He Makes $50K/Month Flipping Lawn Mowers⏐Ep. #282

I was a high school math teacher. Teacher's income, baby coming, so just trying to come up with something, and that's where I started.

What were you making as a teacher?

$40,000 maybe. I profited $20,000 to $30,000 that, that summer. Just summer.

Yeah.

And so then alongside teaching, it was absolutely past it. So our best month, we did $1.1 million last year.

In a month?

In a month, yeah.

Holy crap.

It was posted for $300.

What?

I sold that for $3,000. This is a really big hack for you guys looking to buy and sell lawn mowers.

So last week I come across this guy on the internet, and his claim to fame was that he had made $50,000 of profit in one month flipping riding mowers on Facebook Marketplace. My antennas immediately went up, and I'm like, I got to talk to this guy. So we hopped on a call with my team, they vetted him out, discovered that yes, Matt's legit. And so I had him on the pod. Matt, how did you in rural Michigan, Jackson, Michigan, population 30,000 people, how did you make $50,000 in one month buying and selling riding lawnmowers? Not flipping them, not fixing them up, just buying them undervalued and selling them at market value. I'll give you a tip. Yes, he buys from individuals, but he also buys from dealerships. That's the secret. Today he has his own dealership doing over $1 million a month during the busy season. And yes, he's still buying and selling used and new. So if you want to make thousands of dollars a month flipping riding mowers or anything on Facebook Marketplace, this episode is as tactical as you get. Please enjoy. Okay. Well, Matt, why don't we start by you telling us who you are and what you do?

Yeah. So right now who I am, I own an equipment dealership and, you know, I think we're talking because I started this entire journey buying and selling used, not even just equipment, but couches, washers and dryers, church pews, TVs, Nintendo Wiis, right? So it all started with just buying and selling stuff. And, you know, now I've got an equipment dealership and, you know, trying to take over the, uh, the world one lawnmower at a time, pretty much.

Okay. So you started flipping stuff before you opened your dealership?

Yes. So probably 7 years ago, I was a high school math teacher. I have no equipment industry background. I played sports growing up., high school, college basketball. And, um, you know, it wasn't really an interest. It's not like it's about lawn mowers for me or anything like that. Um, but it definitely, you know, taught me business in a short period of time. And now my passion is absolutely business.

So yeah. Okay. So what got you selling things, um, on Facebook Marketplace? Like what was the event that started that?

So, you know, the initial event is just teachers' income. Wife at home, baby coming, and you see a bank account that's just staying the same. So just trying to come up with something to increase the income. So, you know, that's what spawned it all basically. And that's where I started. It was literally, I went to an estate sale and I saw this beautiful church pew in the entranceway. They're selling for $80. And I just thought it was just, that was my first moment. You know, I think of like large entrepreneurship of thinking that is worth more than $80. And people talk about flipping. And so I just tried it with that, right? And so I sold that, you know, probably a few hundred bucks and I bought some other things and, you know, that idea started there, right? And it was in the process. I had to do other things to make money. YouTube certified research on how to flip houses that I moved and was doing a live-in flip and arbitraging Craigslist, arbitraging Facebook. That started because I saw a couch that I had to sell when I moved. I saw the equivalent couch for $50 and it was in better shape than the one I had sold for $200. And that's where it all started. I'm going to buy this to straight flip it, you know, right off the internet. And I made, you know, $250 within a day. And that just— the itch started, you know, right after that.

Where did you hear about this first estate sale that you went to? How did you end up there?

That's a great question. Who knows? You know, I was probably surfing around Craigslist and I, I always liked going to garage sales and things like that. So I, I don't even know how, you know, that came to be, but I, I love going to estate sales. I love garage sales cuz that's, that's where deals are. And that, and now my passion is sales. I love sales, but it was the art of finding the deal. Like that was absolute passion, right? So that's kind of where that stemmed from for sure.

Now when you bought this pew, did you do any research on what it was worth or you just assumed it'd be worth a few hundred bucks?

So that is the exact, like that question is the exact framework that I work off of is when I'm exploring a new market to try to buy something different, it is an absolute no-brainer that I'm going to make money. Okay. Because I'm buying it for the first time I enter into a new market. It's an absolute no-brainer. They're making money. So for example, the first enclosed trailer that I ever bought used— now you tell me without doing any research if you think this is a good deal— a 16-foot enclosed trailer. So you picture when a closed trailer— yep, it was posted for $300. What? Yeah, so you don't know about—

I know what those costs like.

So yeah, I sold that trailer. That was my first trailer. I sold that for $3,000. So that, that was—

why was it so cheap?

