Making $15k/Month Selling Simple Garage Shelves⏐Ep. #250

I was borrowing my buddy's truck on the weekends. I coordinated everything for Saturdays. I was out and about delivering shelves. May of 24, it got so busy I quit the day job and did this full time instead of just my evenings to this. If you think of a thousand dollar shelf, the expenses on that is probably 150 bucks, so there's still plenty of profit. My record is still 100% for in person sales. Hey, can you come measure for me? Sure. I always close. It doesn't cost you a thing to make a listing, so make as many as you can.

Use ChatGPT to come up with ideas.

Yeah, you can sell anything.

What advice do you have for people wanting to sell anything on Facebook Marketplace? Way back In August of 2024, I interviewed Alex Nelson. He is my buddy in Utah, AKA the shelf dude. And we talked all about how he's able to make 15 grand a month in net profits selling custom garage shelves exclusively on Facebook Marketplace. That was episode 55 and it's linked in the description below. So I wanted to have him back on the podcast for an update. How are things going? How has your business changed, if at all? What advice would you give to other people trying to sell anything on Facebook Marketplace, either a product or a service? So if you want the full context, you're welcome to listen to the episode linked below from August 21, 2024. But we summarized that whole episode in the first five or ten minutes of this episode. So please enjoy my episode with Alex. So tell us what you do, Alex. We'll get everyone up to speed.

Yes, yes. Well, I am the shelf dude. You can see that here on the shirt. I make the shelving units for those black and yellow totes that can get at any of the big box stores. You probably have some in your garage, but they're all stacked. But that's not the best way, most efficient way to access them or store them because you send the husband out, hey, go get me this. And he goes out and has to unstack everything. Find it. It's a stressful situation for him. I don't want to do this. Takes him a long time compared to, hey, just go pull the one out directly from the shelf. So that's what I do. It's really worked out for me. It's kind of a. It's a real simple solution to a everyday need. Everyone has this.

And where did you first see the design for the shelves that you make and for Those watching on YouTube will overlay what it looks like?

Sure. So back in November of 20, 23, two years now. My wife was just kind of scrolling around, saw something similar on online. Just kind of a thing in the background. And, hey, you should make one of those for our garage. So, okay, Made one. Because I also felt that stress, that disorganization, everything was stacked. And so I made one, changed our garage. I immediately felt a relief. It's like, oh, this is easy. Now I don't have to unstack anything. You know, it's funny how many. How many people I run into that have pulled their back or pulled their arm because they've toppled over or they can't lift it.

Do you remember where online you saw it?

I want to say it was an Instagram. This one for my wife. She forwarded it to me. She was looking for a entertainment center.

Okay.

One of the ones that you can buy the plans to and buy or build it yourself. And she'd seen something similar on that guy's site.

Was there any indication on his site that it was a popular design or a popular item or.

No, not that I can recall. It was just kind of. Just something there.

Yeah. This is kind of like when I tell my Bucky story, the first question that people ask is, what else could you do that with? You know, like, what other stores could you do that with? And I don't know, you know, Trader Joe's, H E B. We've kind of dabbled with some of them. Sometimes you just hit lightning in a bottle and it can't be replicated oftentimes. In fact, usually in my experience, it can be replicated with a different product or service. I wonder if there's a way to like, go find. Go to Pinterest or Etsy or a site that sells plans like this and, like, look at the number of comments or sort by most popular and. And take your exact same playbook with it. Could be a coffee table. It could be a table. Could be garage shelving. That look looks completely different. And to use Facebook Marketplace as your distribution platform to copy that. Just wondering out loud if that could be a thing.

I think that there's. There's so many ideas out there. So just. Just sell that. I don't know how. Get some pictures, put on Facebook and see what happens. It's just that easy.

Yeah.

If people buy it up or you get a lot of interest, well, that's kind of. You're proving your concept right there.

So remind me again how it all worked out. So you built one for your wife. What was the triggering event that said, I'm Going to try to sell this.

Oh, great question. So at this point in our lives, I was wanting to go back to school, get the MBA and actually finishing that up in two weeks. We need money to pay for this MBA program and that was the actual motivation to sell these. Once in the, in the mix, in the, in the weeds, it's like, oh, this is. This could be. This has some potential.

Yeah.

And to remind everyone, you know, May of 24, it got so busy I quit the day job and did this full time, dedicating eight hours a day instead of just my evenings to this. But yeah, I was, I was borrowing my buddy's truck. And on the weekends, I'd coordinated everything for Saturdays. Didn't see my wife or kids for many Saturdays as I was out and about delivering shelves.

