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, everyone?
Welcome to episode three of the Resellers Mindset podcast.
Mike here with Johnny B. As always,
today's topic is a very important one.
And there's two sides to this one here.
We have relationships when it comes
to your reselling business.
I'm not talking about your dating life.
I'm talking about your money life,
having relationships to help grow your business,
or the other side of it, relationships
that can hurt your business.
So I'm going to throw it over to Johnny B. here.
He's going to kind of tap on it a little bit.
I'm going to, we're going to start out
with some secret sauce here.
He's not even ready for this, right?
So I've been thinking about this all day.
You're going to scream at me?
Scream at me, go ahead, Mike.
I'm going to throw this one at you.
And you're going to have to give me a good answer here.
So give me the most important relationship
you have in your business.
I don't need specific details, right?
Because I don't want to go steal your source on you, right?
I just want to know the most important relationship you
have currently for your business and how
do you want about getting it?
I have two, but we'll go with the top one
because it's the most important one.
The most important one is the one with my local auction house.
And I was buying from them frequently on the cheap
because they don't know how.
Well, they're not very good at marketing,
let's just say that.
And I get stuff really cheap from them.
But I was a frequent flyer, as they say,
because I was at every auction doing all the things.
I was mainly online, though.
But getting friendly with the owners, I was able to hear
that they were in financial difficulties.
So I took a benefit for that of what do you guys
think about getting rid of your retail portion of your store
and letting me rent that out?
And you guys just run the online business
because that is the only thing that's making you
guys money at the moment.
And this took months and months and months of I
had plans to buy this building all along.
I was just waiting until I had a suitcase full of cash
to do it because it's really close to my house.
It's literally across the street.
I can walk to work now.
But opportunities came a-knockin.
And because I was so friendly with them
and because I was buying from them, supporting them
in their business, they were very
inclined to at least sit down and talk to me.
And one thing led to another.
And I now have a, quote unquote, warehouse
where I work out of every day.
That is my most important relationship.
And it will be an ongoing one because they
are an older couple.
And I could see them even if they stick it out
the next 10 years, I'm going to end up with this building.
I know I will.
So the first time you ever went to this auction house,
what was your mindset the first time you decided to?
Were you just like, let me go check this out,
see what it's about?
Did anything kind of lead you?
Did you watch an episode of Storage Wars or something?
It's like, oh, let me go over to this auction house
and see if there's anything in here I can sell.
I did not come over here when I first got into reselling
because I went in here for funsies
before I got into reselling and it was utterly crap.
It still is utterly crap.
Just tchotchke stuff mainly.
And I don't know why.
I was looking for more places to source.
Or I think it was a rainy day, actually.
I came in here like, maybe they got a couple of books.
This is when I niche down to just books.
And they ended up having quite a few books.
But they did the horrible thing of hiding them.
They were indoors and stuff.
I was like, oh, this is where you put your books.
So you're like, it wasn't messy, but they just
didn't care about the books, essentially.
But I bought all of them, all of their books.
There were a lot of books.
And then the next week they came back,
they actually had a red library cart full of books.
They brought me more.
So I just kept coming back.
This is the retail portion.
Then they educated me that they actually
do a lot of online auctions.
And they had a crap ton of books on the first one there, too.
And I got them for really cheap, really cheap.
And that was the first part of the relationship building,
is me walking in the door, right,
and introducing myself, being friendly, not being a jerk,
or ignoring them.
Because they're friendly shopkeepers, right?
They're like, hey, hello.
Hi, I'm this, that, and the other.
You introduce yourself, you do the polite cordial thing.
And then you probe with your questions,
where are your books?
I like books.
And yeah, it just spun off from there.
And like I said, about a year later,
I'm now working out of their building.
I mean, I'm a renter right now, but I plan
to be an owner in a few years.
That's crazy.
Like you were just, hey, you know, like, ah, you know what?
I'm not going to, you know, it's a miserable day out.
I'm not going to go where I usually go.
I'm going to go to this place that I've
been thinking about going.
And now look what it's turned into, right?
It's just, it's crazy.
And it kind of, you know, that'll take me right into mind.
I have the library.
Then I get all their overflow donations.
