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.
The year now is 2025.
What are we going to do, Johnny?
Are we going to be rich?
Are we going to be broke?
Am I going back to CVS?
Or am I going to be an Amazon billionaire?
Let's get right on into it.
So for me, 2025, year changes, no big deal.
Just number, right?
One little digit at the end of the four digit number.
Goes up by one.
Business continues as always.
But for a lot of people, it's kind of a point of reflection.
Where do they want to be this year?
I'm not saying I'm a huge hater of New Year's resolutions.
I just think there has to be actionable plans
to make changes, right?
We can sit here and say, hey, Johnny,
I want to sell a million dollars.
Johnny's like, OK, what are you going to do?
I'm like, I don't know.
I want to sell a million dollars, though.
What's it going to be?
So the New Year's brings in the resolutions.
That brings in a lot of new resellers.
That brings into a lot of people I want to make more money
or any money reselling.
And I think we have to realize that it's
OK to have new goals.
It's a new year.
We should have new goals.
We always should have goals, whether it's
2024, 2025, 2026.
We always should be working towards something
and kind of refining our processes along the way.
And I would say that I'm excited for a new year
because 2024 was my best year.
So having that challenge of being better than 2024
kind of excites me.
And I already have plans in place to kind of up my revenue,
up my sales, and at the end of the day,
what we all should only be the only thing that should be going
up, the bank account at the end of the day.
So for me, I have a lot of plans in place,
different things I'm going to try.
I'm curious what you're feeling on New Year's resolutions are
and kind of, I don't know, what's your take on it?
I think my biggest New Year's resolution,
and we talked about this in a previous podcast,
is I'm more of a focus on sell through rate of people
going to buy it in a more timely fashion
versus long tail big money items.
It's not like I'm going to ignore those items altogether.
It's just the bulk of my business, I think,
is going to focus more on sell through rate.
And to means to that end, that'll be me opening up
a bigger and badder brick and mortar sometime in 2025,
or this year rather, since we are in 2025 now,
at the time of this release,
and automating a few more systems
and bringing on some staff like on the eBay.
I don't think I need to touch eBay
other than sending offers and monitoring the systems.
I can have one photographer,
I'm probably going to bring on a VA
and teach them what I do.
Maybe two of them, depending on the volume,
because it's not worth my time anymore, honestly,
but I do like the revenue from it.
So I'm going to put my personal time
into more on the buying aspect than the actual day to day.
I'm going to do a lot more outside the book cave sourcing.
I think I'm actually going to go out this year a lot more.
I'm planning on doing that.
I'm probably going to focus on counties around my area
and then expand my bubble outward
and see where that can take me.
And then I think I'm going to add video games in the mix,
because a lot of my friends that are resellers,
they do video games.
And I see the kind of money they make
and they're sending in less than I am
as far as quantity goes, but their ASP is much higher
and their selfie rate is much higher.
So I think incorporating that into my business model
is a smart play for myself.
Still going to do CDs, still going to do DVDs,
and always, always and forever going to be doing books.
And I think the last little fundamental change,
I'm going to get into merchant slash cross-listing,
because there are items that I will just naturally accumulate
where it's not worth sending in to FBA,
it's not worth technically listing on eBay, just in eBay.
But if I cross-list it, it can yield me a few dollars.
But even then, I mean, very hands-off, it's more of,
here's a bucket of merchant slash cross-listing items,
you, Mr. Cross-lister, go do it
and do the put away and the shipping and all that.
So a lot of changes in 2025 for me.
When those will take effect will depend on my cashflow,
but if my business model is spot on,
it should just come naturally and organically.
It's not like a, well, I have 300 grand in the bank right now,
here you go, business, and we're off.
No, it doesn't work like that.
Changes happen gradually.
So these are all my plans I'm hoping to execute
along the 2025 year.
And if I'm short on a few of them, that's okay,
it'll spill off into 2026.
But yeah, I plan to do a lot more hustle
and get a lot more income, but also spend a lot more
in reinvesting in the business.
Hopefully we both are moved by the time
we have this conversation next year,
because you're looking to move.
I've been looking to buy a house.
I just, I don't wanna rush into anything.
I've been so calculated financially
up until this point in my life
that it's not just, oh, go buy a house, Mike.