Yeah. And all of your leads were coming from either Facebook Marketplace or from referrals from Facebook Marketplace, right?

Correct. Yep. It was all. That was me when I wasn't working or building shelves. It's. I was on messenger.

Yes.

Yes. Is this still available? Yes, it is.

Yes. Yes. Are you still interested? Yes. Are you still interested? Yes. Are you still over and over, follow.

Up as best I could with Alex.

Did you then or do you now boost your post or are you just relying on organic traffic to those posts?

I only experimented with boosting. I didn't really see much success with that. Just because it makes it louder. I see it as this. It makes it louder to your already friend group, not external people. I don't know if that's was the algorithm. It is, but it just, it makes it louder to your own friends. But when you make an ad, you get outside of your particular realm.

If I were you, I would try that again. Because when I filmed the follow up to the appliance rental video a couple months ago, Kyler came out here to Dallas. We posted appliances for rent on Facebook Marketplace just as we always do. He got a couple inquiries and. And then we put like 20 bucks behind it. Now the lifetime value of these customers is like 1500. So 20 bucks is nothing. We put 20 bucks behind it and we got like 30 inquiries. Now this is a big, it's a big market, but the more competitive a market like the more competing listings there are, the more you're boosting can make a difference. It can put you at the top of the search results. Right. So I know you have a lot more competitors today than you used to, which makes me think, think that boosting could be a lot more effective today than it used to be. And you Were saying before we hit record that you're getting undercut on price boosting also enables you to keep a higher price because more eyeballs equal higher price.

Good point. I think it's time to revisit that particular strategy.

Yeah. Okay, so you started posting to Facebook. Was your secret sauce on the posting the pictures or the videos? Hmm. Or neither?

I. I believe it was. It was pictures. I didn't do a whole bunch of video at the beginning.

Interesting. I assumed you would be since you're so active on Instagram reels, but.

Right, right. But near the beginning I wasn't as photogenic or practiced, I guess you could say. Yeah, it was just pictures kind of. They spoke for themselves. Right. Totes act up having a kind of a side by side before and after garages unorganized to a clean shelf. I think that spoke wonders.

What were you charging back then for these units on average? I know they have custom ones and then Are you charging about the same today?

Yeah, in our first video I was charging $40 per per tote per space. And it's the same today.

Really good.

And so obviously there's some with every season. There's ebbs and flows with that. I always recommend that you different listings have different prices on them. Whether it's a different size shelf, which is obviously going to be a different price than a small one. Big one. But I vary it also. Maybe I drop it down to 32 for toke for space if I'm feeling frisky. 25. And just to kind of see the difference in the different listings. I get people for both. Right. I even get calls saying, you know, calls over the phone. I'm telling them the price and they say, oh, I. I would have thought it'd be. Be more. I can charge you more if you want.

Yeah.

But it really depends, not in the eye of the beholder, the customer, what value they put on this type of shelf.

Yeah.

Obviously some that could care less. I don't care. I can unstack them. I'm young. Whatever it is, I'm not doing it. My husband is. Okay. But there's also those who understand, feel this need that I have to organize it, that understand exactly what the value is and are willing to pay for it.

Okay, so a four by five would be 20 totes. And that's like 800 bucks, give or take.

Just to do the math here. 20 times 40. 800 bucks.

Okay. And does that include the totes or do they have to buy those separately?

That would be separate.

Okay, so just the Wood and the wheels and just the structure.

Just the structure.

Okay. Now, I remember when we last spoke, we were talking about ideas that were tangential to this. Like you could do garage organization services or garage cleanup services. I've since seen, like, videos on Instagram of people that have that business. Not related to shelving at all, but just like a. A standalone garage cleaning business or garage organization business. Have you dabbled in that at all?

A friend of mine, we kind of called each other at the same time and said, hey, let's do this. Hey, I was going to call you about this. Haven't rolled that out yet. But how that would be set up is, you know, just to kind of utilize the shelf dude platform. Hey, I can organize the space as well, if you need.

Yeah.

In addition to a shelf, if you don't want the shelf.

Great.

I can come and organize for you and kind of work in tandem with my buddy. And doing that side of the business that would obviously necessitate more than just me. That would require some employees more man hours to do that. Because every job is going to vary a lot more than on my particular model. You know, stay tuned. There might be an update on the. On the website for that.

Do you have, like, a database of all the customers you've ever had?