Turn that I've ever got right there.

Did they just misprice it? So they steal it?

Yeah, for now. It's been sitting there for years and it was— this guy needed it gone and it wasn't about the price and whatever. It's an awesome one because I had, you know, I started to, you know, make this into a business, but I was a teacher, right? So I— this was still when I was teaching and I had a former student that had two lawn mowers on the back of a trailer on the east side of the state of Michigan. And this guy on Craigslist lives 10 minutes from where I had one of my students out on the road. And you have to win on speed, you know, with deer. And I saw this 4 minutes after it was posted. Oh, I tell him we're on the way. The stars have aligned because I've got my guy 10 minutes from that location and I sent him over there. I've got a trailer full of lawn mowers and I just told, you know, the kid, I said, pay, I just, just pay the guy, okay? Just pay him and we will come back. And the guy actually, he, you know, he has a title with it, which you would think this thing's stolen and it's not. And I didn't even know about titles at that point, you know, but he had the title for it. And, you know, you just figure things out as you go because, you know what, you know what happened when the kid, the high school kid, went back to pick this trailer up is he's getting onto the highway and, you know, the guy tells him, because with trailers you got a 2-inch ball, you gotta—

I know where this is going. I know exactly where this is going.

It goes— and of course there's no safety chains, right? There's no safety chain. So it detaches from the truck, it goes across on the highway, across the median into the other side. No one is killed, no one is hurt. He hooks back up. He— I— we— he may have gotten a ticket for no safety chains for $30 or something. I mean, just crazy, you know. That was probably the, you know, who knows if it was me, I hope I would have seen that, right? But the point is you just, you take action, you figure things out as you, you know what I mean?

So, so that was the $300 trailer. That was the first. If, if you're 5 minutes later, it's gone. Like, yeah, that good.

He got there within 15 minutes of the post and the guy's book, you can imagine, right? A trailer posted that low. So, and that's the exact learn how to, what to say to keep the deal and all that sort of stuff. But I didn't have the skills at that point to know how to keep that deal closed to me. I was so lucky that I had someone, you know, in the area.

So what are those skills that you developed? If someone comes across something like this, what can they do?

Yeah, that's a good question. So number one, you need to get them actually talking to you. You need to get them on the phone. That's number one. Okay. Because You and me talking right now on Zoom, that creates a whole different level than if we were texting, right? Yep. Level for me.

Someone else is going to get them on the phone. So it better be you.

If you and me were across from each other sitting right now, you would drive that much more as well, right? So you got to get that— the closest proximity to that point, you're going to sell better. But you have to, you know, you have to ask those questions. The other guy is going to offer him $600, right? And so you can literally frame people and you can say, I want to know that your word is good, that we have a deal. And you have to just go crazy to reaffirm that the deal is closed. You know what I mean? You know, one thing, but there's a lot of things you have to do. And so, of course, you can give a deposit on Venmo, PayPal, you know, things like that. And you can protect against scamming. And you know, you're talking to a real person at that point, right? So that's, that's one, right? Give them a deposit on Venmo, PayPal, any of those sorts of things, and that will absolutely secure the deal. No one's gonna, no one's gonna actually sell it out from under you if you have given them some money.

Now, I love it because most people would see this in a different area. They're like, dang it, that's such a good deal. Whatever. Let's go find the next one. And you're like, no, I, I know a guy. I'm gonna call him. And even if you didn't know a guy, everything's figureoutable. Like you could hop on a local Facebook group and say, hey, $150 to whoever can get this trailer the soonest. Then you could pay him a deposit and then you could just, you know what I'm saying? Like there's 100 ways to make that deal work, even if it's not close to you.

This is how business— this is how the business started to get created is you realize it's all about speed, right? So now I develop people that I— number one, it's me first doing it right. And already I got to the point at that point that someone else was in a truck for me. But you have to figure out what's the dollar amount that you could literally call somebody And in a moment's time they would say, yep, I'll get on the road and help you out. They're going to do it for $10 an hour. Will they do it for $15? Is it a retired guy? Is it your dad? Dad will probably do it for no money. You know what I mean? Yeah. But the point is, if you want to build an actual business, you got to do it from, you know, someone who's not related to you. For me, the sweet spot is like $20 to $25 an hour. If it's my— it's literally like $40 to $60 an hour if it's their truck. That number doesn't matter. You just got to do the math on that and take that out of the deal and you do the math on seeing if it can go. But you got to build, you know, if you're flipping like that, you got to build out the call list, so to speak. You know, if people— if this guy can't do it, I'm calling the next guy. Yeah. If I get 4 or 5 down the line and this deal is going to make $1,000, you know, I hate to ask it of my wife, but can I miss dinner tonight? You know, you don't want to. So the longer you build that out, the more you project. Actually be able to have a life, you know?

