Community Banks, Social Media Small Business and Finding Suppliers – SBS 76

The Small Business show. Episode number 76 for Wednesday, July 20, 2016. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show for, by and about small business owners here. Back in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. And welcome back.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, yeah, you guys had a great time, I imagine.

We did. Yeah. Folks, for the last two weeks, I've been out with my family in Europe. We pre recorded the last couple of episodes so that you folks would have things while we were gone. But, yeah, we had a really good trip. It was, you know, it was a lot of fun. It's hard to take the business owner out of. Of his element, as I found. Shannon, you and I were talking about this before the show. Yeah, it's, you know, I automatically adopt the role of, you know, driving the bus no matter where we are. And like, halfway through the trip, I realized, whoa, wait a minute, I need to have, like a vacation from that. And so I told my family, I'm like, all right, I've driven for the last week. You guys drive for a little while. And it actually worked out well. Cause the kids would pick things to do and, you know, learned how to navigate cities or I mean, they know how to navigate cities. But, you know, just being able to practice that skill and be like, all right, we're going to take this bus or we're going to walk here and we got to get this. And like, it's good stuff to let the kids do.

It's a great experience.

Yeah, it is. But being a control freak, it's easy to just, you know, just do it.

Yeah, I know how that is, for sure.

You might know somebody like that.

Well, yeah, and I'm. I'm fortunate because my. My wife, you know, Renee's very detail oriented. And like, we take vacation and we typically have a spreadsheet of the week, you know, of the things that. It's not that we have to do those things, but you got a list. Here's the list. So if you want to take advantage of all these things you could do, here's how it fits into the time schedule. And that's. It's actually great, especially when you're traveling with a group, because you can often stumble around and not get much done.

It's true. Yeah, my wife did the same thing. She doesn't. I mean, I guess she does a spreadsheet, actually, but it was the same kind of thing. Like, she just went through and did, like, before we left Tons and tons of research about all, like you said, all the things we could do. And, you know, I'll share a piece of advice that I think most small business owners will appreciate. We. But we stumbled into it accidentally about two weeks before we were going to leave. We, you know, we were starting to nail down some things. We didn't want to book ourselves crazy. We knew we were going to be away two weeks, we're going to be in three different cities. We couldn't run ourselves ragged every day and survive.

But big mistake when you do that, right?

And we knew that. So it was like, okay, that's fine. But there are some things we wanted to do, and we knew we were going to have to schedule a couple of them, you know, in order to get them in. And one of them was we were going to be in Paris at the end of the trip, and we wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. So we started looking at schedules, and when we booked the trip, we didn't realize it, but we were there. Over there. Essentially, their version of Independence Day. It's. We call it Bastille Day here in the US but they just call it, you know, Fete Nationale. It's their national holiday, and it's when they celebrate their independence, which is July 14th, ten days after us. Yeah. And so we were there over that. And the Eiffel Towers closed that day, or at least part of that day, because they have all these fireworks that come off of it. And it was also just a busy time to be in Paris, as it turns out. So it all worked out fine. But there were no reservations available for the Eiffel Tower any of the days we were there. The day before we arrived, no problem. Day after we left, no problem.

Of course.

Yeah. And so I said to Lisa, I said, okay, well, so that's the front door. What? And so there's, you know, whatever that price is, we can't pay that price and get in there while we're there. What's the price to get in? Like, somebody's got tickets already.

There's a way, right?

