$25K/Weekend Business You Can Start With No Money - Ep. #324

Within the first year, we'd gone from the smallest estates you can possibly imagine to a 32,000-square-foot warehouse selling $25,000 a weekend.

That's wild.

The great thing about starting an estate sale company is there's very little initial investment.

Okay.

Any fees that do pop up, you can just pass those along to the customer or the client.

You collect all the money too, so you don't need to go chase down payments. You pass on the 60%, right?

Right. Estate sale companies work in virtually any community, 5,000 to 10,000 and up. There's money to be made in every single aspect. The sale of the house, the sale of the contents, the move, and/or list the house for them.

I mean, this is a time in a life when people spend money. Everyone knows death, divorce, moving— like, when you move, when there's a change in your life, that is when you spend money.

An estate sale company is the perfect company to start if you aren't tech savvy. It's very easy.

You could literally start this with no money and then be cash flow positive your first week.

You could literally go there with tape and a marker. You can start it for virtually nothing.

What if you could start a business for literally $0 and make $6,000 profit your very first week? Oh, did I mention that this hops on the mega trend of retiring and aging baby boomers? It's an estate sale business, and there is way more demand than supply for this business in any given market. So today I meet Braden, who left a boring corporate job and started an estate sale business that quickly made him 6 figures a year. But I didn't find out until the end of this episode that the estate sale business is just a front. It's just a lead generation machine for a much, much more profitable business that I can basically guarantee you no one else is doing. Please enjoy. So by the end of this episode today, will our viewers have enough information so they can go out and start their own estate sale business?

At the end of today, your listeners will see how anyone who is motivated can start an estate sale company in a week or less and start acquiring estates to liquidate within 2 weeks or less.

How much startup capital you talking?

Almost nothing. Uh, you need to have tape, a price gun, which you can get off of Amazon, and a phone, a point of sale system ideally, but you can use your phone and as many tables as you can get your hands on. And some friends and family members to help you, and that's it.

Okay.

You and I could, you and I could leave here right now, start an LLC, post an ad online, and have a sale lined up. This is a typical result, but within 2 or 3 weeks, you and I could have an estate sale company and our first estate sale in, in just a matter of days.

Okay, so you're a territory sales manager for 2 years, you read the book 4-Hour Workweek, changes your life, and How do you go from that point to estate sales?

I had an antique store booth and, uh, just leftover items, collectibles from my childhood that I didn't want to give away. I'd prefer to sell.

Was this at a farmer's market?

This was at just a huge antique store in, uh, Central Arkansas.

Okay, so you occupied a little sliver of this store?

It was like a 2x10.

Okay.

It was like a family affair where they, you know, my kids decorated it. I provided the the collectibles and the items, merchandise. And anyways, my buddy had asked me for years to go yard selling with him and I relented or, well, finally I relented and went with him and his kids and I ended up picking up, you know, old Star Wars, old antiques, old or vintage tools. And every week was different and flipped those items for several hundred dollars just immediately, just putting them in the antique store booth.

With profit.

In profit. From then on—

what, sorry, what city was this in?

This is in Benton, Arkansas.

How many people live in Benton, give or take?

I would guess about 50,000 in the entire county.

Okay, wow. So I just want people to get a scale for— you don't need to live in a huge city to do this, right? So Benton, Arkansas, 50,000 of the whole county, let's say 25,000 in Benton, right? Your, your buddy finally convinced you to go garage selling. You buy some Star Wars and other stuff, you make a few hundred dollars profit at Exactly.

And then from then on, we went out every weekend, like super early. I'm not an early person, but every Saturday we were getting up at like 5 o'clock in the morning, mapping out where all the yard sales were posted, hitting those yard sales, you know, buying super collectibles, clothing, vintage clothing, vintage, you know, everything, anything we knew we thought we might be able to resell. We just put them in the antique store booth and You know, make several hundred dollars a month. What we ran into is when the fall and the winter rolls around, yard sales stopped because of the weather. So we started going to estate sales. And what we realized pretty quickly is not all estate sale companies are the same. Where we're at, or at the time, there were several, there were a couple of really good ones, but for the most part, there were the existing estate sale companies weren't that great.

Now explain what an estate sale company is.

Estate sale company where we're at basically contracts with the homeowner to liquidate the entire contents of the house, okay, unless specified not to sell. Literally everything in that house will get a price tag and will be offered to sell, including, and sometimes, the vehicles, the house itself, you know. Occasionally, that's a good, good point. 9 times out of 10, an estate sale company, right after estate sale company is contracted, it's because they want to put the house on the market as soon as the contents are out. But is that the answer to your question?

Yeah, they're not necessarily selling the house, but they're, the urgency is to sell the house. Therefore, they hire a company to manage the sale of all this stuff.

Right. And in some instances the house had already sold and they had like a short window where, you know, to get the items out and sell as much as possible.

Now you say estate sale company. Is this like a formal company or like a small business that's local to the area?

That's correct. At that time, there were no franchise estate sale companies in Central Arkansas.

And what year was this?

This was 2007. 2017.

Okay, okay, 8 years ago. You're selling these, you know, buying at garage sales, selling at your booth. Winter hits, what do we do? Let's get creative. You find estate sales. Where were you even learning that these estate sales were happening?

Nationwide, there's a service called estatesales.net.

Okay.

And if you want to find out where estate sales are, or if you want to contract out an estate sale, you can go to that website.

Okay.

And it'll tell you who the estate sale companies are and what sales are upcoming for this, that particular weekend. Okay, so if you typed in your email address today, today's Wednesday, uh, you'd immediately get notified of the estate sales that are coming up in your area for the upcoming weekend. Okay, and for the, for the near future.

Okay, now in a city like Benton, give me a sense of the scale. How many estate sales are there every week or every month?

On average, I'd say there's between 5 to 10 estate sales every week.

Wow.

That number dips in the— well, around holidays, especially December and January, because the weather's so bad. But on average, I'd say about 10.

For the whole county or just for Benton?

For the— I'd say in a 40-mile radius around Little Rock.

Oh, around Little Rock. So that's Little Rock and surrounding areas, 5 to 10 a week? Yes. Okay, that's a good It's a good amount.

Yes. And what we noticed is, uh, some of the estate sale companies at that time were not that great and we didn't particularly care for our jobs at that time. And we just started throwing out the idea, you know, we could do this.

Yeah.

And, uh, and that's what we did.

Now, what about them wasn't great?

So some estate sale companies, well, the ones that were not ideal didn't price everything, maybe didn't focus on arrangement of items. They were all— one in particular is all cash and made it seem a little shady, whereas, you know, most of the other estate sale companies, you know, offered credit card sales as well as, you know, checks.

Because I'm presuming these estate sale companies take a percentage of everything sold. Yes. So if there's cash, then who knows, right? What, right?

Uh, some, some of them not, uh prestigious estate sale companies would bring items left over from the previous estate sale to the next house. So they would look trashy, wasn't organized. Yeah. Maybe some of their staff members weren't very helpful or they didn't have any staff to like help carry out items.

And some weren't even pricing all the items right. They're hoping that like you, they could get a better price, but everyone has to ask manually, what does this cost? What does this cost? Right. Okay. Now, are most of these business owners local?

It's just an individual, maybe a couple of employees where I'm at, and probably nationwide too. They're locally owned. Yeah, there is a growing emphasis on starting and owning your own franchise. And there's, there's 3 big players when it comes to franchising an estate sale company in the US.

Okay. Now, if I'm hosting an estate sale or if I have a need for an estate sale, I'm going to go on Google or whatever, Facebook, marketplace, find someone to host it for me. What percentage fee do they charge? And is there like an upfront fee that they charge as well?

That's a great question. The great thing about starting an estate sale company is there's very little initial investment.

Okay.

And to host an estate sale, any fees that do pop up, like marketing, that's the big one. You just, you can just pass those along to the customer or the client.

Okay.

Typical industry average. Is 35%. Okay. If it's a multi-multi-million dollar home with cars and jewelry and so forth, and you really want to— and you know there's going to be competition, you probably— an estate sale company is probably going to offer less than 35%. On the flip side, if it's a small home with chunky stuff, yeah, um, which maybe just barely meets your minimum threshold, you can charge— you can offer whatever you want. I mean It can be as high as 45 to 50%. Hmm.

Okay. And it's a good business because there's not like, there's not a payer. Like the, the people that are, you know, representing this are the heirs of the deceased, right?

