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.
You probably all are tired of hearing me and Johnny run
our mouths every single week.
So we decided to dig up a fellow reseller, fellow YouTuber.
We got Josh.
So he's going to introduce himself down below.
And as always, when we have a guest,
we're going to pick his brain when it comes to his business
and see where things go.
So Josh, thanks for coming on.
Introduce yourself.
And yeah, man, we're excited to have you here.
All right.
So yeah, it's good to be here.
My name is Josh.
I sell books, CDs, DVDs, that type of stuff full time,
eBay and Amazon.
For the last few years, I've been doing more eBay full time.
But over the last probably about 18 months or so,
I've been transitioning more and more towards Amazon
and kind of about at a 50-50 split now.
So eventually going more towards Amazon.
Got a YouTube channel as well.
It's just my name, Josh Graf.
So go ahead and check that out.
But yeah.
It's funny, man.
I remember when I first found you on YouTube.
This is probably, I don't know how long
your channel's been around.
But it definitely feels like it's at least been a year
since I found you.
And I remember you were parting out sewing machines.
You had all these damn sewing machines.
And since my wife, she is into embroidery
and has embroidery business.
I said, this guy's just piecing out all these damn machines.
And I remember you were selling some of these little parts
for stupid money.
You were just buying them.
Because every garage sale you go to
has those crummy Singer machines thrown.
And you probably, they just want them gone at that point.
So that is actually how I actually discovered you.
And I didn't even know you were big into media
until I actually watched a few videos.
And I said, wait a minute.
This guy is literally doing the same thing as me.
Yeah.
Yes.
I still can't walk by a good sewing machine sometimes.
Every now and then, I probably pick two or three up a month.
But that's about it right now.
But it's so easy just to buy one for like 20, 30 bucks.
Pull 30 parts off of it.
And sell each of those parts for like 20, 30 bucks.
It's easy for you, dude.
You know all the parts.
You know what brands are the best.
You know what models are.
But with anything, right?
There's some, you got to pay your dues
to kind of get a little bit ahead in the reselling world.
It does take a little bit of knowledge.
And the sell through rate is even worse than Johnny's.
So that's the biggest problem with it.
Yeah.
So I'm excited.
You just need thousands of it to make up for it.
Just keep buying.
And it's fine.
It'll be fine.
You are a prime example of one of my, I would,
converts, I like to call us.
People that started with eBay and slowly migrate to Amazon.
Now you're not fully there yet.
In my deep, deep heart, I do believe one day,
eBay will be a tiny percent of your business
and Amazon will be a higher.
I know you're laughing about it now,
but give it some time, dude.
All right?
It takes a little bit.
You got to warm up.
You got to warm it up a little bit.
You might go away like Johnny did.
Then all of a sudden, you come crawling back.
So what kind of, you know, you're heavy into eBay.
Like how many listings do you have currently?
So right now, let's just look.
I got it right here.
I should know this off the top of my head.
I want to say it's 13,000.
Yeah.
13,452.
Looky there.
That's, I mean, that's a lot of work in eBay land.
And you, I know you say you primarily focus on,
you know, the media aspect.
Do you, are you like an everything seller
on eBay nowadays or what?
So I was an everything seller up until about six to 10 months
ago.
And I finally just said, you know what?
I just need to focus on the media
because that's always been the biggest portion of my business.
And just by focusing in on that, it's
made my time worth so much more because I can just
focus on one task, get that one task done,
and then go on to the next one.
When you're selling everything, you're
having to switch from one thing to the next,
and you're all over the place.
It just makes so much more sense to just focus in on one thing.
So let's walk us through the day of a half eBay, half Amazon
day.
What does that look like for you?
So days look really weird around here.
So we've got three kids.
We homeschool here.
And one day from the next looks totally different around here.
Basically, flexibility is the biggest thing
that I love about this business is as long
as I'm putting in about 40, 50 hours a week,
it doesn't matter when I'm putting in those hours.
I can put, so like today, we went
to the eye doctor, and that took a couple hours out of the day.
We took all the kids.
Everybody went to the eye doctor.
But after this call, you know what?
I'll get off here, and I will price 30, 40, 50 books
this evening, and it'll be just fine.
But right now, we're listing about 100 items a week
on eBay.
So I'm doing about 20 a day on eBay.
And then Amazon's whatever's coming in the door.
This week, we put out 435 to Amazon,
which is a pretty good week.
So just getting done whatever we can done each day.
Do you plan on, I mean, I guess I kind of, I don't know.
So say you get in a realm where your Amazon starts overtaking
your eBay in terms of revenue.
I know you laughed about it, but is there a separate universe,
Josh, that maybe down the road is fully committed to Amazon,
and then it's like a 90-10 split or like a 95-5 split?
Or like kind of the eBay store exists just in case
the Grim Reaper on Amazon comes and gets you?
I don't see myself liquidating my eBay store
and all those 13,000 listings.
That is a ton of hours of time put into that.
And it can turn off a profit even if I'm not
putting any time into that.
I am starting to mess around a little bit with a VA
as far as having them do listings from the photos.
We're going to see how that goes.
That's one I'm testing out right now.
And honestly, pretty happy with the results
that we're getting there.
Just started that this week.
But that was just one thing that we
could do to take some time away from eBay,
put a little bit more time on Amazon,
but still keep my output the same.
Do you keep saying we?
Does the wife help?
I'm going to assume wife or?
Yeah, she helps quite a bit around here.
So she's actually involved in a reselling business.
It depends.
It depends on what we got going on.
Some weeks she does more than others.
Some weeks she doesn't do anything.
Some weeks she does quite a bit.
It just kind of depends.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I mean, that makes sense.
So she can basically throw you out the door
and say, thanks for the business, buddy.
So what does your sourcing week look like?
Are you going out?
Are you primarily ordering online
and unpacking a bunch of packing peanuts or what?
I love stuff coming to me.
I do not want to live the same life of Mike
as going out, having all these routes,
and going all the different places.
I will do that from time to time.
And probably once every about two weeks,
I'll go out and run a route for a day.
Two or three times a month at the most.
But I really like my inventory coming to me.
And a lot of that is just built up from contacts,
from different relationships in the business,
different people mailing me stuff to my door.
And then I have that.
