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 sitting next to Johnny.
Johnny didn't tell me the topic today.
He's playing hard to get.
And I'm A-OK with it because I've
tortured this guy over hundreds and millions of these episodes.
So Johnny, take us away.
The topic for today, why are people lazy?
Why do we think this is?
I got I'm going to answer this real quick.
Because it's nice to sit on my big butt
and watch unsolved mysteries underneath my heated blanket
with my big glass of iced tea and not do anything.
It's just easier to be lazy.
I mean, it's 20 degrees out this morning.
I got to record a YouTube wrap up at some point today.
Do you think I want to go out there, dude?
I got the heater blown on me right here.
You guys can't see it.
Yeah, the easy option every time is to be lazy.
But the problem is the money that things don't happen
if I sit on my ass all day and watch unsolved mysteries.
Right.
And it's abundant.
And I think either I get angrier each year
or it gets worse each year.
One of the two.
I don't know.
But I see questions come up like, oh, the sourcing's
an hour away.
I don't want to go more than an hour.
That's me.
It's raining outside.
I can't go sourcing.
What do you mean?
It rains all the time.
I think the bigger issue with it is when you're not
rocking and rolling, and we all know everybody's
had a tough year, right?
I mean, yeah, my sales are up, but that's just because I've
been going kind of crazy.
So everybody's had a tough year.
And there is the point of where you're not getting results.
I mean, think about it.
If me or you were in the domes and we were out here
putting in the time and the sales aren't coming in,
you're not really seeing the results yet.
And we know starting this business, especially
in the Amazon land, you're at like a three to six month
trajectory to even get some money coming back
into your bank account.
You ain't got the motivation because there's
nothing coming in the bank.
And you're like, well, why am I going to keep doing this?
So is it laziness?
I don't know what the other term would be.
It's just like trying to give it up on the business model.
I always tell everybody, don't give up.
You just got to see it through.
Give yourself a fair shot.
Only reason we do this is just so we
can be proof of concept so somebody else can be like, OK,
these guys suck their first six months, first year, first two
years.
You just got to see it through and keep going.
I mean, you're not going to get rich.
It's instant gratification.
That's what makes people lazy and reselling
because you really don't get it.
And here's one.
I don't know if it's laziness or smartness, honestly.
And here's the scenario.
I see a bunch of people trying to figure out the AI stuff
to automate listings, more or less, and or do price research
and or historical research of providence of books and stuff.
And to me, it's like, why don't you just do a listing?
Just put it up and be done.
But then you have, and then the other flip side of it
is how to do imports and all that kind of fun stuff.
So what are your thoughts?
I think we do feel like, like you said,
it's hard to describe laziness because some people feel
like they're working really hard.
But then if somebody else looked at their business,
I mean, I don't even care.
I'm going to grab myself, throw myself under the bus here
just for this comparison.
So when you were sending heavy boxes,
you're sending like six, seven boxes a day.
I'm sitting over here sending my three to six a week.
It's easy.
And I do think this is something that it's hard to,
hard for somebody that's part time or not out there going,
going, going, going.
You feel like you're almost inferior
to these other resellers, some of these big resellers
you see out there.
And of course, you're not going to be motivated.
I mean, it's easy to beat yourself up with.
Not many people are going to be like me and be like,
I accept who I am.
I accept this is the business I have,
regardless of the guy that's sitting next to me
that I deal with on a daily basis.
Whatever numbers he's doing, it doesn't change my business.
It doesn't change how I think about myself or my business.
But the problem is all you see out there
in the realm of reselling YouTube, social media,
it's all these huge people.
And you easily and quickly can be like, well,
I suck in comparison.
So I'm not even going to bother.
Because I'm never going to be Johnny
and send seven boxes a week.
I'm never going to be this person
and do this amount of dollars a year.
And you just kind of quit on yourself.
No, I can see that.
I mean, you're coming into this.
You think you're doing real good.
And you ask your colleagues and your peers what they're doing.
And your numbers are now trivial in comparison.
You can really get self-defeated.
And your self-esteem can go right out the window.
I get that.
But yeah, I'm just seeing people trying to take.
I don't want to.
OK, I view it as shortcuts.
Like, why are you short-cutting this?
Just do the work and get it done.
But they're trying to build tools
and go with tools that will possibly, I'm not convinced.
