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 to episode 21.
Or wait, we're all over the place here
if you're watching on YouTube, whatever.
We just throw a bunch of fingers up to get to 21,
even though I was well over 21.
Today's topic is going to be momentum
in your reselling business.
Kind of the ebbs and flows of just reselling in general.
And we were kind of talking a little bit here
before we started.
I've had a crazy week.
I'm not sure what Johnny B.
Johnny B is a little bit different, right?
He's more consistent with his work schedule than I am.
I can sit here and admit that.
So I'll be curious to see like how momentum works
and kind of works for him and works against him sometimes
because he has employees and everything like that
versus myself where, you know, if I have a bad crappy day,
I can just shut it down and say, hey, you know what, Mike,
today's not the day for you.
Live the fight another day.
So I guess we can start here kind of like just your idea
of momentum and reselling before we kind of get
into our previous week of reselling business.
Sure, I think there is momentum in the sense
of you reach a credible mass of a bunch of work
and then you get to pay off for that.
That's what I consider what you're building momentum to get.
And consistency ties into momentum, I think 100%.
Because you're not consistent.
You don't get momentum.
It's like two steps backwards, one step forward kind of deal.
So I think you need consistency in order
to even have momentum personally.
And that's why I work a pretty rigid schedule,
like you mentioned.
What do you consider momentum?
I mean, you hit it on the head, right?
You gotta be consistent because if you just, you know,
but then again, you know, how can you have momentum
if you're doing this part-time?
I think it really depends on how you look at it, right?
You might look at momentum different than me.
You know, you have this outlook of,
you're already looking 10 years down the road, right?
So your momentum is kind of all building up
towards that end goal where maybe somebody like myself
or somebody's part-time is like,
momentum for me is making sure I go out once a week,
this month, every single week, and that's momentum.
So it's different kind of where you're at in your business
and kind of just your mentality on things.
And I don't think there's any right or wrong answer.
I think it just comes down to being consistent
is how you create the momentum in your business.
Oh yeah, 100%.
Now, you mentioned my employees, consistency gets there.
That gets accomplished by using good old eBay's draft paint.
Cause I told them, as long as we got a two week buffer
in there, you guys need a week off to do, I don't know,
your family holiday nonsense, or you got final,
I got a college kid, so you got final exams
you need to cram for, that's cool.
As long as you do the work ahead of time, I'm cool with it.
Take your week off, don't care.
As long as we built the momentum with the consistency
to be able to do that.
I like, I actually really like that kind of,
your spin on that because, when you work a normal job
that doesn't exist, right?
Johnny B is not your boss and he's not gonna tell you,
hey, you can just disappear for a week,
as long as we have X, Y and Z done ahead of time.
And in your normal job, that doesn't exist.
You can get as far ahead as you want.
I've been there, store manager with CBS
and I could be far ahead of everybody else.
And I can't just go say, hey, if this came up,
I need three, four, five days off in a row.
It just doesn't exist.
And you're kind of creating an environment,
which I think is good because it motivates people, right?
Like, hey, we're staying on top of our stuff.
If I'm gonna go to Disney World next week,
I'll just say, hey, Johnny B,
hey, I see where we're at with the Draft Bank.
I'm going to meet Mickey Mouse.
And you're like, hey, have a good time.
We'll see you when you get back.
And it works another way.
I made it another incentive for him.
And he just took advantage of it today, actually,
because we just had a discussion this week.
I was like, I don't care what you do.
All this extra crap I do that I make you do
outside of your listings and photography, I don't care.
Do you wanna just take off after that?
I'm cool with it.
I'm really only paying you for photography and listing.
I'm just giving you optional hours to do this or that.
Also, if you wanna work ahead to finish your list,
because he's usually scheduled four days, my college kid.
He decided to do four days of listings and three,
so he could have the day off.
I'm like, that works for me and I gotta pay you less.
So, sure.
Yeah, I mean, that's a win-win.
And I like the whole kind of mentality you have down there
when it comes to, you're that guy no matter what,
you're gonna be there every day.
And I was the same way when I was at CVS.
Something comes up, I 100% understand.
