← The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner
The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner
This Is How You Actually Go From $0 to $100K Reselling Online⏐Ep. #243
00:45:42
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- [00:00]
A
This guy Joe, he started with nothing. Over 13 days, he made 1200 bucks. Without knowing anything, he started buying more. He did $17,300 in sales this month. Start small, make some mistakes, figure it out. Mike doesn't buy anything. Mike gets everything for free and does this on the site. He's going to make 5, 600 bucks on this within 24 hours. We made about 40 grand this year so far. It doesn't take much to make money.
- [00:23]
B
$2.99 for a rug?
- [00:25]
A
Yeah. For 67 units, she bought $11,000 worth of rugs for 200 bucks. She bought two pallets of books for a dollar. She sold them for $5000 on eBay. Boring products can make you rich because they get ignored by everybody.
- [00:40]
B
All right, you guys know Shannon Jean by now. He's my good friend. He's been on the podcast a million times because you guys love him. Today he walked through exactly how to go from flipping free $0 couches on Facebook Marketplace to buying welding trucks, helicopters, et cetera. So in other words, how to start with $0 and end with a hundred thousand dollars? And he shares a screen and walks us through actual auctions. And the prices on these things are just mindboggling. Please enjoy and share with a friend.
- [01:02]
A
I'm thrilled to be back. I love talking about this stuff. I want to go shopping like we always do. We can talk about some auctions and reselling and opportunities. But I. I want to have a. Today we're going to talk about a path, like from zero, you know, investment to scaling and then buying things and then turning it. So it's like in the beginning, I'm going to share a seller with you that, you know, invest nothing. It's made like $40,000 this year. And then at the end, we'll. We'll talk about a seller that is, you know, doing like $17,000 a month buying and selling things out of his garage. So all that. But I want to. I want to start. I want to talk about why you have to research first and buy second. And I know it's not as sexy as buying, buying, buying, which I love to do too, and I can't stop, but I want to talk about it. There's just four pieces of this research thing I want to go over before we start. So. Because the worst thing I get is people like, I listen to you. Then I went and bought all this stuff. Now what do I do? And that's not. Because then they have to dig them out.
- [02:03]
B
Yeah. Well, let me interrupt you for A second. Some of that might be my fault. Right. One of my catchphrases is like, the building of the thing is the research.
- [02:13]
A
Yes.
- [02:13]
B
The building of the product is the research. But let me asterisk that when we're talking about sending $2,800 to. To Washington state for a bunch of broken treadmills. That's kind of a different story. Right?
- [02:26]
A
Yeah. We don't want to gamble. We want to take calculated risks.
- [02:28]
B
Right?
- [02:29]
A
Right. This is not rolling the dice. Now, as you do it, you'll get more comfortable and you won't have to do as much research because you'll know, oh, that I know those treadmills are worth X or whatever. So, yeah, the thing is, is trying to find what sells in your market as a first one, are you selling on ebay, whatnot, Poshmark, or are you selling on Facebook Marketplace? You need to know what sells there in that research. That's number one. Just start looking around. Who's the top sellers in categories maybe that you're interested in? Then you have to study. You know, I always say, don't watch Netflix, watch auctions, but you know, watch what other people are doing. And today I'm going to show you how to go search somebody's Facebook marketplace just to, you know, get some feedback on, see what they're selling. Even ebay. Poshmark. Use incognito mode in your browser and log into Facebook so you can just kind of see what they filter to the top for you and what your competitors best practices, what people are doing. And then I always ask people, what's your unfair advantage? And what I mean by that is like, what differentiates you? Do you have extra space? Do you have a warehouse, a barn? That's a huge unfair advantage to somebody that's just selling in their garage or a storage space. Maybe you have a couple of big teenage kids that can help you move scratch and dent appliances around. That's another one. That's massive.
- [03:45]
B
Yeah.
- [03:46]
A
Or do you know something like, I'm not a huge mechanical guy, so maybe you know all about fixing small mechanical things like.
- [03:54]
B
Yeah.
- [03:54]
A
Snowblowers or pressure washers. And that's. That's great.
- [03:59]
B
My takeaway from what you're saying right now is everyone has an unfair advantage.
- [04:03]
A
Yes.
- [04:03]
B
They just, they just, they're underselling themselves or they're not being creative enough. Like, if you use chat, GPT's like video feature, you have an unfair advantage. I use it to fix my lawnmower. Oh, I did it.
- [04:14]
A
I just used it Yeah, I used to fix a washer up one of our vacation rentals this last weekend. It's amazing.
- [04:19]
B
I'm like the least mechanically inclined person ever. That could be an unfair advantage. I got a teenage boy. You're telling me that's an unfair advantage?
- [04:26]
A
Awesome. That is an unfair advantage. What your network is. So think of it as your competitive edge, right? What do you have? And it's to your point, you have to stop and think about it because it's not, you know, everybody has something that they can leverage. We're looking for leverage here, right. To exponentially help you succeed. And then you match those products to your, what your advantages are. If you're, you know, a single person with a tiny little garage. Don't sell appliances. Right. They're too heavy and you can't get them around. But if you're, if you know everything about luxury products and fashion, you should be buying from like the Japanese auction houses and selling that product. So it just depends that that kind of gives you a guide. Okay, so, so this is where I start. And you got to just take a little bit of time so you don't wind up having problems. But the other option is we're gonna talk about Mike McCabe real quick. And you know this guy, you follow him on X. I think Mike doesn't buy anything. Mike gets everything for free. Mike takes couches. Mike is a weatherman and does this on the side. See a picture of him in this suit right here. He's at work and he went and picked up a couch on his break. Okay, so he's going to make 5, 600 bucks on this within 24 hours.