I'm going to say possibly make them more efficient.
Because I've seen the results of these.
I'm like, my listing would be better than this.
Because it's computer-generated AI, whatever.
I'm like, it's, I don't think it's there yet.
But anyway, that's me.
I don't think it's there yet.
But I do think you can be lazy and still get results
in reselling, right?
Yeah.
It's not like it used to be.
We've talked about it a million times,
where you can't just throw anything up and it sells.
But I mean, I wouldn't say what I do is lazy.
It's more calculated.
So you get your time back.
But you still keep the results going in a direction
you want them to go.
Sure, if it comes to the point where I got to work more,
in quotation marks, because I don't consider reselling work,
then I could easily do that.
But I think a lot of it is you can cross-list.
You can get one of these listing softwares that
lists your items everywhere.
It can use the stock photos.
You never have to take a photo.
So that lazy business does exist.
But the only thing that comes with that
is you need thousands and tens of thousands of units
available for sale at any single time,
because they're not quality items.
They're not quality listings.
Right, and here's another one that I
think is in the lazy column.
But I think people are so unaware of it.
And it's very similar to what you said.
They have a listing goal, or they
have a number of boxes a week goal,
and they're sending crap that will never sell.
Or the sell throughs so terribly slow,
they start hurting for money in the long run,
because they're just trying to reach this quota number
that they have assigned themselves, when
if they were to reduce that quota number
and focus on quality items and or try
to source their quota number of just quality items,
they would have a great business, honestly.
But I see people not have this light bulb moment.
You know what?
I'm going to stop listing crap.
I'm going to get good stuff that will actually sell.
I don't know where that line's missed from the beginning
to the middle part of their reselling career,
but it seems to be missed a lot, I think.
Because I think it's kind of like our previous point.
It's this competition thing.
They think if they list more, they'll get these big numbers.
That's not the case.
No, I think you can actually not spend a lot of time.
I'll die on this hill right now, this statement
I'm going to make, because I do believe it's factual.
You could source, you can give me one day a week,
eight hours a week, one day.
One that's like one work day.
Really not even, because most people work more than eight
hours a day now.
One eight hour day a week, I think,
with time you can easily make $1,000 in profit a week.
I agree.
Eight hours, definitely.
It has to be a good solid eight hours, but it's doable.
Yeah, it's basically what I do.
I just add a little bit on top of that.
You have to be tactical.
The idea, and this is another big thing,
this could be a whole other episode,
resellers that are always working in quotation marks.
Like, I struggle to find, like, how many things can I
work on in my reselling business?
There really isn't that, there's no way I could,
the only thing I could fit in to put more hours in
would be me sourcing, which means driving further,
running a different route across state lines.
So this idea, I struggle when people say, hey,
I'm doing this 40, 50 hours a week.
Well, unless you have some type of bulk operation,
if you're running thrifting routes and cherry picking,
you better be making a lot of damn money.
These people exist.
I have one-on-ones with them every single month.
But these people that aren't getting results,
and you're like, well, I'm 40, 50 hours a week,
I'm thinking to myself, what are you doing?
You're going to one store a day?
Like, that is not no type of tactical approach.
Are you going to the same bins every single day?
Sure, you might hit the gold bar here and there,
but it's not scalable.
Right, and even for you, all that extra sourcing
would yield into more space, and then you have more problems
with more space, that's just how expanding goes.
Just everything breaks when you expand,
and then you have to fix it, and it no longer breaks,
and then you maintain, and sorry if you want to grow
or maintain forever, if that's your choice.
You sometimes feel lazy.
I run into this every once in a while too.
You feel lazy because you're not always out there, right?
You're not always in the thrift stores.
You're not always doing something in the business,
or you take your day off, and it's kind of like,
I don't know, it's kind of toxic to always be thinking,
you always got to be working in the business,
and I used to be terrible with this.
I used to be the worst one.
Deb used to always tell me, dude, chill out.
Pump the brakes for a second, you can have a day off,
and you feel lazy because you're like,
well, I'm taking a day off, and now I'm on the other mind
side, well, you know what, I put in the work,
I got 5,000 items sitting available for sale at Amazon
that are all cherry picked, that are going to sell.
If I don't feel good today, or I don't
feel like going to do X, Y, and Z for the business,
it's not that I'm lazy.