Like a lot of people, whenever I talk about it,
they're like, oh, just go buy a house.
I'm like, yeah, well, it's gotta be the right,
it's gotta be in the right location.
It's gotta be the right price.
I'm not just doing it just to do it, right?
So that'll be a big change for me,
hopefully this year as well.
You moving as well.
So we're gonna have potentially our whole lives
being uprooted and moved, you know,
hour or so away, depending how far you go,
depending how far I move.
So that'll be a big change, but I think we can, you know,
get our business to a point where when the change comes,
we can easily make the transition.
And I think transitioning your goals is what you have to do
because we can sit down and write 300K on a piece of paper,
on the calendar, on the whiteboard we got.
But more importantly is, well, okay, that's just a number.
What are the steps?
What are you gonna change to get there?
And I do think 2025 had this,
we talk about this all the time,
there's no better time than today
to double down on what's working or even start reselling,
even though you hear all the noise
and people are getting banned on Amazon,
eBay, the website's down 35 times a day.
You can't sell anything.
I think now if you do it the right way,
there's no better time.
Regardless of all the noise you hear,
if you just block this all out and go away from social media,
never watch another reselling video,
never listen to another podcast and just start your business
and learn the hard way as you go, you make mistakes,
you learn from the mistakes,
you would by far leaps and bounds exceed any goal you had
in your reselling business.
I agree with that.
I listened to, when I started, I was listening
and watching everything, attending an abundance
of calls and all these groups.
Today, I do very little of that.
My circle of listening time or watching time
or being involved time has shrunk dramatically
and more time in the business.
And I think that's just a reseller journey
that you have to go down.
Eventually you will transition to that too
because there's not a lot of new things
or innovation being said these days.
So it's like, it's the same old thing.
And well, if it's the same old thing,
I already know the answer,
I already know the outcome of this conversation.
Do I need to listen to it again?
The answer right now to me is no,
is no, unless I'm missing something fundamental
and then I've made a mistake along my journey.
And then maybe perhaps I need to go back
and do some research and learn and all of that.
But no, new efforts on research and learning,
that's put into what makes my life easier?
What tool can I get?
What's available?
Being aware in that space,
I think is more of where I'm at in these days.
If I can find a tool or an application or a new process
or even a machine to take a lot of the workload off of me
to free up my time,
that is worth my time investment
looking that stuff up at this stage.
All right, Johnny, it's time to piss off all the listeners.
Let's do it.
Johnny's favorite part, Johnny's favorite segment,
just piss off everybody's segment.
My goal is to have one subscriber on this channel.
Let's go.
All right, so if we look back to last year, 2024,
people are going to say that it was,
the economy had a lot of effect on their reselling business
and why they couldn't get sales or grow their business.
And the platforms were busted, the fees are high.
So we get stuck with challenging them on the point
that we both had our best years so far
selling on our respective platforms for ourselves.
So we fall into this weird trap of,
well, what do we do if 2025 is no different?
What if it's worse?
What if the economy in people's eyes is worse?
Because I think a lot of people are banking on this year
being better than last year,
but how do you categorize better?
To them, it just means more sales by not doing more work
because that's the only even comparison we have is
everything you do stays the exact same,
but it's a better year for you because the world,
the economy is better for everybody.
So people have more spendable income.
And I challenge people on that to not just bank on,
well, 2024 was so shitty that there's no way 2025
can be worse.
I'm a firm believer when it rains, it pours,
especially in life when things happen,
they seem to pile up pretty quickly.
So I could care less what's going on out there
in the universe.
My goal is what worked for me last year,
I'm doubling down on that because if 2024 was the worst year
and it was my best year, I mean 2025, Johnny,
I'm looking at billions and trillions of dollars in sales.
What's up Amazon sellers,
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I mean, yeah, I mean, things outside of your control,
you can never predict in a crystal ball
or any kind of forecasting, the market tanks,
cost of goods go up, mailing goes up,
all of these things, right?
So what do you do to counteract these things?
Well, like you said, you double down on what's working,
do more of that to get more income in the bank.
If it works, it works.
If it's a tried and true, well, stick to it.
Now, you may wanna look into things
that no matter what the economic state of the world
and or fee adjustments, maybe put some money
into that aspect of your business model.
For me, I believe that,
and people are gonna pull out their hair when I say this.
