The Best Side Hustle for Beginners (Any Age)
John and Lucas turned flipping household items into a $10-20K monthly electronics business. They source cheap items from Facebook Marketplace and thrift stores, then resell on eBay for 30-50% margins. No upfront capital needed, just price-checking and testing to catch defects.
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What does your business look like today with regards to like monthly revenue and profit?
$10,000-ish, maybe. We actually crossed like 6 figures, which is pretty cool.
Okay, so then after 15 hours of combined work, you make $3,000 to $5,000 in net profit, which is like $400, $500 an hour from your first deal.
Yeah. There's so many opportunities like this out there.
You didn't even take delivery of them.
No, we literally did nothing.
That's incredible. This is like your big inflection point, right? You're like, okay, now we're in the big leagues. Let's do more of that.
Exactly. After that, I was hooked. I mean, it's just crazy that like you go and buy an item and then the next day it's sold. I put up a listing on Marketplace, I get messages, like 20 messages a day.
And you're in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah.
Make them come to you.
Exactly.
Anyone in the world could do that for profit and should. Yeah, right.
I started my reselling journey when I was 15 years old.
I'm guaranteeing you, you have $500 to $5,000 worth of stuff just laying around your house.
Are you selling VCRs?
Yes.
$100 for a VCR?
Yeah, because people think they're worthless, just like you think.
I just wrote an article a year or two ago that like the last VCR manufacturer went out of business. Yeah, nobody makes them anymore.
So they're there's so much demand.
What is this world? It's supply and demand. There's no more supply, so the demand goes up. Exactly. Holy crap.
Same with camcorders. Nobody makes them anymore. Same with digital cameras. I literally sold 6 of them today for $300. Another brand called Jabra, those sell really good. Dell docking stations, a lot of times like thrift stores just think they're cords and they'll throw them in the cord bucket for a dollar, and they sell for like $60 on eBay. So I've found so many of those. Also cameras, like digital cameras, DSLRs, film cameras. A lot of people sell those at yard sales for like a dollar because they think they're worthless.
I think the biggest takeaway just on this, even outside of and there's so much money in the world, no matter where you are, who you are, you don't have an excuse. If you want to get out there and you want to make money outside of a 9-to-5, outside of a boss, you just got to put in the work and you can do it.
I hopped in my truck and started DoorDashing. Dude, I was making $30 an hour. Yeah, $30 an hour. And I was having a blast. Like, there are no excuses. There's just— there are none. I'm sorry.
The American dream is not dead yet.
It is more alive than it's ever been.
Yeah.
What's the playbook? Someone watching this, whether they're 15 years old or 95 years old, How can they go from, you know, $0 to $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month?
Yeah, I would say it's the easiest playbook ever.
Okay, so by the end of this episode, what is one tactical thing that people can take away from you guys?
Yeah, I would say one tactical thing is anybody, no matter what generation you are, what age, what situation of life you are in, you can resell. So whether that's like a big scale like us or whether it's small scale like going to yard sales, flea markets, thrift stores every weekend, and just being a weekend warrior, I think anyone can make an extra $1,000 to $5,000 a month, no matter what stage of life you're in, and only putting in maybe 2 to 5 hours a week. So I would say the biggest tactical takeaway that you can take away from this podcast is that reselling is by far the easiest side hustle to me, at least. And also it's like provides so much value compared to other side hustles where it's just like so much hype around them. Whereas reselling is like, you're like providing value to a a customer, like you're giving them pretty much a product 50% off that works just as well as the new product off Amazon does. So I found a lot of fulfillment in that, and I think you will as well.
Okay, perfect. Beautifully said. Tell me who you guys are and how you know each other.
All right, so my name is Lucas and this is John, obviously. We've been friends since probably middle school. We grew up kind of in the same community. My dad worked alongside his dad in a way, so that's how we got to know each other and And I started my reselling journey when I was 15 years old. And then later in life, towards the end of high school, I got him into it as well. And so that's kind of like what snowballed us down this path.
You guys grew up together in rural North Carolina, Virginia?
Yes.
No.
Yes. So his, his dad works in North Carolina. So that's kind of how we, we knew each other growing up. So I would say probably about 9th grade year, Lucas was like trying to put me on reselling and I was just like, nah, man, what it's like, I just want to like keep doing my thing, working summer jobs and stuff. And then finally. He like kept texting me about like how much money he was making. I was like, hey, this is like kind of cool. So I like decided to try and then we just been doing it ever since.
Yeah. And Lucas, what first got you onto this? What was the first thing you sold and why?
Okay, so I was 15 and I had a lot of Legos from my childhood and they're just sitting collecting dust by that time. My mom was like, all right, so we got to do something with these Legos. They're in my way and we need to figure out what we're going to do with them. So I was like, well, maybe we can sell them on Facebook, you know, because Facebook Marketplace is great. So she's like, okay, we'll go on eBay and try to figure out some prices and give me like a ballpark you want to ask for. So I go on eBay and knowing nothing about eBay and pricing stuff, I'm just grabbing active listings that are new in box. Some aren't even in boxes. So it was really messed up, the skewing. And, um, I came up with a pretty big number, but my mom did list them. She posted them as a lot with a number. And of course, in rural Kealing or rural Virginia, nobody wanted to pay that. Obviously they're not looking for collecting these things or anything. So I asked her, I was like, well, would you mind if I tried to sell them on eBay myself? And so she said, sure, I'll let you do that. Um, so she gave me access to her eBay account because I'm not 18. And I started listing Legos that summer. I ended up selling, I think like $5,000 to $10,000 worth in Legos that summer. After that, because I ran out of Legos, obviously.
Sorry, you just sold what was laying around your house. That's it.
I just sold my Legos. That was it. That was the only thing I sold. You had a lot of Legos because it was not that big of a collection. I started selling my stuff outside of Legos and my family's stuff that they would give me.
You're running out of stuff.
Yeah, I started peddling stuff. And so after that, I started going to thrift stores a little bit because I have a younger sister and she liked to go thrifting and my dad loves antique shops and stuff like that. Anything classic. So I go thrifting a little bit, but I really wasn't making that much money because I didn't know what I was doing. And then fast forward a little bit to, I guess it would have been 9th grade year. I don't know. I got John into it. He kind of put me on to a new niche and it was consumer electronics. And so that's when John started reselling, but that's also when he picked up my reselling game and I started growing a lot more from that. So I don't know if you want to touch on that.
Yeah, I guess I just kind of like heard he was reselling. I was like, like I'd always looked up ways online to make money, did like those dumb like surveys and stuff where you make like $0.10 after like 10 minutes of doing it. Just like other random side hustles, but they never like really panned out. And I was, I think I was like 16 at this point, so I could drive and stuff. And so another friend that resold actually in my town just hit me up one day and was like, hey, do you wanna go to the thrift store with me? I'll show you like how you can resell. Like showed me how to go on the eBay app, go to sold listings and all that. And I bought my first like 5 or 6 items and I texted him. I was like, man, like I got into this finally and just threw 'em up on eBay and one sold the next day. And after that I was hooked. I mean, it's just crazy that like you go and buy an item and then the next day it sold. And so from then on out, I was hooked, kept going to thrift stores, kept going to yard sales. And then eventually I was like watching so much YouTube on, on reselling that I found out like electronics really, really sold good just because there's so much demand for them out in the market. And so then that was my focus. I would go to thrift stores, find electronics, go yard sales, look for electronics. And then I realized at a point that I could only get so many at thrift stores, yard sales, and stuff. Like you only get 1 or 2 at a time, which in high school is so great, you're making good money, like more money than most high schoolers. But I was like, okay, what if I go online and see if I can get them in bigger quantities? And so, yeah, that's kind of how we stumbled upon it.