You're just giving yourself a day off, which any other job,
any other salary job in the universe,
you have days off every single week.
But resellers, we can't.
We've got to be seven days a week.
We've got to be eat, sleep, breathe.
If I'm not reselling, I've got to be watching a reselling
video.
If I'm not watching a reselling video,
I've got to be listening to a podcast.
It's like you just, people get so entrenched with it,
and it's just, it can get to a point
where it just drags you down.
What's up, Amazon sellers?
We wanted to take a second to talk about GoToLister,
the software me and Johnny both use
to list and manage our inventory and grow our businesses.
With the fastest listing speeds out there
and built-in profit analytics, it's a no-brainer.
Easily and quickly have items available for sale
using 2D barcodes, and get more for your items
with its built-in smart pricing.
Make sure to check out the 30-day free trial
at gotolister.com backslash Mike,
or using the link in the description below.
It's so easy to get self-defeated in this business.
There is everything to be like, you're nothing.
You're worse than nothing.
You just joined the Marines, and it's boot camp,
drill sergeants, chewing into you, kind of nothing.
Real easy.
And it's just ignoring all of that and just doing the work.
You have the results, and that's all the validation
you honestly need, is your work pays off.
If your work isn't paying off,
we'll make adjustments in your business.
And to another side of laziness,
when did people get so lazy they can't even Google?
That's probably the biggest one for me.
It's like, when do we like Googlings too hard?
Let me just ask a mass amount of people
something I could just simply Google.
It's like, where did this happen?
Was this a 2018 decision?
I wasn't there for the vote,
and I would have voted the other way, personally.
We all need to get those Alexa,
or whatever they're called,
the speakers you can have in your house.
I tell Deb all the time.
I'll be laying there in bed, and I have this dumb question.
I'm like, I wish I just had one of those speakers.
I could be like, hey, Johnny,
what's the square root of this?
And it just tells you the answer,
because I think that's the main reason
you'll never really get into having a YouTube channel.
I don't know, because I know deep down,
if somebody asks you something stupid, right,
and you know that Google's the first result
on the AI response when Google's gonna be the right answer,
I know you're just sitting over there
like slamming your big gulp down on the table.
You're throwing stuff around, like just Google it.
GTS, man, Google that shit, come on.
No, and it's not even these convoluted,
complicated, multi-tier questions.
It's a simple question of,
where are the thrift stores in my area?
I don't know, what's your zip code, mother?
Let me type it in for you.
Here, let me share my screen.
You can do screenshots even.
I think it's, yet again,
it goes back to the instant gratification
and the, I don't know, the culture when it comes to,
I mean, and I'll be straight out,
most people, most resellers, a lot of big resellers,
they won't even respond to all of their comments.
Sure, there's some that do,
and I respond to all my comments.
And it is kind of brain rotting me
sitting there answering the same question
if they would just go to the channel.
And I've gotten a little better.
I'm nowhere near as good.
I should just let Deb answer the comments
because she's like, just tell them that
you got a video on the channel
and go search it on the channel.
And it's just like, yeah,
that's probably exactly what I should have said.
For some reason, it's because resale
has been spun into this thing, Johnny,
where it's get rich quick
and you don't have to do a lot of work.
So you already go in with this mindset
that you can be lazy and get away with making money.
Because what you see out there is,
hey, I just said it, spend eight hours a week
and make an extra thousand dollars every single week.
While people go into that thinking their first week,
that's gonna be them, they're gonna make a thousand dollars.
And they don't say, well, hey,
it's gonna be five, six, seven months
until you actually get it to that point.
It's not what's shown
and it's not what's really portrayed.
Even when there's news articles about reselling,
it's always something crazy like,
stay at home dad's making millions of dollars
while raising his 50 kids by himself
and he works two hours a week.
And that's just what people expect.
So you can go in almost thinking, hey, this is easy.
I don't gotta do much work.
I can be lazy, I can take days off
and I'm still gonna get the money.
When in actuality, it has shifted so much
that that exists for a small, small percent.
But that's what you see out there.
You see the big hits coming from the thrift stores.
You don't see all the other thousands of people
in the thrift stores that are scanning with their eBay app.
They got their sound all the way up.
I hear that stupid dinging all over the store.
And I think to myself, this poor soul's got no chance.
