Speaker 1We're going to close this month with at least $15,000, if not more. Month four. Yeah, month four. That's amazing. These were like $10,000 books, if not more.
Speaker 2Worst case, you lose $70. Who cares? That's what I thought.
Speaker 1I was like, cheap, good, buy. Also, probably not going to win. Yeah. This is me doing it part-time. I was like, oh my God, I have so many of these. These are going to just take up space. What have I done? Chris, I probably in one week made $1,000 out of them. Like the first week I started posting them, just those specifically. So I actually ended up deciding to quit my job probably like two or three weeks later. Wow. After that, the growth was very exponential. I'm matching my income after one or two weeks of like doing this book business. I was getting a bunch of these computers, but I was also getting a bunch of was monitors at like $1 each. Wow. And my only overhead cost right now is that I rent out a storage unit that paid about $140 a month. I don't have a warehouse. Like I didn't have any capital to start with. No employees, no box truck. Like I don't even have a car now. I didn't have anything. I literally started from just my parents' garage, which there was just a tiny corner that they had allocated to me. So it's like literally anyone can do this.
Speaker 2Meet JV. He's 26 years old and was a restaurant night manager who was supposed to start law school this month. Last December, he saw my episode where I interviewed a woman named Mindy who bought a pallet of books for a dollar and sold it for $5,000. He was so inspired by that that he bid $70 on seven pallets worth of books as a joke, and he won. Ten months later, he does $15,000 a month. From his parents' garage. In a minute, we're going to talk about the Facebook post that sold out his entire storage unit. Halfway through, we'll talk about the garage sale trick that hit number one in his city. And at the end, we'll talk about a pallet of groceries that doubled his money in a week. Please enjoy. So you've been reselling for under a year, making thousands of dollars a month. By the end of this episode, will people have enough information so they can make $5,000 to $10,000 a month profit reselling?
Speaker 1Absolutely. I mean, if you have to hustle the ingenuity. And you're willing to just get out there, like obviously, you know, putting your garage sales uncomfortable, but like every garage sale, we were making like about anywhere from $700 to $1,000 just on Saturday. Now, imagine I had put also a Sunday day, we probably are doubling that. So in four weeks, if it's on the low end at $1,400 on four weeks, you've already made $5,600, right? The reason I didn't do Sundays was just because Sundays are reserved for church, right? Sure. But yeah, so if like you're doing that, even if you're just sticking to the garage sales, you're going to make $1,000. Yeah, absolutely. Now, a couple with that, that you can do Facebook marketplace, a couple of that, that you have eBay sales. Like, honestly, the limit to yourself is you are the limit on yourself and how much research you do. Because like Shane Jean says, and this is honestly so true, buy with math, sell with
Speaker 2emotion. Beautiful. December 2025, you see my video with Mindy who bought like one or two pallets of books for like a dollar, right? In Washington. Yeah. What spoke to you about that idea or that video?
Speaker 1Yeah, so back for like backtracking a little bit at that time. So at that time, I was just kind of like biding my time because I had a nine to five job, you know, I was. What was your job? Yeah, so I had just finished, I graduated college. And then right after that, I decided to move back to my hometown. But the plan is still to go to law school in October. I got a decent score. Applications are good. Like all I need to do is literally like send them in and then just like wait my time to
Speaker 2law school. So the plan was to go to law school like this October.
Speaker 1Yeah, this October, like right now, like right now. I would be finishing on my first quarter or my first semester.
Speaker 2Okay, so you started this restaurant job just in January of this year?
Speaker 1No,
Speaker 2I started it and it
Speaker 1opened up in August of last year.
Speaker 2Okay, August of last year. When you found this video, you were four or five months into that job then? Yeah. And were you liking the job?
Speaker 1Yeah, I was actually doing really good. But then I come across the Mindy video, right? Yeah. And then my thing has always been like, I've always had that kind of like entrepreneurial spirit, even for it. For example, like this going way, way, way, way, way back. But I'm actually originally from Mexico. Okay. What city? Mexico City. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big city. Big city. One of the biggest in the world. Definitely, definitely. So I'm from El DFA. And then when I first started, like there's this big market in Mexico City called El Centro. Okay. And then I think this is what actually started my entrepreneurial journey. But, you know, when me, when I was very, very young, we didn't really have a lot of resources. So my mom would actually. Because she actually had to drop out to, you know, take care of me. And we would go and we'd sell soap in El Centro. And then like.
Speaker 2How old were you?
Speaker 1I was probably like two at the time.
Speaker 2Wow. Yeah. And you remember this?
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I've, uh, I've been blessed to have a pretty good memory. Yeah. So we would sell soap and I remember she'd like give me the money. I had like my little fanny pack because I would love to be in charge of the money and I would count it afterwards after we were done. And there's a really cute story because like one time and please don't let me know if I get out of fun. No, this is amazing. You're great. But this, and honestly, this is probably like what, like, this is like a core memory for me. Right. Because like innocence of a child, my mom, we had just finished like getting sales for us. Like literally have enough ingredients to make more soap for the next day. Yeah. And also just have for groceries. Right. So this is homemade soap. Yeah. This is homemade soap. Okay. And then, um, my mom's like, Hey, how much did we do for the, for the end of the day? And I was like, Oh, I, I gave it all to the kids. We didn't have anything to eat. And she's like, what? I was like, yeah. Like he came up to me to sell me like a torta, you know? And I was like, they didn't have anything to eat. So I just donated the money. Uh, and you know, like now that I'm older, I like think about that time and I'm like, I don't know how my mom had the heart to like, uh, do what she did, but she was just like, Oh, that's amazing, honey. Hugged me. And then like, you know, congratulating me on my kindness, I guess. But I'm sure inside, inside, inside deeper heart. She was like grocery money. Yeah. Like she was like, what are we going to do now? You know? Um, luckily like, cause my dad was a lawyer at the time, uh, in Mexico. So his career started taking off. We started doing a lot better. Yeah. And then eventually the opportunity for him, cause he was, uh, a, he was a lawyer and then part-time, he was also a teacher at like a really good university in Mexico. And the opportunity opened up for him to actually come be a bilingual teacher here in the United States. So he did the thing, they accepted him and that's how we came to the United States through a work visa. And then now, um, fortunately enough, like we're citizens. Yeah. Good for you. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. No feeling blessed, especially right now with my business. Cause like I, uh. I, uh, love Mexico, but you know, the opportunities have been opened up to me, um, specifically with my business, like, and the exponential growth that we've, I've experienced, like if I don't think it'd be possible, uh, anywhere else really, like God bless America.
Speaker 2Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions and you clearly have that. And for good reason, I can't imagine a mother, like a son saying, I literally gave away our money for tomorrow's inventory and our groceries and her just like biting her tongue and being proud of you.
Speaker 1Yeah. She like hugged me and hugged me. And like, since then I can't, I think I've kind of like modeled my business around that too. Yeah. Um, of just like, Hey, like, cause I'm a religious person too, you know, like I believe in God and I've always said, like, I think God's going to like provide for us. Like, you know, like it says in the Bible not to get political or religious or anything, but it's like, you know, he will be your bread and your, and your, and your water, you know? Yeah. And I'm like, that's, he's always looked out for me, even when I was like going to Baylor cause like, obviously it's first generation student, you know? I didn't have the money to like go to such a prestigious university. I mean, you know, tuition alone for one year, 60,000. Yeah. Uh, and my dad probably, you know, makes like, probably that's like his whole year's checks worth. Uh, but the open, you know, the avenues opened up for us, for me to get the scholarships that I needed and to get the loans that I needed. So I'm truly, truly blessed. But, uh. Great story.
