The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - The Best Side Hustle for Beginners (Any Age) - Ep. #302

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

beehiiv is the newsletter platform I’ve used for over a year and a half because their data shows you exactly what’s working. Get 30% off three months at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠beehiiv.com/chris⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join my community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━I sat down with Jon and Lucas from Resale University and we talked about how they built a reselling business by flipping overlooked electronics like VCRs, digital cameras, camcorders, Dell docking stations, and TI calculators. They shared how they started by selling stuff around the house, then moved into thrift stores, yard sales, Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and eventually bulk electronics suppliers. We also broke down their first big deal, where they bought around $5,000 worth of electronics and made a few thousand dollars in profit with only about 15 hours of work. Finally, we talked about the simple playbook anyone can use to start reselling, even with just a few hours a week. You can find Jon and Lucas on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/reseller_uni/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---

What does your business look like today with regards to like monthly revenue and profit? 10, 20-ish-K maybe. We actually crossed like six figures, which was pretty cool. Okay. So then after 15 hours of combined work, you make 3,000 to 5,000 in net profit, which is like 400, 500 bucks an hour from your first deal. Yeah. There's so many opportunities like this out of it.

You didn't even take delivery of them. No, we literally did nothing. That's incredible. This is like your big inflection point, right? You're like, okay, now we're in the big leagues. Let's do more of that. Exactly. After that I was hooked. I mean, it's just crazy that like you go and buy an item and then the next day it's sold.

I put up a listing on Marketplace. I get messages, 20 messages a day. And you're in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Make them come to you. Exactly. Anyone in the world could do that for profit and should. Yeah. Right. I started my reselling journey when I was 15 years old. I'm guaranteeing you have 500 to 5,000 worth of stuff just laying around your house.

Are you selling VCRs? Yes. $100 for a VCR? Yeah, because people think they're worthless, just like you think. I just read an article a year or two. ago that like the last VCR manufacturer went out of business. Yeah, nobody makes anyone. So there's so much demand.

What is this world? It's supply and demand. There's no more supply. So the demand goes up. Exactly. Holy crap. Same with camcorders. Nobody makes them anymore.

Same with digital cameras. How Louis sold six time today for $300. Another brand called Jabro. Those are really good. Dell docking stations. A lot of times like thrift stories think they're cords and I'll throw them in the cord bucket for a dollar and they stuff like 60 bucks on eBay. I've found so many of those.

Also cameras like digital cameras, DSLRs. film cameras, a lot of people sell those at yours sales for like a dollar because they think they're worthless. I think the biggest takeaway just omiss, even outside of reselling, there's so much money in the world, no matter where you are, who you are, you don't have an excuse. If you want to get out there and you want to make money outside of the 9 to 5, outside of a boss, you just got to put in the work and you can do it. I hopped in my truck and started door dashing. Dude, I was making $30 bucks an hour. Yeah. 30 bucks an hour. And I was having a blast. Like, there are no excuses. There's just, there are none. I'm sorry. The American Dream is not dead yet.

It is more alive than it's ever been. Yeah. What's the playbook? Someone watching this, whether they're 15 years old or 95 years old, how can they go from, you know, $0 to $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month? Yeah, I would say it's the easiest playbook ever. Hey, please just take half a second and hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this right now. It would really mean a lot. Okay. So by the end of this episode, what is one tactical thing that people can take away from you guys? Yeah, I would say one tactical thing is anybody, no matter what generation you are.

what age, what situation of life you are in, you can resell. So whether that's like a big scale like us or whether it's small scale, like going to yard sales, flea markets, thrift stores every weekend and just being a weekend where I think anyone can make an extra $1,000 to $5,000 a month, no matter what stage your life you're in and only putting in maybe two to five hours a week. So I would say the biggest tactical takeaway that you can take away from this podcast is that reselling is by far the easiest side hustle, to me at least. And also it's like provides so much value compared to other sad hustles where it's just like so much hype around them. Whereas resellins, like you're providing value to a customer, like you're giving them pretty much a product

50% off that works just as well as a new product off Amazon does. So I found a lot of fulfillment in that and I think you will as well. Okay, perfect. Beautifully said. Tell me who you guys are and how you know each other. All right. So my name is Lucas and this is John, obviously. We've been friends since probably middle school. We grew up kind of in the same community. My dad worked alongside his dad in a way. So that's how we got to know each other. And then I started my reselling journey when I was 15 years old. And then later in life, towards end of high school, I got him into it as well.

And so that's kind of like what snowballed us down this bath. You guys grew up together in rural North Carolina, Virginia? Yes. Yeah. So his dad works in North Carolina. So that's kind of how we knew each other coming up. I would say probably about ninth grade year, Lucas was like trying to put me on reselling.

And I was just like, no, man, what is like? I just want to keep doing my thing, working summer jobs and stuff. And then finally, he, like, text me about, like, how much money he was making. I was like, kind of cool. So I, like, decided to try. And then we just been doing it ever since. Yeah. And Lucas, what first got you on to this?

What was the first thing you sold and why? Okay. So I was 15 and I had a lot of Legos from my childhood and they were just sitting collecting dust by that time. My mom was like, all right, so we got to do something with these Legos. They're in my way. And we need to figure out what we're going to do with them. So I was like, well, maybe we can sell them on Facebook, you know, because Facebook

marketplace is great. So she's like, oh, hey, we'll go on eBay and try to figure up some prices and get me like a ballpark you want to ask for. So I go on eBay and knowing nothing about eBay and pricing stuff. I'm just grabbing active listings that are new inbox. Some aren't even in boxes. So it was really messed up, the skewing. And I came up with a pretty big number, but my mom did list them. She posted them as a lot with a number. And of course, in rural Keeling or rural Virginia, nobody wanted to pay that obviously they're not looking for collecting these things or anything so i asked i was like well would you mind if i tried to sell them on ebay myself and so she said sure i'll let you do that um so she gave me access to her ebay account because i'm not 18 and i started listing legoes that summer

i ended up selling i think like five to 10k worth in legoes that summer after that because i ran out of legos obviously sorry you just sold what was laying around your house that's it i just sold my Legos. That was it. That was the only thing I sold. You had a lot of Legos. Because it was not that big of a collection. I started selling my stuff outside of Legos and my family's stuff that they would give me. You're running out stuff.

Yeah, I started peddling stuff. And so after that, I started going to thrift stores a little bit because I have a younger sister and she liked to go thrifting. And my dad loves antique shops and stuff like that, anything classic. So I go thrifting a little bit, but I really wasn't making that much money because I didn't know what I was doing.