They don't even know how to turn the volume down
on their phone and they're scanning on the eBay app.
It's like, it lives in my, it's like nightmare fuel.
That stupid, have you ever scanned a barcode
with the eBay app?
Yeah, I have.
I didn't like it.
It just makes this loud ding.
You know exactly that it's eBay
and you hear them in every thrift store.
So think about it.
You, somebody that's new to reselling, watches a video,
they see these people bringing home all this stuff.
They go to their stores.
How many of these people that aren't finding
all the gold bars are out there?
And they're just like, well, I guess, I guess, you know,
it's not as easy, but you go in thinking,
well, I'll come back in a month and maybe I'll find something.
And then you never come back because you're just like,
now I'm too lazy, forget about it.
I'd rather just kind of be, you gotta want it, right?
You gotta want it because if not,
you're just gonna be lazy about it.
If you just wanna, it's easier to just stay in your job
or stay in the same situation that you have
instead of trying to make a change,
make some changes in your life
and go out there and actually get it.
I mean, people, I don't know.
I mean, there's something to that.
You gotta be willing to change yourself to be successful.
I truly believe what you're saying there.
And why are people so resistant?
They think there's a better, easier, lazier path.
It's like, why?
No, that's not how success works.
And then you have lazy people trying to cheat the system,
selling new items is not new.
And that's just another form of laziness and or,
you know what, I'm not cleaning any discs.
They're all going in.
And it's like, why?
You could work just a little bit harder and be above board
and not risk your whole account going kablooey.
I don't know, man.
It's just humans are multifaceted.
I'll give them that.
And there's different personality types
and different emotions and different backgrounds of people,
very complex layers, right?
But when it comes down to reselling,
it's do the work, get paid,
and then do the correct work and get paid even more.
And then doing that over and over again for years,
it's very much a long game.
It's not a short game in my opinion,
because every time you're wanting to change
something fundamental, well, it costs money.
If you're wanting an employee, if you're wanting extra space,
if you're wanting new equipment,
if you're wanting a truck instead of a car
because you're upgrading, because you can haul more,
all these fun little things.
But that all comes with the initial work.
And it's the avoidance of work or trying to shortcut the work
where I see people, well, fall flat on their face
and start anew or you never see them again
because they're broke and folded up shop.
I still think we should have some type of reselling graveyard
over in the Discord or people that used to be on all the calls
and they're no longer there and we can just drag them over.
We can hold like a memorial service every single year
for all the resellers that have come and gone.
But I think it's another part of it is it's hard for somebody
that's brand new to replicate what they see, right?
Like when I have coaching sessions with people
that are brand new, first thing I tell them is,
listen, you're not going to get the same results as me.
I've been doing this for years, right?
Sure, what you see on YouTube is me out there scanning,
finding X amount of items, but you're not going to be
the best at something when you start it.
Like it does not exist.
All the greatest people in their fields, they went to school,
they trained the sport for years and years and years to get there.
But for some reason in the reselling world,
we think that we can start the business today
and we're going to go find the gold bars
and we're going to be making all the money
because that's what you see.
And the second you don't, that's it, you're done
because it's a lot easier to be like,
well, I'm just not going to go do it today
because I'm not finding the stuff these other people are finding
and it just enables you to be more lazy
than to actually go out there and do it.
Yeah, I've got one that I recently had happen to myself.
Somebody asked for a price evaluation of a book
because I couldn't find any results.
I'm like, okay, fine, I'll Google this for them.
I did it, it was really quick
and I couldn't find anything really either.
I'm like, well, based off the information, I'm like 50 bucks
because I can't find your exact book.
Another guy comes along, he's been doing this 30, 40 years,
he knows the exact auction weird website to go to.
He's like, Johnny's wrong, it's $500, that extra zero to that.
Here's the link to it.
I'm like, damn, I got schooled.
And it's fine, it's fine.
He's been at this a lot longer than me.
He knows every little rabbit hole to go down to be exact.
I'm like, yeah, I mean,
but I don't know how much time you put into that,
but you're correct, you win, sir.
And that was me being lazy, that really was.
I could have spent another couple of hours to dig that up,
but it's not my book.
I don't, it's not for me.
I just try to help out really quick,
but that was me being lazy.
That's a poor instance.
Hey, if you want to start donating your time,
you can just do all my calls.