Speaker 2I have one memory of Mexico as a kid and I was probably like five and we were in San Diego and we went across the borders of Tijuana and these kids ran up to sell chiclets. Yeah. And so she went to go pull out some money and like a 20 fell out and these kids ran out of the bushes and grabbed it and they ran away and it was like my core memory. And as a kid I was like, you know, offended and now it's like, man, I wish I could help
Speaker 1them. Literally. No, I understand that. Yeah. A lot of necessity there. So I think that's where some of the ingenuity comes in. Yeah. So I think born from there, it's like, I always had this like entrepreneur, like entrepreneurial spirit. Yeah. Yeah. And then a lot of my jobs, cause I started working as. Uh, early at 16 years old, my real quick, sorry.
Speaker 2Go ahead. What age were you when you moved to America? I was six, six years old. Yeah. So you started working at 16.
Speaker 1Yeah. I started working at 16. One of my favorite jobs, honestly, I was a host at a like fancy pizza place. Okay. Loved it so much. Got free pizza all the time.
Speaker 2What pizza place?
Speaker 1From all these.
Speaker 2Oh yeah. Yeah. There's one here in town.
Speaker 1Yeah. Loved it. And the one in the woodlands, I think it's like the biggest one in the country. Okay. It's a two story one. Oh wow. Yeah. So it was like super nice.
Speaker 2Um, I was a bus boy. Yeah. At a Mexican restaurant at 16. No way. And I loved it.
Speaker 1It's a great job. It's a great first job. It's great. You work hard. It teaches you so much.
Speaker 2I got some of the tips. Yeah. It was great.
Speaker 1Yeah. Like I literally, I think you learned so much from like restaurant experience. Like I always say, like, even if anybody like later on down the line, like if I had a company and I want some leadership experience, I think like restaurant business is great to build some of those skills. Right. Yep. Um, but yeah, all my jobs have always kind of been sort of related to sales, but yeah. So very entrepreneurial for there. Always had that itch. Run into the Mindy podcast. I'm working my nine to five. Uh, things are going good. I'm getting promoted whatsoever. And then I'm, I still have the plans to go to law school, but I guess that like, that was just like a huge on lock for me. Cause you know, Mindy, her podcast just seems so authentic and like also so like reasonable. Cause I was like approachable. Yeah. Like, uh, she was a stay at home mom, I believe. And she literally, she didn't even intend to bid on this palette of books, but she saw that it was like there. And she was like, Oh, it wouldn't be cool. If I just put a $1 bid ends up winning it and it makes a thousands of dollars, right?
Speaker 2Yeah. Like five grand from one, a $1.
Speaker 1investment or something yeah crazy returns yeah crazy crazy returns risk super low uh so i see that i'm like oh that's pretty cool so i started searching around and then my school district that i grew up in they were actually auctioning off seven pallets of books uh keep in mind at this point chris never in my life had i even seen a pallet of books never less a pallet of anything what is a pallet literally like i was like oh a pallet like i was like i think i've seen some wooden boards on home depot yeah yeah yeah i can totally fit those in my car right yeah like my idea was like i had a honda civic uh like sit on like the
Speaker 2smallest car you can get
Speaker 1literally literally and i was like seven of those yeah yeah they'll fit i'll make it work like it'll be good like it's books we can just throw them in there you know this was the school district that you
Speaker 2grew up in yeah
Speaker 1it was school district i grew up in so you
Speaker 2went to the same website that she went to you saw it i think it might
Speaker 1have been a different website okay so there's like a certain so there's a few that you can go to i think hers was through got that deals i'm not sure uh the one that i did was public surplus okay and they even have an app on the app store if anybody wants to download it very easy to sign up i don't even think you need a resale certificate for that oh wow okay yeah and that one um there's it's not even it's not just in texas i know they also have some listings in other states okay uh but the one in texas is pretty active yeah so then i went there i found that because i was like very similar like i saw the video and i was like oh how do i get into like i think i literally just google search and i was like uh how to buy school books for my school district and then through google and chat gpt i found this app and i was like oh hey a lot of them sell them through here right so i download the app look at it i'm like seven it was seven pallets of books for 70 dollars keep in mind my own before that i'm thinking i'm like okay everybody must have seen mindy's podcast like these books are now gonna the value of them are gonna go way up
Speaker 2like well in your defense like there were a lot of comments on that video they were like this doesn't work anymore this doesn't work anymore and i've learned over the years that when people like want to do something but their families hold them back they're secretly without even realizing it looking for reasons why they shouldn't try or why it didn't work so they'll go to one website and see oh these pal this pal is a hundred dollar doesn't work anymore i'm out they don't look at a second website or a third or they don't realize that a hundred dollars is still a great deal they're just like oversaturated i'm out yeah whereas you were like you were thinking it's oversaturated but yeah i
Speaker 1was thinking like oh the this palette of books is gonna probably go for a thousand dollars and mindy made one palette into like five thousand so like i'm thinking to myself i'm like yeah i'm not gonna win this but wouldn't it be funny if i just like put a bid like that'd be so cool and honestly very very dangerous mentality to have if you are reselling wouldn't recommend it but sometimes it works out right uh but yeah so i'm like would it be really funny if i put a bid i put a bid next thing you know 24 hours later i am now the proud owner of seven pallets of books which like for how much money for seventy dollars i won it at seventy dollars you were the only bid i was the only bid i was the only bid so i won i each i got each one at ten dollars right uh i was the only bid that put the seventy dollars and i just want
Speaker 2people to understand like books are so cheap yet so heavy that it really necessitates someone local bidding on them because it doesn't make sense to spend four hundred dollars a palette it actually still might but on the surface it especially if you don't really know what all the books are worth yet it doesn't make sense for most people to spend all that money on a palette and ship it to them especially when wherever they are in the country they probably have cheap palettes near them that they don't have to ship so with an industry like this that people might think is oversaturated it all depends on how many people in your little local area happen to see my video and happen to push through all the other you know pieces of friction that you were willing to push through
Speaker 1right oh 100 and here's where like i'll i'll give a little pushback to those comments that you mentioned earlier because since then like i've seen other bids for the same district other districts nearby of like palettes of books i actually don't think it's saturated so the reason i think people are like it's saturated and like this is where i'm like when you come into book selling you're probably going to find uh three main ways that you're going to be selling books right one is going to be ebay a second one's going to be facebook and like anything local and then the third one where people might think it's saturated is going to be when we're coming into like scanning like have you ever heard anything about like people scanning books yes yes so it's like that's where like people are looking at like the amazon rankings list uh or like um sellyourbooks.com i think is the website but basically what they're doing is they're going to like thrift shops like uh local or like places where they donate books and they're like using an app that you can download online i think the app for the scanning i think it's scoutly or bookly one of those things uh if not it's very easy to find but they're scanning them comparing it to the amazon list and then you can either like if you have an amazon seller account if there's a if it's selling very fast and a good amount then you're like okay this is good fine let's sell this or like there'll be places where if you're like you don't want to list it yourself like sellyourbooks.com they'll give you a fraction of the money but very easy way to make money
Speaker 2so with scanning books the the idea there is just to scan a bunch of books and then amazon or whoever will say actually this book is pretty golden like a lot of people want this it's worth this is that
Speaker 1right yeah basically it's like that one there's no perceived value it's already like authenticated okay through amazon or whatever it is you don't have to wonder if it's worth it it's worth it there's demand or what it's worth yeah there's already a man and it will tell you exactly okay now where i think there's an unsaturated portion of like selling books here's where we come into the market of like you have to authenticate the perceived value of it so just to getting in like to simplify because i'm getting into some complicated words there's a lot of teachers out there that they're looking for specific coursework that amazon is not going to tell you that it's worth a lot but they're willing to pay that money so it's like on ebay you are putting a listing and then you might be the only listing with that book out of like five and that's when the sales are going to come through which is like there is a value here it's just not like an apparent perceived value
Speaker 2sure because on the surface there's no demand but what you need to focus on is the fact that there's really no supply and some demand that makes sense like no to low supply plus some demand is better than you know a lot of demand and way too much supply