There's a snowstorm list
and you crash your car on your way to CVS.
CVS ain't buying you a new car.
So, stay at home, it's not a big deal.
I'll deal with it.
And that's kind of the approach you take
in your reselling business is that,
I'm always gonna be here, I'm always gonna deal with it.
It's fine if things come up, I understand life happens.
It just doesn't happen for me because this is my business.
And I treat it like a newborn baby.
I mean, that's a good way to be.
Nobody would really whine about working
for somebody like yourself where
you give so much flexibility,
but it's not to the point where people just walk on you.
You got a fine line where people can't cross.
Even if they do walk on me,
I got two weeks to find somebody else.
Yeah, and it all builds momentum in your business
because people are like, hey, let's get this done.
Everybody comes together.
Hey, everybody besides you wants to take off
for the next 10 days.
So be it because you set it out like,
hey, we got two weeks and let's get there
and let's keep it going.
And if something comes up, it's not a big deal.
So you basically create momentum within other people,
which is kind of a completely different way to look at it
versus just being myself and kind of having
to create your own momentum.
Right, I get it.
They have lives.
They wanna go do something fun with their friends
because the two I have, one's 22 and one's 18.
So they wanna do all the fun stuff, right?
They're still in that mode.
Like you and me are like 10, 15 years older than them
and we're like, eh, same thing every day for me kind of deal.
Yeah, so I kind of give people a rundown
of the crazy momentum filled week I had, right?
So I haven't been out to my furthest thrift storage route
an hour and 10 minutes away, one way driving.
So I took that trip out there early in the week,
drove all the way, no,
we're gonna backtrack even before this.
We're gonna talk Saturday and Sunday,
even though it's kind of Saturday
kind of can be sitter last week.
But I packed my one box of FBA I had.
So that was completely done.
Monday morning hits, restock limits on Amazon.
I get cut by 350.
So if I will end up pack that box before Monday,
I would not have been able to send in those.
I think it was like right around 50 items.
I would have been stuck sitting on those items
until restock limits decide to move again,
which could be March 1st,
March whenever they feel like doing it.
So my week started off good, right?
Cause I'm like, hey, I got it done on the weekend
because that's gotten me before.
I did not pack my boxes on the weekend
and then the restock limits hit
and I'm stuck with all this stuff.
So I'm like, yeah, suckers,
I got you beat this time around.
So I get myself to UPS, it's a good week.
I'm like, all right, we're gonna drive out
to my furthest thrift stores.
I didn't record anything
because I kind of just wanted to be focused
on getting in and out of stores.
And I probably went to like eight thrift stores that day.
And so I didn't record any YouTube videos.
There's a time and a place for that, right?
I don't record every single store I go into.
I try to kind of pick my spots.
And if I'm going further out, I wanna be more efficient.
I'm gonna be having to record before I go in
and then while I'm in there and then a wrap up for it
when I got a whole car full of books,
I gotta keep things separated.
So I was in and out of these thrift stores.
I actually did pretty decent.
I came back probably, I would say maybe around 80 items,
which isn't bad for my new trigger set.
So I was happy with the trip.
So I'm feeling good about myself, right?
I get everything listed in Merchant Fulfilled.
Like it's a good start to the week.
So somebody reaches out to me that day,
hey, I work at a church.
Church is about 45 minutes away.
We got all these extra books.
We had a yard sale and these are the books,
nobody that we couldn't sell.
So Deb did a little research, shout out to Deb.
They don't put their book sale on Booksell find
or anything like that.
So it's just like a local church, local kind of deal.
So I'm like, hey, thanks for reaching out.
Send me a few pictures and the guy's like, all right, yeah.
So he finally gets back to me.
So I go out there Wednesday and he sends me pictures.
He said, this is just some of the stuff, right?
A bunch of boxes of books.
I'm like, all right, 45 minutes is a commitment, right?
You're driving basically an hour and a half, one round trip.
So it's gonna be some guests and it's basically gonna be
almost your whole day.
So I'm planning on, I clean out the car fully, right?
Clean, get everything out of the car, drive out there.
