Welcome back to another episode of the Reseller's
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 usebookguy 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 Reseller's Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny. Home, life, balance, and
reselling. I mean, this is... I guess for me,
it's one of the big reasons I kind of enjoy reselling
is the fact that I get a little bit of my life
back, actually a lot of my life back, because
if I compare my reselling Amazon business to
working salary as a store manager at CVS, the
hour difference is like half of it, but the revenue
is double it, right? So I do think this is a
fine line we have to walk as resellers. because
we can easily get consumed and you know i'm guilty
of this all the time right deb's got to yell
at me like hey let's go out on a lunch date you
know like let's go do something i'm just you
get so consumed with work and going going going
that you kind of miss things and you know we
have people we take care of i recently had a
one of my cats nico of 12 years passed away and
uh i was grateful that reselling allotted me
the time to spend with him uh Versus if I was
at CBS, I would have been working 50 hours a
week, but reselling, I'm working between 20 and
30. I'm home more often. I get to spend time
with Deb at the catch. If something comes up,
family members, we want to go do something, see
something. This is basically my reason why I
resell is to make more money and have more time.
But I do think it's a good topic to talk about
because a lot of resellers I see work way too
hard and there's no payoff at the end of the
rainbow. So I'm going to throw it over to you.
Yeah, I mean, there are things we can do in our
life to either, like Mike was saying, get more
of our life back or get more time to actually
do reselling. And I think a big proponent for
me on that is a schedule. A schedule and you
add in do extra every day. allows you the ultimate
flexibility. It seems rigid at the surface value,
but I promise you the stress that goes away from
you just flying by the seat of your pants doesn't
compare to the rigid nature it seems to be, a
routine. A routine with you doing more than you
need to for the day is going to pay off huge
dividends in the long run, in my opinion. And
what exactly do I mean by that? Well, if you're
going to do, I need to do, I don't know, 10 listings
a day. Do 11. Do 12. Or I want weekends off.
Okay. Pack the amount of boxes you're going to
pack. Do it in five days instead of seven. And
that may include more sourcing during those five
days. If you want the weekends off, you got to
work a little harder in those five days than
you do spreading it out amongst seven. But hey,
you get your weekends off now. Congratulations.
That's what the hard work is for. Plus the paycheck.
You need the paycheck too, don't get me wrong.
But having that, figuring out what you want,
you can figure out what you need to do in order
to make that happen. I mean, we talked about,
Mike talked about it in the last podcast, reverse
engineering. Everything's reverse engineerable,
including your free time and your family time
and your spouse time. your your extended family
once a year vacation that you hate going to time
you can you can do it all but it requires you
to work a little harder i think that what's good
what happens here is you know if you if you have
no other obligations and you're just a lone wolf
out there um then sure you know you want to run
yourself into the ground and work 100 hours a
week but even then i would still argue like what's
the payoff i think what happens is You know,
you tell your family member or person you're
living with or significant other or your kid
that, hey, dad needs to work extra for the next
six months for these reasons. And what happens
here is. you work more but there's no extra payoff
right like me and john talk about this all the
time there has to be a payoff for the sacrifices
we make and usually the sacrifices with time
with loved ones um that or time for ourselves
that we could be spending reading a book instead
of you know going to thrift stores or listing
items on ebay or taking photos when we do these
things and we make these sacrifices but Nothing
changes three months from now, right? Like if
you're like, hey, I want to be the $20 ,000 a
month seller. And three months from now, you're
working more and your sales have not gone up.
Then I would sit here and tell you, well, you
just wasted three months of your extra time because
there's been no results from the extra time you
put in. I think that's what happens. People are
like, yeah, all right. Well, this might suck
for a little bit, but then it sucks forever because
the results don't change. It's the same results,
even though they're spending more time. Right.
And here's another biggie. We we talk about efficiencies
in our business, but hardly ever I hear anybody
talk about what are your efficiencies outside
of your business? Like me, I'm a big proponent
of meal prep because if I just, again, fly by
the seat of my pants, I don't know. Let's look
in the pantry. What am I going to eat tonight?