Right.

So they're probably not as price sensitive as the deceased would've been.

That's a good point. There's four, typically there's four groups of people that need an estate sale. Deceased, they call it the four Ds. Deceased, divorce, debt, and downsizers. Okay, the downsizers maybe would be a little bit more price sensitive because typically that's Grandma or Grandpa going to assisted living. But usually, in my experience, the homeowner just wants to get rid of the contents as soon as possible so they can liquidate the house.

Would you say it's— you listed those in order of commonality like deceased is the most common, divorce is the next most?

Yes, deceased— excuse me, divorce and downsizing would be probably equal, but deceased is the number one.

The fourth, debt. Where does that rank?

Occasionally we would find ourselves in a situation where there was a foreclosure, or the homeowner just like literally moved out of the country and left it, and their kids or the bank, the needed those items. Yeah, needed it gone.

So now, is there any upfront fee that the estate sale company takes, or is it all based on how much they sell?

It is all based off of how much they sell. However, if you, if you know that a house— if you suspect that a house might not gross what you need to cover labor expenses, you can set a minimum, a minimum threshold guarantee where you say, my, my fee's 35%. I think we're going to gross $10,000, but for sure we're going to set a $2,000 minimum.

Okay.

So that if it's rained out, if the people don't show up, because you know, you're posting pictures online of what you're going to sell through estatesales.net. Uh, if it's just not a good turnout, whatever the reason, you still make that $2,000. So So in that instance, if you only grossed $5,000, you're still going to get $2,000.

Yeah. Okay. So 2017, you start seeing how poorly these other guys are doing it. Then you start thinking, you're like, man, this is probably a lot more profitable than $300 a month of, you know, Star Wars memorabilia. What do you do next?

We started an LLC and started brainstorming on— we asked ourselves that same question, like, you know, now what? We went to, or I went to, the premier estate sale company at the time. They've since retired. It was a husband and wife team and they were fantastic. Everybody loved them, high quality. The clients loved them, they had a huge following. And I went to him and said, listen, I'm thinking about starting an estate sale company. You know, I love the business, I think I do. Would you consider letting me work for you for a while? And, or actually, I volunteered, I offered to volunteer. And they said, no, you cannot volunteer, but yes, you can come work with us and just see how a sale goes. And, and they paid me. And, uh, you know, I picked their brain, asked them questions, asked them if they would send us small leads that they didn't have time to fool with or didn't want to. And they did.

So you essentially approached them and said, I want to compete with you. Can I work for you? I'll do it for free. And they're like, yes, you can. And I'll pay you.

Exactly. Yeah.

Why do you think they said yes to that? Just law of abundance? Just kind, good people?

Or— they're, in my opinion, at least where we're at, uh, there's a significant amount of business out there in estate liquidation, and it's only growing. The— there's a company called Cerulli and Associates. I may not be pronouncing that correctly, but they anticipate $124 trillion of wealth transfer in the US in the next 20 years.

Wow.

And approximately 20% of that is real estate. I couldn't tell you how much of that is personal property, but it's— the numbers are headed straight through the roof. And even, you know, 8 years ago, it was still trending upwards. So yeah, there's, there's more clients than there are estate sale companies, at least where I'm at. So they were more than happy. An estate sale company never wants to tell a client yet. I'm sorry, I can't, I can't, whether it's schedule or it's just too small. They love having an alternative. They can say, I can't do it, but XYZ Company can. And we became their XYZ Company.

Okay, but you didn't have, like, at the time you didn't have any reason for them to trust you enough to start sending you business because you didn't have any experience yet, right?

The only thing that I had is, is a previous relationship, just going to their sales saying hi and buying items.

You had a relationship with them, which is a competitive advantage for sure, right? Okay. Um, all right, so, and this was a couple that owned the estate sale business locally, or they had like a big business that was in multi-city, multi-state?

This was a small business, small estate sale business, and all they did were in-home estate sales in the Central Arkansas area.

Okay. What did they pay you?

I can't remember, whatever minimum wage was at the time. It was a 3-day sale, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. If you're familiar with estate sales, you know that the first day is full price, second day is typically 20 to 25% off if there's any items left, and then the remaining items are 50% off on Sunday. And I worked all 3 days.

Those are like industry standard numbers, very standard. It just, it must work, right?

Like, yes, that's the typical structure. If they're, if you have a small window, because of an HOA, or if it's a small house, or, uh, the estate's not massive, sometimes you can have a 2-day sale where first day's full price, second day in the morning from 9 to noon is 25% off, and then from noon to 3 is 50% off.

Okay. Okay. So how long did you work for them before you branched out on your own?

I worked for them on 2 sales. And all the while they're just sending us typically smaller leads, you know, an estate sale company, the existing state. We did that with multiple estate sales companies and they were more than happy to find somebody trustworthy that they could send smaller estates to. So we went from, you know, grossing $1,000, $2,000 a weekend on these smaller estate sales to $5,000, $6,000, $7,000. Started just— we started building our own network. We, we set a good example of, you know, we knew it worked and— or what we thought worked, and we definitely knew what didn't work and what you shouldn't do. So we just focused on, on doing the things that the really good estate sale companies were doing and just built up from there. We wanted to, you know, dip our toes in. Yeah, we didn't— at that time, you know, these smaller estates, we were still doing that on the weekend. On top of our full-time job. And within 6 to 7 months, we landed our first million-dollar property with like a $30,000 estate sale. They had sold their home and they had to be out in like 30 days or less. And all the other companies were booked. After that job, my business partner at the time, he quit his full-time job and just dove straight in. Couple months later, I did too.

Wow. Okay. You got your first jobs. Now, if there are 5 to 10 in a week, how are they getting so many leads? Are a bunch of those leads just not closing?

How are estate sale companies getting leads?

This company you were working for, they were getting a ton of leads even right off the bat when you started working for them. But you said on this website there's only 5 to 10 per week in all of Little Rock. How are there so many leads if there only ends up being 5 to 10 a week?

That particular company that I went to work for was very well regarded. The husband and wife, born and raised in Little Rock, very connected and just an amazing couple. So it didn't take much for them to build a huge following. And then all the real estate agents and, you know, attorneys that deal with elder law knew them as well. So they were very well connected. One thing we also did that I didn't mention earlier is I went to real estate brokers and said, hey, can I bring you guys breakfast, coffee, donuts, etc. at your next broker meeting and just tell you, tell your staff about, you know, for 10 minutes about what we do. And 9 times out of 10, those brokerages were like, sure, you know, because otherwise they'd have to pay for it. They're gonna have the meetings anyways.

Yeah. So I heard that so many times, like real estate offices are very receptive to stuff like that, right? Whereas it's really hard to get in at any other type of office, typically.

I agree.

Okay, so you're making minimum wage, you only need to do a couple weekends worth of sales, you're feeling good, you're feeling confident. What types of things are you learning working for these people that you didn't know before?

Working for an existing estate sale company could just confirm some suspicions that I had and just, you know, uh, solidified what, you know, makes sense, which is be nice to the customer, keep an eye on merchandise, don't overprice items, don't underprice items. They enlightened me on how much staff is required. For example, you want people obviously at the cash register. You want wanderers or floor managers kind of just walking around making sure that the customer doesn't need anything, and then also people aren't stealing stuff. You also took on, depending on the size of the house and depending on what the contents are, you want to have somebody to help load furniture. And working for an existing estate sale company, you just kind of really kind of opened my eyes on what staff looks like.

And maybe most importantly, it just gave you confidence, which like, that's, I intangible thing that is so valuable. You're like, okay, yeah, like I feel like I've de-risked myself. Not that there's a ton of risk going into it compared to other businesses, but— Is it true it just gave you confidence to do this on your own? For sure.

And they were very supportive and told me, you know, if you have any questions or, you know, concerns, you feel free to call us. They gave me their cell phone. So anytime I had a question about staffing or paperwork or percentage or neighborhood or an item, I could call them. To this day, I still— they— one of the— the husband of that team is a guitar expert, and anytime I have a, you know, question about a guitar or musical instrument, I'll just shoot him a text and say, hey, what can you tell me about this? Because I don't want to misprice it.

Yeah. Okay, so not only are they paying you, but then they're giving you leads while you're still working. Working for them. What does your first estate sale look like? What was the situation? How big was it? What did you make, etc.?

