How to Beat eBay At Its Own Game TRP #94 w/ @technsports (Half Episode)
welcome to the resellers podcast with techn sports and daily refinement we've helped thousands of people save time and make more money by improving their online stores check out patreon.com resource podcast for thousands of hours of full-length ad-free podcasts and coaching calls join our facebook group with thousands of sellers making the transition from hobby to business see you in the show what's up guys welcome to the resource podcast with tekken sports and daily refinement i'm super hyped about this episode because i want people to take the power back from ebay and we talk about this sometimes but today i have a different way of looking at it which is the way that you spend your profit can totally be optimized so that it gets you further and further down the right path and the analogy that i want to use is if you're playing a sport let's say you're playing basketball and you score and so now you have one point when you earn ten dollars profit from the sale let's say you sell something for um ten dollars or so you buy something for ten sell for thirty and now you have twenty dollars and if you think about it reselling does cost money to play it's a game it costs the money of the initial item and now you can play twice instead of once but if you spend that ten dollars on something else you just only get to play once again so if you're playing sports this just occurred to me for some reason yesterday you can just always have the ball you can have offense all day you don't you don't need to give the ball to anybody else and what kind of sport is that you always talk about running up the score what kind of sport can you just keep the ball the whole time business is very interesting yeah so business is very interesting and um you know for conventional athletes the length of the career is three or four years they retire at 27 years old and they don't know what else to do so for us we all have the ability to run a very long-standing sustainable business and as you said you know you put the money in you're able to sell an item go out and buy three more if you so choose or go out and buy two more and pocket that third and put that money to the side so it's not back in the game but it could be deployed into a different game if you choose to do it that way so you know there is a million ways to do it but you know the the way that we advocate in the group is always to try to keep that money rolling time after time and involved in the business rather than being taken out of the business because that can really jeopardize your business and hurt your business but you've been on a kick lately with you know taking massive action and a lot of people um you know they they get in this cycle where it's constant consuming of information consuming of knowledge and there really is no you know taking of action so you know some people need more information but a lot of people just need more execution like there's not another piece of information that is going to make or break their business or like take their business to the other level most people already know what to do in fact you made a poll this week where the runaway winner was i know what to do i know how to do it i just don't do it yeah that was surprising the poll was do you know what to do do you know how to do it do you know what to do and how to do it but don't do it or do you know what to do how to do it and then you also do it which was not that many people so people are definitely unclear about what to do next if they know what they're supposed to do they may not know the best way of doing it someone said i know how to do it but it ends up taking too long that would mean you don't know how to do it so if you if you put the effort in and can't get it done that means your technique needs to be improved that way you can get the result that you're looking for which is great because if you just let us know honestly where you are in the process we can help you achieve that now aaron brings up a really good analogy in the chat which is in baseball defense controls the ball now we don't need baseball fans in the chat for this analogy because i don't know tons about baseball but when you are buying something at the thrift store it's like being at bath now you have the opportunity to hit a home run they had a base hit um but if in business if you reinvest the profit you're always at bat you the other team doesn't even get to play you mentioned earlier when i mentioned this that you know when the stimulus checks came out the real winners were corporations they got all that money people spent all that money on other people's they gave other people at nap you gave apple more opportunity to make another phone by giving them your money for the new iphone walmart sold out of tvs for the first time in history when the when the stanford check came in and you saw that they dropped the price to the exact price of the stimulus check that was received so like they're not they're not they're not stupid so you know a lot of people you know they got stimulus last year but they went out and bought a tv so like who really got the stimulus it wasn't you know the person that received that check it was the actual corporation so you know we all have to be wise and be smart and make the right decisions and you know one wrong decision like that can [ __ ] you you know for the long term so you know if if you were smart and you use the stimulus money you went out to the thrift whatever it was seven hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or whatever you know that that can totally catapult you and launch you in the right direction to launch a business but if you squander that money or you know a lot of people talk about taking out working capital loans and then they go out on a vacation or buy a new truck like that's that's the wrong move to make um whenever you do go out and seek that kind of money so you know uh i i always want to be on the offensive i try to focus 100 of my day about being on offense i there's there's rarely if any portion of the day where i'm playing defense so i think that a lot of people like you said the person who said they know what to do but it just takes too long so that means that they