For me, my route, I'm going on that,
there's multiple routes,
but my personal one is brick and mortar.
Doesn't matter if eBay shuts down,
doesn't matter if Amazon shuts down,
my open sign is still open as long as I can do the rent.
And then it's just a matter of bringing traffic to me.
And then having a business outside of reselling potentially,
that is another route.
Or some people like their investments in real estate
and stocks and all of that.
Moding yourself in where you're not just all in helps a lot.
What I mean by mode is you have multiple streams
of incomes coming in.
I mean, you have YouTube, that is your thing.
Me, it's gonna be brick and mortar.
So having multiple streams in the worst case scenario
for one of them doesn't mean that all of them
are in the worst case scenario, just one factor.
But if you're just monode in a singular thing
that produces money, when that thing goes awry,
you're not as, or released in minutes and fucked
as you would be otherwise by diversifying.
You think that's kind of what happened in 2024
is people just kind of only had this one source
and they had an expectation from previous years
or from when they started,
when we talked about it all the time,
when they were giving money away
and people could only shop online.
Do you think that kind of is what caused
like the huge reseller resignation of 2024?
And do you think that in 2025,
we're gonna have the same aspect
because people aren't gonna change their businesses?
Or do you think people are gonna be more uppity
in the reselling world because maybe now that,
magically the economy is better because of stupid politics
that have no effect on your direct life change
and you're gonna be a new president.
And for me, I only worry about what I can control
at the end of the day, but I know for a fact resellers,
we look for reasons and excuses outside of our control
to blame our business success or failures on.
Here's what I see.
If you join up as a reseller in COVID error,
you've either made adjustments by now
or you're out of the game by now
and, or you're on your way out of the game.
So, but there's a coin flip to that.
So all those people are gonna be leaving
and all the people that wanted enough
because they are making it in their day job,
they're gonna come into the market space now.
So I think we're gonna see another boom of resellers.
A lot of part-timers come in and make a go of it.
And then of those, that new boom,
I don't know how many of them are making,
but we're gonna get some amazing new resellers,
I think in the next two to three years come along.
And all there are gonna be a lot more complainers
because that new injection of people,
they didn't have the COVID dollars.
So they're gonna be hungrier
because they're not getting money left and right.
And they're gonna have to grind harder.
They're gonna have to want it more.
So again, I think we're gonna see some beautiful resellers
come along in the next two to three years.
That is a 100% great take because they don't,
they never had the experience of the free money.
So they don't have the expectation
of the free money numbers,
which is 100% only gonna benefit them.
That's kind of, it'll be fun to see what happens,
how it shakes out overall in reselling
and being on YouTube and we do the podcast
and a lot of these groups doing a lot of coaching calls.
I'll be curious to see what the temperament is.
I would say 2024 was a lot of people
trying to either make the money part-time
or try to turn their reselling business
into a full-time hobby.
I've seen success in both
and I've seen absolute failures in both.
And I think as we roll into this new year,
you have to have a clear goal in mind
and a clear basically,
when I worked at CBS as a store manager,
you would have to have a goal
and then you would have to have a plan of action
to get there, right?
You go and just say,
oh, our customer service score is gonna be 90.
Well, they wanna know how do you plan on getting it
from 80 to 90, right?
You need to have a measurable-
It's like a business plan.
There needs to be measurable steps.
That was the big thing.
Measurable steps, not just, well, I'm gonna do more.
No, it has to be something we can measure to see
if this is actually helping or hurting you.
So your goals need to have measurable steps.
Are you actually gonna go to more stores?
And if you do, how many more stores are you gonna go to?
Are you actually gonna send in more items?
If so, how many items?
Are you gonna list more items?
How many more items?
There has to be something you can measure.
It just can't be these willy-nilly things like,
I'm gonna list more.
Well, cool, me too.
Yes, I'm gonna list more.
Is that one more or is that 50 more?
And if you're listing more, is your current model working?
Or are you gonna create a more broken model
and more intensely broken?
Or no, it works and you're going full bore on it
and you're gonna do fantastic.
I mean, these are things you have to analyze.
Like, look at your business, is it working?
Are you getting the, on a single sale,
what is your takeaway?
What is your average percent takeaway?
Are you doing 50%?
