Interview with Prime Time Treasure Hunter

You and I are big fans of systems here, Shannon and I love that our interview guest today, without any prompting started talking about his own systems that I loved.

Yeah, yeah. We have a great guest today. You know, you know, whether you're a small business owner, somebody buying and selling, flipping stuff on ebay, there's some really great lessons here today and I think you'll really enjoy it. I have a lot of respect for this guy. Recently met him and he's. Not only is he done stuff for his own business, but he's built some great communities that I think all of us really benefit from being part of.

Yeah, great interview. Really well spoken guy, understands what he's doing. And you. I had to keep reminding myself that the things we were talking about with him here and all the things he's doing are his side hustle. He has a full time job in a completely different field that is massively involved in taxing and all of that stuff. He's a PhD.

Yeah. I was shocked when, because I started to learn about him and, and I've been following and see what he does because I'm, I'm kind of intrigued how he's built these, you know, support communities for resellers. And then when I, you know, asked him to come on the show, he's like, oh well, I have a full time job on Neuro. Whatever. I was like, oh, wow, okay. You know, but he's, he's a great guy and, and you definitely want to stick around for this one. Ye.

Well, our guest today is Dominic Caron, the primetime treasure hunter. I'm Dave Hamilton, that's Shannon Jean and this is the Small business show. Episode 249 for Wednesday, November 13, 2019.

I decided from the outset I was going to create a group that is a positive and supportive group where we're not going to allow any trolling or any bullying or anything like that. I have a great group of moderators that help me out with the group. So a lot of credit to them. But we've helped to set the tone and now there's over over 13,000 members of the group. And I could honestly tell you that there's rarely any instances of any kind of trolling or bad behavior. And if someone brand new comes in and tries something like that, it's like they're immediately ostracized because the culture has been established. And so that's important for your, you know, for your listeners who are in leadership positions in small business. And you have employees that don't underestimate the value of building up a certain culture. Because if people believe in it and buy into it, they will, you know, they'll follow along with that and help you try to accomplish the vision that you have set out for yourself.

Hey, Dave, you know, I'm a lifetime deal guy. You know, I bought and sold everything, it seems like forever. You know, everything from 40 ton cranes to, you know, computers, technology, handbags.

That's how we met. I know.

Yeah, that's right. And you know, the, the people that are out there grinding it out every day that I really have a ton of respect for. And they also understand the power of buying and selling, finding the delta and, and whether it's a side hustle or a full time job, you know, it can have a big impact on their lives. And you know, the other thing that I've always been connected to, kind of one group or another, different support things. We talk about it all the time here. Getting kind of a support system in place of like minded people. And so today on the show, I'm really happy to have not only a successful reseller, but a builder of communities to support other sellers. Dominic Caron. Yeah, he's known as the primetime Treasure Hunter on YouTube. He's got over 8,000 subscribers that come to him for advice and support. And as well, Dominic's the administrator and you know, really the force behind the reselling resource center group on Facebook, which is how I connected with them. Over 13,000 members. It's a hugely popular group that help one another and you know, Dominic really is an unsung hero in this reseller community and I'm really happy to have him on today. Welcome to the show, Dominic.

Thank you very much, Shannon. Dave, it's a pleasure and honor to be here.

Yeah, we really appreciate it. We'll put the links in the show notes if you know, if you're out there hustling and you're looking for support or have questions about whether primary marketplaces and things or buying and selling. Dominic's a great guy to connect with. So I want to learn about your reselling business and as well as the support communities. Let's start with reselling. How long have you been buying and selling and how did you get into it and what is there a product line that you typically focus on selling?

