Speaker 1i was a high school math teacher teacher's income baby coming so just trying to come up with something and that's where i started what were you making as a teacher 40 000 maybe i profited 20 to 30k that that summer just summer yeah and so then alongside teaching it was absolutely past it so our best month we did 1.1 million last year in a month in a month yeah holy crap it was posted for 300 what i sold that for three thousand dollars this is a really big hack for you guys
Speaker 2looking to buy and sell lawnmowers so last week i come across this guy on the internet and his claim to fame was that he had made fifty thousand dollars of profit in one month flipping riding mowers on facebook marketplace my antennas immediately went up and i'm like i gotta talk to this guy so we hopped on a call with my team they vetted him out discovered that yes matt's legit and so i had him on the podcast matt how did you in rural michigan jackson michigan population thirty thousand people how did you make fifty thousand dollars in one month buying and selling riding lawnmowers not flipping them not fixing them up just buying them undervalued and selling them at market value i'll give you a tip yes he buys from individuals but he also buys from dealerships that's the secret today he has his own dealership doing over a million dollars a month during the busy season and yes he's still buying and selling used and new so if you want to make thousands of dollars a month subscribe to my channel and hit the bell so you don't miss any of my new videos and don't forget to hit the bell so you don't miss any of my new videos flipping riding mowers or anything on facebook marketplace this episode is as tactical as you get please enjoy okay well matt why don't we start by you telling us who you are and what you do
Speaker 1yeah so right now who i am i own an equipment dealership and you know i think we're talking because they started this entire journey buying and selling used not even just equipment but couches washers and dryers church pews tvs nintendo wii's right so it all started with just buying and selling stuff and you know now i've got an equipment dealership and you know trying to take over the uh the world one lawnmower at a time pretty much okay so you started flipping
Speaker 2stuff before you opened your dealership yes so probably seven years ago as a high school
Speaker 1math teacher i have no equipment industry background i played sports growing up uh high school college basketball and um you know it wasn't really an intro it's not like it's about lawn mowers for me or anything like that but it definitely you know taught me business in a short period of time but now my passion is absolutely business so yeah okay so what got you selling
Speaker 2things um on facebook marketplace like what was the the event that started that so you know the
Speaker 1initial event is just teachers income wife at home baby coming and you see a bank account that's just staying the same okay so just trying to come up with something to increase the income so you know that's what that's what spawned it all basically and that's where i started it was literally i went to an estate sale and i i saw this beautiful uh church queue and the entrance way they're selling for eighty dollars and i just thought it was just it was that was my first moment you know i think of like large entrepreneurship of thinking that is worth more than eighty dollars and people talk about flipping and so i just tried it with that right and so i sold that you know probably a few hundred bucks and i bought some other things and you know that i idea started there right and it was in the process and you do other things to make money youtube certified research on how to flip houses that i moved and was doing a live-in flip and arbitraging craigslist arbitraging facebook that started because i saw a couch that i had to sell when i moved i saw the equivalent couch for fifty dollars and it was in better shape than the one i had sold for two hundred dollars and that's where it all started i'm gonna buy this to straight flip it you know right off the internet and i made you know 250 within a day and that just the the itch started you know right after that where did you hear about
Speaker 2this first estate sale that you went to how did you end up there that's a great question um who
Speaker 1knows you know i was probably surfing around craigslist and i i always like going to garage sales and things like that so i don't even know how i came to be but i love going to estate sales sales because that's that's what deals are and that and now my passion is sales i love sales um but it was the art of finding the deal like that was absolutely passionate right so that's kind of
Speaker 2where that stemmed from for sure now when you bought this pew did you do any research on what it was worth or you just assumed to be worth a few hundred bucks so that is the exact like that
Speaker 1question is the exact framework that i work off of is when i'm exploring a new market to try to buy something different it is an absolute no-brainer that i'm going to make money okay because i'm buying it for the first time i entered into a new market it's an absolute no-brainer than making money so for example the first enclosed trailer that i ever bought used now you tell me without doing any research if you think this is a good deal a 16-foot enclosed trailer so you picture when a closed trailer yep it was posted for 300 out what yeah so you don't know i know what those
Speaker 2costs like i don't know what those costs are but if you don't know what those costs are if you don't
Speaker 1know what those costs are you're gonna be like so yeah i sold that trailer that was my first trailer and i sold that for three thousand dollars so that was why was it so cheap turn that i've ever got
Speaker 2right there did they just misprice it so they steal it cover knowledge been sitting there for
