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The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner
How to Make $1.6K/Day on Facebook Marketplace⏐Ep. #282
00:42:59
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- [00:00]
Matt Howe
I was a high school math teacher. Teacher's income, baby coming. So just trying to come up with something. And that's where I started.
- [00:07]
Chris
What were you making as a teacher?
- [00:08]
Matt Howe
40,000 maybe. I profited 20 to 30k that summer. Just summer?
- [00:14]
Chris
Yeah.
- [00:14]
Matt Howe
And so then alongside teaching, it was absolutely past it. So our best month, we did 1.1 million last year.
- [00:22]
Chris
In a month?
- [00:23]
Matt Howe
In a month, yeah.
- [00:24]
Chris
Holy crap.
- [00:25]
Matt Howe
It was posted for $300.
- [00:28]
Chris
What?
- [00:28]
Matt Howe
I sold that for $3,000. This is a really big hack for you guys looking to buy and sell lawnmowers.
- [00:37]
Chris
So last week, I come across this guy on the Internet, and his claim to fame was that he had made $50,000 of profit in one month flipping riding mowers on Facebook Marketplace. My antennas immediately went up, and I'm like, I gotta talk to this guy. So he hopped on a call with my team, they vetted him out, discovered that, yes, Matt's legit, and so I had him on the pod. Matt, how did you. In rural Michigan. Jackson, Michigan, population 30,000 people. How did you make $50,000 in one month buying and selling riding lawnmowers? Not flipping them, not fixing them up, just buying them undervalued and selling them at market value. I'll give you a tip. Yes, he buys from individuals, but he also buys from dealerships. That's the secret. Today he has his own dealership doing over a million dollars a month during the busy season. And yes, he's still buying and selling used and new. So if you want to make thousands of dollars a month flipping riding mowers or anything on Facebook, Marketplace, this episode is as tactical as you get. Please enjoy. Okay, well, Matt, why don't we start by you telling us who you are and what you do?
- [01:36]
Matt Howe
Yeah, so right now, who I am, I own an equipment dealership. And, you know, I think we're talking because I started this entire journey buying and selling used, not even just equipment, but couches, washers and dryers, church pews, TVs, Nintendo Wiis. Right. So it all started with just buying and selling stuff. And, you know, now I've got an equipment dealership and, you know, trying to take over the. The world one lawnmower at a time. Pretty much.
- [02:02]
Chris
Okay, so you started flipping stuff before you opened your dealership?
- [02:07]
Matt Howe
Yes. So probably seven years ago as a high school math teacher. I have no equipment industry background. I played sports growing up, high school, college, basketball. And, you know, there wasn't really an interest. It's not like it's about lawnmowers. For me or anything like that. But it definitely, you know, taught me business in a short period of time. And now my passion is absolutely business. So.
- [02:32]
Chris
Yeah. Okay, so what got you selling things on Facebook? Marketplace? Like what was the, the event that started that?
- [02:39]
Matt Howe
So, you know, the initial event is just teachers income, wife at home, baby coming and you see a bank account that's just staying the same. So just trying to come up with something to increase the income. So you know, that's what, that's what spawned it all basically. And that's where I started. It was literally I went to an estate sale and I, I, I saw this beer, beautiful church queue and the entranceway they're selling for $80. And I just thought it was just, it was, that was my first moment, you know, I think of like large entrepreneurship of thinking that is worth more than $80. And, and people talk about flipping and so I just tried it with that, right? And so I sold that, you know, probably a few hundred bucks and I bought some other things. And you know, that idea started there, right? And it was in the process to do other things to make money, YouTube certified research on how to flip houses that I moved and was doing a live in flip and arbitraging Craigslist. Arbitraging Facebook. That started because I saw a couch that I had to sell when I moved. I saw the equivalent couch for $50 and it was in better shape than the one I had sold for $200. And that's where it all started. I'm going to buy this to straight flip it right off the Internet. And I made $250 within a day. And that just, the itch started right after that.
- [04:04]
Chris
Where did you hear about this first estate sale that you went to? How did you end up there?
- [04:08]
Matt Howe
That's a great question. Who knows? You know, I was probably surfing around Craigslist and I, I always like going to garage sales and things like that. So I, I don't even know how you know, that came to be. But I, I love going to estate sales. I love garage sales because that's, that's where deals are and that, and now my passion is sales. I love sales. But it was the art of finding the deal like that was absolute passionate, right? So that's kind of where that stemmed from for sure.
- [04:37]
Chris
Now, now when you bought this pew, did you do any research on what it was worth or you just assumed to be worth a few hundred bucks?
- [04:43]
Matt Howe
So that is the exact, like that question is the exact framework that I work off of is when I'm exploring a new market to try to buy something different. It is an absolute no brainer that I'm going to make money. Okay. Because I'm buying it for the first time I enter into a new market. It's an absolute no brainer. They're making money. So. So for example, the first enclosed trailer that I ever bought used. Now you tell me without doing any research if you think this is a good deal, a 16 foot enclosed trailer so you can picture with a closed trailer.
- [05:15]
Chris
Yep.
- [05:16]
Matt Howe
It was posted for 300.
- [05:18]
Chris
What?
- [05:19]
Matt Howe
Yeah. So you don't know about.
- [05:21]
Chris
I know what those cost like.