And then fast forward a little bit to I guess it would have been ninth grade year. I don't know. I got John into it. He kind of put me on to a new niche and it was consumer electronics. And so that's when John started reselling. But that's also when he picked up my reselling game and I started growing a lot more from that. So I don't know if you want to touch on that. Yeah. I guess I just kind of like heard he was reselling. I was like I'd always looked up ways online to make money. Did like those dumb like surveys and stuff where you make like 10 cents after like 10 minutes of doing it. Just like other random sidehouses, but they never like really panned out. And I was, I think I was like 16 at this point

so I could drive and stuff. And so another friend that resold actually in my town just hit me up one day and was like, hey, do you want to go to thrift store with me? I'll show you like how you can resell, like showed me how to go on the eBay app, go to sold listings and all that. And I bought my first like five or six items. And I texted him. I was like, man, like I got into this finally and he just threw him up on eBay and one sold

the next day. And after that I was hooked. I mean, it's just crazy that like you go and buy an item. And then the next day it's sold. And so from then on out I was hooked, kept going to thrift stores, kept going to yard sales. And then eventually I was like watching someone. much YouTube on on reselling that I found out like electronics really really sold good just because there's so much demand for them out in the market and so then that was my focus I would go to thrift

stores find electronics go yard sales look for electronics and then I realized at a point that I could only get so many at thrift stores yard sales and stuff like you only get one or two at a time which in high school is so great you're making good money like more money than most high schoolers but I was like okay what if I go online and see if I can get them in bigger quantities and so yeah that's kind of how we stumbled upon it okay so how old are you guys at this time time, 16? Yeah, 16. He started a lot earlier than I did probably 14, 15, but I was like 16 when I started see him. Okay. Now, you say electronics. That's a huge category. What, at this stage, at least, what types of electronics were you buying and selling? Yeah, so various kinds. So a lot of, like, little,

like office equipment thing. So, like, I don't know if you've heard, like the Al conference, like, it's like a big corporate. So a lot of stuff like that. Like a teleconference. Yeah, exactly. There's another brand called Job or those stuff really good. Dell docking stations. A lot of times, like, Thrift stores just think they're cords and I'll throw them in the cord bucket for a dollar. And they stuff like 60 bucks on eBay. I've found so many of those. Also cameras, like digital cameras, DSLRs, film cameras. A lot of people sell those at Yortails for like a dollar because they think they're worthless. Pretty much like anything that you can like think that somebody would use on the daily basis. That's what we're selling. Every now and then I would go to like a

thrift store and find like some professional technology. Like one time I found this like weird like stereo thing for like $50 and sold it for like $700. So we'd have some. crazy flips in there like that, but mainly is like the consumer stuff. Like if you can think of something that people use every day, like it's going to sell good. Like this road mic here, it sells every day for 70 bucks on eBay. Now my good friend Shannon is a lifelong reseller and he says, stay away from electronics, too many variables, too many things to break, too many things to test, return rate is high, defect rate is high. Obviously like the, you know, the devil you know is the best, right? What would you say to that? Like, were there a lot of unnecessary headaches

compared to other categories, compared to Lucas, what you experienced in Lego? Or is it not as bad as people think? No, he's definitely right. When I was selling Legos, I had maybe like two returns out of 100 sales. Now that we're selling electronics, it's definitely a lot more finicky. You can test a device and ship it, and it gets to the buyer and it's broken. I mean, that's just the nature of the beast. With that being so, I find a lot of people like your friend who steer completely clear electronics,

so it opens us up a little bit more. one of the biggest categories for resellers is clothing and vintage clothing. We didn't sell clothing specifically. John sold some clothing, obviously, as you find it. But we're not clothing resellers because the return rates high in clothing as well. People buy something they don't like it. People buy something that doesn't fit them. And you have to accept the return. eBay's going to make you accept the return. So no matter what category selling on eBay, there's going to be a lot of returns. It's just part of the game. You have to factor in your margins for that. But I'm not really that worried about electronic returns because we've learn so much as far as testing and YouTube is your friend when testing. I feel like at least for us, we factored in that we're going to make so much more sales if we niche into electronics and we found more of them that was like, okay, if we have 5% more returns, like yeah, that's going to suck. I guess it's going to be thousands of dollars of return every year. But at the same time, like, we're going to get sales that we would never have reached if we

had never gone into that category. And so I don't know. I think it's like a blessing and a curse at the same time. But it's like with how good that market is for us. Like we don't care about the one or two returns we did it. So what were you doing? in like monthly revenue in these early days. And how did you go from that to like really starting to scale up operationalize and start like sourcing stuff so you could sell more of it?

Yeah. So I don't like with high school and stuff, I would say I don't know, probably numbers a little different for both of us. But yeah revenue probably like two to five thousand a month. They really just like like when you're at this stage like you're going to find some stuff one month that's like goes for yeah, 100 at some. It's lumpy. Yeah. Like summertime is really good. especially for me because I was out of school, I had a ton of time to devote to it. During the school, you're not as much, it's not as much time to source.

Also, not as many yard sales in the summer, or not in like other seasons, lots of yard sales in the summer. And so I'd say around that and then, well, I guess I'll let you answer and then I'll go into the operation part. Oh, yeah, starting out when I sell the Legos, it was great.

It was gravy because Legos is just such a, people love Legos, I mean, especially on eBay. But after I got out of Legos and I was just selling some thrift store stuff and some personal stuff, it's probably about the same as John. Margers are pretty good, though. Yeah. When you're starting out, your margins are a lot better than when you operationalize just because you are finding this, like, you're getting stuff for like $2 and you're selling it

for a couple hundred versus when you're buying more invoked. And you're doing everything yourself. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, like once we started like, I'd say like a year ago pretty much, we started figuring out like electronics did good. And so in order to get from like weekend warriors, basically to doing reselling stuff every day, we, we had this camera supplier basically and electronics. So he's basically eBay supplier. So he gets recycling in and then he like kind of sorts it, I guess, and then sells like he'll sell computers of this guy, AirPods of this guy, cameras of this guy. And so we knew about him already.

Like he posted on eBay a lot. He sold his cameras on eBay for super cheap. And so like they were getting sniped up immediately. But like, and he was overseas too. So he's posting him at three in the morning and we're not getting them. We know this guy that's his A&M. And he's texting me and he's like, yeah, I'm staying up until 3 a.m. To buy these cameras and buy these like other consumer electronics.

And I'm like, man, like I wish I could do that. but I'm also to sacrifice, like, sleep for that because then I'm not just going to, I'm not getting sleep throughout the day. So cut to the story. We message this guy. I message them. I'm like, hey, like, I would love to buy, like, your electronics in bulk. Like, can we just work out a deal off eBay?

That way, like, you save money and we save money to and we don't have to, like, stay up until 3 a.m. And, like, buy them. And he never responds to me. So I'm like, all right, whatever. I guess we're just not going to make this money. And then he messaged them. And for some reason, they respond to him.

And so they message them back. And they're like, yeah, here's my number. Text me on here. So Lucas texted them and we started like figuring out some deals. And then yeah, from there it's like he just started sending the stuff. We tested some stuff out. We're like, okay, cool, this guy's going to be a good electronic supplier. That's kind of how we scaled up.