Speaker 1yeah you're getting like you're hitting the exact spot so it's like on amazon you have a list of books that are uh because they're on the amazon rankings you know the you already know there is a sell through there um versus with ebay it's like it's just an app like you and me you and i could be a teacher and you're looking for a specific coursework that's where you're going to find it where amazon you know you're finding stuff more that's like uh like a harry potter series yeah obviously that's going to be in high sell proof or college textbooks but for some of the stuff that's like more like the stuff that i got in those seven palettes yeah that's things that are people are specifically searching up because they're looking
Speaker 2for it yeah like biology 301 yeah textbooks or you know i don't know books about mitochondria and stuff that like seven people in the world want but you have the only one yeah they'll pay whatever honestly way
Speaker 1more than seven people like i'll give you we'll get into this but for example um a large part of the books that i got were these music connection and art connection books which have now since been super outdated in the curriculum like i think these were made in maybe early 2000s maybe earlier and you know the average person would say and this is where it's like it's like it's like it's like maybe some of those naysayers would come in they'd say like oh everything's digitalized now like why would someone buy a physical copy of a book when we could just have it on digital right i thought the same thing like i was honestly when i saw those i remember we were like loading them up into the storage unit i was like oh my god i have so many of these these are going to just take up space what have i done chris i probably in one week made a thousand dollars out of them like the first week i started posting
Speaker 2them from these 70 dollars worth of books
Speaker 1yeah from these 70 dollars book worth the books and just those specifically because like people these teachers a lot of them they don't like the uh you know the the online stuff or maybe they want a physical reference for their students to actually be able to check yeah so next thing you know i've had like so many teachers reaching out to me and being like hey do you have more of these i really want them um and that's where i'm telling you like those music connection books if you put put them into the amazon ranking list yeah they're not going to be like super high because who's buying on those like people like like college students stuff like that but then you hit this niche where it's like on ebay uh or like facebook really in specific it's they're doing really good so yeah so 24 hours past getting a little back to the story to get it chronologically um i'm now this proud owner of seven seven pallet of books now i actually decided to look at the pictures a little bit deeper and i quickly realized they're not gonna fit in my honda civic yeah yeah like these were like 10 000 books if not more and did you even
Speaker 2look at the manifest before buying or were you just like cheap good buy yeah yeah yeah well it was more like worst case you lose seventy dollars okay that's what i thought i was
Speaker 1like cheap good buy also probably not gonna win yeah that was like the mentality and i was like all right like i have seventy dollars in my bank account might as well yeah
Speaker 2um and the um the alternative to the seller is they're gonna have to pay someone to come throw these away so to them 70 bucks is great because we don't have to worry about it whatever right
Speaker 1yeah yeah a lot of these places like i think i haven't gotten into like the legality of stuff but i think it's like the the legal side of it is like they're gonna have to like make it public to the uh you know to the public uh and then like if it doesn't sell then they're uh allowed or permitted to then just contract like a junk haul removal business and they take out they take the books and whatever uh which did happen when so like because i made relationships as i was purchasing these like these things i made relationships with some of the people that were in charge of like the school district stuff and like to them i was like a gold mine you know like they were like they were they wouldn't tell me they're like hey when i get stuff like i will reach out directly to you and i can tell you when it's posted obviously you're still gonna have to bid on it but i'll make you aware of it um if you want it so that way way you know it doesn't get thrown away or whatnot but yeah so now i'm having to figure out like how am i gonna transport these right because like my honda civics obviously i'm gonna fit it so i i consult my best friend chad gpt i'm like chad gpt how are we gonna do this and i'm like can i fit it into uh my mom's kia like cross track it was a resounding no yeah you know i'm like u-haul yeah so basically i had to get a 20 foot box truck that i rented from u-haul never in my life had i driven up i like a truck much less a box
Speaker 2truck side note isn't it wild that any human with a driver's license can walk into u-haul and they're like here's half a semi go ahead have
Speaker 1fun oh my god don't wreck it so crazy and you're not even just limited to u-haul like since then i have rented so many other box trucks for like different needs and like my main place now is like home depot yeah like because they'll rent you with unlimited miles whereas u-haul you know you pay the account
Speaker 2that's what i really pay
Speaker 1for is the mileage yeah so now i've got the 20 foot uh 20 foot box truck and i've got a 20 foot box truck and i've got a 20 foot box truck and i've got a 20 foot box truck driving it to the school district and uh the 20 foot didn't even fit all the pallets either we actually have to break yeah it only fit five of them and we just literally fit it on crevices just throwing them and like throwing them wherever we could and now we're also racing against time right because like for the u-haul rental i think i had like six or eight hours to do this now in this um i got really lucky because at the time u-haul was also running a promotion where if you were with any u-haul rental you got a free storage unit for a month oh okay yeah and it was like any size storage unit that the facility had so i just got their biggest one which i think at the time was like 10 by 20 or something could you have
Speaker 2canceled a month later yeah yeah but they're just like people don't cancel because then they have to unload it and so exactly they're banking on most people not being you exactly because most people
Speaker 1aren't that using storage units you know they're using it for storing things not to just hold inventory that's going to sell so at
Speaker 2this point you've spent 70 bucks on books you've spent i mean 100 bucks on the u-haul plus
Speaker 1yeah i found the receipt i actually sent it to kevin too okay so it was like it was literally like i think like 98 or something that's pretty close yeah yeah it's like 100 on the u-haul didn't have to spend on the rental gas at the time was a little bit cheaper so you know maybe i spent 50 on gas okay and then um a little bit of a tangent but we're just getting ready to unload the books uh a black like armored suv pulls up besides me and my brother and then the lady rolls down the window right yeah super sketchy i don't know
Speaker 2where you're going right now yeah yeah so
Speaker 1okay yeah i didn't i forgot to tell this part to kevin but if you want to cut this later like no i'm i'm intrigued yeah yeah so black so a lady pulls up and um she rolls down the window and she's like hey like uh i need to move some rugs can you and your brother help me out and obviously we're a little sketched out because this was like a black armored suv what do you mean armored how did you know it was armored or maybe i'm going too uh drastically with armor what i mean it was like one of those like black tinted yeah yeah very very big it's like is the president in this thing so i'm thinking to my in my brain i'm thinking i'm like oh man like loki they might hit us in the back of the head and throw us in there did she look wealthy this woman yeah it definitely did so she's like i will pay you guys 50 i was like oh okay yeah you should start with that you know like yeah so then like yeah it was like literally like just two rugs where it was like not like it was too heavy rolled up inside them hopefully not crazed hopefully not but yeah it was uh two large rugs we literally just like picked them up it wasn't that heavy because it was two of us they put them in there and um she was like thank you so much gave me 50 cash and rolled off so already because of me being in that moment i've just made 50 bucks so now my investment has gone down by 50 yeah yeah so my cost is 120 now yeah but yeah it took us about probably five hours to hand unload off seven pallets because it's not like i have a pallet jack i don't have a yeah yeah anything
Speaker 2what month was
Speaker 1this this was uh i believe this happened in january okay we can check in those nice weather yeah yeah so uh we put in the storage unit get them all in there and then rush back to get the u-haul in time and then i would say i took pictures like then three days later because i remember at the time i'm also still working my nine to five
Speaker 2job so this is january of this year yeah this year okay so you load them up forget about it for three days you're working three days later you come back and what do you do i take some pictures of whatever i could how do you know what to take pictures of you got ten thousand
Speaker 1books like what stands out nothing like i don't know you don't know what you don't know at this point the the storage unit is so packed with books because it's not like we could do it neatly too what was the size of the unit i think it was 10 by 20 okay and it was packed it was packed because
Speaker 2that's about the dimensions of your truck yeah which