Nope. I have a schedule and I make my meals in
advance once a week. freezer prep or it's assembly
based like i could just assemble it like it's
on my list there no extra time thought about
it it's a rotating thing it's never bland or
stale or anything like that because again i mean
before the podcast mike's like what kind of music
do you listen to i listen to it all man it's
just different days i'm in different moods just
like my meals but when i do a meal i don't got
anybody making my meals for me i gotta make my
own meals but i need to be done quick because
If I spend three hours to make the most baller
meal ever, well, that's three hours. I'm going
to, well, I'm not saying don't do this, but for
me, I think that's a waste of time, but that's
me. And I'd rather do six hours once a week,
make all of my meals for the week, or plan it
out and just be done with it. Now me and Johnny,
this has turned into the food prepping podcast
because me and Deb do the same thing. We don't
do it for the week. We usually do whatever we
make is three days worth of food. So we'll make
something that will be three lunches and then
something that'll be three dinners. And then
it's, I know it sounds stupid, right? And like,
oh, Dale, you're eating hot dogs every night.
Listen, it's not like that. And honestly, is
it that big of a deal to eat the same thing for
lunch three days in a row, right? Like, okay,
I get it. Some people want to eat different things
every single, I don't think there's something
wrong with that, but that's kind of not the whole
idea of what we're saying here. little efficiencies
and inefficiencies that will eat up your time
and kind of make you realize like hey like i
don't know i don't i think resellers don't care
about their time i think most people don't care
about their time honestly i think people enjoy
wasting time i think about people just sit on
the phones and scroll all day right like just
scroll and look at the feeds and what's going
on and it has no real effect on like your life
right it's like who cares what's going on somewhere
across the universe or who cares, you know, about
the news. It's just like, it's such a waste.
And I guess we're different. I guess we're just
different mentalities when it comes to this.
Like I see it now is I need to work hard while
I can now invest in my future, put money into
retirement. Get it paid for a house so I don't
have to work until I'm dead and I don't have
to even work till close till I'm dead so I can
have a comfortable retirement. Because for me,
the future is, you know, whether Social Security
or not, it's not going to be enough to live on.
Right. So I see sacrifice today. And is it exciting
to invest your money today, Johnny, and not get
it for another 25, 30 years? The answer is no
every single time. But that consistency. of getting
the results and seeing the growth in the investment
account. What's up, Amazon tellers? We wanted
to take a second to talk about GoToLister, the
software me and Johnny both use to list and manage
our inventory and grow our businesses. With the
fastest listing speeds out there and built -in
profit analytics, it's a no -brainer. easily
and quickly have items available for sale using
2D barcodes and get more for your items with
its built -in smart pricing. Make sure to check
out the 30 -day free trial at gotolister .com
backslash Mike or using the link in the description
below. That's worth its weight in gold. I wish
I could just shake everybody and get everybody
on board. Like, if we're going to sacrifice today,
then let's see the results in the future so that
we don't have to be still grinding this out.
when we're 90 years old no offense to the 90
year old resellers watching this we're not saying
this to offend you we know a lot of yous like
to just stay active all right but i don't plan
on doing this when i'm 90 maybe johnny does but
not me yeah tommy boy ain't retiring i'm not
retiring that's the rule well yeah i have to
stay busy i can't imagine myself okay i can't
if i had like a full -blown hobby i did all day
people would see that as work But I need to stay
busy. I'll be that 90 -year -old guy doing something.
Either I'll be tinkering or I'll still be reselling,
whether it's managing a shop or whatever. I'll
be doing something. I'm not going off to a private
island or living in my dream home, tilling or
being a farmer kind of deal because that's what
I want to do. No, none of that. That's not for
me. Again, it's different personality types,
I think. But yeah, okay, so we talked about scheduling,
we talked about meal prep. Another biggie, I
think, is if you have other people in your life,
and I'm going to save you a lot of headache right
now, ask them what they want from you when you're
together with them. Do you want to go out to
eat once a week, like a date night? Do you want
to go on at least, I don't know, two vacations,
one of which may be a cruise? You're a fun job
to figure out how to make that happen. You need
dollars most of the time to do this, and you
need to work a little harder to get that free
time. Again, doing the extra listings, doing
the extra boxes. And you can make what they want
from you. a reality but you you're the one that's
got to figure out what you need to do on the
business end to make that happen um that's all
on you at that point i mean if your spouse wants
to help you or your children want to help you
out with that fantastic but it's usually going
to fall on you to figure out to be honest um
saying those with friends if your friends like
hey i haven't seen you in three months you started
this reselling thing that's gonna make a you
feel bad and two they're thinking about you they
miss you man you gotta figure out how to give
your friends some time if you have friends um
or like mike was mentioning earlier pets i mean
goldfish doesn't mean much attention but a cat
or dog probably does so maybe like hey once a
week i'm gonna go walk the dog or play squeaky
toy with a cat or something for an hour just
put that in and figure it out you can make everybody
around you happy which cause and effect will
actually make you happy because when you're around
somebody who's in a foul mood, that naturally
spills over to you a little bit. Now you're in
a bad mood and you don't know why. So working
all these problems out in advance, again, doing
things in advance, it's one of the big ones we're
talking about here today, will spare you pain
and agony and it will give you happiness and
peace of mind. Yeah, that's so true. The other
day I was in a rotten mood for some reason. And
Dev's like, you're in such a rotten, nasty, bastard
mood. And I'm just like, I don't know what it
is, but it rubs off on the people around you.