- [05:22]
Matt Howe
So yeah, I sold that trailer. That was my first trailer and I sold that for $3,000. So why is it so cheap turn that I've ever got right there?
- [05:31]
Chris
Did they just misprice it?
- [05:32]
Matt Howe
So they steal it now? It's been sitting there for years and it was, this guy needed it gone and it wasn't about the price and whatever. An awesome one because I had, you know, I started to, you know, make this into a business. But I was a teacher, right? So I, this was still when I was teaching and I had a former student that had two lawnmowers on the back of a trailer on the east side of the state of Michigan. And this guy on Craigslist lives 10 minutes from where I had one of my students out on the road and you have to win on speed, you know, with. And I saw this four minutes after it was posted. I, I tell him we're on the way, the stars of a line because I've got my guy 10 minutes from that location and I sent him over there, I got a trailer full of lawnmowers and I just told, you know, the kid, I said pay, I just, just pay the guy, okay? Just pay him and we will come back. And the guy actually he, you know, he has a title with it which you would think this thing stolen and it's not. And I didn't know about titles at that point, you know, but he had the title for it and you know, you just figure things out as you go because you know what, you know what happened when the kid, the high school kid went back to pick this trailer up is he's getting onto the highway and you know, the guy tells him because with trailers you got a two inch ball, you got it.
- [06:48]
Chris
I know where this is going. I know exactly where this is going.
- [06:50]
Matt Howe
It goes. And of course there's no safety chains, right? There's no safety chain. So it detaches from the truck it goes ac on the highway across into the other side. No one is killed, no one is hurt. He hooks back up. He. We. He may have gotten a ticket for no safety chains for 30 bucks or something. I mean, just crazy, you know, that was probably the, you know, who knows? If it was me, I. I hope I would have seen that, right? But the point is you just, you take action, you figure things out as you. You know what I mean?
- [07:26]
Chris
So. So that was the 300 trailer.
- [07:28]
Matt Howe
That was the first.
- [07:29]
Chris
If, if you're five minutes later, it's gone. Like, I feel that good.
- [07:33]
Matt Howe
He got there within 15 minutes of the post. And the guy's book, you can imagine, right? A trailer posted that low. So. And that's the exact. Learn how to. What to say to keep the deal and all that sort of stuff. But I didn't have the skills at that point to know how to keep that deal closed to me. I was so lucky that I had someone, you know, in the air.
- [07:54]
Chris
So what are those skills that you developed if someone comes across something like this, what can they do?
- [07:58]
Matt Howe
Yeah, that's a good question. So, number one, you need to get them actually talking to you. You need to get them on the phone. That's number one, because you and me talking right now on zoom, that creates a whole different level than if we were texting, right?
- [08:14]
Chris
Level for me, someone else is going to get them on the phone, so it better be you.
- [08:18]
Matt Howe
If you and me were across from each other, sitting right now, you would drink that much more as well, right? So you got to get that the closest proximity to that point. You're going to sell better. But you have to, you know, you. You have to ask those questions. The other guy is going to offer him 600, right? And so you can literally frame people and you can say, I want to know that your word is good that we have a deal. And you have to just go crazy to reaffirm that the deal is closed. You know what I mean? You know, one thing, but there's a lot of things you have to do. And so of course, you can give a deposit on Venmo PayPal, you know, things like that. And you can protect against scamming and, you know, you're talking to a real person at that point, right? So that's. That's one, right? Give them a deposit on Venmo PayPal, any of those sorts of things, and that will absolutely secure the deal. No one's gonna. No one's gonna actually sell it out from under you. If you have given Them some money.
- [09:14]
Chris
Now, I love it because most people would see this in a different area. They're like, dang it, that's such a good deal. Whatever. Let's go find the next one. And you're like, no, I. I know a guy. I'm gonna call him. And even if you didn't know a guy, everything's figureoutable. Like, you could hop on a local Facebook group and say, hey, 150 bucks to whoever can get this trailer the soonest. Then you could pay him a deposit, and then you could just. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's a hundred ways to make that deal work, even if it's not close to you.
- [09:38]
Matt Howe
This is how business. This is how the business started to get created is. You realize it's all about speed, right? So now I develop people that I, number one, it's me first doing it, right? And already I got to the point at that point that someone else was in a truck for me. But you have to figure out, what's the dollar amount that you could literally call somebody, and in a moment's time, they would say, yep, I'll get on the road and help you out. They're going to do it for 10 hours. Will they do it for 15? Is it a retired guy? Is it your dad? Dad will probably do it for no money. You know what I mean?
- [10:08]
Chris
Yeah.
- [10:08]
Matt Howe
But the point is, if you want to build an actual business, you got to do it from, you know, someone who's not related to you. For me, the sweet spot is like 20 to $25 an hour. If it's my. It's literally like 40 to $60 an hour. If it's their truck, that number doesn't matter. You just got to do the math on that and take that out of the deal. And you do the math on seeing if it can go. But you got to build. You know, if you're flipping like that, you got to build out the call list, so to speak. You know, if people. If this guy can't do it, I'm calling the next guy.
- [10:41]
Chris
Yeah.
- [10:42]
Matt Howe
If I get four or five down the line, and this deal is going to make a thousand bucks. You know, I hate to ask it of my wife, but can I miss dinner tonight? You know, you don't want to. So the longer you build that out, the more you project it actually being able to have a life, you know?