Yeah. So when you started doing this as a teacher, how long until this income replaced your teacher's income or exceeded it?

Once I started buying lawn mowers, it was instantaneously. Okay. The first lawn mower I bought was right at the summer, you know, a summer, and I made a couple bucks on the zero turn.

And remind me what city you're in again?

Jackson, Michigan.

Jackson, Michigan. All right. Couple hundred bucks on your first zero-turn.

The second one I made closer to $500,000. And that's when the light bulb really went off. And that summer I bought and sold 30 of them. So I profited $20,000 to $30,000 that, that summer. Just summer. Yeah. And so then alongside teaching, it was absolutely past it, you know? And that was hard, right? Because you're teaching, that's happening after, you know, teaching hours. And so by the end of that, By the end of that summer, the students that, or at the end of that teaching year, the students that didn't like me, you know, 'cause I was too regimented or whatever it would be, you know, they were, they were telling the principal, he's calling people in between class to strike deals. I was like, it's true. You know, I knew I was leaving by the end of that summer anyway. I loved teaching. I liked it, but I caught something that just grabbed hold of me, you know, that I fell in love with, you know.

Quick reminder, I know you've heard me say this before, but if you know someone that might want to make money buying and selling mowers on Facebook Marketplace, then please share this episode with them. It could change their life. What were you making as a teacher?

$40,000, maybe $45,000.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What turned you on to that first lawnmower? How did you find that deal? Where'd you find it and where did you sell it?

Reason that I— so number one, I was buying and selling couches, then it went to washers and dryers. Heating element went out on the dryer that I sold, and I'm thinking, golly, I, I want to do things the right way. I want to live my according to God, and I want it to be under the right principles. And it felt dirty that I sold something that didn't work afterwards. And there was this little doubt of maybe I should stop. But when I tried to sell my first house, I did— I couldn't actually sell it. And so I rented it to a guy.

The live and flip?

And so the one that I was living in that I did the live and flip, that's the one where everything started to get discovered. And the house that I moved from, I ended up renting out instead of selling. Okay. That guy had a zero-turn lawnmower and it looked like ragged, terrible, and he told me it was worth $2,500 and it blew my mind that that could be worth that much money. I'm thinking in my head, 15% of $2,500 is a lot better than 15% of $300, right? And so, and that's my whole thing. Like, even me right now with mowers, if I could get into construction equipment that sells for you know, $100,000 to $1,000,000, that, you know, less training. It's the same amount of time, you know what I mean? Same amount of skill.

Where did you come up with the 15% number?

Just in general, right? You realize you're selling something for $400 and you bought it for, you know, you're into it for $325, you know, just—

all right.

Okay. Could be 20%, 30%.

It's just a number. So you bought it from this guy that was renting your house for $2,500. And then what?

Yeah. So the idea was zero turns are worth a lot more money than the stuff I was selling. So that's what turned me on to thinking, let's try it with a mower. And a mower is magical because I don't know anything about mowers. No. But do the blades turn on? Does it move forward and back? You can actually take it through a full testing cycle. Unlike these dryers, you know, you got to run in your home and I'm all around these for $200. Yeah, exactly. So that, that's why. And then, you know, and this is— here's the biggest misconception about flipping stuff. I knew nothing about equipment, right? People buy and sell stocks because they know what it's worth now and they wait until it's worth more, right? So you got to learn to think about items like that. Buy it when it's low and preferably when it's beautifully perfect condition. You don't need to do the values, not in fixing it up. The value is in buying it low, right? Yeah. So, and then selling it for what it's exactly worth. And so I was within a week, like every time it was quick. It's about a fast. You got to be able to get it for a price so you can sell it quick.

Okay, let me— I'm going to throw a wrench into this. I'm going to switch things up a bit and then I want to get right back to that story. This is by total coincidence. Total coincidence. Just last night, I bought a zero-turn mower for myself, like to mow my lawn, right? Because I need one. I had a John Deere. I didn't like it. I sold it, you know, at the end of the season. And now it's getting warmer here in Dallas. So I went on Facebook Marketplace. And I want to show you what it looks like and tell you, I want you to tell me what you think I should have paid, like what it's worth.

Undervalue because you're a deal guy.