And I think as resellers, we let a lot of the
business stuff keep us up at night. You're worried
about getting returns and you're worried about...
Is this going to get there in time? And you're
tracking your packages. Dude, I am so minimalist
with giving a single shit about anything related
to this business. I could care less, Johnny.
It goes in the box. I drop it off at UPS. I don't
know where it goes. I don't even know how it
gets there. I could care less. I don't even want
to know. And I'd look at none of it. All I'd
look at... How much I'm spending, how much is
coming in the bank account. Now, if there is
a time and a place where I have to be more analytical
to make money, I will do it. But for the time
being, dude, the stuff we get caught up on, prepping
books, cleaning books, customer service, I want
zero parts. I don't even care. It's not even
me being lazy. It's me just doing. All that's
asked of me. I sound like I'm being asked to
do anything else. So why am I going to go above
and beyond if there's no impact to the bottom
line of my business? Exactly. Now, here's one.
And people are, we're going to get flamed in
the comments for this one. And I'm going to sound
like the Jeffersons all of a sudden, but I'm
not. So there are certain tasks in my life that
I get no enjoyment or pleasure of, but they must
be done on a weekly basis. Laundry. lawn care,
doing the dishes. Guess what? Just like a VA
you would for your business, I've outsourced
all that bullshit because I hate it. But it needs
to be done. It's necessary. So yeah, I have a
maid and I have a lawn crew. That saves me so
much time on a weekly basis that I could then
throw back in my business. Whoa, whoa, Johnny,
you're spending money there. Hold on. Yes, but
that is the expense. that I'm willing to do because
my dollars per hour in my business versus doing
those tasks that I loathe that are very much
necessary outweighs that. So that is a necessary
cost for me. Now, if you're the guy or girl who
enjoys doing dishes and or laundry or lawn care,
I'm not saying taking that away from you. If
it gives you actual therapeutic, methodical...
pleasure, relaxation by all means. But for me,
I don't get any of that. I hate it. I agree.
I think, I think the stigma around money and
having money and spending it certain ways is
so stupid because I mean, look at people that
have infinite amount of money, right? Like they,
they use the money to get their time back to
make their life easier. What John just said is
exactly that, right? Like you pay somebody to
do things you don't want to do or, even if it's
an easy task to you, you just don't enjoy doing
it, right? Like, you know, maybe you really hate
vacuuming or like you really hate mowing the
lawn, but it'll only take you 10 minutes, but
you really hate it. You're just like, I'd rather
just pay somebody 40 bucks to knock it out, right?
Like, I think we have to, it all comes back to
like leveraging your time and money and they
go hand in hand. It's stupid, but you make the
money so that you can. not spend as much time
working and like working isn't just your business
it's other things in life that you probably don't
enjoy doing i mean that's why all these service
companies exist and if you have the money and
you don't want to do it and you can afford to
do it i mean some of the stuff is even business
write -offs right so like there's there's so
many ways you can leverage money to balance your
life better when it comes to the amount of time
you spend but yet again we get back to that same
beginning point of we can't even keep a hundred
dollars in the bank account rather yet try to
i guess pay for as people would see as like unnecessary
services right because what you're talking about
is like most people are going to be like so you
don't need to have that like that's so excessive
well i mean who cares It's my money. I'm free
to spend it however I damn well want. There you
go. I don't want to do the lawn. I don't want
to do dishes and I don't want to do laundry.
He said it so I didn't have to say it. He's the
bad guy as always. Yeah. Well, okay. On the other
segwaying here, when I was growing up, My dad
would sometimes come home and he'd have his office.
We had an office in our home where he would do
computer work, whether it was programming, whatever.
He was a computer guy. And the rule was the door
shut. You don't dare come in. If you came in,
you were going to get a beat. Well, in my household,
it's not kosher these days. You get a beating
flat out. So I never went in there after I learned
my lesson the first time. And those were the
rules. Now, I'm not saying and it's not allowed
these days. But setting the clear boundary rules
with your family, like, hey, when I'm in my office
or I'm in my garage or where I'm in the storage
unit, I'm not to be disturbed. But conversely,
he had to come out of there eventually, right?