Or I've got relationships with a thrift store in town
where I just go and I pick up all their books.
Just take the trailer, fill it all the way up,
spend a couple hundred bucks.
And then I can sort it all here on site.
I'm here with the family all day long.
I don't have to leave and go and do other things.
I'm here if I'm needed.
And yeah, that's just the way I love getting the inventory
right to the door.
So it sounds like you're doing quite a bit
as far as the inventory allotment per week.
When did you first start upping the game?
And we'll just call it bulk for lack of a better.
When did you start getting doing more bulk?
Like taking it really seriously?
Okay, I just need to buy as much as I can
because I can make pretty much unlimited money
as long as I put in the hours.
That's hard to say when that started.
Like there's been...
Okay, so it was probably 2020.
I was at this estate sale,
but they weren't supposed to be having estate sales.
The guy was just selling everything in the house.
They had to sell the house type of deal.
And I wish I'd bought more now looking back on it.
But at the time, like I completely filled my car up.
There was no more room for books.
I wish I'd unloaded it and loaded it again.
Second trip, yeah, yeah.
But man, that was a really good sale too.
Like all these like woodworking books
and tons and tons of cookbooks that
I thought none of the cookbooks had value at the time.
Just like, I didn't take any of the cookbooks
and a whole bunch of them on like hype setting
and different things like that, really niche stuff,
which was really interesting.
Made a ton of money,
but that was really my first big purchase from there.
But I'm gonna ask you,
cause I did this last year.
Have you gone back through your eBay inventory
to see what you can send into Amazon?
I did that when I first started on Amazon,
but my knowledge of Amazon was so little at the time.
I really probably should do it again
with the knowledge that I have now.
I've done it about two and a half times now
and it's been worth it every time.
Yeah, it's probably time to do that again.
I did, so every year in January,
I go through the oldest 10% of my store
and I either delist it or end and relist
or drastically lower the price.
But that's my way of kind of getting through my old
eBay inventory is getting rid of that oldest 10%.
And there was one book in there
that had been setting in my store from over three years.
It was actually on type setting.
It was from that big sale, like back in 2020.
So I guess it was set there like four years.
And I sent that into Amazon
and it sold in like less than a week.
Crazy.
I'm curious, what do you do with all the stuff
that ain't worth it, right?
Because people like me,
we don't wanna deal with the quantity.
And then you have, you keep maybe 15,
well you do eBay too, so it's probably closer.
Do you have a roundabout of like how much percentage
of every trailer load you actually list on eBay or Amazon?
It depends a lot on the quality
or so where it's coming from.
That makes a huge, huge difference, but maybe 25%.
But that includes like sellback companies as well,
because I use them quite a bit.
I typically work with three sellback companies.
So I'm thinking about going down to just one, World of Books
is the biggest one, sellback yearbook, of course.
The second one I work with is Books Run.
And I just feel like they've been accepting less
and less stuff lately.
And then I'll work with PALS sometimes
because they'll just accept like some random stuff
that nobody else wants for some reason.
So what are you doing with the other 75% of y'all?
So I've got two local bookstores
that I work with quite a bit
and I set aside stuff for them.
And honestly, that's probably like another 25% of the stuff
ends up going to them.
And then the last 50% of that is either getting donated
at a Goodwill not in this town
or it is getting recycled, one of the two.
So what kind of, under shipping, what do you do there?
You're saying you're doing 20 a day
and I'm assuming X amount are going out.
And then plus you got your Amazon shipment.
Are you doing shipping every day or are you doing it
on the Amazon or are you doing it
like once a week kind of deal?
Okay.
Are you talking on eBay or Amazon here?
Both.
Like I don't know how you have your shipping set up.
It could be two day handling, three days,
same day handling, et cetera.
Okay, so for eBay, I have two day handling
and I have everything stored offsite.
I've got two 10 by 10 storage units
that everything is stored in.
They're climate controlled.
They cost me like $206 per month,
which for 13,000 items, you do the math on that.
That's like a quarter,
it's a quarter for the whole year per item.
So everything is stored there.
So I go there Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays,
get everything that I need that has sold,
drop off everything that I have just listed.
And that usually takes about one minute
for however many items I have to pull,
including my driving there and back
because it's pretty darn close.
So then Monday, Wednesday, Fridays,
we're doing the shipping.
I usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays
are usually my heavier Amazon days
as far as sending out shipments.
If I'm sending out Amazon shipments,
since I'm not doing eBay shipping on those days,
those are the days I'm usually focused more on Amazon.
So let's talk about processing
because to do what you're doing
has to require so many processes.
Like what do you do?
Like you get a box in the mail
or let's just say five boxes in the mail.
What's the steps to process those five boxes?
So it depends on where it's coming from
and like what the plan is for it.
So like, and who's sending it to me.
So if I have somebody that does a lot of Amazon
that's sending it to me
and they're already saying, this is not good for Amazon.
I'm not going to scan it with Scoutly
or even look it up on Amazon.
I'm gonna go straight to Terapeek,
do my research there, price it and then move on.
And it just depends on where it's coming from.
It really does.
Gotcha.
Like if I'm pulling a bulk load of books out
like from somebody that's not a reseller,
like I've got a trailer load of books from a thrift store,
I'm gonna make piles.
Barcodes are gonna go up in one pile.
Those are gonna get scanned with Scoutly.
ISBNs, everything with ISBNs
are gonna go into another pile.
Anything without ISBNs gets set to the side
and I will get to that when I can get to that
because that stuff is what takes the most time.
But anything with barcodes or ISBNs,
we can get through quick, get it out of here
so it's not setting around
because I can not have stuff just setting around
unprocessed taking up space.
I'm gonna get you in a hot seat early on in this podcast.
Usually I save these for the end
but I'm feeling a little spicy today.
So eBay land, do you promote your listings?
Do you feel like they have to be promoted?
And also, do you charge for shipping
or are you a free shipper?
Okay, I have traditionally promoted my listings
in the past.
However, recently, like say the last six months or so,
I've quit promoting anything new that I'm sticking up
and it seems to be doing just fine.
Honestly, I've left all my old stuff
that was already promoted, promoted
because that stuff hasn't sold.
It obviously needs the extra help.
But I have not promoted anything new
going into my store in the last six months
and it seems just fine.