Yeah, I know, it's not charity work
and I don't get paid for it, so yeah.
You get the $50 answer, not the $500 answer.
They sign up for the one-on-one, right?
And they expect me to show up and you show up,
and they're like, shit, it's Johnny, not Mike.
Maybe that'll be like the new thing like for the YouTube,
when you sign up for the one-on-ones,
it's like, you don't know who you're gonna get
for your one-on-one, but you've got your-
It's like a mid-tier, the 750, and it's like a button.
Big money, no Johnny, no Johnny.
Johnny, damn it.
I think if you think about it,
you can't be lazy in this, right?
I've classified myself as being a quote unquote
in comparison lazy reseller,
because I'm only in it 20 hours a week,
and that's not hard, intensive labor.
And I think the other route, like you were talking about,
is you can almost be lazy if you bust your ass
for the one to five years it takes to build this business,
where you can hire people and step out of the business,
and then you're just the guy that has to deal
with the big problems, right?
Like maybe the logistics or just getting the inventory,
you're not actually listing,
you're not actually lifting the books.
And what I've seen really recently,
and I saw this a few years ago,
and then the trend died off, and now it's back.
People are starting reselling,
and they're instantly hiring a VA,
and they don't know their business.
What is 50 cents an hour, dude?
And that's like a badge of honor.
No, no, no.
I'm seeing people go the other way.
They'll say 50 cents a listing or a dollar a listing.
And it's like, I agree, a VA can be a useful tool,
but you should at least know what you're doing first
before you get one,
so you can teach the VA how to run your business.
Dude, you are reselling.
You need this middle part of knowledge
to transfer to this low wage worker.
We as resellers, as single persons,
as single person operators or couple,
whatever it may be,
one, two, three, even if it's a family of four or five,
the potential and money you can make by yourself
is astronomical.
So this idea that we need,
and I haven't seen it come back.
I feel like in 2023,
that's every video that I've seen on YouTube
was like, hire somebody, hire us.
I quite haven't seen it, but you're in another group,
so I can see it coming.
The VA thing definitely is like the hottest thing in Amazon.
When I joined reselling, VA was hot,
and then it stopped and people fired their VAs.
Now it's back.
Like Shady's back.
I don't think you need an employee
till you're doing well over six figures reselling by yourself.
I don't care if that's eBay, Amazon, Bonanza,
whatnot, McCarrie, Poshmark, Etsy.
You can get a lot done.
I mean, I've been in the trenches,
Deb's, she built her own brand.
She's had days, multiple days, weeks in a row
where it's sun up to sun down.
The machines are running, we're stitching,
we're stuffing cat and dog toys.
And you think to yourself, okay, well,
let's take a step back and look at this.
Well, how much money are you making?
How long can you do this for?
And then you can think about that.
But I mean, it's gotta be at least six figures
before you even think of,
dude, I do over six figures in sales
and I'm working 20 hours a week.
Why the hell would I ever need a VA?
I could just work more and make more money myself.
I think it's the badge of honor.
And I think it is the laziness
of people trying to cut corners.
But I mean, you got services now out there
where you can send your items and they'll photo it for eBay
and they'll actually store it
and then they'll ship it for you when somebody orders it.
So they almost have like an Amazon FBA service out there now.
Right, like a prep center, right?
Like Amazon has the prep center,
which is the equivalent of VA Lister on eBay, essentially.
Yeah.
But yeah, it's like, at least get five,
at least do 5,000 listings in my opinion,
whether they're drafts or actives,
take you maybe a year or two
if you're doing this on part-time.
Or at least get to 5,000 active units on Amazon
before you use a prep center,
unless you're dealing with refrigerators from the get-go.
I think there's this do it yourself,
learn all you can moment.
And then people are unwilling to take that.
You're like, you know what?
I want an easy life.
I'm hiring a VA right now.
I've never even launched a listing.
I don't even know what a listing looks like
and I'm gonna hire a VA.
Well, you're more around like the eBay VAs.
I'm more around the Amazon VAs.
Yeah, that's true.
I'm curious.
So I hate eBay.
I hate listing on eBay.
So you're telling me-
Most everybody does hate listing.
I go to like, I don't know,
one of these websites,.ph and get my VA.
So I just take the photos and what?
Just upload them into like a Google Drive
and then they create the listings?
Correct.