Well, then it was his time to do family time
and stuff. So conversely, you'll want, okay.
You come out of your reselling hobbit hole after
8 p .m. and we'll spend a couple hours with your
family. I'm talking people that are married or
they got kids or whatever. If you're alone and
single, you don't got those rules, right? Good
for you, bachelor or bachelorette. But again,
working ahead of time, setting the rules of the
house for both family and work, for your work
-life balance and family balance. It's going
to spare you a lot of headache, a lot of arguments,
and a lot of resentment, honestly. And they may
have a list of rules for you that you're unprepared
for. But in life, we call compromises. That's
what all relations are. Nobody's a winner. Everybody's
a loser during a compromise. But it's what's
the agreed upon misery that everybody's willing
to live with. All right, so for the sake of me
and everybody listening or watching this, we're
going to role play with Johnny here, all right?
Okay. So it's 10 years in the future, Johnny.
You are you. You are Johnny, right? Okay. You
have a wife. You have a four -year -old Johnny
Jr., right? Okay. It's 8 p .m. You're in your
house in the garage, and 7 .30 to 8 .30 is your
don't open the door time, right? And you got
one of those doors that you can see through,
right? It's like glass paint, right? Well, you're
only halfway through your work time and nobody
can come in. But little Johnny comes up and he
smacks both his hands on the glass. Daddy, what
does Johnny do? Does he reach for the belt or
does he go open the door and let little Johnny
in? probably going for the wrench at that point,
but no little Johnny and come on. It depends
what I'm doing. If it's a mundane, this will
take me twice long. If little Johnny comes in
fine, whatever. If it's something urgent and
time sensitive, I need to get done. That little
bastard's getting beat. It's a, I think, you
know, I think people are, I'm sorry for political
correctness sake sent to his room to think about
what he did. I think people that are best at
this are – sorry, I hate to break it to you,
fellas, but I feel like women are a lot better
at these types of things we're talking about
because, I don't know, just in my experience,
I have a lot of coaching I do, and there's lots
of moms out there and heads of households. And,
like, I think to myself, like, these ladies got
kids running around. They got jobs. They got
a husband that they're taking care of. At the
end of the day, listen, the ladies take care
of us, right? Let's just not try to spin it any
other way. And they're still pushing good numbers
on Amazon, like $8 ,000 to $12 ,000 a month on
Amazon. And they juggle all of these things.
So I'm just like, if we could just transplant
how they do it into some of us dumb guys' brains,
we'd be so much better off for it. But maybe
that's the thing. Maybe it's just... When you
don't have a choice and you're thrown into it,
and I guess you enjoy it, right? Like maybe the
people that really suck at this just don't enjoy
being around their family or they don't enjoy
little Johnny, right? Like maybe they're just
like, to hell with little Johnny, you know, I'm
just going to stay in my garage all day. Maybe
that's the secret to this all is that if you
enjoy, I guess, the other things you have going
on besides resale, and then you figure out a
way to kind of make it work. Here's a perfect
test for this. Get you and your spouse together
saying you're going to blah vacation somewhere.
Who makes the itinerary? Or do either of you
make the itinerary? Because then I can tell you
who's the multitasker, the one that made the
itinerary. Now, if you both made itineraries,
you're both multitaskers. If none of you made
itineraries and you're just go with the flow,
you're not multitask oriented, I don't think.
The person who's multitasking wants to plan everything
out. They want to write it all down to the damn
minute and do it. And I think, and not to go
too much into gender assumptions because everybody's
different, right? But I do think by and large,
average, and I'm sure there's some case study
out there, it shows that women are better at
multitasking than men are. Men are better at
singularly focused, complete task, one thing
before the other kind of deal. I do think that.
Now, whether that's a wrong assumption. And I
think I can't blanket 100 % because there's plenty
of guys that are good at multitasking and there's
plenty of women that aren't good at multitasking.
But by and large, I think that is true. You can
blanket me with that statement all day long because
it's facts. Deb is way more detail -oriented,
figuring things out. I don't know what it is.
Like you said, I just go scan stuff, dude. She's
just like, go scan stuff and make me some money.