Speaker 1was packed yeah so it's like we've got books just spiraled everywhere right we try to like at least be organized with some of them for like for example the music connection books but the rest of them like we had like when i'm telling you uh like coursework we had you know it came in there like uh library books dvr cds like we even came with like uh timers and clocks like all sort of things like it was more than just books yeah start taking pictures specifically of the music connection books and i quickly had a really like a lot of success with selling those because uh something that i hadn't heard anyone try but i think it was actually chat gpt who who pitched it to me and it would be very successful groups so not facebook marketplace but facebook groups because the mindy podcast had talked a lot about selling them on ebay which i did do a lot of that too especially with the cds uh but with the facebook groups i just joined a bunch of facebook groups of like it was like i searched them up by niches and it was like homeschool groups um you know like uh music teachers art teachers all
Speaker 2over the country not local to houston
Speaker 1exactly all over the country just like general groups based on those categories and then man at the time i didn't even know what to sell them for so it was literally i took a picture of the uh stacked um tower of the music connection books posted it in the music group and i was like hey i have these in a storage unit i'm not sure if they're worth anything would anyone want these the um the demand was overwhelming what which
Speaker 2group was this in specifically that you posted this
Speaker 1i think it was like music teachers garage was the exact you know how many people were in there uh probably somewhere in the thousands nothing crazy though no millions or anything like that but probably like i don't know i don't know like three thousand five thousand maybe more i could check it just like freaked out over it yeah like i posted that probably at 2 a.m like i'd had just come back from work because remember i was like a night manager so i came back very late so i just come back from work and i was like okay i really need to do this so remember the time's ticking i only have the rental for 30 days and i'm not wanting to pay another three hundred dollars for the storage unit right so i'm like every single time that i like moment that i had outside of work i'm posting that i'm taking care of it um so i got home at 2 a.m and i was like okay i gotta post these posting my 2 a.m and i'm going to sleep wake up the next day to like go to work my phone had blown up like i probably have um like 30 dms 50 like 100 plus reactions to the post and like 50 people commenting on that post that i did of just saying like yes like i would love a set or like some people asking for multiple sets for their school like the uh answer was an overwhelming yes there was a there was a demand
Speaker 2for this and they're not on ebay they're not on amazon this is one of thousands of facebook groups
Speaker 1yeah and that's the crazy thing is that they're not on ebay they're not on amazon this is one of later i posted these same books on ebay crickets yeah so that's what i'm telling you it's like that's why i'm listed three different ways to sell and each one's going to have its own demand yeah so it's like the facebook group so so good but then like ebay didn't really and i even tried listening i'm like lower than the price i sold them on facebook didn't really get a hit yeah
Speaker 2so did you for that stack
Speaker 1did you sell all of them from facebook so at the end of the like by the time i did the last deal with the books because like uh fast forward of three months you know i've sold a bunch of the books but i'm now starting to scale up to like bigger things because like one of the sayings that i believe is like it takes the same amount of effort to make a thousand dollars and it does to make ten thousand you know you just move down to zero a little bit so it was like at that point i was starting to get into like inventory that was going to give me better margins or just like bigger money uh because the margins on books are actually phenomenal i mean you'll find them for very low selling for a lot um but by that time i still had probably like i want to say five sets left out of the i don't know like 40 plus sets of the music sets yeah the music in specific
Speaker 2okay and did you sell all
Speaker 1but five from the facebook post i would say so i probably only sold on ebay i remember only selling like three on three sets on ebay and so
Speaker 2on facebook you were just like getting their address through dms like how are you managing all the logistics of this oh yeah venmo me like yeah
Speaker 1literally that was the next thing to figure out right because like when i posted the books i didn't put a price so now i have like 50 plus people wanting these books and i don't know what to sell them at and i also don't know how to ship them never have shipped them i don't know how to ship them i don't know how to ship books before likely this is where we loop back into your podcast i remember you had done a podcast with someone who's selling uh they were selling sugar they were selling sugar i think on amazon it was like the
Speaker 2hummingbird nectar sugar yes sam thompson yes exactly yeah we'll link to
Speaker 1that episode yeah so he was selling sam sugar and i remember at the end of the episode you were like uh you asked him something and you were like oh you're selling this on media mail and i was like on what media mail oh yeah yeah yeah and he was like yeah something's and you had never heard of media mail i never heard about an email but i was like let me look into this look into media mail and for like the viewers that don't know what media mail is basically the u.s government allows for you to sell through usps send out things that are educational material there's certain like compliances around it but like almost every single educational material you're good to send out an email and the rates are going to be way lower than it would be based on something else because on that one it's solely based on the weight yeah you also take dimensions out of the like equation right um so i'm like figuring that out that the send once of the five music connection books was just grade one through five it's about seven i think it was like 18 pounds which came out to be about like 15 or something like that at all not bad at all so i'm thinking okay like i'm not i have a bunch of them again also these are teachers keep in mind my dad's a teacher right he's a elementary um bilingual teacher so one i'm like okay i don't want to like just make a bunch of money off of these teachers and also i knew like their budget didn't allow for them to buy so much so i decided like a 50 was probably like a good amount i was like uh 50 you know 50 50 of those dollars like 15 will go into like packing materials like boxes tape and the actual shipping itself or and then like 35 for me to
Speaker 2profit 50 for a set which includes free shipping yeah okay yeah and you you landed on that kind of based on what people were offering and some numbers that were floating that seemed like a fair price yeah i think like
Speaker 1for the first two i was like trying different numbers like i tried 60 try 40 and i saw the like 50 was like a good one where like people were okay with that but even after that you know there was the whole there was a whole concept of like um how do i know you're not gonna scam me
Speaker 2right sure because there's no there's no third party like ebay or amazon that's like that's protecting them exactly some dude on facebook
Speaker 1literally literally and some teachers i will say were very trustworthy and then they were like yeah like i'll try this out which ended up being like a massive success later because i had some teachers who like first order a set for me and i had other like material still in music that wasn't the music and action books but other books and after they ordered the first one and arrived safely and they liked what they got they ended up putting orders that were like 300 400 for me because they trusted you now exactly uh but before that like if anyone else wants to try this i would say like a way to bypass that um you know that trust or not trust but like to breach the trust would just be to like paypal has a service for goods and services so that's like a lot where i did my thing it was like you send them an invoice for what it was in there exactly okay and then it's they know because i think they provide some sort of insurance yeah so they know like they're getting scammed they can back out and that ended up working out like really well okay i think at the same time also what ended up working is like group trust right because there's like they saw other people posting on that
Speaker 2comments i think for
Speaker 1the books yeah okay exactly but yeah so like did really good i think in the two weeks i had already matched my income that i was making from like the restaurant right so
Speaker 2what did you make in two weeks
Speaker 1in two weeks i probably made like a thousand dollars wow right i mean oh yeah well i'd say without those a thousand let's take 200 off for shipping okay yeah right okay is that all from
Speaker 2these music books or were you selling other stuff no i started selling
Speaker 1some of the art connection books too and then i started selling some other stuff like um more other music stuff that i had or general like i started posting some stuff on ebay but i will say like the majority of my sales at the beginning were going to be those music connection and art book connection books now that wasn't because the rest of the stuff wasn't good but again you got to keep in mind i was very space like constrained yeah so it's like i'm trying to sell whatever i can get my hands on it was at the
Speaker 2top of the pile okay
Speaker 1so i'm working my way through
Speaker 2this pile that's a great sign right yeah i'm thinking the same thing if you knew that these were the most profitable you make a thousand bucks great but now you got a bunch of crap to deal with but you just pick these at random yeah
Speaker 1essentially exactly and then as i'm getting more into it doing more research you know watching other stuff that mindy's been on trying to pick up keywords i'm starting to realize like these music connection books weren't even the things that was selling that was doing super good it was like in line of stuff like that but uh you know the other stuff that was like really really good was like actual like uh curriculum like material at
Speaker 2the end of the day how much did you make on all seven pallets do you still have some of those books today no