So overflow donations is just items they already have.
They do have like a thing out front
where they sell books.
It's only like a little table and they have a little free book
section.
The only thing they keep on those is like newer fiction.
That's within the last three years.
So anything that's new fiction within the last three years,
they'll keep for themselves to put out on the free table
because it's in a nicer, larger area, more upscale,
affluent area.
So they like having that stuff for the regulars
that are always in there.
And so the overflow is basically all their textbooks,
because libraries don't deal with textbooks,
at least in my area.
So any textbooks that comes in goes to me for nothing.
Any of the older stuff, they don't even waste time.
If it doesn't have a barcode, it goes in Booksaver's pile.
That's what they call me, the Booksaver.
So it's like soon enough, I'm in talks right now.
I'm going to be joining the Avengers.
But yeah, so my relationship, I kind of did, I mean,
I wouldn't say mine is kind of the same as yours,
but I lucked out with it in essence,
because they actually reached out to me
through my Craigslist ad where I buy books.
And they didn't even want me to buy the books.
I just said, hey, they were, before me, they were literally,
all the volunteers, friends of the library volunteers,
most of them are older ladies, they were literally filling up
their cars.
And they told me stories, because I
helped set up their book sale.
These little old ladies are loading up their Priuses
with boxes of books to take them to a thrift store.
And they were actually, sometimes they
would have to pay the thrift store to take the books.
How much of a racket is that?
That is crazy.
I mean, you have something I don't.
I still have to pay for books.
I mean, sometimes it's really cheap, nickels and dimes,
but I don't have access to free books.
You do.
That's impressive.
So they literally, and that's why I always say,
like, when you're doing this kind of stuff is,
it's not so much you getting rid of the stuff for them.
You're providing them a service.
Any way you look at it, it's not, oh, they just
want the books gone.
They really don't care about the money.
They just want the stuff to be all gone.
And I'm not saying, I didn't say, hey, sure,
I'll come look at the books and take only what I want.
I said, no, I'll take everything.
We'll figure out how to deal with it later,
because you have that infrastructure in place
where if somebody shows up with a truckload,
you at least have a plan, some sort of plan.
But yeah, I stumbled on the mine through Craigslist,
and now every month I get a call, hey, Mike,
we got a whole car full of books.
I drive over my 2011 Sonata, fill it up with 30 boxes of books.
I'm sure the suspension's been shot for years,
but it's whatever.
It's like, whatever.
It's an old car.
As long as it runs, it gets you from A to B.
I don't need to break out the Lamborghini from my book haul.
And that kind of relationship, so I get them for free.
You're talking about it.
You get it for free.
But every time I go, I'm donating at least $25
to the library.
First off, I'm writing off the donation, $25.
Second off, the ladies appreciate it.
So I deal with one person that's like their intake donation.
So up until I set up this library sale last month,
I never met any of the other ladies.
But when I went and met them, when I set up the library sale,
they all were like, oh my god, we
can't believe you actually donate to the library
when you come take these books.
Like, you're providing us a service.
And I'm giving them $25, and they
think it's like the end of the world, right?
When in reality, it's probably like a penny per book I'm taking.
Well, that's the beautiful part.
You're getting free books, and you're getting a write-off.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's those kind of relationships.
He talked about he's got his with his auction house,
and he lives there now, basically,
because he works out of there.
He's still home for a shower.
That's it.
You just need like a bridge going across the street,
right to your attic, to the warehouse.
No, man, like a 50-foot slide.
I mean, that's my workout, climbing a 50-foot slide
and just sliding into the office every day.
You barrel a hole, just crawl right underneath.
Yeah, so those are kind of what you just heard it here, right?
Our best two relationships we have and how we got them.
There's no secret way of doing this.
It's basically just being out there
and having your name out there.
And we say it all the time, you want
to be known as the book person of your area.
You want to have flyers, business cards,
and you want to have conversations.
It doesn't mean nothing if you got all this stuff,
if you can't walk in and have a conversation
with the business owner.
Now, OK, it's different when it comes
to going into chain retail stores versus mom and pops.
But we've already seen proof of that in the group,
where people have access to backroom of multiple good
wills, multiple people have access to backrooms
of good wills.