So I show up and it was literally the boxes he sent me
and maybe one more or two more stacks of old books
that were just like national geographic magazines
that were, and like the crappy like old school,
like trade books, like how to wire your house
or like how to do drywall.
So I'm like, all right, it's a church, right?
So it's feel good anyway, right?
So I wound up spending like 20 bucks.
I don't feel good, Mike.
I don't feel good right now.
I'm paying 15 cents a pound, right?
So I wound up spending 20 bucks, it's whatever.
I get back, I scan the whole thing.
I get one book for FBA and one book for merchant fulfill.
The merchant fulfill was like $6
and the FBA was I think like 27.
So I'm already in the green, right?
So I'm like, all right, whatever.
Everything else, I take the second in Charles
and they take it all and I get like,
I think it was $32 in cash or like $55 in credit.
So I'm kind of pissed off, right?
Because yeah, it was a church,
but yeah, I was expecting to fill up the car, right?
I even asked the guy, I said,
how many books do you have?
Like, do I need to like, you know, run a U-Haul or can I?
He said, oh, you probably can fill up a minivan.
All right, so for those, so reference here is,
I have a Hyundai Sonata, four doors Sonata
with a pretty decent size trunks.
So I'm like, all right, a minivan,
like I'm easily gonna be able to fill up my car.
So before I went, you know, I went to the ATM.
I'm taking out $150
because I'm thinking it's gonna be a thousand pounds
of books, right?
I'm like, all right, yeah,
like this is gonna be my next few days here.
And it turned out not to be,
I could fit everything in the trunk easily
and I got through it all probably within 10, 20 minutes.
And that kind of like, kind of, you know,
it was like a shot through the heart, right?
Because I was rocking and rolling on my thrifting trip.
And now I was expecting this huge bulk buy.
And I'm like, yeah, like, yeah, this week is turning out good.
And then like all of a sudden things start going south, right?
So my mindset, my mind's it's done for the day.
And Deb's like, listen, it's whatever, you know,
it's whatever.
And Deb kind of jokes around with me too.
Like she'll like look at the pictures and be like,
nah, don't even waste your time.
Nah, nah, like she always tells me like,
and she's usually right.
And with that one, she was, right?
She's like, hey, don't even bother with this.
And I was like, well, you know, it's a church,
it's a relationship ongoing.
If they have a lot of books,
I'll at least find some ones that don't have barcodes
that'll, you know, make me decent money.
Completely wrong.
So, you know, Deb's kind of kidding with me all day long,
throwing it in my face.
But that was like kind of the start of my week.
And as it kept going,
I even got another one that kind of built me up here.
My DVD guy reached out and said, hey,
my nephew got a storage locker.
It's got books in it.
He needs to get rid of it.
Okay.
Here's my nephew's name and number.
Hit him up.
Hey, you know what's going on?
Oh yeah, what's going on?
Yeah, my uncle said, you know,
you and him are kind of in business.
You can swing by the unit before anybody else
and kind of pick through what you want to pick through.
All right.
Use book guys back on cloud 10, right?
I'm riding high.
Now I need that U-Haul.
I'm throwing it in Deb's face.
Yeah, I'm gonna be in the stores lockers, you know?
I'm gonna be in there picking before anybody else.
And so he sent me a few pictures.
Well, he posted on Facebook too.
So Deb looked at the picture and Deb's like,
that doesn't look that good, Mike.
I'm like, listen, I don't care.
Like this is a reselling bucket list here
to get in the storage unit before anybody else, right?
So I'm like, all right.
So Saturday comes and that's the day we're supposed to meet.
Like he's gonna text me the address
and everything in a time.
And I wake up like around 8.15, he texts me,
hey, I sold the whole unit to somebody.
So forget about stopping by.
Oh, oh man.
I tell Deb and she's just laughing.
She's just losing it.
I'm like, oh, that's a sad story.
That's a tragic story.
I was so excited and it just kind of goes to show like.
It's like birthday kind of excitement, right?
It's definitely not your birthday anymore.
There's nothing guaranteed, man.