Well, I primarily focus on comic books, but then surrounding that I sell, resell, basically anything that you can think of that is vintage and collectible. And it's funny because when you asked me about the beginnings, the beginnings really do go back to my childhood with comic Books. I immersed myself in comic books as a child and a teenager, collected them like crazy. And whenever I had extras or ones that I just, you know, decided it was time to, you know, move on to somebody else, I would set up with a couple of my friends. New Jersey is a place many of your listeners have probably been there. If anyone's from New Jersey or the Northeast is a place called the Englishtown Auction. And so we would wake up very early in the morning, and our parents would drive us over there. We'd set up a plastic table, some chairs, put our boxes of comic books out there, and people would come by here and there and purchase some. But, you know, back then, we were not purchasing them with the intent to resell them. But it was early experience in reselling, but, you know, for what you would traditionally consider reselling nowadays. You know, my beginnings with that started in 2000 with eBay, which was shortly after ebay started. And, you know, it was kind of getting up and running. And I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the time. I was going to graduate school at Nova Southeastern University to pursue my PhD in specializing in clinical neuropsychology. And over the weekends, my wife and I would go out to a place called the Swap Shop. Again, a place many of your listeners have probably gone to or know if they live in the South Florida area. And it's just a giant, huge, basically outdoor flea market, had a little bit of an indoor component. And we would just go. And we didn't have, you know, cell phones with apps on them back then. And so we just kind of, you know, by just eyeing it, would look at things and if we thought it was potentially valuable, or sell on ebay as an auction. Remember, back then, ebay was only an auction site. You couldn't do it, buy it now, stuff that you can do nowadays. And, you know, once in a while, we'd buy something for a dollar and flip it for, you know, 50 bucks. And then other times, we'd buy something for a couple bucks and we couldn't sell it. And we just learned a lot through there. And then, you know, a lot of shows started coming out on, you know, on TV that were centering around collectibles, you know, like Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars and American Pickers and Storage wars and all those types of things. And even though there's some staging component to some of those shows, there's still a lot you can learn and get educated on in the value of items. And, you know, you learn about things to look for. So I was you know, pretty active in reselling during the four years that I was there. And then I took time away from it to focus on developing my professional career in neuropsychology. And then kind of things just kind of came full circle. And over the last few years, I've decided to jump back into reselling. The story behind that is a little interesting, but decided to jump back into it and have been really active reselling and with the whole social media aspect of it in the past two years.

That's cool. Yeah, I love the buy sell as, you know, as well of finding that treasure and, you know, have bought storage units and all that kind of stuff. And I mean, it's just, you know, headaches with it, just like every other business, but it can be pretty fun.

Yeah, I mean, I am a treasure hunter at heart, you know, before I was actively getting back. And this is actually. It's kind of interesting because it's one of the experiences that I had that actually led me into developing a YouTube channel is I was pretty interested and getting into the hobby of metal detecting, which is. Which is treasure hunting. And it's a lot of fun. I had a blast doing it. And mostly I was treasure hunting on. On land, you know, parks and, you know, schools and stuff like that. Once in a while I'd get into a different area, but there was a guy on YouTube who was watching who was doing metal detecting in little shallow rivers, and he was always finding Civil War collectibles. And it's fascinating to me. And I loved his YouTube channel. I watched all the time. And then from there I started watching some reseller YouTube channels that would just kind of pop up, you know, on the side, related to that. And it just kind of got me connected into the whole YouTube universe.

That's cool. That's great. So when you're buying and selling this product, are you primarily on ebay or are you selling other venues as well?

Right now, I am primarily on ebay. We do some local marketplace flips for bigger, bulkier items, like furniture pieces that my wife helps with that aspect of the business. She is very good at restoring furniture and touching it up to make it look nice. So we'll often get free pieces of furniture that are being discarded by somebody on the side of the road. Or they'll post that, it's free for pickup, we'll go get it, and, you know, she'll work on, you know, in that situation, I'm really just the heavy. I'm just picking it up and bringing it back. And she does all the touch ups. But yeah, we'll flip that stuff on, on Facebook Marketplace or Offer up or, you know, let's go or you know, Craigslist or something like that. I've dabbled a little bit into Poshmark, but not much. And so, you know, there's other areas to potentially expand into, but right now it's primarily ebay.

This is fascinating. I mean, you just, you just find where the deals are and go after them. Unabashed is sort of the word that comes to mind. And I think there's a lesson here for our listeners. You know, don't, don't hold back for any reason. Just find the stuff and go do.

Works.

You have to have that. It's very important for people who are starting a small business is you have to have a go get them attitude and you have to also just eventually do what it is that is your goal. So for a perfect example of this would be the YouTube channel. And a lot of people put it off because they're nervous and stuff. And eventually I just got to the point where I actually heard somebody say, who is a, you know, a bigger time youtuber who's like, you know, listen, you know, just do it. You want to do it, just do it. And so I just decided one day. I actually looked at it last night in horror. I still keep it out. My first YouTube video, which was on the Value, believe it or not, a vintage spray cans. But it's just, it's just terrible compared to what I'm doing now. I mean, I keep it up just to look back at it and to see how much I've grown in terms of, you know, developing. Because it's a big, it's a big challenge. There's a lot to learn. I had not done anything like that before, but you just got to jump in sometimes and learn as you go.