The first estate sale that we, we received was from a real estate flipper who— and real estate investor who was a good friend of mine. And he said, uh, Braden, I bought this house. It's a 3-bedroom, 2-bath. It's full of stuff. Do you want to sell it? Because he knew I was going to do estate sales. And I said, sure. Because otherwise he was gonna have to run the sale himself or just throw everything away. And really quickly, we priced everything in the house. We held an estate sale. Yeah, it was a smoker's house, which we knew, but we thought the walls were orange. And when we started taking items off the walls, like the gun rack, there was a— yeah, you could tell exactly where the guns were because it was white underneath there.

Oh man.

And, uh, anyways, that was our first estate sale, and we sold basically everything in there.

Wow.

Uh, any items that were left, we got rid of. And, uh, soon thereafter is when we got that million-dollar house.

Okay. What did you, what did you make from that, and what percentage did you give him?

That first estate sale, he let us keep everything. He just wanted us to get rid of it.

Get rid of it. I mean, that's a value to him, right?

Right. He would have to pay somebody to get rid of those items.

Yeah.

And, uh, he, he actually sent us more leads after that. Um, one in particular that was a hoarder house, which I can talk about later. But that first estate sale, I want to say we grossed $5,000 or $6,000.

Wow. And, uh, holy cow, you know, I mean, you grossed— really netted, like, your costs were very little, right?

Right, right.

Did you have people help you on that one?

So one, one positive thing about estate sale companies is it can be a family business. So that particular sale, and almost all future sales, my wife was there, his wife was there, our kids were there, and it was basically a family-run deal where there was virtually no, no expenses other than buying a few tables and the pricing guns.

So in other words, correct— and correct me if I'm wrong— you started this business and your first week, your first week that you were really in business, your first job, you made about $1,000 profit, right? That's incredible. And how much was left on the second day and the third day? Did it take you a while to get rid of everything?

Are we talking about the Smoker's House?

Yeah, the first one.

Okay, let's say that one grows $6,000. Industry average on a good estate sale, or with a good estate sale company, you're gonna have— you're gonna sell about 70 to 80%, I'd say 75 to 85% of the content. So what was left, we took to an auction and resold it there. And when you take it to an auction, at least in our area, nothing's coming back. They're going to sell everything. It may be for pennies on the dollar.

Yeah.

And instead of selling, you know, all the pots and pans individually, they're just going to bundle it into one, one, you know, one cost or one price. But that's what we did with those particular items.

And how much does the auction take?

That particular auction keeps 35% 5% as well.

So, but your cost on it was zero?

Exactly.

You just had to get it there, some labor, right? Okay. So of that $6,000, what are some examples of some higher ticket and lower ticket things that you sold there?

That particular item, or that particular house, there were vintage clothing, vintage cookware, Dutch ovens. There were a handful of guns, um, other more expensive items would be mid-century modern furniture. Those are the big items that come to mind.

So there's not like one or two things that are carrying most of the weight on this, maybe on some, but not on this estate sale, right? Because I was thinking like, you know, this sectional or this piece of, you know, electronics or whatever gives $500, $1,000, $2,000. It's kind of like the 80/20 rule, right? Like 10 items bring you 80% of your revenues and 100 items bring you to 20%. It doesn't really work out like that.

Not on that particular sale. One, one aspect of that sale I forgot to mention is the garage, which can be a huge center of revenue, and it can be very time-consuming to price 1,000 different tools, tools. And but, but also that's where a lot of people, typically guys, you store their, their beer memorabilia, and $3,000 lawnmower, their lawnmower. There was a lawnmower. Yeah. And that can actually be the number one income generator for a house is the, is the man cave slash garage.

Okay. Was that the case on this one or no?

Yes.

Yeah.

As I sit here and thinking about it, I can remember spending hours in the garage which was not air conditioning, pricing out every single tool. Yeah, the beer memorabilia, the lawn mowers, the equipment, the old equipment that doesn't work anymore, but some people are still interested in. Old boat motors in particular can be very collectible. Even old grills.

Really? Yeah, I wouldn't think so.

There's a brand of grill called PK Grill, which is an aluminum type grill, which is actually making— made in Arkansas. I saw, and there's, and there's others similar that retain their value like crazy, like $200, $300 grills that are 20, 30 years old.

Wow. Now that's probably an overlooked aspect of this, is the tediousness of pricing. And you're not really listing, you're taking pictures to promote the estate sale, but unlike Facebook Marketplace, you don't have to photograph each individual item, right?

Right. You want to photograph and post the most valuable the good stuff— lawnmowers, vehicles, mid-century modern furniture, clothing, collectibles. You know, if you've got Star Wars or coins or jewelry, those are— those will be the items you want to focus on, not necessarily a hammer and a, you know, yeah, set of screwdrivers.

Yeah. On this first one, how many hours in total you plus your help spend pricing and like cataloging all this?

Starting an estate sale company, there's definitely a learning curve. And when you first start off trying to figure out how to price and how quickly to price accurately— pricing accurately, pricing quickly, and pricing accurately don't typically go hand in hand. So on that particular, that first estate sale, it took us days and days and days of pricing and researching. But, you know, fast forward to today day, I can walk into a room and have everything priced in an hour because you've seen it all, right?

You're like ChatGPT when it comes to this type of stuff, right? So you've got a price gun with a little sticker and you just type in a price and you stick it on there.

Exactly. If it's a higher-end home or item, we'll put like a special tag on there.

Okay.

If it's a tool in a, you know, garage, we'll put a piece of blue masking tape on there or painter's tape.

Okay.

And just write it on there. And then that's customary for, you know, for those items because a lot of tags won't stick to tools and the items you typically find in a garage.

So on this first estate sale, $6,000, how many man-hours in total did you and your help spend on it versus today, a $6,000 estate sale, how many hours would it take in total? Yeah, I know these are guesstimations. Submits.

So that first estate sale probably took us 40 hours. Okay, 20 hours each because there were two of us pricing to get it ready. Nowadays we could walk into that same house and potentially— and this is like a 1,200-square-foot house— potentially be done in one day.

Wow, like an 8-hour workday, pretty much. Okay, so the first one, 40 hours. I'll do my math. All right, for $1,500, so that's still $150 $150 an hour. 150 times 40, $6,000. But today it would be more like $800 an hour. Well, today you might not— it's, I guess it's not common to make full profit like the flipper gave you, right?

Right.

That was kind of unique. So if it were that divided by 3, $200 plus an hour.

Um, it can be very lucrative.

Is that how you look at it? Are you optimizing for like dollars per hour? What is your metric?

That's a great question. I probably should, but the metric we use is what we typically do is we'll walk the house with the client, take pictures, and then I'll walk the house again by myself. And I'm just, I have a cash register going in my head. Like this room is $2,000, this room's $3,000 and so forth. And once it, once I'm done, uh, and I'm writing notes in my notebook too, you know, it adds up. And nowadays, and this probably applies to most estate sale companies, if it reaches that $10,000 or more gross mark and the house is, you know, relatively clean, we'll make an offer to the client. Typically they say yes, and I'll go back through my notes and say like, this is going to make $4,000.

Yeah, 40%.

Well, this is going to gross $10,000. Yeah, we'll probably make about 4, we'll offer them, you know, 39% to make it sound a little sexier than 40%, you know, use the 9 numbers. And, and then we'll try to knock out the pricing in as little time as possible.

Yeah.

So I don't typically account for my time pricing.

Sure.

Even though I should, but I am accounting for, okay, I'm going to need a staff member on here Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, or 2 staff members members at least.

Yeah.

Uh, or more for, you know, 6 hours each day. Plus, uh, there's going to be a social media marketing fee. If you post the sale on estatesales.net, that's going to be a fee of $100 to $200. It's changing and it depends on how much you want them to promote it.

Yeah.

Uh, I work myself back from there. So if it's $10,000 gross budget and you know, my time, the labor in particular for employees or family members, any social media marketing costs that, um, the customer— that we're going to absorb if we absorb it, which we usually don't. And then, uh, I've done it so many times now I just know, okay, this is going to be for sure $3,000 to $4,000 net. Yeah, this particular weekend.

Okay, so if it's $10,000 in sales, you take home $4,000, but you pay your help everyone else, is it reasonable to net $3,000 of that for, or is it going to be less than that?

Anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000 per weekend.

Okay, so great margins, right?

And if they're your friends or family member, then especially if it's your family, then, right, your margins go up even higher.

Well, and you collect all the money too, so you don't need to go chase down payments. You pass on the 60%, right?