don't know what they're doing you know the the mechanical portions of the business taking a photo people know how to do that um but people really get stuck on the knowledge portion whether they get crippled by the research or they don't know how to fill out the the um the listing form and then they get stuck on that portion whether item specifics you know price and things like that and that's where they really slow down and it takes them too long to list but if you don't know how to research and you have taken the time to understand the listing form where you could do it with your eyes closed there's nothing that's going to ever slow you down um the only thing that's going to slow you down and trip you up is just going to be yourself venturing outside of really and truly whatever you're supposed to do so you've mentioned in previous podcasts that ebay is the best way to multiply your money i want to give people an example of of what you were doing because i've heard you say you turned eight dollars into 30 but i never really looked at the math so i want to break this number people right now so if you're listening to this on youtube maybe you want to pause the video and get a piece of paper write this down because it is interesting if you sell if you buy an item at the thrift store for eight dollars and then sell it for 30 30. ebay will charge an average of two dollars and 50 cents in tax so buyer pays 32.50 for the item that you bought at the thrift store for eight dollars goodwill let's say they got it for free so first part of the equation somebody donates it you look through the whole store find the item for eight bucks you resell for 30. two bucks goes to tax that's important because that's how they calculate the fee after the ebay final value fees comes out if you pay six dollars for shipping you end up with seventeen dollars profit on an eight eight dollar investment okay so this is available to anyone listening somewhere in your neighborhood or area you can buy something for eight and sell for 30 and you now have instead of we talk about doubling your money but you go from one attempt so you go out with your eight dollars that's one attempt by making money if you're successful you get three attempts the next time that's pretty insane you also have a buck for gas that's that's awesome so all you you just put gas in your car and go do it again it doesn't take very long before that becomes something pretty insane right but then people say but i can't find items that sell for thirty dollars no problem you buy two fifteen dollar items for four dollars each yep and it and it's just you just have to work a little harder and at the end of the day you know we can't be afraid of working a little harder like you know you you listen to these interviews or like these people that are self-made came from nothing they started as a janitor and rose to be the ceo and their their their only words of advice always at the end of the interview is you know i came in early and i stayed late how many people show up early and stay late for their ebay business i've never heard that discussion before they don't if they do they're certainly not working the whole time um right we were talking about this too you're the owner of a business somebody comes in early and goes home late that person gets preferential treatment they get more attempts which is what we're talking about right now you if you want more attempts at work show up early go home late do a good job you'll get the opportunity to move up you're the person they present first with the opportunity because you're the least replaceable everybody else comes on time leaves on time you come early you stay late you know kobe bryant said that he wanted to be the first person in the gym and the last person in the gym out of the gym because he wanted to have the ball the most time so you're putting in the most work you quote on quote deserve the ball more than everybody else so if you want to be more deserving you can you can put in a little extra work and you're right you texted me earlier that the janitor the ceo story is is quite common in the us and it's always they were looking for something extra to do at work over and over and over again until they became the ceo right and we're like you know the masters of our own domain we're piloting our own ship but i don't hear anybody talking about showing up early to their ebay business and staying late that that's non-existent and like it's almost like a taboo subject but how how in the world do you ever expect to move up in anything let alone ebay move up in the ebay world without putting in the extra time showing up early staying late you know becoming a true professional in the craft and those three things are the epitome of being offensive you know showing up is often staying late is offense and becoming an expert in your craft is is strictly offense but a lot of people don't take the time or put in the effort to make sure that those three things are necessary so yesterday you did a nine hour coaching call and it's funny because you texted me first this morning i'm and i'm on the west coast it's funny you are still up understanding answering questions yeah i was still there i looked at the video you did yesterday compared to last week and it looks like it's on pace to do double so it was very interesting to see um the differences between those two videos so i was just reading through it so i thought i'd reach out and tell you that it is like the first person in the gym last person to leave the gym first person to work last person leave the work you also notice a lot of things if your first person at work you're going to notice a few things that people don't notice and that is the difference for reselling when you show up a little bit early show and you do a little extra you notice everything and this goes to being being a parent you do a little extra cleaning you do a little extra prep everything is completely different i think you're right i guess i've been obsessed with this massive action thing recently and i just you know we just put together the ebay white paper and we grinded that out in a week or so there was a lot of information to reduce and there's no better time than just doing it immediately so i'm super on board with the