It's so like, it's so up and down
and you can easily catch yourself in a rut
or you can kind of build yourself up to a point
where it's not realistic.
You're like your expectations with things.
And when it doesn't go right,
like you gotta be able to just suck it up
and just be like, yeah, whatever.
You know, like I tell Deb, you know, hey, yeah, yeah.
You were right.
Tell her 10 times a day.
Yeah, you're right.
Whatever.
Like that was my momentum filled week.
What do you have going on with momentum?
My eBay store is going up a lot.
Doing some marketing there
and getting a lot of multi-orders.
I had a 800 plus day on Tuesday of this week
as a result of that.
And then some smaller profit days outside of that.
So getting over $500 in sales on books
is a pretty good win on the Bay pretty much.
So that was a good day for me.
People are buying more quantity things.
So that's been the momentum.
I've been working on that since December
and I've seen results from it a lot.
And I'm tweaking it here and there.
And because of my tweaking,
I'm seeing a gradual momentum there.
Also increasing my follower count on eBay
as well has been helping a lot actually.
I didn't do any of that in 20,
what year are we in? 2022.
But now that I'm actually pushing it a lot harder,
I'm reaping the rewards of that push essentially.
My listings are about the same,
but I do have plans to go up in that with the employees.
Right now we're launching about 40 listings a day.
End of March we'll be doing 50.
End of April we'll be doing 60.
End of May we'll be doing 70 listings launched a day.
With our two week buffer.
So what can throw a wrench in your momentum?
What's gonna slow everything down?
What are some things or just in your experience,
what are some big hiccups where you were felt like
you were trending up and you're riding high
and then all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute,
something happened and then all of a sudden
you feel like you're down in the dumps
like you're ready to call it quits.
eBay doesn't update that they either push out early
or didn't announce that jinx with the whole day
and or week depending on what's broken or,
well eBay thought this was a great idea,
this is horrible kind of deal.
So it slows the routine down I guess,
which in turn slows the momentum down
because now you're off by a week or a few days
with everything you've estimated.
So I do a lot of spreadsheeting as you know.
So I hate when my numbers get messed up
because of unforeseeable things,
but knowing this I have accounted for unforeseeable things
and a lot of my number crunching now that I figured out
that it's not gonna be the same every day
either from Amazon or eBay.
Like Amazon in particular, I mean, we've been locked out.
Most of us have been locked out since what late August
and now we're tail end of February.
That's a lot of months versus the three or four
I was counting on and all my estimates.
So all my Amazon data is garbage now.
But we do have some dates to go off of.
We'll see when March 1st rolls around how things will really be
or if we're gonna be waiting a little longer
and then I just make adjustments from there.
But even if the momentum slows down,
my eBay's momentum is going up.
So I have to, that's how I accounted for that.
It's just okay, if I'm locked out of Amazon,
we'll focus more on eBay.
If I get eBay's ever down for whatever reason
or there's some per fluffles that we need to slow down
our listing pace on, well, okay, fine.
More time allocated to Amazon kind of thing.
All right, so I got a question for you
because I'm not heavy into eBay, right?
I don't, you're like a thousand X what I am.
And I always see like at least probably once every other day
there's a lot of YouTubers that complain that like
eBay is down and it's not working
because they're not getting sales.
Like, do you like, is that all just, you know,
is that just me getting suckered in like an old man
for like click baity stuff?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
That's not how eBay works.
The best people in the business,
why don't they make all the money all the time?
Because eBay is kind of democratic on who they promote.
Even though you have the best thing, best price out there,
they still rotate how they promote you on the search things
or push you out further like on Google and stuff.
So just cause it's a slow sales day,
that usually means unless you haven't done your list,
you haven't done the usual, right?
Excluding that, like you haven't done your daily listings
or you missed a day.
It just gets rotated around.
That's usually why it's a slow day
is cause it's not your turn today.
Yeah, so it's kind of like the buy box on Amazon, right?
It rotates, you know, it just doesn't stay with you forever.
Even if you have the best price or, you know,
the best description, the best title,
that doesn't mean it's gonna stay with you all day.
It's kind of gonna rotate between sellers.