Personally, they won't let me do it.
I've tried it.
But you got to shoot your shot, right?
There's no harm in trying.
And you just got to, you know, it just takes,
I honestly think, just one of these relationships
will probably, you know, 5x, 10x somebody's business, right?
No matter if you're doing media, no matter what,
you know, like certain people have
people that go out and source clothing for them
and bring it to them.
Like that just, it just accelerates everything so much
because you have the inventory now.
And that's the whole thing.
You need the inventory if you want to grow.
And that's it just takes one relationship like that.
And all of a sudden, you're rocking and rolling.
And you think the sky is the limit.
And these relationships take time, right?
You're not going to, you know, sure there's anomalies,
you know, people that start out and they already have,
you know, auction house access, which we've seen, you know.
It's crazy.
But, you know, it takes time to get that one relationship.
And once you see the potential of one, you're like, wow,
what if I had two?
What if I had three?
You would have an endless supply of goods
to sell in your business no matter
what kind of business you have.
So yeah, that's our kind of two relationships,
our most important relationships in our business.
Personally, for me, like I said, it's usually
at least a thousand books a month I get for 25 bucks.
Johnny B, whenever they have books, I mean,
how many books you think you get from there in a month?
Well, one of my key sources for my eBay storage
from the same auction house.
So what happens is he comes in with about a thousand bucks
about what you do at the library sale.
I don't get them for free.
I do have to pay for them, but they don't even bother
putting them on the floor or in the auction.
They just call me directly and they're like,
your pile's over there.
And I look at the pile, make sure it's good.
And I walk up and pay them.
But outside, and I'll be honest, that's where a lot
of my bread and butter items are on my store come from.
Not the high dollar value ones.
I mean, maybe occasionally there's some in that pile,
but just $30 or less essentially.
But their actual auctions where they get books from,
I've probably bought in this year,
3000 outside of the thousand a month
that I get every month.
I almost feel like auction houses are kind of overlooked
nowadays.
The only people that buy from this,
and this is cause they don't advertise,
is resellers that buy from here.
Every person I met from here is a reseller of some kind,
either an everything seller or like me, I do books.
There's a tool guy, there's electronic guy.
Nobody's an average Joe, I bought this cause I want it
and I'm a consumer.
It's cause they don't advertise.
So people that know, I also live in a rural area.
People are unaware and listening to this.
So that maybe has something to do with it
in addition to the not advertising,
but they still get a hundred, 150 customers
every time they do an auction, which is cool,
but they're all resellers, all of them.
And I'm one of them.
That'll take us right into this.
The next part of it is maintaining
and keeping your relationship, right?
So like you just said, you're rural, but guess what?
If all of a sudden they put up skyscrapers
in your neighborhood, you're still that guy
because of the relationship you have.
Is there anything like, like I said,
I pay for my books and I don't ask for money.
And I volunteered to help set up the book sale,
which listen, in all transparency, I went to the book sale
thinking I wasn't gonna be able to scan anything
beforehand, right?
The lady said, hey, we usually have help
from the boy scouts and local mission,
but they didn't have any help this year.
So I said, hey, if you need me, I'll come do it.
I had no ill intentions on scanning anything.
So I got there and it was me and 30 old ladies
moving a hundred banana boxes of books.
So I basically carried them out to the tables.
They set them up and then they're like, hey,
since you're here, you can, it was funny,
you can shop, right?
So before the doors even open.
All right, so once the main lady,
like the treasurer of the library said,
hey, you ladies can shop, since you're helping set it up.
Everybody stopped moving books besides me, right?
All the old ladies went out and started shopping
the sale right away.
I swear to God, I was the last one still moving stuff around,
but I didn't mind, right?
That was like my, it was a good deed, right?
And they're like, let them have a few books, whatever.
They're like, oh, we'd rather you get it
than another reseller get it.
So I showed like some of the ladies exactly like,
there goes the copyright strike, way to go.
We showed a few ladies like how it works,
like how you scan stuff and they were all like,
oh my God, so that's what people are doing.
So I got the scan, I probably came home
with two boxes of profitable stuff.