So it was definitely a lot slower than most people want. Most people want to start reselling and go from getting stuff at thrift stores to buy in bulk the next month. But it was like two years for us. So the stage that we explained to everybody, what you need to do is first sell stuff around your house. So Legos, whatever family has. Then go to thrift stores. take that money, go to thrift stores and yard sales and flea markets and buy stuff with that, and then take that money. And once you really know a category, which I would say you need to

sell 100 plus items in a category to really know it, then you can start looking in bulk, like bulk quantities, whether that's on eBay, Macari, posh market, like all that stuff. It's kind of crazy that we would buy bulk lots off eBay and then resell the stuff back on eBay. Like most people don't think you can do that because it's the same platform. But we would do that same with Marketplace. You buy them bulk off Marketplace. But you really need to know the category because a lot of people are going to sell you their crap. And so you really need to know, like, if this stuff's good or is this stuff like getting sorted out? I'm so glad you said that because I've told people so many times, like you could literally buy on one platform and sell the same stuff on the same platform and make

money. Yeah, 100%. And people don't realize that. But there's so much asymmetric information out there that it's possible. So let me recap. So you're 16, 17 years old. You're selling Legos. You're selling electronics, sometimes two grand amounts, sometimes five grand. It's kind of lumpy because you're still in high school, you're seeing some success. You start noticing on eBay that there are like wholesalers selling stuff on eBay to people that are kind of piecing it up and reselling on on eBay. Is that right? Yeah. So basically what they're called is like untested lots. So on eBay, they'll post electronics untested. And so that's a big risk. It could be all broken or it could be all working. So yeah. Yep. And if they're like a not trusted seller, if they're new, then they could be tested to be

unworking. They could be selling a crap bill of goods. But you're a. assuming since this guy, his stuff sells fast, he has good feedback, that it truly is untested, and there's probably like a workable defect rate in there that you can still make money on, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay. So this guy comes on your radar and he's clearly selling at a good price because if anything moves that fast, it's probably priced too low. Yeah. So he's on your radar for a good reason. You DM him doesn't respond. He DMs him. He does. You work out a deal. So if you go off of eBay, then you can save on eBay fees and you don't have to to stay up all night. So how does your first order from him go? How much do you spend? What do you get?

It's all in euros. I'm trying to like convert, but it might have been like five case. It's probably around. Yeah, which honestly, like that was like a lot to us. Like that was like, man, this is like nerve-wracking. Like I don't know if we're going to get this money back. Looking back, it's like we should have done that 10 times over. But so yeah, we paid him that. We did it on. We like wire transferred. So first off, that's kind of sketchy because you've never worked with the guy. So you don't know. Like we, we, we saw as a big business. So we figured you won't going to scam us, but like, you never know. And he's also overseas.

Yeah. It's like, what country was he in? There's some European country. Yeah, like Denmark. Okay. Maybe around there. And was he shipping from there?

Or was he drop shipping from the U.S. So it's even slower. So we paid him like 5K USD. He gets it probably, the wires took a while back then. So maybe like three or four days because we were getting all of our banks set up. And then he ships them. So we probably get him like three weeks later, maybe a month later.

That's a, that's a long time when you're, you only have five grand. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, we're waiting on that. Gets into Lucas, we look through them and they're like, all of them are really good. Not all of them, but like 80% of them are really good.

Probably 60% of them work. And what were they? Consumer electronics. Yeah, so mix of stuff. So like some cameras, yeah, cameras, office equipment, headphones, all that kind of stuff. All kinds of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And so like, did you have a manifest?

No, we did not. We have never gotten a manifest from this guy. We didn't even have pictures. No, he didn't even have pictures. So. So what? What was the description? What, what did you think you were buying other than electronics? Or was it literally just? My picture, actually. He sent us a, like, a very quick picture, but you couldn't, like, zoom in and see model numbers. So, like, we were using, like, Google lens a lot because you can, like, screenshot and Google lens it. And so, like, we had a good idea.

Something just happened with Beehive that I think you might have missed. You can now connect your Beehive account directly to Claude, Chat, Jupit, Gemini, or whatever AI tool that you used through something called MCP. So last week, I connected my newsletter to Claude. And now I can sit in Claude and say, look at my open. rates from the last 30 days and tell me which subject lines perform best or draft next week's newsletter based on the topics my audience clicked on the most this month and claude does it it can see my real beehive data subscribers engagement numbers automations revenue everything and i've already cut my weekly production time because i stopped guessing what to write about and started letting the data decide for me so instead of using AI to just write generic content use AI to plug into your actual newsletter to make decisions based on what's already working beehive built this MCP so your favorite AI tool can be your newsletter strategist and your data scientists all in one.

So move your email list over today and try Behive 30% off for 30 days with code Chris 30 because this might be the simplest, highest leverage business you can build right now. How many items were there? What did you pay per unit? Ooh, it must have been. So the first order we got from him was really low because he wanted to build this relationship with us. So he's like, all right, I'm going to give you a good deal.

I think it was like $8 or $8 euros each, so maybe like $10. Also, we didn't have enough money to buy. anymore. So it's kind of like, yeah. So yeah, we negotiated it down. He was like, yeah, I'll pay for shipping. I'll get it down. That way we can keep doing more deals in the future. So we're like, cool, this is good. So I think it was like around $10-ish apiece. And I mean, stuff was selling. So 500 units? Yeah. Yeah. That's all right. Yeah. Of course, the broken stuff sells probably less than we got it. So five to $15 each. But again, there wasn't too much broken stuff and then you have some working stuff. I'd say the range is probably like 50 each to maybe

like 200-ish each. And so the margin on that is crazy. But we had this one buy. Jeez, weird. Yeah. We had this one buyer. And where was he from again? New York. New York. Yes, New York City. And he bought all of our cameras. So he was like a flea market vendor. Actually, it was through my eBay store. He saw that had a bunch of cameras. And he was like, hey, like, you want to strike up a deal? I was like, sure. And so then from then on out, we would just text them what we have and he would just our PayPal or stripe us and we would just avoid all the eBay fees and just saw him in both. It was interesting too because he's paying eBay prices in bulk. So it's kind of like you would normally take a little bit of hit on your price, like move off eBay, but this guy's

like, no, I'll pay eBay prices. Like John would name the price and instance that you'll take it. I was like, dang, bro, we got to like, keep moving this up a little bit. But yeah, it was crazy. Yeah. What types of cameras were these? Like, give me an example of like, were the DSLR? Yeah, it's kind of a mix. So he would buy some DSLRs. He would buy some of the point in shoots. He'd buy some films to mirrorless. He does like, I'm trying to think what he did. He did, I think like flea markets like on the street type sales at New York. So they just pay a premium price for some reason. So he kind of bought a little bit of everything. Also camcorders. So like the little like tape camcorders thing. Camquarters. Jeez. What is this? 1998? What the heck? Give me an example. So you're paying $10 per unit. And I know that's an average, right? You're getting some crappy stuff in there too. Let's say you've got a point and shoot camera for you're paying $10 for it. What are you selling it to him for? And what do you think he's selling at the flea market for? I would say, so it really depends on the model.