Okay. So how old were you guys at this time? 16?
Yeah, 16. He started a lot earlier than I did, probably 14, 15, but I was like 16 when I started.
So, yeah.
Okay.
Now you say electronics, that's a huge category. What at this stage, at least, what types of electronics were you buying and selling?
Yeah, so various kinds. So a lot of like little like office equipment things. So like, I don't know if you've heard of like the Owl Conference, like media, like it's like a big corporate. So a lot of, a lot of stuff like that.
Like a teleconference?
Yeah, exactly.
System?
There's another brand called Jabra. Those sell really good. Dell docking stations. A lot of times like thrift stores just think they're cords and they'll throw them in the cord bucket for a dollar and they sell for like $60 on eBay. So I've found so many of those. Also cameras, like digital cameras, DSLRs, film cameras. A lot of people sell those at yard sales for like a dollar because they think they're worthless. Pretty much like anything that you can like think that somebody would use on a daily basis. That's what we were selling. Every now and then I would go to like a thrift store and find like some professional technology. Like one time I found this like weird like stereo, stereo thing for like $50 and sold it for like $700. So we'd have some crazy flips in there like that. But mainly it was like the consumer stuff. Like if you can think of something that people use every day, like it's going to sell good. Like this Rode mic here, it sells every day for $70 on eBay.
So now my good friend Shannon. Is a lifelong reseller and he says, stay away from electronics. Too many variables, too many things to break, too many things to test. Return rate is high. Defect rate is high. Obviously, like the, the, you know, the devil you know is, is the best, right? What would you say to that? Like, were there a lot of unnecessary headaches compared to other categories compared to Lucas, what you experienced in, in Legos, or is it not as bad as people think?
No, he's definitely right. When I was selling Legos, I had maybe like 2 returns out of 100 sales. Now that we're selling electronics, it's definitely a lot more finicky. You can test a device and ship it and it gets to the buyer and it's broken. I mean, that's just the nature of the beast. With that being so, I find a lot of people like your friend who steer completely clear of electronics. So it opens us up a little bit more. One of the biggest categories for resellers is clothing and vintage clothing. We didn't sell clothing specifically. John sold some clothing, obviously, as you find it. But we're not clothing resellers because the return rate's high in clothing as well. People buy something they don't like it. People buy something that doesn't fit them and you have to accept the return. eBay is going to make you accept the return. So no matter what category you're selling on eBay, there's going to be a lot of returns. It's just part of the game. You have to factor in your margins for that. But I'm not really that worried about electronic returns because we've learned so much as far as testing and YouTube is your friend when testing.
So I feel like for at least for us, we factored in that we're going to make so much more sales if we niche into electronics and we found more of them. That was like, okay, if we have 5% more returns, like, yeah, that's going to suck. Like, it's going to be thousands of dollars of return every year. But at the same time, like, we're going to get sales that we would never have reached if we had never gone into that category. And so I don't know, I think it's like a blessing and a curse at the same time. But yeah, it's like with how, how good that market is for us, like, we don't care about the 1 or 2 returns we get a day.
So what were you doing in like monthly revenue in these early days and how did you go from that to like really starting to scale up, operationalize and start like sourcing stuff so you could sell more of it?
Yeah. So I don't like with high school and stuff, I would say, I don't know, probably numbers a little different for both of us, but yeah, revenue probably like $2,000 to $5,000 a month. They really just depend like when you're at this stage, like you're going to find some stuff one month that's like goes for $100 something.
It's lumpy.
Yeah. Like summertime is really good, especially for me because I was out of school, had a ton of time to devote to it during the school year. Not as much. It's not as much time to source. Also not as many yard sales in the summer. Or not in like other seasons, lots of yard sales in the summer. And so I would say around that. And then, well, I guess I'll let you answer and then I'll go into the operation part.
Oh yeah. Starting out when I was selling Legos, it was great. It was gravy because Legos is just such a, people love Legos. I mean, especially on eBay, but after I got out of Legos and I was just selling some thrift store stuff and some personal stuff, it was probably about the same as John. Margins are pretty good though.
Yeah. When you're starting out, the margin, your margins are a lot better than when you operationalize just because. You are finding those, like you're getting stuff for like $2 and you're selling it for a couple hundred versus when you're buying more in bulk.
And you're doing everything yourself.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, like once we started, like I'd say like a year ago, pretty much we started figuring out like electronics did good. And so in order to get from like weekend warriors basically to doing reselling stuff every day, we, we had this camera supplier basically and electronics. So he is basically eBay supplier. Um, so he gets recycling in and then he like kind of sorts it, I guess. And then sells, like he'll sell computers to this guy, um, AirPods to this guy, cameras to this guy. And so we knew about him already. Like he posted on eBay a lot. He sold his cameras on eBay for super cheap. And so like they were getting sniped up immediately, but like, and he was overseas too. So he's posting at 3 in the morning and we're not getting them. We know this guy that's, mm, he's A&M and he's, he's texting me and he's like, yeah, I'm staying up till 3 AM to buy these cameras and buy these like other consumer electronics. And I'm like, man, like I wish I could do that, but I'm also don't wanna sacrifice like sleep for that. 'Cause then I'm not just gonna, I'm not gonna get any sleep throughout the day. So cut to the story. We message this guy, I message him, I'm like, hey, like I would love to buy like your electronics in bulk. Like, can we just work out a deal off eBay that way? Like you save money and then we save money too. And we don't have to like stay up till 3:00 AM and like buy 'em. And he never responds to me. So I'm like, all right, whatever. I guess we're just not gonna make this money. And then he messaged them and for some reason they respond to him. And so they message him back and they're like, yeah, here's my number, text me on here. So Lucas texted him and we started like figuring out some deals. And then yeah, from there it's like he just started sending us stuff. We tested some stuff out. We're like, okay, cool. This guy's gonna be a good electronic supplier. That's kind of how we scaled up. So it was definitely a lot slower than most people want. Most people wanna start reselling and go from getting stuff at thrift stores to buying in bulk the next month. But it was like 2 years for us. So yeah. The, the stage that we explained to everybody, what you need to do is first sell stuff around your house. So Legos, whatever family has, then go to thrift stores, take that money, go to thrift stores and yard sales and flea markets and buy stuff with that. And then take that money. And once you like really know a category, which I would say you need to sell 100+ items in a category to really know it, then you can start looking in bulk, like bulk quantities, whether that's on eBay, Mercari, Poshmark, like all that stuff. It's kind of crazy that we would buy bulk lots off of eBay and then resell the stuff back on eBay. Like most people don't think you can do that because it's the same platform. But we would do that same with Marketplace. You buy in bulk off Marketplace, but you really need to know the category because a lot of people are going to sell you their crap. And so you really need to know, like, if this stuff's good or is this stuff like getting sorted out.
I'm so glad you said that because I've told people so many times, like, you could literally buy on one platform and sell the same stuff on the same platform and make money.
Yeah, 100%.