I charge shipping, I do calculated based on the weight.
I do media mail shipping for the majority of media items.
Yeah.
How much is media mail nowadays for like a one pound book?
413, I think, somewhere around there.
It's crazy how much it's gone up
just in the past two or three years.
It used to be, you know, you weren't even close to $4.
Now we're already over $4.
Yeah, I think media mail will be done
within the next five years.
I don't think it's gonna be around much longer.
Yeah, just because the price doesn't even make sense.
I'm curious.
So as a fellow YouTuber,
give me the story behind why you decided to start YouTube
and why you continually upload videos.
Because we know YouTubers aren't getting rich
by any means necessary, especially resellers.
Right.
I just enjoy it.
I don't know, it's a lot of fun, you know?
And it's something like everybody that's doing YouTube
wants to build it in order to become something,
to have a channel that can make you some money.
But it's something I enjoy doing,
just going and documenting what I'm doing.
And some videos I make just so I can look back on later
and see where I'm at.
Like I've been meaning to make a video
like the top 20 categories I sold last year.
I like making that video every year
so I can see the split of what I've been selling
over the last few years.
And so I just enjoy doing that.
I really-
Don't you worry that, you know,
you've given out all the secret sauce,
like the video you just put out
talking about, you know, selling DVDs on Amazon.
I mean, you gave out some, I mean,
the information you gave in there
is like top secret information
and anybody can kind of go to their local pawn shop
and do exactly what you did.
So, I mean, do you ever have that thought in your mind?
Like, hey, I'm literally,
because I'm in the same boat as you, right?
We kind of, we don't keep any secrets
and I'm just curious what your mindset is.
I was about to say, this has come from the guy
who told everybody how to ungate the whole category.
I mean, I'm a specter of royalty checks
and the mail is still haven't shown up with been here.
But hey, I'm just curious, you know,
your mindset behind putting out the good information
that somebody can easily take today
and start making money.
I mean, these markets are so large.
The media market as a whole is so huge.
We might change it a tiny bit,
but I don't think we're gonna affect the market whatsoever
by bringing some more people to it.
And the majority of people that watch these videos,
they're not gonna actually do anything.
And if they do, it's gonna be for a few weeks
or a few months.
There's constantly people coming into this space
and out of this space,
but people that actually stay here long-term
for several years are pretty rare.
You don't honestly see it very much.
And those rare people, they would have done it
or figured it out on their own eventually,
because they're the kind that was stuck with it anyway.
So I see you have a fancy disk cleaning machine behind you.
Yes, I do.
Ah, did you start with that one
or did you start with little JFJ?
This was the first one I got.
Really?
Because I did not wanna buy a second one.
I got this one, and this isn't,
it looks like an AutoSmart, but it's the older model.
It's an-
Oh, okay.
That's how old it is.
It's a senior.
It's got a fancy touch pad on the top screen.
I was looking at that.
I thought it was an AutoSmart, just like you said.
Okay.
No, it's the model they had before the AutoSmart.
Gotcha.
Basically the same thing, but no, I love this thing.
But part of me wants a master, but I'm just not there yet.
Part of everybody wants a master.
So yeah, I feel you.
So what was it like getting that?
What was the learning process
for a disk cleaning machine of that caliber?
This thing, there's no learning process.
Like you just pop the disk in and it comes out beautiful.
Like there's no learning process.
I laugh every time I watch somebody use a JFJ
or like all these tips and tricks.
There's no tips and tricks.
You just like, it just works.
It just works.
Yeah, but it's expensive, dude.
How much you pay for that thing?
I don't know.
It's been about a year and a half ago.
It was several thousand dollars.
When they give the answer, I don't know.
It's a lot.
Yeah, that's why us JFJers are over here
with our cheap asses on the floor,
licking disk clean after they run through the machine
and cleaning up the mess because we're broke, Josh.
We ain't got the money, honey.
All right.
You just decided to jump deep end,
no floaties on your arms, whatever.
I'm either gonna sink or swim real quick
and we're gonna find out.
So that is a huge benefit to kind of just jumping in
and kind of get in that level machine.
And what I always tell everybody,
like dude, it's justified, right?
Like anybody watching this,
like look at the amount of disk that's sitting there.
I mean, he probably stacked these to show off.
It's probably all 40 year old versions.
It's the same exact DVD and Blu-ray,
but I mean, it's justified.
He spent the money because he knew he was gonna double down
on this part of his business.
So he paid for that machine 10 times over,
50 times over already since buying it.
So just have that in the back of your mind,
like yeah, the machine's awesome
and I should probably get one.
But at the end of the day,
I don't even process as many disks as you do
because your model's different than mine.
Everybody's model's different.
If I'm only pulling out the JFJ once every two weeks,
I don't need a fancy machine that you have versus you.
You'd probably run that thing every single week
to get some of these disks in.
And I've even thought about it.
What if you just bought like scratched up
profitable disk off eBay?
Like that's another way you could have inventory
just come to your front door
because all you gotta do is pop them in your little machine
and they come out brand new.
Yeah, I think in the video game category,
that would make a lot of sense really,
just five months and resurfacing them.
Before I bought this thing,
I had like five totes of scratch disks just saved up.
So it basically paid for itself within that first month,
getting those all out the door.
So let's go back in time.
Let's talk about whatever you're doing before
and then what was the trigger for you to start reselling
and then take us a step further than that
to leave whatever you're doing before to just do reselling.
Okay, so before I was teaching math
at the university here in town,
that was my previous career.
I taught high school when I was at the university
the last few years before I got here.
Now, when I was there,
I was also doing a lot of assessment writing on the sides,
like ACT, SAT, that sort of thing.
And actually when I left there,
it was my plan to do much more of that.
I was not planning on to doing more reselling.
I was doing kind of reselling on the side for fun
and just from extra pocket money.
But after I left there,
which would have been like May, 2021,
every day I just wanted to resell more.
I didn't wanna go write more ACT questions.
I just wanted to resell more.
And so like every day for the,
probably about three or four months,
I would just write less and resell more.
And finally I was just like,
why don't I just do what I wanna do?
So here I am reselling now.
So making that transition,
cause there's a few people in Mike's group
who are wanting to make that transition.
How did you decide to do it?