pro being proactive taking massive action and i want people to recognize it doesn't have to be perfect you will just figure it out if you're out there trying you'll you'll figure it out absolutely you will and you know especially if you if you whittle it down like what like we always talk about if you do a time on it and you know you you really separate the task you can improve every single task at the same time but you can improve what you're focusing on and if your focus is spread amongst 8 or 10 or 12 different things nothing is really going to get improved everything is just going to stay the same or regress but you know if you could really narrow down you know one or two things that you really want to work on and focus on and put all your attention towards those things will will be done better we'll be done faster you know you'll start paying attention to the detail you'll start noticing other things um that you know you didn't notice when you're looking at a bigger picture so you know there's like two parts of the business like inside of the business and outside of the business and along or most of the time i kind of get stuck inside of the business like inside of the perimeter of the computer screen but you know every couple of months i kind of take that step back and look at everything on a much larger level and whenever i do take the time and really like rack my brain and put in the effort to do so um my business always takes like a huge step to the next level but it's very difficult to do that when it's you know open to close like really my new inside of the business you're unable to really clear your head or or make any sort of innovations or improvements or or anything that can really help your business gain and get to the next level so i think it's very important that you know we all take that time to take that step back and look at the big picture of your entire business for the health for the safety you know for the future for the longevity um and make sure that we are moving in the right direction because you know everything is changing the climate is changing the you know the um you know the recession prices going up everything is changing across the board and you really have to wonder and think about and figure out is the business that you're running a day running today sustainable is it sustainable today is it sustainable next year in five years in 10 years and if it is today fine if it isn't three years five fine if it's not in five years if it's not sustainable in five years you have to start making some changes you have to make sure that you put yourself in the position where you're not going to get priced out you're not going to run yourself out of business by just continuing to do the same thing over and over while increased competition comes in higher costs come in um these companies are now starting to compete with us instead of you know just places that we can source now they're starting to compete with us so like you know it's only going to get more and more and more difficult and we all have to come up with like new original ideas and figure out ways how to pivot so that way when things do come our business can still grow and still be prosperous so landon is saying in billiards you can set up the game to get the ball right back again so i think this is interesting because the definition of passion is wanting to do something again so if you're selling and isaiah asked me how i was able to quickly build my store from starting with no money i'm very passionate about growth so i want to sell the item as soon as possible to get my money back so i can do it again the hardest part of that experiment was in the first two weeks there were periods of time where i had zero money i had to wait for an item to sell i had to wait for the ebay payment thing to kick in to get my money that's why i was shipping the same day because if the person gives you a positive feedback it releases the money in some cases so i'm like i gotta ship this right now because i want to have no money two ebay is holding my money and when you're really passionate you want to do it again so the people who want to sell items really quickly they act very differently than the set it and forget it the senate and forget it you don't need to be passionate you can just put it online and you're done you want to sell the item today you might be dancing on the the corner of the street with the item and you might draw this giant chart with sidewalk chalk trying to sell your writing because you want to sell right now that's the passion is like everyone's in such a hurry how come that energy is not going into selling your item faster but that's that's really going to make your business explode you just channel that energy and getting your money back so you can do it again that's real passion so during that process of you building your store you know when your cash flow wasn't great when ebay was holding the funds when you're waiting on positive feedback you figured out how to force a sale and a lot of people don't think about that a lot of people just let the sale come to them wait it out however long it takes maybe throw on you know a half-ass effort on a sale or a promotion or a newsletter or a markdown or a coupon like no one is out there really truly trying to force sales trying to get your items in front of customers trying to get those items to convert you know figuring out why things convert why things do not convert but if if you know how to force the sale you can get that money back like you said on a three times multiple now you get three more at bats for the next one yeah i think that wanting to do it again is when people are passionate they're excited they get out of bed quick and that's how you should approach your your listing you want your listing to be like that do you want a listing that um takes its time or do you want a listing that works as hard as possible to get the sale so when people talk about um wanting to do promoted listings or not doing from one of those things or you're like or why take 10 photos instead of one photo why fill out all the out of specifics when i can just fill out none of the item specifics why price it competitively when i don't when i can just make up a number earlier in the chat i asked