Right. Uh, industry average The, the usually takes about 2 weeks for most estate sale companies to reconcile credit card statements, the cash. And there may be a handful of items, like maybe a vehicle didn't sell that particular day, but you know you can sell it someplace else.

Yeah.

You know, the customer will give you, and you may work this into your contract, like, uh, 2 weeks or, or sometimes more before you'll receive a check from us.

Yeah. So that's a positive cash flow. Conversion cycle, and it enables this business to be one of the few ones that technically don't require any money. Like, you could— if you had to borrow tables, borrow packing tape, you know, you could literally start this with no money and then be cash flow positive your first week.

You could literally go to a— if you got hired to do an estate sale for a friend, family member, or whoever, you could literally go there with tape and a marker and borrow tables from a church or friends and family.

I'm talking about like the 6-foot Lifetime folding tables, right? Costco, right? $70. Yeah, or $50. You can rent them for $2, right, if you really need to.

And in many instances, the customer already has tables at their house that they want you to sell, or there's just so much counter space.

You need your tables.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Okay, you can start it for virtually nothing.

Okay, so how much marketing marketing is required to get enough people at this estate sale? Because more eyeballs equals more money, right? More demand for the supply.

The nationwide number one resource, and the one that most if not all estate sale companies use, is estatesales.net. Uh, the most estate sale companies are listed on there as a resource to be, you know, be the client's resource. So there'll be, you know, in my area, 10 to 15 estate estate sale companies listed on there, I'm guessing. Uh, so there's that resource, but also, uh, once you're on estatesales.net as a vendor, partner, vendor, affiliate, then you, for a discount, you, you can post your— I believe there's a discount to post your sale for that upcoming weekend. So if I know I'm gonna have an estate sale 3 weeks from now, I can go ahead and post the sale, post the date. Uh, you can post the address, but typically that's hidden until about 72 hours or the day of the sale. That way you don't have a million people showing up to the house, which happens. Uh, and, um, but to answer your question, the main resource that most estate sale companies use is estatesales.net.

Okay. So that website is a marketplace. There's people like you, vendors posting on there, and then there's people, consumers, homeowners, whoever in Little Rock looking to buy stuff at estate sales, right?

And to, to get access, they have to give their email. And once estatesales.net gets their email, every Wednesday typically, or more depending on your settings, you'll get, you'll get an email for sure weekly about the upcoming estate sales.

Okay. All right. And then Facebook Marketplace.

Facebook Marketplace is a good resource, and that's what we did initially and do occasionally still, uh, post upcoming estate sales. And that's been very effective.

What are some— like, how do you, how do you post something that people will search for? What keywords do you use or tricks or whatever?

That's a great question. The Facebook ads were set up a long time ago. We, if I recall, we would use estate sales, estate liquidation, yard sales, garage sales as the keywords.

Okay. And then do you ever list individual items on Facebook Marketplace as like an ethical bait and switch to get people there. So like, here's this dresser for $50 at the estate sale, right?

On our Facebook page, we would, we would post all those high-dollar items, as well as on EstateSales.net. On the Facebook ads, we haven't talked about a warehouse sale yet, which we may get to, but that's really where we focused our Facebook or social media spend, uh, is just a flyer about the warehouse sale with no particular items mentioned unless there was a vehicle, but just promoting the address and the date and time and what kind of sale it was, which was warehouse sale.

I love the principle of surface area, a lot of surface area. Like if I'm promoting one of these podcast episodes and we talk about 7 different business ideas, that's 7 different angles I can take when promoting the full episode. So if you have 7 different things at this estate sale that are unique or like inherently viral, like an old collectible or something. That's— there's 7 different personas out there of people that would want to— they would not want to come for the 6 things, they don't care, but for that one thing they would. But when they get there, they might end up buying 2 or 3 other things as well, you know?

Exactly. And then on estatesales.net or any of your marketing, you're writing descriptions of everything that's there because A lot of this, a lot of the items offered are your typical kitchenware, you know, garage items, tools. But occasionally there's a super collectible item. Yeah, I know I keep going back to Star Wars, but if you have vintage Star Wars or any vintage toys, uh, you know, from the '80s in particular, that's going to draw a huge crowd. So in the description, you want to list any potential, yeah, um, niche that's— that someone might be interested in because they're going to— your customers are going to read that description. And if they don't see it when they get there, they're going to ask you about it.

And a few years ago, you would have to just take time to learn and to get a trained eye and to just know the industry well enough to be able to spot those cool things. And I'm sure that's still, you know, helpful today. But today you just take pictures of everything, upload it to Claude or ChatGPT and say, I'm totally ignorant to this. I know that's a dresser. I know that's a Star Wars thing. That's a Lego set. Like, what of this is interesting or valuable to people? What of this would get clicks? You ever, you ever use AI in creative ways like that?

We don't. And I'm glad you brought that up because I am, I'm learning more about AI. I definitely don't know anywhere near as much as you do and others. And there's a lot of people in the estate sale industry who, who don't. I would guess that a majority of estate sale company owners are in their 60s and 70s. Yeah, we've not considered AI whatsoever, which is okay in my opinion. Uh, an estate sale company is, is the perfect analog company to start if you, if you aren't tech savvy. Yeah, it does take a little, you know, background in working with websites to post your information to estatesales.net, but not a lot. I mean, it's very easy, and we all know what it's like to post on Facebook. It's not that difficult. Yeah, but you could, you could literally, as far as your tech savviness go, just know how to post or have a friend help you post on estatesales.net, and that's all you would need to know as far as being tech savvy.

Yeah.

Now on the flip side, so, so there are those companies that have no are not using technology at all or very little. On the flip side, that is changing. Many companies, especially franchises, are using online auctions to sell their items. They may not even have an estate sale. They may just put everything online and sell everything on the auction. Or if they have high-value items like precious metals, guns— well, maybe I shouldn't say guns, but definitely precious metals or extremely valuable collectibles, artwork. They may sell that only online because of the risk of those items walking off. Yeah, at the estate sale.

Are people using Whatnot or TikTok Live for stuff like this?

I know that our customers are on Whatnot because they'll come and buy, you know, Fisher-Price items from the '80s and so forth, and/or collectibles in some instances. Coins and sell those on Whatnot, but I think that's a small percentage right now. Okay.

How often do you come across things and you're like, oh, this is too good, I'm gonna take this for myself?

That's a great question. The company that I, you know, volunteered to work for initially and worked a couple sales with, they under no circumstances would buy anything from their particular, you know, estates or their clients.

Conflict of interest.

Right. However, if that item was still left over at the end of the sale, they would ask the customer, can I, can I buy this? Every estate sale company has their own policy procedure. In many instances, estates and the heirs don't care for the contents at all. They want them gone as soon as humanly possible. They don't care who buys it, whether it's the estate sale company or not. Yeah, uh, so that's in a case-by-case basis. But yes, that is one perk of owning an estate sale company, especially if you're— exactly, you know, uh, cool clothing, cool furniture, cool collectibles. And, you know, if you have a certain niche that you're into and you come across it, you know, it's, it's common courtesy to ask the the customer, the client, hey, I collect these, do you mind if I, you know, pay you full price and have first dibs on this? And, uh, but not all the states sell companies do that.

Yeah, yeah, because I come across like a holographic Charizard or something, like I'm, I'm going to want to pay them full price, but I don't want it to go to the general public, you know?

Right.

But I can also see the logic and the ethics in just saying we don't touch that. That's— we want to serve their best interest, which is putting it in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

Exactly.

Um, what are some cool things that you personally have found or walked away with?

Um, that's a good question. At one point or the other, every piece of furniture in my house came from an estate sale.

Really? Yeah. Wow.

I own some Airbnbs, and we have purchased an entire estate and not even gone to— not even held the estate sale. We just bought the whole house Wow. And put every single item in the, in the short-term rental.

Yeah.

Uh, I collect— that's a good question. I just— it just depends. I, uh, certain aviation items, certain pieces of clothing. Um, that's a good question. I'm gonna— as soon as I leave here, I'm gonna think of different items I collect, but I can't think of any in particular right now. I just know it when I see it.

Yeah, yeah.

A lot of times my kids will see items, and they'll ask if they can buy it.

Yeah. Okay, so your first one is $6,000. What do your next few look like? What are some like hard-earned lessons that you learned?