Absolutely. That's the only way to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you expect to be an expert the first time you do something, you will never do anything.

Absolutely. Right.

Right. Yeah. That's impossible.

Really good. Yeah, it's, it's great advice. Yeah. So the one thing I struck me watching the videos and listening to you is, you know, people ask me about product sourcing all the time and I typically say, hey, those are my trade secrets. I can't tell you where I get all this stuff. But you kind of do the opposite, right? You explain the how and the how, the costs and how to find stuff and everything on your YouTube channel. So let's talk a little bit about that how you got why, why the how and why you got started on YouTube. I mean, were you doing it to try to eventually generate revenue or just build this community, promote your own business? What was the impetus, impetus behind that?

There's multiple aspects to it. You know, eventually if you catch on, yes, it can be a source of revenue. Right now it's a relatively small source of revenue for me through advertising. It takes a while for you to even get your channel to the point that you could get it monetized and you need a thousand subscribers, for example, and you need to have a certain amount of view time. So it's not like you could just flip the switch and you know the old saying says and all of a sudden start making money through YouTube. Doesn't quite work that way. But that was, that was one goal as something I would like to do is, you know, continue to develop that. But also I just really wanted to take it on as a, as a personal challenge. And I like taking on personal challenges and something that I haven't done before and I don't want to regret. You know, at the end of my days, you know, I wish I would have done a YouTube channel. I thought about doing it, but I didn't do it. So I just figured I'd dive into it and try it. I wanted to share my treasure hunting experiences with people. I was watching other channels and people were doing, you know, something similar. But I felt like I could add a unique perspective to it. I felt like, for example, I could add insights into the psychology of buying and selling based on, you know, my career in neuropsychology. So I know a lot about how people think and what motivates people. And also I felt that I could help people with motivation. I've written two books related to motivation. They're, they're, they're boring books. You're. They're not any. It's not like self motivation, but it's just, it's academically based. They're academically based books. But it's an, it's a topic that's of interest to mine. I felt like I could shed some light on it. And also I just thought that I would have just some fun experiences to share. With all the different treasure hunts I go to on the estate sales that I go to, the, the rummage sales, the flea markets, the garage sales, I, I just thought that I'd be able to share some interesting things with people and, and help them out. And right before I actually came on your show, I kind of got some Validation of that from someone who wrote me on YouTube and he said, I'm a new reseller and your videos have saved me. And I said, that's awesome. That's a great feeling. So just, it's not always about the money. It's just sometimes just the gratitude of feeling you could help people out is a good thing.

Yeah. And I would say that. I would speculate that it helps motivate you as well. Right. You're kind of developed this cyclical system, if you will, that, you know, you're out there sharing stuff, you're getting that good feedback. That's gotta help propel you to do more as well. Right.

It does. It makes you accountable, you know. Cause people ask you, for example, if you went and sourced something and you said you were gonna sell it for, you know, you thought you'd sell it for X, Y or Z, they'll say, hey, did you list that yet? Did you sell it? Whatever happened to that item or what's happened, you know, more recently, which is interesting. And this gets to where you're talking about is develop a source of revenue. Developed a small enough following now that people start asking me when they see something source, that they would like to purchase it so that actually not put it aside and let it sit there for a while and just, you know, get it listed. And then someone, you know, will just purchase it directly. And so, you know, that's a. That's a cool experience as well. And then the other thing is that, you know, sometimes I might run into a problem and I can't solve it, and I'll ask the audience for help or for assistance. And, you know, with the audience built up how it is now, you know, I could pretty much get an answer very fast if there's some kind of problem or something that I need a solution to.

That's really cool. Using it as your, you know, resource for you as well.

Yeah. So it is reciprocal, like you say.

Yeah, yeah.

And how long have. How long you been doing the YouTube channel?

The YouTube channel is coming up to about two years. I did my first video at the end of December. I think it was December 28, 2017. So we are getting close to 9,000 subscribers and hopefully maybe 10,000 by the end of the year. Will be fun.

