The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How to Start Reselling (Even With $0 in the Bank) w/ Shannon Jean⏐ Ep. #199

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.com.If you've ever gotten a newsletter from me, it was powered by Beehiiv. Built by the team behind Morning Brew, it's the only platform I’ve found that actually moves the needle. Go to beehiiv.com/chris and use code chris30 to get 30% off your first three months I sat down with Shannon Jean and we talked about how to spot overlooked opportunities and turn them into real money. We got into strategies for flipping items with zero upfront cost, how to use platforms like Facebook Marketplace, GovDeals, and B-Stock to find profitable products, and how to build repeatable systems around local reselling. Shannon shared how to create a network of local buyers, how to wholesale to discount stores, and how your personal story can actually help you close more sales. If you want to start something scrappy and profitable, this one’s packed with ideas. You can find Shannon on X: @ShannonJean (https://x.com/ShannonJean)And learn more at: https://shannonjean.com/If you liked this one and want more from Shannon, check out the other episodes with him here:Start Here: How to Build a Business from Nothing with Shannon | Ep. #180This One Belief Will Kill Your Business Before It Starts with Shannon | Ep. #177Shannon returns! How to Know if You Will Win at Entrepreneurship and Love It Too? (+ a Few Biz Ideas). Part 2 of 2. Ep #064How to Start a Digital Detox Biz (+ a few other ideas) with Shannon Jean. Part 1 of 2. Ep #061Shannon returns! More high ticket flipping and deal making tips. Part 2 of 2. Ep. #041Asymmetric bets & flipping high ticket items for profit with Shannon Jean. Part 1 of 2. Ep. #038Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Unlocking Reselling Opportunities02:47 The Power of Liquidation Deals06:00 Finding Hidden Gems in Unsexy Markets08:49 Building Relationships for Reselling Success12:08 Leveraging Local Markets for Profit14:55 Understanding Product Demand and Pricing17:47 Avoiding Common Reselling Pitfalls21:10 Crafting Your Reselling Narrative24:00 The Future of Reselling: Trends and Insig

Some of this stuff for just reselling, you don't have to spend any money. I click over to Target, and there it is. They sell it for $250. Your cost per item is $3.78. Wow. You can do this every day over and over and over. Something that almost no one thinks to do is to list stuff before you have it. Buy with math and sell with emotion.

I want to sell iPhones. No, you don't. There's no money in it. I want to sell sneakers. That's tough to make it. Go find the boring stuff that other people ignore. I'm going to show you how to buy those products here in a couple minutes. It's crazy.

All right. I have a headache. My friend Shannon just came on. He's been on the podcast half a dozen times. He's a guest favorite. That's why he keeps coming back. We did something different today. He shared his screen, went to all these liquidation sites, and we just analyzed deals together. These are deals where people could make tens of thousands of dollars from a multi-hundred or multi-thousand investment. Super approachable. Super exciting. This episode will do extremely well because it's a certified banger. Please share with a friend and enjoy. You can spend, you know, literally a few hundred to get involved in this stuff and learn how it works.

And some of this stuff for just reselling, you don't have to spend any money. We have a member that is, he's a weatherman actually up in, up north. And he picks up free couches from Facebook marketplace, takes him home, cleans him up in his garage,

takes better photos and everything, puts him back out in his driveway and sells them. You know, so he does nothing, no investment, but his own time. And he's super excited about it. Yeah,

I've posted about it. This guy, Mike, he's amazing. And you can just conjure income out of just your time and you're willing this to push the boundaries, right? Yes. Well, I'm about to share my screen and show you this picture here that I took in Utah. I was filming a video. I saw this.

Yeah. It's filming a video about appliance rental on Facebook Marketplace where we got two videographers. We're walking down the street. We're talking about business. And I look over as they're filming and I see this couch in the front yard. And if you're if you're only listening, it's. just says free with duct tape on it in the middle of the cushion. And I'm just like, we need to film on that couch.