You give them the limited eBay access
and you give them the criteria of how you want it listing.
And they may get it wrong and then you retrain them.
Eventually they'll get it right.
And then you have a lister.
And you either do it by the listing
or you do it by the hour.
In my opinion, the hour is the way to go over the listing.
All right, maybe I'm crazy.
Maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong.
But I got an eBay hot take coming in here.
What you wanna do,
I feel like that's the most important part
is the item description and the title.
Because the photos, even if it's described correctly
and it's got a good title
and the item descriptions are correct,
I think you can still sell an item with crappy photos.
It's got a correct description
versus the other way around where you have the best photos
and the title is completely wrong
and there's no item descriptions.
Yeah, I think, I mean, all of it's important,
but as far as the priority goes,
I think title needs to be searchable.
They gotta be able to find it.
And then your photos have to make it look
what the product you're is gonna get.
And then the item specifics,
I think that'd be the totem pole order in my opinion.
Are they hiring, is it US based VAs?
Are they doing the Amazon route where it's like oversees?
It's all foreign.
You're paying like,
you're paying either like 50 cents a dollar a listing
and then hourly,
you're probably in the three to $4 an hour range.
Yeah, I'm out.
I mean- If you pay more, you can,
I don't know, keep,
the other part about VAs is they're notorious for outsourcing
if you pay like $2 an hour.
They'll give it to grandma McGee over there to do the work.
They'll take a dollar, grandma will get a dollar,
but you're never consistent with the quality of work.
See, that's why you have to end up in the, I think,
five to $6 an hour range if you want a really good VA
and you wanna maintain them.
I think it's worthwhile to say, right?
Like when you had your employees,
you were paying them a good fair wage above what,
they would make it any other place.
And I would say you got,
if you compared the wages like versus you hiring a VA
versus you hiring somebody and the person you hire,
you're paying 10X,
I feel like you're getting way more than 10X
with that person that's right there next to you
that is capable of understanding and teaching
and learning the business versus somebody that lives
on the other side of the universe
who has no idea how anything works.
Right, and I think you're able for an in-house team,
even though you're paying the in-house team more,
you can catch mistakes a lot quicker than you could a VA.
VA may do 500 units and there's 500 mistakes
that need to be redone.
Okay, here's your money for the mistake worked.
And now here's the new money
for you to do all the corrections.
You did the same thing for an employee, don't get me wrong.
I'm not gonna dock their wages
because you have fucked up more or less.
But I do, I think I can catch it easier if it's in-house,
at least that's my personal experience
because I'm walking around, I'm doing things,
I spot them doing something wrong versus a VA, I don't know.
I mean, they got screenshot logs and all that
that you gotta review or whatever,
but that's not multitasking, catching something kind of deal.
Like I was saying, walking around the shop,
I'm doing my thing, they're doing theirs.
I think those mistakes can be caught a lot quicker.
Now, I'm gonna say this, I'm not opposed to VA.
I think they're wonderful tools.
And that's not meant as a joke.
An employee is a tool of mine.
A VA is a tool of mine to use,
to pull out of the toolbox when needed.
But to the point of,
I think you gotta know what you're doing
before you hire an employee.
How do you have a standard operating procedure
if you've never had one for your own self?
You gotta be making money too, dude.
Yeah, you're gonna be bleeding money.
Even if it's three bucks an hour, right?
That's not productive work.
I mean, unless you're, I think a lot of that crap too
is category based, right?
I mean, imagine somebody trying to hire me as a VA
and I got a list like women's clothes, right?
Or like shoes, or like, I don't know no brands,
I don't know no style.
So I think that would be so, but it's a way to be lazy.
That's why you brought it up, because you can just say,
well, I sent my photos in the Google Drive
across the world to some other person
and I can just sit back and do nothing all day.
There's no easy shortcuts like that.
And you have to accept the fact that
if you wanna be the person that can build the business
and set back out of it,
you're gonna have to work really, really hard for years.
And you sacrifice today,
so you have something different in the future.
And that's another reason why people get lazy
is because you sacrifice today, right?
Like I worked the hardest I've ever worked in 2024,
but you don't have nothing to show for it, right?
Like we've all been there where you're starting something,
you're building something,
or you can even relate it to like debt, right?
When I used to be in tens of thousands of dollars in debt,
I'm working more than I ever have, 50 hour weeks at CVS.