Yeah. That's really great.

Do you do anything to market that YouTube channel? Like, I mean, other than the obvious, filling it with good content and et cetera, et cetera? Do you do anything to really promote it out there?

Yes. So I think that. And this is a Very important thing for small business owners is that it's really important to be on social media. Your business is pretty much invisible if it's not on social media these days. You need to get it integrated in some way. That doesn't mean necessarily it has to be on every single social media forum, but there's some real important ones that it's good to be on. YouTube, if you could find a way to make that work, is a good one. Obviously, Facebook is another one as well as Instagram. And so what I do is I try to integrate the three together. And actually I try to integrate with the ebay too, as much as possible. So I'll give you a perfect example of this. So in my Facebook group, for example, I do something called the BOLO of the day, which is IS stands for be on the lookout item. And so what I like to do is I like to take an item that, ideally, if I could find one of these that I showed in a video that I sourced and then show people what I sold it for and then show people, you know, something else similar in that category, you know, that sold. So, you know, let's say, for example, it's, you know, yesterday I bought a Dracula jigsaw puzzle, never opened from 1974. So let's say that sells for $30. I might show the video where I sourced that, and in the Facebook group I'll link to it and I'll say, hey, within the body of the text, you may remember I sourced this item at the 1212 mark. So if you'd like to go check it out, go check it out. So people who are new to the Facebook group might say, oh, wow, this guy does treasure hunting videos. I might go check that out and then maybe they'll subscribe. And then in the YouTube channel, I'd be directing people over to my Instagram account or back to the Facebook group. So they all kind of feed off of one another. And of course, I'm mentioning my ebay store. So, you know, right before I came on, in fact, the moment before I came on with you both today, I put up an Instagram post that said, hey, I have this rare Avengers poster that was signed by George Perez from 1994, and it's available in my ebay store if you'd like. It'd be a great Christmas present. And I'm always directing people over to the Instagram from my YouTube and sometimes from my Facebook group. So they all interplay off of one another. You got to connect them together.

That's really smart. Yeah, okay. Yes, that answers the question, right? Because if you've got an audience in one place, why not tell them about, you know, your presence elsewhere and cross pollinate. Hey, I want to take a quick minute and talk about our sponsor for today. Our sponsor for today's show is textexpander. We're always talking about productivity, and especially here today with Dominic really talking about productivity because he's working like a side hustle on top of a side hustle here. And you can do the same thing. When you're doing that, though, you need to both be accurate and efficient. Those two things don't necessarily go hand in hand. In fact, they usually combat each other. Not so with textexpander. Because what you can do is all those email replies, the addresses, all the things that you type regularly, but you need to make sure are accurate it you put in textexpander. That way you don't have to go dig around in your sent folder in your email to find the thing that you sent that was sort of like this the next time. No, you just put them in textexpander. And then when you need to send that same email out, answer the same question, provide the same instructions, whatever it is, you've got them, you've gone through, put them in textexpander. You vetted it, and now you don't have to think about it. You can just invoke it, either with a short little keystroke, hence text expander, or with a menu item. If you rather work that way, once you put it in, you put it in right in your email. It'll work pretty much anywhere. Then you just hit send. You don't have to review it because you've already done that. That's the beauty of textexpander. And if you happen to have more than one person on your team, you can use it with your team. Meaning the things you put in textexpander are available to everybody on your team, vetted by you or whomever you want on your team to look through and make sure that this stuff is perfect. Maybe you've got somebody that's better at grammar and all that stuff than you. Great. No problem. Delegate that out, put it in there. Then you get to use their expertise. Every time you send something out, you've got to check it out. And you can do so and get 20% off your first year just for being a listener. Or visit textexpander.com podcast to learn more about Textexpander. Our thanks to Textexpander and the folks at Smile for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, back to you.

Cool. Hey, so we're kind of talking about buying and selling again. I want to say, what do you think you're kind of one of the biggest problems that you face as a reseller, is there, is there something recurring that, that kind of comes up that you've worked to overcome to make your business more profitable, Some kind of tip that you can share with our listeners?