That would be an awesome album cover, first of all. Absolutely. And that could be your first flip. You can make. That could be it. You can make 200 bucks. Yeah. We sat there for a half hour and had one of our segments just browing down on the couch about

flipping appliances. And especially if you're like, I was talking about this young guy, Tristan who bought this, he bought this truckload of flat pack, brand new flat pack furniture. He reached out and said, what do you think, you know, how, and it was a small investment. I think he paid less than $4,000 for the entire truck. This is 300 pieces of furniture. And I said, where do you live?

He goes, well, you're right in between two colleges. And it's July. So it's perfect timing to start talking to parents, get into Facebook marketplace, get into Facebook groups. There's a, you know, a group called flown and grown. That's all about kids going away to college. So it's just perfect, man. Like the couch thing, I always tell everybody, I think I've said it on this show.

you know, if you live in a college town, you should be in the couch business because every kid and every house and every frat and sorority, they're constantly churning couches over and over and over. So just a great, it's right in front of you. Beautiful. That's right. All right. Well, what has been catching your eye on? Yeah, let me share my screen. I want to show you some.

Okay, here we go. So Target is an interesting company to buy from. I don't look at them all the time, but when I see. brand new stuff I really like. That's kind of, that's cool. And I go down and I said, okay, what's to sell them for? Target's telling us that MSRP's about $11,000. Okay, so that's not true.

But we know that they put that there. But the first thing that caught my eye is this first line. Number one, the auction's sitting at $525. Okay, right now. And it's going to close. Three hours left. Three hours. So yeah, it's going to go a little bit more.

But I predict that it sells for less than $1,000. Because I've seen these before. First of all, what makes you even? want to click into sporting goods in the first place? I like sports just because of your history or why do you like it? And it's, so I got to target. They have tons of stuff.

You know, everything sells at a target. But right now this time of year, sporting goods kind of great, outdoor stuff. What do they have? I'm just curious to look at what it is and, you know,

where it's at. This is five pallets, new condition, unsold merchandise. So you get all this in there. Unsold merchandise. No signs of use. This is really important.

So not returns. They're not returns. We're going to, I'm going to show you some returns in a minute. But as I was just kind of scrolling around, the first thing that caught my eye was is 10 by six rigid air dock. And Target says they sell for 250 bucks. So a lot of times they lie. But I just, like, I click over to Target. And there it is. They sell it for $250.50. And it's one of those floating rigid docks. Like if you have a lake and a, oh yeah. Right. That kind of stuff. You know,

we're in the middle of July. Great time to sell it. You know, if you can get it here, $250. And right now, your cost per item is $3.78. Wow. So if you buy this. Of correct. And this is, yeah, I would look, okay, if I'm going to spend, let's say, $1,000 on this, well, how many of these do I have to sell at $100? On Facebook Carcplace and blow one up and put it in water and get your whole investment

back. Then you have 66 pickleball sets, trim a tree. we're going to talk about seasonal stuff in a minute. But then we also have this in-text 14th. This is a swimming pool, a 14 by 42 clear view swimming pool that targets those for $450. Right? And then you've got 40 rollic play tunnels for your kids that, you know, put them up. You know, how fast that pool would go on Facebook marketplace right now?

Yeah. Today. Right. That's right. So that's what I'm, it's finding things. Everybody wants to say, oh, I want to sell iPhones. No, you don't. You know, there's no money in it.

You know, I want to sell this. I want to sell sneakers. That's tough to make it. You know, go find the kind of boring stuff that other people ignore. So take a look at this. I love this deal. And I love the brand new. I love outdoor products.

I love that it's got a manifest so I can go through down and go through every single item. I love that there are 30 high ticket items that I can sell a portion of those quickly to get my investment back. I'm always focused on. especially when you're just starting, the question in your head should be, how do I get my money back? Not how much profit I'm going to make. Because you're going to learn all these lessons. You're going to learn about Facebook Marketplace.

You can learn about eBay. You're going to learn about shipping and logistics. And you're going to make mistakes. So you're just like, all right, what's on this list? Oh, well, these 10 by 6 rigid air. And boy, I got this one swimming pool that's a 14 by 42 pool brand new. That's amazing. It's a great deal.