- [05:46]
B
Dude. Shannon, I'm interviewing a guy from Instagram and he's a full time couch flipper in Canada. So come back about a week from now and I'll have a whole episode dedicated to couch.
- [05:56]
A
This is such a great way to start because Mike just picks his stuff up for free or nominal. 50 bucks. You know, sometimes for people put a couch and then he takes time lapse video of him cleaning it and getting it all prepped. He's learned how to do upholstery. His unfair advantage is he's willing to put himself out there. He bought an upholstery repair kit off Amazon. He sews up when there's tears and rips. He doesn't let any of that stuff stop him. And he flips stuff every single day. And I know he's made about 40 grand this year so far.
- [06:27]
B
And he's a weather anchor.
- [06:28]
A
Yes. So you Know, and his main thing, I always ask people to what their noble cause is. Like, we all want to make money, but. But what's. What's higher level than that? Oh, I want to, you know, my spouse not to work, or I want to send my kids to private school or whatever. Something you can, you know, you keep in your mind. Mike's was. He was just kind of bored. He's like, you know, I'm in my mid-50s. I've never done anything like this before. And it's reinvigorated his life. Whenever I talk to him, he's just like, I'm so excited. This is the greatest thing ever. What? You got to find a higher cause. It's like, sure, we're just selling couches. And if you tell that to some, I don't know, professional guy, they'd be like, well, that's stupid. You know, but you're just like, it changes your life if you think about it the right way. And you put. So now he's starting to do other things. He's starting to do carpet, and he's starting to do some other deals. So this is going to lead to something greater than him. So I love this concept here. Another one that's basically free is. This is Mindy. She bought two pallets of books from gov deals for a dollar, and over three months, she sold them for $5,000 on eBay.
- [07:33]
B
What?
- [07:34]
A
Yeah, this is what happens. And this is Mindy's ebay account. And you can go find it and look at, you know, this book. 45 bucks. All. All these books she happened to buy were. This is a great category too. Homeschooling and education. $68 for this reading.
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B
So 52. I'm guessing that books are not a sexy category on gov deals.
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A
No, that's what makes them great. Boring products can make you rich because they get ignored by everybody.
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B
I just. I just feel like the average Gov Deals buyer is, like, sophisticated. They're savvy, they know what sells. And so. And even I'm an optimist. If I see a pallet of books for a dollar, I'm thinking, oh, there's no opportunity here. Because my. My competitive bidders know there was no opportunity here. Yeah, that's right. But that's not true.
- [08:21]
A
No. And she manages, and she's still got a ton of product to sell. So I, you know, these are just easy. Take a picture, list it, go. There's nothing that's going to break. Nothing wrong. It is what it is. You know, you use that inexpensive media Mail to ship them out to people. But this is what you. This is how you research. You find it. Okay, gee, there's some books. What do I recognize on the pallet? I'm going to go look on ebay. This is all her sold listings. This is not stuff that's. That's just for sale. These are. These are her sold listings.
- [08:48]
B
Yeah.
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A
And. And now she's out on the. On the prowl for more books. That's how you figure it out. You start. She spent a dollar and she went and picked this stuff up. It's. It's just. I love it.
- [08:58]
B
It was. It was near her. So she just. No shipping.
- [09:01]
A
Yeah. No, she means she drove a pickup truck and went and picked it up. So there's two examples that you can start with basically zero. Right. It's only your time and action and the stuff you can get into for nothing. And so we're going to walk you through this. We're going to keep going and we're going to spend a little bit more money, but we're going to stay on gov deals because I love gov deals and like you said, and this is a category I know nothing about, which is like restaurant equipment, commercial food. But I happen to know somebody in this. In this business, and I know these Hobart mixers sell for four to $5,000 like every time because they always break and people need to buy them and they cost more money to repair. And they sell on gov deals for about 500 bucks over, maybe a thousand, over and over and over. So if you had those connections, I'm not saying you should go buy this mixer, but if you have connections in the restaurant business industry, this is the kind of niche or niche categories that perform really well because everyone else ignores them. There are no bids on this yet. This is just sitting here. 500 bucks is our opening bid. This one has eight days. So you got plenty of time. You don't even need a resale permit to be up here. You could just pay the tax if you want.
- [10:15]
B
What are the chances of stuff like this having no reserve?
- [10:18]
A
This has no reserve.
- [10:20]
B
Oh, it shows you.
- [10:21]
A
Yeah. It would say reserve not met.
- [10:23]
B
Wow. Okay.
- [10:24]
A
There's no reserve on a lot of.
- [10:25]
B
This stuff, give or take. Roughly what percentage of stuff on gov deals has a reserve versus no reserve?
- [10:33]
A
I want to say maybe less than 20% has reserves.
- [10:36]
B
Wow. Oh. So people go to gov deals when they like, they're. They're batna. Their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, AKA plan B is like acronym.
- [10:44]
A
I have to.
- [10:46]
B
That's What I learned from TCU, 100. That's what 100 grand got me. But like, their, Their. Their plan B is they are going to have to pay someone to come get this. Like a junk removal.
- [10:56]
A
This is. Why would they. Public reserve. And this is a public school district. So what you'll find is the. The school district so you can see their other stuff. Like, if you want to see the other things that sell, they're selling. Here's some more mixers. Right? Here's all kinds of stuff. Like, you know, not very messed up. They just need to get rid of this stuff. They're not trying to, you know, they probably have some rule or law that says, hey, you have to put it up for auction. You can't just sell it to your buddy and that kind of thing. So Gov Deals is just an amazing place to start and to just research because there's hundreds of categories and thousands and thousands of items that you can find right around where you are.
- [11:34]
B
Yeah.
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A
I mean, it's incredible.