Speaker 1no no so um basically after that the growth was very exponential because as i'm seeing like i'm matching my income after one like one week one or two weeks of like doing this book business and i'm like this is me doing it part-time and i'm also the time the time's uh taking on like the time that i have this rental and i don't want to pay another rental unit right so i actually ended up deciding to quit my job probably like two or three weeks later
Speaker 2wow which again which is the job you liked
Speaker 1yeah i love that
Speaker 2college degree and like they wanted you to open a new restaurant and it was going well oh it
Speaker 1was going so well like i had just gotten promoted and they gave me a substantial raise uh and again like they were investing a lot of resources into me but in my mind i was like okay i think i'm at the best time to ever try to do this one i'm already seeing the the tale of success right two i was like i don't have any kids i don't have like responsibilities and if all goes wrong i just go to law school yeah it's the plan anyway exactly so i was like might as well do it now and i knew especially with like i mean the uh the offers they were giving me at the restaurant was very enticing and i was like if i don't get out now like i was like i know i'm gonna like because it was comfortable right like that's the whole thing about like starting to entrepreneur sometimes it can be very uncomfortable uh and because there's risk involved there's uncertainty ambiguity so i i knew if i didn't take this the chance then i would get comfortable and even if i went into law school like i just would it would still be a comfortable thing to do so i decided to quit my job and then just went into it like full time as the book sales are starting to come through i'm also realizing though that like uh i want to start like getting into stuff that's going to make a lot more money because at the same time that i like right after i found the mindy and i started starting to have success with that i run into your podcast that you did some of the content you did with shannon jean and you know he's talking about reselling and he's talking about pallets and stuff so i know i want to work my way up to the pallets um but i'm not quite there yet so the next thing i started like i'm still searching through this public surplus originally it was like to look for more books but then i started seeing that like one of my local school districts or not sorry not local school just it was like my local police office they're just selling technology like all the time and it was like good technology where were you seeing this uh in the houston area like on on these surplus websites oh it's still on the same app that i told you about okay public store that's what it's called public surplus okay so they're selling
Speaker 2like old computers and stuff
Speaker 1yeah it was like uh it was like optiplex 720s with their hard drives removed uh it was a bunch of monitors that are in working condition like some of them like almost like brand new they might have some scratches on the back and stuff like that but nothing on it on the screen and so i'm looking at that i'm like okay let me like purchase some of these so i remember my first purchase was 20 units that i got for like 200 each because i was like again one of the only people putting in a bid on these for computers yeah for computers it was these like old computers that like now that i know more about them so so old like i think they were like uh 40 20s optiplexes like big towers that is okay yeah so just big paid 200 bucks each no uh i paid ten dollars each oh okay 200 200 in total for 20 okay yeah yeah and then again uh as i'm coming into this at first i was like oh my god this is amazing because uh again like back then i was very naive and um i was putting bits left and right and just like being like obviously i'm not gonna win this someone else is gonna beat me out but i didn't understand like there's really it's like it's not that saturated like really the field is very unsaturated especially with these local stuff um i know winning them and then in a week i flipped it for 600. wow okay yeah
Speaker 2pulled your money yeah where did you sell them and how did you sell them
Speaker 1yeah so i posted a picture of all of them stacked up over in facebook marketplace wasn't even a good listing like it was like now i've gotten a lot better at making facebook marketplace listings but it was literally like one picture and it was like uh i have all these 720s i didn't even look at what was inside like i didn't see what graphics card they had or anything i was just like flipped them computers and then some guy um reached out to me who they owned like one of those like recycling instances and then he was like recycling yeah and i remember at the time um this is where like those like sales things come in right because like uh he was pushing for 400 i was like no i want 800 on them not knowing what they were worth either like i remember he was like hey can you send me some of like the service tag on them and i was like what's the service tag like you know like uh and he was like yeah go to like he directed me he was like go to the back of the computer you'll find it near blah blah send me what code it says right there because you wanted to see what was the components um and ended up we ended up coming in the middle did 600 for the sale and i still remember that first moment like my heart was pounding so fast right but they pulled up in like an suv to my house um i opened up the garage helped them load it up they gave me 600 in cash and that was good to go tripled your money in a week tripled my money in a week so i'm like oh my god this is crazy right this
Speaker 2was after you quit your
Speaker 1job uh i'd say there's still like this was during like the ending of me quitting my job
Speaker 2okay and real quick what what happened with all the books how much did you end up making from this
Speaker 1yeah yeah so at the end i probably ended up making over a span of three months um from my initial 70 investment so it's hard to pinpoint those ones exactly because remember i kept buying more and adding it yeah i kept buying more and especially if like things went together i would do bundles right yeah so it's like oh let me put these music connection books with this over here like you get creative with it right um but i was able to find some invoices that i sent over to kevin and i and also like the ebay sales of just the standalone ones that i knew came from that palette and i would say in it's three thousand maybe four thousand wow okay three
Speaker 2to four thousand dollars over a span of
Speaker 1like three months for your hundred and seventy dollar investment or whatever yeah amazing yeah from just those seven did you keep that storage unit i did keep that storage unit for one more month okay because uh as i was like quitting and then also like i started getting like i started stretching myself a little thin because i remember i started like after the success of the computers i was like okay books are great but i'm not seeing too many book palettes like i i'm seeing some some but it's hard to really scale that yeah because the school district hadn't like posted another one and i'm like i still have i have enough books where these can now start making not passive income, but it's like, I can list this on eBay, list it on Facebook groups, and like they can sell, you know, as they're going. And then I can start doing more active sales with technology. So then I started purchasing a lot more of this technology, and then, but I didn't, like a lot of this technology, I wasn't making bundles anymore, 'cause I'm purchasing like different types. So then what I started doing was I started hosting a garage sale every single Saturday. -
Speaker 2At your house? -
Speaker 1Yeah, at my house. Literally right outside, like literally on my driveway, I ended up buying, I believe it was like seven, eight foot tables from someone else who was selling them on Facebook Marketplace. Got them at $35 each. -
Speaker 2Okay, just like the plastic standard folding tables? -
Speaker 1Yeah, the ones you buy at Walmart. But the ones at Walmart, I believe to this day, it's like a six foot one is 55 bucks. So I was like, oh, eight foot one for 35, I was like, steal. So we bought them and then I would just set them outside. And what I would do is I would run ads on Facebook Marketplace, two days before the garage sale, get those going. -
Speaker 2Specifically like ads, like you're posting and then you're boosting it or what? -
Speaker 1Yeah. - Okay. - So I would post it three or four days before the sale and I would boost it. - Garage sale. - Yeah, so like if sales on Thursday, or sorry, on Saturday, I would post the ad on Thursday and then pump $30 into, and I would run like two ads, pump $30 for each of the two days. On the day of, I would lower it to $10. And then after that, I wouldn't spend any more on it. -
Speaker 2And are you putting the address in the ad? -