So like sometimes there's like this brand called Kodak. Those will probably sell for 25, 30, even if they're working. Then there's this brand called Cannon, which is like the cream of the crops. So sometimes 100 to 200. So we're selling to him for those prices, pretty much stock price. And I would say he's probably upcharge in 30% just to like be on the streets and have them like physically there and people just kind of go bananas for them like when they actually get to hold them and like use them versus online where they don't kind of get to hold it I guess also we were

selling a battery without the charger without SD cards and I think he was putting all that stuff together and he was like selling them like that kind of so when you saw me kids they do move a little bit faster and they go for a little bit more money so it's not uncommon for you to sell something for a hundred that you're paying 10 bucks for oh no that's pretty common yeah I'd say in the reselling space that's extremely common like we know tons of people that do that every day of week. Jeez, Louise. Okay, so you might not know this number, but any idea, if you just took that box of 500 units that you paid $5,000 for, what did you make in profit from that? Yeah, yeah, I have to look back at our numbers, but I would say after like all expenses, a lot of shipping labels

as you would get. Shipping and buying batteries and you got to package it together with stuff. The first lot was definitely smaller because you have a high upfront cost. Like most of these cameras, we didn't have batteries for, so that's like five bucks a pop. And then of course shipping, like you're spending hundreds of dollars shipping, especially in the big boxes bulk up in New York. But I would say anywhere from like, we at least doubled our money at least like, it's over, I think. Eight grand, maybe eight to ten grand, which is like insane for your first lot because that's like, what? Triple your money almost or double your money easily.

So yeah. And then, I mean, of course it's like half and half, but like still that was like insane to us. How many hours of work do you think that that deal took that first deal? That's what was crazy about it. So since we did have that buyer in New York, I remember like we got. I meant. We did have to wait on some batteries. So if you would count that time, maybe a week, but like actual work, I don't know, maybe 10 hours max. But that's combined. Yeah. Yeah, that's not like one person. Let's just say 15 hours combined. Like it was like crazy because

we literally sent him pictures of like just like a big old lot and he was like, all right, cool, just package it up. And I mean, it takes 30 minutes to package up a box like that. How old were you guys at this point? This was like last summer. So 19. Yeah. So you're 19. You're selling stuff one Z Z, garage sales, eBay, yada, yada. You're like, let's operationalize this. You find this guy. You buy $5,000 worth of electronics, $10 each, 500 units. How many of them did you unload to this guy on eBay? Did you sell him all to him or most of them? No, he wouldn't buy any broken or defect. Like, if it was slightly wrong, it had to be pristine almost. And that's just the cameras. So the other stuff too that we were getting in. So I would say probably

60% of the stuff was going to him. But even that, like, it doesn't take too long to list. You just open the eBay up on your phone, take pictures. Like, we done it so much at this point. Like, we can get a listing up in a minute. So. So then after 15 hours of combined work, you make, you know, roughly 3,000 to 5,000 in net profit, which is like 400, 500 bucks an hour in profit from your first deal. Probably 5,000. You think so. Yeah.

Okay. That's incredible. So then this is like your big inflection point, right? You're like, okay, now we're in the big leagues. Let's do more of that. Is that what you were thinking? Or let's not do electronics. Exactly.

I mean, yeah, that was definitely our thought. Like, we got to get more on this. And so I'd say probably what a week after. we got this and we're like, all right, when's our next one coming in? And I think you did more of the communication there. So do you want to explain like what happened from there? Yeah, yeah. So after that, well, actually before that to rewind a little bit, I remember meeting with John

before we bought this lot. Like we've been talking to the guy. We're figuring out numbers. We meet in Hardee's and we're just talking about this. And he's like, he's telling us some ridiculous numbers. He's like, I can get you 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 units a month. And I'll just tack on like three euros from what you're paying right now. You met this European dude at Hardee's?

No, no, no, no, just us. We were discussing. Okay, okay. I'm like, how'd you get him over here? Yeah, no, no. Okay, so you sit down at a hearties and then you call him. Is that what you're saying? We're just texting on what's up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. And he's like, I can get you 5,000, 15,000 pieces of this same quality stuff per month. Yeah, and it was crazy because we're figuring out numbers. We're like, this is ridiculous money for what we're doing. Yeah, this could be six figures a month of profit. Yeah, easy. We were thinking more than that.

So we were getting really high. So then we do our first, lot. We figure out our numbers and we're getting ready to make our next deal and there's another buyer involved. So we're having to compete with another buyer. And so he's wanting us to start order in larger quantities so they can do business with just us. He's like, I need you to order in large quantities so we can cut this other guy out. That's how we like to move our stuff. We don't like to move at low quality quantities. But we're like, well, we can't afford that. We can't pay. We can do another 500 lot, but we can't do more than that because we just don't have the cash for

everything's tight. And I guess he assumed he was working with a big business or something. He He had no hustling out of rooms out of our parents' house. Yeah, so from that point on, we started just turning around like 100, 500 camera lots. And shipping is still taking forever. We're talking about like a month in time just to get the products. Sorry, what are you doing in the meantime? He's waiting or what? We're just reselling on our personal stores.

Yeah, we still have like little personal stores. Like, we still go to your hotel. Like, we just kind of found that fun, just the process. So we'd still, like, do that. I was also in college. So that was most of my week was taking up doing that. And then he was drop shipping here at time, which is faded out. But yeah, we found stuff to fill our time with.

Okay. So it's taken forever. You're scaling up 100 units here, 500 units there. Then what? So the buyers kept coming. We were getting, I think we got 500 boxes, or not 500 boxes, but like units of 500. I think we got like three or four of those. There was another buyer that came in the market from China.

So we had China, Japan, and us. And for some reason, like he liked us the best. Like I guess we just like communicated with them better. Like he just liked the way we did business. And so he was like, all right, I'm just going to keep going with. you guys but the thing was he had a business partner that they were 50-50 on it and for some reason his business partner like the Chinese people better the Chinese guys better just because they paid a little bit more than we did and so he started sound to him and so we kind of got a little

bit bottleneck and and like his business partner was super upset he's like this is not fair to y'all like um i don't like this at all so he started his own business just for us almost oh the first lot he got us was like really really good like same quality i think he just kind of stole him from his big business and so we got those in great we're like okay this is going to be smooth sailing like let's just keep working with this guy on his personal business. And then he goes back to the big business for another month. And he's like, all right, I got a thousand here. This is while the 500 are coming in.

So he's like, I got a thousand here. I can give them to you for like $15 a piece, which is still good. We would have bought that. But the thing was, we had those coming in. And so we didn't really have the cash for it. Looking back, we could have like just pulled in personal money and bought it. But he ended up selling that to the Chinese company. And so that really sunk because it was like a thousand pieces.

I think it's more than that. I think they ended up about like $15,000. Yeah. Yeah, 1500 pieces. Yeah. And so that stunk for us because that company pretty much dried out all the stuff that we wanted. And now that company's underwater, which is crazy. They were like, they're 1.2 million monthly.