- [10:58]
Chris
Yeah. So when you started doing this as a teacher, how long until this income replaced your teacher's income or exceeded it?
- [11:06]
Matt Howe
Once I started buying Lawnmowers. It was instantaneously.
- [11:10]
Chris
Okay.
- [11:11]
Matt Howe
The first lawnmower I bought was right at the summer, you know, a summer. And I made a couple bucks on
- [11:18]
Chris
the zero turn and remind me what city you're in again.
- [11:21]
Matt Howe
Jackson, Michigan.
- [11:22]
Chris
Jackson, Michigan. All right. A couple hundred bucks on your first zero turn.
- [11:25]
Matt Howe
The second one I made closer to 500. And that's when the light bulb really went off. That summer I bought and sold 30 of them. So I profited 20 to 30k that. That summer. Just summer, yeah. So then alongside teaching, it was absolutely past it, you know, and that was hard. Right, because you're teaching. That's happening after, you know, teaching hours. And so by the end of that. By the end of that summer, the students that. Or the end of that teaching year, the students that didn't like me, you know, because I was too regimented or whatever it would be, you know, they were. They were telling the principal, he's calling people in between class to strike. I was like, it's true. You know, I knew I was leaving by the end of the summer. Anyway, I love what we teaching. I liked it. But I. I caught something that just grabbed hold of me, you know?
- [12:15]
Chris
Yeah. Love with, you know, quick reminder, I know you've heard me say this before, but if you know someone that might want to make money buying and selling mowers on Facebook Marketplace, then share this episode with them. It could change their life. What were you making as a teacher?
- [12:28]
Matt Howe
40,000, maybe 45,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [12:32]
Chris
What turned you on to that first lawnmower? How did you find that deal? Where'd you find it and where did you sell it?
- [12:38]
Matt Howe
Reason that I. So number one, I was buying to sell couches. Then it went to washers and dryers. Heating element went out on the dryer that I sold. And I'm thinking, golly, I. I want to do things the right way. I want to live my according to God. And I want it to be under the right principles. And it felt dirty that I sold something that afterwards. And there was this little doubt of maybe I should stop. But when I tried to sell my first house, I did, I couldn't actually sell it. And so I rented it to a
- [13:04]
Chris
guy to live in Flip.
- [13:06]
Matt Howe
And so the one that I was living in, that I did the live in Flip, that's the one where everything get discovered. And the house that I moved from, I ended up renting out instead of selling. That guy had a zero turn lawnmower and it looked like ragged, terrible. And he told me it was worth $2,500. And it blew my mind that that could be worth that much money. I'm thinking in my head, 15% of 2500 bucks is a lot better than 15% of 300 bucks. Right? And so, and that's my whole thing, like even me right now with mowers, if I could get into construction equipment that sells for, you know, 100 to a million, that, you know, less train, it's. It's the same time, you know what I mean? Same amount of skill.
- [13:52]
Chris
Where did you come up with the 15% number?
- [13:55]
Matt Howe
Just in general, right? You realize you're selling something for 400 bucks and you bought it for, you know, you're into it for 325, you know, just. All right, could be 20%, 30%. It's just a number.
- [14:07]
Chris
So you, you bought it from this guy that was renting your house for 2500 and then what?
- [14:12]
Matt Howe
Yeah. So the idea was zero turns are worth a lot more money than the stuff I was selling. So that's what turned me on to thinking, let's try it with a mower and a mower. Magical. Because did I know anything about mowers? No. But do the blades turn on? Does it move forward and back? You can actually take it through a full testing cycle. Unlike these dryers, you know, you gotta run and you're hauling them all around. These have.
- [14:36]
Chris
For 200 bucks.
- [14:37]
Matt Howe
Yeah, exactly. So that, that's why. And then, you know, and this is, here's the biggest misconception about flipping stuff. I knew nothing about equipment. Right. People buy and sell stocks because they know what it's worth now and they wait until it's worth more. Right. So you got to learn to think about items like that. Buy it when it's low and preferably when it's beautifully perfect condition. You don't need to do anything. The value is not in fixing it up, the values in buying it low. Right? Yeah. Oh, so. And then selling it for what it's exactly worth. And so I was within a week. Like every time it was quick, it's about a fast. You got to be able to get it for a price so you can sell it quick.
- [15:26]
Chris
Okay, let me. I'm going to throw a wrench into this. I'm going to switch things up a bit and then I want to get right back to that story. This is by total coincidence. Total coincidence. Just last night I bought a zero turn mower for myself, like to mow my line, right? Because I need one. I had a John Deere I didn't like it. I sold it, you know, at the end of the season and now it's getting warmer here in Dallas. So I went on Facebook, Marketplace, and I want to show you what it looks like and tell you. I want you to tell me what you think I should have paid. What it's worth.
- [15:55]
Matt Howe
Undervalued. Because you're. You're a deal guy.
- [15:57]
Chris
I am. But I also, like, I didn't. I didn't work that hard on this one because I'm not trying to make money on this. I'm just trying to mow with it. So I kind of look at it differently. But let me. I'm going to share my screen and just don't look at the price on the right side. Okay, let's. Let's do this. I was thinking I should buy this after I talked to Matt because he'll tell me what to pay, but I'm too impatient. So.