I am, but also like, I didn't, I didn't work that hard on this one because I'm not trying to make money on this. I'm just trying to mow with it. So I kind of look at it differently. But let me, um, I'm going to share my screen and just don't look at the price on the right side. Okay, let's, let's do this. I was thinking I should buy this after I talked to Matt because he'll tell me what to pay, but I'm too impatient.

So because I want to do this right. Okay, I've got it covered. So I don't know the price. Hey, okay, first, my first mower was a Toro. I'm a Toro dealer. You got a Titan, you got a good one.

It's an MX5400, 54-inch, 171 hours.

171 hours. So that brand sells for about $6,000 right now. So you got it used with that low, that's about a 10-year-old lawn mower.

It's got suspension on the seat. It's in great condition. It's got a roll bar.

You need to tell me, I know everything about that.

I don't know.

I'm hoping, I'm hoping For sure, for sure. I certainly hope you paid less than $3,000. But if you got it for under $2,000, you did really, really well.

I'm embarrassed.

I'm embarrassed. Now, with that being said, if you bought it for $3,000, that to me is market value. So if you paid above that, you went high.

Okay. So it was listed for $4,000 8 weeks ago, never sold.

Yep.

Put it— he put it to $3,500.

He, so he had above market value. That's why he didn't sell.

Keep going. Yep. And it's also wintertime still, right? No one's mowing right now. And I said, hey, I could have lowballed him, but I said, hey, if you deliver it to me, he was 45 minutes away, deliver it to me, I'll pay $3,300.

There's value in him delivering it. So that's why you're willing to pay more. Yeah. So that's fair.

You know, he's a, he was a flipper. He's like you.

He was a flipper. And I would have been the same. I would have been the same thing, you know, at a price for, you know, you need to go a little bit possibly. And so, yeah, you, I mean, you retail buyer, you're the retail buyer.

It's funny because when he came, I was like, I'm interviewing a guy tomorrow that made $50,000 in a month selling.

He's like, what?

$50,000? Him and the other guy. He was like, man, the best month we ever had was August 2025. We sold a mower every day for the whole month. 30 mowers, we made $30,000, and that was like 80 hours a week of working.

And, uh, my guess is he's, he's fixing these himself, right?

I think he is.

But he bought that, he should have bought it in the exact condition that he sold it to you for, for $2,000, but he probably bought it for $1,000 and he did a bunch of work to it. He made more money, but his time per hour was way worse. And that was, that's that. Why he could never scale.

Yep.

Yep. Unless you fix it, right? So it's very hard for someone that knows how to fix stuff to take that approach. So that's my biggest advantage, right? Is that, is that I don't— now I know how to fix some stuff, but I choose not to do it.

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So really the first thing is what I already talked about, right? You got to hire someone. What's the, what's the biggest leverage task that you're doing and what is it when you're flipping? It's finding the deal. That's, that's the thing that you can't— that's very hard to outsource. It's very hard to teach that part of it. Right. So what's the easiest thing to do and what's the most time-consuming thing to do? It's to sit in the car for 5 hours if this thing is 2 hours away, you know what I mean? So That's the first thing you should outsource. You should not outsource that until you've done that yourself a handful of times.

Amen, brother. So same thing.

It's a lot easier to get somebody with super low skill to drive for $20 an hour than it is to someone who's got negotiating skills. So you've actually got to learn to negotiate the deal all the way down as low as possible. Get an agreed-upon price first and then go. But you can't do that at the expense of losing the deal. And you got, you know, speed to lead on the sales side is the same thing on buying and selling.

So it is more effective to do that negotiations in person, right? But you just, you can't scale if you do every negotiation in person. You can't do it over the phone.

Now what I would do is I would send someone with a slip of paper that's like an inspection sheet. Okay, that's what I would do now. And then I would have them call me afterwards and then I would renegotiate even lower.

Let's say you see this Toro 2 hours away, the same one that I just bought in Michigan. It's listed for $3,000. You're not going to pay over $2,000 for it. So you get them on the phone, you're like, listen, man, I do this, that has this, it needs a new tire, yada, yada, yada. I can get you to $2,300. He's like, I'll be there today. I'll be there in 2 hours. Okay, cool. I'll send my guy.

Awesome.

He comes with an inspection sheet. Like, yeah, actually, the blade's a little bent, right? It's rattling a little bit. I can do $2,100. I can do $2,000, right? Is that kind of how you do it?

That's— well, that's kind of it, but you're missing some, you know, like negotiating 101. He who speaks first, right?

Right, right. He says the price.