Was there a monetary goal you must meet
or was there a certain amount of sales you must meet
or what was the goalpost for you taking a walk
from what you were doing?
Cause that's a hard thing to do.
So because I had the other bit of the assessment writing,
I could go out each day
and make the dollar amount I needed to.
I can't even remember what the dollar amount,
but I used to have this dollar amount in my mind
that this is how much I need to make each day.
And before that we had like a six month emergency fund.
We were totally fine.
If I made nothing for six months, we were great.
And also I quit teaching in May.
So I was still getting income for like another three months
over the course of the summer.
So I had plenty of extra time there
where if I didn't make any money, I was fine.
But I would go out each day and just say,
hey, I need to make $500 today.
And I can either make that writing
or I can make that reselling.
And I would just kind of balance that.
And over the longterm, I was just like,
I'd rather be doing this reselling stuff
than writing all these ACT, SAT type questions.
And was this also during,
was this in the same timeframe COVID was going on?
Okay, so this would have been like 2021, May 2021.
Was it okay?
So still in it, but we're on our way out of it essentially.
Now during 2020, when everything was shut down,
I was reselling quite a bit just because.
The money was raining from the sky back then.
Money everywhere and plenty of free time, so why not?
Very cool.
So what would you advise people
who are wanting to make that transition now?
And what's some general advice you'd have?
You said you had six months of savings
plus another three months of residual income,
plus you were still doing part-time writing at the time.
Do a lot of this business on the side
before you jump in full-time.
You should not leave one income source
to go build another income source.
You should leave an income source
after you've already built up an income source
and it's already flowing money in.
That's the biggest thing.
Don't leave income source A to go start income source B.
And if you can understand that,
then you can go build any business you want.
And half of you didn't understand that,
so please rewind and listen to it again.
Yes, because it's very important.
Very.
Was there any point you were like,
where you had to regret?
Like sales were low for a month or something.
Like what have I done?
I mean, there's slow weeks, there's slow days,
and that's just part of selling anything.
Like people complain about this on eBay all the time.
Like, oh no, it's a terrible week,
or it's a terrible day, the way it is sometimes.
Like there's going to be slow days.
There's going to be slow weeks.
And that would be the same if you are selling online
or if you had a brick and mortar or wherever you're selling.
But I typically look at it
over the course of the whole month.
Some months are down a little bit,
some months are up a little bit.
And some months are tighter than others,
and some months are really great,
but it all works out in the end.
I have people that,
because I got a lot of people that enjoy books,
enjoy selling books, and they only do eBay.
I'm curious about your decision to decide
to even open up an Amazon store,
because everybody is so afraid to, I don't know,
step out of their comfort zone
and even give Amazon a shot when it comes to media,
when I think when it comes to media overall,
it's definitely the platform you need to be on.
But I'm just curious, what went through your mind
and did you feel like it was kind of scammy
when you first started watching videos
about selling media on Amazon and you're like,
I don't got to take photos
and I don't got to deal with customers.
I don't got to pack and ship.
What was your mindset and what kind of push you
to give it a shot?
And was there any hiccups or anything early on
where you're just like, I'm done with this.
I'm just going to stick with eBay.
I'm not even bothering.
So Amazon feels scammy whenever you start watching videos,
because some of the people putting out videos
are kind of scammy.
And so because of that, you start feeling like
this whole idea of selling on Amazon is scammy,
but it's really not.
And the reason I started doing it more,
when I first started it up was because I wanted
to diversify where I'm selling stuff.
If something ever happens to eBay,
I need some other source of income coming in.
So I'm already growing that other income source on the side.
And that's what I've been doing with Amazon.
Now, Amazon's weird.
Amazon's kind of harder to get going,
because with Amazon, there's really two things you need
they don't give you at the beginning.
You need that used buy box,
and you need to be ungated in the majority of categories.
And Amazon does not give you those two things
until you start consistently sending in inventory.
And that's what I didn't get for that first,
probably year and a half was,
I was not sending stuff in consistently enough.
And so they did not give me that used buy box,
and they did not give me the ungates
in the majority of categories.
It's so crazy to think about,
if you just, kind of like you said,
diversify a little bit,
it kind of opens up a whole nother door
and a whole nother income stream.
I'm basically working in opposite, right?
Like I have my eBay store that exists,
ain't nothing on there,
but like if something ever happens, then sure,
I know how the platform works.
And the idea that got me into Amazon was that
I didn't have to take the eBay photos.
I didn't have to pack and ship every single order.
Like, yeah, the fees are high,
but like everything's calculated for, right?
Even in eBay, there's an eBay fee calculator.
You know exactly how much you're gonna make
at whatever price you sell.
So the idea that people kind of get caught up with fees,
and just from talking to you just on this podcast,
I can tell like, you're not the guy that like,
oh man, eBay must be down today.
Like the sky's falling.
Like you just do your work,
and the results will come one way or another.
Yeah.
Consistency really will solve
the majority of problems in your business.
If you are consistently doing the right things,
consistently putting out good product,
it's gonna solve the majority of your issues.
Like pick a number for how much you need to make on eBay
each week or on Amazon,
figure out how many units you need to be doing,
do those number of units,
and eventually everything's gonna fall into place.
I agree with that 100%.
Consistency is the number one thing.
Two is process is to help your consistency be better.
Right.
I think those two things are very, very critical.
But number one, I gotta believe it's consistency.
And that's teachable to an extent,
but it really comes from the willpower
of the person being, okay, I gotta do it.
Today's another day.
I did it yesterday, but guess what?
I gotta do it again today.
It never ends.
That's the thing I don't think click with many people.
It never ends.
That's the thing.
And they'll give up or they'll want a day off
or they didn't do a draft bank to take those days off
and then they fall off the wagon.
And then some people come back
and then some people don't, unfortunately.
It's not hard though.
I mean, look how little bit of hours I put in last year.
Like it's not hard to make money reselling
by any stretch of the imagination.
I mean, unless you're buying pure garbage,
the list on eBay at cheap prices,
like it's really not hard to make money reselling.
I always say if I could train in chimpanzee
to go scan stuff in stores,
I could just sit at home all day
and get a paycheck every two weeks.
It is not hard, but you're right.
Consistency, you can't train it, Johnny.
I do coaching calls every single month with one-on-ones.