You know what I've noticed? Do you remember last time you were on the podcast? I talked about how I had all these Tesla credits. And so I was buying stuff from Tesla.com and selling them on Facebook marketplace. Yeah. It's so interesting what you learn when you do that. Like just when you list stuff, just to see what the demands like, because I listed like five things before I ever bought anything. And the hottest thing I listed was a the wall charger.

Like your standard Tesla, I think they're like $450 that people put in their garage to charge their Tesla, level two charger. Okay. What was very interesting about that is you can only get those from online, right? Like no one's going to drive to a Tesla store to buy it. So they're $450. And then you pay 100 shipping and then you pay 8% sales tax. So you're looking at 600 bucks. And I was able to sell those for $450, $500.

And like I sold, I could have sold 20 of them if I had them because there was so much demand. Yeah. So what's also interesting and you don't want to do this in your research, but oftentimes you can sell it for more than what you expect if it's a hot item simply because like your house is closer to their house than Target. Or you don't want to pay Target 8% sales tax or you don't want to pay shipping or you don't want to wait for it. Maybe you pay the equivalent of what it costs the target with the sales tax and with the shipping, but you don't want to wait three or four days. So you'll go drive to pick it up, right? So I'm not suggesting that people bake that into their research. But have you

ever seen that where you list something and you're able to sell it for closer to retail because of it's just like in demand or it's seasonal and you're in the season? Yeah. And also like I had it was a big life lesson to me when I started this handbag selling designer handbag experiment and I was selling and people are like, hey man, what are you doing selling it at that price? I was like, well, I thought that price was close to the retailer and they said, yeah, but there's a two year wait to get that bag. Now I had no idea. So in that. research it is what is the availability of it and popularity of certain things like you know there's people that resell those little Trader Joe bags. Yeah. Line up at the store when they release them and

yep. So it's it's like when you go to a restaurant and they have market price. Well, you need to know the market price of what you're selling. I hate that. And understand. And the guy that runs the mini Costco store up in Washington full of stuff, he's like, you know, I priced my shoes at like 70. percent of the Costco price and they sell every single day. And he's got racks and racks and racks of shoes. And so if you're not in as a competitive market or that's a hot product or you can sit on it, you know, one of the bags that I had the most success with their brand was a brand called Sprayground because they do limited runs. And I would buy as much as I could get my hands on and I would just wait. And then they're gone. They sell out. And then I would list them

for sale. And then you could, I would sell them $200 more than. the retail price. Yeah. It's amazing. Oh, man. I'm going to show you another one. I want to show you another one. Let's do it.

I could do this all day. I could too. Let me show you this. It's my favorite so far. You shouldn't have favorites, but I am. Okay. Let me share this one. This is interesting.

There's a company called Walker Edison. Okay. And they make flat pack furniture. And like here's this auction. Entry tables, chests and more. You get a full manifest. You should never buy anything without a manifest. because you don't know what you're going to get.

You know exactly what the condition is. These are brand new. They've got photos that you can look at of the products that are all beautiful, factory sealed, fantastic. You look here. It's got, you know, everything from beds, entry tables, four-door chest. Now, you know, they say it's retail $76,000. Well, the retail price is a lie.

That's just a fact. So I just like, just cut it in half. Just say, okay, let's just say it's $35,000. And right now the bid is at $2825, $2,825. So this is going to sell for not much more than that. It'll probably maybe $3,000, $4,000. A 95% discount to quote retail, right? Yep, you got some freight because 16 pallets is almost a truckload.

So to me, because this is in California, it'd be like $1,200. So let's say it sells for, I guarantee it you're into this for less than $5,000. Mm-hmm. And this stuff, sells itself. You get it. You put together a sample of each item. Now, I would want to look at the bed thing. This is the one that's weird. But there's, this place has, there's three or four different auctions that go on every single day. There's chairs, TV councils, all kinds of stuff. But this stuff is not difficult to sell. It's beautiful for a Facebook marketplace. You build one of each. You take some pictures. I was just going to say that. Yep. You take some video of you building it. You do a time lapse video of you putting it together. That should be the first media. Yep. Yeah, exactly.