And the bank account is not going up, Johnny,
because all my money is going towards the debt.
So you can easily just say,
well, listen, I just worked more than I ever have
my entire life, and I don't see no difference.
I still can't afford the Domino's Pizza.
So that's it, I'm just gonna give it up.
I'm here to tell you, it was planning, right?
Like years and years of doing a budget,
a handwritten budget, every single paycheck,
every single dollar had somewhere to go.
So me and Deb sacrificed for years, and yes, it sucked,
sucked a big time when we couldn't afford nothing.
And you're hoping your income tax return
got you a little bit of money so you could buy,
yourself a tablet, an iPad.
And now, nowadays, it's completely different.
Now I'm just like, okay, the bank account goes up,
we can start planning for the future,
but it's so easy to flip that switch off.
Hell, I'm talking years of doing this.
People can't stay with something for three months.
So it's so much easier to just be like,
all right, I'm done, this sucks.
It's just easier for me to just go be the rat in the wheel
and continuously just be lazy
because all I do is work my job, and when I'm off my job,
I don't wanna do anything else.
Well, I'm here to tell you,
if you wanna get ahead in this game,
it's still possible to get ahead.
There's just gonna be a lot of hard work
and a lot of tactical and thoughtful approach to everything.
The inventory you're buying, how you're listing,
how many listings, how long are you taking the pack?
What are you spending on advertising?
As resellers, we don't even really like,
well, we got promoted listings on eBay,
but Amazon, we don't really pay to promote your brand
versus Deb, she's got her own brand, her own website.
You're paying hundreds, thousands of dollars
every single year in advertising,
and we just, I don't know, man, it irritates me
because I've sacrificed and there were plenty of times
I wanted to be lazy, and I thought to myself,
well, what is life gonna look like
if I just suck it up and deal with it?
And not only me sacrificing, the person you're with
or the people you're around or you're used to being around,
they're gonna have to make a sacrifice too.
If it's just Johnny, but Johnny goes and hangs out
with his friends every single night to play poker
or Dungeons and Dragons, I don't know,
are you a poker or Dungeons and Dragons guy?
Both.
Both, okay, fair enough.
He plays both, it depends on the day of the week.
And he's like, hey, I'm trying to build,
I'm working on building this business
and I wanna kinda get some money in my bank account,
start planning for retirement, maybe buy a house,
buy a car, whatever that may be.
I'm not gonna be around every single night anymore.
And that's a sacrifice.
And that's another reason why people get lazy
is because you have to sacrifice some things.
And it sucks, dude, I'll admit it.
We've all been there and it's easy to just say,
ah, I'm good, I'd rather just sit around
and play poker tonight instead of listing 50 items on eBay.
Exactly, and for anybody who has a warehouse
and there's a few of us out there,
I hope that are listening, you're stuck in the cave, right?
That's what the warehouse is, it's a giant cave.
And anybody who's worked in a warehouse
for a lengthy part of time, we all know this.
We want out of the cave, but we stay here
to do the hard work to get out of the cave
and do whatever we want later.
It is a self-sacrifice.
And to Mike's point about paying off the debt,
that is a flight or fight scenario,
but nobody tells you the fight's gonna last
a little while, same with the warehouse workers.
Staying in the cave for years, it sucks, it blows,
but it's a necessary thing to be done
to get what we want later.
I think, actually, I shouldn't even say this,
but I don't care.
We're slowly becoming one of the most controversial
podcasts ever.
I think people are too soft nowadays.
They don't got the worth all to see something through
and actually commit to a process for longer than a week
or longer than a month, longer than six months.
Nothing good comes easy, and I know that's like a cheesy,
oh man, everybody's, nothing good comes easy.
That's like, you know, but that's the reality of it.
You gotta be willing to get down there,
bust your butt when you don't wanna bust your butt.
That's gonna make the difference between you
and the next person is you actually doing it,
because the topic of laziness,
if there's a hundred of us that are standing here today,
it's 20 degrees outside, we all gotta go thrifting,
but the turkey just came out the oven
and it's nice and warm inside, and my favorite show,
my football game's about to come on, my team.
It's how many out of the hundred people
are just staying at home?
It's probably 95 plus, right?
But those five people that decide, okay, you know what?