And people don't realize that, but there's so much asymmetric information out there that it's possible. So let me recap. So you're 16, 17 years old, you're selling Legos, you're selling electronics, sometimes $2,000 a month, sometimes $5,000. It's kind of lumpy because you're still in high school. You're seeing some success. You start noticing on eBay that there are like wholesalers selling stuff on eBay to people that are kind of piecing it up and reselling on eBay. Is that right?
Yeah. So basically what they're called is like untested lots. So on eBay they'll post electronics untested. And so that's a big risk. It could be all broken or it could be all working. So yeah.
Yep. And if they're like a not trusted seller, if they're new, then they, they could be tested to be unworking. They could be selling a crap bill of goods. But you're assuming since this guy, his stuff sells fast, he has good feedback, that it truly is untested and there's probably like a workable defect rate in there that you can still make money on, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay. So this guy comes on your radar and he's clearly selling at a good price because if anything moves that fast, it's probably priced too low. Yeah, so he's on your radar for a good reason. You DM him, doesn't respond. He DMs him, he does. You work out a deal. So if you, if you go off of eBay, then you can save on eBay fees and you don't have to stay up all night. So how does your first order from him go? How much do you spend? What do you get?
It's all in euros, I'm trying to like convert, but might have been like 5K-ish. It's probably around about— yeah, which honestly, like, that was like a lot to us. Like, that was like man, this is like nerve-wracking. Like, I don't know if we're gonna get this money back. Looking back, it's like we should have done that 10 times over. But so yeah, we paid him that. We did it on— we like wire transferred. So first off, that's kind of sketchy because you've never worked with the guy, so you don't know. Like, we, we saw it was a big business, so we figured he wasn't going to scam us. But like, you never know.
And he's also overseas.
Yeah, I mean, that's like—
what country was he in?
There's some European country.
Yeah, like Denmark. Okay, maybe around there.
And was he shipping from there, or was he— yeah, dropshipping.
So it's even slower. So, oh geez, we paid him like 5K USD, he gets it, probably the wires took a while back then, so maybe like 3 or 4 days because we were getting all of our banks set up, and then he ships them, so we probably get them like 3 weeks later, maybe a month later.
That's a, that's a long time when you're, when you only have 5 grand.
Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, we're waiting on that. Gets into Lucas, we look through them and they're like, all of them are really good. Not all of them, but like 80% of them are really good. Probably 60% of them work.
And what were they?
Consumer electronics.
Yeah, so mix of stuff. So like some cameras. Yeah, cameras, office equipment, headphones, all that kind of stuff.
And all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, yeah. And so like, did you have a manifest? No, we did not. We have never gotten a manifest from this guy.
We didn't even get yours.
No, we didn't even have pictures.
So, so what, what was the description? What, what did you think you were buying other than electronics? Or was it literally just a picture?
Actually, he sent us a like a very quick pictures, but you couldn't like zoom in and see model numbers. So like we were using like Google Lens a lot because you can like screenshot and Google Lens it. And so like we had Good idea.
Your ChatGPT history knows more about you than your resume does. And think about it, every business idea you've ever brainstormed, or every career question that you've ever asked, or goal that you've talked through, ChatGPT has been building context about you for months or even years, but it all just sits there in the chat window and you can't really do anything with it. Gamma just changed that. They built a connector that lives inside of ChatGPT, so all you do is connect Gamma to your ChatGPT account, and then anytime you're in a conversation, you just tag @gamma and say something like, build me a landing page on this, and it will turn whatever you've been talking about into a real website or a presentation, career plan, resume, portfolio deck, anything. And it's all structured and actually useful. So I went into ChatGPT and asked it, based on everything you know about me, what am I missing for my next move? Then right there in the same chat, I typed @gamma turn this into a presentation all on one line. 2 minutes later, I had a full business plan that looked like a professional consultant had built it. We're not just talking about making slides anymore. We're talking about turning your AI conversations into something that you can actually build on. So go connect Gamma inside ChatGPT, and the next time you're deep in a conversation, just tag @Gamma with whatever you want it to build and just see what it creates, because you're going to be shocked by what it already knows about you. How many items were there? What did you pay per unit?
Oh, it must have been—
so the first order we got from him was really low because he wanted to build this relationship with us. So he's like, all right, I'm going to give you a good deal. I think it was like $8 or €8 each, maybe like $10.
Also, we didn't have enough money to buy any more. So it's kind of like, yeah.
So yeah, we negotiated it down. He was like, yeah, I'll pay for shipping, I'll get it down. That way we can keep doing more deals in the future. So we're like, cool, this is good. So I think it was like around $10-ish a piece. And I mean, stuff was selling.
So 500 units?
Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's all right. Yeah.
Okay.
Of course the broken stuff sells probably less than we got it. So $5 to $15 each, but again, there wasn't too much broken stuff. And then you have some working stuff. I'd say the range is probably like $50 each to maybe like $200-ish each. And so the margin on that is crazy, but we had this one buyer.
Sweet.
Yeah, we had this one buyer. In— where was he from again?
New York.
New York. Yes, New York City. And he, he bought all of our cameras. So he is like a flea market vendor. Actually, it was through my eBay store. He saw I had a bunch of cameras and he was like, hey, like, do you want to strike up a deal? I was like, sure. And so then from then on out, we would just text him what we have and he would just PayPal or Stripe us and we would just avoid all the eBay fees and just sell them both.
It was interesting too because he's paying eBay prices in bulk. So it's kind of like you would— you'd normally take a little bit of hit on your price, like move them off eBay. But this guy's like, no, I'll pay eBay prices. Like, John would name the price and instantly like, yeah, I'll take it. I was like, dang, bro, we got to like— wow, keep moving this up a little bit. But yeah, it was crazy.
Yeah. What types of cameras were these? Like, give me an example of like— were they DSLRs?
Yeah, it's kind of a mix. So he would buy some DSLRs, he'd buy some of the point-and-shoots, he'd buy some films to mirrorless. He does like— I'm trying to think what he did. He did I think like flea markets, like on the street type sales in New York. So they just pay a premium price for some reason. So he kind of bought a little bit of everything. So I also came for— so like the little like tape camcorder thing.
Camcorders. Geez, what is this, 1998?
What the heck, bro?
Give me an example. So you're paying $10 per unit and I know that's an average, right? You're getting some crappy stuff in there too. But let's say, let's say you've got a point-and-shoot camera for— you're paying $10 for it. What are you selling it to him for and what do you think he's selling at the flea market for?
I would say, so it really depends on the model. So like sometimes there's like this brand called Kodak, those will probably sell for $25, $30 even if they're working. Then there's this brand called Canon, which is like the cream of the crop. So sometimes $100 to $200. So we're selling to him for those prices, pretty much stock price. And I would say he's probably upcharging 30% just to like be on the streets and have them like physically there. And, um, people just kind of go bananas for them, like when they actually get to hold them and like use them versus online where they don't kind of get to hold it, I guess. Also, we were selling a battery without a charger, without SD cards, and I think he was putting all that stuff together and he was like selling them like that kind of. So when you sell them in kits, they do move a little bit faster and they go for a little bit more money.
So it's not uncommon for you to sell something for $100 that you're paying $10 for.
Oh, no, that's pretty common.
Yeah. I would say in the reselling space, that's extremely common. Like, we know tons of people that do that every day of the week.
Jeez Louise. Okay, so you might not know this number, but any idea if you just took that box of 500 units that you paid $5,000 for, what did you make in profit from that?