I didn't scan everything.
So I left some stuff there for other resellers
that came along.
I don't wanna be that guy.
And I didn't want their sale to get a bad name
or anything like that.
So, but that's how I maintain that relationship is,
the lady has my number, I have her number.
If she ever needs me, she can reach out.
So like, what are some things you do
to kind of keep your relationship in good faith
besides pay them rent every month?
I help them with their online business.
They're doing the reselling thing,
but I'm trying to help them get into eBay themselves
and maybe a little bit of Amazon,
cause they actually get some stuff that's sealed sometimes
and it's got barcodes like,
why not just send that in to Amazon, collect a few bucks.
So, and I'm also helping them,
cause before this, I was into marketing.
I was harping on their marketing earlier.
So I'm helping them with that.
And that's actually how I got a reduction in my rent.
Cause they were asking about 400 more dollars
than what I'm currently paying.
And I threw that in as a reduction option for them.
And I would say the most beneficial thing
is just showing up,
you don't have to do it every day, not even weekly,
but just making sure they remember your face,
maybe every couple of weeks or something.
Even if you don't buy anything, just walking in,
how are things going?
You have any more books,
you don't have to be as crass as that,
but just be friendly with them.
It's just the common courtesy, like, hey, how you doing?
How you doing?
Are they heavily like,
so you're talking about like getting them
onto selling stuff online more,
or are they more like,
I mean, clearly they're not interested in books.
Like books, media isn't their main thing like you, right?
So they really don't care about that stuff.
Their bread and butter is coins and currency,
old coins currency,
but they sell everything.
Yeah, yeah.
Figured with an auction house, I got to sell everything,
but that's their niche is coins and currency.
That makes sense.
So, I mean, you help them out,
it's a relationship, right?
It's not just a tenant, you know, landlord kind of deal.
Right, and when they have a big haul,
I mean, I'll go out and help them unload some stuff,
or I have extra supplies.
Here's a perfect example.
I had a poly bag order from eBay, a big one,
but for some reason they decided to give me a box of boxes.
I don't use their boxes for my books.
So it was like, hey, you guys want these boxes?
Because it's either that or I resell these boxes,
and I don't really want to do that
because I run a bookstore.
And they're like, yeah, with love boxes, free boxes, yay.
And we'll do favors for each other here and there.
So being a renter works out in that regard as well.
They want to ask me a question or get my advice,
and maybe I have something for them.
If I ever have a thought of how would I rent an auction house,
maybe I'd ask them a few pointers.
Or how do auction houses work?
How do I get better deals at an auction house?
That would probably be more of my inline questions today.
Or how do I deal with city auction houses?
Because I don't deal with them that much
because I don't live there.
All right, so now we're going to get into,
so that kind of covers the good business side
of a relationship and how we came across our best ones.
I want to kind of talk about, I mean,
I wouldn't say it's business.
It's more like a personal relationship, right?
Almost like me and you sitting here talking,
like other like-minded reseller relationships.
We'll get into the good side of that first
before we turn to the dark side
and get into the dark side of both,
which will be a lot more fun.
It will be a lot more fun.
The good side here though,
like when it comes to being around like-minded people is,
you're around like-minded people that have the,
not the same goals necessary,
but you're working towards almost the same thing.
You're selling the same kind of stuff.
So you kind of can, you know, balance ideas off one another.
Me and you do it all the time.
And you have somebody else that'll tell you
if something sounds crazy and stupid,
or if it's something like, wait a minute,
I should be doing this too.
That's a great idea.
So I think that's kind of the good part of it is,
you know, being able to basically get another opinion
from somebody you know.
I mean, I mean, I guess I really don't know
if you're a true billionaire over there,
but everything you said just from the relationship point
of it, like, you know, you can tell somebody's,
you know, legitimate, honest person.
So when it comes to that,
I think it's good to be around like-minded people
when it comes to having relationships, but you gotta,
listen, there's only so much time in the day, right?
Me and you, I can't hang out on here all day with you,
unfortunately, right?
We got, I got a business.
We're besties, Mike.
We can have the whole day together.
I got a business I gotta run.