So just find out the number. Maybe it's more than we want to spend, and we'll say no, but at least we know what the number is. So she like, oh, yeah, good idea. So she did some research, and she found a tour group that had what they called their Skip the Line Eiffel Tower tour. And it was. Maybe it wasn't even quite double what we would have paid going in the normal way. It was. It was maybe 60% more or 70% more. And it came with a tour guide. And the deal was they said, look, you can. Our tour guide will get you in and up to the second level and they'll give you a ticket and you can then go to the summit. Or our tour guide, whoever wants, will give, you know, you about an hour tour of the second level and tell you all about stuff. But you don't have to join that. Like, we understand that some of you are paying this because you don't have a lot of time just to get in, right? Just to get in. And it was like, hey, wait a minute. So, okay, so yeah, we paid a little more, but not any. But it wasn't more than we could have paid. It was the minimum, in fact, that we could pay to get in. And it meant we got to skip the line. And it was like, okay, wait a minute, we need to rethink everything that we're doing, because even standing in line in Europe costs me money because we're only there for a limited period of time. And so I started thinking about, okay, what are the other attractions we want to go to where there are lines. And there were a couple. The catacombs in Paris was one. The Louvre in Paris was another. But I think in the other cities there were one or two things. And we looked at, okay, is there a way to skip the line? And for the Louvre, we did something similar to what we did for the Eiffel Tower, and it cost us a little bit more. But again, it avoided a two hour long line that we would have been standing in. Not quite rain, but not rain. Like mist. Sure, yeah, so we did that. And then for the catacombs in Paris, that's another two hour line. But if you book your time in advance online, it's less money. And you show up and they bring you literally to the front of the line. And so those people hate you.

Yes, of course.

But hey, they could have done it. So in some ways we saved money by thinking about, you know, skipping the line. But in all cases, we skipped the line.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

It really was. And to me, it was the right way to do it because like I said, there's opportunity cost. Unless our point of traveling to Europe was to enjoy standing in lines, any of that time was simply wasted. I mean, it would be family time together, but it's like miserable family time, at least for part of it.

And I think that we've talked about this a lot on the show. Time is your most valuable asset, especially when you're trying to make everything happen in your business, and paying a little extra could possibly be the best investment you ever made.

It totally was. I mean, I have no doubt.

Yeah, we did the same. I took my son, the 14 year old, we took him to the NFL experience. And it was the same way when we schedule online. It was a little thing that just said, oh, if 20 bucks more and you get the VIP. And I was like, 20 bucks, that's really sold. That's it. And like you said, everybody looked at you with utter disdain as they walked you to the back, where they were right up to the front, and you got to go in the exits for every event and everything. And he got to do stuff over and over and over because every time he had this thing and the guy was like, oh, you guys are VIPs. I said, you know, dude, it was 20 bucks.

It was 20 bucks, but it was too late.

You couldn't buy it.

Yeah, that guy couldn't buy it then. Right? Of course.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's a. That's a great thing.

No, it really was. So, you know, like I said, we sort of. If I'd stopped to think about it, we would have done it anyway. But, you know, we were sort of forced to think about it because of this Eiffel Tower thing. And it was the best scenario that we could have gotten ourselves into because it just. It dictated how we thought about this. I mean, there were some lines we waited in, but not many, you know. Yeah. In Barcelona, we went to the Pablo Picasso museum. That dude was a twisted man, by the way.

Yes.

Yeah, but. But it was the same thing. It was like, well, we can wait in line or we can book an appointment, and they have a limited number per hour, and so you kind of got to plan ahead, but it's like, well, that's better.

I mean, it's the way to go.

It's the way to go.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, sure.

That's great. Yeah. And. And I think, you know, saving time, looking for things to eliminate those kind of headaches, it's. It makes your. Your travel much more enjoyable.

Well, that was it. Yeah. Especially for two weeks. You know, we couldn't. If we got to a point where we were in a miserable pattern, it wouldn't have worked out. I mean, and. And it did. It worked out swimmingly. We really had. Yeah, we had a good time. We took advantage of a lot of the. The siesta opportunities when we were in Barcelona. I mean, it. You know, we didn't we didn't drive ourselves crazy.

Yeah, that's. I love it.

And we enjoyed it.

Yeah, that's cool. That's good. Awesome. Well, hey, so we have some catch up stuff to do since we've, you know, been the last couple episodes are recorded. One, you know, a couple weeks ago we, I was kind of on a rant here talking about an experience I had with a new bank. And I got some, we got some good feedback on that. And we in, we had a call in. Right. Dave, some of you were talking about, you know, I was talking about wire transfers and managing cash and how, you know, things can, you know, bigger banks. And so we had a call in From Scott from D.C. and on the text and the voicemail line.

That's right.

