and or you gave your employees raises
or tacked on more employees
and you're producing the same amount of output
and you haven't compensated for any of these costs going up.
You're not sending in more.
You're maintaining the status quo.
And that's why you're seeing your bank account decline.
And lucky for you, there's an easy solution.
Work harder, do more, list more, send more.
That's how you compensate the reseller inflation.
It's the people that maintain the status quo
and make no adjustments in their business
because it worked year one, I'm not changing for no one.
Or they're oblivious to things have changed.
They don't know their numbers as you spoke on earlier.
It's cool to think about because the reseller
that makes a hundred dollars in sales a month
and puts $50 into their bank account
is making more than the reseller
who thinks they're growing their business
that's spending $20,000 to make $20,000.
But we don't see it that way
because if that overall sales number is going up,
we automatically think there's more money
going into the bank account.
And in theory, in my business and in your business,
if our revenue goes up,
the more money goes into our bank account
because we don't add on these extra things.
If we do, it's a calculated decision.
What am I gonna get in return?
But the majority of resellers, well, my sales have doubled.
Well, then that means your bank account balance
should have been close to doubling
because you're not gonna be able to take it all
because if you're buying more inventory
to double your sales, you're gonna have more expenses.
But your bank account should be a lot higher
than it was back when you were at $1,000.
Now, if you're doing $2,000 a month,
you should be seeing more money coming to you,
not more money just disappear or a little gain
because even if it's a small gain,
well, if you're doing double the work
and you're only getting an extra 5% on the bottom line,
that doesn't make sense.
It's not scalable.
Yeah, and that's why I determined with my eBay business.
It would be scalable,
but the amount of time I would have to wait was ridiculous.
But it was only like a marginal gain, like 10 to 12%.
It was really low.
And I was like, man, I'm doing all this work.
This seems silly.
So another thing people don't think about is,
okay, so you sell $100 in Amazon land, right?
In my opinion, Amazon off the gates taken 50%,
but it goes higher.
And here's why.
How much did you pay for the item?
And that 50%, does it calculate what it costs
to send that item in that box, part of the mailing label?
And if you're using the placement fees, adding that on.
So I think you're spending closer to 60% in Amazon land.
So if you sell $100 in sales,
for those that can't do the mental math,
I'll go ahead and give you the answer.
You're gonna clear maybe $40 out of every $100 at Amazon.
So make those kinds of adjustments.
And then, and the other reason it's closer to 60%
is if you're listening to this,
well, if you're subscribed to the used book guy,
you have Scoutly, you have Kipa,
you have all of these tools, right?
You're inclining more to that 60% margin
than you think you are at 50%.
So there's a substantial amount of money
between 50 and 60%, I'm here to tell you.
Not a lot of people realize that,
hey, I'm gonna get about half of everything
I send to Amazon.
No, no, no, you're probably not,
unless you are subscribed to no one.
You have no software, you're listening on Amazon directly,
and you're doing the multi-box split mint kind of thing.
And even then, you're probably at 52, 53%
because of mailing labels.
Yeah, yeah, it's true.
You don't realize how quick it can add up,
but you can be smart about it.
Just because you're growing doesn't mean
you need to get the next fanciest,
bells and whistles software, the next,
the better looking, this, the cooler.
I mean, we're almost to a point now in the resale world,
I hate to admit it, but people,
you got the people that love the Rolos,
or they love the Dimos, and it's almost like,
who cares, does it work, right?
Just go get you. The only time I care
is when I get mentioned, I'm like, team Rolo,
and that's the only time I think about it.
It's crazy, but that's the reality of it.
Resale has become so trendy, hip, and cool,
it's like we should all have reselling rooms,
and we should all have storage units,
because it's cool to have a storage unit.
And I think to myself, let's turn and burn,
sell through, let's get the money actually
into the bank account.
You don't get paid until it sells.
And this is why I always undercut the prices on Amazon,
buy a penny, because Amazon weighs the price,
the lowest price, the heaviest in their algorithm.
I want my stuff to sell.
I want my money, even if it's not the $1,700
you thought you were gonna get for the book.
If I told Johnny, instead of $1,700,
he would get $1,200 by the end of April,
one month turnaround.
I guarantee you, he's taking that money in April
and moving on to the next thing.
Yeah, and let's go back to that sold item over there.
Let's see, paid and shipped.
Let's go down the fee breakdown.
Did I clear $1,700?
No.
Yeah, but I mean, you got $1,700 showing
into your 90-day total, and that's all we care about.
Ooh.
So I paid about 20 cents for the book
with the cost of travel and all that.
We'll just call it 50 cents.
So in sales tax, $142.
In transaction fees, $248.
I think I had this thing at 2% promoted.
And then I bought insurance with it
because it was a higher end item.
It's $40.
So at the end of it, I'm left with $1,400
that's going to my bank account.