Now they're not even a company. And so now, like, currently we're still working with this guy, his like separate business. But since he like lost that connection to the big business, the quality of lots has gone down pretty drastically. We're thinking that in the next month we're going to get back to what he had coming in because he said he found the same supplier that he had from the big business. but I would say probably around like September when he went off on his own. We just kind of trusted him that was going to be the same quality. And that was when we got our first bad lot, which is kind of like the first like low of our business. Like we bought like, what was it, 500 pieces?

And they like literally none of them worked. And so we lost like a good bit of money in that. But we've definitely learned some lessons. Okay. So eventually you buy a bad batch. Do you think that they intentionally put all the crap units in that batch? Our contact, the guy we're working with did not. He just doesn't understand the electronics like we do.

but the people upstream from him that he's buying from more than likely did. They were probably just wastey waste. Statistically speaking, it's impossible that you would, let's say your average defect rate is 10%, suddenly it's 90. Like that's intentional from someone. If not him, then whoever's up the food chain. He basically like texted us the other day and was like, I think what I've realized is that I've been buying from resellers versus e-waste, which I'm like, I don't know why you didn't tell us that earlier.

Like we've kind of been picking up on that. And so, yeah, it's exactly what's happening. Yeah. Well, why don't you differentiate the difference between a reseller and an e-waste company? E-waste, they're getting pure recycling in. So if you get a recycling center and throw stuff in, you might throw in a working computer. You might throw on a Bergen computer. The E-A's companies are getting the raw donations in, essentially.

And then they have certificates where basically they kind of make it safe for resale, but they don't do anything to test it. They just kind of strip out the hardware, all that stuff. And so then they just take it from there and sell it to resellers versus a reseller is literally taking it, separate the good stuff out, putting on their eBay, and then selling you the junk. and they're saying that they're a waste supplier, that way you think it's wrong. But it's clearly. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So it's like, I mean, e waste is like, that is the source. That's the top of the food chain. A reseller is their middleman, which you're middleman.

I'm a middleman. Nothing wrong to be a middleman. Right. It's just different. Yeah. You can't have two middlemen though. You got to have a middleman to a consumer. You can have.

You can. Well, yeah, you can. But right. But it's just not always the best. It's more surface area for error, for scams, for fraud, etc.

Right. Right. Surface area. Going on that point, that was crazy because, like, in the summer, we had our supplier selling to the guy that we were buying from and we were buying from that guy and we were selling to another reseller. So essentially there's like, what, four resellers in the middle there and everybody's making profit on it. So it's like it's insane how much like money's in electronic. So that's, yeah, I guess. Okay.

So how long ago did you get that bad batch? That would have been September or October when it landed. Obviously, bought it a little bit earlier. And how much did you lose on that? Probably four or five is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, a good bit. You just kind of like lost everything you spent on that then?

Yeah, we lost everything, but we also lost a lot of time because you get it in and you have to process. You have to test. You have to take pictures. You have to list. By that point, we were listing everything on eBay for the most part. We had a few bulk buyers, but it wasn't that many units we were selling to them. So we're spending all this time trying to negate our losses.

We're losing money working. So it's pretty discouraging. Where was your head out at this point? Like, God, what are we doing? Or just like on to the next one? Yeah. Oh, it's on to the next one, really. Well, yeah.

I mean, like, I said to Lucas multiple times, I'm like, man, we should have just, like, stopped here and just, yeah. But, I mean, looking back, you can't ever say that because then you don't learn any lessons, I guess. And so, yeah, we just head down onto the next one. Like, you got to find different suppliers. Like, you can't just rely on one person or else you don't really have a business. You just have, like, one stream, I guess.

Which we knew that. We knew, like, when we were in the peak of the summer when we're making all this money, we have got to diversify. We can't just make all this money from one supplier. I mean, for one thing is overseas. So tariffs already. can mess you up a lot or just like licenses and stuff and Europe can be really strict. And so we're talking about we need to change stuff, but we don't have any time because we're

just testing stuff and listing it. And then come September, it bites us in the butt because we didn't diversify enough. So we only have one supplier sending us stuff. So what do you do after September until today? What do you change? So from that point on, we had never done a single cold call, which is kind of crazy. Like we literally just had this guy. We just like got stuff in, made our five grand profit a month or so. Maybe it like made a little bit more than that. And then just like kept going, like that's great money as college students. Like we were like happy with that. And so then from that point we're like, okay, this is not acceptable. Like we're going to keep trying to work with this guy. We still are to this day. We haven't got quite to the quality that we were at. We're hoping this

summer it's back to that. But we're still like have that connection because I guess it's probably one of the best connections anybody has in the world within the US community. And so we have that connection still going. But we just started picking up the phone calling more domestic places because we were tired of paying tariffs every time we got stuff in with the new like trump act we're paying 10% i believe on the on the number on the value of the packets that's coming in which is kind of crazy um so we were tired of that tired of speed because a domestic lot we get in three three to four days overseas it's a month and so we started calling people around us junk removal places that's honestly a sneaky one because they get a bunch of stuff in and they just scrap all the metal they get so

started calling those people around us also i had some prior connections when i was doing my personal eBay store that I knew like sold pretty decent electronics that I would buy in lots off of eBay like we were talking about earlier. So I found like I looked up their company because it was like the title on eBay and I looked it up online and I found their number, found their emails and I was just reaching out through that calling them and I was like, all right, so can we like move some deals off eBay? We have like a liquidation company now. And so I would say we probably got, I don't know, four or five of those guys that were pretty decent. Yeah. And so we just had people sending us definitely not as big a lot, but a lot more variety I would say, which kind of like broadened our

scope a little bit. All are still in electronics. Yeah, all still electronic still. Yeah. I would say honestly, the U.S. stuff has an even higher working rate. Oh, yeah. Just because it's not getting shipped as far. And I just think that we found like pretty raw suppliers. Yeah. And then we just like, like, we just found random people on eBay. Like, we found this one guy up in Michigan that's probably shipped us 500 or so cameras, like throughout this time that I just found that he had like 50 or so listed on his eBay all individually untested. And I was like, hey, do you have more of these? He's like, yeah, man, actually like my buddy in the army just left to go overseas and gave me his whole eBay store. I was like,

all right, let's just buy him a bulk. And then literally every month, he's like, all right, this is all I got. And then I get a text later. It's like, hey, I found 200 more. I'll give them to you at five bucks a pop. I'm like, all right. Jeez. So it's clear that your biggest bottleneck is on the sourcing side, not on the selling side, right? Oh, yeah, always sell instantly. Yeah, that's how in a perfect world. You've got like bulk buyers, right? Like the guy in the in the flea market. That doesn't always work. So worst case, If it's working, you already know on eBay, you look at, you check completed, you check sold. These sold for 30. We're going to give eBay 12%. Let's be conservative and say 18 minimum