I'm like, yes. march out and scan stuff and bring
it back and list it and get rid of it it's it's
all balance and it's it's hard at times life
sucks you get hit with a lot of shit in life
and if you think everything's going to be golden
forever you're wrong and when it rains it pours
and money can kind of give you a bigger umbrella
in some of these situations but even then right
like people get sick loved ones get sick pets
get sick kids get sick you get sick right your
own health you don't even take that into consideration
when i hear these people working these crazy
hours i'm just like you're not probably sleeping
right you're probably not eating right like it
all it's all a culmination and like we said if
we're in a society where everything tries to
get you like anxiety fueled ridden the news the
sky's always falling because that's what gets
the views you're always going to be in shambles
at the end of the day. Right. And it goes back
to what Ivan and Mike's been saying the whole
time. If you do a little bit extra ahead of time,
those, you get sick, someone in your family gets
sick, and you need to take care of them because
they're worshiping the porcelain gods all day
long. You have the flexibility to, well, take
time off, take a sick day, either for you or
them. or emergency, somebody broke something,
needs to go to the ER, and it's okay. You'll
be frustrated for one minute, like, I'm not going
to get my work done today. But hey, you worked
ahead of time. You prepared for this by working
ahead of time. It's okay. It's perfectly okay
to take the day, the week off, as long as you've
been working ahead of time. Your business doesn't
suffer for that. You're taking care of you or
the others that need taking care of. It's okay.
Me and Deb have dropped. literally full days
of plans just to go take care of different things
that popped up in life and without a care in
their world, right? Like the money's still in
the bank account. Things are, the business is
still going. And I'll say this, like prior to
that, right? Like CBS won't give me the day off.
Something happened in the middle of the day.
They're going to tell me you can't leave. There's
nobody else there. So cherish this opportunity
that we have as Resound because, you know, your
other boss isn't going to let you take the day
off. And in Resound, if you build this business
properly. and you have some funds set aside,
then, you know, me and Johnny decide not to record
another podcast today, then who cares? We can
come back and do it another time. We lose no
sleep, no money, no dollars over anything. So
it's beneficial to make the sacrifice if the
payoff is there. If you can be accountable and
actually see the payoff down the road, and you're
not sacrificing everything, right? You're not
giving, you're not selling your soul to the devil
for a few bucks. It's just part of any business.
Anything you're trying to grow is going to take
time. There's going to be having people on board,
having conversations with those around you. And
some people might not understand it fully, right?
Like, you know, they're not going to understand
what you're trying to do when you try to explain
you reselling to a family member who's never
done reselling, right? That's kind of, that's
just the reality. And different people are going
to understand it and they're not, but they don't
have to understand it to understand, hey, you're
going to try something for. two to four months
and you're going to try to get these results
and we're going to we're going to do this so
we can make an extra five thousand dollars so
we can pay off our debt or we can go on the cruise
or we can you know pay for the kids braces or
something like that it's all worth it in the
end if you do this business right right exactly
and and here's one for you if you personally
need a mental health day like i can't do another
listing i can't pack another box you've been
working hard all this time you've been doing
the extras all this time you don't want to because
it goes against your work ethic but it's okay
to do so to recharge your personal batteries
everybody burns out now here's where people get
in the dangerous trouble that day of hooky you're
doing to recharge turns into five turns into
10 turns into 15 and their business suffers because
of that but if you are anywhere in control of
your responsibilities. But one day, I get one
day until this happens again. I'm allowing myself
this one day of inconvenience for my business
because I personally need it and my business
is actually suffering because the quality of
my work's gone down and I can tell. Yeah, take
the day off for yourself. Do something fun. Recharge.
But tomorrow comes, it's back to the grind. And
as long as you're good with that and you can
do that, great. But if you can't do that and
you're the kind of person, well, that was really
fun. I want to do it again. I want to do it again,
Mike. I'm going to take two days off. That's
where you're going to get into trouble because
that just compounds to more and more problems.
Your business is going to suffer and you, in
effect, are going to suffer. I agree. I'm going
to wrap this episode up here. Like Johnny said,
it's all a balancing act. You have to take time
for yourself and get carried away with it. Don't
compare yourself to other people, especially
in the reselling world. Lots of nonsense out
there. Everybody's business is completely different.
So you comparing yourself to try to be like Johnny
or me or tech or any of the million resellers
out there, you're never going to feel satisfied,
right? Set goals for yourself and kind of work
on that. And just be clear, communicate with
yourself and those around you what you're going
to be doing and what the expectations are. And
you shouldn't, there's always going to be hiccups.
Nothing's ever going to go 100 % smoothly, but
there'll be less bumps in the road along the
way. So that's going to do it for this week's
episode. Thanks for listening to another episode
of the Reseller's Mindset Podcast. Today's full
episode and all previous episodes are available
to all YouTube members along with the weekly
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