I guess that's good to know
because I never really thought about eBay like that before.
Like they do have some kind of algorithm on the backend
that kind of rotates sellers and items,
even if they're maybe not the best price or best title,
right? That's kind of what we're saying.
Right, exactly.
Like look at, we were talking about this week actually,
look at Tech and Sports.
Why doesn't he get all the sales all the time
for everything he has?
Why hasn't he sold out all the time?
It's cause of that very reason.
Yeah, that's actually a pretty cool way to look at it.
So if you bring that back to like momentum,
if you get caught up in that, like that could be it, right?
You know, like you go down the rabbit hole of thinking
the reason you're not getting sales is because, you know,
eBay is broken or Amazon is broken.
You can easily, you know, go down that rabbit hole
and probably not come back out the other side
because if you go and look like those videos,
they're out there, like I said,
every day somebody's posting that eBay is broken
because they didn't get sales.
You could spend a lifetime just watching those videos.
And once you kind of get in that negative mindset,
like it just destroys you.
And that's kind of why I kind of like lay back,
try to take things easy on it,
try not to stress out about things
because when you have that mindset,
like it affects everything around you,
not just your business, it affects your relationships,
you have in your life, you know,
just your everyday interactions, right?
You can just, if you go out and you go to the store,
you can just see some people are just miserable.
Like you can see it on their face.
And if you have a business, you know,
maybe that's why that person's miserable.
Maybe they don't know how to run their eBay store
and they just watch Joe Blow say, you know,
the sky is falling and eBay is the reason
why you're not getting sales.
And you just, you know,
it just carries over on every aspect.
I've seen all kinds of nonsense.
You just need to launch a couple extra more.
You need to unlist things and relist.
It doesn't work.
I mean, there's certain things to be said
about launching things.
Yeah, you'll get that first 24, 48 hour boost,
but your store's not broken.
That's just eBay being eBay.
Well, I forget exactly what you said.
It's like, you know,
it's a lot easier to like complain and not take action
than to, you know, look in the mirror and say,
hey, I need to change X, Y, and Z and give it time for,
you know, to actually show you results.
Right.
And that comes with the consistency.
You do the same thing every day.
You will reap the rewards, at least on eBay,
and you will reap the rewards on Amazon, actually,
if you're sending in your box a week.
Don't miss a week.
Yeah, it's the same thing.
Like even if we start to roll like kind of luck
into the equation, right?
Because when you go out,
you don't know what the thrift store has.
It's not like, you know, hey, I'm going here
and I'm gonna get 20 items.
You don't know exactly what you have,
but you kind of can create your own luck with momentum
because with momentum comes consistency.
If you're consistently at the store or the thrift store,
of course you're gonna find the better items, you know,
because you're there more often
and maybe you get to know somebody,
maybe you build a relationship there.
I mean, the momentum and consistency,
like it can take your business to the whole next level
and you won't even know about it.
You're just doing your normal thing, right?
You're going into the store, you're having a conversation.
If an employee asks, I always say,
be upfront about what you're doing, right?
Don't be in there all sneakily, right?
Like you're boosting books.
Like if somebody asks you what you're doing,
like, come on, I have the ring scanner.
It's like the most obnoxious thing there is.
People are probably like, you know, what are you doing?
Like this thing is not small
and it shoots like a laser tag laser beam.
And usually the people putting out books,
usually older ladies and gentlemen,
and they're like, hey, what is that cool thing?
I'm like, well, let's see here.
Do you remember Robbie the robot or Johnny five?
This is just a newer version of them.
And you kind of just explain what you're doing.
And you never know where that conversation
is going to take you,
but you have to be out in the stores, right?
If they see, you know, the used book guy in the store
once a week, every week, sooner or later,
somebody that works there is going to be like,
Hey, what are you doing with all these books?
You're in here every single day, right?
It's like you're-
He can't be reading all of these, he can't be.
Yeah, or like when you get the checkout, right?
And you got like a cart full of books and like,
well, you got a lot of reading ahead of you.
I'm like, no, here's actually what I do.
I don't plan on reading any of these.