Speaker 1years and it was this guy needed it gone and it wasn't about the price and whatever an awesome one because i had you know i i started you know make this into a business but i was a teacher right so i this was still when i was teaching and i had a former student that had two lawnmowers on the back of a trailer on the east side of the state of michigan and this guy on craigslist lives 10 minutes from where i had one of my students out on the road and you have to win on speed you know and i saw this four minutes after it was posted i i tell him we're on the way the stars have aligned because i've got my guy 10 minutes from that location and i sent him over there i got a trailer full of lawnmowers and i just told you know the i said pay i just just pay the guy okay just pay him and we will come back and the guy actually he you know he has a title with it which you would think this thing's stolen and it's not i don't even know about titles at that point you know but he had the title for it and you know you just figure things out as you go because you know what you know what happened when the kid the high school kid went back to pick this trailer up is he's getting onto the highway and you know the guy tells him because with trailers you got a two inch ball i know where this is going i know exactly where this is going it goes and of course there's no safety chains right there's no safety chain so it detaches from the truck it goes across on the highway into the other side no one is killed no one is hurt he hooks back up he i i we he may have gotten a ticket for no safety chains for 30 bucks or something i mean just crazy you know that was probably the you know who knows if it was me i i hope i would have seen that right but the point is you just uh you take action you figure things out as you you know what i mean so so that was
Speaker 2the 300 trailer that was the first if if you're five minutes later it's gone like yeah that good
Speaker 1he got there within 15 minutes of the post and the guys you can imagine right a trailer posted that low so and that's the exact way you can learn how to what to say to keep the deal and all that sort of stuff of stuff but i didn't have the skills at that point to know how to keep that deal close to me i was so lucky that i had someone you know in the air so what are those skills that you developed if
Speaker 2someone comes across something like this what can they do yeah that's a good question so number one
Speaker 1you need to get them actually talking to you need to get them on the phone that's number one okay because you and me talking right now on zoom that creates a whole different level than if we were texting right yeah it's a level for me someone else is going to get them on the phone so it better be you if you and me were across from each other sitting right now you would do that much more as well right so you got to get that the closest proximity to that point you're going to sell better but you have to you know you you have to ask those questions the other guy is going to offer him 600 right and so you can literally frame people and you can say i want to know that your word is good that we have a deal and you have to just go crazy to reaffirm that the deal is closed you know what i mean you know one thing um but there's a lot of things you have to do and so of course you can give a deposit on venmo paypal you know things like that and you can protect against scamming and you know you're talking to a real person at that point right so that that's that's one right give them a deposit on venmo paypal any of those sorts of things and that will absolutely secure the deal no one's gonna no one's gonna actually sell it out from under you if you have given them some money now i love it because most people would
Speaker 2see this in a different area they're like dang it that's such a good deal whatever let's go find the next one and you're like no i know a guy i'm gonna call him and even if you didn't know a guy everything's figureoutable like you could hop on a local facebook group and say hey 150 bucks to whoever can get this trailer the soonest then you could pay him a deposit and then you could just you know what i'm saying like there's a hundred ways to make that deal work even if it's not
Speaker 1close to you this is how business this is how the business started to create it is you realize it's all about speed right so now i develop people that i number one it's me first doing it right and already i got to the point at that point that someone else was in a truck for me but you have to figure out what's the dollar amount that you could literally call somebody and in a moment's time they would say yep i'll get on the road and help you Yeah, they're going to do it for $10 an hour. Will they do it for $15? Is it a retired guy? Is it your dad? Dad will probably do it for no money. You know what I mean? But the point is, if you want to build an actual business, you've got to do it from someone who's not related to you. For me, the sweet spot is like $20 to $25 an hour if it's my car. It's literally like $40 to $60 an hour if it's their truck. That number doesn't matter. You've just got to do the math on that and take that out of the deal, and you do the math on seeing if it can go. But you've got to build. If you're flipping like that, you've got to build out the call list, so to speak. If this guy can't do it, I'm calling the next guy. If I get four or five down the line and this deal is going to make $1,000, I hate to ask it of my wife, but can I miss dinner tonight? So the longer you build that out, the more you project it. Actually being able to have a life.
Speaker 2So when you started doing this as a teacher, how long until this income replaced your teacher's income or exceeded it?
Speaker 1Once I started buying lawnmowers, it was instantaneously. The first lawnmower I bought was right at the summer, and I made a couple hundred bucks on the zero turn.