- [11:36]
B
You told me everything I needed to know about the sophistication of the seller when you said it's. It's a school district.
- [11:42]
A
That's right. That's right. And there's cool stuff up here, too. Look at this. Like, this is a motorcycle simulator. I have no idea. But the one. The. The great part is they've took lousy pictures. So you. It's. You can't even really tell. This is a picture of a picture. It's a picture of a picture. There's some. I can see some handlebars. I don't know what it does, but it's only 160 bucks. Right. And it's sitting in Maysville, North Carolina. That's a. That's the town or whatever motorcycle simulator works. Oh, Police department Use it for training and events. That sounds awesome to me. I would love to have that to have in an event or put it at something. Maybe I could put it to my Airbnb and let people see me or.
- [12:22]
B
Sell it to someone with an Airbnb.
- [12:24]
A
I would.
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B
I would screenshot that bad boy, throw it to Chat GBT and say, what is this and what's it worth?
- [12:29]
A
Yeah, exactly. I can imagine it's thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. It's gotta be. Yeah.
- [12:37]
B
Should we do that right now?
- [12:38]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [12:39]
B
How about this? I'm gonna screenshot it. I'm gonna screenshot a picture of a picture of a picture, and I'm gonna ask ChatGPT right now. What is this motorcycle Simulator and what's it worth? New and used. All right, so this is a screenshot of a picture of a pitcher.
- [12:57]
A
Yes.
- [12:58]
B
Through our recording software.
- [12:59]
A
That's perfect.
- [13:02]
B
Let's see. Go ahead.
- [13:05]
A
No, yeah. I'm super curious because this is the stuff you want to buy. Because they have lousy photos, they don't have a lot of information. But the great thing about Gov deals is you can contact these people. You can ask a question. Now I, I don't like to ask questions publicly on this because you're giving up data to other people. But there's a phone number. Call Shimada Brown right here. She wants to talk to you, dude. She will tell you everything you need to know about this thing. Hey, can you give me the brand name of this? Can you do whatever. What did chat say it first it.
- [13:38]
B
Said it appears to be a coin operated arcade. And I said no, it was used for police training.
- [13:43]
A
Yep.
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B
And it said hold on. It's. It's getting there.
- [13:48]
A
Yeah. So that's the thing is like you have to just dig. You start pulling the string a little bit, dig a little deeper, find out these things. Because it could be worth a ton. It's certainly worth buying for 160 bucks. If you live near Maysville, North Carolina, you should go buy this. You don't need to do any research.
- [14:07]
B
Everyone listening or watching lives near somewhere.
- [14:09]
A
Yes. So if you, if you have somebody and this is, it's two days, I think that's November 7th. So this may not come out by then, but you'll, you know, it might be out tomorrow.
- [14:18]
B
I think this might be out tomorrow, actually.
- [14:20]
A
Well, that's amazing. So then there'll still be a day to do it and you know, just go to Gov Deals and search for motorcycle simulator. You can find it. I think it's great. Did, did GPT get close?
- [14:30]
B
Yep. It said it's a police motorcycle training simulator. The kind agencies used to teach pursuit, evasive maneuver, scamming, scanning, etc. Common makers simul Mock Orlando it says. Okay, here we go. Prices are quote only, but ballpark spans several thousand to well into the tens of thousands. Basic training bike sims listed are listed for 4 to 7K. Broader motorcycle SIM ranges show up at over $100,000.
- [15:01]
A
So that's. You got a good range in there so you're safe spending.
- [15:05]
B
Yes.
- [15:05]
A
You have to bid. You'd have to bid 170 bucks. That's the next bid.
- [15:09]
B
But it says if it's complete and working, 5-15k is a realistic surplus value.
- [15:15]
A
It's Genius. How can you not love this deal? Right? I love it. I think it's great. And I just spent, you know, I prepped for this. Our call here. I just spent a little time ago. I know I'll go find some stuff up there. And I always look at the different categories and poke around. So let, let's. Here's another one I really like. These are. These are parking pay stations, not a parking meter. They're connected with an app called Flowbird and I reached out to them this morning and they. Oh yeah, you can connect these back up the. This is sold by the state of Arkansas. These are in Fayetteville. They got a ton of it. This is just one auction. This is 27 of them.
- [15:50]
B
Close down a parking lot or something or swap out their hardware.
- [15:53]
A
Yep. And you can put these anywhere they take right now. They pulled the SIM cards and stuff, so there's no credit card payment, but it's it. They're still set up to take coins, but you don't want to do that. You want to contact Flowbird, which is still around. You can download their app and you want to get connected and do it. But they're a hundred dollars right now. No reserve, no reserve. They're going to close in one day, in nine hours. And there's a few different auctions of these. So these are going to sell for nothing. More than likely they'll sell for a hundred bucks. And so you could be into these for nothing. Go pick them up, put them in wherever you want and turn it into a business. And you've. Whether you have a parking lot, whether you have somebody else that wants to do. Nobody likes paying for parking, but everybody pays for parking, dude.
- [16:39]
B
I mean you could even like find an empty lot in a city that's for sale or it's just sitting and say, hey, can we do a month to month lease? I want to use your lot as a parking lot month to month. If it goes well, I might want to buy it. I might want to sign a three year lease. If it doesn't go well, you know, your lot will look the exact same and you'll make some revenue. And then you could take these $100 things, post them up on a cement pad and you're in business.