It's just going quick. It's the same as grinding a stump. Same thing. You kiss her eye. They're like, what's this guy doing? You stop, you look and go, hey, you know, this is a, you know, $170 item. I'm selling it for, you know, $90, whatever is. And you'll be into them for less than $20, $20 an item.

It's the same concept as IKEA. As a matter of fact, I would use some of that verbiage when I was listing it, you know, similar to IKEA or something. something like that where you could fucking. Keyword stuff it with IKEA, even though it's not IKEA because it's like IKEA. Yeah. This company's Walker Edison. It's sold up on the B stock marketplace. So you know you're buying it direct. You're not buying from some middleman. B stock is not marking anything up. They're not cherry picking. Which is why you need a reseller certificate. You need a resale permit to get it. You can get it. I'll tell you where to get it. Just go to shannongeen.com

slash resale and there's every list of every state that you can take a link to get your resale permit it's easy it doesn't cost anything don't pay anybody to do it anyway so this is you know we've got 32 you know 50 some out 60 some odd pallets worth of this product that's all selling at 90% off of wow their store price 95% yeah 95% this is my favorite I mean I know we're not done yet, but this is my favorite, mostly because I know that I can lean on Facebook marketplace for this. This is, people go to different platforms for different things, right? If I want to buy a used iPhone, I'm going to go to eBay. I'm not going to go to Amazon or Facebook Marketplace because I'm going to trust the seller.

They're going to have good feedback. It's small. It's going to ship quickly. If I want to buy a bed frame, I'm only going to go to Facebook Marketplace. Yeah. That's right. And you could just, like, I would use like the stock photos for this. And I would take my own pictures and videos of this and say brand new.

Like, of course. You're going to be a similar price to the used comparables of this, except correct. Except brand new. Yep. In the box. So how do you, when you hear 16 pallets, that's like, so I like to say, all right, a pallet is almost four by four feet.

Yeah. Just about. So 16. So we're talking like 200 square feet. So picture like a bedroom. And it's like a big bedrooms. You can put in your garage. If you had.

If you emptied your garage, you put in your garage. Or you can buy a store. get a storage unit, you know, that kind of thing, if you didn't want people come to your house. But, I mean, this is how you build. These are relatively, you know, it's low risk. You're investing, you know, less than $5,000 or this, there's a couple of them, $5,000. But you need to learn your market. You know, you need to go up and study it.

It's like, oh, are people selling this kind of product on Facebook? What are the used stuff? Like you said, Chris, what do you stuff sell for? Gee, you know, this stuff sells for $100. I'm going to sell brand new, you know, that kind of thing. And I love deals like this, again, because no one knows. about this stuff. They just don't, they're not searching for it and it allows you, you know, these have like 19 bids, 23 bids, but these are, there's probably three or four people

bidding over and over again, right? It's not, it's not like 25, even, even so, it's still not much. But is there anything else on the, on this page that kind of stands out to you that as a good or a negative indicator? Are there any negative indicators to this one? Well, the negative thing I thought on that last one was the beds. I thought that was kind of weird. I don't know anything about bed frames, but that seems like a slower mover versus a console to put the flat panel TV on. It looks like they have one here with a fake fireplace in it. That's cool. I'm always wanting to buy close to me.

Like, I'm not going to buy this out of Ohio when I can buy it from California because I'm in California. So you always have to keep your freight. You know, you want to buy close to you. You know, one of the things I do is you do your study, figure it out,

do your research built, download the manifest that you'll get up here, which is essentially a spreadsheet. You list your prices of what you believe you can sell it for. And then you back it out. You just do it backwards. So you say, okay, if I could sell this one we were looking at, if I think I could sell it for $50,000, what can I pay? What am I going to pay?