And you know, we'd love to get, if you, if you have a comment or you'd like to chat or be on the show, you know, 401-472-4249. You can text us there, you can leave a message and you want to play Scott's comment there.

Take it away.

One shorter. Hi, Dave and Shannon, this is Scott from D.C. dave knows me from the MacGeek Gap. I run a small business, the Washington D.C. suburbs of vintage collectibles and antiques and things like that. My inventory is not usual. There are no distributors, there are no vendors really. For what I do, I do have to maintain. I do have a presence at a local antiques mall. I do pay for that. But most of my inventory is all cash. And this is almost an, almost always an all cash business. I had to go out and find a bank. I went and using a local advertisement, I went to the largest bank, bank of America. What a disaster that was. They really don't care and don't want to care about small businesses. They have their rules, they have the ways of doing things. If you don't like them, go elsewhere. In the process of going elsewhere, I was running things out of my own personal checking account. Don't do that, by the way. Don't run everything out of your own. Even if you're incorporated, don't run it out of your own personal checking account, which is with Citibank. It's been with Citibank for many years for a lot of different reasons. And I should close that account. But Citibank was giving me problems. I found a very local community bank and you can look up about community banks online. These people are in your community. The community bank I found has 12 branches in the region. The bank presidents lives within 10 miles of where I am It's a very well run bank, very well capitalized bank. It's not going anywhere. And they have been marvelous. They were. It was explained when I walked in that I am a cash business. I could walk in on one day and withdraw a wad of cash so I could go out and do some buying and then walk in a couple weeks later after doing a show somewhere with a wad of cash deposited, no worse for wear. I do get checks because I maintain a presence from an antique center nearby, but otherwise I'm all cash and they have been no problems. The only time I had to deal with wiring money was when I was buying some furnishings for the, for my space in the antique center, some cases and stuff, and I had to wire the money. That was no problem. I walked in, we signed the papers, the, the, it was executed while sitting there in their office. No problems whatsoever. So for a small business, especially if you're, you're under, you know, I would say under 20 people.

And I think that's where the message got cut off. Scott. So, Scott, thank you so much for, for sending that. Right. Calling that in and leaving it for us. Yeah, it, what Scott describes actually makes a lot of sense to me. Believe it or not. I have my personal checking account with Citibank like Scott does, largely because I worked for them years ago and it's still discounted, so I keep it. And I have all my business stuff with bank of America and here I've had great success with them. But it really depends on your banker, I think, is what that comes down to. So, thoughts on this, Shannon?

Oh, no, I'm here. Sorry about that. Okay. I, I love the concept that, you know, the community bank thing too, but I think to your point, it also depends on the staff and, and hopefully, you know, with a community bank, maybe you have less turnover and, and I've used B of A as well. And, and again, you get a really good banker that can take really good care of you and kind of push through and, and bend those rules and that kind of stuff. It's fantastic. But though there's, you know, the movement in those big organizations is frequent.

It can be, yes, it can be.

Yeah, it can be. Where maybe on a, you know, on a community bank, maybe someone's sticking around a little longer that can understand your business. The key is someone that understands your business and what your needs are. And sometimes it's really difficult, as I explained in episode 74 a couple weeks ago, getting the answer, you know, for the specific service that you need and finding out if that's really going to work. So it's challenging.

One thing I do like about using a larger bank like BofA is we have employees. And because we're a virtual company, I have employees in almost. I think there's only one state, well, two mine in Colorado where I have more than one employee. So there's lots of states where I have only one employee. And setting up and dealing with payroll taxes and all of that in multiple states would be a bear if we had to manage it on our own.

Yeah, I agree.

And within the payroll service that BofA has, I mean, we have to. When we add a new employee, there's a little bit that we have to do. And if it's a new state, we've got to fill out the paperwork. But in terms of processing payroll, you know, twice a month, it's just a non issue.

They handle it all for you.

It happens like magic. Yeah. I don't even think about it. You know, I mean, occasionally. Well, not occasionally, it's like, okay, well now we owe X amount to Colorado or X amount to California. Is that okay to pay? And you just say, well, yeah, and then it's done. That's it.

