Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation interviews Stacy Gallego to learn about how she makes thousands of dollars flipping.
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Side Hustle Show Interview With Stacy Gallego
Nick Loper: Here's how one side hustler earns thousands of dollars a month. And how you can
too.
What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to The Side Hustle Show because the difference between scarcity and abundance. Might only be one sale away. In this episode, I'm excited to revisit the popular side hustle of buying low and selling high with an inspiring guest, Stacy Gallego. Thanks to her part-time flipping business, Stacy's been able to scale way back at her nursing job.
She's been able to travel more, to spend more time with her family. And what's cool about this income stream is it was actually inspired by a former side hustle show guest. Rob the Flea Market Flipper Stevenson, who we last heard from in episode 298. Stacy's one of Rob's star students and I've loved watching her share some of her sales results over the last year or so.
The ability or the skill to find a profit in your hometown is one way, I think to really recession proof your life.
But it's all good stuff and you'll see how Stacy has been implementing it. In this episode, if you stick around, you hear how she consistently sources profitable inventory, how she deals with the logistics of transporting and shipping, sometimes some pretty huge items, and her advice for new flippers to start making money.
Stacy Gallego: I never dreamed that I could do this. I, I just kind of fell into it. I found Rob and Melissa on a blog and started listening to how, what their business model was, which was basically focusing on selling larger items for a lot more money versus where a lot of people just sell a lot of volume and ship a lot.
And I just thought, I wanna work smarter, not harder. So I figured if I could make a thousand bucks a month, that'd be really cool. And I pretty much consistently started that right away where I was making, you know, an extra thousand a month and then it just moved into $4,000 up until last month, which is, I've been doing it almost two years now, and last month I had, I was $4 short of $10,000.
Wow.
Nick Loper: Is this sales or or profit after your, your cost of acquisition sales?
Stacy Gallego: So my profit would be around $7,000 . Okay. Still. Yeah. I was thrilled. I never really had it on my radar to quit my job. I love my job, I love the people I work with. So it was never really on my radar until I started realizing it was really everything I wanted.
You know, I had the freedom, I could spend time with my kids. My husband just retired at 56 from the federal government, and you know, we can have breakfast in the morning, we can take walks, we can hang out, and it's just been really great. And I can travel for 30 days and make $4,000. It's not too bad.
Nick Loper: Not too bad at all.
We're gonna unpack some of the sourcing process, the constant hunt for inventory, remarketing, shipping, some of these larger items. Excited to dive into to all of that, but you draw an important consideration here. And Rob, who Stacy mentioned, has been on the podcast a couple times. They run flea market flipper.com.
The idea, the, and this is in contrast to, we've done episodes on flipping, textbooks or flipping like thrift store clothing and selling on Poshmark, where it's like, I might make $10 an item. Rob's idea is like in the early days was like, if I'm not making a hundred bucks an item, like there's a lot of effort here in sourcing and photographing and listing and shipping this stuff, like I wanna make it worth my while.
And it's like very much, it's very, very possible to play this volume game, but his argument and sounds like yours is as well, it's like maybe I could do a similar amount of, of work up front for just one item and just, you know, make sure that item happens to be a home run where I double or triple my money.
But let's dive into this inventory sourcing. Can you give me an idea of where you are looking for profitable inventory? What kind of stuff are you buying?
Stacy Gallego: Well, this is the thing that I tell people who are interested in getting into the business. Never stick to one way of sourcing. I really try to have several ways that I source.
I source at yard sales. Not so much. Now because of pandemic, there's not a lot of sales happening right now. I go to thrift stores. My big finds are usually on OfferUp Facebook Marketplace, let go just the local apps. And my goal really is to find those undervalued items. Locally and then resell them on a larger market.
So I never really stick to one thing. I'm always looking for new ways to source. And my biggest new way, which is I learned from a private coaching group from Rob, and that was that to build contexts. I tell people what I do at first, you kind of keep it to yourself because you know you don't wanna bug people with your new business idea or whatever.
And so you don't always say what you do, but. I started sharing that with people and instead of them throwing out their items, they give them to me and then I sell them, and I can either give them part of the profit, or if they're gonna dump them in the garbage, I'll take them and, and flip them and add to my inventory.
And then when I, I have several contacts just locally. One guy cleans out houses and then he sells me stuff. Very inexpensive. And then I have another guy that works at a thrift store locally and he and I have a really good connection where he basically lets me shop, shop at a store before he puts his stuff out.
Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's really awesome.
Nick Loper: And shoot, shoot everybody else who's like going in there, you know, has the door opens, like, oh, the good stuff has already been picked up.
Stacy Gallego: Right? Believe me, there's plenty of really good stuff. There's all kinds of ways to get items and. You can just make a really good living doing it.
Nick Loper: Is there a reason that somebody listing on Facebook marketplace or offer up or let go or Craigslist isn't valuing their item properly? Or are you coming in w with a low ball offered? Just kinda curious about the, the mechanics there.
Stacy Gallego: Well, that can be a lot of reasons why people wanna get rid of something.