Speaker 2And remind me what city you're in again?
Speaker 1Jackson, Michigan.
Speaker 2Jackson, Michigan.
Speaker 1All right.
Speaker 2A couple hundred bucks on your first zero turn.
Speaker 1The second one, I made... I made closer to 500, and that's when the light bulb really went off. That summer, I bought and sold 30 of them. So I profited 20 to 30K that summer, just summer. So then alongside teaching, it was absolutely past it. And that was hard, right? Because you're teaching. That's happening after teaching hours. And so by the end of that summer, the students that... At the end of that teaching, the students that didn't like me, you know, because I was too regimented or whatever it would be, you know, they were telling the principal, he's calling people in between class to strike deep. I was like, it's true. You know, I knew I was leaving by the end of that summer anyway. I loved teaching. I liked it, but I caught something that just grabbed hold of me. You know, that I'm in love with, you know.
Speaker 2Quick reminder, I know you've heard me say this before, but if you know someone that might want to make money buying and selling mowers on Facebook Marketplace, then please share this episode with them. It could change their life. What were you making as a teacher?
Speaker 1$40,000 maybe, $45,000. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2What turned you on to that first lawnmower? How did you find that deal? Where'd you find it? And where did you sell it?
Speaker 1The reason that I... So number one, I was buying and selling couches. Then I went to washers and dryers. Heating element went out on the dryer that I sold. And I'm thinking, golly, I want to do things the right way. I want to live my life according to God. And I want it to be under the right principles. And it felt dirty that I sold something that didn't work afterwards. And there was this... A little doubt of maybe I should stop. But when I tried to sell my first house, I couldn't actually sell it. And so I rented it to a guy.
Speaker 2The live-in flip?
Speaker 1So the one that I was living in, that I did the live-in flip, that's the one where everything gets discovered. And the house that I moved from, I ended up renting out instead of selling. That guy had a zero-turn lawnmower. And it looked like ragged, terrible. And he told me it was worth $2,500. And it blew my mind. That that could be worth that much money. I'm thinking in my head, 15% of $2,500 is a lot better than 15% of $300, right? And that's my whole thing. Even me right now with mowers, if I could get into construction equipment that sells for $100,000 to $1,000,000, that's less... It's the same amount of time. You know what I mean? Same amount of skill.
Speaker 2Where did you come up with the 15% number?
Speaker 1Just in general, right? You realize you're selling for $1,000,000. You realize you're selling for $1,000,000. You realize you're selling for $1,000,000. You realize you're selling for $1,000,000. You realize you're selling for $1,000,000. You realize you're selling something for $400, and you bought it for... You're into it for $325,000. It could be 20%, 30%. It's just a number.
Speaker 2So you bought it from this guy that was renting your house for $2,500, and then what?
Speaker 1Yeah, so the idea was zero turns are worth a lot more money than the stuff I was selling. So that's what turned me on to thinking, let's try it with a mower. And a mower is magical because do I know anything about mowers? No. But do the blades work? Do the blades turn on? Does it move forward and back? You can actually take it through a full testing cycle, unlike these dryers. You know, you've got to run... You're hauling them all around. These have... For $200. Yeah, exactly. So that's why. And then, you know... And this is... Here's the biggest misconception about flipping stuff. I knew nothing about equipment, right? People buy and sell stocks because they know what it's worth now, and they wait until it's worth more. Right? So you've got to learn to think about items like that. Buy it when it's low, and preferably when it's beautifully perfect condition. You don't need to do anything. The value's not in fixing it up. The value's in buying it low, right? Yeah. And then selling it for what it's exactly worth. And so I was selling it within a week. Like, every time. It was quick. It's about a fast... You've got to be able to get it for a price so you can sell it quick.
Speaker 2Okay, let me... I'm going to throw a wrench into this. I'm going to switch things up a bit, and then I want to get right back to that story. This is by total coincidence. Total coincidence. Just last night, I bought a zero-turn mower for myself. Like, to mow my lawn, right? Because I need one. I had a John Deere. I didn't like it. I sold it, you know, at the end of the season, and now it's getting warmer here in Dallas. So I went on Facebook Marketplace, and I want to show you what it looks like and tell you... I want you to tell me what you think I should have paid. Like, what it's worth.
Speaker 1It's undervalued because you're a deal. Okay.