- [17:03]
A
I love it stuff. I mean, you could spend hours up here. Like I said, I always say, don't watch Netflix, watch auctions. This is what I mean. You should be looking at this stuff because there's tons of opportunity. I'm gonna jump into selling scalable stuff where you could buy it over and over. But these unique things are great moneymakers and it's a great way to start. Cause often I get. Well, I don't have any money. Okay, well, let's go get some couches off Facebook. Let's buy some books. Let's get in here. Let's buy this and scale yourself up. This is another one I really like too. This is 34 hotel rooms full of furniture that they're selling. It's near you, it's in Fort Worth, and it's $1,500.
- [17:43]
B
And every 34 rooms full of furniture.
- [17:47]
A
And every room has a television. Every room has this chair. I thought the couches looked $2,000.
- [17:53]
B
Buy it now price.
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A
Buy it now for two grand.
- [17:58]
B
Okay, how many pieces are we talking?
- [18:00]
A
Well, if you count them up, you're like, okay, there's a chair in every room. Oh, I think it's right here. This is the list. There's a sofa, accent chair, coffee table, TV stand with the 32 inch TV, two nightstands, a queen headboard, no mattress or frame. A dresser, a mirror and a table.
- [18:20]
B
Okay, hold on. Okay, so sofa, accent chair, coffee table, TV stand, TV, two nightstand, headboard, dresser, mirror, small table, single chair. So 12 times 34. Yes, 34 rooms.
- [18:35]
A
Right, 34 rooms.
- [18:37]
B
Okay, so we're talking 408 items and for a two thousand dollar buy it now price. So five dollars per item.
- [18:44]
A
They just are trying to get somebody to come pick it up. Yeah, that's really what.
- [18:47]
B
Or they're gonna have to pay a junk removal company.
- [18:49]
A
Correct. They're gonna pay. So you could go buy and pick this up now, tomorrow? Because it's.
- [18:54]
B
Yeah, I could. It's an hour away from me.
- [18:56]
A
There you go. I could see stuff out in your field.
- [19:01]
B
But I don't think rains on the forecast for the next week.
- [19:03]
A
This is great stuff to sell. I mean, can you sell a 34 inch TV for 50 bucks? I don't know anymore. Maybe. I don't know what you do with them. Maybe you put four of them together and sell it. Like a red zone football sports thing where they could watch them all at once.
- [19:19]
B
Here's what you do. Like, I'm assuming all of these things are the same, right?
- [19:24]
A
Yeah.
- [19:24]
B
Like it's all.
- [19:25]
A
Yeah, they buy them all at the same time. Yeah.
- [19:27]
B
So all you need is 12 Facebook Marketplace listings. Right. And you, you put the price stupidly low on all of them and you put the address in the listing and you say, I'm gonna update, I'm gonna edit this listing as things sell out. But if you're seeing it here, it's in stock right now. If you message me in, is this still available? I will not respond to you.
- [19:48]
A
I won't. I love that.
- [19:50]
B
Because I can't.
- [19:50]
A
Right.
- [19:51]
B
So come to the address. If it's up, it's in stock. Come pick it up. Here's my Venmo. And then you just have people come to you because people are rightfully hesitant to want to go lug a dresser around the Dallas Fort worth metroplex for $15. You don't have to do that. Go pick all of them up at once, drop them off at once, put up some listings, take some pictures and videos and just collect the cash.
- [20:15]
A
I agree.
- [20:16]
B
And say I won't negotiate. Yeah, this is price.
- [20:18]
A
This is so cheap. It's great. You could sell the whole room. I'll sell the whole room for $200. You know what I mean? Or something like that. And, and, but this is like a 10x maybe not 10x, 8x, something like that. I mean, just. Yeah, just deal. So. So it doesn't take a lot of money and there's a lot of upside. It all depends how much effort you're willing to put in if you really want to change your life and you really want to make that extra cash, you know, and this is not a side hustle. This is like an evergreen revenue stream, Right. This is stuff that has a big impact on your life and your kids and, you know, all this kind of stuff. But you want to, you want to build the ADU for your mother in law, you know, all that stuff.
- [20:54]
B
These are $5 per unit, right?
- [20:56]
A
Yep.
- [20:57]
B
I think 8x is very conservative. If you sold each one for 40 bucks, that's 8x. So $16,000. 2,000 of that is your cost. You got to put. You're. You're back into it.
- [21:07]
A
Yeah.
- [21:08]
B
Maybe you got to go rent a U haul for, you know, 75 cents a mile.
- [21:12]
A
Yeah. And you could go make multiple runs. Put these somewhere. Like I said, you know, maybe your unfair advantage is you have a barn. A barn or a warehouse or a self storage place, you know, and, and it's money, man.
- [21:24]
B
But I mean, this would. If you could sell these in two weeks, which I think is realistic. If you price it aggressively, you boosted. You only have to boost one listing. That's the thing. Yeah.
- [21:32]
A
Yeah.
- [21:33]
B
So I did this once, Shannon. We. We moved warehouses for my, my logistics business. I posted one Facebook marketplace listing and I listed out every single thing we were selling. Racks, chairs, whiteboards, TVs, everything. I'm not exaggerating. I got like over 10,000 clicks on that thing.
- [21:50]
A
Wow.
- [21:51]
B
Because it was stuffed with keywords.
- [21:53]
A
Oh, yeah, right.
- [21:54]
B
It was just stuffed because people searched.
- [21:56]
A
That's what I did. Yep, yep.
- [21:57]
B
I said, we're going to be there from nine to five. Here's our Venmo. Here's the price. If you see it listed, it's here. If you ask me if it's available, I'm like, I'm never going to respond to any of these. Just come pick it up between these hours. Right. And then it just became like a flea market. So if someone were to do that, even if they just posted up in their car at a storage facility two weeks time, they've made $14,000 profit.
- [22:18]
A
And you've gathered a bunch of data from people, you get their emails, you get them on Facebook, say, hey, I'm starting this liquidation.