Like I have no problem with explaining it
because you don't know where the conversation is going to go.
And if you're upfront with it, maybe they say, well, hey,
you know, that's cool.
We got a whole bunch in the back if you want to, you know,
or they even tell you, hey, we put them out this day,
that day, this day.
So with momentum kind of comes like a boost
in your business overall.
No, 100%.
And sometimes that leads to bigger deals like,
oh, you do this?
Well, we got a whole lot of crap in the back room
we would like you to go through.
So we don't have to pay our employees to do it
if you're just going to take it right now.
Deal, done, let's do it.
It goes both ways though, right?
You know, like you can ride high or, you know,
I've had times where your momentum is just terrible, right?
You go out, your hour and 10 minute drive
and the stores just got junk
and there's nothing you can do about it, right?
But it's like, well, you're already committed.
I'm already out there.
I'm already out in no man's land.
So it's like, well, this store sucks, the next store sucks.
I'm like, well, I'm still going to the next one
because it only takes one kind of stop
to kind of maybe open your eyes
to maybe a product you never even knew existed,
a relationship you never thought you could have.
Like it only takes one time to kind of just bust everything
open for your business.
And speaking of that, and just because you're stored
and produced that you went to,
you shouldn't write it off entirely.
I've seen people do that.
Like, it was never good for me.
I'm never going back.
No, you should go back.
Cause it's that one time
where they got the mother load there.
That's what you want to be there for.
You may, you may, I know Mike mentions this a lot.
He may space out the time interval
before he circles back to it,
but you don't just write things off 100% never.
No, even my worst crappy goodwill, I'll go to at least once
every two months.
If I'm out by there, I'll just swing in.
I mean, you kind of can tell things have changed
when you walk in the front of the store, right?
If you see the same, you know, pair of beat up Nikes
in the glass case for, you know, $50, then you know, hey,
it's still the same bozos work in here.
You do a quick walk in the store and get out of there.
But you got to hold, I just like holding them accountable.
That's what I'd like to say is like,
you got to hold these stores accountable.
Make sure, you know, if they suck, they still suck.
Maybe things change, new manager comes in
and all of a sudden, you know,
the goodwill might look like a brand new store.
The price or the person pricing the stuff in the back
might be doing it differently.
There's so many different things.
I would never write something off 100%.
It's just, you got to pick and choose your spots.
I got a question for you.
I want to know if you do this too.
Usually when I'm done scanning or pulling for eBay
in a store, I'll pick the five junkiest things on that row
and put it on one of the ends and do that for each row.
So I know if they even touch the shelves
next time I'm back in there.
Oh yeah, you can do that where you can just leave
kind of like the books, like if they're standard.
Yeah, turn a different way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you'll be able to tell the second
you walk back in there.
I know like some people say, well,
I just go in and look for the other colored stickers.
But the thing with that is there's no,
that's not, you're wasting too much time with that.
I don't care what anybody says
because they're not putting all the books
out in the same spot, right?
It's different if they're working left to right
and all the new stuff goes all the way down the right
and they kind of just keep, that's not the case.
Whatever, you know, person's working there,
they just go and say, oh, look, there's a spot there,
one there, one there.
So the sticker thing doesn't add up.
What you're talking about would kind of be better.
But yeah, you just kind of get a feel for it
and kind of, you just got to understand, you know,
with momentum comes ups and downs.
And when it's good, it's real good.
And when it's bad, it can be bad.
Like you can get yourself into a rut
or you kind of can just say, well, I ain't finding nothing.
So this isn't for me.
When in actuality, maybe that next day
or the day before you went, they were loaded with stuff.
Right?
You just never know.
Or maybe they just have been too lazy
and it's in their get to put it on the floor later pile.
You can ask like, yo, you got a new inventory in the back?
Because I ain't seeing a new inventory in the front.
And even if they don't, they can tell you,
oh, we've stopped accepting books.
Oh, oh, oh.
I mean, get some information.
I'll tell you what, and even if you,
I personally have seen gay lords
in the back of a thrift store, not a major chain
because their bathroom was in the back, right?
So I'm like, let me go to the bathroom.