we can sell these for. We paid five bucks each. We're golden. Right. That's like quote unquote worst case scenario if something's working is to sell it piecemeal on eBay. Best case scenario is to sell it for close to eBay price in wholesale, right? Yeah, exactly. And that like going back to the electronic category, like it does have higher returns, but it is by the far. are the best category on eBay, like sell through rate, which essentially means number of sold versus the number of listed. So I'll say the average electronic has 100% sell the rate, which means for every 90 that have sold, or every 90 that are listed, there's also 90 sold. So you're guaranteed to sell item within a month or so. So yeah. Okay. Now, when it comes to,

like, you finding 100 or 200, 300, 300, 300 cameras from someone, like, where are they getting these old random camcorders from? Like, is this like a, is this like a high school that does like an Eways drive and like is that where all these start or where are these starting from? Like where's the the ground zero for these old things? Because if we're talking about ground zero for iPhone 15s, sure, they're three years old. Of course, you can get thousands of those. But for old old stuff, how are you getting so many that are so old? Yeah. So E waste route, I don't know how they're getting those like I couldn't tell you. But I would say for like especially a lot of the domestic guys that we buy from, they go into schools and they just for some reason, schools bought a bunch of these

things like back in the day and they just had him sitting around. They used warrants. I don't think that's the E-waste drive or if it's like they actually used them. So I know a lot of one of our guys specifically, he just goes in schools and businesses. And then a lot of stuff is businesses that they just had stuff. That makes sense. So like businesses will hire out these E-W-A-S guys to come clean out stuff, which I kind of, I've thought about getting in that business because you get paid to get profitable

inventory, which is kind of cool. And so, but I don't know. I think since we're in smaller cities, it's kind of harder for us to do it. So we'll just buy off these guys. Yeah, yeah. Listen, I need more people. like this to interview on my podcast. So if you know of someone with a side hustle or a business that's unique and cool and super profitable, email Molly, M-O-L-L-L-Y at co-founders.com. That's one word,

co-founders.com. Molly at co-founders.com, tell her your story and we'll give you $100 if we end up interviewing them. Okay, so you make your first cold calls. How many cold calls would you say you had to make? And then from those calls, how many new suppliers did you get? Are we talking about all time or like in just like in that time period from like from like inflection point of September to today okay I would say probably close to a thousand then honestly you think so yeah I mean I think the more cold calls you make like you have to factor in like okay I might get half a percent to one percent of these just because it is so hard like all these people already have buyers so you're trying to like wiggle your way in

there almost and a lot of them selling eBay so you're like you're already you're kind of breaking in their systems you're like all right I want to yeah these in bulk like eBay doesn't want you doing that yeah exactly yeah so I don't know it's like we probably made a thousand cold calls and we've gotten five or six suppliers maybe so it's not not to mention we sent out like 12,000 emails so it was like it was a lot of ground we've gotten a few of yeah right which we used AI to get all the emails so it wasn't like we're like clicking on every side yeah yeah well let me be very clear like not all cold calls are created equal if I'm cold calling up consumers to sell them diet pills like that's probably like one of the worst things you

could do right but you're calling companies that already do something and you're you're calling companies that already do something and you're saying, I want to give you money. That's how I look at it. I hate cold calls too, but if that's my cold call, yeah, I'll make a thousand. Hey, can I give you money? You know, other people are giving you money. Can I give you some of that money? I'm oversimplifying. It doesn't mean it's a yes. They would much rather sell to reputable people, higher paying buyers, buyers that they've worked in the past because they trust them more. Of course, you're 19, 20. You've got to break through that. I'm not saying it's easy. But it's just, it's an easier ask of can I give you money as opposed to can I sell you something? The hard part now has been like a lot of these people

are starting to figure out the vintage electronics sell good on eBay. So like we literally have one supplier the other week and I was like emailing him. I was like, hey, you got anything else for us? Like we bought three or four off of them and he's like, sorry man. Like we're starting to realize that like our eBay buyers are going to pay more than you and I'm like, yeah, I mean, that's true. It's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to happen. Like there's like in I've been selling on eBay for 20 years and like there's always categories that come and go. And as long as you're tapped into the eBay culture, you'll be tapped into the hot category. And a year from now, you might be selling converse shoes, you know, like who knows? Okay, so you make all these cold calls. You go from one supplier,

which is very dangerous to, you know, five, six, seven. What then? You're still buying the same type of stuff, mostly from the U.S., from different suppliers. If your per unit cost was 10 bucks before, what does it look like today? I'd say it's definitely increased, which is just the nature of the beast. I mean, getting like it's just that supplier was very rare. And like in the U.S. You are going to pay more of a premium just because it is the U.S. I mean, it's like everything's more expensive here. So I would say it really depends.

Like sometimes we're paying upwards of $30. Also, I will say it depends on if we're getting a manifest or like pictures. Like we will pay more if it's a scripted manifest. Like a lot of these U.S. guys, they have tons of employees. They're going to get you a manifest what it comes with. And so with those we're paying anywhere from $20 to $40 each. And we'll just like maybe like barely double our money or go a little bit under double just because it's like confirmed it's gonna like versus like unsorted stuff i'd say we're

probably in the 15 to 20 range 15 to like 40 range now so definitely not as okay but it's still pretty good and what are you selling units for on average nowadays it's really all over the place because it's so much but broad probably slightly under what we were before maybe like 100 to a 190 somewhere in there 150 if it's working but if it's work yes because there are still yeah yeah but like we said before defect rate in the u.s is so much better like you don't have as many defects. Also, I think our quality of suppliers has went up because we're calling these people, a lot of these guys are getting stuff out of working environments. That's the big thing. And they're pulling them out of working environments. The stuff works and they don't test it and they

give it to us. But once we buy a lot from them, we're like, okay, these work. So we know we can sell them for a higher problem. Yeah. So that might be like an elementary school that has a bunch of iPads and they're just upgrading. They're not broken. They're nothing wrong. They're just getting new ones. Yeah. Yeah. Upgrading is our favorite is our favorite buyers. I'm sure. It feels like, because I've been in this space, just a note to the, to the listener, my first, like, big business was an iPhone repair business. And then I sold millions of iPhone screens and cases. And like, I specifically have been in the electronics resale space, specifically smartphones and tablets, right? To me, that's like, like iPhones, tablets, laptops, MacBooks, whatever. That's like a whole other world in electronics. Is it not? It is. It's crazy because like when you get a manifested list, a lot of times, times they have all their consumer electronics just like Dell laptops or what have you. And then separately they put all their Apple products and they charge the premium own Apple. So it's like I would love to get Apple because Apple sell through it is amazing. Of course, they do have their own problems.

But people just want so much just because it's Apple. The competition is Stephen. Yeah. I don't think we have it either. Wow. Are you selling VCRs? Yes. Those are extreme. Let's bring. We can't get those in bulk because I mean, they're going to break instantly shipping in bulk. But Every time I go to your sale, I'll probably find one, $2, go to $100. Yeah, it's crazy. So that's another. $100 for a VCR? Easy.

That's low end. Sometimes $200. And you're paying $2 for them? Yeah, because people think they're worthless just like you think. So it's like, oh my gosh. Who's buying VCRs? Is it millennials for their kids? Like people like me buying them so they can watch.