Well, we noticed just immediately, it was just kept growing. And we kept getting calls, we kept getting the small estates. And, you know, it started at $2,000, then $3,000, then $4,000 gross a month, and then $8,000, then 2010, uh, where we really 10x'd— and I don't know if this is the answer to your question— is we, we got access to a warehouse through a family member, and for just a nominal fee, he would let us borrow this 8,000-square-foot warehouse and to hold estate sales in.

Wow.

And what, what we started offering is, because we've gone to these other estate sale companies and asked them to send us our small their small leads or the leads they didn't, you know, weren't profitable enough. All those leads started coming to us. And what we started doing is instead of having two, instead of merging, you know, instead of having an estate sale for one estate that has like $2,000 worth of stuff, we would start accumulating 10, 15, 20 estates.

Wow.

That had $1,000 to $2,000 worth of items. And every estate was different. You know, some might have, might be heavy on Christmas decorations, some might be heavy on toys, clothing, furniture. And what that evolved into is a $20,000, $25,000, $30,000 weekend sale with 30 different estates.

Wow. And, uh, which brought in tons of people because cross-pollination, they're all coming for something else.

Every single person was there for something, for something.

Were you able to sell the same item in the warehouse for more than you'd be able to sell it at the individual estate sale?

That's a great question. That is a very good question. What, what, in my opinion, an estate sale in someone's house, you can offer and ask for more as opposed to having that same item in the warehouse because you're in the house and you're in the house. It doesn't feel like you're in a HomeGoods Right, the customer can picture that bed and that bed frame and that mattress in their room because it's set up in the house.

Yeah, it's like staging a home for sale, right?

And a lot of people— I don't know the science behind this, but I know that it's true— and that is when a, when a customer comes to an estate sale and the house is a million bucks and they buy that bed, there's some subconscious portion of that sale that makes them think that, you know, They're now, right? Yeah. As opposed to selling that exact same bed for the exact same price, or trying to get the exact same price in a warehouse that has astroturf and no air conditioning. But yes, I'm almost certain that, that items that are offered in a house sell better and for higher pricing than, than what you would sell it for in the warehouse.

It's like two things competing against each other. I can see the logic of why it sells for more in house for the reasons you just said. But theoretically, if you're able to cross-pollinate and get more people, more eyeballs in a warehouse— more eyeballs equal more money, right?

That's true too.

But what's working against you in the warehouse is you're more diluted. There's more people, but are there a proportionally— are there a proportional amount of more people as there are more items? Because in a home you might have 100 items and 100 people. In a warehouse you might have 1,000 items but 800 people, right? Does Does that make sense?

Right, right.

The item-to-person ratio could be skewed not in your favor in a warehouse.

It can go both ways. Parking also plays an issue because if, if a customer pulls up to an estate sale in a neighborhood and there's nowhere to park for a mile in one direction, a mile the other, yeah, they'll leave. But at the warehouse, we had unlimited parking, so that, that was not an issue.

But no air conditioning.

But no air conditioning. Yeah.

Is the springtime the big season for you?

Springtime and the fall, yeah.

But is it— is this a year-round thing?

Year-round.

What are you doing Monday through Thursday?

So initially, the warehouse turned out to be a huge blessing, and I'm not aware of many estate sale companies who use that hybrid model. What we did initially was the warehouse fell in our lap. We, we had the small estates bring us their items, which is fantastic. Or in some instances, if they didn't have that option, we would go get them. And, and then also any leftover items from the estate sale at a house, we just bring them to the warehouse, lower the price again if they hadn't sold, and, and sell them there as well. Catch-all, right? So we became a hybrid of we can do the estate sale in your house and you know, which was in my opinion the ideal, you know, location. That way you have to move it twice.

Yeah.

Oh, or if that wasn't a possibility because of an HOA or time frame, we would have the customer bring the items to us or we would go get the items. And then, um, so that was a hybrid model that, that we used.

My next question was just that, was just managing the logistics of taking 15 estate sales and putting it in one place Sounds like a pain, but if you get them to do it, it's a win-win. And they might actually be happier because their house is empty faster. They might take longer to get paid because you need time to aggregate enough estate sales to make it worth it in the warehouse, but that's offset by them just clearing out the crap faster, right?

That is exactly right. Uh, we, uh, you quickly accumulate the, the warehouse, uh, showcase area, so to speak, or floor area, it was 8,000. But there was 24,000 square feet also. And occasionally that entire 24,000 would fill up.

No way. So much space. Yeah, half an acre.

Yeah, it's huge. But, but you're selling 8,000 square feet, you can do one every month for sure. But if you hustle, you can do one, one every 3 weeks. I was going to say, what you're doing Monday through Thursday is pricing like a crazy person.

Yeah.

And, and what you're doing is you're rolling out a segregated lot. You know, the Smith family is lot number 1, and you're pricing all their items, you know, with a 1 on the, the tag, so that when the customer comes to check out during the day of the sale, you know, let's say it's a $5 Let's say it's a $10 Dutch oven. You're going to ring it up $10 under Lot 1. Let's say they also bought a fishing pole from the Jones family, which is Lot 14. Then you're typing $14, Lot 14. The customer still pays the same price, but your cash register separates everything out. So at the end of the day, when you reconcile, you know, you list who's who or which family or which estate grossed what. That and just, you know, use a spreadsheet.

It's not as complicated as you might think. It's just a lot number and a price, right?

It sounds complicated initially, especially as we started adding— like, when we started getting over like 10 estates, we're like, we had to get a different cash register that could go up to 50 different lot numbers. But at the end of the day, it's very easy.

So I was going to ask you what software you use for that, but that's just a cash register, right? What about if they pay in card? Do you just enter the card amount into the cash register?

Yes, we would reconcile through the cash register, the lot number of the estate, and then whether it was cash or card.

Okay. All right. So what, I know you kind of got the hookup with this warehouse. What does he charge you?

So while I was, I don't do the warehouse sales anymore, but—

You personally? No, no, you're a company.

Me personally, I retired. My business partner kept going and he ended up buying that warehouse from his relative. So, uh, at the time he would rent it to us for I think like $400 a weekend. It was just, it was nothing.

Yeah.

And, or is the average estate sale company going to be able to land a large warehouse for that price? Probably not.

But they could find a warehouse.

They could find a warehouse. They could find enough, find an old Dollar General. They're, they're there are buildings out there that can be leased and there are other companies that do this.

Yeah.

Especially once you're established and have clients coming out of the wazoo and you can't, you can't manage them all, but you, but you want to, uh, warehouse sales. I think it's the best kept secret in estate sales for estate sale companies because we're the, I know of one other company that does this in the Virginia Beach area where they like us, they'll buy the contents, they'll do the estate sale, they'll take the items to their warehouse and sell it there or auction them off. They'll move the, the customer to their new home. They do all of that. And if you— because there's money to be made in every single aspect: the sale of the house, the sale of the contents, the move. And they'll even and/or list the house for them.

I mean, this is a time in a life when people spend money. That's why, like, USPS has a program where you can put an ad in, you know, an envelope that'll go to someone's house right when they move in. Everyone knows death, divorce, moving— like, when you move, when there's a change in your, in your life, that is when you spend money. So to this company in Virginia Beach, it's like, shoot, we already have their trust, they already like us. Let's get them a moving truck. Let's get them movers. Let's sell their stuff at an estate estate sale. Let's list their house for 6% commission. You know what I'm saying?

Right.

And, and sell them a coffin.

I don't know about that, but they— you can, you can— what's the, what's the expression? You basically get a piece of every single action.

Vertical integration.

And you can negotiate. You can say, well, if, uh, if you let me list the house, I can do the estate sale for— instead of 35%, I can do it for 25%, or I can do it for free.

You make a lot of money on listing the house, right? Okay, so how did your next few go? Like your second, third, fourth, fifth? Like roughly what were the numbers on those?

What we— we started averaging $10,000 to $15,000 per estate sale per weekend. Per weekend. So what we would do is have one regular estate sale per month, and then that same month we'd have a warehouse sale.

Okay.

We would handle all the small estates. We, we take the items that didn't sell at the regular estate sale at the house, sell them there. We would do buyouts from an estate that was just too small to have an estate sale where they needed to sell, like maybe their house had sold and they needed to be out immediately.

We just offer them one price for everything, right? And you resell it.

We just take it to the warehouse.

Okay. So what did your— so this was 2017.

This is— we started in 2017. This is— we're getting into 2018. Now. So within the first year, we'd gone from, you know, just the smallest estates you can possibly imagine to a 32,000 square foot warehouse selling $25,000 a weekend.

