If you don’t want to read it, you can watch this video.
A lot of resellers end up with things that won’t sell on eBay, Amazon or Craigslist. As the stuff starts stacking up, they even consider giving it away just to get rid of it. If you do that, you’re throwing away money. Listen to me. You’ll make more money with base hits versus homeruns.
Homeruns are nice and they’re beautiful. But, name one baseball player who has made a living off homeruns. I can’t think of any. If they don’t get those base hits, the homeruns don’t mean “jack.”
The homeruns are icing on the cake and the cake is base hits. If you get a guy who is hitting like 600 or 700, he’ll be the richest baseball player ever. That’s how important base hits are to winning the game.
Now back to this business of creating your own flea market. One of the things I noticed when I started buying more storage auction units is I would get the same things over and over. Our cutoff was $25 or $30. Anything worth less than that, we put in the dollar area. Why? Because I knew I was going to get that item over and over again.
One of the mental things that kills so many people in this business is thinking an item is worth more than it is. That will be based on how often you get this stuff. If you get a very nice stainless-steel microwave and this is the first one you’ve gotten this year and you want $40 for it, I say that is the proper decision.
But if you get a regular run of the mill microwave and you know next week you’re going to get another one, regardless of how nice it is, it needs to be between $5 and $10 because you are going to replace that inventory before you can sell it at the higher price. If you know you are going to get this stuff frequently, it is best to blow it out.
One of the reasons you have this small inventory you can’t sell is because you think it is worth more than it is. Based on how readily available it is and how easily it can be replaced, it is just a commodity and you need to sell it for a low price to get rid of it. Why are you treating it like it is special? That’s like dating a tramp and treating her like a queen.
This is what you do to get rid of that stuff. Create your own flea market. People will say, “I don’t want to do that.” Then you don’t want to make money. Many of you are in a place where there’s really not a great flea market in your town. There’s not a great flea market in your city.
In the best flea market in my city, you will make a lot of money selling small, cheap, normal, run-of-the-mill stuff that you get all the time. In my resale business, we made the bulk of our money off of small stuff. Sixty-eight percent of our revenue came from small stuff. Why? We got it all the time.
One of the biggest things that will help your business if you are a picker, estate person or reseller, is the ability to solve not only your problems but your customers’ problems too. That is how I saw my role. I was a problem solver. That was the biggest thing I did.
That’s where the flea market idea came from. Upscale Garage Sale was essentially a flea market with some nice stuff in it. That’s what it was because any day of the week you can go out and get clothes, irons, microwaves, and shoes and a lot of other stuff that’s going to range from crappy to nice.
This is what happens. You have this stuff on sale for $1. People come in and they can’t believe the stuff is only $1. They come to checkout and they spend $20, $30, $40 or $50. That’s how you move the small stuff.
When you are in a position to get lots of stuff, you are in one of the best positions to be in. Once you learn how to build a customer base, you are in a position to make more money. Now, I just gave you for free all you need to know to build a successful six-figure business.
Now this is what is going to be the problem. It requires work. It’s going to take you working your ass off. But if you like money and freedom and you like being in charge of your own destiny, this will be cool for you.
Back to the discussion about building your own flea market, it will not happen overnight. Initially this was not so much a plan as an accident. We were losing money because we were not presenting the merchandise properly. To address the problem, I knew we had to do something different.
Initially we started renting units. I had a lot of units rented. Stuff had to be processed in the back. It did not come in the store unless it was “sale ready.” Then things got better.
The resale game is not common sense. If it were, everyone would be rich. Everyone would be doing what they want to do and there would not be all this bitching and whining in the resale space. There is a ton of bitching and whining in this space because people are untrained.
You have to have a strategy. You have to have a plan to be really successful. A lot of people are sucked up in this frigging entitlement mentality that makes them believe that because they breathe they should be entitled to success. It doesn’t work like that playboy. It never did and never will.
Rid yourself of the entitlement mentality. Rid yourself of the idea that you know more than others. You have to get involved with continuing education. Things change fast.
If you’re going to have a business, you must track where you are month to month, quarter to quarter and year to year. You have to do it. Because if you don’t do it, you might be going backwards but you don’t know it until you are over the cliff. I see that with businesses all of the time. That is part of being a business owner.
If you are in a town that does not have a flea market, you are in the “hot bird” seat.
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