Speaker 1No, that's like I, okay, that's one of the, it's funny 'cause I actually haven't seen any other reseller done this and I've actually coached a lot of people on how to do this. So I'm not the originator of this, but I'm calling it. But anyways, what I did was actually, 'cause like you wanna get the Facebook algorithm to work for you, not you work for it, right? So you're, as I'm sure anyone who's had any experience in Facebook Marketplace, you're gonna realize that you're gonna get a lot of people who are just gonna like message back, like, is this available, right? - Yeah. - So what I did is I wanna get the people who, I wanna qualify buyer's intent, but also at the same time, get the people who are just putting, is this available, get them to push me up in the algorithm. 'Cause what happens when someone looks up garage sale and this stuff? They're probably only gonna look at the first two rows that they see with you wanting to be on spot one through five. So what I did is like, I would put the, I put a really good title. You can get ChatGPT to help you with that. Put one or two pictures. Don't go too crazy 'cause you still wanna like, have a sort of like, moment of mystery, right? 'Cause like, I think that's what people love about garage sales, where it's like, they don't know what they'll find. So you don't wanna list every single product that you have, but some of them that will entice them. And then what I would put is like, just like, I'd always run some sort of promo. 'Cause linking back to the, sorry, these public surplus thing, where I was getting a bunch of these computers, what I was also getting a bunch of was monitors. And I'm talking, I was winning monitors at like $1 each. - Wow. - And like, I would say 90% of these were working monitors. 10% probably weren't good. And then 5% of them, like straight up, they were probably breaking during transportation. 'Cause at this point it's still very naive. I'm not thinking about putting any like padding or anything. I'm literally like getting them in a truck and just driving. So I'm getting like monitors at $1 each. So what I would put in my garage sale, I'd say is like, gonna have like a bunch of things that could be like, mouses, blah, blah, blah, whatever I can get my hands on from these local sales. I even have books too. Some people came and bought books as well from these garage sales. 'Cause I had a lot of library books from the original thing. And then I would put, with purchase of any PC, you get a free monitor. So people love that, right? 'Cause they're like free monitor. And my lowest, and I would put like $20 PC up to like, you know, 120, whatever. And people are like $20 PC for free monitor, what a steal. 'Cause like a lot of them, like, I was able to list them at $20. 'Cause I got them for like $5, which were these like older models, these big towers, and they didn't have hard drives in them. So then, and people were buying these because again, like this is where we come into the hole where if you're just basing yourself off Amazon, eBay, whatever, you're gonna miss out on some hidden opportunities. 'Cause a lot of these people who are buying these from me, either wanted the RAM inside, they wanted some of the components or mostly, they wanted the case because these big towers, they make, really good cases for people building their custom PCs. - Okay, yeah. - 'Cause it provides a lot of space. -
Speaker 2Yeah. Sorry, did you ever say like, what bumps you up in the algorithm? -
Speaker 1Oh yeah, sorry, I'll get to it. - Okay. - So you first, you put a good offer, right? So, and then something with like a hook, something will get them in there. Like they'll see, you know, free monitor with every purchase, put a low ticket item. So that way they know that like, it's like the buy-in is kind of low. And then you don't put your address. At the bottom, also make sure this listing's not too long. 'Cause no one wants to read a long listing. At the bottom, you put comment. And I think I would put like comment and quotation marks, like garage sale for the address. -
Speaker 2And then you got an automation that would automatically send the address or no. -
Speaker 1No, I actually didn't. I did think about automating it, but then it would have like texted everyone that said, is this available? So a lot of people, like I did message back, but basically when they messaged me, especially with that, that thing that said like, oh, like if they messaged me when I put at the bottom, I would then qualify the lead a little bit further of being like, hey, yeah, it's gonna like, here's the address. Immediately give them their address. This is where you probably should automate it. I just didn't go into the process of automating it, but just get them to give out the address immediately and the time that you're gonna be on. So like 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM. For garage sales, your golden time is honestly, you wanna be set up by 6:00 AM. A lot of people are gonna shop from the hours of seven to 12 is gonna be your biggest pop. And then after 12 o'clock, it kind of dies down. -
Speaker 2So you're saying if you don't put the address in the listing, then it gives people a reason to comment or to DM you. And if the algorithm sees that a lot of people are reaching out about this one, it's gonna surface you to the top. -
Speaker 1Exactly. - Okay. - And that way, even the people who maybe weren't gonna buy anyways, and they're just putting, is this available? They're still gonna like comment on it, right? And then a lot of people, they're gonna save this listing or reshare it with other people 'cause they're seeing it and they're like, oh man, this looks really good. Exactly, 'cause like what happens if you put your address immediately? They're probably not gonna message you 'cause they're gonna see the address. They're just gonna show up. - Yeah. - But now they have to message you. So now they're messaging me. I'm qualifying buyer's intent 'cause if they put me on that thing, now I know they're intent to come to this garage sale. It's probably pretty high. And now you can even double down on that and make it even further by giving them a second offer. So what I would tell them is I'd be like, hey, yeah, it's gonna be an awesome sale. Send them your address and then the hours. And after that, I'd be like, hey, you know, if you want on Friday, I do most of the inventorying and I'm doing the pricing. Let me know what you're looking for and I can send you some pictures. 'Cause like they're messaging you throughout the week, right? Like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever. 'Cause the ads, and this is where like, it's also like a really good because the ads that I had on week one, by week four or five, they were the number one ads on anytime anyone put garage sale. And those ads probably performed for me for like the next three or five months. Like even after I stopped doing the garage sales, people were, I was still getting at least like 14 to 15 messages a week of people being like, hey, is this available? Like, I really wanna come and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, I just hadn't turned it off. So I eventually did have to turn it off 'cause I was just getting so many messages from it. But yeah, so like tell people, hey, like I'm gonna be doing the inventory on Friday. Like, let me know what you're looking for. 'Cause like if they message you on Monday, that way you send them a sneak peek and it's like, hey, just so you know, like I have this, but make sure you show up early 'cause the best stuff goes first, right? So that's why I'm sending them on Friday. If they're like, yeah, I'm looking for a big tower with blah, blah, blah. If I see it when I'm doing the inventory, 'cause on Friday I'm putting the prices on everything, which I just bought like white stickers from like Walmart and then just write them down. You can use ChatGPT to tell you what prices to put. And then it's like, I would just like send them pictures and I'd be like, hey, here you go. Just, you know, like, you know, early bird, like the best things go first, but you know, show me this message when you get here and I'll give you $5 off on your 40 plus purchase. So now they even a second incentive to show up. - Yeah. - And remember they still have the free monitors. So you're getting like deals left and right. - Yeah. - It's like kind of when, you know, we were talking about Burma, Burma, it's like make an offer so good they can't, - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - They can't decline it. So that worked out really, really well to the point where enough, I had enough capital where I was like confident buying a pallet of rugs from like a B stock. And then I started holding technology and rug sales, which you wouldn't have think that was a good combo. -
Speaker 2At a garage sale or? -
Speaker 1Yeah. - Okay. - I was literally on the same eight foot tables that I had out. I was putting out like, just five by seven rugs just spread out. And then I would put one or two and I would put the other ones, just a bunch of them, just like up and like rolled up, like laterally up and leaning on the table. And it was crazy. 'Cause like some people would show up for the technology. 'Cause I put out different ads. I put out ads for rugs. I put out ads for technology, technology and rugs. So someone would come for just, would just see the technology one, show up for like a $20 PC, but then ended up going back home with like $200 worth of rugs, right? - Wow. - 'Cause they're getting great prices from these. So that worked out really well. And then I guess like, sorry, I went on such a tangent. Looping back to the books though. 'Cause at this point, the garage sales is like an active sale for me. I'm doing super, super good on them. And the books, I bought like two or three more pallets of them. They did really well. But I'm thinking, I'm like, I don't want an overhead cost of having the storage unit all the time. And also the books is, at this point, you know, it would take a lot of time to go and take pictures and stuff like that. On this one, the sell, like I'm selling these a lot faster. And also the ticket amounts are higher. - Yeah. - So, the books I actually ended up designing because at some point it was they started like the sales started slowing down a little bit because i started getting into like more like the uh stuff that like library books really hard to sell because like people everyone's got library books and also the condition of the library books can be really bad yeah so i got very lucky because i ended up posting an ad on facebook marketplace and it was really funny because i remember my dad being like like who is gonna buy this but i i did an ad where i was like i have like i just loaded up the all the books that i had left in a box truck because i also ended up purchasing a 20-foot box truck through gov.deals uh okay govdeals.com or whatever yeah govdeals.com okay uh which you can find a lot of sales there i purchased a 20-foot box truck from a&m through there texas a&m yeah texas a&m and it was like the craziest things like one day my dad my dad showed up from work uh came home and i was like dad guess what he's like you know he's like excited he's like oh my god guess like what i'm like i
Speaker 3just purchased a twenty thousand box truck and he was like what i was about the whole truck yeah actual truck yeah the actual truck not like a truck's load of something no like i got the actual physical truck and you paid 20