Yeah, yeah, I have to look back at our numbers, but I would say after like all expenses, so a lot of shipping labels, as you would guess, shipping and buying batteries and you got to package it together with stuff. The first lot was definitely smaller because you have a high upfront cost. Like most of these cameras, we didn't have batteries for, so that's like $5 a pop. And then of course shipping, like you're spending hundreds of dollars shipping, especially in the big boxes, bulk up to New York. But I would say anywhere from like, we at least doubled our money, at least. It was over, I think. $8,000 maybe, $8,000 to $10,000, which is like insane for your first lot because that's like, what, triple your money almost, so, or double your money easily. So yeah. And then, I mean, of course it's like half and half, but like still that was like insane to us.
How many hours of work do you think that deal took? That first deal?
That's what was crazy about it. So since we did have that buyer in New York, I remember we got him in, we did have to wait on some batteries. So if you would count that time, maybe a week, but actual work, I don't know, maybe 10 hours max.
But that's combined, by the way. Yeah. That's not like one person.
Let's just say 15 hours combined. It was crazy because we literally sent him pictures of just a big old lot and he was like, all right, cool. Just package it up. And I mean, it takes 30 minutes to package up a box like that. So.
How old were you guys at this point?
This was like last summer. So 19.
Yeah.
So you're 19, you're selling stuff, onesie, twosie, garage sales, eBay, yada yada. You're like, let's operationalize this. You find this guy, you buy $5,000 worth of electronics, $10 each, 500 units. How many of them did you unload to this guy on eBay? Did you sell them all to him or most of them?
No, he wouldn't buy any broken or defect. Like if it was slightly wrong, it had to be pristine almost.
And that's just the cameras and other stuff too that we were getting in. So I would say probably 60% of the stuff was going to him. But even that, like, it doesn't take too long to list. You just open the eBay app on your phone, take pictures. Like, we've done it so much at this point, like, we can get a listing up in a minute.
So, so then after 15 hours of combined work, you make, you know, roughly $3,000 to $5,000 in net profit, which is like $400, $500 an hour in profit from your first deal.
It was like $5,000.
You think so?
Yeah.
Okay. That's incredible. So then this is like your big inflection point, right? You're like, okay, Now we're in the big leagues. Let's do more of that. Is that what you were thinking? Or let's not do electronics?
Exactly. And I mean, yeah, that was definitely our thought. Like, we got to get more on this. And so I'd say probably what, a week after we got those, then we're like, all right, when's our next one coming in? Yeah. And I think you did more of the communication there. So do you want to explain like what happened from there? Yeah.
So after that— well, actually before that, to rewind a little bit, I remember meeting with John before we bought this lot. Like we've been talking to the guy, we're figuring out numbers, we meet in Hardee's and we're just talking about this and he's like, He's telling us some ridiculous numbers. He's like, I can get you 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 units a month. And I'll just tack on like €3 of what you're paying right now.
You met this European dude at a Hardee's?
No, no, no, just us.
This is us. We were discussing.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Yeah. No, no, no. I'm like, how'd you get him over here?
Yeah.
No, not at all.
Okay. So you sit down at a Hardee's and then you call him. Is that what you're saying?
We're just texting on WhatsApp.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. And he's like, I can get you 5,000, 15,000 pieces of this the same quality stuff per month. Yeah.
And it was crazy because we're figuring out numbers and we're like, this is ridiculous money for what we're doing. Yeah.
This is like, this could be 6 figures a month of profit.
Yeah.
Easy. If you were to get more than that.
So we were getting really hyped. So then we do our first lot, we figure out our numbers and we're getting ready to make our next deal. And there's another buyer involved. So we're having to compete with another buyer. And so he's wanting us to start ordering larger quantities so he can do business with just us. He's like, I need you to order in large quantities so we can cut this other guy out. That's how we like to move our stuff. We don't like to move it low quality quantities. Um, but we're like, well, we can't afford that. We can't pay, we can do another 500 lot, but we can't do more than that. 'Cause we just don't have the cash flow. Everything's tight. And I guess he assumed he was working with a big business or something. He didn't, he had no idea we were hustling out of rooms out of our parents' house. Yeah. So from that, that point on, we started just turning around like 100, 500 camera lots and shipping is still taking forever. We're talking about like a month time just to get the products.
Sorry, what are you doing in the meantime? You're waiting or what?
We're just reselling our personal stuff.
Yeah, we still have like little personal stores. Like we still go to yard sales. Like we just kind of found that fun, just the process. So we'd still like do that. I was also in college, so that was most of my week was taken up doing that. And then he, he was dropshipping during that time, which has faded out. But yeah, we found some time or found stuff to fill our time with.
Okay, so it's taken forever. You're scaling up 100 units here, 500 units there. Then what?
So the buyers kept coming. We, we were getting I think we got 500 boxes or not 500 boxes, but like units of 500. I think we got like 3 or 4 of those. There was another buyer that came in the market from China. So we had China, Japan, and us. And for some reason, like he liked us the best. Like, I guess we just like communicated with them better. Like he just like liked the way we did business. And so he was like, all right, I'm just going to keep going with you guys. But the thing was he had a business partner that they were 50/50 on it. And for some reason, his business partner liked the Chinese people better, the Chinese guys better, just because they paid a little bit more than we did. And so he started selling to him and so we kind of got a little bit bottleneck and, and like his part, business partner was super upset. He is like, this is not fair to y'all. Like, I don't like this at all. So he started his own business just for us almost. Oh, the first lot he got us was like really, really good. Like same quality. I think he just kind of stole 'em from his big business. And so we got those in great. We're like, okay, this is gonna be smooth sailing. Like, let's, let's just keep working with this guy on, on his personal business. And then he, he goes back to the big, big business for another month and he is like, all right, I got 1,000 here. This is while the 500 are coming in. So he's like, I got 1,000 here. I can give them to you for like $15 apiece, which is so good. We would have bought that. But the thing was, we had those coming in and so we didn't really have the cash for it. Looking back, we could have like just pulled in personal money and bought it, but he ended up selling that to the Chinese company. And so that really, that really stunk because it was like 1,000 pieces.
I think it's more than that. I think they ended up about like 1,500.
Yeah. Yeah. 1,500. Something crazy. Yeah. And so that stunk for us because that company pretty much dried out all the stuff that we wanted. And now that company's underwater, which is crazy. They were like, they were $1.2 million monthly and now they're not even a company. And so now like currently we're still working with this guy, his like separate business, but since he like lost that connection to the big business, the quality of lots has gone down pretty drastically. We're thinking that in the next month we're going to get back to what he had coming in because he said he found the same supplier that he had from the big business. But I would say the, probably around like September when he went off on his own, We just kind of trusted them that it was going to be the same quality. And that was when we got our first bad lot, which is kind of like the first, like, low of our business. Like, we bought like, what was it, 500 pieces and they like, literally none of them worked. And so we lost like a good bit of money in that. But we've definitely learned some lessons.
Okay. So eventually you buy a bad batch. Do you think that they intentionally put all the crap units in that batch?
Our contact, the guy we're working with, did not. He just doesn't understand the electronics like we do. But the people upstream from him that he's buying from more than likely did. They were probably just wasting it.
Statistically speaking, it's impossible that you would, you know, let's say your average defect rate is 10%, suddenly it's 90%. Like, that's intentional from someone. If not him, then whoever's up the food chain.