people what they would price a used nike hoodie at and the lady said i just priced every single hoodie at 29.99 every brand every style every size every color and i was just thinking wow that is like the opposite of passion and that was that was after you told them there was like a five percent sell through per month at that price point yeah so it would take you it would take you two years to sell it and they still said they would price it at 25 bucks it is interesting passion i think if you break it down into wanting to do it again it really does get you fired up because i think about everything now how to make it faster if you if you want things to sell faster you don't take shortcuts that's so that's so interesting right you would you would not think that's true you want something to sell as fast as possible you personally take zero shortcuts you show up early you make sure the lights are turned on floor is swept lighting is perfect everything's in place you know when you walk into a fancy store we're they're walking around making sure it looks perfect it looks perfect for every customer because they're trying to get the sale everyone has a smile on their face it's just it's just so different than walking into somewhere and no one is there to help you you don't know what it is you don't know how much it costs this is so different the because you know everyone's all about fast but then they don't make it so their item can sell fast they act fast but they're not trying to make their items sell fast maybe that's the mentality shift making your item sell fast is a full contact sport you gotta get in there and figure it out are people okay with their items selling slow um yes i think i think that the general ebay thought is um i'm not sure how much profit i'm going to make but i know i didn't pay very much for it so they don't figure out the exact profit margin they don't know and then also the they don't really know or care how long it takes to sell because they're not the more research you do in the souls the faster your item will sell so like to a regular ebay seller and as you said what they sell two thousand dollars a month is like a regular average ebay seller yep so two thousand dollars a month regular average ebay seller that is just putting your items out there and just waiting waiting for something to bite like it's no there is no urgency with that there is no there is no extra initiative or effort otherwise it would be way more than two thousand dollars because like pretty much everyone in the group once they figured out how to how to operate ebay they would all agree that 2 000 is something that you know at a certain skill level and a certain amount of experience is not very difficult to achieve the average ebay seller lists and sells three items a day with 2 000 items in their store so that's a grind that's basically two-car garage completely full you're selling and listing three items a day which is not very many items it's not very exciting there's not much in my opinion that's where the passion is lacking they they're passionate about having an ebay store but not passionate about their item selling because people spend a lot of money making their ebay store look nice nice shelves nice thermal printer they the most popular poshmark item was the tote that you take the item to the post office in so even if the total didn't have any packages in it you are solid if you have the right look so i just want people to get into it because now whenever somebody comes up with some kind of strategy like oh i tested one percent versus three percent promoted listings or rather now it's two percent i tested two percent versus five percent and they get into it you know they're on the right track back in the day lewis knew his metrics exactly he's like my impressions went up this much my click three went up this much i sold this many more items in before that lewis is getting into it i just think that's figuring out how to i've never heard it that way forces sale um but like the book that i had from from you know the baby book baby wise that book you can force the sale by low low pricing it low there's so many people who want it you can force the sale by just pricing it low on something more generic forcing the sales man that is it almost requires an expert to to force a sale on a nike hoodie you have to know exactly what you're doing that's not easy with with 22 000 competitors maybe people are underestimating how hard it is to sell an item it is difficult but once you really gain an understanding not only can you force that first sale but you can entice buyers and kind of force them into another sale as well with you know different levels of discounts you know order discount volume pricing things like that and you could try to force you know two sales on every one sale in the media call you know a lot of people are very very focused on you know selling three items to every buyer five items to every buyer and they're they're really forcing those extra sales because they don't want one person to buy one item they're forcing them to buy three or five items the way that their discounts and their store is set up you know um the one cent sale is actually pretty common like you know people always talk about the nordstrom rack ones penny sale where items get marked down all the way to one penny they've just decided that that is it's cheaper for them to give it to a customer as a lost leader than to liquidate it somewhere else and i feel like what the reason they do that is so they can get more shelf space for different stuff this is part of the cycle of retail you have to move all of your inventory maybe that's something that other reasons how many ebay resellers say they want to sell all the way through their inventory right absolutely and that's a very important metric to look at like so i i try to cycle my store three to four times every single year um that's my goal and you know you know when people that when they get caught up on like the line by line thing or like i paid five for this item like they they don't fully understand that it's a net net game involving your entire store so like when home depot marks something down to a penny they've already sold and oversold so much product that they're way in the green