Speaker 1after taxes and everything yeah 20 because you know you got to get like the uh pay the taxes at the dmb to get it on your name because like i won it at 16 okay and then it was probably like another thousand that they took as the buyer's premium and then like another a thousand or something whatever for the thing so i altogether i'd say i wasn't close to the nineteen thousand twenty thousand okay i said twenty thousand just to make it like yeah yeah easy to remember but yeah it was a 20-foot box truck for 20 000 um straight for a texan a&m so it was super well kept i remember it was like i think it was like 2024 or something like that oh with only yeah with only 60 000 miles another one of those moments when i saw it i was i was like list like going through stuff and i was like you know i knew the retail value on the ad was like 32 000 or something like that so i was like i'll just put 16 i'll never win this and then i was the proud owner of a 20-foot box truck 24 hours later and you wanted this to use it for your business not to resell it no i probably wanted it i wanted it to resell it okay i did think about my business and i was like yeah it's gonna it ended up working out great because we used it for a lot of stuff like when once we transported the books from that storage unit that i originally had because i only paid one more month in that storage unit and afterwards i was like i ended up getting another deal for a storage unit that was in front of my house way closer because this one was about 30 minutes from my house um and they give me a free month like most of these storage units if you're the first it's the first you're the first time like buying with them yeah they will give you a free month okay um or they'll give you a really good rate so what month did you buy the box truck uh i think it was march because it was around my dad's birthday yeah okay and then when did you sell it i ended up selling it uh i want to say around june because i used it uh a lot like first i i did buy it with the purpose of reselling it then i ended up using it for a little bit but then i did end up deciding to sell the truck uh specifically because i wanted to get capital because then around that time is when the tick tock side of things started kicking off and i wanted capital to buy inventory
Speaker 2okay how did you what what did you sell the truck
Speaker 1for and how did you
Speaker 2sell it i ended
Speaker 1up selling it for 20 500 okay which was a lot less than i wanted it to but um it's also because i may or may not have like uh destroyed the front left side of it i guess uh very tall trees so um all
Speaker 2right how did you sell it you used to listen on facebook yeah facebook marketplace okay
Speaker 1yeah and then i found a buyer there from louisiana who was like actually only there for the week and it was like so yes he came in saw the truck because it was a very nice truck and i'm telling you i'm sure if i would have sat with it a few more months like i probably could have gotten like at least 26k yeah but i was like that's a something and then use it to make active money right now right right and because the opportunity with tick tock was opening up i was like that's going to be so good so i ended up just deciding to sell it at the my lower amount but i still recouped my cost uh and plus all the use that i had taken from it okay
Speaker 2so first six months of the business you're doing all kinds of stuff books technology garage sales junk removal what changed in june or july like you started live selling is that right yeah so
Speaker 1basically looping back to you full circles right yeah um i saw that you did that uh tick tock live stream with braden fleck and where you guys were like basically came onto his live and we're just selling bill protein bars right this room no way is this true oh that's crazy i thought it was in utah uh-uh oh that's crazy but yeah so i saw him doing that and that caught my attention and um i'm always just like doing my research like my biggest one of my biggest competitive advantages one is my family and two it's uh that i'm always just watching youtube videos anytime i can i put them on and i knew that live selling is just becoming a really big platform so originally i wanted to do food live tick tock live i got approved to start it um but i was like i just want to dip my toes like i just want to like get into it uh so i had a few rugs left over from my rug selling days because i bought ended up buying two or three pallets of rugs uh and these were like slower moving rugs at this point keep in mind like um if you had to ask anyone what can you sell rugs would have not been on anyone's mind for tick tock live auctions yeah but i was like they're expensive to ship they're huge so expensive to ship yeah and also it's like the biggest i think one of the other biggest constraints is that people are always like oh well like people are going to shop for what they want in their house like that particular rug that you're showing at that time in that moment it's probably not going to be what they want so but i was like i'm just going to go live with it and sorry what did you pay for all these rugs like per rug on average if i had to give you
Speaker 2a ballpark like 12 per rug twelve dollars per rug twelve dollars including shipping to you yeah including shipping to me did you get them shipped to you or did you have to go pick them up no they'll ship it to you okay it's 12 bucks a rug that sounds like nothing yeah and so you're thinking tick tock live not a good fit for this but let's give it a shot yeah i'm thinking like i just want
Speaker 1to figure out the controls like i just want to see what happens when you go live like yeah what's in the screen like all the good stuff and i was like i don't have food to sell right now right so you have to like also source that in bulk and i was like but i have rugs i already made my money back on that palette so i go live and that first live is a smash like i ended up selling i think it was seven hundred dollars over like 20 items of
Speaker 2rugs yeah okay so 35 bucks a rug so you're crippling your money and did you have any tick tock followers like how did you get all these people to show up did tick tock just send them
Speaker 1yeah i think that tick tock just send them because like i didn't i started on a new account it wasn't even my personal tick tock account okay create a whole new one brand new account brand new account first time going live never posted anything in my life like literally i was honestly you don't have like any unfair advantage you don't have an audience you're put pushing this too oh chris when i first went on i was streaming from my parents garage and then the way i set up the rugs was i literally put two of the eight foot foot tables that i had i just laid them out didn't fully expand them either it was literally a half rolled out rug because they're huge right and a half old rug on another one grabbed a sheet of paper wrote rug a on it with really bad handwriting on the other one wrote rug b looking back you're cringing at yourself i could have done this so much better so much better but also it was like honestly like fun so fun yeah it is fun because like and then i put the camera with the tripod in front of me and my thought process was like okay when someone wins they can type in the comments do they want rug a or rug b they can't even fully see these rugs laid out yeah and yeah never posted anything before it was a smash like uh first show was really good sell that and then uh seven hundred
Speaker 2dollars in how long and like i
Speaker 1think it was like an hour one hour
Speaker 2and like two-thirds of that was profit five hundred dollars profit
Speaker 1give or take yeah and then um next lie so then the next day i'm like okay i'm gonna try to sell more right because but i'm still thinking like this was a fluke like that's probably just like an off you know just not lucky you've been a gainer's luck uh i think that next show i probably did anywhere from a thousand to a thousand two hundred dollars and just like so it's probably more like an hour thirty on this one okay but i sell like the rest of my inventory that i that hadn't moved in months right because i already went through all the kids
Speaker 2you can't sell these in any other venue
Speaker 1yeah no like i've already ran my garage sales yeah yeah jeez louise okay yeah so i sell the rest of them and here's the thing you know keep in mind at this point no one's ever done selling rugs so the next like i hadn't even figured this out but the next um obstacle is like figuring out shipping so there you have me building my own custom-made boxes like i'm literally grabbing an exacto knife some masking tape and just building some boxes eventually i did narrow it down where like now we had it like this is like as a system yeah but um yeah i bought another palette of rugs and just started selling rug like rugs left and right on tiktok live which kind of like uh boosted me to like you know like you know like i'm like getting like some awareness from there i got connected with a lot of other people like brain now i have brain flag is like a really good friend of mine like the other day we had like a two or three hour call where he was just talking about tiktok live i've met kip and all those good people and like they've been amazing and um we just gone on from there like since then i've sold ac fans on tiktok live i've sold weighted best which we never would have thought of whatever you can buy cheaply you'll sell literally yeah literally that you like it's still good quality right and it's all from like the big sea uh which is costco um yeah and from there now like the most recently like what the next thing we have coming in is going to be uh we have a whole palette of designer dresses like ralph lauren and stuff like that and i would say about 60 of our shows is also food now so we did i did eventually get into food and the food has been so so good like this last week we just closed out with seven thousand dollars in sales uh i would say one thousand of that was rugs because i don't do rugs too many too much anymore because the margins there i don't do rugs too much anymore because while they are good they're not as good as other products because again coming back to the same takes them the same amount of money to sell that or something amount of effort to say sell a thousand then does say sell ten thousand right so but since we hit two thousand followers in my tiktok account i was like okay we'll do something special i'm going to bring back some rugs because a lot of people have joined the community since we started which again this has only been in the spam of three months i didn't get a chance to buy some rugs so we ran tiktok live over a weekend a thousand a thousand of the seven thousand dollar sales was rugs and the rest was six six thousand was uh food what kind of food literally groceries snacks and beverages that you would get all from costco all from costco so