He basically like texted us the other day and was like, I think what I've realized is that I've been buying from resellers versus e-waste, which I'm like, I don't know why you didn't tell us that earlier. Like, we've kind of been picking up on that. And so, yeah, it's exactly what's happening.
Yeah.
Well, why don't you differentiate the difference between a reseller and an e-waste company?
E-waste, they're getting pure recycling in. So if you go to a recycling center and throw stuff in, you might throw in a working computer, you might throw in a broken computer. The e-waste companies are getting that raw, the raw donations in essentially. And then they just, they have certificates where basically they kind of make it safe for resale, but they don't do anything. They don't test it. They just kind of strip out the hardware, all that stuff. And so then they just take it from there and sell it to resellers versus a reseller is literally taking it. Separating the good stuff out, putting on their eBay and then selling you the junk. And they're saying that they're e-waste supplier. That way you think it's raw, but it's clearly—
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So it's like, I mean, e-waste is like, that is the source. That's the top of the food chain. A reseller is their middleman, which you're middleman. I'm a middleman. Nothing wrong with being middleman, right? It's just different.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's—
you can't have two middlemen though. You got to have a middleman to a consumer. You can't have—
you can.
Well, yeah, you can, but.
Right. But it's just not always the best. It's more surface area for error, for scams, for fraud, etc. Right. Obviously surface area, which is—
yeah, yeah, going on that, we're sharing the product. Crazy, because like in the summer we had our supplier selling to the guy that we were buying from, and we were buying from that guy, then we were selling to another reseller. So essentially there's like, what, 4 resellers in the middle there, and everybody's making profit on it. So it's like, it's insane how much like money's in electronics, I guess.
Okay, so how long ago did you get that bad batch?
That would have been September or October when it landed. Obviously we bought it a little bit earlier.
And how much did you lose on that?
Probably 4 or 5-ish. Yeah.
Yeah.
Good bit.
You just kind of like lost everything you spent on that then?
Yeah, we lost everything, but we also lost a lot of time because you get it in and you still have to process, you have to test, you have to take pictures, you have to list. And by that point, we were listing everything on eBay for the most part. We had a few bulk buyers, but it wasn't that many units we were selling to them. So we're spending all this time trying to negate our losses and we're losing money working. So it's pretty discouraging.
Where was your head at at this point? Like, God, what are we doing? Or just like, on to the next one?
Yeah, all right, let's go on to the next one. Really?
Well, yeah, I mean, and like I said to Lucas multiple times, I'm like, man, we should have just like stopped here and just— yeah, like, but I mean, looking back, you can't ever say that because then you don't learn any lessons, I guess. And so yeah, we just head down onto the next one. Like, you gotta— we gotta find different suppliers. Like, you can't just rely on one person or else you don't really have a business, you just have like one stream, I guess, which we knew that.
We knew like when we were in the peak of the summer when we're making all this money, we're like, we have got to diversify. We can't just make all this money from one supplier. I mean, for one thing, he's overseas, so tariffs already can mess you up a lot, or just like licenses and stuff. And Europe can be really strict. And so we're talking about we need to change stuff, but we don't have any time because we're just testing stuff and listing it. And then come September, it bites us in the butt because we didn't, we didn't diversify enough. So we only have one supplier sending us stuff.
So what do you do after September until today? What do you change?
So from that point on, we had never done a single cold call, which is kind of crazy. Like we literally just had this guy, we just like got stuff in, made our $5,000 profit a month or so, maybe it like made a little bit more than that. And then just like kept going, like that's great money as college students. Like we were like happy with that. And so then from that point we're like, okay, this is not acceptable. Like we're going to keep trying to work with this guy. We still are to this day. We haven't got quite to the quality that we were at. We're hoping this summer it's back to that, but. we're still like, have that connection cuz like that's, that's probably one of the best connections anybody has in the world within the US community. And so we have that connection still going, but we just started picking up the phone, calling more domestic places cuz we were tired of paying tariffs every time we got stuff in with the new like Trump Act. We're paying 10% I believe on the, on the number, on the value of the package that's coming in, which is kind of crazy. Um, so we were tired of that, tired, tired of speed cuz a domestic lot we get in in 3, 3 to 4 days. Overseas, it's a month. And so we started calling people around us, junk removal places. That's honestly a sneaky one because they get a bunch of stuff in and they just scrap all the metal they get. So started calling those people around us. Also, I had some prior connections when I was doing my personal eBay store that I knew like sold pretty decent electronics that I would buy in lots off of eBay, like we were talking about earlier. So I found, like, I looked up their company because it was like the title on eBay and I looked it up online and I found their number, found their emails. and I was just reaching out through that, calling them, and I was like, all right, so can we like move some deals off eBay? We have like a liquidation company now. And so I would say we probably got, I don't know, 4 or 5 of those guys that were pretty decent. Yeah. Um, and so we just had people sending us definitely not as big of lots, but a lot more variety, I would say, which kind of like broadened our scope a little bit.
And so all still in electronics?
Yeah, all electronics still.
Yeah.
I would say honestly the US stuff has an even higher working rate.
Oh yeah.
Just because it's not getting shipped as far and I just think that we found like pretty raw suppliers.
Yeah.
And then we just like, like we just found random people on eBay. Like we found this one guy from Michigan that's probably shipped us 500 or so cameras like throughout this time that I just found that he had like 50 or so listed on his eBay all individually untested. I was like, hey, do you have more of these? He's like, yeah, man, actually, like my buddy in the Army just left to go overseas and gave me his whole eBay store. I was like, all right, let's just buy them in bulk. And then literally every month he's like, all right, this is all I got. And then I get a text later. It's like, hey, I found 200 more, I'll give them to you at $5 a pop. And like, all right, cool. So, jeez.
So it's clear that your biggest bottleneck is on the sourcing side, not on the selling side, right?
Oh yeah, because things sell instantly. Yeah, that's how it—
in a perfect world, you've got like bulk buyers, right? Like the guy in the, in the flea market. That doesn't always work. So worst case scenario, if it's working, you already know on eBay, you look at, you check completed, you check sold. These sold for $30. We're going to give eBay 12%. Let's be conservative and say $18 minimum we can sell these for. We paid $5 each. We're golden, right? That's like quote unquote worst case scenario if something's working is to sell it piecemeal on eBay. Best case scenario is to sell it for close to eBay price in wholesale, right?
Yeah, exactly. And that like going back to the electronic category, like it does have higher returns, but it is by far the best category on eBay, like sell-through rate, which essentially means number of sold versus the number of listed. So I'll say the average electronic has 100% sell-through rate, which means for every 90 that have sold or every 90 that are listed, there's also 90 sold. So you're, you're guaranteed to sell item within a month or so. So yeah.
Okay. Now when it comes to like you finding 100 or 200, 300 cameras from someone, like where are they getting these old random camcorders from? Like, is this like a, is this like a high school that does like an e-waste drive? And like, is that where all these start or? Where are these starting from? Like, where's the, the ground zero for these old things? Because if we're talking about ground zero for iPhone 15s, sure, they're 3 years old. Of course you can get thousands of those. But for old, old stuff, how are you getting so many that are so old?