- [16:18]
Matt Howe
Because I want to do this right. Okay. I've got it covered. So I don't know the price.
- [16:21]
Chris
Okay.
- [16:22]
Matt Howe
First. My first mower was a Toro. I'm a Toro dealer. You got a Titan, you got a good one.
- [16:28]
Chris
It's a 50 MX 5,454 inch. 171 hours.
- [16:33]
Matt Howe
179 hours. So that brand sells for about six grand right now. So you got it used with that low, that's about a 10 year old long it.
- [16:42]
Chris
It's got suspension on the seat. It's in great condition. It's got a roll bar.
- [16:46]
Matt Howe
You need to tell me. I know everything about that.
- [16:49]
Chris
I don't know
- [16:52]
Matt Howe
for sure, for sure. I certainly hope you paid less than 3,000, but if you got it for under 2,000, you did really, really well.
- [16:59]
Chris
I'm embarrassed.
- [17:00]
Matt Howe
I'm embarrassed now. With that being said, if you bought it for 3,000, that to me is market value. So if you paid above that, you went high.
- [17:09]
Chris
Okay. So it was listed for four eight weeks ago. Never sold. He put it to 3500
- [17:19]
Matt Howe
above market value. That's why I didn't sell. Keep going.
- [17:22]
Chris
Yep. And it's also winter time still.
- [17:24]
Matt Howe
Right.
- [17:24]
Chris
No one's mowing right now. And I said, hey. I could have lowballed him, but I said, hey, if you deliver it to me, he was 45 minutes away. Deliver it to me, I'll pay 3,300.
- [17:33]
Matt Howe
There's that in him delivering it. So that's why you're willing to pay more. Yeah. So it's fair.
- [17:42]
Chris
He was a flipper. He's like you, he was a flipper market.
- [17:45]
Matt Howe
And I would have been the same, I would have been the same thing. You know, I'd have price four know you negotiate a little bit, possibly one. So yeah, you, I mean you retail buyer. You're the retail buyer.
- [17:55]
Chris
It's funny because when he came I was like I'm interviewing a guy tomorrow that made 50 grand in a month sell. He's like what 50 grand? Him and the other guy, he was like man, the best month we ever had was August 2025. We sold a mower every day for the whole month. Thirty mowers, we made 30 grand. And that was like 80 hours a week of working.
- [18:17]
Matt Howe
My guess is he, he's fixing these himself, right?
- [18:21]
Chris
I think he is.
- [18:22]
Matt Howe
He bought that. He should have bought it in the exact condition that he sold it to you for, for two grand. But he probably bought it for a thousand and he did a bunch of work to it. He made more money but his time per hour was way worse. And that was, that's that why he could never scale.
- [18:39]
Chris
Yep, yep.
- [18:40]
Matt Howe
Unless you fix it. Right. So it's very hard for someone that knows how to fix stuff to take that approach. So that's my biggest advantage. Right. Is that, is that I don't now I know how to fix some stuff but I choose not to do it.
- [18:53]
Chris
Yeah. Did you know you can build a six figure business with only a 10,000 person email list? I just talked to the founder of Beehive and he told me that there are people with 10 to 15,000 subscribers making more than newsletters that are 10 times that size. Here's how. Well this one design newsletter with around 15,000 subs doesn't just sell ads. They run two week online cohorts four times a year that generate six figures. And on top of that they're charging companies 20 to $30,000 to get in front of their audience. And that's on one small focus list. This is not about going viral anymore. It's about owning a niche and monetizing it correctly. And Beehive gives you exactly the tools to do just that. Like surveys to understand exactly who your readers are or a built in recommendation network to grow automatically. Paid subscriptions, digital products, sponsorship tools, and you keep 100% of the revenue. You don't need a massive audience to run a successful business. You need the right system. So move your email list over today and try out beehive with 30% off for 30 days with code CHRIS30. Because this might be the simplest, highest leverage business that you can build right now. Just go to beehive.com, chris to learn more of that. That's B E-E-H-I-I-V.com Chris. Okay, so the way I understand it is you start with couches, then you go to appliances. You have this one bad appliance experience, which is not abnormal, right? The heating element went out, and you're like, what am I doing? All this work for 50 bucks, 200 bucks. Then you by accident come across this mower. You make 350 bucks just flipping it, not fixing it, just buying it and selling it as is. What do you do from there? How do you start scaling this mower operation?
- [20:35]
Matt Howe
So really, the first thing is what I already talked about, right? You got to hire someone. What's the. What's the biggest leverage task that you're doing? And what is it when you're flipping? It's finding the deal. That's number. That's the thing that you can't. That's very hard to outsource. It's very hard to teach that part of it, Right? So what's the easiest thing to do? What's the most time consuming thing to do? It's to sit in the car for five hours if this thing is two hours away. You know what I mean? So that's the first thing you should outsource. You should not outsource that until you've done that yourself a handful of times.
- [21:09]
Chris
Amen, brother. Still the same thing.
- [21:11]
Matt Howe
It's a lot easier to get somebody with super low skill to drive for 20 bucks an hour than it is to someone who's got negotiating skills. So you've actually got to learn to negotiate the deal all the way down, as low as possible, get an agreed upon price first and then go. But you can't do instead of losing the deal and you got, you know, speed delete. On the sales side is the same thing on buying and selling.