That's wild. All right, what were your sales and profits like first few months, first year, second year, third year? What did that trajectory look like?

First full year We averaged, I would say, $5,000 a month. Second year, $10,000. Third year— this is gross, you know— $20,000 to $30,000 a month.

Wow. And then where did it peak?

When I retired, we were grossing about $30,000 to $40,000 a month. Wow. What— the reason I retired is because I'd been telling my business partner Instead of dealing with 10,000 items, I could deal with just one item, and that's the house. He went out of town on vacation. He was not interested in getting into real estate. He was just strictly interested in estate sales, which is fine. And he went out of— he went on vacation. He was gone for a week, and while he was gone, I got a call from a client, and I went over there, knew immediately that they did not have enough to sell. They might have maybe $2,000 worth of items, probably closer to 1. And I just told them, I said, you know, they were moving to Idaho, they're moving to Nampa, Idaho. And I said, how about you just sell me the house and the contents? You guys take whatever you want, leave everything else. There's a bunch of trash. You don't have to worry about listing it. I'll buy it from you, you know, 2 weeks or less. And they said, deal. So, uh, closed in 2 weeks, sold the handful items that were there, pulled pulled out the carpet, relisted this $70,000 house for $150,000, and it was under contract in a week.

Wow, just with new carpet? You kind of cleaned it up a little bit?

I just pulled out the old carpet. I didn't even put in new carpet. Wow. Uh, I got bids from contractors and it was $40,000, $50,000 to renovate it, but my mentor told me, he's like, why don't you just list it for a month and just see what happens?

Yeah.

And that's what I did, and it sold. So from then on So you're converted from then on? Yes. Yeah, real estate was top of mind anytime I went into a house.

I think just the, the whole business model of— maybe this is what exactly what you're doing, but using estate sales simply as a front or as a way to get your foot in the door to buy really affordable real estate.

That is the best-kept secret in real estate. I have never met anybody else that uses estate sale company as a funnel for off-market deals.

Yeah, it's just a different angle, right?

You're the first one through the front door.

Yeah.

And they're paying you to— not only they're paying you to come visit them basically and to, to tour the house.

Yeah. So how does that work with your business today? You just— do you not own any of the estate sale business? He keeps doing what he's doing and he's like, hey man, I got this house, uh, they might want to sell.

Exactly. And I contacted all the other states, so companies too, and say, listen, if there's— if you— if there's a house that you know needs work, or it won't sell for whatever reason, or they need to sell quickly, please give me a call.

How do you fund these deals?

Hard money lenders, local lenders.

Okay. Have you ever just gotten completely upside down in one?

No. I've occasionally If I'm not sure of a house, I'll wholesale it. I'll get the, get the property under contract. I'll empty the house if that's what the client wants, or buy their items, sell their items if the items didn't come with the house.

Yeah.

And I'll just wholesale it to the end buyer.

Um, how many homes have you done so far?

60.

60. And how many years?

Since 2018.

That's wild. And what is your average now? How many of them have you held as long-term long-term, short-term, flipped? What does that rough breakdown look like of the 60?

When you get into wholesaling real estate, at least for me, you realize real quick I have got to keep this funnel up forever if I'm gonna, you know, maintain income.

It's tough.

Yeah, otherwise I really need to keep a hold of some of these deals.

When you say wholesaling, do you mean flipping or wholesaling?

Flipping or wholesaling.

Yeah, and for those watching, wholesaling is simply finding a property under market value getting it under contract and then selling the contract to someone else who ultimately buys it, right? Hopefully you make tens of thousands or more on that, right?

I've wholesaled properties for as little as $5,000, and I've wholesaled, like, through a double close, essentially $30,000. It just depends on the property. But, uh, wholesaling is— it's just like estate sales. You don't need a lot of capital to get started. Yeah, you need to be able to, to get, you know, legally, you need to be able to actually come up with the funding if, if you make an offer. But essentially, you don't need to have much, if any, cash.

Yeah. Okay, so 60 deals in how many years?

8 years.

Okay. And then what was the breakdown between long-term rentals, short-term rentals, flips, wholesales, give or take?

I would say, well, almost all those are single-family residences. I'd say half of those are were wholesale deals. You know, another 20 or so were properties I actually closed on, renovated, and flipped. And nowadays I just have a handful that I, that I own and maintain as short-term rentals.

Some short-term, some long-term, or all short-term?

All short-term.

All in the Little Rock area? Yes. Okay. And I know Airbnbs have kind of taken a beating in certain markets over the last 5 years. How has the Little Rock market been?

The Little Rock market's been great. They're building a Buc-ee's right where we're at. So we've housed Buc-ee's workers who are from Florida and Texas and all over for the last year. So if it's not Buc-ee's workers, we have— we typically, we're moving more and more towards Furnished Finder because a lot of those clients or customers or tenants are there for 6 months or more, at least 3 months in the case of travel nurses. But I've hosted the same workers for one location for over a year and a half.

Wow. That's like— do they call that midterm or like midterm housing?

Yeah, midterm rentals.

Okay, so that's kind of been your sweet spot, or Airbnb is still the bread and butter?

Actually, midterm rentals through Furnished Finder is Definitely the bread and butter. You don't have to work, you don't have to worry about housekeeping going over there constantly. Typically they leave early and come back late. They're not, they don't have time or the capability to party because they're too tired from work. And they're, you know, just super relatively easy compared to what you might find on Airbnb or VRBO.

Yeah. So how much would you say per profit these 60 homes have brought you in the last 8 years?

It's enough to supplement the living I was making working in food sales, and it's helped me build wealth as opposed to net worth. Yeah, build up my net worth as opposed to, you know, relying on income from estate sales and/or wholesaling real estate.

Yeah, safe to say 6-figure income, 7 figures of additional net worth?

About that.

Yeah, that's amazing. And the estate sale business is still going. You're still getting leads from it. How many leads? Not exactly, but roughly what's the split between leads you get from your business partner, your old business partner, and the leads you get from everyone else?

That's a great question. Because I have eased out of estate sales, I don't get as many estate sale leads as I used to. I kind of went full throttle into real estate investment, which in hindsight was a mistake. I am getting back into the estate sale business more on the consulting side, but also to, to potentially do a sale for every, every now and then, but primarily as a lead funnel for the real estate aspect.

Yeah. So you've never really— have you ever lost money on a deal?

I I've not lost money on a deal.

There's just been deals you probably didn't make as much as you'd hoped, right?

We made— the least amount I've made on a wholesaling deal was about $1,000. Yeah, and that was a weird situation, pretty much.

Yeah. Um, what— when you look at just the real estate side, what are some landmines that people should watch out for regarding wholesaling and real estate in general?

Yeah, that's a good question. Well, one thing that blindsided me was on the buy and holds is the interest rates. You know, I went from in 2020 and 2021 to having, you know, 3%, 4% to 6, 7, 8% on commercial loans. So that, like a lot of real estate investors, has been a huge problem. As far as looking, you know, like specific real estate properties, you You just have to do your due diligence. You know, you can walk through a house and no matter how big of an expert you think you are, a real estate home inspector is going to catch things that you don't. You want to build a relationship with a licensed contractor who can see things that you don't, whether it's foundation issues, issues with the pool, issues with the roof, HVAC. Most real estate investors are going to come into a property with a notebook that, you know, reminds you, I need to check this, this, this, and this, and not necessarily rely on what the seller is saying.

Yeah. Is one of the reasons that you've been successful, or a large reason, the fact that you're in a low competition market? Honestly, this is just a question. I don't necessarily think you are in one. I think it's all about supply and demand. A tiny market could have way too many competitors, and a huge market could have few. So just take it at face value. Is— yeah.

In my opinion, most mid to large cities have a shortage of estate sale companies. Estate sale companies work in really virtually any community, 5,000 to 10,000 and up. I would say 10,000 for sure, there you can start an estate sale company and make a living. And the larger your community, the larger your county, the better.

Do you have any data that says in Central Arkansas, we have more supply than demand or more demand than supply? Or do you not even know because it's not relevant to you to know that? You just know what you know.

If you hustle as an estate sale company and build up your brand and take care of the customers, both the clients and the shoppers, you're going to build up a huge following and the leads are going to come. I think the leads will come anyways because I believe there's a shortage of estate sale companies, and the baby boomer generation is downsizing and passing away.

Yeah.