Yeah. So e-waste route, I don't know how they're getting those. Like, I couldn't tell you, but I would say for like, especially a lot of the domestic guys that we buy from, they go into schools and they just, for some reason, schools bought a bunch of these things like back in the day and they just had them sitting around. They use more, uh, that makes sense, e-waste drive, or if it's like they actually use them. So I know a lot of, one of our guys specifically, he just goes in schools and businesses. Um, and then a lot of stuff is businesses that he just has stuff, um, sitting around. So like businesses will hire out these e-waste guys to come clean out stuff, which I kind of, I've thought about getting in that business because you get paid to get profitable inventory, which is kind of cool. And so, but I don't know, I just, I think since we're in smaller cities, it's kind of harder for us to do it. So we'll just buy it off of these guys.
Yeah, yeah. I want you to do something right now. Open your bank statement and add up every single software subscription that you're paying for. Your CRM, your email marketing tool, text message platform, calendar booking app, funnel builder, review management, even a separate form builder or automation tool. I've talked to business owners paying $500 to $3,000 a month across 8 or 10 different tools, and half of them don't even talk to each other. So then they go pay for Zapier on top of that just to make things connect. HighLevel replaces all of it. CRM, email, SMS, funnels, websites, calendars, automations, reputation management, invoicing. One login, one dashboard, one bill. Starting at $97 a month. A guy in my community was paying $347 just for ClickFunnels, $99 for Mailchimp, $25 for Calendly, $79 for a review tool, and $49 for Zapier just to glue it all together. That's $600 a month if you're not counting. He moved everything to HighLevel and cut his software costs by over 80%. but the best part isn't even the savings. It's that everything just works together natively. A lead fills out a form on your funnel that creates a contact in your CRM, which triggers a text and email sequence, books an appointment on your calendar, and then asks for review when the job's done. One workflow, zero duct tape, and then you can white label the whole platform to resell it to other businesses as your own software. Charge them $200 to $500 a month. Check out gohighlevel.com/tkopod. They'll give you a 30-day free trial to see what I mean. Okay, so you make your first cold calls. How many cold calls would you say you had to make? And then from those calls, how many new suppliers did you get?
Are we talking about all time or like in just like—
in that time period from like, from like inflection point of September to today?
Okay. I would say probably close to 1,000 then, honestly. You think so? Yeah. I mean, I think the more cold calls you make, like you have to factor in like, okay, I might get 0.5% to 1% of these just because it is so hard. Like all these people already have buyers. So you're trying to like wiggle your way in there almost. And a lot of them sell on eBay, so you're like, you're already, you're kind of breaking in their systems. You're like, all right, I want to— yeah, these in bulk.
Like, eBay doesn't want you doing that.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So I don't know, it's like we probably made 1,000 cold calls and we've gotten 5 or 6 suppliers maybe. So yeah, it's not, not to mention we sent out like 12,000 emails.
So it was like, okay, it was, it was a lot of groundwork.
We've done a few of those.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Which we use AI to get all the emails, so it wasn't like we were like clicking on every site.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let me be very clear. Like, not all cold calls are created equal. If I'm cold calling up consumers to sell them diet pills, like, that's probably like one of the worst things you could do, right? But you're calling companies that already do something and you're saying, I want to give you money. That's how I look at it. I hate cold calls too, but if that's my cold call, yeah, I'll make $1,000. Hey, can I give you money? You know, other people are giving you money. Can I give you some of that money? I'm oversimplifying. It doesn't mean it's a yes. They would much rather sell to reputable people, higher paying buyers, buyers that they've worked with in the past because they trust them more. Of course, you're 19, 20, you got to break through that. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's just, it's an easier ask of, can I give you money as opposed to, um, can I sell you something?
The hard part now has been like a lot of these people are starting to figure out that vintage electronics sell good on eBay. So like we literally have one supplier the other week and I was like emailing him. I was like, hey, you got anything else for us? Like, we bought 3 or 4 off of them and he's like, sorry, man. Like, we're starting to realize that, like, our eBay buyers are going to pay more than you. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, that's true, but it's going to happen.
Yeah, yeah, it's going to happen. Like, there's like— and I've been selling on eBay for 20 years and like, there's always categories that come and go. And as long as you're tapped into the eBay culture, you'll be tapped into the hot category. And a year from now, you might be selling Converse shoes, you know, like, who knows? Okay, so you make all these cold calls, you go from one supplier, which is very dangerous, to, you know, 5, 6, 7. What then? You're still buying the same type of stuff, mostly from the US, from different suppliers. If your per unit cost was $10 before, what does it look like today?
I'd say it's definitely increased, which is just the nature of the beast. I mean, getting like, it's just that supplier was very rare and like the US, you are going to pay more of a premium just because it is the US. I mean, it's like everything's more expensive here. So I would say it really depends. Like sometimes we're paying upwards of $30. Also, I will say it depends on if we're getting a manifest or like pictures. Like we will pay more if it's a scripted manifest. Like a lot of these US guys, they're, they have tons of employees. They're going to get you a manifest, what it comes with. And so with those, we're paying anywhere from $20 to $40 each. And we'll just like maybe like barely double our money or go a little bit under double just because it's like confirmed. It's going to like versus like unsorted stuff, I'd say we're probably in the 15 to 20 range, 15 to like 40 range now. So definitely not as good, but it's still pretty good.
And what are you selling units for on average nowadays?
It's really all over the place because it's so much, but broad, probably slightly under what we were before, maybe like $100 to $190, somewhere in there, $150.
If it's working, but if it's working, yes, because there are still—
Yeah, yeah.
But like we said before, defect rate in the US is so much better. Like you don't have as many Um, because also I think our quality of suppliers just went up because we're calling these people. A lot of these guys are getting stuff out of working environments. So that's the big thing. And they're pulling them out of working environments. The stuff works and they don't test it and they give it to us. But we, once we buy a lot from them, we're like, okay, these work. So we know we can sell them for a higher profit.
Yeah. So that might be like an elementary school that has a bunch of iPads and they're just upgrading.
Yeah.
They're not broken. There's nothing wrong. They're just getting new ones, right?
100%. Yeah.
Yeah. Upgrading is our favorite. Like, those are our favorite buyers.
I'm sure it feels like, cause I've been in this space, just a note to the, to the listener. I, my first like big business was an iPhone repair business and then I sold millions of iPhone screens and cases and like I specifically have been in the, the electronics resale space, specifically smartphones and tablets, right? To me, that's like, like iPhones, tablets, laptops, MacBooks, whatever. That's like a whole other world in electronics. Is it not?
It is.
It's crazy because like when you get a manifested list, a lot of times they have all their consumer electronics, just like Dell laptops or what have you. And then separately they put all their Apple products and they charge a premium on Apple. So it's like, I would love to do Apple because Apple sell-through rate is amazing. Of course they do have their own problems, but people just want so much just because it's Apple.
The competition is—
Yeah, I don't think we've ever got the Apple in before.
No, I don't think we have either.
Wow. Are you selling VCRs?
Yes, those are extreme. We can't get those in bulk because I mean, they're going to break instantly shipping in bulk. But every time I go to Yard Sale, I'll probably find one, $2, go to 100 thrift stores, $5, go to 100.
So that's another $100 for a VCR.
That's low end, sometimes $200.
And you're paying $2 for them?
Yeah, because people think they're worthless, just like you think.
So it's like, oh my gosh, who's buying VCRs? Is it millennials for their kids? Like people like me buying them so they can watch Nobody makes them anymore.
So yeah, they have to go to eBay for them.
I think I just read an article a year or two ago that like the last VCR manufacturer went out of business.
Yeah, nobody makes it anymore. So there's so much demand. It's crazy.
VC— 100x markup on VCRs. What is— what is this world?