Yeah. But yeah, obviously the core concept is the same, but like the best way to negotiate with me, a dealer, or anyone you're trying to buy anything You make them lay down the number first. Okay. Yeah. So they've already done it by $3,000, right? But you got to ask what's the lowest that you would possibly consider taking. Now, the biggest mistake people make is that's their first question.

No.

Yeah. What's the—

work them to that.

Build rapport. What's the only thing that you have in common with that person? The only thing you have in common with that person is knowing about that machine. So what do you do? You talk about that machine. And you don't— totally contrary— you don't talk it down. Now, you ask them a lot of questions about it, but you actually talk it up. You talk about how nice a machine it is. The more that they connect with you over the machine, then, you know, they're willing to actually take a lower price because they're liking you.

They're starting to like you more.

Yes, exactly. So for me to finish that, they lay down the number, right? And then let's say they don't lay down the number. What do you do if they're forcing you to say the first number? What do you think? What's your guess? They want you to say a number. What do you do? They won't say a number.

You walk away or pretend to walk away.

You offer an unrealistically low number. So let's take what you should have done. If I would have gotten a hold of you before you did this, what should you have done? What's a number that in your wildest dreams you don't think he would accept on that? So he had $3,500.

What is $1,500?

Oh yeah, so just say, say, you know, and obviously the further you go, you know, the more that they won't, but that will force him to actually say the number, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you should, you should have built rapport, then you should have said, what's the absolute lowest you could possibly consider taking for this? You shouldn't have brought up the delivery yet. And let's say he says $3,000, you're quiet. Right? You're just listening. Oh man, you know, you just let that silence sit, you know what I mean? Well, tell you what, you know, and obviously if you already said 3, I was literally thinking like a couple thousand bucks. And then he'll say, oh geez, oh big, you know, he'll go on and say, no, that's what I was thinking, but like, I mean, is there a middle ground, you know? Is there a middle ground? But I'll tell you what, people might— they will— if you're not dealing with a flipper, They might just be tired of it and say, yeah, I'll tell you what, I can do that. It will surprise you the amount of people that will take the number that you think is crazy. So you lay down an unrealistically low number, right? And then work off that. And if they don't say anything, let's say that he doesn't say $3,000 and you say $2,000, he will then actually say the real number that's going. Everyone's got a number in their head. He'll say $3,000 when he never would have before. Right. So that, that's like negotiating 101 right there.

Okay. So after you sold the first one, what were your next steps to start scaling that?

To scale it, you have to understand it, right? So I was just in the trenches doing it myself for the first—

you just started buying and selling yourself?

15. I'm going to drive, I'm picking it up, I'm making calls, all that sort of stuff. She's getting upset because I'm on the road at night, you know. And then you start to really— you start to pick up patterns of like, gosh, I'm spending 8 hours a day in the car. You know, and so that's when you realize, okay, I gotta call someone.

Okay, so how many mowers would you say you bought yourself before you hired your driver?

I bet it was like 5 to 10. It wasn't a crazy amount. Second layer of this actually turning into a business, I bought one, it worked perfectly, right? Because I didn't want to buy something that I didn't know, you know, I didn't know how to fix it. Well, one of them just stopped working when I was driving around the middle of my lawn. You know, I had no idea. So I thought, you know, I, I driven by this house that always had these old lawn mowers sitting in front of them. Just drove up to this guy's house. I knocked on his door and I said, do you, do you like fix these? And he said, yeah. Well, it turns out this guy, Bill. So I drive him over to my house and he determines that the fuel pump went bad. And so then all of a sudden I got a mechanic, you know what I mean? And people, when you're trying to scale a business, notice what I, I don't have full-time employees. I've just got, and it's just a, it's, it's a 1099 base. Here and there, you know, basis. And then you start to 1099, you start to like hire people and you start to realize, my gosh, I've got this guy, like he's, he's been doing like 20 hours a week for me at that point, hire him part-time.

What were you, what were you paying Bill for this stuff?

Bill had his own rate, right? But he was probably working at like 14, you know, he's probably working at like $14 an hour. So the more that you hustle stuff, you'll find Right now, what's my shop rate? It's $125 an hour. Why can I charge that? It's because I market myself. I did the work of finding Bill. If he would market himself, he could easily charge $20, $25. That's not— he wasn't optimizing for money. He just wanted something to do here and there. You know what I mean? I started to push beyond his limits. You know, he's 70 years old. He's got a cane, you know.

So once you found Bill, did you start opening up your parameters of what you could buy, like being more willing to flip things and not just buy and sell?