- [22:24]
B
Why are their emails.
- [22:25]
A
Yes, I'm going to have, I'm going to have more stuff. I want to keep in touch with you. You haven't sign up. When they come in, you have an iPad or something like that. You, you know, it's, it's, it's a repeatable process.
- [22:36]
B
If you think someone drives 45 minutes to pick up a TV or a dresser and you say, all right, what's your email? What's your phone? Yeah, like they're not going to give.
- [22:43]
A
It to you, they'll give it to you.
- [22:45]
B
Then you'll have a database of everyone. Of people that are bargain hunters.
- [22:48]
A
I agree.
- [22:49]
B
I'm so fired up right now.
- [22:50]
A
I know, dude, this is exciting stuff. There's no reason not to do it. I wanted to point this one out. This is my friend Jim Rowe. He's in our mastermind. He's a great guy. You'll see him on X. He bought this truck off gov deals for the price of the. If you're not watching this, there's a welder that's at the top on the side of this truck. So he figured out what the resale price of that welder was and that's what he bid. So he bought that truck and they flipped it. Within 48 hours, he made $4,000. So when you're looking at like utility trucks are big. It has that crane on the side. That's a very, These are very expensive accessories. Like if you had to buy that crane, it's probably four or five thousand dollars to get it on your truck and all this kind of stuff.
- [23:33]
B
Yeah, you know, he could have made More if he like broke it all up.
- [23:35]
A
Correct.
- [23:36]
B
Just wanted to flip it.
- [23:37]
A
He drove it home. It was up near him. He posted about it, laughing. I'm going to try this. We're going to get this thing going. We're just surrounded by opportunities. So we started with nothing easy things to flip. Now we're getting a little more sophisticated. Oh, I'm going to buy a truck. Oh, I'm going to buy a mixer. Oh, maybe I'll buy some hotel rooms worth of stuff. All very accessible, especially as you learn up, you know, as you get going. So go ahead.
- [24:05]
B
Can I give you an analogy real quick? I was just with AI exploding, right? It's not going to slow down anytime soon. Like, let's relate this to the stock market, right? What happens when AI explodes? Nvidia is now a $5 trillion company. Tesla's 1.3 trillion meta. All these AI companies OpenAI took three years to reach a half a trillion dollar valuation. Yada, yada, yada. And I'm not even saying they're overvalued. It just is what it is, right? AI is transformative. Then you got stocks like Chipotle, McDonald's, Nike, Lululemon. Like, these are boring. These are old stocks. Like, no one cares about them anymore. And you know, investors only have so much capital, they only have so much money to put into companies. So now they're like, Chipotle is pretty boring. And Chipotle is like, we opened 400 stores last year. But whatever, I'm putting this money into Nvidia. Right? And, and so the, the analogy here is like, all of these new AI things are awesome and like, people should chase AI. I'm chasing AI. You're probably using AI in your business, but that just means the amount of eyeballs looking at like a, a Ford F450 to make four grand on is fewer. There's fewer eyeballs because they're looking at the Nvidias of the world, Right?
- [25:17]
A
Boring products can make you rich.
- [25:19]
B
Yeah.
- [25:20]
A
There's no doubt about it. Over and over and over. And I'm going to show you another boring category that's amazing right now, and that's rugs. And this, this category is because, same kind of thing. Nobody pays attention to it because it's like, I don't want to sell rugs. But we might have talked about this before.
- [25:38]
B
It's not a product you think about.
- [25:40]
A
No, right. It's not.
- [25:41]
B
It kind of reminds me of what you say about electronics. Like, avoid, avoid. Because everything on them can break. It's the thing that's top of mind, right? Oh, I have an iPhone. Everyone has an iPhone. I'm going to flip iPhones. No. What are you not thinking about? The thing under your feet, the rug that you replace every eight years. Right. That's what you should be buying.
- [25:58]
A
That's right. So you really need to know your local market. In some areas people have carpet in their houses, most people. And so rugs are not that great. But other places everybody has tile or wood floors or whatever and carpets are very popular. What also makes them very popular is that these higher end brands like Ruggable, they made, they, they created a system to take the backing off the rug so you could throw the rug in the washer. Big, big deal. That changed everything. And they sell the rugs for like 500 bucks. So when you look at these, this category you have and these auction just, just closed. So this, when, when I pulled them up an hour ago, they were just closing. So these are the real final numbers. Here's 8,847 worth of rugs for 500 bucks. So 5, 6% of the Costco. These are Costco rugs. Costco price. This one, $10,000. Look at this one. 10,1100-101100-10600. Sold for 200 bucks. 1.89% of the Costco price. Okay, that's 67 units. So it doesn't take much to make money on this product. And it's great because when you get these things, you're going to roll them out. These are customer returns. You're going to run a vacuum on them, but you're not going to do anything until you set up your iPhone and time lapse and showing you vacuuming it. Some of them you might even have to steam clean it. You're going to show them doing that as well. And that is the first thing people are going to see when they're scrolling through Facebook Marketplace. They're going to see your stuff, they're going to see your time lapse stuff, just like your stump grinding stuff. It stops the scroll. You want to find that stuff that stops the scroll. And this category can be very profitable, mainly because it's so inexpensive to buy because you're buying for less than 5% of the, you know, the, the, the Costco price which is already discounted. And so when you want to do the research, you jump into Facebook marketplace. So I look for stuff like this because this is a stock photo. Okay. Oh, 8 by 10 washable non slip rug. And I go and look at the seller. And this. This woman here has 76 feedbacks. I'm like, okay, so she's selling. So let's.
- [28:03]
B
She knows what she's doing.