Anything vintage, it's going to sell good.
It doesn't even matter. Like, like you said, it's supply and demand. There's no more supply, so the demand goes up.
Exactly. Same with camcorders. Nobody makes them anymore. Same with digital cameras. Nobody—
like, we're talking like the— you flip out the thing. Yeah, it's like one of those.
I literally sold that today for $300. $200 to a flea market guy.
Hold on a sec, let's do this. I wasn't planning on doing this. I think I got one. Where is that thing? I'm gonna find it.
We'll give you a quote.
Yeah, right. Ever do like these thermal printers here?
Oh yeah, that, that's probably $150, $200.
Shut up, dude, I have like 12 of these in my attic.
Is it a Dymo?
Maybe not quite that much.
What, what brand is it?
It's a Dymo.
Dymo?
Yeah, I got Zebras, I got Dymos.
That's at least $80. Haul it.
I mean, I've had a bunch of shipping— I got so many of these and I've almost thrown them away like 10 times.
Now we'll buy them.
Hold on, I'll sell them to you for sure.
Yeah, this is the fun— like, this is what we do with people all the time. We'll go to their yard sale, they won't have stuff out, we'll be like, hey, do you have anything in your junk drawer, like any camera stuff? And they'll go out and pull out like a Wii and be like, dollar for this.
I got this, I got this like Nest thermostat thing. Oh no, this is like a mesh, a Google Wi-Fi mesh router.
Yeah, I get those all the time.
Look, I got a freaking GoPro in here. I got another GoPro on my nightstand I've never used.
A couple hundred probably.
I got a DSLR lens right here. I wish I could find that camera. It's whatever. Anyway, I'm floored. I'm floored that this stuff sells for so much.
Holy crap.
I've been saying it. So fun fact, I, um, I'm like a domain name junkie. And I buy way too many. And I had— back when I was in college, I started this business called Door to More, and it was door-to-door electronics selling, or door-to-door electronics buying. You just go through these wealthy suburbs and you're like, hey, I'm here to buy all your crap, right? And I'll be back tomorrow. I'll be back next week or something. Here's my card. I'll be back and I'll Venmo you on the spot. And it was called— instead of door-to-door, it was Door to More, which is kind of corny. but I ended up selling that domain to like some kids resale shop for $750. I think anyone in the world could go do that and should like go door to door because it's not a hard pitch. It's not like, hey, do you want to buy pest control? It's like, hey, I want to give you money right now. You probably have 4 iPhones in a drawer. Let me pay you for them.
You can honestly get it for free too. Like I have a couple of buyers on the personal side for my business, like personal reselling. And I like, I literally have a guy that shipped me stuff yesterday. He's in California. He puts bins out in neighborhoods. He's like, hey, like if you, have all electronics, just put them in here and he'll send me pictures every month. Be like, hey, I got this right now.
So I did that. Shout out to Bob Jones High School, Madison, Alabama. I was a volunteer wrestling coach there back in 20— 2012, and we had a fundraiser. They were selling cheesecakes door to door and I'm like, we're not doing that, guys. I brought in a big box. We sent an email to all the wrestling parents and it was just an e-waste drive. And I did this like pro bono to help the team and They basically just donated all these Nintendo Switches and not Switches, it was too old, but, you know, old electronics. And I'd sell them on eBay and I gave all the money to the wrestling team. But like anyone in the world could do that for profit and should. Yeah, right.
That's fire. Yeah.
Okay, so you have 5 or 6 suppliers, you're doing the same thing. What does your business look like today with regards to like monthly revenue and profit with the suppliers that we have now?
Probably $10,000-$20,000-ish, maybe, maybe a little bit lower than that. But at the peaks, like we were doing pretty decent amount. And so like we actually crossed like 6 figures last year, which was pretty cool, especially as like 2 college students.
Yeah.
And so profits in the summertime, like we were, I mean, we were talking about it earlier, probably 50% profits no matter what. Um, but it's definitely like, like, like we talked about, you have to buy US suppliers, so it's just gonna cost more. And so just because of that, it's probably closer to 30, 30-ish percent maybe. But I mean, that's still pretty good for like running it.
That's amazing.
Like I'm still in college. He's, he's still like, you guys are still both part-time on this? Pretty much. Yeah. So we both run our personal stores. It's definitely like way lower than, than the big business, but like, I mean, still like good, like a little gas money and stuff like that.
Yeah.
It's a little bit better, a little bit better gas money, but, and then yeah, I'm also a student and he, he's like full-time entrepreneur, I guess.
Yeah. Where do you want to take this? Do you want to keep scaling this? And if so, what will that look like?
Yeah. So if this guy can lock in a little bit and he can deliver on the stuff he's been telling us for the past, month or so, we would like to scale this full-time, like actually full-time. Like we're putting 40+ hours of work in a piece into it and collecting a good chunk of change. We just like to keep growing and pull money out when we can.
So what is the, what's the playbook? Someone watching this, whether they're 15 years old or 95 years old, how can they go from, you know, $0 to $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month?
Yeah, I would say it's the easiest playbook ever. First off, like, I mean, we've talked about the whole podcast. Go to your house, find some things that are like— I'm guaranteeing you, you have $500 to $5,000 worth of stuff just laying around your house.
Yeah.
I mean, you did it literally on call. Yeah, yeah. You literally showed them on call. So I mean, go first in your junk drawers, go look around your house, find stuff to sell, take that money, go to a thrift store, go to yard sales. You probably won't even spend all that just because you're going to get stuff so cheap. Go get VCR players, go get— just watch YouTube. Honestly, you're going to see stuff that sells. Watch our Instagram. You're going to see stuff that sells every day. And then you're going to just like keep growing it from there, building connections. I think a lot of times in the reselling space, people don't think it's like a person, like a people-to-people business, but it actually is. Like if you buy something off somebody, be like, hey, here's my number. Like I'll buy these every time you get them in. Same thing on eBay. If you buy something off them, be like, hey, every time you get these in, let me know. Like we've both done that. And now we have people messaging us probably close to every day being like, hey, I have this, I have this, I have this. And so then once you get there, like maybe you start to find some even bigger suppliers. Like we've finally found and then you can scale to full-time. But I think like most people don't want to go full-time. That's what I've seen. They just, they want to turn on the car and they want to work 5 to make like extra $5,000 a month to go to their mortgage and call it a day. So I think, I think you could easily do yard sales and thrift stores, go twice a week and make that $5,000 a month.
Well, I would think that people in bigger markets, like you guys live in the middle of nowhere, people in bigger markets would have even more success simply Buying on Facebook Marketplace and selling on eBay because the percentage of people going to list stuff on Facebook Marketplace that are actually cross-checking prices on eBay, it's probably like 2%.
Yeah.
No one's thinking to do that. Even if they're eBay users, they're just not thinking to cross, to cross-reference prices. So I think people could just like, once they exhaust everything in their house, they could just start buying stuff on Facebook Marketplace and selling on eBay. And you don't need to, you don't need to spend any money until you already know if there's demand.
So I go to school down in Raleigh. I go to NC State and basically, so when I'm here, like home for the summer and stuff, I just do like thrift stores and yard sales and stuff. But when I'm down there, like it's a million plus people. And so that's been like the biggest game changer for my personal business this past 6 months is I don't know why I didn't tap into it earlier, but just scrolling Facebook Marketplace every day and finding like people and then just buying off of that. So yeah.