Shipping included everything. Okay, I'm going to sell it for $50. It's going to cost me $7,000 to get here. Okay. Do you want to do that for $43,000? And then if you answers, yes, go up and put your $7,000. bid in there and walk away. Don't watch it anymore. Don't get emotionally involved in the bid. You may lose that one, but next week, there'll be four more and over and over and over.

One of the things I really like a lot of these auction places, especially Costco, they close auctions on the weekend. They always sell for less. So you should be bidding on the weekend because nobody else is. And you should put your bid in on Friday and leave. It's auto bid, it'll auto bid for you. you know. And for the love of everything, if you're looking at this and you see the manifest, don't just do your math. Go to Facebook marketplace and try to sell the thing. How many clicks do you get, if any?

That could prevent you from ever buying it. Yeah. That's right. That's something that almost no one thinks to do is to like list stuff before you have it, just for the research purpose. See how many, how about, how many messages? Yeah. Yes.

How about we do this real quickly? I'm going to do a little research here on the fly. Yep. and show what I would look for, which one of them has an interesting word that might appear or stand out? Maybe this retan platform king bed. Retan paneled platform king bed. Let me see. And for those they don't know, it was called Walker Edison. Yeah, Walker Edison. Yep. They're trying to be like the e-commerce only IKEA of the next generation. And they white label a ton of their stuff to companies like Wayfair and Walmart. But then they also sell directly. So,

It's pretty smart. They're like, all right, IKEA's crushing it, but they're retail. We want to be like IKEA, but we never want to sell retail. Yeah,

we don't want to store. And so that also means that there's stuff that you're getting on palettes is like, it's well packaged to be shipped and sold only online. That's right. Right. Yep. You got it. Retan paneled king bed.

I'm looking DFW. I'm going to do condition new. You don't have the luxury of doing on Facebook marketplaces knowing you can, but not as well, how much interest there. is in any given thing. Yeah, right. But I'm seeing there's almost nothing under $400.

Yeah. Three to $800 for these king beds. Some of them over a thousand, new in box, 550, Retan style bed frame 500. This might be the exact one. So if we were to, let's say conservatively, we sell them for a 350, what would our profit look like on that?

Yeah, right now the cost is, your cost on that landed will be about $30. That's crazy. Yeah. And this is every day. I mean, it's not, if you don't want to sell beds, find that go do the next thing. Yeah.

Yeah. It's wild. So you've probably heard me talk about Beehive before. And if you've ever received a newsletter from me, it was powered by Beehive. I've been using Beehive for the last year and a half. Their three founders left Morning Brew and built the platform so the rest of us could use the same tools that turned Morning Brew into a multi-million dollar operation.

That's why Beehive doesn't feel like every other newsletter platform because it's not. It was built by people who scaled a newsletter empire. Now you know that I only recommend stuff that actually moves the needle for me. This moves the needle. So go to Behive.com slash Chris. Use the code Chris 30 to get 30% off your first three months. Let me show you a bad example. Dude, all that.

What I don't think you should buy because it's too popular. Let's see here. And if you're listening in, I'm going to show you there's an image. of this four pallets of Stanley 40-ounce stainless steel H2.0 flow state quencher tumblers. These are everywhere, right? Every young girl, every soccer mom. And they're Stanleys. They are standards.

And they're brand new. The problem is Target says they're worth $37,800, $45 a unit. But you do a quick search and you see everybody sells them at $25 bucks. Maybe they're 25 because it's the, they're gray and they're not a bright color. So I don't know. I don't know anything about this market. But the bid is at $12,000 right now, not including freight. So they're at 1435 a unit.

Well, that's not a good deal. You can't pay 50% of what you find them in selling for. You'll be upside down on this deal. But people get enticed. You know, I always advise. Because it's Stanley. And they're popular. I see them everywhere.

Yeah. That's a bad thing to sell. Yeah. You know, if Target is is dumping them, what does that tell you? They can't sell them. Otherwise, if they couldn't get them. So there's a lot of other reasons. And their basis is probably pretty high because it's Stanley.