And it's like Johnny says,
like I can sit here and tell you,
if you send more, you're gonna make more money.
If you go out more and source more, you scan more items.
The only difference between us three sitting here
is how many items we're scanning on a single week.
That's gonna decide how much we're sending to Amazon,
which is gonna decide how much we get paid.
There is no different at all.
That's all it comes down to,
but I can't tell you to go do it.
And then you're just like,
well, I don't feel like doing it today.
Well, then you lose that day of productivity
and you lose that day of sales.
Like Josh was saying when he started,
he wanted to do $500 a day in sales
and profit that he's actually out there sourcing.
But you gotta get off your ass and actually go do it.
And I don't think it's teachable.
And I think the world of reselling,
anybody can start it.
That's a great thing,
but it's also a bad thing because a lot of people,
they need the structure to say,
hey, Johnny, you better get to work today, right?
Or because you're just-
I don't wanna.
You're fired.
And when it's just you, right?
If I wanna sit around and be like,
ah, nah, Josh, I'm good today.
I'm not leaving the house.
And you're like, dude, it's 70 degrees out.
It's beautiful.
Go scan some stuff.
I'm like, nah, man, I don't gotta.
I'll catch up on it tomorrow.
Like, you know that ship sooner or later is gonna sink.
So you've been doing this for a significant amount of time.
What do you think is the biggest lesson learned?
Oh, man.
I know.
I find it crazy in our industry
that somebody that's just been doing this
for three, four, five years,
is somebody that's been around for a long time.
It's really kind of weird.
Mike, how long have you been making these videos?
Too long, dude.
Too long.
I couldn't.
I'm actually- Longer than I've been reselling.
I know that.
It is.
It's probably been a solid four or five years
of putting out videos every single week.
I know we say that, but in any other industry,
if you were to say,
I've been doing this four or five years,
that's not enough to be really there a long time.
Senior management, essentially, right?
I know.
You're just barely rising up in the ranks.
Well, reseller years are like dog years.
Every year reselling is like seven years for everybody else.
And so that's always where I kind of struggle
with this type of stuff.
Like, yeah, I've been doing this three or four years,
but that's not really a lot
when I compare that to other industries.
But I guess we haven't here.
But anyways, your question was, what again?
What is your biggest learning experience
across your reselling journey?
I guess the biggest thing I thought at the beginning
that I don't know now is, or let me free.
The biggest thing that I didn't know at the beginning
that I know now is like,
you've got to be patient.
Stuff is going to eventually sell.
Like, and part of that was from kind of starting selling
a lot more in 2020.
In 2020, if you listed something, it just-
Different rules.
Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
Like stuff just sold as soon as you listed it.
But just have patience.
It's sitting in Amazon's warehouse.
It'll sell there or it's sitting in my storage unit.
It'll sell eventually.
Like, just be patient with these items.
Don't think about them.
They will sell.
See, I didn't start the year before COVID.
I'd like to compare the year before COVID
and the year after COVID and see how similar they are.
Cause I'm not including the years of COVID
as any kind of solid data.
Those were some wild years.
Yeah.
Stuff like that.
I made stupid money then.
And like anything would sell.
Exactly.
I think the thing with the conversation though is
you did it the correct way, Josh, right?
Like, so you don't need your book to sell today, right?
Like you had the money set aside.
And in today's world, unfortunately,
most people are, we need instant gratification, right?
Like that's why Amazon delivers your shit
same day, next day.
And unfortunately in the resale world,
I can't afford to wait more than a week for this to sell.
So it also benefits you that made the transition
in a way that actually made sense
where you didn't need your stuff to sell that same week.
Like you didn't need to take that immediate payout
from eBay or Amazon to kind of go fund your business.
And it's hard, but I always tell everybody,
listen, you were doing your job
and you hated it for 10 years.
What's another six months of building a business
on the side gonna do to you?
Like you already been dealing with it.
Yeah.
Yeah, you can build this up slowly
and it can be really good.
I mean, I got 13,000 items.
I don't care which dozen or two or three dozen of them sell
over the next day or two.
Like some of them will sell, most of them won't,
but enough of them will sell
that I can put money in my pocket.
I can pay the mortgage and we can all be good.
This is where like 95% of our income comes from
is selling this stuff online.
And it doesn't matter which of these items sells.
Some of them will.
It's a guarantee with 13,000 of them,
enough of them will that the bills are all paid.
So we talk about relationships quite a bit.
And earlier on, you said you had relationships
with a couple of bookstores.
How did that come to be and why did it come to be?
Was it solving an issue?
So both of the bookstores I'm working with,
the used bookstores are both like
newer used bookstores, believe it or not,
which I do think there's a bit of a revival right now
in the used bookstore market.
Yes.
So one of them is a younger girl
that she bought out the used bookstore in town,
which, oh my goodness.
Turnkey operation, sure, yeah.
Looks so much better now.
Like it was claustrophobic walking in there before.
I didn't work with them before
because I didn't want to walk into that building.
But I take her about two totes worth of books.
She looks through them, usually buys half of them,
gives me cash, and then we walk out.
And it's absolutely a beautiful deal.
I'm in there for like 10 minutes, amazing.
And then the other one,
they will just take anything I take to them,
but they have a limit to what I can bring them each week.
But they're like three minutes from my house.
So like I go by there every week, very consistently,
same day, same time, and we have a great time.
I talk to them.
You got to talk to these people when you go in there.
You can't just want to go in there
and just want to have a business transaction.
You got to go in there, talk to people, smile.
They need to be happy to see you.
Yeah, I think that's very critical
because if it's totally robotic transactional,
they're not going to throw you a bone here and there
or give you an opportunity
that would have never come your way
if you were not nice and culture.
Just human decency, honestly.
Treat them like a human
and they'll treat you a human right back.
Well, my natural inclination is to like go in there
and just make the transaction and go on.
It's business, that's what we're doing.
But like, there's got to be more to these relationships
if you want to build these relationships
and have them actually grow long-term.
I agree.
And it's so silly how you can easily land some of these.
But again, it's that mindset of, you know,
so many people that Resolve rely solely on thrift stores.
And it's like, I try to get people away
from these damn thrift stores as far as I possibly can.
And for some reason, it's like this,
you can't escape the orbit of the sun, right?
It's like the thrift stores, they got to go to that goodwill.