So in my opinion, the sky's the limit as far as starting a company and being successful almost immediately.

And most of your leads are just coming from being listed, listed on estatesales.net, and then you supplement them with donuts to real estate offices, phone calls to real estate investors and flippers. Is that accurate?

Exactly.

Okay. What is the most valuable thing you've ever found in a dead person's house?

Hmm. We sold a Rolls-Royce.

Oh, wow.

We had a Rolls-Royce, a very vintage collectible car called a Roadrunner. Excuse me. It's a— I forget what it is. It's like an orange Dodge that's like $100,000 or more. We found— I bought houses, just bought the contents and everything with the client didn't want the house or the contents and was digging through the closet and found a chest full of jewelry, chest full of coins. Uh, oh, um, my mentor, a real estate investor, gave us a house. He's like, you can have anything in there, but let me warn you, it's a, it's a hoarder house and it's bad. We went in with hazmat suits and my business partner went into this one room. He had to crawl over over a massive pile of clothes to get into the closet. And he called my name. I came around the corner. He just started handing me guns. There were like 20 different guns in there.

Are there any regulations to that?

Every state is different when it comes to that.

Arkansas is like, we don't give a crap.

Right. What we tried to do is when a collection presents itself, whether it's coins, coins, jewelry, guns. We typically go to a collector on the side and, and we'll go to two collectors. We'll get, get them appraised, but then also we'll sell it to a specific person that we know buys guns because that's not typically something that estate sales want to promote.

Yeah.

At an estate liquidation, or can in some, some instances.

Yeah. Okay.

We've done estate sales at murder scenes where there was a double murder at the house. We've done estate sales in homes where you could see the downstairs from the upstairs through the floor, through a hole in the floor. We've done estate sales where there was no parking whatsoever and we had to shuttle people in. We've done estate sales in the snow, in the rain, on every single holiday except for Christmas. Pretty much the sky's the limit when it comes to when and where an estate sale can be held.

Do you ever have customers push back when you say, "All right, we did your estate sale. Here's the $4,000 we owe you"?

Occasionally, customers will be disappointed in the gross sales. A lot of customers want a line-by-line list of what all was sold, and we tell them from the get-go, you know, there's literally 10,000 'Hey, there's 5,000 items in this house, and there's no way that we'll be able to get it.' No one will do that. Pretty much. There's no one that I'm aware of that will do a listing like that. However, if there's a very expensive item like a vehicle, or a, you know, a special piece of furniture, artwork, in those instances, I will commit to providing them with a detail on what that item sold for.

Yeah.

And I'll make sure that the person at the cash register writes that down.

Okay. Do some of the customers that come into these estate sales just walk away with a steal of a deal?

Occasionally they'll— that's every estate liquidator's worst nightmare, is putting the wrong price on an item and then as that customer's leaving saying, you know, this is worth $500, right? Uh, that, that has happened once on a piece of Native American artwork. I don't know if he he was over-exaggerating the value or not. But that has happened once, and for sure that's every estate liquidator's worst nightmare. If you're— if, if an estate sale company owner is not sure, the great thing about being in the estate sale community is you can call another estate sale company or an appraiser, and you should, and say, hey, I'm not sure about this guitar or this piece of art or whatever it is. Can you point point me in the right direction. There are a lot of resources online nowadays through Google and AI and so forth, but, uh, and those are good resources, but it's also good to consult with an expert.

What percentage of people are coming and actually get a deal on stuff versus the people that are coming because they think they're going to get a steal of a deal on something? Like, how much of it is selling the dream, right?

Every estate sale company owner wants to price the items just high enough so that it serves the, the client, but just low enough so that it attracts customers and you don't get your customers saying, well, they, you know, they priced items so high, I'm not coming back. So it's a delicate balance of pricing those items, you know, in the sweet spot. And then also you have to keep in mind, what do I want this item to sell for on day 3 at 50%? Because I don't want to sell— you have to keep that in, in mind because you don't want to walk out the door for nothing.

It's kind of like in, in real estate, if you own an apartment complex or a mobile home park, you never want your occupancy to be at 100% because it means you're undercharging. If it's 90 or 80%, it means you're overcharging. So I always look for like 95% because that's like, you know, market value. I would think that in an estate sale, if after day 1 you've sold 95% of your stuff, you're like, crap, like, this is kind of too low. Is that the case?

That's it. And once you do this for a while, you know, you get a really good feel on virtually every single item in a house because you've seen it 10, 20, 30 times before. Yeah, we've done hundreds of estate sales. And yes, there are some new estate sale companies I imagine would be if they're not careful, they could price— they could overprice or underprice real quick.

Yeah. How much haggling do you do, or do you allow for?

So on one hand, I am a haggler. I love to go to State Hills, right, right, and yard sales. And like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. I honed my craft at yard sales, uh, haggling. However, I— as an estate sale company, that's one aspect, I hate it because many people, sometimes dozens and dozens, will come up to you and say, "Hey, I know you've got $50 on this, but can I get it for $25?" It's the setting.

They expect that that's the cultural norm there, right?

Right. The problem with that is once you do that once, if you've got 1,000 people coming to your estate sale every weekend, you're going to have to do that 1,000 times more because they're going to overhear that.

Yeah.

Is a bid sheet. Okay, you give the customer a bid sheet and say, hey, Mr. Customer, thank you for the offer. Why don't you put your bid, which you're comfortable, you know, buying that item for, put your number on there, and at the end of the day, we'll call you. It's essentially, instead of having to their price, just saying, you know, this is gonna be 25% off on Sunday if it's still here. Why don't you put a bid in over that, and if you have the winning bid, we'll call you. And that typically nips it in the bud right there.

They don't even need to do that, they just buy it or walk away.

They'll either buy it or they'll submit a bid, and if it's still there, you know, it's still a sale.

Well, that could be a great way to acquire leads and email addresses and phone numbers. Have you ever thought of that? Like building a customer list?

That is a— acquiring email addresses is an effective marketing tool for most, if not all estate sale companies.

Yeah.

And then, because if you don't capture their email, you're totally—

you start fresh every week, right?

Through estatesales.net or Facebook, where you can't capture their emails. If, if you capture their email addresses and phone numbers, then not only can you send out an email about upcoming sales, but you can also, uh, offer them opportunity to come to a VIP sale, maybe the day before, like a huge estate sale where you've got to get some stuff out before the actual estate sale because there's just not enough room. Or, or upcharge them or upsell them to, hey, why don't— for $50, you can, you can come to the, the night before estate sale and have first dibs at XYZ items.

Yeah. What is like worst case average and best case with regards to attendance at an average estate sale? Not a warehouse sale, but an estate sale.

That's a good question. Average, you're not like counting, but roughly, you know, I'm very familiar with Central Arkansas. And your listeners are going to come from all over the US and all over the world. So I can't speak to their area. But on a typical 2,000 square foot house, if marketed correctly, and if you post the right pictures, I would guess that you would have 300 to 400 people per day, and maybe even more on the last day because—

so much—

because it's 50% off.

So 1,000 people, that's wild. I wouldn't have thought that.

You can, and depending on the neighborhood, you can have even more because you're just limited by the parking.

Yeah. What's the worst you've seen? And the best?

The worst I've seen is 30 40 people show up per day.

Why?

Not a— well, weather, it could be, can be one. Although people who go to estate sales are extremely dedicated and will go, just like yard salers, every weekend no matter what and hit multiple estate sales.

Yeah.

And buy tons of things that they resell and/or don't need.

Yeah.

So we've seen estate sales with a few, like 40 40, 50 people per day. And that comes down to either bad pictures or just low quality items. Bad weather. Did I already say that? The most we've seen was that million dollar house I was referencing earlier. It was in an amazing community. There were local celebrities who live nearby. I think they were promoting it as well.

Is it Mina?

Mina?

Mina is a good community, isn't it?

This was a— this is This is a very upscale community in Little Rock.

Okay.

And they had amazing items. The husband was a doctor. The wife was an interior designer slash party planner. So she had like, I'm talking tens of thousands of dollars in each category that I'm about to describe. Halloween, Christmas, St. Patty's Day. Yeah, girls' night out. She, she planned those parties. Anyway, she got out of the business. So there was literally something there for everyone. And I would guess that there were 3,000, 4,000 people come through that house. It was a 4,000-square-foot house. So it's like something in every room.

And how many, how many sales did that one do?