Nobody makes them anymore. So they have to go to eBay for them. I think I just read an article a year or two ago that like the last VCR manufacturer went out of business. Yeah, nobody makes them anymore. So there's so much demand. It's crazy. VC 100X markup on VCR.

What is how? What is this world? Anything bent to the like, it's all good. It doesn't even matter. Like you say, it's supply and demand. There's no more supply.

So the demand goes up. Exactly. Same with camcorders. Nobody makes them anymore. Same with digital cameras. Nobody. Like we're talking like that you flip out the thing. Yeah.

Like one of those. At least out of $300 to a flea market guy. Oh, let's do this. I wasn't planning on. I think I got one. There is that thing. I'm going to find.

we'll give you a quote yeah right ever do like these thermal printers here oh yeah that that's probably 150 200 bucks shut up you i have like 12 of these in my attic is it a dimo maybe not quite that yeah what my brand is it's a dimo yeah i got zebras i got dimos that's at least 80 holy i mean i've had a bunch of shipping i got so many of these and i've almost thrown them away that 10 time now we'll buy hold on i'll sell them to you for sure Yeah, this is the fun Like this is what we do with people all the time We'll go to their art sale

They won't have stuff out We'll be like hey do you have anything in your junk drawer Like any camera and they'll go out and pull out like a Wii And be like a dollar for their stuff like How you thought of awesome I got this I got this like nest thermostat thing Oh no this is like a mesh

A Google Wi-Fi mesh right Yeah I get those all the time Look I got a freaking GoPro in here I got another GoPro in my nightstand I've never used A couple hundred probably I got a DSLR lens right here I wish I could find that camera. It's whatever.

Anyway, I'm floored. I'm floored that this stuff sells for so much. Holy crap. I've been saying it. So, fun fact, I'm like a domain name junkie, and I buy way too many. And I had, back when I was in college, I started this business called Door to Moore. And it was door to door electronics selling or door to door electronics buying. You just go through these wealthy suburbs and you're like, hey, I'm here to buy all your crap.

right and i'll be back tomorrow i'll be back next week or something here's my card i'll be back and i'll venmo you on the spot and it was called instead of door to doors door to more which is kind of corny but i ended up selling that domain to like some kids resale shop for 750 bucks i think anyone in the world could go do that and should like go door to door because it's not a hard pitch it's not like hey do you want to buy pest control it's like hey i want to give you money right now yeah you probably have four iPhones in a drawer let me pay you for them You can honestly get for free too. I have a couple buyers on the personal side for my business,

like personal reselling. And I literally have a guy that ship me stuff yesterday. He's in California. He puts bins out in neighborhoods. He's like, hey, if you have old electronics, just put them in here and he'll send me pictures every month. He'll like, hey, I got this right now.

I did that shout out to Bob Jones High School, Madison, Alabama. I was a volunteer wrestling coach there back in 2012. And we had a fundraiser. They were selling cheesecakes door to door. And I'm like, we're not doing that, guys. I brought in a big box. We sent an email to all the wrestling parents, and it was just an e-waste drive. And I did this, like, pro bono to help the team.

And they basically just donated all these Nintendo switches. And not switches, it was too old. But, you know, old electronics. And I'd sell my eBay and I gave all the money to the wrestling team. But, like, anyone in the world could do that for profit and should. Yeah. Right. That's fire.

Yeah. Okay. So you have five or six suppliers. You're doing the same thing. What does your business look like today with regards to, like, monthly revenue? And profit. With the suppliers that we have now, probably 10, 20-ish K, maybe, maybe a little bit lower than that. But at the peaks, like, we were doing pretty decent amount. And so, like, we actually crossed like six figures last year, which was pretty cool, especially as like

in college. Yeah. And so profits in the summertime, like we were, I mean, we were talking about earlier, probably 50% profits, no matter what. But it's definitely like, like we talked about, you have to buy a US supplier. So it's just going to cost more. And so just because of that, it's probably closer to 30th, 30th percent maybe. But I mean, that's still. pretty good for like running it. That's amazing. Like I'm still in college. He's,

he's still like, you guys are still both part time on this. Pretty much. Yeah. So we both run our personal stores. It's definitely like way lower than than the big business. But like, I mean,

still like good like little gas money and stuff like that. A little bit better. And then yeah, I'm also a student and he, he's like full time entrepreneur, I guess. Yeah. Where do you want to take this?

Do you want to keep scaling this? And if so, what will that look like? Yeah. So if this guy can lock in a little bit and, And he can deliver on the stuff has been telling us for the past month or so. We would like to scale this full time,

like actually full time. We're putting 40 plus hours of work in a piece into it and collecting a good chunk of change. We'd just like to keep growing and pull money out when we can. So what is the, what's the playbook? Someone watching this, whether they're 15 years old or 95 years old, how can they go from, you know, $0 to $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month?

Yeah, I would say it's the easy. Playbook ever. First off, like, let me, we talk about the whole podcast. Go to your house. Find some things that are, like, I'm guaranteeing you have 500 to 5,000 worth of stuff just laying around your house. Yeah, I mean, you did it on call, yeah. Yeah, you literally showed them on call. So, I mean, go first in your junk drawers, go look around your house, find stuff to sell. Take that money, go to a thrift store, go to your yard sales. You probably won't even spend all that just because you're going to get stuff so cheap. Go get VCR players. Go get, just watch YouTube, honestly. You're going to see stuff that sells. Watch our Instagram. You're going to see stuff

that sells every day. And then you're going to just like keep growing it from there. building connections. I think a lot of times in the reselling space, people don't think it's like a person, like a people to people business, but it actually is like, if you buy something off somebody, be like, hey, here's my number. Like, I'll buy these every time you get them in. Same thing on eBay. If you buy something off on, be like, hey, every time you get these in, let me know. Like, we've both done that. And now we have people messaging us probably close to every day being like, hey, I have this, I have this. And so then once you get there, like, maybe you start to find some of even bigger suppliers like we've finally found and then you can

scale the full time. But I think like most people don't want to go full time. That's what I've seen. And they just, they want to turn down and they want to work five to make like extra $5,000 a month to go to their mortgage and call it a day. So I think you could easily do yard sales and thrift stores go twice a week and make that $5,000 a month. Well, I would think that people in bigger markets, like you guys live in the middle of nowhere. People in bigger markets would have even more success simply buying on Facebook marketplace and selling on eBay because the percentage of people going to list stuff on Facebook marketplace that are actually cross checking prices on eBay, it's probably like 2%. No one's thinking to do that. Even if they're eBay users, they're just not thinking to cross, to cross reference prices. So I think people could just, like, once they exhaust everything in their house,

they could just start buying stuff on Facebook Marketplace and selling on eBay. And you don't need to, you don't need to spend any money until you already know if there's demand. So I go to school down in Raleigh, I go to NC State. And basically, so when I'm here, like, home for the summer and stuff, I just do like thrift stores and your hotels and stuff. But when I'm down there, like, it's a million plus people. And so that's been like the biggest game changer from. My personal business has past six months is, I don't know why didn't tap into it earlier,

but just scrolling Facebook marketplace every day and finding people and then just buying off of that. So, yeah. So I live in Dallas-Fort Worth. There's 9 million people within an hour of me. I just typed in VCR. What do you see? Are you drooling right now? Yeah.