Like, I'm curious, thrift stores in your area,
I know you're not out running in them all the time like I am,
but have you seen the change as well
in thrift stores in your area?
Are prices going up?
Are they selling things online?
Like, what's your take on the thrift store situation?
Prices are definitely going up some.
I don't see the outside of the big chains, the smaller ones,
I usually go to the smaller thrift stores.
That's where I'm going.
They're still not selling online, at least in my area.
The big places like your Goodwills or your Salvation Armies
or whatever you have in your area.
I don't go in those, like just don't.
Nobody's gonna listen to you, dude.
Good try though.
Every couple of months to look around,
but like, now I did go to a Goodwill grand opening
a while back and I did absolutely great.
Like they had this in-cap that was really nice
that I just took the whole in-cap.
But the places to source from,
thrift stores are at the bottom.
I'd rather go to a garage sale
before I go to a thrift store, honestly.
They are pretty much bottom wrong.
And also they're farther away from me to be fair.
But even if they were around me,
I still think they would be bottom tier
sourcing opportunities in the world of media, honestly.
Go ahead.
The one thing about thrift stores is
if you can get in to just bottom,
get in to just buy all their books
and convince them to quit selling books,
that can be very, very good.
So going in, building relationships,
convincing them to quit selling books
or to just have one small bookshelf of books
so people will keep donating books there
because they know they sell books,
but then buy all the books.
That's the better route to take in my opinion.
Let them sell books.
Absolutely.
Like you're just the solution to a problem.
They get more floor space to put out things
that actually move in their store.
They're more money.
Absolutely.
If you land that kind of deal, yeah.
Work with the Goodwills,
work with the Salvation Slimies all day long.
Salvation Slimies, dude, you might've said it before,
but that's a new one to me.
I feel like we need like t-shirts
that's Slimer on the front from Ghostbusters.
Yeah, dude.
It's why media, man?
Media sucks.
There's media is everywhere.
It stinks.
There's low dollars.
Most of it is junk.
Why in the world would you wanna build a business
around selling media?
Even when I was an everything seller
and I was just selling everything I would come across
that I could make a few bucks on,
media was still always my biggest category.
And a big part of that is just, it's cheap.
This stuff is dirt cheap.
You are buying, there's a Salvation Army
I can get to in like 20 minutes.
The books are a dime.
I mean, there's not very many good books,
but they're a dime.
You can buy 10 books for a dollar.
I mean like.
You can buy at their whole store
and probably come out ahead and dime.
I've thought about it a few times.
But it's not good quality there at this.
But like this stuff is always cheap.
It's everywhere.
And like people need it gone.
We're solving a big problem for people
by taking this stuff away.
And so there's a lot of people that are in this business
and they don't even spend anything
as far as cost of goods goes.
Like their whole model is just taking the free books.
And well, that's not something I focus on a lot
because like you gotta advertise that a lot more
and do some other things that I really just don't wanna
spend the time doing.
Like it's easy to get books.
They're everywhere.
Yes.
Sourcing should never be the issue, honestly.
I don't care if you're rural or you live in a major city.
If you're up in Alaska, you got a computer.
I hope you have a computer in Alaska
because you're gonna be really bored otherwise.
But anyway, so we have Amazon, we have eBay,
we have a couple of bookstores.
Do you have any other sources of income
or adjacent to your business that you have going on?
Though I've tried cross-listing to like Macari,
Poshmark, whatnot, Etsy.
It feels like it should be a good idea.
It always feels like it should be good.
But like the sales just are not there.
I tried Etsy this year.
I started that in January, which it's still January,
but I'm seeing no results there.
I like the idea of diversifying,
just having the amount other places,
but man, it's just not worth it, I don't think.
Yeah, I tend to agree.
I mean, to even to do Etsy,
if I was just to import my eBay store,
it's gonna cost me $1,100 to try it out.
Yeah.
I mean, just to try it out to see if it works or not.
That's ridiculous.
And then you know what?
I have to pay another $1,100 in four months.
Yeah, that's the biggest problem with it.
If Etsy was free to list on,
I would probably stick more stuff over there.
I've got a subscription fee
like eBay does for insertion fees, right?
Right.
I get the one-time fee, but every four months, come on.
And Etsy search is a lot different.
They want you to do a lot more like tagging
and putting like stuff.
And that's just,
it's something I don't wanna put the time into doing
because my time is better spent pricing stuff for eBay,
doing my photos for eBay or sending stuff off to Amazon.
If I'm doing those activities,
I'm making so much more money
than I am putting labels on Etsy listings
to try and get stuff to sell
that's probably going to sell anyways.
And I know some booksellers
are having really great results on Etsy,
but for me and the type of books I come across in my area,
it's not the right type of thing.
So you're a YouTuber,
which means you wanna be famous one day.
So why aren't you doing live selling?
I tried it.
So I tried it.
The problem with live selling
is you gotta schedule it in advance,
and then you've got this time window where you're stuck
and you've gotta do it at that time.
Like I do this business
so that I can have a flexibility of my schedule.
Scheduling live shows on whatnot or wherever else
is messing up my schedule.
Then I'm like, I've got this hour, two hour window
where now I can't move things around.
My schedule is messing up my schedule.
You need a t-shirt.
I love that.
I don't wanna do whatnot.
Just don't wanna do it.
No. I'm in the same boat.
I'm in the same boat with it.
You gotta focus on what works.
We kind of talk about doubling down
where you're getting results.
And that's why I'm a firm believer
as you continue to grow your Amazon business,
the dark side will continue to pull you in
and get stronger and stronger and stronger.
But like you said, just like you started with eBay
from when you were working, you build it on the side,
see where it goes, you can adjust down the road.
Just what's the most expensive book you've sold ever?
Do you know?
Man, I don't know.
Me neither. They're all the same.
I've sold a bunch around like the $500 mark.
Like I know I've been around that mark quite a few times.
I don't think I've ever hit that $1,000 mark though
as far as, oh wait, no, no, no.
I had a set of books this last year.
They were all these like train railroad Santa Fe books.
And most of them were like numbered and signed.
And it was this giant 12 volume set.
I think that sold for like 9.75
or something just shy of that $1,000 mark.
Now, what did you pay for it?
It was on consignment.