- [21:37]
Chris
So it is more effective to do that negotiations in person. Right? But you just. You can't scale. If you do every negotiation in person, you do it over the phone.
- [21:46]
Matt Howe
Now, what I would do is I would send someone with a slip of paper that's like an inspection sheet, okay? That's what I would do now. And then I would have them call me afterwards, and then I would renegotiate even lower.
- [21:59]
Chris
Let's say you see this toro two hours away. The same one that I just bought in Michigan, it's listed for three grand. You're not going to pay over two for it. So you get them on the phone, you're like, listen, man, I do this, that has this. It needs a new tire, yada, yada, yada. I can get you to 2300. He's like, I'll be there today. I'll be there in two hours. Okay, cool. I'll send my guy. Awesome. He comes with an inspection sheet. Like, actually, the blade's a little bent, right? It's rattling a little bit. I can do 2100. I can do 2000.
- [22:26]
Matt Howe
Right.
- [22:26]
Chris
Is that kind of how you do it?
- [22:28]
Matt Howe
That's. Well, that's kind of it. But you're missing some, you know, like, negotiating 101. He who speaks first.
- [22:35]
Chris
Right, right, right. He says the price.
- [22:37]
Matt Howe
Yeah, but. Yeah, obviously the core concept is the same, but, like, the best way to negotiate with me, a dealer, or any what, you're trying to buy anything, you make them lay down the number first. Okay. Yeah. So they've already done it by 3,000. Right. But you got to ask, what's the lowest that you would possibly consider taking? Now, the biggest mistake people make is that's their first question. No, yeah, What's.
- [23:00]
Chris
Yeah, welcome to that build.
- [23:02]
Matt Howe
What's the only thing that you have in common with that person? The only thing you have in common with that person is knowing about that machine. So what do you do? You talk about that machine, and you don't. Totally contrary. You don't talk it down. Now, you ask them a lot of questions about it, but you actually talk it up. You talk about how nice a machine it is. The more that they connect with you over the machine, then, you know, they're willing to actually take a lower price
- [23:31]
Chris
because they're liking you. They're starting to like you more.
- [23:33]
Matt Howe
Yes, exactly. So for me to finish that, they lay down the number. Right. And then let's say they don't lay down the number. What do you do if they're forcing you to say the first number? What do you think? What's your guess? They want you to say a number. What do you do? They won't say a number.
- [23:50]
Chris
You walk away or pretend to walk away.
- [23:52]
Matt Howe
You offer an unrealistically low number. So let's take what you should have done. If I would have gotten a hold of you before you did this, what should you had done? What's a number that in your wildest dreams, you don't think he would accept on that. So he had 3500.
- [24:07]
Chris
What is 1500?
- [24:09]
Matt Howe
Oh, yeah. So just say. Say, you know, and obviously, the further you go, you know, the more that they won't. But that will force him to actually say the number, right?
- [24:18]
Chris
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:19]
Matt Howe
So you should. You should have built rapport then you should have said, what's the absolute lowest you could possibly consider taking for this? You shouldn't have brought up the delivery yet. And let's say he says 3,000. You're quiet, right? You're just listening, man. You know, you just let that silence sit. You know what I mean? Well, tell you what, you know, and obviously if you already said three, I was literally thinking like a couple thousand bucks. And then he'll say, oh, geez. Oh, big. You know, he'll go on and say, no, that's what I was thinking. But like, I mean, I. Is there a middle ground? You know? Is there a middle ground? But I'll tell you what, people might. They will. If you're not dealing with a flipper, they might just be tired of it and say, I'll tell you what, I can do that the amount of people that will take the number that you think is crazy. So you lay down an unrealistically low number, right? And then work off that. And if they don't say anything, let's say that he doesn't say 3,000 and you say 2,000. He will then actually say the real number that's going. Everyone's got a number in their head. He'll say three grand when he never would have before. Right? So that. That's like negotiating one on one right there.
- [25:27]
Chris
Okay, so after you sold the first one, what were your next steps to
- [25:30]
Matt Howe
start scaling that, to scale it. You have to understand it, right? So I was just in the trenches doing it myself for the first.
- [25:37]
Chris
You just started buying and selling yourself 15.
- [25:39]
Matt Howe
I'm going to drive. I'm picking it up, I'm making calls, all that sort of stuff. She's getting upset because I'm on the road at night, you know? And then you start to realize. You start to pick up patterns of like, gosh, I'm spending eight hours a day in the car, you know? And so that's when you realize, okay, I gotta call someone.
- [25:56]
Chris
Okay, so how many mowers would you say you bought yourself before you hired your driver?
- [26:00]
Matt Howe
I bet it was like five to 10. It wasn't a crazy amount. Second layer of this actually turning into a business. I bought one. It worked perfectly, right? Because I didn't want to buy something that I didn't know, you know, I didn't know how to fix it. Well, one of them just stopped working when I Was driving around the middle of my lawn. I had no idea. So I thought, you know, I driven by this house that always had these old lawnmowers sitting in front of them. Just drove up to this guy's house. I knocked on his door and I said, do you, do you like, fix these? And he said, yeah. Well, turns out this guy Bill, so I drive him over to my house and he determines that the fuel pump went bad. And so then all of a sudden I got a mechanic. You know, and people, when you're trying to scale a business, notice what I. I don't have full time employees. I've just got. And it's just a, it's a 1099 basis here and there, you know, basis. And then you start to 1099, you start to like hire people and you start to realize, my gosh, I've got this guy, like, he's. He's been doing like 20 hours a week for me at that point. Hire him part time.