15 bucks. One buck. 10, 2020, 20, 20, 2010, 15, 20. That's insane. Anything good here? Yes, this magnavox right there, you just want ever go up? Right. Right here.

Go down. Right here. Yes, right there. That thing right there goes for 150 maybe. Ooh, and it's 20 bucks. 20 minutes from me. I'll hold the exact model. Now you do have to test them, obviously.

It will break. Sure. I mean, look how many there are. I know it's insane. The big TVs with the VCR's on himself like 300 bucks. What, CTVs or whatever they're going? All right. So every time I scroll seven times four, there's 28 listings.

CRT, that's what it is. There we go. So we got. 56. We got 2-2-12. I mean, look, we've got hundreds. I'm not even to the end. This is just within 40 miles of me. Hundreds of just VCRs. That's crazy. Yeah. And then what else should I type in? Camcorder? Type in, yeah, camcorder. How are these prices? Let's do $40 max price. This Sony is pretty good. The $40 one. You could probably talk them down to $20. Yeah. You see more opportunity here? I see more in the VCR, but yeah, there's stuff.

opportunity. Oh, right there. That digital camera was $15 and it's like a $150 digital camera. There's a Canon. What else should I search for? Search up. What other category? Digital camera. What max price should I do? 50 bucks. Yeah, right there, that $15 one, that's like a 150. Right here. Yep. 150 bucks for that thing? Yeah, it has a flip screen on it. Holy crap. Yeah. So someone could turn, like if they lived in a bigger market, they could turn just buying on Facebook marketplace and selling on eBay into a legitimate business. Oh, yeah. And here's another thing I do, your audience.

I put up a listing on Marketplace saying, I will buy your cameras, I will buy your old electronics. I get messages, like 20 messages a day. A lot of it is John. And you're in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. So. Make them come to you.

Exactly. Any other search terms I should, like any hot categories? Yeah, I do AirPods some, but I think a lot of people know what they have with that. Yeah. Because what I do with the AirPods? instead of selling as a set, I'll break them up individually because people lose like the left one or the right one and they'll pay a premium for the...

Hey, look up this. Look up Texas Instrument calculator. That'll be a good one. Ti or should I spell it out? Do Ti-84 calculator and see what comes up. That's like the best one. TI headquarters 20 minutes from me. Fun fact. People might know what they have with this to...

Sometimes I'll get like the top one there they have for 50 for like 15 and sell it for like 70. But again, like you can lowball these people, especially if they, yeah, do 20. I'll do max price 20 here. free. There you go. Oh, wow, free?

No way. That thing sells us for 75. So, like, there's so much opportunity out here. Come to Dallas. Yeah, those two. Oh, wow, that's a steel. Oh, Justin Black Club. There's a digital camera.

Any other tips, tricks, categories that people should go after that could help them avoid a world of hurt? You can dabble and close some if you take the time. It's just so much enclosed to figure out. That's what we did it. I guess it's like that electronic. I will say medical devices they sell really well. You have to be careful.

It's kind of great. Be very careful, like what you like what you can and can't sell, but they sell very fast, like supplements, sell really fast. That stuff, you just kind of have to be more careful. Vintage toys? Yes. Like Lego or Lego's not even vintage. You can sell Lego. I think the main tag right from the Bay is anything vintage or not anything because a lot of vintage stuff is not as worthless.

But like honestly, anything from like the 2000 or 1990 to like 2010 range to like retro. It sells really good. Yeah. Okay. Game Boys? Yes. Oh, yeah. I've sold three of those last week, 100 bucks a piece.

What about actual VHS movies? Is there value there? Not as much. It's boom or bust. You're either going to sell one for $500 or a dollar? Yeah. Like, remember the whole hyper black diamond Disney stuff? If you have a black diamond that's going to be worth all this money, it's like most

them aren't worth that much. I'm sure there are some that are a lot, but like three bucks for Dumbo, black dime or whatever. It's like, come on. Dude, I'm over here thinking like, how can I set up Claude Co-Work or OpenClaw or some AI agent to go have hundreds of conversations for me every day, negotiate, Hagel, can you deliver it to me? $10.

here's my Venmo. Like you could have an AI agent run 90% of this business for you and then you just pack up the orders and ship them. Like it would be a lot of work to get to that point, but it would be worth it. Yeah, I set one up and sell it to everybody. That's a good idea. What did I forget to ask you that I should have asked you? You forgot about like unexpected stories. We kind of talked about this or like unexpected profit streams. One time we, so one of our suppliers had like 100, that's why I said Texas Instruments calculator. He had like hundreds of tech instruments calculators and essentially we did no work in this we hit by on ebay we made an offer hit by or we did it separately but we still the same supplier we hit by and we i found a guy in

tennessee that like supplies them the schools and so he buys them in bulk like we don't even have to test them we literally sent them we bought them sent them untested to this guy this guy test them for us and he's like all right i'm going to pay you $20 each for the working like $10 for broken we pay like $5 each and so we literally did no work we hit by and then we sent him or zelle and He sells us money. So it's like, there's so many opportunities like this out there. You didn't even take delivery of them. No.

No, we literally did nothing. I think the biggest takeaway just on this, even outside of reselling, there's so much money in the world, no matter where you are, who you are, you don't have an excuse. If you want to get out there and you want to make money outside of $9 and five, outside of a boss, you just got to put in the work and you can do it. I mean, it's a year ago. You were just resigned. We could have taken that full time, but we did.

We took slightly different approach. I hopped in my truck and started door dashing for the, I don't even order door dashing. consumer. I was making 30 bucks an hour. 30 bucks an hour. And I was having a blast. Like, there are no excuses. There's just, there are none. I'm sorry. The American dream is not dead yet. It's still alive and well. It's not even, it is more alive than it's ever been. Yeah. I'm going to say that. Guys, you are the best. Where can we find you if we want to learn more? Yeah. So this past year, we just started something called resell university. We just wanted to try a new thing about posting a real every day. And we've been doing it for. So we're just going to see how long we can do it for. But yeah, just re-social media. Just look at Resoling University. There's a bunch of them, but there's only one with

actual faces. So that's us, and we get a lot of free stuff. We'll link to you. And just know, that's not a course. That's not a school community. It is their Instagram handle. So don't go pay a school community. Yeah, please do not. Go to their social pages, which we link to in the description. Yeah. We will be coming out with a course at some point probably, but that'll be if they do, buy it from them. Yes, own our Instagram. They deserve it. That's right. Amen. Thank you, You guys are the best. Thanks for coming on.

I appreciate you. I'm glad to stay in touch. Hey guys. If you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mulling the lawn. You're still driving.

What have you? If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra mile,

share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life. today.