So I do consignment with one person.
It's a family member.
They buy out estate sales at the end
and I take all the media.
That's cheating, dude.
Wait a minute, you got a family member
who does estate cleanouts.
You're a cheater.
I mean, that's all there is to it.
I've told you, I don't want to run these thrift store routes.
The inventory comes to me.
That's the way I-
I won't do anything but walk in goodwill.
Love that.
So what is it like juggling?
Because I hear some of this from Mike
because he does all the heavy lifting on the YouTube front.
I just show up.
What is it like juggling that with the reselling business?
That's really hard and interesting.
Like if I have to not do something, I don't do YouTube
because YouTube is not a primary source of income
for my family whatsoever.
So if the ball gets dropped somewhere
with all these balls we're juggling,
YouTube is the first ball that I drop.
I drop it quite frequently and don't put out videos.
Is this game for you, Mike, or is that ball number one for you?
I wish it was ball number one for me.
I wouldn't even sell on Amazon.
I'd be like my fake background.
I just act like I sell on Amazon.
Yeah, I wish.
I mean, it's different for me, right?
Because we have the group.
So-
Yeah, I mean, there is some responsibility
because of group members and they're giving you money.
Yeah.
100%, right?
I got the one-on-ones.
Like I got, I think 11 or 12 one-on-ones tomorrow.
So like all day tomorrow, I'll be doing one-on-one.
So it's a little bit different than me,
but like it's just one of those things
where I got a YouTube editor
and I only do the podcast and one video a week now.
So it's really, there's no burden on that front
besides just being in the Discord every single day
and trying to answer people's questions.
But that's why we got the weekly calls, right?
And even that, we cut back the call.
So everybody gets a call once a week.
I mean, we're only charging $2.99.
Like how much can we possibly give people for three bucks?
So-
So instead of increasing the prices,
maintain the same,
you kept the prices the same and lower the cost.
Genius, genius, Mike.
Genius, yeah.
And I paid you to do an extra one.
So it's one less call I have to do, right?
And I have to do more.
It all works itself out.
You figured it out, the clever son of a gun.
It all works itself out, like Josh says,
but there are things where, you know,
I do the Amazon influencer program, right?
And like when I don't have time to do that,
then guess what?
And then nothing's getting uploaded on that front.
There's some other things I'm working on this year as well.
And those are like,
do I have extra time to get them done this week?
Like to work on this side fund project
that eventually turns into another stream of income?
I will say this,
all the things I try to focus my extra time on,
I'm like, Josh, we're like, I see it's gonna take time.
It's like a six month, maybe two year, two year plan,
but eventually it needs to make me some type of money.
I'm not gonna commit a bunch of my time
because we can just go out and source more.
At the end of the day, we sell books.
It's everywhere, everywhere you go,
you just drive an extra 10 minutes,
you're gonna find more of it.
So I have to be strategic just like you two gentlemen.
But yeah, it's a little bit different for me
on the YouTube front because of the group.
If the group didn't exist, I mean, honestly, like 2024,
I had weeks, months where I just thought to myself,
if I just cut the group out completely
and said goodbye to you suckers,
like I'd probably make a shit ton more money reselling
because I wouldn't have to worry about any of it.
But for me, I get the paid benefit of,
I guess, the feel goodness.
And that's why Josh does it
because I know what YouTubers make in a reselling world,
they don't make nothing.
You feel good if you can just help one person
kind of get out of their situation.
So it's like you get paid in good karma, I guess.
So my karma bank is hopefully seven figures
somewhere along the road and hopefully it comes back.
But yeah, it's tough being a reselling YouTuber.
I think a lot of people don't see it.
And then when like a reselling YouTuber kind of steps back,
they're like, oh, what's going on?
Well, you gotta focus on things, life happens.
And YouTube is at the bottom of the rung
unless you're making six figures doing it,
which a percent of a percent of YouTube resellers
are making that.
Yeah, the reselling YouTubers,
that's of all of YouTube,
if you look at the numbers of people, the subscribers,
it's very small when you're comparing
the different categories.
Because there's only so many of us
that actually want to resell, right?
And a lot of us, I mean, YouTube guys,
you use some of it, but you don't do it all the time,
like the Instagram haul kind of videos,
like the other categories do
to try to boost up those numbers.
It's very interesting.
You both convinced me never to do YouTube, congratulations.
Yeah, I'll steer clear of it.
Just have people that do YouTube pay you
and then you just, every year you'll get extra more,
more soon enough, I'll just promote the group, Johnny,
and you'll do all the calls, all right?
Maybe I'll bring Josh on and he can do the calls
and like, I'll just be a figment of imagination.
Well, you know how I like to prepare.
I have my resignation letter in a file folder
just in such an event where it'll occur.
That's all right, Josh is right here.
Now that I had him on the podcast, now he's obligated.
Hear that, Josh?
It's gonna circle to you.
The group will all be yours one day.
He's obligated now, we're leaving it to him.
Johnny put you in the will for when he gets canned.
I mean, this is a video will that's going on right now.
This is exactly the key setup we always wanted.
It is tough though to juggle things, man.
And you got a lot going on and we talk about it all the time.
Like, you know, you got kids, I got cats.
Like I can't compare to that.
So the idea that you have this flexible schedule
and Johnny's the first one of like,
yo, Josh, you need a schedule that's set in stone
or you're never gonna make it.
And you're like, yeah, whatever, dude.
No, so I do not have a daily schedule
that is set in stone by any means of the imagination.
Like there's no way to make that happen.
Like I've thought about making a group too.
I'm in all these discord groups and they're a lot of fun
and definitely worth the 2.99 that I'm paying
to be in your group.
Like, oh my goodness, that's so cheap.
But the thing is like, I don't want to have this hour
or two hours that's blocked off every single week
where I've got to be there at that specific time
that just does not work for my schedule.
I need that open case.
I need to do something with the kids
or I had to do something with the kids earlier in the day
and I need to get eBay done or Amazon done
or whatever that is.
And having that flexibility in my schedule
is very important to me.
So that's the way I do things the way I do them.
Right, but you have a routine
that you can make adjustments in your schedule, right?
Like you have a general idea
of how you want your schedule to go,
but kids in the world acting up,
but you account for that and you just follow the routine
and you just follow the routine.