Speaker 2I am, but also, like, I didn't work that hard on this one because I'm not trying to make money on this. I'm just trying to mow with it, so I kind of look at it differently. But let me... I'm going to share my screen, and just don't look at the price on the right side, okay? Let's do this. I was thinking I should buy this after I talk to Matt because he'll tell me what to pay, but I'm too impatient, so...
Speaker 1Because I want to do this right. Okay, I've got it covered, so I don't know the price.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1My first mower was a Toro. I'm a Toro dealer. Good for you. So you've got to tighten... You've got a good one.
Speaker 2It's a MX 5400, 54-inch, 171 hours.
Speaker 1179 hours. So that brand sells for about $6,000 right now. So you've got it used with that low. That's about a 10-year-old lawnmower.
Speaker 2It's got suspension on the seat. It's in great condition. It's got a roll bar.
Speaker 1You need to tell me. I know everything about that. I don't know. I'm hoping... I'm hoping... For sure, for sure, I certainly hope you pay less than $3,000, but if you've got it for under $2,000, you did really, really well.
Speaker 2I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 1Now, with that being said, if you bought it for $3,000, that, to me, is market value. So if you paid above that, you went high.
Speaker 2Okay. So it was listed for four eight weeks ago. Never sold. Yep. He put it to $3,500.
Speaker 1So he had it for above market value. That's why it didn't sell. Keep going. Yep.
Speaker 2And it's also wintertime still, right? No one's mowing right now. And I said, hey, I could have low-balled him, but I said, hey, if you deliver it to me, he was 45 minutes away. Deliver it to me. I'll pay $3,300.
Speaker 1There's value in him delivering it, so that's why you're willing to pay more. Yeah. So that's fair.
Speaker 2He was a flipper. He's like you. He was a flipper.
Speaker 1And I would have been the same. I would have been the same thing. You know, I'd have priced it for... You know, you need to go a little bit, possibly one. So yeah, you... I mean, you're a retail buyer. You're the retail buyer.
Speaker 2It's funny because when he came, I was like... I'm interviewing a guy tomorrow that made $50,000 in a month selling. He's like, what? $50,000? Him and the other guy. He was like, man, the best month we ever had was August 2025. We sold a mower every day for the whole month. 30 mowers. We made $30,000. And that was like 80 hours a week of working.
Speaker 1My guess is he's fixing these himself. I think he is. He should have bought it in the exact condition that he sold it to you. For $2,000. But he probably bought it for $1,000 and he did a bunch of work to it. He made more money, but his time per hour was way worse. And that's why he could never scale.
Speaker 2Yep.
Speaker 1Unless you fix it, right? So it's very hard for someone that knows how to fix stuff to take that approach. So that's my biggest advantage, right? Is that I don't... Now I know how to fix some stuff, but I choose not to do it.
Speaker 2Yeah. Did you know you can build a six-figure business with only $1,000? Only a 10,000-person email list? I just talked to the founder of VHive and he told me that there are people with 10,000 to 15,000 subscribers making more than newsletters that are 10 times that size. Here's how. Well, this one design newsletter with around 15,000 subs doesn't just sell ads. They run two-week online cohorts four times a year that generate six figures. And on top of that, they're charging companies $20,000 to $30,000 to get in front of their audience. And that's on one small, focused list. This is not about going viral anymore. It's about owning a niche and monetizing it correctly. And VHive gives you exactly the tools to do just that. Like surveys to understand exactly who your readers are or a built-in recommendation network to grow automatically. Paid subscriptions, digital products, sponsorship tools, and you keep 100% of the revenue. You don't need a massive audience to run a successful business. You need the right system. So move your email list over today. try out Beehive with 30% off for 30 days with code Chris 30 because this might be the simplest highest leverage business that you can build right now just go to beehive.com slash chris to learn more that's b-e-e-h-i-i-v.com slash chris okay so the way i understand it is you start with couches then you go to appliances you have this one bad appliance experience which is not abnormal right the heating element went out and you're like what am i doing all this work for 50 bucks 200 bucks um then you by accident come across this mower you make 350 bucks just flipping it not fixing it just buying it and selling it as is what do you do from there how do you start scaling this mower operation so really the first thing is what i
Speaker 1already talked about right you gotta hire someone what's the what's the biggest leverage task that you're doing and what is it when you're flipping it's finding the deal that's no that's the thing that you can't that's very hard to outsource it's very hard to teach that part of it right so what's the easiest thing to do what's the most time-consuming thing to do it's to sit in the car for five hours if this thing is two hours away you know what i mean so that's the first thing you should outsource you should not outsource that until you've done that yourself a handful of times amen brother so same thing it's a lot easier to get somebody with super low skill to drive for 20 bucks an hour than it is that someone who's got negotiating skills so you've actually got to learn to negotiate the deal all the way down as low as possible get an agreed upon price first and then go but you can't do sense of losing the deal and you got you know speed the lead on the sales side is the same thing on buying and selling so it is more