- [27:02]
Chris
What were you, what were you paying Bill for this stuff?
- [27:04]
Matt Howe
Bill had his own rate, right? But he was probably working at like 4. You know, he's probably like 14 bucks an hour. So the more that hustle stuff, you'll find right now. What's my shop rate? It's $125 an hour. Why can I charge that? It's because I market myself. I did the work of finding Bill. If he would market himself, he could easily charge 20, 25. That's not. He wasn't optimizing for money. He just wanted something to do here and there. You know what I mean? I started to push beyond his limits. You know, he's 70 year old, he's got a cane, you know.
- [27:37]
Chris
So once you found Bill, did you start like opening up your parameters of what you could buy? Like being more willing to flip things and not just buy and sell?
- [27:46]
Matt Howe
Now I shouldn't buy even with a mechanic in the back. I should not buy anything that needs any kind of work. A little bit different formula now that I've got a dealership, Because I'm trying to keep the guys working in the off season. So then it actually does make sense so I can keep his wages. So the whole, you know, everything changed right when I actually. This turned into an actual dealership.
- [28:06]
Chris
Okay, so, all right, so you use Bill. Bill fixes the fuel pump. How do you scale to your biggest month ever? Like, how did you have that monster month? What did that month look like?
- [28:17]
Matt Howe
Part of how that one came together is at that point, I'd probably been doing this for like a year and a half. Okay. Everyone thought I was crazy when I quit teaching and gave up the benefits. So they, they picture that I've got these little lawnmowers sitting in front of the house. I got no idea what's actually going on. So my cousin is telling me like, you are crazy dude to possibly do this. He's where. He's a corrections officer and my wife doesn't want me to do it. She's risk averse. And anyway, what ends up happening is my cousin Dan, he ends up quitting. He ends up quitting his job to come work for me out of my barn.
- [28:53]
Chris
At the prison?
- [28:54]
Matt Howe
Yeah, if he quits, he quits working at the prison, gets out of there. And there's other guys that I played basketball with in college and I taught them how to do this. Okay. And what I had a deal structure set up that I would teach them how to do it. We would use half of their money, half of mine. We would use my equipment, my setup, and I would get a certain percentage of that deal. And I think it was like a 50 50. So if they found a deal, I would still get 50% of the pie. I had four I built. This is what I thought the big business was going to be. I built a business called Family Affair Flippers. So I would teach people, but it was kind of using some of my capital. I had a guy from Nashville, Tennessee doing it. We had like, I had like five guys doing this alongside myself. Most of them doing it from my barn, some of them doing it from afar. It was a really big trust basis thing because I knew these people. Me, me personally, you know, this video that, that you discovered me off of me personally. The stuff I bought and sold was about like 30 to 35 grand that I made. And then there was like you know, 15 to 20 grand made from like the 50, 50 splits from the other people. 30 grand, number one, like really pivotal piece was like, number one, you got a monster trailer and you're going out to Ohio. Ohio is like the hotbed of. I'm in Michigan. Ohio for what? It's the hotbed to find equipment. I don't know what it is, but they'll come back with four or five pieces of equipment. Well, and this is a really big hack for you guys looking to buy and sell lawnmowers. There are dealers that just hate dealing with used stuff. And I came across one of these dealers, the nicest guy in the world became a mentor to me as I actually opened up My equipment dealership here. Shout out, shout out to Wanamakers. Okay? These guys are the largest simplicity dealer in the nation. And this guy's just getting droves of lawnmowers in. And the first one I buy was just crazy underpriced. I'm like, how is a dealer selling it for this? Cheap. And so I put two and two together. I'm like, this is like a source for me now. You know what I mean? And so that we didn't just buy the first time, I said, well, what else do you have? We left with a trailer full of three or four. And I, I got to the point where I was probably buying like, you know, 20, 30 mowers a month just from this one guy. Talk about leverage. Right now you can call out, I'm still searching. We're getting massive volume from this guy. And so that was a huge, I mean, and there's enough room for me to make 1,000, 2,000, $2,500 on the mowers that he'. Yeah, so each, each, yes, yes. You know, so like a zero turn mower that I sell brand new now, I mean, they can get to like 12, 15, $20,000. It's crazy what they can sell for. And that's why this is such a good niche. So you can get a used lawnmower that sells for five grand and great value because they sell new for 15 grand.
- [31:42]
Chris
Yeah. What do you make on the new ones on average?
- [31:44]
Matt Howe
So it's, it's a volume game, you know, it's 18 to 22%. And that's, that's if you're doing it right. That's if you're doing it right. You know, dealers that aren't doing it right, you're probably making more like 10 to 15%, you know, so you'll buy
- [31:57]
Chris
a new one for 12 and try to sell it for 15.
- [32:00]
Matt Howe
Yeah, and they've got like, it's called map pricing, which is minimum advertised allowed pricing. And so you pretty much follow map. There are dealers that don't follow map. They'll go above it. You know, I, I'm trying to build a national platform with what I'm doing, right? So I'm going with like a constant, steady, a fair price. Some people maybe are trying to sell it under that, but I would rather go volume. And that's the same thing. When you're flipping, right, you don't want to, you don't try to make all the money. You try to make 80% of the money and move it within a week. You know.