I got two gay lords full of books sitting back there.
Right?
I'm like, well, I got to shoot my shot here.
Right?
So me and Deb get up to check out and older lady, I'm like,
hey, I seen you have like two huge pallets of books.
You know, it's like, are those going out or,
oh yeah, we'll get around to them.
So you're not even going to win those battles.
Even if you know they have stuff in the back,
but like, I'll tell you what, I was flying high
when I seen them when I was going to the bathroom.
I was like, oh yeah, here we go, here we go.
And you know, it just, it sucks, but you know,
you move on to the next one.
And maybe next time when you're there,
you'll have somebody else or maybe the manager will be there.
And you know, the momentum kind of works in your favor
because you're out there, you see it, you ask the question.
And then boom, that relationship, once you get it once,
you're in for life.
I mean, as long as you're, you're their guy,
you're their guy.
As long as you know how to treat people, right?
And you know, you're being fair about everything.
Once you have that relationship, it ain't going to go nowhere.
Yeah, I have one of the libraries call me up.
I put them way back in my mind just because I was super
friendly to them last time when I cleaned them out.
I didn't even, I didn't even write down
when they were planning to do the,
it was where I first started getting to library cells,
but they saved my number.
They remembered who I was.
They even remember my name.
Well, they probably put my name in the phone.
Maybe they, maybe you're not remembering my name,
but they called me up next time they did a library cell,
just because I was a nice dude.
I always say, always save the contacts in your phone
when you're doing bulk buys from people or places.
I have their name, what it was that I bought from them.
So I'll have, you know, like Johnny B bulk CDs, 10 cents.
Because I've had people reach out to me more than once.
And if I want to save their name or number,
then all of a sudden it's like, hey, new phone,
who this?
It's like, you lose that relationship right away,
in my opinion, when if somebody reaches back out to you,
like, hey, you know, kind of like my DVD guy, right?
I had his number saved and now, you know, it turned into,
now I got his nephew's number saved,
who does storage unit clean outs.
And like sooner or later,
that relationship will produce something for me.
So it's always good to kind of just,
just be on top of things with momentum
and kind of create your own momentum.
Even if things suck at the thrift stores,
there's other things you can do, right?
You know, maybe the books suck.
Maybe you focus a little bit on DVDs and CDs,
or just kind of switch it out and just keep growing with it.
You're gonna get beat up, you know,
it just happens in life.
Sooner or later, you're gonna get beat up.
Just get back up and keep going.
That's how you survive.
That's how we've made it to this point.
It's not like everything has been, you know, amazing, right?
How many zero sale days did we have when we started?
You kind of just,
you gotta be able to kind of put it in the back.
And I know that's hard to say,
like just throw it in the back of your mind
and forget about it.
But with experience, with life experience,
you kind of know life happens
and it happens in business too.
There's lots of ups and downs
and things can go sideways really, really quick.
So, I mean, just overall with momentum,
I think the big takeaway here is
with consistency comes momentum.
Now that can be different for every single person.
Johnny B's everyday momentum.
It's fine if you're once a week momentum,
as long as you're consistent with that once a week,
you can walk into some good things
and you kind of like said it before,
like, hey, you know, maybe the one time you show up
to a thrift store and it's like a gold mine,
that actually happened to me at a Goodwill.
I was scanning the books,
lady pushed out a cart full of books.
And I'm not kidding.
It was a Goodwill cart full of the Warhammer 40K books.
I mean, I wound up buying like,
I think it was like 95% of the cart.
And like, that's like stuff you hear about
in like YouTube videos, right?
I'm kind of jealous of that buy right there.
Yeah.
At a Goodwill.
So like it happens, but if I wouldn't have took the time,
and it was my furthest Goodwill,
it was the one that was an hour and 10 minutes away.
The out of the way one, yeah.
Yeah, so it was like, if I wouldn't have decided to,
you know, just suck it up and drive out there for the day,
like, or if I would have went the day before,
the day after, that opportunity is gone, right?
So some of it is luck,
but some of it is just being consistent
and getting out there, doing your routes,
going to your stores and just building relationships
while you're out there.