Yeah. So all the purchases of plans, all the physical install of shelves, those customers, I got a list of all them. Everyone who's ever emailed me. You know, I think it's all. It's all enlisted now.

Let's say, theoretically, you've delivered 300 shelves lifetime.

Probably closer to a thousand.

Okay, let's say a thousand. Even better. And you get 10% of them to sign up for, like, annual spring cleaning services. Right. 600 bucks, right. That could be 600 times 160,000. That could be 60 grand a year. And recurring revenue, where you really have no cost. It's just your labor, your time. Of course, your cost would be any help that you had, but that could be an entirely other business. And then if you were to go to all your competitors, build a database of all the people on Facebook Marketplace in your area that are doing the same thing, and just say, hey, I do garage cleanup as well. Every lead you send me, I'll give you a hundred bucks. And you could have, like, this network of referral partners, because the chance of them hearing that and thinking, oh, I'm going to do that myself, it's probably pretty low. Like, it's not. It's not a sexy thing to do is go clean out someone's garage on a Saturday.

Right, right. Who, who likes to do that?

Right. But like eventually, you know, do things that don't scale. You could just, you could hire it all out and you could monetize your competitors, you know, in a different way.

Right, yeah. As they, as they undercut you in one way. You know, not take advantage but you know, create a business.

Yeah, yeah, monetize them. So you got to 15k a month in revenue. You ended up getting a shop, right?

Correct. Yep. Got a shop, had one, had to move out of it, got another one. Now it's a little bit nicer. That's the one you most recently have seen. It really works out to have a space where you can lay out everything, all your tools in one spot, move from station to station and not have to rearrange things as I did in the garage way back when. You gotta move this. Okay. Tuck it away, gotta get the cars in. It's no longer an issue. I can just show up, turn lights on and start cut. Yeah.

And today your business is more about like working with a network of installers and you have a course that you sell as well. Less about building shelves directly.

Right, sure. No, yeah. I still have shelves on my docket for things to build, but it's changed. It's, it's kind of transformed as I've kind of built up this, this following of like minded people wanting to organize spaces, installers as, as you just mentioned that can kind of just join my, my network of installers to be able to receive leads when they come in as people message me, hey, I'm in, I'm in Oshkosh or I'm in Florida. I'm in, I'm on Australia, mate. I can forward those leads on through this installer network which kind of works out great.

Right. What do you sell those leads for? How much do you get for referring someone base?

There's kind of a 70, 30 split. If you think of a thousand dollar shelf, that's obviously 300, 700 of their. 700 for that size of shelves, roughly a five by five. The expenses on that is probably 150 bucks.

Oh wow, that's great.

They're 70%.

Yeah. So even if they're, they're, they're making 700 bucks on that, they're still 80% profit margin, which is their time, right?

Yeah, yeah. Aside their time and that's, yeah, that's up to them however fast they want to build it.

So now have you dabbled with making other stuff for people?

Oh yeah, I Often don't post those because I don't want to build more of them. The process isn't streamlined enough. But no. Most recently I don't know if my wife posted this one, but I made a bed for my daughter. And so it's kind of the same old setup with the totes but just in a different arrangement bed style. And so you can tuck your totes underneath it, bed on top, kind of just a different way. Instead of sliding them underneath the bed, you can put them on the shelves.

Oh, that's cool. You don't want to scale that.

I think it works. That could blow up.

Have you tried to sell that yet, like on Facebook?

No, I believe my wife as she's yelling at me over here, whispering.

I'm still working on the video to be released.

And also another innovation just over time is just better plans. I made the first plans that you could buy online, just kind of digital download on my computer myself, PDF, Adobe, and they all look different. It's kind of funny looking. But I've since upgraded all those so that once purchased, want to see a different style. You can go on and see those improved version. I got a guy now that can make plans, so he's. Oh, that's cool. Also making plans for that bed as well.

What tips do you have for people that are selling anything on Facebook? Marketplace, A product or a service. Facebook doesn't really like people selling services. Right. How do you get around that to.