No, I shouldn't buy— even with a mechanic in the back, I should not buy anything that needs any kind of work. A little bit different formula now that I've got a dealership because I'm trying to keep the guys working in the offseason. So then it actually does make sense so I can keep his wages. So the whole, you know, everything changed, right? When I actually— this turned into an actual dealership.

Okay. So, all right. So you use Bill, Bill fixes the fuel pump. How do you scale to your biggest month ever? Like, how did you have that monster month? What did that month look like?

So part of how that one came together is at that point, I'd probably been doing this for like a year and a half. Okay. Everyone thought I was crazy when I quit teaching and gave up the benefits. So they, they picture that I've got these little lawnmowers sitting in front of the house. They got no idea what's actually going on. So my cousin is telling me like, you are crazy, dude, to possibly do this. He's a corrections officer. And my wife doesn't want me to do it. She's risk averse. And anyway, what ends up happening is my cousin Dan, he ends up quitting. He ends up quitting his job to come work for me out of my barn.

At the prison?

Yeah. Yeah. He quits. He quits working at the prison, gets out of there. And there's other guys that I played basketball with. In college, and I taught them how to do this. Okay. And what I had a deal structure set up that I would teach them how to do it. We would use half of their money, half of mine. We would use my equipment, my setup, and I would get a certain percentage of that deal. And I think it was like a 50/50. So if they found a deal, I would still get 50% of the pie. I had 4. I built— this is what I thought the big business was going to be. I built a business called Family of slippers. So I would teach people, but it was kind of using some of my capital. I had a guy from Nashville, Tennessee doing it. We had like— I had like 5 guys doing this alongside myself, most of them doing it from my barn, some of them doing it from afar. It was a really big trust-based thing because I knew these people. Me, me personally, you know, there's a video that, that you discovered me off of. Me personally, the stuff I bought and sold was about like $30,000 to $35,000 that I made. And then there was like, you know, $15,000 to $20,000 made from like the 50/50 splits from the other people. Yeah. $30,000. Number one, like really pivotal piece was like, number one, you got a monster trailer and you're going out to Ohio. Ohio is like the hotbed of— I'm in Michigan. Ohio, for what I— it's the hotbed to find the equipment. I don't know what it is, but they'll come back with 4 or 5 pieces of equipment. Well, and this is a really big hack for you guys looking to buy and sell lawn mowers. There are dealers that just hate dealing with used stuff. And I came across one of these dealers, the nicest guy in the world, became a mentor to me as I actually opened up my equipment dealership here. Shout out to Wanamaker's. Okay, these guys are the largest Simplicity dealer in the nation, and this guy's just getting droves of lawn mowers in. And the first one I buy, it was just crazy underpriced. I'm like, how is a dealer selling it for this cheap? And so I put two and two together. I'm like, this is like a source for me now, you know what I mean? And so that— we didn't just buy the first time. I said, well, what else do you have? We left with a trailer full of 3 or 4. And I, I got to the point where I was probably buying like, you know, 20, 30 mowers a month just from this one guy. Talk about leverage, right? Now you can call— oh, I'm still searching, but getting massive volume from this guy. And so that was a huge— I mean, and there's enough room for me to make $1,000, $2,000, $2,500 on the mowers that he's Yeah. So each, each. Yes. Yes. You know, so like a zero-turn mower that I sell brand new now, I mean, they can get to like $12,000, $15,000, $20,000. It's crazy what they can sell for. And that's why this is such a good niche. So you can have a used lawn mower that sells for $5,000 and great value because they sell new for $15,000.

Yeah. What do you make on the new ones on average?

So it's, it's a volume game, you know, it's 18 to 22%. And that's, that's if you're doing it right. That's if you're doing it right. You know, dealers that aren't doing it right, you're probably making more like 10 to 15%, you know.

So you'll buy a new one for 12 and try to sell it for 15.

Yeah. And they've got like it's called MAP pricing, which is minimum advertised allowed pricing. And so you pretty much follow MAP. There are dealers that don't follow MAP. They'll go above it. You know, I, I'm trying to build a national platform. With what I'm doing, right? So I'm going with like a constant, steady, a fair price. Some people maybe are trying to sell it under that, but I would rather go volume. And that's the same thing when you're flipping, right? You don't want to— you don't try to make all the money. You try to make 80% of the money and move it within a week, you know?

Yeah. So let's, let's talk timeline. When did you go from like, when did you buy your first mower and then you started scaling up? And then when did you open your actual, actual dealership? And then when did you start selling new?