The two problems that I faced are not problems that are unique to me. They're really a problem that most resellers run into, which is space and time. Because it's very easy to go out and source items. The more challenging part is the listing aspect to it. People get that thrill of the treasure hunt. They love doing that. I do as well. But you've got to listed or else you're hoarding the stuff. And so, but if you want to grow your business and pick up on certain opportunities that come your way, you know, you got to, got to grab them when they're available. So that will lead to an accumulation of stuff sometimes. So you've like initially for me, what I, what I started to do is initially just start investing into my business by, you know, purchasing some really solid, you know, metal, storing shelves and putting them throughout my residents in the areas where I'm permitted to put those types of things, you know, so in the garage or downstairs in the basement, that type of thing. But once that started running out, I've always had wanted to get a storage shed and so this just gave me a perfect excuse for it. So I wound up getting a nice storage shed over the summer, did a whole video on it and I've shown it kind of develop over time. And so, you know, for people who don't have the space for a storage shed, you might need to get a storage unit or something like that. But, but space is a continuing challenge. And then there's time and time really, you know, there's so many other things that I'm doing. As you mentioned, you know, I have a full time job and stuff. And so I've got to continue to try to develop efficient systems to, to list. And so I, I modify things over times in terms of what I do. I give you one perfect example of it. So sometimes what someone will do is they'll, they'll take an item, they'll, they'll photograph it, they'll go over to the computer, they'll list it, they'll get back up again, they'll photograph, they'll go back computer, list it I tend to take like a whole bunch of things at once and usually things that are similar, like for example, posters. And I might just take a bunch of pictures of posters all at once, try to capture them in daylight. So on the weekends, for example, I would tend to photograph those. And then I might, I may know I don't have time to list them now, but maybe I'll have time to list them later on at night. And so, you know, I'll put them up, I'll put them up then. So trying to take advantage of proper lighting opportunities when you can. Grouping similar types of items, taking pictures of multiple items at once. Because the problem is, is that if you're doing them one at a time, when you sit down onto the couch to do it or wherever it is you're sitting to relax it, it's harder sometimes as the night goes on to get up, you know, a second, a third or fourth or fifth time, as opposed to if you have them all already set. You know, it makes the listing process more efficient. That's just one example. There's lots of different, you know, now.

That'S a really smart thing though. It, it just in general, whatever your business is compartmentalizing, as you would if you had multiple staff members, right? You might have one person. If you were, you know, if this were big enough and you're doing it as a full time thing, you might have somebody that all they do is take the pictures and then somebody else that's posting to social media. Well, for a lot of us, that's us, right? We do all the jobs, we get to wear all the hats. But still compartmentalizing it, dividing the labor up and saying, okay, I'm going to do all of this right now, it makes it way more efficient. Not only is it, you know, a brain hack for motivation, right. But it's also just way more efficient to do it that way too.

Way more efficient. I'm very big in efficiency. And actually this podcast coming out at this time of year is perfect timing for your listeners because I would suggest I do this every year. I mean, you could do it throughout the year, but definitely at the end of the year is to take a step back and look at the systems you have in place in your business and figure out what is not working in the ideal way in terms of efficiency and time. So, for example, at the end of last year, I realized I was wasting a lot of time printing out labels, cutting them out and taping them on. So I took the, you know, the time to invest and research into A thermal printer, which just prints out the labels almost instantly, doesn't use any ink, it just comes out. You know, it's a heat based printer. So it basically just burns the address right into the label and comes right on. Literally takes like two seconds now to print a label or. I was spending a lot of time just after I got home from work, turning on my old laptop and waiting for it to just kind of get going. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes. I purchased a brand new laptop with, you know, 16 gigs of RAM just to make sure I sped things up. And so it's important because new business owners or small business owners sometimes might be a little reluctant to put in those, you know, those investments. But those investments will, will pay off big time down the road in terms of efficiency. And it's ultimately going to be something that works out for you in the long term, as long as you're making the right investment.

Yeah, it's great. Great. It's true. I watched that video, by the way, when you sourced, bought those posters. It was pretty awesome. That was a good.

Just one other smaller thing to mention is just. Which doesn't really have to do with purchasing anything is just looking around, just figuring out what your, what your system is. I mean, I talked about this a little bit earlier with, you know, how you do the photography setup. But, you know, for me, you know, there's lots of things I have to grab in terms of envelopes and tape and scissors and stuff. And there's a lot of resellers who are starting out, for example, that have things spread out all over the place and they're, they don't realize how much time they're wasting walking to another room to get, you know, the scissors and then walking to another room to get the tape. So I have everything kind of centralized. I have a rule, everything I need once the item sells and needs to be packed and shipped, everything I need to complete that has to be within arm's reach.