- [32:32]
Chris
Yeah. So let's, let's talk timeline. When did you go from like when did you buy your first mower? And then you started scaling up and then when did you open your actual, actual dealership? And then when did you start selling new from your dealership?
- [32:44]
Matt Howe
I bought my first zero turn. I quit teaching in that for probably about exactly a year. And then this was from third of an acre property. It's the eight lawnmower sitting in a little two car garage. I've got five or six enclosed trailers in the backyard. So imagine your neighbor's got to love you, right? But that's why matter. I had great, I had a great relationship, right, with my neighbors. I moved to after I quit teaching. Then I bought a, a 20. It's a 24 acre property with a barn behind it and that's where I could actually, I had the space to actually do it. But that in of itself. They had an estate sale right at the house that I live in right now. And I'm back there trying to find a lawnmower and then I realize I'm like, what are you guys doing with the house? Well, we're going to put on the market in a couple of months. So I bought it, you know, as a 1970 original house with neon in one, you know, room and, and you know, all these bright colors. So you just imagine a 1970 original house and it's just been awesome. It's like American dream, right? You, you buy the house now, now you got the finishings in there and I've got the skills to do that. So but even that, right, I've got now instead of me fixing the house myself, I'm paying someone at 30 bucks an hour because my time's worth more than that at this point. You know, so, and so then I operated like that for probably like a, a couple of years.
- [34:07]
Chris
From your property.
- [34:08]
Matt Howe
Four years ago, this was a dance studio. When I bought it, it wasn't a dealership. I just bought a building. And again, I'm a deal guy. So I got a great deal on the real estate. They didn't market it the right way. Shame on them. But we were driving by and thank goodness my wife was looking, you know, she said that's for sale. And, and I had no lines, right. I just, I literally, I bought this and these people probably thought this guy's not going to make it. There's 10 or 15 used lawnmower sitting out there, this baby blue building, you know, that I'm knocking wall there and you know Slowly you pick up brands. You pick up Toro, then you pick up Trailer Line, then you pick up Bad Boy. And that if you came, you would never know. I mean, it's a full fledged dealership at this point, four years later.
- [34:55]
Chris
So that's amazing. Are you still buying used on Facebook Marketplace as well?
- [35:00]
Matt Howe
I did a couple of weeks ago because there were. We're kind of slow in the winter, you know, that's another hack. I'm trying to figure out what to do. So we bough bought. I'm trying to think of the last deal I got, but I bought like a Kubota side by side. Like, you know, you can sit beside each other. That's why they call this side by an ATV. And I bought it for 8,000. But this needed work. And I've got this listed for 13 grand right now. But we did have to put work into this. Okay. Probably hope to make a few grand on that. But this is a. I bought one that needed work. I bought a Polaris Ranger that needed work, and I got a crazy deal on it. I bought it for maybe $4,500 $5,000, and I sold it a few days ago for 10 grand. It needed some work on the engine, and my mechanic knew what he was doing. He got it fixed. I probably made like four grand on that. Then the guy traded in his side by side. We got that for. I think it was 40. No, no, I bought that for 3750. That one's probably worth eight grand. So that's another people think. Here's the other big hack for you guys listening. You think that you don't want people to know that you're buying and selling. People want transparency. The guy that you bought that from, he ended up telling you. You might tell your buddy to call this guy. Yeah, yeah, right. Or you might call him back in three years and say, hey, what do you got? And you trade that in, and he makes money on that again. So you being transparent is everything, you know?
- [36:22]
Chris
Yeah, it's more profitable.
- [36:23]
Matt Howe
And it's all about how you word it. You don't say, you know, you start to learn the verbiage. You don't say. I flip stuff all about how you frame it to people.
- [36:32]
Chris
What are your monthly sales at your dealership during, like, the busy months?
- [36:36]
Matt Howe
So our best month, we did like 1.1 million last year.
- [36:40]
Chris
In a month?
- [36:41]
Matt Howe
In a month, yeah.
- [36:42]
Chris
Holy crap. And what's your net margin on that?
- [36:44]
Matt Howe
You know, we're 20 to 25. So 90% of my business is sales. That's not a healthy dealership. You should be like, 60% sales. I do so much on the sales side that that's just grown so much faster than the service side. Right. But yeah, so think like 20 to 25%. You got the brick and mortar, the overhead, all that. So good dealers are walking away with like 7 to 12% net, you know, at the end of the tunnel. Yeah.
- [37:12]
Chris
That's amazing. What's crazy to me is you're in a city of 30,000 people. Jackson, Michigan.
- [37:19]
Matt Howe
Right.
- [37:19]
Chris
Like, if someone just.
- [37:20]
Matt Howe
Texas. We got a mower going to Texas.
- [37:23]
Chris
There you go. If someone didn't want to scale, like, they didn't want to open a dealership. They just want to do this on the side from their house. On Facebook Marketplace. Buying on Facebook, selling on Facebook. How scalable is this? Like, in all markets? Because you're in a cold market. I mean, Texas is a better market because they're mowing nine months out of the year here. Is it pretty scalable?