- [28:04]
A
She knows she's. She's selling. So then I bring up her profile. Kind of looks like a mug shot. And then I want to go look at what she's got. This is what she's selling now. Lots of rugs, 60 bucks, 70 bucks. But I also really want to look at what sold out.
- [28:19]
B
What's done this before. I've never gone to, like, the seller's page. Is. Is that new, or am I just outdated here?
- [28:26]
A
I don't know if it's new. I've always done it. And then you scrape it. I use instant data scraper, and I scrape this. And so you're creating the market. So she hasn't sold a rug. You know, this is a ruck. 20 bucks. Five by eights, an outdoor rug. This is, you know, okay, patio rug, but there's one 60 bucks. I mean, and she's got all kinds of other stuff here. I know she's selling returns. You can just. I can sense it, you know, a hallway runner, 25 bucks. So you're buying those rugs at, you know, what is this? This is 299. $3.
- [28:58]
B
$2.99. For a rug?
- [29:00]
A
Yeah. For 67 units. You bought $11,000 worth of rugs for 200 bucks. This one here is $6 per unit. Eight grand for $624. Right. So. So let's just say you're under 10 bucks per rug. Well, under. But be conservative. And the big ones. But you see what they sell. Here's 50 bucks for a six by nine. Eight by tens are the most popular. Here's 30. Here's this kind of stuff. But you don't have a make. Have to make a big investment. And this is your proof. And if this was your town, your city, your hyper local market, this is how you find out what they're selling.
- [29:35]
B
Yeah.
- [29:35]
A
What's selling? What's selling up here? What's it, What. What's. And who's doing it. And, you know, you could reach out and talk to this. This woman and ask her questions, but that's how you create the market. That's how do. And then I, like I mentioned, use instant data scraper to scrape that data off. You make a spreadsheet. You. You build it out that way. So I love that concept. Boring products, man. Make you rich.
- [29:57]
B
Oh, man, that's so good.
- [30:00]
A
And so this guy, Joe he's awesome. He started with nothing. That's his first pallet he ever bought, a pressure washers. He invested 1050, and he. He took him to. This was his first deal he ever bought. Earlier this year, over 13 days, he made 1200 bucks net profit. Just without knowing anything, didn't know anything. As he started to grow, he started buying more. Buying more. Joe has sold over 700 pressure washers so far this year in Sacramento. Yep. Because he figured out. He partnered with a couple of guys to help him with repairs, and he figured out what was going on. And his. These are his sales. Here we go. He started with nothing. Up, up, up, up, up, up, up. In August, he had a hard time getting inventory or maybe went on vacation, whatever. And now he's back up in October. So this is almost 17, and I think I have a screenshot. He did $17,300 in sales this month in October. This is. Cause we're rolling in November. Last three months, he's done $42,000. He started. Oh, my gosh, go back. He spent a thousand bucks and bought this pallet and figured out this game. And he's just leaning into it, and now he's selling other stuff. He's selling. He bought a truckload of patio furniture. And so, you know, but he only spent the truckload was like $5,000. And so he sold that truckload. He. He was in the black. Within less than two days, 36 hours of receiving it, he was in the black and. And turned. Flipped it. Now he's selling all kinds of stuff. You know, so that's the. That's the. The roadmap here, the Runway. You know, start small, make some mistakes, figure it out. What do you like to sell? I don't want to sell rugs. Okay. What else is next? Sell Blackstones. You know, whatever you want. I think it's. I think it's terrific.
- [31:52]
B
It seems like there's nothing too niche. Like, could you imagine someone saying, like, what do you do for a living? I'm an optometrist. What about you? I own a restaurant. What about you? I sell pressure washers in Sacramento.
- [32:03]
A
Yeah.
- [32:04]
B
Like what used sometimes needing to be repaired. Yeah. I make 15 grand a month selling used pressure washers only to people that live in Sacramento.
- [32:12]
A
Yeah. Like. And I work, and I work, like, two hours a day, and I have my kids, and I go to every sporting event, and I never miss anything. And my kids are helping me. And this. Yes. It's amazing. It. Mentally, that's. That's a big struggle. That, as you mentioned, that. Because people want to be defined. Right. That's why when people say, what do you do? When I was younger, I was like, I don't know. How do I tell this guy, you know, what I do? Because I do all this crazy stuff. And it didn't matter that I might have made more money than him. I felt inferior because I didn't have this label, you know? But now I know that it's better not to be, you know, be hard to define. It's better. So I just say I own some small businesses. That's what I always say.
- [32:57]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:57]
A
You know, and then I meet. If I meet somebody like you, then you just dive deep and go, oh, by the way. Yeah, yeah. So this is another one. This is this. This auction ends in three minutes. As we're recording this.
- [33:10]
B
This is the right time to buy exercise equipment.
- [33:12]
A
Absolutely.
- [33:12]
B
January 1st coming up.
- [33:13]
A
January is coming up. This is a truckload. It's 15 units. So that means they're putting each unit on a pallet because they're, you know, they want to protect it. Customer returns from Costco about $16,000 worth of exercise equipment. It says used. Good, so they're good. Customer returns. The bid's at $276 right now.
- [33:35]
B
And it ends in two minutes.
- [33:36]
A
It ends in three minutes and 10 seconds. And no one else is going to bid.
- [33:40]
B
It's going to see.
- [33:42]
A
Yeah, yeah, we'll see. And now there's freight. Got a whole truckload. So just to get this, to me is like 2600 bucks. So that's your real cost. Right? So you're.
- [33:49]
B
Where's it coming from?
- [33:50]
A
Ontario, California?
- [33:52]
B
Louisiana.
- [33:53]
A
Louisiana.
- [33:53]
B
Yeah, I said Canada. I meant.