Speaker 2effective to do that negotiations in person right but you just you can't scale if you do every
Speaker 1negotiation in person yeah do it over the phone now what i would do is i would send someone with a slip of paper that's like an inspection sheet okay that's what i would do now and then i would have them call me afterwards and then i would re
Speaker 2negotiate even lower let's say you see this toro two hours away the same one that i just bought in michigan it's listed for three grand you're not going to pay over two for it so you get them on the phone you're like listen man i do this that has this it needs a new tire yada yada yada i can get you to 2300 he's like i'll be there today i'll be there in two hours okay cool i'll send my guy awesome he comes with an inspection sheet like yeah actually the blade's a little bent right it's rattling a little bit i can do 2100 i can do 2000 right is that kind of
Speaker 1how you do it that's well that's kind of it but you're missing some you know like negotiating 101
Speaker 2he who speaks first right right right he says the price yeah but yeah obviously the the core
Speaker 1concept is the same but like the best way to negotiate with me a dealer or any what you're trying to buy anything you make them lay down the number first okay yeah so they've already done it by 3000 right but you gotta ask what's the lowest that you would possibly consider taking now the biggest mistake people make is that you're not going to be able to buy anything you're not going to be able to buy anything is that's their first question now yeah what's yeah welcome to that build what's the only thing that you have in common with that person the only thing you have in common with that person is knowing about that machine so what do you do you talk about that machine and you don't totally contrary you don't talk it down now you ask them a lot of questions about it but you actually talk it up you talk about how nice the machine it is the more that they connect with you over the machine then you know they're winning the game they're winning the game they're willing to actually take a lower price because they're liking you they're starting to like you more yes exactly so for me to finish that they lay down the number right and then let's say they don't lay down the number what do you do if they're forcing you to say the first number what do you think what's your guess they want you to say a number what do you do they won't say a number uh you walk away or pretend to walk away you offer an unrealistically low number so let's take what you say and you're willing to actually take a lower price because they're liking you should have done if i would have gotten a hold of you before you did this what should you had done what's a number that in your wildest dreams you don't think he would accept on that so he had 3,500 what is 1,500 oh yeah so just say say you know and obviously the further you go you know the more that they won't but that will force him to actually say the number right yeah yeah yeah so you should you should have built rapport then you should have said what's the absolute lowest you could possibly consider taking for this you shouldn't have brought up the delivery yet and let's say he says 3,000 you're quiet right you're just listening up man you know you just let that silence sit you know what i mean well tell you what you know and obviously if you already said three i was literally thinking like a couple thousand bucks and then he'll say oh jays don't fit you know he'll go on and say no that's what i was thinking but like i mean i is there a middle ground you know is there a middle ground but i'll deal with a flipper they might just be tired of it and say i'll tell you what i can do that it will surprise you the amount of people that will take the number that you think is crazy so you lay down an unrealistically low number right and then work off that and if they don't say anything let's say that he doesn't say 3,000 and you say 2,000 he will then actually say the real number that's going everyone's got a number in their head he'll say three grand when he never would have before right so that that's like negotiating 101 right there okay so after you
Speaker 2sold the first one what were your next steps to start scaling that to scale it you have to
Speaker 1understand it right so i was just in the trenches doing it myself for the first you just started buying and selling yourself 15 i'm going to drive i'm picking it i'm making calls all that sort of stuff she's getting upset because i'm on the road at night you know and then you start to you start to pick up patterns of like gosh i'm spending eight hours a day in the car you know and so that's when you realize okay i gotta call someone okay so how many
Speaker 2mowers would you say you bought yourself before you hired your driver i bet it was like five to
Speaker 1ten it wasn't a crazy amount second layer of this actually turning into a business i bought one it worked perfectly right because i didn't want to buy something that i didn't know you know i didn't know how to fix it well one of them just stopped working when i was driving around the middle of my lawn well i had no idea so i thought you know i i driven by this house that always had these old mowers sitting in front of them just drove up to this guy's house i knocked on his door and i said do you do you like fix these and he said yeah well turns out this guy bill so i drive him over to my house and he determines that the fuel pump went bad and so then all of a sudden i got a mechanic you know what i mean and people when you're trying to scale a business notice what i don't have full time employees i just got and it's just a it's a 1099 base you're in there you know basis and then you start to 1099 you start to like hire people and you start to realize my gosh i've got this guy like he's he's been doing like 20 hours a week for me at that point hire him part-time what were you what were you paying bill for this stuff bill had his own rate right but he was probably working at like 40 he's probably like 14 bucks an hour so the hustle stuff you'll find right now what's my shop rate it's 125 an hour why can i charge that it's because i market myself i did the work of bill if he would market himself he could easily charge 20 25 that's not he wasn't optimizing for money he just wanted something to do here and there you know what i mean i started to push beyond his limits you know he's 70 year old he's got a cane you know so once you found bill did