That's great.

Yeah, that's very cool.

So, okay, I want to talk about the Facebook group, the reselling support center. You know, if you're in, in the business of buying and selling or you're on marketplaces like ebay or Poshmark. Tracy. What? Uh, you know, I highly recommend you join. So did you start the, the, the support center to promote your YouTube videos or vice versa? How did all, how did the, the group come about?

The, the Facebook group came a couple of weeks after I started the, the YouTube channel. Just so your, your, your audience knows if they if they're interested and want to come by and check it out. It's called the. The Reselling Resource Center. And, you know, that'll easily show up. They just type those words in on Facebook. Yes, that was. One reason would be to promote things. And, you know, I can't promote things unfettered in other people's Facebook groups because it's their Facebook group. So there's something to be said for having your own group that you develop and, you know, to be able to promote things, those successfully, you have to build up a group, good community. And one of my other motivations for building up the group, I mean, there were many. But one of the things I have a real problem with on social media these days, particularly in groups that, you know, where there's maybe a shared common interest area, is that a lot of people have the experience, and I've had it as well, where you pose an innocent question, you know, or maybe a basic question that, you know, there should be a relatively simple answer to. Maybe you just don't know it because you're new and someone comes in and just tries to tear you down for, you know, asking, quote, unquote, a stupid question. So I decided from the outset I was going to create a group that is a positive and supportive group where we're not going to allow any trolling or any bullying or anything like that. I have a great group of moderators that help me out with the group. So a lot of credit to them. But we've helped to set the tone. And now there's over 13,000 members of the group. And I could honestly tell you that there's rarely any instances of any kind of trolling or bad behavior. And if someone brand new comes in and tries something like that, it's like they're immediately ostracized because the culture has been established. And so that's important for your, you know, for your listeners who are in leadership positions in small business. And you have employees that don't underestimate the value of building up a certain culture, because if people believe in it and buy into it, they will, you know, they'll follow along with that and help you try to accomplish the vision that you have set out for yourself. Yourself.

Yeah, that. That's for sure. And I love that because it is all about building each other up. And even the little things like you're talking about here, you know, okay, where's all your stuff? And you've got your packing supplies and this and that and that. Well, somebody's just getting started they just maybe haven't thought through that process. You may have been doing it for years. So it's a great, you know, resource and place to go, and it is. It is very positive. I love it.

Have you.

Yeah.

Related to your Facebook group? And we've been through this with some of our businesses here. I love Facebook because so many people are there. But the flip side to that is all the people that are there are Facebook's readers. They are Facebook's audience, not my audience. Right. And so I don't get to control the Facebook group, truly. I mean, yes, I can moderate it and all of that, but I moderate it essentially for the benefit of Facebook. Right. They're the ones that get to market to these people. They're the ones that get to do all of that. And with some of our stuff, especially one Q&A group that we had, the format of the way Facebook did, it just didn't work for us. So we wound up moving to our own platform. Have you ever, like, thought about what the future is like for your Facebook group? Does it stay on Facebook? Do you try and move it to your own platform so you can truly, truly have your audience at your own home, so to speak?

I see what you. What you're saying. I have thought of that in the past, just in. In the sense that I'm. I always have an awareness, and I think this is important, that there's no guarantee that any of these programs that we are using are going to be around in the long term. I mean, remember when MySpace was the most popular thing and everybody was using that? So. And especially with all the. The controversies that Facebook gets itself. It gets itself involved in with privacy policies and politics and stuff, you never know how long that's going to last. And so I do always have that in the back of my mind. It's not something I've actively looked into right now to do, but it's. It's always good to kind of. To kind of think about these things, but we try as much as possible to, you know, take the group and to use it as. As a mechanism for, you know, positive and supportive change in people's lives and to help people make money. Like, we have an. Every week, which I'm sure you've seen, Shannon. It's called Support that Seller Sunday.

Yeah.