Nice.

Yeah. As long as you have the money.

I mean, sure, of course you should. We've talked about that too.

You don't start kiting out of your payroll taxes.

Yeah, your payroll taxes are not yours, you know, and you should not even be aware of them.

Yeah, yeah, I pay them right away.

Yeah, we do too.

Some states I have to pay them right away. Of course, the irs, I have to pay right away. But. But some states we get to float, we could float it for a month or whatever.

It's like, oh, no, don't want to do it. Yeah. And I would say, you know, talking about payroll, you know, having someone do your payroll, you know, a payroll service or, you know, your bank, I mean, it really is one of the best investments that, that you can make because there's no way, like Dave says, that you're going to keep track of all these rules and these requirements and this kind of, you know, leave it to the experts and that can keep up with all the federal and state regulations.

But you could use a third party payroll service and still have your, your relationship with your small community bank. So for you, Scott, I mean, I know, I know enough about Scott. We've known each other, like I said, or like he said, he's a listener to another podcast that I do. And so I know that he doesn't have any Employees. But if any of you are in that position where you like your community bank and you have employees, you know, just check there's payroll. Like QuickBooks has payroll. There's all kinds of people that have payroll. So, yeah, yeah, it's not a big deal.

There's a lot of. No, no, no. It's much easier now to. To manage everything.

And it's. So.

Yeah, it's very fluid. You know, there's the barriers. Starting a business, hiring your first employee. I mean, you know, distributing your product, posting your information, spreading the word about your business ownership. All those things are just so much. Maybe easier isn't the word, but maybe less friction. Less friction, yeah. Very good. You know, this stuff is not difficult to do and very simple to set up. And, you know, it's a great time to start a business. And if you're. If you're on the fence thinking about it and, oh, this barrier or that barrier, I mean, you can just plow through this stuff that, you know, Dave and I dealt with 20 years ago of trying to set things up and, you know, just the movement of money. You know, we're talking about banks and all that kind of stuff, but the. The flow of money around and to people, whether they're. You're paying them or you're buying things or. It's. It's just so much more fluid now. Yeah, it's great.

That's crazy. It's good, though.

I mean, I think so.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So Shannon, before I left, we recorded a couple of episodes, and one of them talked about Shannon's closet on Poshmark.

That's right.

So how's that going?

Pretty good. You know, just a little backstory. You know, we've had a lot of people on the show that started their companies on in social media, and that's their primary vehicle to get customers make sales. And, you know, I'm sitting here for a year and a half going, gosh, you know, that's so great, and we've got to try this and experiment with it. So, you know, we've always wanted to get, you know, in the fashion business, I love the concept of. And primarily like handbags. I have a. A source, you know, that I can purchase product like that. And. And it passes. Two of the tests for any product that we've ever sold with our trading businesses is that it's. They're small and whether small and lightweight.

Yeah.

And for. There's an. For shipping and there's. They have a. A value that's not really based in reality.

No, it's true. Yeah, that's the right way to say. I mean, it's a terrible way to talk about your customers, but.

No, no, no, no. It's not saying that they're not, you know, that they don't value it. They value tremendously.

Tremendously.

Yeah, yeah, tremendously.

It's. It's not a commodity. It's not a commodity in this sense. Right. That a handbag from brand A could be the same quality, in fact, built by the Malaysian family and you know, the handbag from brand B. But brand A is worth more because it's brand A. And that's. Right, that's the end of it. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, you know, my. After listening to the guys like, you know, via island and all this stuff and building up all their followers and everything, so I, you know, we started a couple weeks ago and get things, get the ball rolling going out and what I really wanted to do to be is to be able to run the whole thing on my phone and, you know, only sell via apps, all the social stuff. So I could just really, you know, time we're talking about it, I want to be able to sit anywhere. I want to be up in Tahoe, I'm going to be on a plane wherever it is, and I want to be able to manage things other than shipping the product. Right, sure, of course. And. And so like you said, selling on Poshmark, a couple other sites, we sell on Tradesy, those sites or those apps, very easy to set up. Start selling immediately, doing your research and start building followers. So in about almost three weeks, we've got a little over, I think today we went over 3,000 followers.