Are you doing 20%?
Can you make a business off a 20% margin rate of return?
Rate of return, back to you.
And then of that 20%, let's pay taxes on it.
Let's take up the cost of goods.
Let's take out all the little fees out of that 20%
that is a true remaining amount
that's left in the bank account.
And now it's scaling that up.
Can you live off that?
Can you retire off of that?
Yes, no, these are questions.
You need to ask yourself today, not tomorrow, today.
It's tough for some because you have no boss, right?
You got nobody you have to answer to.
You kind of can just do whatever you want.
It's like the benefit of reselling
is that you can have your own schedule,
but that's like the biggest downfall of people
because most people need the structure in their life of,
okay, here's my schedule for the next two weeks.
Here's when I got to show up.
Here's when I can have all.
In reselling, that's not the case.
So a lot of people at start this aren't accustomed
to having the freedom.
And you can easily lose all your money
and all of your time in reselling
if you're not kind of calculated from beginning to end.
And I think the biggest takeaway for me in 2024,
maybe my biggest pet peeve with 2024
that I've seen from resellers
is we are trying to get all the money all of the time.
And my mindset in 2024 was give me any of the money
all of the time and I'm gonna be a okay.
And that literally transformed my business.
And I think in 2025, we have to have that mindset is
let's price our items to sell.
Let's aggressively price our items.
Let's aggressively source our items.
Let's get our items for cheaper.
So we can sell it for less and make more money
than somebody who's paying more for the item
and selling it less.
That gives you the upper hand.
We always think of ourselves as resellers
as the little guy, right?
Like me and John, you're the little guy
compared to some of these huge book companies
that have warehouses.
Well, the reason they can go down to six dollars on a book
is because they have an infinite supply of them.
You as a single reseller can stumble into the same thing
if you just actually open your eyes and look.
So for me, I want any of the money all of the time.
Even if that means I sell an item
and I wind up breaking even or even if I lose a quarter,
the item is still going from my inventory.
It had a shot when I sent it in initially
to sell for profit.
Not everything is going to sell.
Not everything that is going to sell
is gonna sell for profit.
But if I can just turn that inventory over,
maybe recoup some or just get it out of my inventory,
that's better than it just sitting there.
But for some reason, we have to be the guy or the girl
that's like, I know I can get $50 for this remote.
I'm not taking a penny less,
even if there's 10 other people selling it for $40 or $30.
Right.
And here's another big takeaway.
Like earlier on, and I get why you have to do this early on,
because every dollar is precious.
The haggling for deals, I do less of that these days.
I just say yes, normally.
Or if the deal's a no-go, I just say no.
But if I'm gonna make money
and their number's a little higher than what I want,
I'm not gonna tell them no, I'm not gonna counter offer.
I'm just gonna say yes.
Yes, they're making money, I'm making money,
it's a total win.
Because the reason that is important to me,
because I know there's people in the comments like,
you fool, you could have gotten it for less.
Like, you're probably right.
But I'm looking more in relationship building these days
and I want them to contact me again and again and again.
And if I nickel and dime them,
I'm not, how do I word this correctly?
I'm not worth their time anymore.
They're never gonna call me again.
I wanna be worth their time every time.
And I think that's fundamentally important
in long-term relationship building.
I'm all about the long-term.
Now, the little one-off deals on Facebook
or free pickups and all of this,
I mean, I've kind of outgrown that, honestly.
And I'm looking for established people
that get what I sell on a regular basis
and I wanna be their go-to person
when they have excess inventory or they have inventory
they don't even know what to deal with that is up my alley.
I wanna be at the top of the call list for that.
And me nickel and diming them will not produce that.
And it doesn't matter if you're doing libraries,
it doesn't matter if you're talking about
thrift store managers or estate sales or auction houses,
or even fellow resellers who pick up stuff for you.
What I can do to grow my crop of being the go-to calls,
that's my goal these days is to be that person.
Let's get into some outlooks.
Well, first will be Outlook on Amazon
because that's the main platform we both sell on.
So my Outlook 2025 on Amazon overall is a platform.
At the end of 2024, basically Q4,
a lot of people were getting jammed up with IP complaints
and losing their accounts
because they didn't have chain of custody of products.
I think in 2025, we'll probably see more of the same
because at the end of the day,
there's a lot of bad players out there on Amazon.