They're not a no-name brand from China. That's right. And so, you know, I always tell people to buy with math and sell with emotion because if you use emotion when you buy, the math never works. And this is one of those deals that you should just, oh, I'm not, I can't, I'm not even going to have been on these, you know, unless you had somebody that said, hey Chris, we really want Stanley 40-ounce tumblers. If you ever come across them, I can pay you 20 bucks a piece for them.

Okay, well, that's a different conversation. It's an exception. Yeah. An exception. So you want to stay away from these. It's not a good investment. When you say sell with emotion, do you just mean like storytelling, like good sales skills, enthusiasm?

Absolutely. Your story, the narrative, why you're selling. I'm putting your kids through college or I'm going to pay for summer camp for my kids or I'm taking my family on a trip and I'm trying to earn extra money. That should be in your listings. You should be talking more about it because people want to buy from people. You don't want to compete on price if you don't have to. You want to be competitive.

You add your story, your purpose. Why? Everybody wants to make money. That's just that's table stakes. But if you're like, I'm trying to add an onsuit to my house so I can move my mother-in-law in, in the next two years. That's great, man. People share that. That's what people want to know. People want to know about you and what you're doing. That's what I mean. Especially if you're in a more competitive market or you're selling a commodity. When I helped those teenagers start the firewood

business last year, firewood is a commodity, right? I know if I go to Facebook marketplace, it's going to be 450 accord. And so I don't want to go 500, but I also don't want to go 400. So instead, I went 450 and in the title was, help us pay for college, 100% of the profits, go to these high schoolers that are trying to pay for college. Yep. I love it. I love it. It's brilliant.

Let's talk about batteries. I love obscure deals, right? Of course, I love to sell the sexy stuff too, but there's way more competition in those markets and often less margin. And there's not as big of a moat because everybody wants to sell, you know, fancy sneakers or Blackstone Grills, that kind of stuff. But this is a Gov Deals auction, just at Gov Deals. It's a lot of 8,000, and it doesn't sound exciting because it's not.

It's 8,000 AA GP Gold Peak Ultra Plus alkaline batteries brand new. I don't know anything about batteries, right? But I'm like, well, there's 8,000 is brand new. It's kind of interesting. So I started looking at the pictures on the boxes. And the one thing that stood out, and I'm scrolling through these pictures here, is there's a, let's see, I can make it a little bigger for those on YouTube, is this, this date code, 08, 2031.

Okay, that was my next question. It's like expiration date. These batteries, after just a little bit of research, they're specifically made to have a 10-year shelf life. That's why they're valuable. And if you go look at Amazon, if you search, so I just search for that brand, GP Gold Peak Ultra. If you search on Amazon, they're all over.

If you search on eBay, on eBay, they're selling expires. versions. You can buy it. They sell like a 200 or 250 pack for like $50. But on the current versions, they basically sell for about a buck a battery. Wow. So what it comes down to, about a buck. So two pack, these are in two packs and they're not retail packed. So when you look at a retail pack, like Amazon sells them basically for like two bucks a battery in a retail pack. So if you look around, you're not going to have a retail pack. You're not on Amazon. You're not going to sell it for that much. I go through and like, okay, what's it worth? And so you said these should go for a dollar apiece. So are we talking $8,000 worth? We're talking $8,000. If you have to go buy two pack

a AA batteries, what's it cost? Four bucks or something like that? I don't know what they are. But I know these batteries, easy. You can sell them as a reseller for basically a dollar each. And so you can sell whatever it is. You sell 10 pack for 20 bucks, you know, however you're going to. We're not talking about the Walmart retail price. That's unreal. It's unrealistic for us. It's unrealistic. Yeah, you could go. You have to search, like you're saying, you have to go to eBay. You've got to search sold listings.

Got to search for that brand. I like to look at Amazon because they show velocity really quick right there. And they'll say, oh, 4,000 orders over the last 30 days. Very helpful. And you want to know. So I love this deal. Another reason I love it is it's small. It's 8,000 pieces, but it's only like six or seven, maybe eight boxes that you could put

in your bedroom or your office, whatever it is. So I love that stuff. Small things, very inexpensive to ship if you want to sell them online. You can put them in an envelope, a free, you know, priority mail envelope so you don't have to buy packaging. You get to go pick them up. These are sitting down. These are in Gilroy, which is not too far for me. And the other thing I love about Gov deals is you can ask questions.