- [37:42]
Matt Howe
It's absolutely scalable. And you tell you what the secret is not lawnmowers. It's not trailers. It's that you pick something and it doesn't even matter. You could be pressure washing a house. It doesn't. And the more you do it, the more you learn what works and what does not work. And if you happen to want to do with mowers, you watch a channel, you watch the Matt Howe channel, you'll learn how that works. You know what I mean? But point is, you get on board with someone that you resonate with, and then you don't do it for a month, you do it for 10 years. And then absolutely, you know, it's.
- [38:15]
Chris
I've been on the mo. On the market for this mower, and it's led me down these rabbit holes on Facebook Marketplace where I'll see, like, the same guy selling multiple mowers, and I'll click into their profile, I found five to 10 guys that have dozens of mowers listed. Not dealerships, just guys. Would you suggest that people, like, they simply try to buy on Facebook and sell on Facebook? Not things that need to be fixed, but just buy, undervalue, sell at or above value? Or would you suggest that people try to find these estate sales and garage sales so they can find stuff that's like, off the radar and then sell it on Facebook Marketplace?
- [38:49]
Matt Howe
You should try to do that. Here would be my suggestion. Start calling dealers and seeing what used equipment they have. That is way under arbitrage. There are people that are just Buying all their stuff from dealers. Find the dealers that are not advertising. Well, find the one not putting their inventory on Facebook like they should be. Okay. I have to actually like hit the. Hit the phone book, you know, go on Google and start calling the ones and you'll start. You have any used and you'll find one. That's probably the biggest hack, I'd say, right there. I like that. I just thought. But that's. That would absolutely work.
- [39:23]
Chris
It's one point of contact for mowers every week, every month. Anytime you get a trade in, let me know.
- [39:29]
Matt Howe
Exactly. And then you just visit them. Maybe they don't call you because they're so busy. Just you call them. Hopefully they're local enough that you can go find them. But if, if that guy comes to my store, I'm giving him the ratty mower out back. That's not the mower you buy. You buy the one that's complete, ready to go. For me, if I've got 10 lawnmower sitting out there and some guy walks up on my doorstep a young bad how and he wants to buy all 10 of them, I'd give a deal. I would absolutely deal. And more people will buy from him out of his barn than me sometimes because they feel like they're getting a deal when it's not from a dealership. So, you know, go to a dealer and just find the best one or two, you know, mowers he's got, you know, don't just face value, do that. Right. But vet that a little bit, you know?
- [40:14]
Chris
Yeah. Now I've got a buddy that. That rents out washers and dryers. And in the process of doing that, he discovered by accident that a lot of these mom and pop appliance shops need people like independent drivers to deliver appliances. They don't want to deliver them themselves. Do you think there's an opportunity there to just be a delivery guy for these dealerships? Every time they sell one, you deliver it. Or yeah, maybe.
- [40:36]
Matt Howe
I mean, that's a job at that point, but you could. Maybe that helps you learn the industry a little bit. People talk about someone for free to learn an industry, you know, and that's. That's. No one's actually willing to do that. But, you know, people pay you what you're doing, what you're worth.
- [40:52]
Chris
Yeah, well, it was a good setup. He worked it as a business and the individual would pay the appliance shop a delivery fee, and then they would just pass that on to him. So he would just have like a route every day. He was like just a third party delivery guy.
- [41:04]
Matt Howe
Right.
- [41:05]
Chris
Is. Are there any other opportunities you see in this space, maybe tangential to mowing or tangential to flipping that you think are still in their early stages today that people could attack?
- [41:14]
Matt Howe
It doesn't matter. The, like, it's it for flipping. It's not about a mower. It's not about a trailer. There's some item on Facebook right now, I don't know what it is, that is worth a good amount of money, two to five grand. That has a big margin to it. And no one's buying and selling it right now. Well, you got to pick a market that people are actually buying. It's an actual need, you know, that's out there. I don't know what it is, you know?
- [41:41]
Chris
Well, I know a guy in North Carolina that does that with sheds. So he buys and sells sheds?
- [41:46]
Matt Howe
Yeah, it could be.
- [41:47]
Chris
Matt, this is amazing. Is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you that people would. Might like to hear or learn?
- [41:54]
Matt Howe
Number one, my life. My life without the person of Jesus Christ is far worse. Okay.
- [42:01]
Chris
Amen.
- [42:02]
Matt Howe
And I can tell you that from the experience of being super filled with my faith, and I can tell you that for being more of like an agnostic, like, I don't really even know if there's a God, but the last year or so, my life, I mean, God was gifting me with learning about business when I. When I wasn't following him. And he made it abundantly clear to me that he was gifting me that skill. That when I actually do have faith, I could use that for his in my life is not even 10 times better, not even 100. It's infinitely better when it's in accordance with my faith.
- [42:36]
Chris
I'm glad you said that. That's awesome. Thank you. I'm a. I'm a believing man as well. Yeah, completely agree. Thank you, Matt. Where can people find you if they want to learn more?
- [42:44]
Matt Howe
So buy a lawnmower for me. We'll ship it to Texas. We'll ship it to anywhere at how Equipment. Okay, so equipment on YouTube. I'm in the trenches right now, so if I'm just a little bit ahead of you, hopefully I can help you, you know, if you watch that channel.
- [42:57]
Chris
All right. Thank you, Matt.
- [42:58]
Matt Howe
Thank you. Appreciate you.