So I live in Dallas-Fort Worth. There's 9 million people within an hour of me. I just typed in VCR. What do you see? Are you drooling right now? Yeah, 15 bucks, 1 buck, 10, 20, 20, 20, 20, 10, 15, 20.
That's insane.
Anything good here?
Yes, this Magnavox right there. You just want to ever go up right there, right here, go down now. Here, right? Yes, right there. That thing right there goes for $150 maybe.
Oh, and it's $20, 20 minutes from me.
I saw the exact model.
Now you do have to test them, obviously.
Yeah, sure.
Also, those—
I mean, look how many there are.
I know, it's insane.
The big TVs with the VCRs on them sell for like $300.
What, CTVs or whatever they're called?
All right, so every time I scroll 7 times 4, there's 28 listings.
CRT, that's what it is.
There we go. So we got $56, we got $112. I mean, look, we've got Hundreds. I'm not even to the end. This is just within 40 miles of me. Hundreds of just VCRs.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
And then what else should I type in? Camcorder.
Type in camcorder.
How are these prices? Let's do $40 max price.
This Sony is pretty good. The $40 one, you could probably talk them down to $20. Yeah.
There's a lot more opportunity here.
I see more in the VCR, but yeah, there's still opportunity. Oh, right there.
That's what—
that digital camera is $15 and it's like a $150 digital camera.
There's a Canon.
What else should I search for?
Search up—
what other hot categories? Digital camera. Should it— what max price should I do?
$50. Yeah, right there, that $15 one, that's like $150. Yep.
$150 for that thing?
Yeah, it has a flip screen on it.
Holy crap.
Yeah.
So someone could turn— like, if they lived in a bigger market, they could turn just buying on Facebook Marketplace and selling on eBay into a legitimate business.
Oh yeah.
Oh, easy. And here's another thing I do. Your audience will like— I put up a listing on Marketplace saying I will buy your cameras, I will buy your old electronics. I get messages, like 20 messages a day. A lot of it is—
you're in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah.
So make them come to you.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Any other search terms I should— like any hot categories?
Yeah, I do AirPods some, but I think a lot of people know what they have with that.
Yeah.
Because what I do with the AirPods, instead of selling as a set, I'll break them up individually because people always like the left one or the right one and they'll pay a premium for the Hey, look up this— look up Texas Instrument calculator. That'll, that'll be a good one.
TI, or should I spell it out?
Do TI-84 calculator and see what comes up. That's like the best one.
TI headquarters, 20 minutes from me. Fun fact.
All right. People might know what they have with this too. Sometimes I'll get like the top one there they have for $50 for like $15 and sell it for like $70. But again, like you can lowball these people, especially if they do $20.
I'll do max price $20 here. Free.
There you go. Oh, wow. Free. No way. That thing sells for $75. So like, there's so much opportunity out here.
Uh, come to Dallas.
Yeah, those two. Oh wow, that's a steal. Oh, Justin Black Club. There's a digital camera.
Any other, any other tips, tricks, categories that people should go after that could help them avoid a world of hurt?
You can dabble in clothes some if you take the time. It's just so much in clothes to figure out. That's why we— yeah, it's just like that electronics.
I will say medical devices, they sell really well. You have to be careful.
It's kind of a gray—
be very careful like what you like, like what you can and can't sell, but they sell very fast. Like Supplements sell really fast. That stuff, you just kind of have to be more careful.
Vintage toys?
Yes.
Like Lego or Lego's not even vintage. You can sell Lego.
I think the main takeaway from eBay is anything vintage or not anything, because a lot of vintage stuff is worthless. But like, honestly, anything from like the 2000 or 1990 to like 2010 range sells really good. Yeah.
Okay. Game Boys?
Yes.
Oh yeah.
I've sold, I sold 3 of those last week. $100 apiece.
What about actual VHS movies? Is there value there?
Not as much.
It's boom or bust. You're either going to sell one for $500 or a dollar.
Yeah.
Like, do you remember the whole hyper black diamond Disney stuff? Everybody, if you have a black diamond, it's gonna be worth all this money. It's like, most of them aren't worth that much. I'm sure there are some that are a lot, but like $3 for Dumbo black diamond or whatever, it's like, come on.
Dude, I'm over here thinking like, how can I set up Claude Cowork or OpenClaw or some AI agent to go have hundreds of conversations for me every day, negotiate, haggle, can you deliver it to me, $10, here's my Venmo. Like, you could have an AI agent run 90% of this business for you, and then you just pack up the orders and ship them. Like, it would be a lot of work to get to that point, but it would be worth it.
Yeah. Hey, set one up and sell it, everybody.
That's a good idea. What did I forget to ask you that I should have asked you?
You forgot about, like, unexpected stories. We kind of talked about this, or like unexpected profit streams. One time we— so one of our suppliers had like 100— that's why I said Texas Instruments calculator. He had like hundreds of Texas Instruments calculators. And essentially we did no work in this. We hit buy on eBay. We made an offer, hit buy, or we did it separately, but we still have the same supplier. We hit buy and we, I found a guy in Tennessee that like supplies them to schools. And so he buys them in bulk. Like we don't even have to test them. We literally sent them, we bought them, sent them untested to this guy. This guy tests them for us and he's like, all right, I'm going to pay you $20 each for the working, like $10 for broken. We pay like $5 each. And so we literally did no work. We hit buy and then we're sending Marzell and he sells us money. So it's like there's so many opportunities like this out there.
You didn't even take delivery of them.
No, we— no, we literally did nothing.
I think the biggest takeaway just on this, even outside of reselling, there's so much money in the world. No matter where you are, who you are, you don't have an excuse. If you want to get out there and you want to make money outside, that is 100% outside of a boss, you just got to put in the work and you can do it. I mean, a year ago, 100%, we were just reselling. We could have taken that full-time, but we didn't. We took a slightly different approach.
I hopped in my truck and started DoorDashing for the— I don't even order. She's a consumer.
You said a screenshot.
I was making $30 an hour, $30 an hour, and I was having a blast. Like, there are no excuses. There's just— there are none. I'm sorry.
The American dream is not dead yet.
It's still alive and well. It's not even— it is more alive than it's ever been. Yeah, I'm going to say that. Guys, you are the best. Where can we find you if we want to learn more?
Yeah. So this past year we just started something called Reseller University. We just wanted to try a new thing by posting a reel every day. And we've been doing it for 6 months, so we're just going to see how long we can do it for. But yeah, just every social media, just look at Resell University. There's a bunch of them, but there's only one with like actual faces. So that's us. And we do a lot of free stuff.
We'll link to you. And just know that's not a course, that's not a school community. It is their Instagram handle. So don't go pay a school community.
Yeah, please do not.
Resell University. Go to their social pages, which we link to in the description.
Yeah, we will be coming out with a course at some point, probably. But that'll be—
if they do, buy it from them.
Yes. On our Instagram.
They deserve it. That's right. Amen. Lucas, John, you guys are the best. Thanks for coming on the show.
I'd like to stay in touch.
Listen, I need more people like this to interview on my podcast. So if you know of someone with a side hustle or a business that's unique and cool and super profitable, email Molly, M-O-L-L-Y, at co-founders.com. That's one word, co-founders.com. Molly at co-founders.com. Tell her your story and we'll give you $100 if we end up interviewing them. If you like this content, please share with a friend, hit a like or comment below, and we'll see you next time on The Koerner Office.