Speaker 2you start uh like opening up your parameters of what you could buy like being more willing to flip
Speaker 1things and not just buy and sell oh i shouldn't buy even with a mechanic in the back i should not buy anything that needs any kind of work a little bit different formula now that i've got a dealership because i'm trying to keep the guys working in the off season so then it actually does make sense so i can keep his wages so the whole you know everything changed right when i actually this turned into an actual dealership
Speaker 2okay so all right so you use bill bill fixes the fuel pump how do you scale to your biggest month ever like how did you have that monster month what did that month look like part of how that
Speaker 1one came together is at that point i'd probably been doing this for like a year and a half i don't even know how long it was but i've been doing it for like a year and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half and a half everyone thought i was crazy when i quit teaching and gave up the benefits so they they picture that i've got these little lawn mowers sitting in front of the house they got no idea what's actually going on so my cousin is telling me like you are crazy dude to possibly do this he's where he's a corrections officer and uh my wife doesn't want me to do it she's risk averse and anyway what what ends up happening is my cousin dan he ends up quitting um he ends up quitting his job to come work for me out of my house and i'm like i don't know what to do with him i don't know what to do with my barn at the prison yeah yeah if he quits he quits working at the prison gets out of there and there's other guys that i played basketball with in college and i taught them how to do this okay and what i had a deal structure set up that i would teach them how to do it we would use half of their money half of mine we would use my equipment my setup and i would get a certain percentage of that deal and i think it was like a 50 50 so if they found a deal i would still get 50 of the pie i had four i built i this is what i thought the big business was going to be i built a business called family of flippers so i would teach people but it was kind of using some of my capital i had a guy from nashville tennessee doing it we had like i had like five guys doing this alongside myself most of them doing it from my barn some of them doing it from afar it was a really big trust basis thing because i knew these people me me personally you know this video that that you discovered me off of me personally the stuff i bought and sold was about like 30 to 35 grand that i made and then there was like you know 15 to 20 grand made from like the 50 50 from the other people yeah 30 grand number one like really pivotal piece was like number one you got a monster trailer and you're going out to ohio ohio is like the hotbed of i'm in michigan ohio for what it's the hotbed to find the equipment i don't know what it is but they'll come back with four or five pieces of equipment well and this is a really big hack for you guys looking to buy and sell lawnmowers there are dealers that just hate dealing with used stuff and i came across one of these dealers the nicest guy in the world became a mentor to me as i actually opened up my equipment dealership here um shout out uh shout out to wanna makers okay these guys the largest simplicity dealer in the nation and this guy's just getting droves of lawnmowers in and the first one i buy it was just crazy underpriced i'm like how is a dealer selling it for this cheap and so i put two and two together i'm like this is like a source for me now you know what i mean and so that's we didn't just buy the first time i said well what else do you have we left with a trailer full of three or four and i i got to the point where i was probably buying like you know 20 30 mowers a month just from this one guy talk about leverage right now you can call it out i'm still searching but get massive volume from this guy and so that was a huge i mean and there's enough room for me to make a thousand two thousand twenty five hundred dollars on the mowers that he's got so each each yes yes you know so like zero turn mower that i sell brand new now i mean they can get to like 12 15 20 000 is crazy what they can sell for and that's why this is such a good niche um so you can have a used lawnmower that sells for five grand and great value because they sell new for 15 grand yeah what do you make on the new ones on average so it's it's a volume game you know it's 18 to 22 and that's that's if you're doing it right that's if you're doing it right you know dealers that aren't doing it right you're probably making more like 10 to 15 percent you know
Speaker 2you'll buy a new one for 12 and try to sell it for 15 yeah and they've got like it's called map