You're over 3,100 right now on Poshmark. Yeah, yeah.

This morning it was. It just peaked over 3,000. So it's definitely grows along and, you know, the secret on Poshmark and after, you know, reading my, you know, till my eyes bled about how to do this and ideas is really reciprocating and following and sharing and it's really a tight community so you can build up those followers quickly. And so everything I've read, it's like, hey, you know, until you have about 5,000 followers, you're not going to see a ton of sales. And I can attest to that. I mean, we're selling product every day. Okay. But, you know, it, it definitely fits my philosophy of, hey, if you can make, you know, 50 bucks, you can make 500. If you can make 500, you can make 5,000. And on and on and on. I spent my whole life chasing $100 bills. And I can see that this concept does work because there's enough traction, there's enough interest. You know, we're fielding enough questions. It's not like you just built this website and, you know, nobody knows where you are. Yeah. You're trying to blog and turn to this or now. You know, I didn't want to sell in our typical marketplaces where we sell other products. Amazon, ebay. But I do have to confess that, you know, the ebay app is so great that I was like, you know, I just have to. I just can't not do it. Especially. We made a pretty decent investment. I think we bought about $15,000 worth of bags and various suppliers and stuff. So we're like, hey, I got to move this. I want to get my return on investment going. It's been great. We've been selling on all these platforms, have been booking sales on a daily basis, and the only thing I would say is it's extremely time consuming right now.

Okay.

And. And. And that. And it's because I'm doing. I'm doing everything. Yeah, of course you are.

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

You know, I had to go get a mannequin because people want you to pose with the bag, and I don't think they want to see me, you know, so we now.

I don't know, man. There's a market for everything.

That's true. That's true. You know, so you could be.

It's a niche, but a man, I'm telling you, you could own it.

I have to try it both ways. Let's try it. But it's been really fun, and, you know, I've been learning so much, and now. So, you know, I think by the end of next week, we should be up to about 5,000 followers, primarily on Poshmark. But, you know, we sell on another app we got out, and everybody talked about this one called Mercari. And the great thing about Mercari is they don't charge any fees yet, you know, of course. I'm sure.

I was gonna ask. Yeah. I'm assuming a place like Poshmark makes. Makes their money. They don't charge you to have a store there. They. They make their money when you sell things. Right?

They do, and it's not cheap, see? So Poshmark charges 20%.

Oh, yeah.

So. But there's a reason, you know, of course.

You got the audience.

Yeah, they've got the audience, and they have the. The community. And. And I would Say, the support from the other sellers, and there's enough traction where you can do the research if you have anything involved with, you know, women's fashion. It's an extremely fast way to ramp up your business, I believe, because it's very easy to go find a seller that has 30, 40, 50, 100,000 followers and really study what they're doing and just replicate it. And that's really what I've done. That's what you're doing. And. Okay, okay, I want to get. But we're getting a thousand a week now. I need to get that to 2,000 a week. So we'll check in from time to time and see how it's going.

Now, listen, I wanted to tell you, while I was in Barcelona, I found a couple of guys on the. On the street there that sell these handbags cheap. So I'm sure they source them for you if you like.

Well, it brings up a good point. So I. I start selling Poshmark Trades uk. I'm like, well, who are there? What other, you know, apps can I sell on? I post everything I have on those other two platforms I post on this site called Mercari. And within a day, almost everything I listed got taken down because of authenticity.

Okay.

And so I reached out to.

You're saying my guys on the, on the. On the boardwalk in Barcelona might not be authentic?

Might not be.

That's correct.

Might not be. But, you know, our stuff is completely authentic and, you know, we have deep ties to these suppliers and all this kind of stuff, suing everything. And so I started getting feedback, started trying to get support, and it was dismal. You know, I kept getting these bots responding to me, not really answering my question. And what I realized is what people were doing, quote these competitors on Mercari, where they were reporting your post to try to get your post taken off so it wouldn't be competing with them. Very different experience. So, yeah, so I was like, okay, we're not going to be up there. It's not worth our time.