Okay, I had to do this.
We had to go to the hospital, belly broke his arm,
hospital's done, okay, it's back to it kind of deal.
Correct or am I wrong?
To a certain extent.
So like I ship Monday, Wednesday, Fridays.
Those have to get done.
But if it happens up
and I know Wednesday mornings are going to be messed up,
I'll go to the storage unit late on a Tuesday night.
I'll be there at midnight,
get my stuff the night before
that way I can still ship it out.
Yes, exactly.
It's like having a draft bank.
If you're out sick or you're in the hospital,
you can still launch your draft
or tell the wife or the doctor to grab your cellphone
and do it for you, right?
But yeah, that's exactly right.
You can be flexible, but you do have a routine.
Also, I'm not as,
I don't care as much about daily listings.
I care more about weekly listings
and that gives me a lot of flexibility that way.
I know a lot of people are so worried about the algorithm
and the daily listings.
And yes, daily listings is going to help the algorithm
and it is going to be better for your store
in the short term,
but long-term, it doesn't really matter.
You're getting the listings up,
they're going to eventually sell.
As long as you've got the space and the space is cheap,
which I'm here in Oklahoma, space is cheap,
it doesn't matter how long they take to sell.
Right, if it's desirable,
and that's the thing with media,
you never know when it's going to be desirable.
What I was going to say is,
as long as it's a desirable item,
it's eventually going to sell.
Media, sometimes in book land, we don't know.
It looks cool, we have solds in the past,
but then again, it'll sit on your shelf for two years
and then all of a sudden will sell.
It's like, why did you sell in the 90-day window
that Terapeake or eBay said?
That's something out of our control for whatever reason.
Yeah, the daily listing on eBay is BS
because I rarely list and when I deal with sales.
So the idea that, I got a perfect example.
I got to list this on eBay.
It's been sitting here for a while.
This dude from Crosby, Stills and Nash,
it's signed by him.
So I just got to list it.
I guarantee it sells the same day.
I'm going to be the lowest price.
I'm going to do my 2.2% promoted listing
so I'm over everybody else.
But I haven't listed anything in months, gentlemen,
and this will sell within the week that I listed
because it'll be the lowest price.
This is a desirable item.
That was on his side and he listed that.
There's no telling how long it would sit for.
Yeah, I know.
You got to think a little bit to the next level
when it comes to the resell and stuff.
And so many people, like we were talking about,
it's the flashiness.
That's why the Amazon marketplace comes off as scammy
because 90% of people in the Amazon space
are pushing courses and it's scammy.
It is what it is at the end of the day.
And eBay land, it kind of goes one or two ways.
You either have the people that think eBay sucks,
but they still rely on it as their income
and say it's always broken,
or you got the people that are just sitting on the sidelines,
not out here in all this nonsense social media,
and they're just absolutely crushing eBay,
kind of like you.
Everybody we bring on that does eBay is like,
I'll do six figures on eBay easily.
And it's just like, it's crazy to me, the drastic change.
I'm sure you see it as a YouTuber.
What's your take on the landscape
when it comes to reselling and content creation,
especially around eBay?
Because the majority I see is that eBay,
there's always problems with eBay and this is down,
or this is a quick way to get more,
to delete your listings and relist your listings
is like always a catch-22.
Like what's your take on it?
A lot of the people that are like spouting off these like,
here's how you fix the algorithm, or here's these things.
They're trying to get views.
That's what they're doing.
They just wanna get some YouTube views.
Or maybe they think it works,
or maybe it helps just for a little bit,
but none of those changes are long-term solutions.
Quit looking for the short quick fix.
Think long-term.
Don't just think this week or last week or next week.
We're thinking months out, years out here
when you're building these listings.
And not everybody can wait, I know,
for things to sell for three, four years like I do.
Not everybody has access to cheap space like I do.
It's one of the benefits of living out here nowhere.
Like if you're on one of the coasts,
you can't get cheap storage units.
I understand that.
But since I can wait for things to sell forever,
I just do that.
And I'm not gonna get caught up in all this nonsense
on how to increase the algorithm junk,
because like there's no reason to.
It'll work though.
You'll become more famous
than you've ever been on YouTube.
If you do six months of clickbait,
the sky is falling eBay videos, dude,
you will be so famous you won't even be able to go out to eat
in your little town in Oklahoma.
And you'll sell so many courses.
Oh, and courses.
You can launch your group.
Oh.
So what are some final words you wanna leave us with?
You have a audience and you're just,
you have Mike's audience.
What do you wanna tell Mike's audience?
All 10 of us, yay.
All right, everybody unsubscribe from Mike
and come subscribe to Mike.
There's the play right there.
There we go, that's what we're here for.
Leave his 299 group.
I'm gonna make a new group.
I'm gonna make a new group that's gonna be $299.
I've actually made it a point to start saying $2.99
because I think the reselling world is so accustomed
when I say 299, it just hits like you did, right?
It's like $299, they think.
So now every time I say it, I'm like $2.99.
I had people confused by that,
but really the biggest thing is be consistent
in this business.
Think long-term, don't think short-term fixes.
If sales are down for a week, that's no big deal.
If they're down for two months, you've got a problem.
And the only way you can think through that
is if you've got an emergency fund
or you've got some other source of income
and you need to have one of those two things.
You either need to have another job
or have a big enough emergency fund
that it doesn't matter if you don't make money
for a couple of months.
Yeah, man, I agree 100%.
And it's not overnight instant success
like you might see out there,
but I preach the same thing you do.
You gotta be financially secure when you make these decisions.
And starting your own business is a big deal, right?
And you wanna do it.
And I mean, I didn't even have the kids to take care of.
So I can't imagine being in that situation.
It's probably scarier than ever,
but if you do it the right way, there's no risk.
There's just reward if you're willing to put in the time.
You could have just, I mean, you could have quit your job
and you could have just sat around for three, six months.
But even then, right?
You still would have been able to go get another job
because you had the money set aside.
And I think that's the big takeaway here.
So Josh, we appreciate you hanging out with us.
And all of his YouTube information,
all of his social medias will be down in the description.
So make sure you go comment, subscribe,
join his $299 a month group.
He will never do that.
He's like me, he's a man of the people.
So we appreciate you hanging out with us tonight, Josh.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
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
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