Speaker 1pricing which is minimum advertised allowed pricing and so you pretty much follow map there are dealers that don't follow map they'll go above it you know i i'm trying to build a national platform with what i'm doing right so i'm going with like a constant steady a fair price some people maybe are trying to sell it under that but i would rather go volume and that's the same thing when you're flipping right you don't have to buy a new one you don't have to buy a new one you don't want to you don't try to make all the money you try to make 80 of the money and move it within a
Speaker 2week you know yeah so let's let's talk timeline when did you go from like when did you buy your first mower and then you started scaling up and then when did you open your actual actual dealership and then when did you start selling new from your dealership i bought my first zero
Speaker 1term i quit teaching in that for probably about exactly a year and then this was from third of an acre property it's the eight lawnmowers sitting in a little two-car garage and i'm like oh my god i've got five or six enclosed trailers in the backyard so imagine your neighbor's got to love you right but that's why i had a great i had a great relationship right with my neighbors i moved to after i quit teaching then i bought a um a 20 to 24 acre property with a barn behind it and that's where i could actually i had the space to actually do it but that in and of itself they had an estate sale right at the house that i live in right now and i'm back there trying to find a lawnmower and then i realized that i had to find a lawnmower and i had to find a lawnmower and i i'm like what are you guys doing with the house well we're gonna put it on the market in a couple months so i bought it you know it's a 1970 original house with neon in one you know room and and uh you know all these bright colors so you just imagine a 1970 original house and uh it's just been awesome it's like american dream right you you buy the house now now you get the finishings in there and i've got the skills to do that so but even that right i've got now instead of paying someone at 30 bucks an hour because my time's worth more than that at this point and so and so then i operated like that for probably like a couple of years from this property four years ago this was a dance studio when i bought it it wasn't a dealership i just bought a building and again i'm a deal guy so i got a great deal on the real estate they didn't market it the right way shame on them but we were driving by and thank goodness my wife was looking you know she said it's for sale and um and i had no lines right i just i literally i bought this and these people probably thought this guy's not gonna make it there's 10 or 15 used lawnmowers sitting out there this baby blue building you know that i'm knocking wall there and uh you know slowly you pick up brands you pick up toro then you pick up trailer line then you pick up bad boy and that i mean if you came you would never know i mean it's a full-fledged dealership at this point four years later so
Speaker 2that's amazing are you still buying used on facebook marketplace as well i did a couple weeks ago because there were
Speaker 1we're kind of slow in the winter you know that's another hack i'm trying to figure out what to do so we bought i'm trying to think of the last deal i got but i bought like a kubota side by side like you know you can sit beside each other that's why they call this side by atv and i bought it for 8 000 but this needed work and i've got this listed for 13 grand right now but we did have to put work into this okay probably hope to make a few grand on that this is a i bought one that needed work i bought a polaris ranger that needed work and i got a crazy deal on it i bought it for maybe 4 500 5 000 and i sold it a few days ago for 10 grand it needed some work on the engine and my mechanic knew what he was doing he got it fixed i probably made like four grand on that then the guy traded in his side by side we got that for i think it was 40 no i bought that for 37 50 that one's probably worth eight grand so that's people think here's the other big hack for you guys listening you think that you don't want people to know that you're buying and selling people want transparency the guy that you bought that from he ended up telling you you might tell your buddy to call this guy yeah yeah like that right or you might call him back in three years and say hey what do you got and you trade that in and he makes money on that again so you being transparent is everything you know yeah it's more profitable and it's it's all about how you word it you don't say you know you start to learn the verbiage i you don't say i flip stuff it's all about how you frame it to people what
Speaker 2are your monthly sales at your dealership during like the busy months so our best month we did like 1.1 million last year in a month in a month yeah holy crap and what's your net margin on that
Speaker 1you know we're 20 to 25 so 90 of my business is sales um that's not a healthy dealership um you you should be like 60 sales i do so much on the sales side that that's just grown so much faster than the service side right but yeah so think like 20 to 25 you got the brick and mortar the overhead all that so good dealers are walking away with like 7 to 12 net you know at the end of the tunnel yeah that's amazing um what's crazy to me is you're
Speaker 2in a city of 30 000 people jackson michigan right like if someone just texas we got a mower going to texas there you go if someone didn't want to scale they didn't want to open a dealership they just want to do this on the side from their house on facebook marketplace buying on facebook selling on facebook how scalable is this like in all markets because you're in a cold market that i mean texas is a better market because they're mowing nine