So I think the section threes will continue,
but there are ways to kind of get around it
and actually keep your account.
So for people like me and you,
it's really not that much of concern
as long as you do things legitimately.
I think overall sales-wise,
I think Amazon's gonna continue to grow.
Now they've upgraded from the gas cars
and now they got the electric Amazon
that's delivering around me.
They built a new Amazon warehouse
literally within walking distance of my storage unit.
I think Amazon's gonna continue to grow.
I think their infrastructure is too strong.
The idea of skipping USPS
and getting people their stuff same day, a day,
two days at the longest,
is going to continue to create a marketplace
that's basically sucks for other platforms
because you can't compete, right?
Even if you ship all your stuff same day with eBay,
you still gotta wait for USPS to get it to the customer.
And people are so accustomed to the Amazon Prime
one, two day to get your stuff same day
that it sucks to sell on other platforms
because if that customer has that expectation
to get it within two days, it's just not gonna happen.
I think Amazon's gonna continue to grow.
I personally feel like I definitely will have higher revenue
in 2025 than I did in 2024.
I think the platform's still a great platform to start on.
Yes, there's hurdles, but all I can say
is every hurdle you jump, somebody else
is hitting that hurdle face on
and they're not getting to the next one.
So everything you do to get involved today
and all the little headaches, it's all worth it in the end.
What's your outtake on 2025 on Amazon?
I mean, no fee adjustments which is gonna be nice.
I mean, let me rephrase.
No new fees doesn't mean they can't increase current fees.
That's the language of what's been pumped out to us.
So I expect them to increase current fees
somewhere along the lines of 2025.
And I think what I'm putting into Amazon,
again, focusing on a higher sell through rate,
probably lower margin, but a higher sell through rate
is gonna sell within the six month window.
And things that go beyond that six month window,
they really gotta be worth the dollar amount.
Like it could sit there for three years
in the Amazon warehouse and it's okay.
Those kind of items, not the $30 item
that may or may not sell.
And working more on taking a step back
from like the box packing and more on the buying aspects.
I think that is, and that comes with employees
and staff and all that.
But I think that's my biggest projection outcome
of 2025 for Amazon for myself.
As far as Amazon as a whole, I expect some,
I expect some exodus from at least the media market
and or reselling on Amazon in general.
Cause I don't think all the kicking and screaming
we saw this year, they're not gonna survive two years,
the same thing.
Yeah, for sure.
I agree.
Let's get into the one that I really don't sell on is eBay.
But I do have a, I'm strongly opinion on eBay
because when I list something on eBay, it sells.
If it's once a month, once every three months,
it's a desirable item at a good price
and it actually sells.
So I'm a firm believer of all the people
that are out there crushing on eBay
that it can be a beautiful business
if you actually list desirable items at desirable prices.
And I mean, that just sums up any business in life, right?
If you provide a service,
a good service at a good price,
yes, you will actually get clients
and yes, you will actually make money.
I think the outlook for eBay,
I think the people that are winning now
all continue to win and if they wanna grow,
then it's definitely 100% possible.
And I think what you said in the Amazon space is,
I think a lot of people are burnt out on eBay
that aren't getting the sales
and aren't treating the platform right
and aren't listing the quality items.
It's harder and harder to get to run my eBay call
because I'm like, well, it's a little easier on Amazon
if you really want.
Yeah, it's tough because people have been accustomed
to getting this success on eBay,
regardless of what you're listing,
regardless of the quality of listings.
And I know for a fact that we could 100% be better
at some of these things.
Like I remember when you had,
the 10,000 plus inventory on eBay
and just how descriptive your listings were, right?
Like nobody could even come close to touching that
in the media category.
And for some reason, people don't wanna do that.
They just want the easy three photo, AI description,
sell the item on eBay.
And I think we have to accept the fact things have changed.
But for me personally, I think we're gonna see people
that have been crushing on eBay,
take it even further in 2025,
because they understand desirable items
at desirable prices means your bank account's going up.
Absolutely.
People are making eBay work.
They're just gonna crush it year over year.
They're not gonna see 100% growth year after year.
But a 10% growth, a 20% growth,
they're probably gonna see it
because they're just dialing up either the amount
of listings or they're upping their quality or both.