that them selling that item for one penny is literally one penny of profit but like when that item is sitting on the shelf it's zero dollars of profit it became a liability yeah but so like just because they might have spent 57 dollars on that particular saw that's now been pennied out on the sku yep they also spent 57 on you know 400 other saws that they sold for 400 yeah so like they're way in the green on that skew it's run its course they need to just sell it and fill that spot with something else that hopefully can sell through faster that they can hopefully have better margins or hopefully have better profit on and it's the same thing inside of our stores as well like if you spend a hundred dollars every single day on inventory and you sell 500 every single day all you have to do is pay your store back a hundred dollars to buy more inventory to list 20 more items sells for 500 bucks you keep the 400 you repay back the store 100 every single day it doesn't matter how you get there but if you get to hundred and one dollars technically speaking you were profitable that day but a lot of people get caught up and going oh you know i paid a for this item i can't sell it for any less than x amount or i have to double my money or i have to make at least twenty dollars like you don't have to do anything what you have to do is turn a profit and like no one in here will ever go out of business turning a profit it's not possible but you can go out of business needing or wanting or desiring to double your money or making twenty dollars per item it's net net if you spend seven hundred dollars a week on inventory it's your job to three times that money and get twenty one hundred dollars put 700 back into your business and you put 1400 into the bank and you do that every single week for the rest of your life and you live a very comfortable life because you're only listing a handful of items every single day you're shipping a handful of items every single day you have very low overhead because at that point you can still work out of your house with no employees and you're banking a thousand two thousand dollars a week like it's not rocket science to get to this point but like a lot of people are not operating in the proper way like just because you do get the 8 into the 30 and you get 24 so now you get 3 at bats there's nothing wrong with getting your original money back buying a new item taking another eight dollars back buying a new item and then keeping eight dollars like one can go to ebay one can go to a new item one can go into the bank and you can live a beautiful life just by doing that somebody asked you a question that hasn't or at least i haven't heard the question before yes until yesterday can you grow too slowly and you said you'd be making a lot of money because the opposite is growing quickly and having no money right people who grow quickly actually have no money that is a really interesting if you're about to double or triple your your listing goal prepare to be broke it it sucks all the money out of out of everything because it's so expensive you have potentially new equipment you need new inventory system you have that your cost of goods doubles or triples and then do you have the revenue sustain it you bank a decent amount of money before you grow and still bank money as i grow because like we talked about in the advanced podcast you can grow and still be extremely profitable if you do it the correct way yeah but in the 99 dollar tier like it hit it right on the head a lot of people don't want money they just want more shoes yeah i got i don't understand that concept like no money just all the shoes just let's but let's just keep throwing every single nickel back in the product and like you never get the opportunity to make any money yeah now yeah and that's what happens when you see people's listing goes double or triple there's no money all the money is going back into the business and yeah no money just close like you can't pay your rent like with air force ones that you got at the thrift eventually you have to turn them in the money and then pay the rent with the money man i just keep thinking about the the 100 and 500 rule is really nice because at a certain point if you follow the tenants of the group you'll run out of time you you list as much as there is time so at that point if you're a restar in nirvana if you can list 30 items a day you're selling 30 items a day you can't spend the profit of 30 items a day it has to go somewhere else and then it goes into things that are more passive um if you just keep that goal because you you can't you can't list more than 30 because maybe you have a full-time job or maybe that takes you all day so you're at your capacity but if you slowly grew there you wouldn't have to there's no cash flow problem and now it's it's extra you're at the point where 30 a day is um around 900 to a thousand a day um and to run that only costs to 300 a day yeah so you can't you can't even spend it to be honest because it's hard no no like i i would challenge someone to spend 600 every single day like is it's eventually you'll run out of stuff to spend the money on yeah and if you're thinking about one thing about massive action is if you're trying to make tomorrow easier and you invest that's i mean 600 profit is a lot per it day doesn't it's hard and being prepared to do that every single day being that consistent is it's a it takes your full attention trying to be consistent i think that that's this offense thing is really just blowing my mind just thinking about you playing a sport and you don't have to let somebody else take a turn you can just keep winning over and over and over again you because essentially what happens is you've already won if you make 101 dollars and you spend 100.
you've already won but you just keep going thank you for listening to the resource podcast with tekken sports and daily refinement if you'd like to listen to the full episode please check us out at patreon.com resourcepodcast for all information all our full-length episodes over thousands of hours of coaching and our facebook mentorship group which is 35 dollars per month just about a dollar a day to help you get to the next level we appreciate you guys see you next time
2022-07-28 19:26