I can just check the score when I'm out and about
and I have a second and I can eat when I get back,
or maybe I can take a turkey sandwich with me.
Those people are the ones that win.
You just gave me an epiphany moment.
I asked a question a while back,
I don't know if it was here or some other group,
like why does the book selling demographics
seem to be an older crowd?
And you just answered it for me.
It's work ethic.
I don't see the younger guys,
like you and I are considered young guys in this game,
we really are, even though I think of myself as old,
and then I'll see somebody much younger than me,
those people are even rare, the guys in their 20s,
their younger 20s.
It's because where's the work ethic gone?
I mean, you just said it a minute ago,
it's like, we're just so lazy.
Like when I was growing up, my old man would throw me a rake,
he's like, I want these two acres raked up
before sundown or no dinner for you.
That's a consequence, I gotta get it done.
Or you gotta go do the hard, grindy job.
Like you worked at CVS, I worked at a marketing thing,
we both grind of different types,
but we grinded it out because it needed to be done.
Nowadays, you know what?
I don't like my Starbucks job,
I'm gonna work at Uber Eats next week,
I'm gonna go do whatever other job,
and they don't stick with it, they don't grind it out.
And I'm not saying do stupid jobs
for doing stupid jobs sake,
I'm saying doing what's necessary.
Where has the doing what's necessary mentality gone?
It probably went to that same meeting
where they decided not to Google shit anymore.
I'm just saying.
It's funny, me and Deb talk about this all the time,
people are like, they're not working
no matter what their job is or what business they have.
And they have an opportunity to go work,
but it's not the amount of money that they wanna make.
And the immediate thought that comes into my mind is,
well, isn't some money better than no money?
But in today's world, that is not the case, right?
It's just, well, I'd rather just do nothing
instead of going to make less money than I think I'm worth.
Well, at the end of the day,
some money is better than no money.
But we can't accept that fact.
We always gotta have the perfect situation
for me to jump into and actually buckle down
and give something.
Like everything has to go perfect for me to stay motivated.
And I'm here to tell you, in reselling,
everything is gonna go the opposite way of perfect,
and it's gonna be trials and tribulations
of you trying to figure it out and weasel your way through
to get the business profitable, refine your processes,
and turn it into something that you actually can live on.
Right, and there's that,
and then having the foresight of what you're living on today
is not gonna cut it in the following years.
You need more,
and you have to constantly grow in your business.
And that does require foresight.
That does require the planning.
And it requires the investment of both time
and your money that you're getting.
Like I'm making money.
I should go spend some of it now.
All the core business needs are met.
All my personal bills are met.
Here's this pile of money left over.
You know what?
I haven't upgraded the car in four years.
It's time for a new one when that car is perfectly fine.
I go out and buy it.
And then they just do little upgrades like that.
I'm not saying don't improve your quality of life.
That's not what I'm saying.
But make the necessary sacrifices,
maybe hold off on the new car and see it needed.
Hold off on, well, I'm gonna upgrade from the two-bedroom
to the three-bedroom apartment just because I can.
Some of those things need to wait
because you gotta take care of your future self.
You've already taken care of your today self,
but your future self needs its attention here today as well.
So invest in yourself for the future.
All right, we're gonna wrap this episode up here.
Being lazy, you can spin it into kind of like
my type of business where laziness in quotation marks
because you just get your time back,
but other people will think of you as lazy
because you're not reselling 80 hours a week.
You're no real reseller, Mike.
Well, you know what?
Hey, let's check the bank accounts.
Let's see whose bank account's going up.
Just because somebody's working more
doesn't mean they're making more money.
And a lot of times in a reselling, believe it or not,
it is the complete opposite.
A lot of people reselling love to waste all of their time
and make little to no money.
Meanwhile, little Mike sits over here
and works as little as he can.
It makes a lot more money than the people working all the time
and it's different for everybody.
But don't let the lazy bug kind of drag you down.
There is a way you're just gonna have to get through
the crappy days and there's gonna be a lot of good days,
but just focus on today and getting through today
and putting in the work you're supposed to do today.
Rinse and repeat, give it some time,
then you'll get results.
That's gonna do it for this week's episode.
We will talk to you all next week.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes
are available to all YouTube members
along with a weekly Zoom call and private Discord.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash to use book guy
and consider joining for as little as $2.99 a month.