So there is a line where you can't, you know,
you can't just be chatting all day with other resellers
because then that's when it turns to the dark side.
But what's your take?
It's very tempting to do so.
It really is.
Oh yeah.
It's like, I think here's the problem.
When we first start out, we don't have that outlet.
We don't have anybody, even if you have a snitch
being there there, they're gonna tell you
to shut up after an hour.
That's Deb.
So I don't wanna hear anymore.
But us as resellers, our brain's constantly going
with this stuff, right?
We wanna talk, talk, talk, talk about it.
Like even on our Sunday calls.
I mean, you show up an extra half hour early
than what's scheduled.
And we talk the entire time.
Those calls could go all day long, if I let them.
They could.
Even when I say, is there anything else?
I gotta start saying, is there anything else
like 30 minutes before the call ends?
Because there's always like 10 other things that come along.
And I'm guilty of this.
I've caused the call to run over.
It's my fault, Mike.
It's mine.
But that's the thing.
We get together once a week.
And then we have Discord.
That's a little, it's like heroin addict, right?
We gotta get our fix.
We gotta talk about reselling all the time.
And I think that, I mean, you put it earlier.
We just gotta get to work sometimes.
Talk later.
We got an hour to talk.
Rest of the day is work.
When we're all retired on the beach,
we can talk as much as we want.
Right, but then we won't be theory crafting all day long
and wasting time.
I know, right?
It's different when you're not completely
in the business talking about it.
But like you said, right?
There's a thin line of us wasting way too much time.
Discord, for me, it's different, right?
I quote unquote have a brand, a YouTube brand,
a personality, whatever.
So, of course that's gonna take more time out of my day.
But I always think to myself,
if I didn't have all these obligations
and I didn't waste so much time,
how much more productivity could I get out of myself?
And how much more money would that be on a daily basis,
a monthly basis if I actually broke it down, right?
It'd probably be thousands of dollars.
No, for sure.
If you and me were not involved
doing these social activities with other resellers,
I mean, we're losing out on hundreds,
if not thousands of dollars on a weekly monthly basis.
But we do this because A, we want to, maybe, probably.
B, we like helping other people.
I don't mind answering somebody's questions,
especially the brand new, neither do you, obviously,
because that's your whole thing.
I have a lot more background
and you're a lot more foreground,
but I don't mind helping on the background.
It's usually a quick answer like, yes, do that.
No, don't do that and here's why.
You gotta find a balance.
That's a big thing, right?
So, I could post YouTube videos seven days a week
or I could stick with three days a week.
You gotta figure out what's the limitations you have
to a point where you're not basically harming your business
to a point where it doesn't make sense to keep doing.
So, it's one of those things where you'll learn as you go
how much time, quote unquote,
you can waste on these types of activities.
It's definitely not wasting to me.
I love doing the calls
because you learn so much from other people.
Everybody's got different business model, different plan.
Everything works differently for,
no matter who you are,
no matter what kind of business you got.
So, just being around like-minded people.
I mean, Sunday's my day off and that's when I do the calls.
So, that says enough, right?
It's my day off, my only day off I take of the week
besides the days I spend with them.
So, I learned so much from other people,
whether they're new or whether they've been around forever
that it makes sense for me to maintain these relationships
and can you just continue them and see where they go
and always be there for people and answer the questions.
That's why I do it.
And that's kind of the good side of having those relationships
is that you're always learning, right?
You never know everything there is to know.
And I'll give you a prime example
and I'm sorry for plugging another group
but I'm gonna plug the daily refining group.
I'm still in that group by the way.
I love you more, Mike.
Early on, I was trying to attend every single call
those guys have and they have a call for everything.
And I was talking and I was listening and I was learning
but you know what I was not doing?
I was not working.
The working gets the money.
The talking, listening and learning, that's great
but we're in this to make money.
Especially if you're doing this full time.
And I wouldn't say it was wasted time
but I need to assign my time better.
So I stopped attending a lot of their calls
and only the media calls which is particular to my business.
They're a reselling group for all,
just to clarify for people who don't know.
So if you sell jeans or jewelry or books
they got a call for everything.
They even have a generic morning call
of reselling in general and it's fantastic.