This is me right here. So they put, they're like, hey, what's the expiration date? And it said 8, 2031. And then there was this other date, 529, 25. So I thought some were 2031 and some were 2025. And I'm like, what's the break? down on the cases. You know, a number of cases with 2031 expiration date, number of cases with 25. Nakeda back said they all expire 2031. 2025 is the month we answered that question. So,

you know, these have been up here for a while. I think they didn't sell before and they got listed, right? Because they wouldn't be sitting here since May. But this is a kind of deal when I stumble across them or it's money. And you can do this every day over and over and over. And it wouldn't take you long to sell this. It wouldn't take, obviously, it's not going to take you very long to get your investment back. Yeah. And that's a big part of it, what I try to show people is take calculated risks, but then focus on getting your investment back, you know, as quickly as you can. And that may mean wholesaling some to other, you know, shops.

Maybe you walk into a hobby place in your town and say, hey, you want to buy Casey's batteries? What would you pay me for 500 of these? So is that the play with these to wholesale them to the retail store? That's what I would do. Yeah. Do people ever walk into like the Ollie's discount outlets or those dirt cheap? There's a handful of chains around the country. Yeah.

Is it possible to just walk in, talk to the GM and say, hey, do you want these? Because they could just put them on the floor. Yeah. The key is not to walk in with anything in your hands. The key is to walk in and just say, hey, I'm a reseller. I get access to some crazy stuff. Could I email and share or anything? Do you guys buy from individuals or from other businesses?

And some will say, no, we do not. We have a corporate, yada, yada, yeah. Some will absolutely say, yeah, what do you got? And you get their contact information. And when you get a manifest or a list like this, you say, hey, you fire off an email. You know, maybe you bring donuts by. You have to build a relationship. This is a relationship business.

And so you get that network going and you email and say, hey, John, I got an opportunity on these brand new GP Ultra batteries. It looks like 10 years. Here's some Amazon, you know, link. and eBay, is that something you guys be interested in any idea what you might want to pay for 500 pieces? And you let them tell you the price. Well, here's what I love about this product. So when I had my third party logistics company, we would occasionally inherit some just crap that some of our customers would sell and they were never able to sell. Sure. We were forced to liquidate it to pay for

their bills, their storage bills. Ah, I get. Yeah. And I inherited a couple pallets of these blunders, imported from China. They were like single serving blunders and they were good quality. But like, who wants that? Like, you can't sell that on Facebook marketplace. It's $5. It's like the bullet kind of thing that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. But with this, like if I'm a store manager and I'm able to buy stuff, I'm going to think, you know what? 100% of my customers use AA batteries. 100% of them. Correct. And so if I'm a customer, I'm going to walk by that and be like, you know what? Those are $4 at Walmart, $1 here.

I might as well pick up eight packs. I won't need batteries for another five years. You got. You know. And the fact. that they last for, you know, they're going to last for another seven years or six years or whatever it is. Yeah.

You know, so. But that framework doesn't work for even most products, but it does for this because this is a commodity. Yeah, that's right. Again, talking about unfair advantage. I'm going to share some Costco stuff here, liquidation stuff in a few minutes. If you don't live near a Costco, that's a big unfair advantage for you because everybody wants Costco products, right?

They did 250 billion in sales, right? So you can buy Costco liquidation items. and offer them in your local community that doesn't have a Costco, not only can you make money, but you'll be a hero. It's just a great product. One of the things that make this so valuable is that everybody overlooks it. That's nuts. I don't want to sell batteries.

I can't sell batteries. Well, I'll show you how. I just heard, I've heard the same thing recently from two different world famous investors, Scott Galloway and Manich Pabri. They both said their best deals, their sexiest deals, their sexiest investments have been the, the most unsexy industries or businesses, right? Like maritime shipping.