It's not. Yeah, it's not worth fighting that battle. So they. They. Yeah, that. See, that's where the competitive. You have to. You have to temper your competition.

Yep.

Or your competitive side, I should say, because part of me, like, if I was in that boat, I'd be like, no, that's it. I'm gonna spend 100% of my time making sure those guys don't win. Right. But. But that's not necessarily the best use of my time.

Yeah, no, no, the Best use of your time is going out and following extremely successful sellers.

Yeah.

And then replicating what they're doing. So you can get 5,000, 10,000, you know, and. And, you know, now we're on it, and, you know, we push the same content to Instagram and to Pinterest and. Okay, you know, so now the next goal for, you know, for us is really to push out onto Instagram and get those followers up because, you know, we've got to get 10, 20,000, you know, followers and really spread the word out before you can say, yeah, we've got a viable business, but we're getting there, and I'm having a great time, and I've. I've learned more about handbags than I ever thought I would want or need to know. But it's. But it's pretty cool. And everybody's been super friendly and really, for the most part, supportive, and they love, you know, we sell this product for about half of what it. Or more, you know, about 55, 60% below retail, and people are really happy.

Well, that's great. That's good. Happy customers and. And all of that. Yeah, yeah.

And this is stuff I'm doing, you know, outside of, you know, I have two other businesses that I run. And so this is stuff I come home, we have dinner, hang out. Everybody's great. I walk up, Dave, where the studio where you and I recorded while you were out here. And I've got it, you know, full of bags now, and I've got this mannequin and my lights and everything, and I just work for a couple hours, and then the rest of the time, I'm just kind of answering questions on my phone and follow, follow, follow, and over and over and over. And it's really. If you want to start a second gig and get something going or a third gig, I would highly recommend it.

That's awesome, man.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's great.

That's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we'll check in from time to time, and, you know, we'll talk next month and see how it's going. But if anybody has any questions, you know, I'm certainly a rookie at this still, but I would be glad to answer any questions about these platforms and the ins and outs of what I have found to work or not work for us so far.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, very good. Very good. Great.

Awesome. And I think we have a. How we doing on time, Dave? We have time for a reader question.

Or you think I. Yeah, you know, let's. Let's do it, sure.

Okay. Why not?

Yeah, we'll go to, we'll go to Sharon here. Sharon writes, I listened to your show about starting a business just using social media and apps. I think it was something to do with fashion. Anyway, my question is, how do you find products to sell? I'm hard working, energetic and ready to start. I just don't know where to find things to sell. And this is why I wanted to do this question from Sharon, because it's related to this. And frankly, it was a question I was going to ask like, okay, you spent 15 grand, fine. We probably have plenty of listeners who could afford to spend 15 grand in a couple hours a day on a new business. So. But where do I send my 15 grand?

Should I give him my address?

That's right. You know, you don't send it to Dave and have him go back to Barcelona and source the stuff off the boardwalk, you know, But I could get you bags for like 10 bucks a piece, man.

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. Yeah. And I think, you know, Sharon, that's a great first question to ask, you know, is where can you buy this product if you want to be in the, you know, the trading business is what I call it, you know, you're in buying and selling whatever it is. In my experience, your suppliers are really your trade secrets. I mean, everybody always asks, hey, where do you buy? Where do you get it? Well, you can't really talk about that.

Right.

Because you don't obviously want them to tell anybody. But where are your interests? And I got into the fashion because I like this certain aspect of it, but everything else we've sold, it's kind of led me down the path. Like the electronics and Apple products, those were my interests. Were. So I was highly motivated to research and to dig and to find who's in this business and who's selling stuff and how are they selling it and what do they do with extra stuff. I've always tried to find stuff that people, other people ignore.

Okay.

The first thing, I mean, we've made, you know, our whole career in our, you know, sales and refurbish this and that of buying. And we say we've made more money buying what others would consider junk.

Sure.