- [33:55]
A
Yeah, but they're all over the US So you want to buy near you to try to save on. Because that's actually a pretty good rate for 15 pallets. 2600 bucks. But so you have 15 units. So you're into it for what? Because I don't do Math in public.
- [34:10]
B
200 bucks each.
- [34:11]
A
2,603. Yeah. Plus 276. So 28, 79 divided by 15. 190 bucks. $191. Well, look at this. So this is real important, too. You want to always have a manifest. They tell you exactly what you're going to get. Look, this Nordic Track treadmill is 2,500 bucks. That's a Costco price. Other stores sell it for more. NordicTrack price sells for three grand. This is his proform trainer. It's 1400. There's nothing on this list less than $6002-500140-01200,000, thousand, thousand thousand. Most of her thousand bucks. 8.99699. So, yeah, you're gonna get some stuff that's broken. There's no doubt a lot of people mess this stuff or they're heavy and it gets kind of broken. But how many items do you have to sell to get your 2,800 bucks back? 1, 2.
- [35:06]
B
I just went to Facebook Marketplace and DFW typed in Costco NordicTrack and they're going from 700 to $900 on Facebook Marketplace used.
- [35:15]
A
Yeah, I love it. And here, you know, you get to look. The other thing that's really nice is with. With Costco especially, they have pictures of every single thing and they're labeled 4 of 15 5. So you can, you know, zoom in on these photos to get some condition information. And there's. I go and I do these coaching sessions where I point out, don't buy this load because of this. See how they stack that? That's not good. See the dining room table? They stacked it upside down and all the chairs on top of it. The top is going to be scratched, you know, that kind of thing. Oh, but if it's in the box, it's different. In the box is great. It's protected, so you can look at each of these items, see if there's, you know, stuff hanging off them or whatever. But now is the time to buy. It's November.
- [35:59]
B
Yeah.
- [35:59]
A
You hang out by time you get it. It's going to be late November, early December, and in January. Hits, man. Everybody going to want to buy a treadmill, right? Yep. So I love these deals. It's actually not. I always tell it's not one of my favorite categories because it's so heavy and big and kind of wonky to get around. But we have people, you know, selling them all the time in there. So I'm kind of reassessing my. Let's go talk about the gold and we'll come back to that thing. So the gold is. This is 431 ounce gold bars. Township back east has it. And so they're selling this stuff. There's the 43 of these. They've had them inspected. It's still got five days sitting at 150. Started at like, I think like 40 grand or something. Like, their mill was 19,000. And when I sent it to you a few days ago, so it's. It's kind of peaked out here because I think I don't Know how? I don't know anything about gold, but from what I hear there's still like maybe 15 grand profit in it. Something like that.
- [37:02]
B
How many? How many?
- [37:03]
A
43. 431 ounce bars.
- [37:09]
B
So as of today, that's 168 grand worth. But like you'd probably only get 160 for it. 162.
- [37:18]
A
So I. I don't know how you make this deal work because there's a buyer's fee on it as well.
- [37:22]
B
Right.
- [37:22]
A
So you're going to pay another 5%. So that's.
- [37:25]
B
You know, this is like a good example of like an. An efficient market.
- [37:29]
A
Yes.
- [37:30]
B
There's a set market price for this. It's very liquidatable. Very liquid.
- [37:37]
A
And someone has an unfair advantage that is going to win these. That or someone's going to be bidding with emotion, which is a big mistake. You should.
- [37:45]
B
You know what? You know, I'm actually putting out an episode here soon about flipping gold from Costco.
- [37:50]
A
Yeah.
- [37:50]
B
And I. I picked the guy's brain at Costco about it because he's very open. So I just kept going.
- [37:57]
A
Yeah.
- [37:58]
B
Isn't that the best when you're like digging for info and they're just happy to oblige. He said that a lot of their buyers are people that make custom jewelry and people that are using the gold to build their own stuff.
- [38:10]
A
Genius. And it's cheaper to buy that from them, I'm sure. Right. Than to try to get specialized.
- [38:14]
B
Costco is the cheapest gold supply, basically.
- [38:17]
A
Of course they are in a hot dog.
- [38:18]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [38:19]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it.
- [38:22]
B
I bought. I bought my gold at self checkout, by the way.
- [38:25]
A
Oh, you did? That's the best, dude.
- [38:27]
B
They give you.
- [38:28]
A
Yeah.
- [38:29]
B
And then you scan the ticket at self checkout and then they give you a bar gold and you walk out and you show the lady at the door.
- [38:35]
A
That's perfect. I love it. I love it. I love Costco. It wouldn't be a talk without talking about a helicopter. Without talking about this Blackhawk.
- [38:43]
B
Right.
- [38:43]
A
And obviously. Yes. So these are GSA auctions, government services. They were out of. They were shut down for a little while, but now they're back because of the shutdown.
- [38:50]
B
Why are they shut down?
- [38:51]
A
The government shut down. But.
- [38:52]
B
So this is a government website. Unlike gov Deals, which is a privately owned company. This is the government that we're.
- [38:58]
A
You are buying from the federal government. Right now. The. The general service administration handles all buying and selling of everything. This is an amazing site to go to. You can Buy houses up here. We looked at that, that lighthouse on the island last time.
- [39:12]
B
It was like 100 acres or something.
- [39:13]
A
It was some, I don't know how many acres, but it was so cheap, it was ridiculous. It was a private island with a, with a 1700 square foot house on it that sold for like 300 grand. It was stupid.
- [39:22]
B
Yeah.