Oh, you know. The most boring, unsexy thing ever. And so that same framework holds true with liquidating items. Absolutely. I just went to chat, GPT, as you're talking, and I said, tell me the biggest metros in the U.S. with no Costco. And I grew up in Logan, Utah. That's in Cash Valley, northern Utah.

And there's, I think, a quarter million people in Cash Valley, maybe more. They didn't have a Costco until, a Costco. until a few months ago. Wow. And it's slammed. It's slam now. I can imagine. Yeah.

But dude, Waco, Texas, 280,000 people. No Costco. Just north of Austin. Yeah. Right. Like, the thought of someone in Waco driving all the way to Austin for Costco is like another planet. They're just not going to shop at Costco, right?

That's right. So if you had a small warehouse and you had those same products and you were on Facebook marketplace talking about it and you were in your parent groups on Facebook talking about it, you would just be inundated. with people that wanted to buy those products. And I'm going to show you how to buy those products here in a couple minutes. It's crazy. Dude, here's a few more.

First of all, it told me Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Huntsville, Alabama, but that's false. They both have Costco's. Yeah. So these have been checked. Yeah. You have it. They lie.

Jackson, Mississippi, biggest city of Mississippi, no Costco. And a lot of these are because, like, Costco knows where they need to go, right? They're not stupid. They know what demographics they need to support a store. But it doesn't mean that there's no people there, right? Like, that would want a Costco. For instance, there's no Trader Joe's. like in my area, because there's just not quite enough people.

Yep. You know? But there are a lot of people if you expand it out a little further. Amarillo, Texas, 300,000 people, Lubbock, Texas, 300,000 people, Laredo, Texas, 300,000 people, 300,000 people. No Costco's. It's huge. I mean, it's such a basic concept that people love Costco. It's a cult, right?

I mean, they love going there. And they should. It's freaking awesome. It is awesome. It's amazing. It's changed my life. I mean, I'm telling you, sitting in. You especially.

Change my life. And they're amazing people. They are truly people that care about everyone succeeding, which is highly irregular in the industry. And from a buyer standpoint, or however you want to call it, my relationship with them, they're one of the few companies that won't sell you out for a dollar, you know? Yep. Because they're like, no, no. We sell to Shannon and he's reliable and we've known him for 10 years and we're going to

keep selling to Shannon. And that is priceless, man. priceless. Jim Senegal, the founder, he is a testament that you can have your cake and eat it too. You can treat employees well. You can pay them very well. And you can offer the lowest prices on the market. Like if any other company out there is saying, well, we can't do this because of it. Just look to Costco. It's possible. Yeah. And when you can sell a hot dog and a Coke for a buck 50. In like the most brutal industry, grocery where no one makes money. They're making money and they're treating their employees right. And they're beloved by all. Like, yeah, what are we talking about?

It's huge. Before you contender, another one more quick business idea. I can't help myself, but doing the same thing with IKEA. There's a whole thriving industry out there of selling IKEA furniture to people in big enough markets that are big enough to have a good population center, but not big enough for an IKEA because most markets are not big enough for an IKEA. They're a lot more selective. Huntsville, Alabama, half a million people, no IKEA. I actually started a business in when I lived in Huntsville called My Modern South. And that's what I did was I would load up.

I would go to the Atlanta or the Memphis, IKEA and place orders beforehand. And I would literally just say, go to IKEA.com. Tell me what, like, fill your cart, print out your cart. I'm going to add 30% to it. And then meet me at this grocery store parking lot. And I love it. Collect all the money up front. You rent a U-Haul for a day.

You pay by the mile. You work that into the cost. You show up at a parking lot. If you're not here between this two-hour window, I'm keeping your crap. And you just resell it. Yeah, I love it. That's it. I'll wrap it up. Come visit our reseller mastermind. It's shannonjene.com slash mastermind.

A bunch of Chris's guys are in there. We talk about these deals every day. It's totally fun. There's all kinds of stuff going on. And I'll come back because I have a lot of other stuff that we can talk about. I mean, it's crazy, dude. All right. What did you think?

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