Where. Where I take one seller out of the group who's been a positive member in the group and has helped support my. My. My group has helped support the. The Facebook group and my YouTube channel and stuff, and I showcase them and I ask everyone in the group to go look at that person's store. I'll put a link up to it and ask people to buy from that person. And we've had people make up to 500, close to $5 sales people who get picked for that event. At this point, pretty much it's guaranteed they're going to break their sales record if they get selected for it. And so, you know, it's a really, you know, a good way that we, you know, we take Facebook and, you know, help people besides myself market it. Because I don't want it to just be from. For me, I want it to also be for other people. That's one of the things that also. I wanted to do different with my channel because if you go into a lot of other. I say channel, a lot of Facebook, Facebook groups, it's primarily centered around the person who. Who runs the group. But I wanted it to be a way that I could actually showcase and feature people and, you know, help them promote themselves in a structured environment.

Yeah, it wouldn't work if you were just trying to promote your own stuff. The, the. One of the, you know, the secrets to the whole thing, I think, is that you do spend, I would say, more time, you know, promoting other people's stuff and helping out, coming up with, you know, tips and posting news, things related to reselling. So it is a really good resource. That's why it attracts so many. So many people.

Yeah, right. You're right. Because if you come across that all you're trying to do is self promote, self promote, self promote, there's definitely a significant percentage of people that could get turned off by that. So I really do try to balance that as much as possible. And you're right. I mean, I may actually, you know, shifted over in the other direction more, But. But that's okay. I mean, I think people. People appreciate that.

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, on this show, we talk a lot about mistakes all the time. We just did a big episode on Failure last week, which I'm an expert at, so we went really well. But so, you know, we're. The reason why we're fans of mistakes is because they teach us so much. Right. And looking back on them. So what would you say is your. Your best mistake? I'm making quotes in the air here. The one that stuck with you taught you a valuable lesson either related to reselling or with your community building. One of those.

With reselling, I would say that there's nothing more frustrating to a reseller when someone purchases an item from you and you can't locate it, that's really, really a problem. And even though you may eventually find it, and 99.9% of the time, I'll eventually find, I just had my streak broken last night, by the way of 20 years of never misplaced an item and first time it happened last night. So you always have to implement good customer service and make sure you do everything possible to go the extra mile for the customer. But it continuously teaches me that I need to continuously improve my inventory system and the ways that I'm storing things. I mean, I have a general setup right now where when things come in, they go to a certain location for processing, and then once they're listed, they go to a certain location as well. However, those locations are not absolute, and what I'm currently working on doing is making them 100% absolute. So nothing could go, for example, in section A unless it's something that listed. There could be no crossover, because once you start getting into crossovers like that, things start to get muddled and things could get misplaced easier. So that would, I'd say, be my main thing. The other thing would be with reselling is. And I pride myself on shipping. I have a ton of videos on shipping, but once in a while I'll make a mistake with shipping. Something might break. Now, it might not technically be 100% my fault. It could be that the postal service worker chucked my package onto the porch and that's why it broke. But you still have to try to protect it as much as possible. That could even withstand something like that. And so I'm continuing to try to, you know, do videos to show ways to kind of make your patches as. As iron proof as possible so that they don't get damaged. So always learning from things like that as well.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And, you know, the, the not being able to locate an inventory item, I'm. I'm familiar with that, unfortunately. And that's one of the big metrics that you're rated on ebay for as a. As a reseller and can really drive.

Your.

Top rated seller. You can lose that quickly. I mean, the ratios are really slim on, on mistakes you can make. So you want to be. Be sure to be focusing on keeping track of that inventory.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So, so what's next for you? Are you. You want to continue doing what you do now? You want to expand into other areas, grow the business? I mean, what, what are you at a. A. I mean, I know we talked about time, and you know, you're probably like, Dave and I are working all the time, but quote, quote, work, you know, what do you want to do in the, in the future?

You know, I would say I started this as an experiment to see where things would go. And you know, I've set goals every year for myself and I've been meeting those goals. And so as long as I'm, you know, meeting those goals, I'm having fun doing it. That's also important. You have to have fun doing it. I'm going to continue on with it. And so, so in terms of where things are going to go from here, I'm actually pretty close to publishing, self publishing my own book about reselling. It's about the items to be on the lookout for. It's going to be several hundred pages long. So I'm looking forward to finalizing that. I was hoping to get it done by the end of the year. I still might, if not beginning of next year. I am interested also in expanding areas where I'm sourcing into. I source a most, you know, commonly, you know, known locations. But storage units is an area that I'm very interested in. So that's something I'd like to do and bring those types of videos over to my channel because those are very popular in the reselling community on YouTube, our storage unit unboxing videos, people love that type of stuff. You know, long, long term. I would like to retire when I can, which would be about age 60, about 15 years away from that, and do the reselling and all this other stuff for my full time gig.