That did not factor in, well, minus 50 cents
because that's the cost of goods, right?
But that's not $1,700.
That's $1,400.
And again, that's looking at the numbers
and knowing the numbers and how everything breaks down.
Yeah, so promoted listings,
and then you have placement fees over at Amazon.
All these little things, the little things add up.
They add up to a tremendous number
at the end of the course of a year.
They really, really do.
When you look at how much did I pay
in promoted listings?
My God, how much did I pay in placement fees?
My God, why?
Why am I spending all?
Because we wouldn't sell it otherwise probably.
And the difference between me and Johnny
and somebody else is we account
for these things in the business, right?
Like I know I'm paying the 22 cents
per item for placement fees.
I put that into my software.
So I know when I scan an item, the profit is after that.
So it's not a shock.
I don't care about it because I've already accounted for it.
That's how you get ahead in this.
And I know it sounds stupid
and not a lot of people like dealing with numbers,
but if you're the person that's like,
you don't wanna deal with numbers,
but you don't know what your business is making,
get a notepad, write down your budget every month,
what's coming out, how much you're getting paid,
how much do you actually have left over?
This is the only reason me and Deb have gone
to the point we have gotten with our finances
is I shit you not.
Deb used to have a little book just like this,
and she would write out all my CVS checks every two weeks
for the whole year and everything that came out of it.
And it wasn't one of those things where,
well, you just take all of it out.
Like my whole rent comes out of one check.
Well, I couldn't cover that.
So the check would have to be split into two different ones.
So half the check would come out of my first paycheck,
half the rent check would come out of the second paycheck.
That alone, understanding that fundamental math
changed our lives financially.
And I think reselling, it can work the same exact way
because you're gonna realize how much money
you're spending on stupid stuff,
where you can cut some money back
and put a little bit more money into your pocket.
This adds up over time,
and this is how you get ahead of the game
and you don't wind up feeling like you're stuck
in this rat race where you're always just running
and you're not gaining ground.
Right, and I'm gonna use a horrible thing
in my explanation here.
Resellers should be like couponers.
Every nickel matters, every single nickel.
You gotta know where that nickel's going.
You gotta know where that nickel's saved
because it adds up, I'm telling you, it adds up.
And if you're just using your credit card,
are you counting for the little bit of percentage points
they're charging you for the convenience
of using that credit card?
Well, I got cash back with it, doesn't matter.
They're still gonna charge you interest.
But no, I sign up for a promotional.
I get a year free, interest free.
Well, that year's gonna run out
unless you're constantly juggling credit cards
with those promotionals, which you can do, I suppose.
You don't know your true numbers.
You're knowing false numbers.
You're good for a year, sure, but I don't know.
I mean, Mike is absolutely right.
The fundamentals are there, and it's A minus B
and equals C is C plus or minus or zero.
That's what it comes down to.
And if you're not seeing a plus
and your plus is getting smaller each year,
you got some problems and you need to figure out what the,
identify what those problems are,
come up with a game plan and follow through on that game plan
and see if those numbers in the plus column
are going back up or they're maintaining the same
or they're not as many pluses as you wanted
in your calculations.
And then, well, back to the drawing board again.
You gotta do this continuously.
Trial and error.
We make our best guesses, guesses, quote unquote,
on how it's gonna perform.
But the proof in the pudding is how much money
is going into your bank account minus your expenses.
It doesn't get any plainer than that.
It's A minus B equals C.
All right, my final thoughts here
will wrap up this episode.
This is how the little guy, the little girl gets ahead.
By understanding these little numbers and understanding,
you don't always have to be in the rat race
and feel like you're not making ground.
Financials is not complicated.
You don't have to get crazy with it.
You just have to understand your basic numbers,
what you're spending, what's coming in.
Imaginary numbers, you don't get paid till the item sells.
Get that out of your head.
You sourced a $200 item today.
When it sells for $200, how much you're getting after fees,
you don't get paid until that money hits your bank account.
You don't get a refund, et cetera, et cetera.
This is how you get ahead as a small reseller.
I know a lot of you out there are small resellers.
You don't have to sell millions of dollars
to get ahead financially in life.
I'm here to tell you that doesn't have to be that way.
You can have a small timid reselling operation.
And if your finances are good,
you're great at keeping track of things.
You can make leaps and bounds in your financial life
and reselling and your personal life
by just understanding those fundamental numbers
of how to grow a business properly.
And the only thing that matters is what you're actually selling
and getting paid for, not the imaginary numbers
of what items might be listed for.
I mean, you might as well be the person at the garage sale
that says, I've seen this on eBay for $30 million.
Well, you can list anything at any price.
What is it selling for?
How fast are you selling it to get the money back?
And that's how you get ahead in this game.
That's going to do it for this week's episode.
We'll talk to you all next week.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the resellers mindset podcast.
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