Chris and Tech are the owners of that
but even they say the group's biggest flaw
is there's too much information and there is.
We can sit on, even if you are not part of any group
you can sit on YouTube all day
and go through all the reselling channels
and waste a whole lot of time
versus just going out and do it.
Even if you don't know everything
there's no way to know everything.
It's impossible.
It is impossible.
Maybe not that tech guy,
tech and Chris may know everything
but outside of those two anomaly human beings
go out and do it and learn yourself.
If you got a question after you do the work,
yeah, show up to a call like,
hey, I did this, I didn't feel right about it.
Am I doing it right?
Am I right?
Sure, that's acceptable.
So basically take action before
trying to figure everything out, right?
Because the easiest way to learn something
is to do it yourself.
You can watch it.
Listen, I had to clean out the drain the other day
in the sink and I had to disconnect the thing
from underneath and get the little plunger out
and sure I can watch a YouTube video
but like actually doing it,
yeah, I see the guy doing it
but getting down there and your sinks
not the complete same,
it's like your thrift stores aren't the same as mine.
It's almost the same thing.
You just got to get out there and take action
and those relationships, they'll be there, right?
You don't have to be on all these calls,
like you said, things like that.
And same with YouTube, right?
You don't need to follow a million different resellers.
I'm guilty of that when I first started.
I was on YouTube, I was subscribed to Soam.
I mean, there's-
I'm guilty of that too.
There's probably a million reselling YouTubers out there
but I've narrowed it down to people that I kind of
get the most constructive information
that I can relate to my business.
And I would recommend anybody out there to do the same,
right?
Just because somebody posted a video,
like Deb, she does embroidery.
So she has her embroidery business people that she watches.
That'd be like, if I watch embroidery business videos,
it has no relation to what I'm doing.
So it's literally just a waste of time.
And you might tell yourself,
oh, well they have their own business.
So it's not a waste of time, but it is
because you're not really getting anything constructive
from it.
100%.
I mean, knowledge is power.
I don't disagree with that statement at all,
but what particular knowledge applies to you,
which is exactly what you were just saying.
That's the important bits.
And even on the media calls,
I hadn't showed up in like three months.
Because I knew everything and my time got more intensive.
They made a comment, hey Johnny,
we haven't seen you in three months.
So I'm like, I've been busy guys.
I'm sorry.
And then I showed up the next week,
and they're glad to see me.
And they're always glad to see me, super nice people.
But it's like when I need to learn or I have the extra time,
then it's okay to be invested in those things, I think.
But you got to concentrate on you and your business.
Are you gonna spend two hours sourcing
or you're gonna spend two hours on a call,
not getting anything accomplished or two hours listening
or two hours packing a box for Amazon?
I mean, we mentioned way earlier on the call here
that time's money.
How much is your time worth?
That you're not making any money doing,
like this, we're not making any money right now.
Neither one.
Well, maybe you are with your YouTube nonsense.
I'm not making any money.
I'll make like a dollar and a quarter.
I'll cut you in somewhere along the line.
But we're doing this because we've allocated a time.
You and I have a schedule to be here
a certain day of the week, a certain time, every time.
That way it doesn't screw with our business.
So it's like, we have a call once a week
and it's like, a main reason we decided to do this
is because this is something,
a podcast is something where you can listen and work, right?
We upload the video to YouTube
because you and Deb both agreed,
hey, we're already recording this.
YouTube's a video platform.
Why not upload the video?
You're a YouTuber, Mike.
You're a YouTuber.
I could just put like, you know, like, you know,
some kind of, I'll have a cutout just sit here,
but it's more to listen while you work.
That's kind of the big benefit to this style of video
and kind of why I wanted to make it.
It's almost, basically I'm taking less time out of you.
I'm taking less time out of your business
while you're working.
Even though this is a video that's five times longer
than a normal video I make,
because you can listen while you work.
You're not looking.
You just have this in your ears and you can do your thing
versus you have to sit here and look at a screen
at what I'm showing you, you know,
explaining different things.
I can do that all right here in your ears.
I don't have to take away from you being productive
in your business and that's the end game, right?
To be more productive and, you know, help people grow.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
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