Just think how many followers you'll have by that time.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think about that too because a lot of times in business or other areas of life, and this is an important point to put out there, is that there's such a desire for instant gratification. I immediately have to get, get, you know, 50,000 subscribers on YouTube or 30,000 people in my, you know, Facebook group, or $20,000 in sales within 60 days. And you know, too many people don't realize that they have something good that they're doing, but they need to give it time to build it up and not quit too easily. So just sticking with it and seeing how things develop over time, like you said, is, you know, is something I want to continue doing and see how it grows. Continuous collaboration with others. I, I actually consider this, what I'm doing here with you on the podcast, as an example of that. I like to, you know, branch out into other areas, you know, on a Small business show is fun and exciting for me. So I want to do more of these, you know, media appearances. I think they're, they're interesting. I want to enhance the video quality on my, on my YouTube channel. Just increase the production quality of that type of stuff. So there's lots of things that I plan on doing. That's just like a few examples.

Examples. No, that's awesome. You know, there's a bunch of really great advice in this. You go back and listen over to this and I really appreciate you coming on and sharing what you're doing. I have a ton of respect for the communities that you're building. I know how much time it takes to, you know, put everything out there and manage it and, you know, so go once again, tell our listeners the best way to connect with you and your communities.

Well, the easiest, the most open access way because the Facebook group is closed and requires people to be approved, is on YouTube. And so you just go over there. Primetime Treasure Hunter, a YouTube channel. Appreciate if you came by and like the content, if you subscribe to it. And there's comments section there where you could reach out to me. I'm also available by email@primetime treasuremail.com. there's no s at the end of that. And then there's the Facebook group, the reselling resource center. You can, could request to join there and you get in and talk to me there. And if you're in there, I could talk to you on Facebook messenger or do that with a lot of people. And then there's also Instagram. So there at Primetime Treasure. No S. Awesome.

That's great. Yeah. And we'll put those links in the show notes when we push this episode out later this week as well.

Great.

Yeah. And thanks again. You know, we really appreciate it. Excellent tips and highly recommend anybody that's reselling, get over to those groups and watch those videos. Videos.

Thank you very much, Shannon and Dave.

Yeah, thanks for coming, Dominic.

Appreciate it.

That was awesome.

Oh, man, I, I, I, yes, man. He knows. He knows what he's doing. He knows how he's doing it. He also knows he has a lot to learn. Like he's, he's not cocky about it, but no, no confidence.

Very humble.

Yeah.

What I love about it is that even he's talking a lot of the advice and the things that he's, he's bringing up on a real micro level. Like if you, oh, I'm a reseller. I'm buying and selling collectibles, vintage items, whatever it is, but those same things that he's talking about are applicable no matter how big or small your business is. Right. The culture that he's building, all that kind of stuff, managing inventory, it's. It's powerful, man.

It's power. Totally powerful. And he is, I mean, it is a real business. He is running it very much like a real business. And as I mentioned in the intro, it's his side hustle. Like, he is super serious, super dedicated to this and he. But he acknowledged, you know, the allure of the couch. Right. Like, that's. Yeah, that's the thing that can often stop you from even beginning your path down having a side hustle. He, you know, he seems to have figured out how to manage that by hacking his brain and creating his systems, which is great.

Yeah. And not only did he create the side hustle to, hey, generate revenue, and I'm interested in this stuff and it's fun, but along the way he's like, well, let me start this YouTube channel. Let me start this Facebook group. And he's got almost 20,000 followers and members in these groups that he interacts with now. Something. It's a, it's a powerful system.

He's got a side hustle to his side hustle.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's great. But he's a great guy. I love having him on the show, you know, come take a look at the show notes up@businessshow.co and you can click in and see his YouTube channel and the Facebook group and let us know what you think. You know, give us a. Drop us an email to feedbackusinessshow.co if you have questions for Dominic that you'd like to pass on to us or questions for us. Love to hear from you.

Absolutely. I'd like to thank our sponsor, of course, Smile Software there with textexpander. Go check them out and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.