But you're not gonna see the huge swings.
Because once you make that first initial swing,
it's a home run and you've doubled your business.
You've tripled your business.
But doing that, compounding that year after year,
you get to a point where that's not doable anymore.
And you're looking at a slower growth,
but that's okay when your growth means an extra 50, 60,
80,000 in the bank for a 10%, 20% growth or 100,000.
It's okay.
It's okay, I promise you at that stage.
Now, what I also am seeing,
all these other little platforms,
they're trying to make these big shifts like,
hey, sellers, we're gonna pass on fees to the customers.
And then it backfires.
And then, you know what, JK,
it's back to you now, just to incentivize sellers.
Because I don't think these platforms understand
how fee bleeding a seller's is actually impacting us.
So they're trying to get more of us to sell
because they want the customers to come
because this is supply and manage you.
You need the resellers to supply your stock
so your customers come in and buy.
But they want money on their back end for their overhead
and plus a little change
because that's their business model.
I understand that.
But how they can tack on, continuously add on fees
impacts systematically.
And it gets to a point where, you know what,
the fees are too high.
Let me go try another platform.
They've left that platform.
So supply goes down and then your demand goes down
because those people,
well, I don't see anything I want anymore.
Let me go shop elsewhere.
So I'm seeing this across the board
of the smaller platforms trying to shift to this.
I'm wondering if the mighty Amazon and the mighty eBay
get to this some point where they're like,
no, we just don't want crap on our website anymore.
You got to sell high margin things
or you got to get into the new game,
new item game for clarification.
Because I don't know if you've ever talked to an Amazon rep
but when you say you sell goose,
those reps are like, what the hell are you doing?
We want you to sell new items.
They push that hard.
And all the emails we get, they want you to sell new items.
The use market, you can obviously tell
that is a low priority for Amazon.
Very, very, very low.
I think it's good because Amazon punishes you
if you send in slow moving inventory, right?
You have higher storage fees.
They want you to list things that are going to sell
versus eBay where you can just list it
and throw it in your garage
and it could just sit there for 25 years.
So I think there is benefits to Amazon kind of forcing
your hand with faster moving items.
So on the topic of our outlooks for different platforms,
we've already kind of seen a swing in this in Q4.
I think the huge shiny object that's going to come along,
at least in our space is selling on Walmart.
It's already kind of got some legs
and people are already jumping in and well,
what happens here is, well, selling on Walmart is great.
You can get so much more for your money,
but as the market becomes more saturated with new sellers,
it kind of balances itself out.
So I think that'll be a huge push in the reselling realm.
You're going to see tons of Walmart courses,
tons of Walmart coaches,
people leaving Amazon to sell on Walmart
just because they think, oh, you know,
I can get a little bit more.
Well, I challenge you on that.
Amazon is the biggest platform there ever will be
and it's only going to continue to grow.
So I think Walmart will be a huge one.
If I look at another platform
that kind of has taken off this year, Whatnot,
I think there's still lots of room for growth in Whatnot,
but I think yet again,
the same people that fall flat on their face
on other platforms are going to fall even flatter
on your face in a Whatnot
because people go to Whatnot streams
to get things at great prices and have a personality, right?
Like, you know, you got to talk to these people,
you got to be personable and you got to have great products
and you're not going to get the full asking price.
I have done research on Whatnot.
The people that win get good quality stuff
and are A-okay with selling it at lower margins
because they're selling more at a faster sell-through rate
than the other platforms.
So those people win.
And then all the little people cry about it
because, well, I can't help the fact
that that video game seller's got 30,000 copies
of Super Mario Brothers
and he can sell them endlessly at $3.
When I got one copy, I find it once a year
and I got to sell for $30.
I think we'll see more of that in the Whatnot space.
I think that's going to kind of weed out
a lot of the smaller people.
And honestly, the research I've done
and I've watched plenty of live streams,
it just, unfortunately, it's a platform
where anybody can go live and try to sell their stuff
and the quality of the setup is just bad.
The people aren't personable during their sales.
So for me, I think Whatnot's going to see growth.
I think Whatnot's going to continue to grow.
I think people are going to win even more in Whatnot.
I think a lot of people that are seeing success
on eBay and Amazon and Walmart and Poshmark and Macri,
I think those people that see success in those platforms
and can transition it into Whatnot,
I don't think you need a huge social media following.