From your dealership? I bought my first zero-turn. I quit teaching in that for probably about exactly a year. And then this was from a third of an acre property. It's the 8 lawnmowers sitting in a little 2-car garage. I've got 5 or 6 enclosed trailers in the backyard. So imagine your neighbor's gotta love you, right? But that's why we're at it. I had great, I had a great relationship, right, with my neighbors. I moved to, after I quit teaching, then I bought a, um, a 20, it's a 24-acre property with a barn behind it. And that's where I could actually— I had the space to actually do it. But that in and of itself, they had an estate sale right at the house that I live in right now. And I'm back there trying to find a lawnmower. And then I realize, I'm like, what are you guys doing with the house? Well, we're going to put it on the market in a couple of months. So I bought it, you know, as a 1970 original house with neon in one room and, and, you know, all these bright colors. So you just imagine a 1970 original house and it's just been awesome. It's like American dream, right? You, you buy the house now, now you got the, the finishings in there and I've got the skills to do that. So, but even that, right? I've got now instead of me fixing the house myself, I'm paying someone at $30 an hour because my time's worth more than that at this point. You know? And so, and so then I operated like that for probably like a, a couple of years.

From your property?

4 years ago, this was a dance studio when I bought it. It wasn't a dealership. I just bought a building. And again, I'm a deal guy, so I got a great deal on the real estate. They didn't market it the right way. Shame on them. But we were driving by and thank goodness my wife was looking, you know, she said, that's for sale. And, um, and I had no lines, right? I just, I literally, I bought this and these people probably thought this guy's not going to make it. There's 10 or 15 used lawnmower sitting out there, this baby blue building, you know, that I'm knocking walls there. And, uh, you know, slowly you pick up brands, you pick up Toro, then you pick up Trailer Line, then you pick up Bad Boy. And that, I mean, if you came, you would never know. I mean, it's a full-fledged dealership at this point, 4 years later.

So that's amazing. Are you still buying used on Facebook Marketplace as well?

I did a couple weeks ago because there were kind of slow in the winter. You know, that's another hack I'm trying to figure out what to do. So we I bought— I'm trying to think of the last deal I got, but I bought like a Kubota side-by-side, like, you know, you can sit beside each other. That's why they call this side-by-side ATV. And I bought it for $8,000, but this needed work. And I've got this listed for $13,000 right now, but we did have to put work into this. Okay, probably hope to make a few grand on that. But this is a— I bought one that needed work. I bought a Polaris Ranger that needed work, and I got a crazy deal on it. I bought it for maybe $4,500, $5,000, and I sold it a few days ago for $10,000. It needed some work on the engine, and my mechanic knew what he was doing. He got it fixed. I probably made like $4,000 on that. Then the guy traded in his side-by-side. We got that for— I think it was $40,000. No, no, I bought that for $37,500. That one's probably worth $8,000. So that's another— people think Here's the other big hack for you guys listening. You think that you don't want people to know that you're buying and selling. People want transparency. The guy that you bought that from, he ended up telling you. You might tell your buddy to call this guy. Yeah, yeah, right. Or you might call him back in 3 years and say, hey, what do you got? And you trade that in and he makes money on that again. So you being transparent is everything, you know? Yeah, it's more profitable and it's, it's all about how you word it. You don't say, you know, you start to learn the verbiage. You don't say I flip stuff. It's all about how you frame it to people.

What are your monthly sales at your dealership during like the busy months?

So our best month, we did like $1.1 million last year. In a month? In a month. Yeah.

Holy crap. And what's your net margin on that?

You know, we're 20 to 25. So 90% of my business is sales. That's not a healthy dealership. You should be like 60% sales. I do so much on the sales side that that's just grown so much faster than the service side. Right. But yeah, so think like 20 to 25%, you got the brick and mortar, the overhead, all that. So good dealers are walking away with like 7 to 12% net, you know, at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah, that's amazing. What's crazy to me is you're in a city of 30,000 people. Jackson, Michigan, right?

Like if someone just— Texas, we got a mower going to Texas.

There you go. If someone didn't want to scale, like they didn't want to open a dealership, they just want to do this on the side from their house on Facebook Marketplace, buying on Facebook, selling on Facebook. How scalable is this like in all markets? Because you're in a cold market that— I mean, Texas is a better market because they're mowing 9 months out of the year here. Is it pretty scalable?