I think relationships kind of get overlooked a lot
when it comes to reselling.
Yeah, I got one for you, and I still use them.
There was an estate sale company,
and I've been to a few of their estate sales,
and they noticed I was just buying the books
and the CDs and DVDs.
And like, hey, you want to come to our warehouse?
We got a lot more of the stuff there
because of when I wasn't going there before
that they just accumulated.
I walk in there, this is a 20,000 square foot facility.
I had no idea because they didn't strike me as the type.
I ran out of tubs, Mike.
I believe it.
I didn't know what to do.
I was like, can I come back?
They're like, yeah, we'll be here all day.
I'm like, okay.
And it was like, I still have so much of their stuff.
And they wanted me to come back again.
I'm like, I'm going to need a minute
to get through all this.
They're like, that's fine.
We got stuff to fill up in here.
And so I was like, and I asked them, do I even need
to come to your state sales anymore?
Like now, so, okay, done.
That's literally the opposite of what happened to me, right?
This past week, right?
I went to the church, this guy told me to bring a minivan.
I could have brought one of those smart cars
that's got two doors and fit everything in it.
You show up like, oh, they probably got a garage
or something.
That's what I was thinking.
Are a couple storage units worth?
No, no.
But what happens, right?
If this happens next week again, right?
Somebody from a church reaches out to the used book guy
and says, hey, here's some photos.
We got books and it's 45 minutes away.
Guess what?
I'm headed back out there, dude.
I'm rolling the dice again.
That's how you build relationships.
And he even said, hey, when we get more books in,
I said, hey, I saved your number.
I got everything, saved my number.
And you kind of square away that relationship.
So down the road, when there's a next sale
or something like that, you're lined up to go.
And next time I'll know, there's not going to be
as many books.
So I'll plan a thrift store route around that.
So hey, I go get the books, hit a few stores,
make a day out of it versus kind of just assuming
that the whole day is going to be devoted to that.
Cool.
I can't believe it.
That's just how it happens, though, right?
You were like, I'm going to bring five tubs, right?
If I fill up these five tubs, I'll be-
About 20 and I needed so many more.
So many more.
I mean, that's it, though.
You kind of built that luck yourself
by being consistent, getting out there,
talking to libraries, building relationships
with estate sales and auctions and all that stuff.
So with the momentum, it's different, right?
When we talk about, if you're just doing thrift stores,
your momentum is going to look different
than kind of trying to actually build a media business
because you can't just rely on thrift stores
if you're going to have a full-time media business.
It's just not feasible.
So if you're just focusing on thrift stores,
if you're doing this part-time,
your momentum is going to be getting out the thrift stores
and being consistent with sending in X, Y, and Z, right?
So we can sit here and say,
if you want to send in one box a week,
then, or one box every two weeks, we'll say,
your goal is to fill up that one box and get it out.
That can be your momentum.
Your consistency and momentum looks different
than everybody else.
It just depends what you have.
Do you have employees?
Are you by yourself?
Do you have three hours a day?
Do you have 10 hours a day?
So it looks different for everybody.
And if you're down in the dumps
when it comes to luck and momentum,
listen, all you gotta do is comment
on one of my YouTube videos.
I responded to 50 million comments
over the lifetime of the channel.
And I'll say, shut up, get back out there.
Good things will happen.
I'll give you a little boost of morale,
unless you're Johnny B.
Whenever he messaged me about something like,
dude, just close up shop and send me all your stuff.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
What's your final takeaways with momentum?
I'm gonna use a quote from Galaxy Quest,
never give up, never surrender.
That's a good one.
I mean, that's business, right?
Just because you have a bad day
doesn't mean you gotta have a bad week or bad two days.
Like you can, things turn around in an instant, right?
And we can be sitting here right now for all we know.
And somebody could be typing up, you know,
a response to a Craigslist ad that we have saying,
hey, I have 50 million trillion books for you to come take.
And you know what?
I don't even want a penny for them.
I just want them gone.
Okay, done.
Done.
All right, as always, we appreciate you listening.
And we will talk to you guys in the next episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
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