I just think you need to have quality stuff at good prices
where you're still making money to get success on Whatnot.
So I'm kind of, you know,
I'll be glad to see Whatnot do a little bit better
because I know those people are getting less for their items,
but they have the margins.
Yeah, I mean, I keep my eye on it.
I'm still not convinced
because in my other book group,
it's called Paper Gold, Max Rons, whatever,
they have a little Whatnot section
and they like posting their numbers there.
It's like a little scoreboard.
And I'm seeing the same thing I always see.
They're either selling quality items
or they're selling crap.
People selling crap or making nothing,
but they're also making nothing, I believe,
is the main point you hit on of,
yes, you need a good item,
but also you need the personality to back that good item up
to make any real money.
Because I've seen some really great items
go for like $2 because the personality is so dry
or the technical difficulties are so bad.
They don't know their platform yet
or they don't have the personality to inject in there
where I don't think they're gonna be successful.
Because it's one thing.
Okay, I'm gonna make a horrible analogy
and I hate analogies.
If you've ever been to a carnival,
the people who have the lines
or the people with the biggest personalities,
with the biggest showmanship,
there are to get a stupid $10 teddy bear.
When the guy's selling the same teddy bear for $5
gets one customer.
It is very much an act of showmanship
of come see me, come look at me, come be a winner.
You're a cool person or here's a funny joke.
Getting your attention somehow some way
where you're kind of paying up for an entertainment value.
Because that's what this live selling is, it's entertainment.
I mean, you have Twitch, it's been around for decades.
People there have tremendous personalities
because that's the name of that game on Twitch, right?
For just watching me play.
You're literally buying nothing.
You're getting no product.
You're there for the entertainment.
It's the same thing for what not in my opinion,
except you get a physical item
at the end of that entertainment show.
So I believe if you're gonna make live selling your go-to
and you wanna make a great strives to it,
yeah, source grade items.
But also prepare to razzle and dazzle your audience,
charm their wallets off of them.
That is gonna have to be your play versus do a listing.
You can do it over and over again
or put it in the box and do it over again.
Different business models, they all work.
But I think what not is gonna be much harder grind
than people initially think it is.
Oh yeah, especially in the media space, you gotta be nuts.
You have to be absolutely asinine crazy
to think that you can make more money on what not
than you can selling media on Amazon.
It's not even close.
I mean, right now, if we just compare it to apples to apples,
it ain't even in the same generation.
And it's very much a volume game
because you're gonna be selling things for three, five,
eight dollars.
So how many shows are you wanting to do a week?
To me, that would be exhausting.
I'd rather grind all day doing listings or packing boxes
than grind, it's like us doing this podcast all day.
I don't know if I could survive past four hours
because there's a lot of talking,
a lot of talking and thinking and mental real estate
and paying attention.
You gotta read a chat too.
So imagine if we did the podcast, Mike, of,
I mean, you've done live Q&As.
That's a much harder live thing to do
than doing what we're doing now.
I think overall, to sum up this episode here,
2025 can be whatever you want it to be.
Set your goals out, have steps,
actionable, measurable steps to get to those goals,
regardless of the platform, regardless of the category.
You can make money still reselling.
It's better time than ever.
Start today, start doubling down on what's working,
start thinking about the future,
start being more obsessive about your financials,
understanding those types of numbers.
And 2025 can be your year.
It can be anybody's year if you're willing to put in the time
and the work, and Johnny sounds like a broken record,
but work more, right?
Johnny, that's how you're gonna get there.
Absolutely, work smarter in your efforts
that you do more of, and you'll be successful.
Now, if you're not working smarter
or you're grinding with a failing business model,
that's not gonna work.
You're gonna fall flat on your face and go out of business
and, or five years down the road,
you come to this realization,
and then you've wasted five years.
Don't waste five years.
Take a damn hard look at your business,
what's working, and anything else, cross off.
If you're spending time sorting does
to try to get 10 bucks in store credit,
and it takes you six hours to do this, stop that nonsense.
Just put them in the donation burn pile or trash can,
please, and thank you.
100%, that's gonna do it for this episode.
We appreciate you all listening or watching over
and YouTube land, we'll talk to you all next week.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
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