That, that one grossed about $30,000. We had— we committed to getting rid of or liquidating the, the contents for her because it was It was under contract to be sold. So we had to load a 26-foot box truck and we had to take the rest of their items to an auction. And, uh, that estate continued to pay dividends for a while. We also put some other items on consignment in the antique store that we had booths in as well. So it was just a ton of items, a ton of people.

Getting divorced or?

Uh, they were just downsizing.

Okay.

They were empty nesters.

Okay. What is the weirdest thing a family has ever asked you to sell?

The weirdest thing we have— when we see a customer, we tell them, listen, I'm going to touch every single item in this house, in the drawers, in the garage, in the car, etc., etc. And occasionally we'll come across illegal drugs. They didn't necessarily ask us to sell that. In fact, they did not, but Uh, we've come across those items. One particular estate, the husband was a hoarder and he hoarded vintage toys and he had a massive collection of unopened 1980s Star Wars.

Oh wow.

And we knew as soon as we saw them that it was going to be a huge marketing opportunity and We posted those pictures for sale and we literally had people fly in from out of state to put in bids on those items. We've had tremendous interest in jewelry. We've had a lot of really cool mid-century modern pieces. We've had pieces from historical buildings that somehow ended up in that person's house. I'm going to think of a million different things on the way home.

No, that's good.

Damn.

That's really good. One person with no employees make in this business working only on the weekends?

If a person applies themselves, makes connections with real estate agents, elder law attorneys, other estate sale companies for leads that they don't want to— that existing estate sale companies don't want to fool with— a person just getting into the business can easily make an extra $1,000 to $4,000 a month. Wow.

On the weekends?

On the weekends.

Did you ever have family members fight about stuff during a sale?

We did have— that's a great question. We, we, uh, we agreed to do an estate liquidation for a lady who ended up having some severe mental issues. And she came to the warehouse sale in the middle of the sale and just started loading up her items into her hand and taking them out to the car and screaming at the top of her lungs. We've done estate sales where the, in an HOA neighborhood, like very expensive neighborhood, where the next-door neighbors— we almost came to blows with the neighbors because shoppers were walking on their grass. Trying to think of other stories.

Have you ever found cash hidden in the walls or in the furniture?

We, on a house that I bought and bought the contents of, I opened up the stove, opened up the oven, and there was a Dutch oven in there. And I opened up that Dutch oven and there was a bank bag in there. I opened up that bank bag and there was a wallet in there. In that wallet there was $1,200. Hmm. So that was nice. I've bought a house before with a chestload of jewelry, you know, 14K, 24K rings, coins. We— when we find— if it's a client and we're doing an estate liquidation and we find any cash, checks, Social Security cards, pictures, we'll put that to a side and/or text the picture, a picture of those items to the customer or the client and say, what do you want us to do with these? Do you want us to shred these? Or we'll just say, hey, we found these mementos or cash or ID cards. We're going to put them in a box and we'll give them to you later.

Do you ever do any flips, any real estate flips that don't come from estate sales? Like you find them in other methods? Yes.

When, when we're holding estate sales, I'm always looking around the neighborhood for homes that look like they might need, uh, or might be abandoned or vacant or have issues. And I'll get on Deal Machine and I'll mail them a postcard that says, hey, my name's XYZ. I, I'm interested in buying your property. And so I'll get leads that way. And then also, you know, I work with a lot of real estate agents and they'll send me homes that that they know they can't sell and will buy them that way too.

So is the estate sale business basically a loss leader for the real estate business?

You could say that. It's definitely a portal.

Not that it loses money, right?

When you own an estate sale company, you don't have to get into real estate, but it is an easy transition. And most estate sale— I would say many estate sale company owners transition or add at least, you know, the realtor to their name so that they can list the property as well. Because anything you can do to sweeten the deal over another estate sale company just makes it all that much easier.

Why isn't every other real estate flipper in America copying this strategy?

I have never talked to another real estate investor that sources their deals through estate sales. I've gone to BiggerPockets conferences. I'm in REIAs, real estate investment associations, in Texas Texas, Arkansas, and Florida. And it's, in my opinion, the best-kept secret because you're the first one through the front door.

Yeah. You know what I'm gonna— I'm gonna tell this— that's gonna get clipped. A bunch of people are gonna see it and nothing is gonna change. I'm gonna tell you that right now. There's gonna be 2 or 3 people that are like— they take it seriously, they watch this whole thing, they go out and they do exactly what you're doing. 2 or 3 people out of 200,000 or 300,000 or million, depending on how well it does because it's ugly and it's hard and it's sweaty and it's difficult and it's unscalable and it's not AI and everyone's chasing AI. So like as much of a best kept secret that this is, it's still hard. And I think people are still going to be deterred by that. They'll get somewhat down the line and then be like, ah, too hard. Just because I own this podcast and I see what people do and how they act and we're always taking the path of least resistance. Assistance. But I, I think it's an incredible opportunity. Um, what would you say the ideal estate sale business owner looks like?

The ideal estate sale company business owner can be a lot of different people. If you love going yard selling and flipping items, if you love going to estate sales and visiting with other customers and the owners, if you have an antique store booth and want to scale up. If you love the show Pickers and those other shows, Storage Wars, starting an estate sale company is the perfect avenue to start a new business, a new source of income, a new side hustle, or a full-time income and completely supplement your existing income.

Well, and also, if, if I have illusions of grandeur about starting a restaurant, I got to put in a bunch of money, I got to sign a 5 a 10-year lease, and if I don't like it, yeah, sorry. But with this, it's like, listen, you host an estate sale or two and it is a massive pain. You're gonna make some money and you can just quit. You just walk away, take your folding table back to Costco.

Exactly right, man.

Um, Braden, this has been amazing. Where can we find you and what can we— what can we buy from you?

Before I get to that, yeah, please, if you don't mind, um, if you want to start an estate sale company from scratch, you can do it with very little resources. There's, there's books for sale on Amazon that can walk you through it. There's, there's a few videos on YouTube about how to do it. It takes more effort and there's a lot more questions you have to figure out for yourself. You can also buy a franchise if you have the capital and you, you're positive that this is something that you want to do. You can invest $50,000 to $75,000 to buy a franchise from Blue Moon or Caring Transitions or Grayson's. Those are the big 3 that I know of. I'm not affiliated with either 3. They will instantaneously provide you with leads in your market and the training and the resources and the t-shirts and the business cards and all that. It's a hefty fee, but you get instant authority in your particular area and consistent leads. You don't have to start from ground one. Or from the ground floor. You also get a website. They'll do basically everything for you in exchange for the initial investment franchise fee plus a percentage of your, your revenue moving forward. There's a middle model too where it's called EstateSaleBiz.com where— and there's others— where you can get a website completed for you, designed and posted for you. There's some training there, but there's no recurring residual or commissions owed to them. It's just a one-time fee. I am an affiliate of Estate Sale Biz, and if you use the— if you decide to use Estate Sale Biz as a resource, if you use the term or word Brayden, that you do get 10% off. And there's a variety of packages, but, uh, so there's 3 different models if you're thinking about starting an estate sale. You can do it all yourself, you can do, which would require you doing all the marketing, all the hustling, all the lead sourcing. Uh, that if you're going to do that, it's best to start as, in my opinion, as a side hustle, or, you know, just occasionally, not, not jump in full time. You can go in full time by purchasing a franchise. There's a huge initial, you know, outlay for the franchise fee plus recurring commissions, but they do everything for you, including lead sourcing, which is huge. Or you can do like a middle hybrid for $500 to $1,000 partnering with a company like estatesalebiz.com where they do the website for you. They do, they provide training online, but, uh, there's no franchise fee and there's not as much, however, uh, you know, continuing assistance as far as marketing goes. Actual, you know, training in a headquarters.

Gotcha. Where can we find you if we have questions?

You can find me at flippingcouches.com.

Oh, that's a good domain.

It's a— I wrote a book about how to start your own estate sale company and how to transition into real estate. Also, you can also find me at californiescape.com.

Is that your book?

That's my book.

Okay.

Which is a resource for anyone considering leaving California, which is not as easy as you think.

Hmm, I wouldn't know. Hopefully I never have to find out.

I hope not. And also, you were the resource, episode 204 from November of last year. Jason— I've got his name written down— Sam, he did the lawyer funnel.

Yeah.

And then that's what that is.

Really?

Yeah.

Awesome. So you started a business from this podcast?

Yeah.

Very cool. Thank you, Brad. This has been great.

Thank you.