Than anything else because that's where the opportunity is. Everybody fights to buy brand new product because all you're doing is selling it. But something that you can add value to and you can go out to a supplier, it doesn't matter. I mean, if you want to be in the shoe business, go to the local shoe store and say, hey, what do you guys do when you only have one pair on the shelf? And you don't want to leave that one pair there because shoe stores don't want one pair of shoes. They need, you know, 20 or 30 or whatever. And you can ask that question of every single kind of, you know, reseller of anything. And that's just one way. But finding something you're interest, interested in is, I think, paramount because you have to be motivated to not give up because it takes a long time to find those suppliers. You know, the wholesale quote, wholesale business is extremely different than it was years and years ago before the Internet.

Right, right, right, right.

You know, it's, it's much flatter, you know, when you're checking, when you do think you found something, be sure to jump online and see what it's selling for on Amazon, on ebay, these other apps, because that will be your, your reality, that's your competition.

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

And then just work it backwards. So if you know product X is selling for a hundred bucks on Amazon and you say, well, I want to sell that on Amazon, what do you need to pay for it after you pay the fees and the shipping and all this other stuff to make a profit or a return on investment that you're happy with and ask yourself those kind of questions. So I don't have a great, Here, call this 800 number and you can start buying this product. But do research, use Google, start finding out who's doing what you want to do and, and just start digging.

Okay, so I have a follow up question on this.

Yes.

How do you, I mean I, you know, I joke about the guys on the, on the boardwalk, but it, especially in what you're doing here with this, you know, the handbags, how do you avoid counterfeit stuff?

Like how do you. Question. Right. I would never buy this product from a supplier that I did not already have some type of relationship with.

Right.

I would never do it. I wouldn't do it because of that reason, the authenticity. And you know, you're trying to give a good experience to your customer and you know, it's just not worth the risk.

There's, I agree.

Yeah, there's far easier things to sell than this. This meets my criteria because it has a high, they often have a high resale value, of course. So it's, you know, and, but you know, you could do the same thing with socks or with, you know, anything, you know, anything you could think of and try to stay away from things that are Easily counterfeited. Because not only do you run the risk of, you know, running into problems like that, but many places that you want to sell them will not allow you to sell them.

Just like you ran into. That's right.

Of course.

Even though your stuff isn't counterfeited.

Correct. But because you're not an authorized, you know, reseller, and I hate that word or that combination of things, but what these big, big brands have done is they forced platforms and marketplaces like Amazon say, hey, there's so much counterfeit and fake product out there that we want you only to sell or allow people to sell that we are telling you they're buying directly from us or from a quote wholesaler. And even though a lot of it's kind of restrained a trade which we can go into a whole nother show on that, but they're trying to protect the consumer, and you need to be sure. Again, don't go out buying something you think is really hot. I mean, you can't even sell some models of iPhones on Amazon now as a reseller because of the problems that.

They have because of the counterfeiting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you really got to research and find that stuff out. And, you know, you want to stay away from boring things are often the best thing to sell. Stuff that is just not even worth talking about often has the highest profit margin because it's not sexy.

You don't have everyone else thinking they wanted to sell that, too. Yeah.

Like if somebody asked me, oh, you know, people trying to get into business, they want to resell things and go on ebay or selling them on Amazon often, especially guys, because we tend to kind of like this stuff. Technology things, electronics and all that kind of stuff. I would say do not go into that business. The margins are slim. The product is hard to deal with. There's so many negatives. But if somebody came to me and said, hey, man, I have a great deal and I can buy scotch tape at 5 cents on the dollar, and I can. I was like, man, that's a great business. And then you can focus on your customer service and what you bring to the table and how you add value in a different way than everybody else that's selling, you know, some other boring or the same boring product.

The same boring product. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I like it, man. Well, that's good. Cool. Well, I'm glad it's working for you. That's good. Oh, did I lose you again, Shannon?

Yep, I'm here now. Sorry.

Okay. That's all right, folks. If you want to reach us. If you have any questions, you can, well, you can email us feedbackusshow.com you can do like Scott did. You can call us at 401-472-4249. And we hope you have a good week. We hope you have good luck in your business. And we hope you have fun protecting your, your charmed lives there.

That's right. Have a great week, everybody.

Sa.