Your first question of advice that I would give to somebody who wanted to sell something on Facebook? It comes down to wanting it and your why. Why are you wanting to sell something? Obviously it's for money. You want to provide in some way for your family. I think having that at the core of why you're doing it, it's in the why is going to help you push forward those difficult times of it not working. That's first and paramount. From there it's. It's a lot of trial and error. I believe if they, you know, if they want to sell arepas or a little, you know, those are the Venezuelan treats or empanadas or whatever. I'm thinking of Latin food for some reason. But any little trinket or hobby or craft, whatever it is, they just got to put it out there and see what happens. Makes and take some nice photos, Make a. Make an example of it. Take a photo, post it out there and see what happens. If you get a lot of feedback saying, oh, this is too expensive or hey, do you have this version? Well, all those little Details go into making a better version. Many people don't even reach this point. They are scared of what's going to happen. That's the most sad thing that I've seen is like, oh, they're struggling for money, but they don't know what to do. We'll just try. You gotta try. Instead, they resort to other free services in the community to support themselves. Which nothing's wrong with that. Maybe that. But there's a lot to be said and a lot to be had. But just trying something. Trying something new.

Yeah, I love, I mean, I'm doing this right now.

I'm going to share my screen. I just pulled up Facebook Marketplace.

I love just pulling up Facebook Marketplace and seeing what Facebook's trying to show me on the homepage because it's, it's always the most unique things. Like here we go, we got a free home gym. Okay, well you could sell that stuff, go get it for free and then sell it free old church pews. I guarantee you someone would pay for that.

Oh yeah.

I didn't even search anything. This is just what the homepage is showing me.

Yeah, this is. The whole buy resell market is crazy.

Yeah.

The di. I don't know if you have a di in in Dallas, Texas.

No. Do you like thrift stores?

Yeah, it's like a deseret. It's like the. That's a thrift store basically. But people line up at the, at the thrift stores waiting for new goods, buy it all up and go resell it. You know, there's a difference. But it requires that mindset of somebody to go in and be looking for that opportunity and wanting to do that.

Yeah. I mean this Guy's selling a 16 foot trailer with a tiny home on it for 9,500 bucks. Like 9,500 bucks for a house. Like, it's obviously not as nice as like a formal tiny home, but tiny homes sell for 80 grand. Like a trailer alone could be 95. Yeah. Little cabin, golf cart for two grand. An eight foot floating alligator. It's just, it's so interesting just to just ideate by looking at these sourdough starter. Pay what you can, you know, There you go. School bus. For $4200 you can sell anything. Have you come across other people on Facebook Marketplace? Like selling something in interesting or unique that's kind of made you cock your head.

I remember seeing some flowers, not your regular flowers, but kind of a crafty take paper, roll it, paint it. They look like the metal aluminum ones that are all Kind of folded up and you put them on your wall, if you know what I'm talking about. Somebody was selling those for 30 bucks. People are just making. Making crafts and people were buying them. I thought to myself, well, how. What does that. What is the work required behind that? Is it worth it? How long does it take you to make that? If you're selling it for 30 and it took you two hours, it's $15 an hour. Walmart pays 17. Either go get a job or innovate and try and make them faster.

Yeah. I mean, I pulled up Facebook Marketplace and someone was selling fettuccine Alfredo. Like, that's it.

There's a lot of dumplings, a lot of things.

There's a lot. I'm so curious. Like, I want to do a whole video series where I just, I buy a bunch of stuff, pay them to deliver it to me, and then I just interview them on the doorstep. Like, tell me about your business.

Right.

That'd be so interesting to me. I don't care if no one watched it. I. I would be fascinated.

There's a lot of hustlers out there, which is cool.

Yeah.

A lot of entrepreneurs. I think there's an article or probably a video, Utah. There's a lot of entrepreneurs, MLMs, influencers, a lot of these types here. Let's create a lot of competition. Brings out the best in us.

So what advice do you have for people wanting to sell anything on Facebook Marketplace? Are there any, like, best practices that they should follow?

I kind of mentioned this, but. But it's quantity. Right. It doesn't cost you a thing if you don't do ads, don't boost anything. It doesn't cost you a thing to make a listing. So make as many as you can.

Use ChatGPT to come up with ideas.

Yeah. Whatever it is. Or even just yourself. Change one word. You know that repetition, that big net that you cast is going to help you determine which of those is best. Then you hone in on that one. It's kind of. I don't know if it's common knowledge, but just hone in on the one that works and do more of that.

Yeah.

You always have to be doing that. Always.

Yeah.

I'm telling myself this too. You always have to be selling. If you're not selling, the business dies.

Yeah. What do you think is next for your business?

As we've discussed, the shelf, it's not a repeat subscription type model. I set somebody up and this shelf's gonna last until the second coming.

I want to say I was gonna.