Speaker 2what what are your numbers these last few months like what is your monthly revenue and profit been
Speaker 1so the thing with tiktok is like it is an incremental play um the more you sell on it the longer you're out there i've only been there for three months but the more you sell on it you start unlocking different perks one of the biggest unlocks for us recently has been this thing called cvt which is collections by tiktok which has brought my shipping cost down by 40 now i could profit that 40 keep it in my pocket and keep the same shipping prices but what i've done is actually pass that on to my like buyers a little bit which i think is why my community likes it so much because like now when they shop with me the first package is like 5.49 and then after that they get free shipping on their next two items so it's like they're honestly like not paying a lot for shipping and getting great prices so i'd say my margins right now we're pushing close to like 40 percent uh because so net yeah okay because so the palette of food cost me two thousand dollars and that came with four pallets of food this last week we did six thousand of that was uh just that food palette wow and then i would say i still have about and i still have a fourth of the of the uh pallet left so about one pallet's worth which should be enough for me to run one really big double your
Speaker 2money on food then yeah
Speaker 1i've doubled my money on the food because from that six thousand only a thousand of that is um shipping is going into shipping costs and late and like i would say labor so which is including um like the boxes that i'm buying and shipping costs and shipping costs um like i would say labor so which is including um like the boxes that i'm buying and shipping costs like the boxes that i'm buying the actual cost from the shipping and then i've uh i've been blessed enough to actually hire my first packer shout out to brent um and he you know sold labor as well and so i probably still have enough to run one other show and then keep in mind the retail value on that palette from the manifest was nine thousand dollars so we're pushing close to getting eighty percent of retail value yeah
Speaker 2okay so last three months what is your revenue and profit been
Speaker 1last month we did 15k right uh-huh and then uh i think it was 14k actually i posted my numbers on x so you should be able to see them there um but it was 14k what about right 30 net margins okay and then five grand yeah this month we um right now we're all right we're already at i think like 15.7 and then we're trying to push more
Speaker 2we still got four more days
Speaker 1yeah so we still have four more days and this one we're pushing close to 40 40 uh profit margins the biggest unlock there was that from month from last month to this month is that we unlocked that collections by tick tock the month of october was the first time we had that which has brought our shipping costs way lower like to give you an idea that how crazy these are shipping costs are the other day i sent out a 20 pound package guess how many how
Speaker 2much it cost me um 25 bucks seven
Speaker 1dollars holy cow yeah what was in it it was all um all food like was the carrier drinks uh i don't know because like the thing the way the way they do it with collections by tick tock i'm not sure they're sat like their exact method but it's like when you print the label say collections by tick tock but the carrier itself will be whatever like the system figures out is the cheapest ups i've seen like swift x ups gofo um usps like a bunch of a bunch of them so they figure it out on that uh obviously not it is based on distance i'm based on texas so like somewhere in new york that 20 pound package is probably going to be closer to like 14 15 right but still freaking like super super crazy especially because um we're not constrained by dimensions anymore like if i'm sending a 12 by 12 by 12 box versus a 8 by 6 by 4 box it's just based mostly on weight yeah yeah so dimensional weight which is like crazy crazy which has been a huge unlock for the rugs too again we're not doing those as much just because the margins are harder because for example for food if i'm getting like 9 000 retail worth of food um you know like for example one unit might be count an 18 pack might be counted as one unit but an 18 pack and can split it into uh four four packs and still have two left over so that one item becomes four
Speaker 2okay what um okay so your second month you this is your second month this is my fourth month okay you're gonna do like seven thousand in profit net profit yeah give or
Speaker 1take yeah and then so the reason we haven't done more because obviously you're thinking this and you're like dude like why are you doing more numbers right no it's great uh is because we've been very inventory constrained because when you first start with tick tock it's uh you don't get your payouts for 30 days but as you start selling more you got longer history in there uh you start unlocking more benefits including accelerated payments yeah so october we started with uh express settlement which is basically that you get your payment immediately on the day of delivery so if i sold something two weeks ago i'm probably gonna get it like either this week or earlier last week yeah okay now since then we've unlocked one more thing that's above that which is now we get the payment upon us putting out the label which has basically cut down my my yeah my cash cycles by um like literally like two weeks yeah so now we're probably like on current revenue so it's like all the money that i'm making now i can now reinvest into more inventory yeah
Speaker 2so other than all the tips you've already given people what tips do you have for people that want to do reselling and or live selling reselling
Speaker 1uh at the end of the day there's gonna be every reason why not to do something do it anyways and last tip would probably be like uh a lot of people chase passion chase obsession because at some point like the novelty of whatever you're doing it's gonna draw out and you're gonna be like oh you know i'm not having fun with this anymore but if you're obsessed with what you're doing you're gonna push through yeah and like you're gonna keep going because you have because of whatever dream you have in mind like for me and for my example my dream has been to achieve the american dream right get my student loans paid off get my parents their home paid off it's like this you know shout out to my mom and dad they've been such a great i tell everyone my competitive advantage is them yeah because like i started with like hey mom and dad can i crash at your place until i go to law school that began with like hey can i use your garage to store some inventory to now like my mom is the one helping me during my live shows when i go live i sell something and i can go really fast because at first it took me like two minutes to sell every item now we're probably going selling about four or five items per every two minutes yeah so crazy like i put out five seconds sudden death at the end of the five seconds whoever got the highest bid they get it no
Speaker 2reserve no minimum no reserve yeah
Speaker 1exactly and the viewers they're still getting great prices like they're probably paying anywhere from uh 40 to 80 percent of retail and they're paying free ship giving free shipping because i passed that on to them right um but yeah so i can go really fast i give the item over to my mom my mom puts a label on it puts it somewhere else my dad he's helped me on various projects the most recent one when we were looking to hire because like i started with garage right and then that went in for me like basically commandeering the whole bottom of the living room my only overhead cost right now is that i rent out a storage unit that paid about 140 a month um where that storage unit it's housing all of their downstairs furniture because they've let me like basically like um make all their downstairs into a mini warehouse yeah and my dad he helped me put up a partition wall between that separates the kitchen from the front door and that's where we have now the shipping area and that gives them some privacy so they've allowed me that to do that so i can actually hire someone yeah um so it's like they've honestly been my favorite unfair advantage like i think i sent a picture to kevin maybe we'll put it they'll put it up with me just giving them certificate of saying like you guys are like the founders of this company with me and yeah they've just been awesome and i'd say like that's a big like one of that's one of the biggest takeaways to take from the from like this episode it's like guys i'm not i don't have a warehouse like i didn't have any capital to start with outside of 200 dollars no employees no box truck like i don't even have a car now because at some point when we were doing the tick tock and because it took 30 days to get the payments i actually sold my own my car to have money for inventory while i was waiting for the payments to come through um but i didn't have anything i literally started from just my parents garage which there was just a tiny corner that they had allocated to me so now like i'm running this out of my parents garage and we just closed out 15 000. we're going to close this month with at least 15 000 sales
Speaker 2if not more month four
Speaker 1yeah that's amazing so it's like literally anyone can do this you don't have to go the tick tock route i've done that because i think it's a growing business yeah but it's like even if you look if you hear anything from this podcast like i start with books it's like you you can start with books do whatever you want and like you can build your dream from
Speaker 2there yeah jv if people want to learn more where can they find
Speaker 1you yeah if people want to learn more they can find me at jv coco deals on text uh i think the tick tock account is the coco duck so y'all can see there very open if anybody ever has any questions love to connect all right thank you thank you so much chris
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