- [39:22]
A
But anyway, they just put this Blackhawk up here. The starting bid is half a million dollars, which could be the best deal in the world on, but. And what I love about it is they only, right now they only have a couple of pictures, but I think it's complete. You know, they give you the, the, the Sikorsky thing, the model number, VIN number, all that kind of stuff. I love these sales. These are great. I'm, I, I think it's amazing. You can go and inspect it. There's all kinds of aircraft information records to download in this place. But this, these places are amazing and I highly recommend that you start hanging out here. These are the halls, which I think are great. Airbnbs, there's some more aircraft. There's MREs to always. Meals ready to eat. If you have connections in South America. It's amazing. Could be an amazing opportunity. Bottled water. If you want to buy pallets of bottled water, boring items can make you rich. 150 bucks.
- [40:15]
B
How much are these? 150 for a pallet.
- [40:17]
A
Let me see how many. Let's see how many pieces it is. I think it's more. It is 2000 bottles. 19. 20 bottles. 150 bucks.
- [40:28]
B
What would you even do with that?
- [40:29]
A
I have no idea. Sell it in my store. If I had a retail store. If, if, like we talked about before, if you're an hour away from a Costco, you should be selling Costco stuff. And like Jim Rowe, he's. He's 90 minutes from a Costco and he sells toilet paper and bottled water because people come in every, every week to get it. And it's. So he's like, I don't make any money on that stuff, but I just get him in the store. They buy a bottled water, toilet paper, paper towels. He's like, I sell it the same price Costco does and I just bring it in, bring it in, bring it in. It gets them in the store. Wow. So that's what I would be doing with this stuff. But.
- [41:01]
B
So Jim has a, he has a retail store then?
- [41:03]
A
He does. It's called the Barking Shop. Yeah, he took over another guy, started with nothing. Within a year, group went to one, started in a Self storage. Then went to a tow truck place that he rented month to month. And now he's in a 6,000 square foot former Sears location. He does three to five thousand dollars a day. And. Yep. And he's. He's trying to make $1,000 700 times so he can buy a $700,000 yacht.
- [41:29]
B
Oh, yeah, I remember that guy. He's on Twitter, right?
- [41:31]
A
Yeah, yeah. He's. All these guys on there. I'm like, hey, come over here. Start posting this stuff. Everybody loves it, but it's awesome. It's. It's. You can have a lot of fun. There's a bunch of great people involved in it. And come do it. We've talked about Advanced Auto before, and what happened was Pep Boys bought them. So whenever you hear things about one company buying another, you always want to connect with that. Like when Dick's Sporting Goods bought Foot Locker. So they're blowing out massive amounts of shoes that Foot Locker hoarded for years because it helped help their quarterlies look better. But then they run out of cash, right? And then they got all this inventory. So Dick's is like, now we got to flood this out. That's the opportunity. Same with Pep Boys bought Advanced Auto. This is a truckload right here. It's 9833 units, brand new product. The retail price, the price that Advanced Auto Parts sold it for was $117,441. Okay. I watched this. Clothes. I don't have the snapshot because they don't show it afterwards, but this whole load sold for 1650 bucks. 17 cents per item out of this, 9,000. And I don't. I can't access the list anymore because this was. This was a few days ago. But the manifest was all these specialty parts, everything, at least a hundred dollar value. So when I say that their biggest problem is they have to get rid of it. That's true. Because this happens every. Every other day. Advanced Auto has this product that they're selling. There's. There's one up there. Now if I go to. If I just go back up to B stock. Can I search? There's this one right here. This is 185,000 worth. This is. There's a generator, commercial shop equipment, all kinds of stuff, tools, everything. Auto parts. The bid is at $9200. So that's $2.60 per unit. And there's 22 hours left. So they wouldn't be putting this stuff up here, letting it sell for nothing if they didn't have a better Way to do it. These are some of the smartest people in the world when it comes to buying and selling product. So yeah, you have to shift your mind the mindset to I'm solving a problem for them. How do I add value to my customer? And you know, I don't know where I was going with this, but this is why you have to. If you want to make extra money. This is the easiest way, in my opinion, to make extra money. Where you're starting with free couches or getting all the way up to buying truckloads of auto parts and generators and whatever it is. But I still love that the way you try to sell this stuff is the treasure hunt is the best way to sell it. It's like, wow, you don't. I mean, I don't really like to sell. So you want to share the opportunity. It's like, wow, I got all this stuff. It's amazing. Would you. I have these Blackstone grills I could sell for half price. Does that interest you? And people are like, heck, yeah, it interests me. I want to buy this stuff. How do I get it? And then you cut them in on it. And so one of the first things you do if you're selling in your garage is you get your neighbors involved so they feel good about trucks showing up in front of your place. So everybody gets a deal in your neighborhood. Everybody gets $100 Blackstone. Everybody buys stuff for their kids. The kids get free stuff. You become the hero in your community, not the guy that everybody's mad at because a truck shows up at 7:00am yeah, sure.
- [44:53]
B
Yeah, sure.
- [44:53]
A
Part of the. That's part of the strategy. So. Oh, always fun.
- [44:58]
B
I love on yourself.
- [45:00]
A
I love shopping to this stuff. I'm gonna go buy some parking meters.
- [45:04]
B
Should.
- [45:04]
A
Should I always get great to get together. I'm losing my voice. I get so excited about talking about this stuff. But if you want to learn more shannongene.com auctions you can download. I have a free auction starter guide. There's a. And I'll give you every link to every auction we started we talked about today. I have a five dollar mastermind. We've got about 1800 people in there, so come hang out. It's only five bucks. You can learn everything you want to know about being a reseller and then you could turn around and help other people that are changing their life too. It's fun. Have a great time.
- [45:36]
B
Beautiful.
- [45:37]
A
Awesome, man.
- [45:38]
B
All right. Thank you, Shannon.
- [45:40]
A
Yeah, thank you, Chris. Always fun.