Say that it's solid, it's not going anywhere. And you can move it with you because it's built with screws, right? Move it to your next house so that doesn't cause a whole bunch of repeat customers. And so I've had to innovate. So that's where we've now transitioned. Always had, we've always had the digital plans which you can buy, but now we've kind of transitioned over to the installer network which you got a couple different tiers of that. You got the free version which, hey, if you're making shelves, you're doing your own thing. Great, let's just connect and I can send you something later on if you need an extra shelf. Right. Who wouldn't reject that? And then you got a paid version which just kind of gets you more exposure on the website that lots of people are visiting. Hey, and get your name listed right there. Your location, territory, exclusivity, etc. Get your hat and shirt because you're a shelf dude.

Now.

That's kind of what the installer Shelf Dude Pro program is what I'm calling it. Once again, innovating is this course that I've developed is everything that I've learned over the last two years ever growing as well of eight modules of how to do this, how to do that, how to do Facebook, how to. Etc. If it's not there, let me know and I'll, I'll add that in. But you can take that if you haven't. If you don't know anything about shelves, take that. Learn everything that I've learned and have implemented and hit the ground running. So that's. It's also there as we've discussed kind of the, the Garage organization is a possibility that I'm looking at as well as some other digital assets that I'm currently in the works but don't want. A book, for example, I'm kind of dabbling in a book.

Oh, there you go.

Of why we get so disorganized. The point there being that, oh yeah, you could learn how to avoid it.

Yeah, yeah, I think people would like that. It's kind of like, it's like a self help book. Right. And obviously that's one of the biggest categories. Like what was the Marie Kondo show? Yeah, it's like that. Like there's clearly a demand for people to pay for that.

Aside from these little things that I sell. Right. I, I get kind of caught up sometimes of oh, and I'm just sick of selling just A little tired. I want to do. And I gotta. I gotta remind myself, why? Why am I doing this? And it comes back to a real life or a story that I shared recently of. I love to organize a space. Maybe that's the OCD in me. I love to organize it, make it clean and accessible. But the stress related to that, that the person has because it's disorganized, it's cluttered, is a stress they don't know they have until they have it released. So I love bringing that piece. Not any customer I've installed a shelf for has said, I hate this. Afterwards, they're always ranting and raving because it feels much better than thank you so much. And those are the moments that fill me up. It's like, oh, that's why I'm doing it.

Yeah, yeah.

They feel and understand that this is so much better. Why did I have it any other way? A recent customer, they're moving, located here in Draper. Moving from house. They're doing some renovations, so they were staying with grandma, but all their house 150 bins was in a storage unit. So they called me up, hey, we need some. We can't be unstacking all these things all the time. Because they'd seen my stuff, went over there. I set them up with five, five by five shelves. That's 25 times. That's 150 totes with wheels. And she was ecstatic. This is the best thing ever.

This was.

And it was actually his husband, her husband's birthday. So this is his birthday present. He loves it. I always think back when I'm having a rough day.

Yeah, yeah.

That's why I'm doing it.

That's awesome. During your sales process, do you sell the dream of that? Like paint the picture of how they're going to feel when you're done?

A lot of the sales kind of, the how that happens is a lot of just message over, over Facebook and so, hey, here's the price, here's some pictures and what's your space look like? Send me pictures and kind of go create that professionalism there and let them know that I'm the expert. And there's not a lot of calls where I have that opportunity to paint that picture for them. Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe I. It's always hard to ask for a phone number. Hey, what's your phone number? They don't want to hear, right?

People don't. So there's a trade off though, because you're going to be more likely to Close them if they do give you the number. Right.

My record is still 100% for in person.

Oh, wow. Your close rate.

I'm a closed right there. Hey, can you come measure for me? Sure. I always close because I'm able to connect with that way I'm in the space.

Yeah. My friend Alex that does land clearing, he. He attributes all of his success to painting the picture in their mind of what their land's going to look like and how they're going to feel when it's done. And I love applying that principle to any industry. Like, tell them how they're going to feel when it's done. And he said sometimes when they he clears some acreage, they'll cry because they're like, my property has not looked like this since I was a kid. It looks like a different property. And so, like, once he saw that reaction in people, which he didn't expect. Now he, like, tries to get ahead of that reaction and tell them that they're going to feel that way. And his close rate went up even more.

Sure, sure. And I connect the emotion to it.

Yeah. Well, the shelf dude dot com. That's where we find you. Right.

It was a dot company site before. Got rid of that. Now it's just shelfdude dot com.

Okay, well, if you are in Utah Valley or you want to start this business, go to the shelfdude.com and Alex will help you out. This is not an ad. He's not paying me, but he's a great guy and we should give him some business.

Awesome. Thanks, Chris.

All right, what'd you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner Office.