Speaker 1months out of the year here is it pretty scalable it's absolutely scalable and you tell you what the secret is not lawnmowers it's not trailers it's that you pick something and it doesn't even matter you could be pressure washing a house it doesn't and the more you do it the more you learn what works and what does not work and if you happen to want to do with mowers you'll watch a channel you watch the matt howe channel you'll learn how that works you know what i mean but the point is you get on board with someone that you resonate with and then you don't do it for a month you do it for 10 years and then absolutely you know it's i've been on the more on the market
Speaker 2for this mower and it's led me down these rabbit holes on facebook marketplace where i'll see like the same guy selling multiple mowers and i'll click into their profile i found five to ten of my mowers their profile i found five to ten guys that have dozens of mowers listed not dealerships just guys would you suggest that people like they simply try to buy on facebook and sell on facebook not things that need to be fixed but just buy under value sell at or above value or would you suggest that people try to find these estate sales and garage sales so they can find stuff that's like off the radar and then sell it on facebook you should you should try to do that here would be
Speaker 1my suggestion start calling dealers and seeing what you're doing and then sell it on facebook and use the equipment they have that is way under arbitrage there are people that are just buying all their stuff from dealers find the dealers that are not advertising well find the one not putting their inventory on facebook like they should be okay i have to actually like hit the hit the phone book you know go on google and start calling the ones and you'll start you haven't used and you'll find one that's probably the biggest hack i'd say right there i like i just thought but that's that
Speaker 2would absolutely work it's one point of contact for mowers every week every month anytime you get a trade in let me know exactly um and then you just
Speaker 1visit them maybe they don't call you because they're so busy just you call them you hopefully they're local enough that you can go find them but if if that guy comes to my store i'm giving the ratty mower out back that's not the mower you buy you buy the one that's complete ready to go for me if i've got 10 lawnmowers sitting out there and some guy walks up on my doorstep a young bad how and he wants to buy all 10 of them i'd give a deal i would absolutely feel and more people will buy from him out of his barn than me sometimes because they feel like they're getting a deal when it's not from a dealership so yeah you know go to a dealer and just find the best one or two you know mowers he's getting you know don't just face value do that right but vet that a little bit you know yeah now i've got a buddy that that
Speaker 2rents out washers and dryers and in the process of doing that he discovered by accident that a lot of these mom and pop appliance shops need people like independent drivers to deliver appliances they don't want to deliver them themselves do you think there's an opportunity there to just be a delivery guy for these dealerships every time they sell one you deliver it or yeah maybe
Speaker 1i mean that's a job at that point but you could maybe that helps you learn the industry a little bit people talk about someone for free to learn an industry you know and uh that's that's no one's actually willing to do that but you know people pay you what you're doing what you work yeah well
Speaker 2it was a good setup he worked it as a business and the individual would pay you the appliance shop a delivery fee and then they would just pass that on to him so he would just have like a route every day he was like just a third-party delivery guy right is are there any other opportunities you see in this space maybe tangential to mowing or tangential to flipping that you think are still in their early stages today that people could attack it doesn't matter
Speaker 1the like it's it's for flipping it's not about a mower it's not about a trailer there's some item on facebook right now i don't know what it is that is worth a good amount of money two to five grand that has a big margin to it and no one's buying and selling it right now well you got to pick a market that people are actually buying it's an actual need you know that's out there i don't know what it is you know well i know a guy in north carolina that
Speaker 2does that with sheds so he buys and sells sheds yeah it could be a matt this is amazing um is there anything i should have asked you that i didn't ask you that people would might like to hear or learn
Speaker 1um number one my life my life without the person of jesus christ is far worse okay amen and i can tell you that from the experience of being super filled with my faith and i can tell you that for being more of like agnostic like i don't really even know if there's a god but the last year so my life i mean god was gifting me with learning about business when i when i wasn't following him and he made it abundantly clear to me that he was gifting me that skill that when i actually do have faith i could use that for him in my life is not even 10 times better now you know it's infinitely
Speaker 2better when it's in accordance with my faith i'm glad you said that that's awesome thank you i'm a i'm a believing man as well yeah completely agree thank you matt where can people find you if they
Speaker 1want to learn more so buy a lawnmower for me we'll ship it to texas we'll ship to anywhere at how equipment um okay so equipment on youtube i'm in the trenches right now so if i'm just a little bit ahead of you hopefully i can help you you know if you watch that channel all right thank you matt thank you appreciate you
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