It's absolutely scalable. And I'll tell you what, The secret is not lawn mowers, it's not trailers. It's that you pick something and it doesn't even matter. You could be pressure washing a house. It doesn't. And the more you do it, the more you learn what works and what does not work. And if you happen to want to do it with mowers, you watch a channel, you watch the Matt Howe channel, you learn how that works. You know what I mean? But point is, you get on board with someone that you resonate with and then you don't do it for a month. You do it for 10 years and then absolutely, you know, it's—

I've been on the more on the market for this mower and it's led me down these rabbit holes on Facebook Marketplace where I'll see like the same guy selling multiple mowers and I'll click into their profile. I found 5 to 10 guys that have dozens of mowers listed, not dealerships, just guys. Would you suggest that people like they simply try to buy on Facebook and sell on Facebook, not things that need to be fixed, but just buy undervalue, sell at or above value? Or would you suggest that people try to find these estate sales and garage sales so they can find stuff that's like off the radar and then sell it on Facebook Marketplace?

You should try to do that. Here would be my suggestion. Start calling dealers and seeing what used equipment they have. That is way under arbitrage. There are people that are just buying all their stuff from dealers. Find the dealers that are not advertising well. Find the one not putting their inventory on Facebook like they should be. Okay, I have to actually like hit the, hit the phone book, you know, go on Google and start calling the ones, and you'll start— do you have any used? And you'll find one. That's probably the biggest hack I'd say right there. I like that. I just thought— but that's—

that would absolutely work. It's one point of contact for mowers every week, every month. Anytime you get a trade-in, let me know.

Exactly. Um, and then you just visit them. Maybe they don't call you because they're so busy. Just you call them. Hopefully they're local enough that you can go find them. But if, if that guy comes to my store, I'm giving him the ratty mower out back. That's not the mower you buy. You buy the one that's complete, ready to go. For me, if I've got 10 lawn mowers sitting out there and some guy walks up on my doorstep, a young bad owl, and he wants to buy all 10 of them, I'd give him a deal. I would absolutely deal. And more people will buy from him out of his barn than me sometimes because they feel like they're getting a deal when it's not from a dealership. So, you know, go to a dealer and just find the best one or two, you know, mowers he's got. And, you know, don't just face value do that, right? But vet that a little bit, you know?

Yeah. Now I've got a buddy that, that rents out washers and dryers. And in the process of doing that, he discovered by accident that a lot of these mom and pop appliance shops need people like independent drivers to deliver appliances. They don't want to deliver them themselves. Do you think there's an opportunity there to just be a delivery guy for these dealerships? Every time they sell one, you deliver it?

Or— yeah, maybe. I mean, that's a job at that point, but you could. Maybe that helps you learn the industry a little bit. People talk about somewhere for free to learn an industry, you know, and, uh, that's, that's— no one's actually willing to do that. But, you know, people pay you what you're doing, what you're worth.

Yeah. Well, it was a good setup. He worked it as a business and the individual would pay the appliance shop a delivery fee and then they would just pass that on to him. So he would just have like a route every day. He was like just a third-party delivery guy. Right. Is— are there any other opportunities you see in this space, maybe tangential to mowing or tangential to flipping that you think are still in their early stages today that people could attack?

It doesn't matter the like it for flipping, it's not about a mower, it's not about a trailer. There's some item on Facebook right now. I don't know what it is that is worth a good amount of money, $2,000 to $5,000, that has a big margin to it and no one's buying and selling it right now. But you got to pick a market that people are actually buying. It's an actual need, you know, that's out there. I don't know what it is, you know.

Well, I know a guy in North Carolina that does that with sheds. So he buys and sells sheds.

Yeah, it could be that.

Matt, this is amazing. Um, is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you that people would—

might like to hear or learn? Um, number one, my life— my life without the person of Jesus Christ is far worse. Okay. Amen. And I can tell you that from the experience of being super filled with my faith, and I can tell you that for being more of like an agnostic, like I don't really even know if there's a God. But the last year or so of my life, I mean, God was gifting me with learning about business when I, when I wasn't following him. And he made it abundantly clear to me that he was gifting me that skill, that when I actually do have faith, I could use that for his. And my life is not even 10 times better, not even 100. It's infinitely better when it's in accordance with my faith.

I'm glad you said that. That's awesome. Thank you. I'm a, I'm a believing man as well. Yeah, completely agree. Thank you, Matt. Where can people find you if they want to learn more?

So buy a lawnmower for me, we'll ship it to Texas, we'll ship it to anywhere at Howie Equipment. Um, okay, so equipment on YouTube. I'm in the trenches right now, so if I'm just a little bit ahead of you, hopefully I can help you, you know, if you watch that channel.

All right, thank you, Matt.

Thank you, appreciate you.