Maybe they don't know what it is. I, I try not to play that game. I don't want to take advantage of anybody in any way, but there's people that are moving, so they may be just needing to get rid of their stuff, otherwise they're gonna have to pay to have it moved, and they really don't want the item anyway.
There's items, like for instance, I just purchased a piece of equipment for a person that's disabled. And the guy sold it to me very inexpensive because he had family members that were using it that were no longer using it, and he just needed to get it out of his garage. So those are opportunities that basically we can help them by instead of them dumping it somewhere in a landfill, you know, we can pick it up and they get money and they're happy with it.
And I just figure as long as they're happy and we can come to an agreement, it's a good deal for both of us.
Nick Loper: Right. It ends up being a, a win-win. I like, I don't wanna deal with it. And that's kind of been a lot of our stuff that I've have sold or even maybe mistakenly given away or, or set out in the bulky item pickup for the garbage collector.
Like, I just don't wanna deal with it. And you're like, look, I'm, I'm willing to deal with it, especially for the stuff that you think might be worth several hundred dollars or, or more. So equipment for disabled person, any other, you know, home run fines that you care to share.
Stacy Gallego: Well, a couple of my favorites are I found a, it's a town and country vintage skateboard.
I found it at a yard sale and I just looked up the name quickly on eBay and I could see that some of them were selling for quite a bit, and this one was a mint condition. I mean, like it had never even. And used, so I asked him, well, what do you want? He said, five bucks, and I thought I'll take a chance on five bucks.
So I didn't even, I don't skateboard or anything, so I didn't know anything about it, which is kind of the fun part of the business. A lot of the things that I get, I have no idea what they are. Or even what they're used for, but I can figure out how much they're worth and be able to sell them. So I grabbed it.
I took photos of it cuz I was really concerned cuz it was so nice that maybe it's not genuine or real. So I took photos of it and I sent a message to the company where it was made in Hawaii and the guy immediate, they didn't even make the skateboard anymore. They only. We're making surfboards. So he sent me a message back and offered to buy it for 300 bucks.
And I thought, okay, this is worth some money. So I listed it on eBay and sold it five days later for $650. Wow.
Nick Loper: So I never even heard of it. A town and country vintage skateboard. All right. So if you're outsourcing, if you're on the lookout
Stacy Gallego: for those, if you could find them. Yeah. So that was really fun. And then the guy was, He had one when he was a kid, wanted another one.
So it was really fun to kind of connect him with something that he nostalgia from when he was a kid. So that was really fun too. And another one of my favorites was, this is just a recent one that I sold. It was a motorcycle sidecar, which was so cool. It was from 2001. It was a convertible with a little like a trunk in the back.
It was such a cool. Little car. Rob helped me find that one. I did a private coaching group with him and he found it for me. I went down and negotiated it. The people just wanted to throw it out. They were just like, we just need to get it out of here. So we gave him $200 and I sold it for $3,300 on eBay, and my husband and I shipped it, and, and that was one that I, I sold that while I was on the beach and, Florida enjoying my vacation.
Nick Loper: Nice little, little $3,000 profit there minus whatever, eBay listing fee. Right. This kind of leads to the next question is like, that sounds like not a small item. It sounds like something that is gonna have to go in a crate on a pallet. I don't rent a U-Haul and drive it to the seller. Like tell me about the logistics side of shipping some of this bigger stuff.
Stacy Gallego: Okay. Well that's really what I loved about Rob. When I found them on, I was searching around, I thought, well, how can I get this $20,000 for the rv? I had signed up for Wag, like a dog walking, and I thought, I'm gonna have to walk a thousand dogs to even get close to. That's not gonna cut it. And so I saw him and his wife Melissa, talking about how they freight shipped.
And I said, this is it. I can do this. I know I can do this. So I told my husband, this is what I'm gonna do, and he's like, we are not doing that or anything like it. And I thought, oh, well that didn't work good. So I thought my husband's the type of person that if he sees it and he understands what's.
Happening. He'll figure it out and say, okay, yes. So that's what I did. I started buying larger items that I wouldn't normally have bought, and I was making a really, really good profit.
Nick Loper: Okay. But meanwhile, he thinks this is an awful idea. Like, you brought this into our garage, like what is going on here?
Stacy Gallego: Exactly. And that's when I kind of talked him into doing a freight item. I just said, you know, let me just try it. And so that, that actually was my first. Experience. I bought another disability machine. I got it for $125 and I sold that one for 3,100 and that was our first experience. And Rob was amazing.
He actually called us up on the phone, walked us through it, and then after you do the first one, It's not very hard. Of course my husband's very valuable to my business and he is great at putting the pallets together, but it's not as hard as one thinks and it's way better to make $3,000 off of one sale than ship out 300 things cuz it's just the time.
I didn't wanna spend that much time. So that's kind of how we got started.
Nick Loper: Yeah. Walk 300 dogs. So when you're comparing it against these alternatives, like yeah, there's. Some stuff that I haven't done before, but I can figure it out. And if that involves freight shipping. So it sounds like, so you're building a pallet in the garage.
So is this trip to the lumber yard, trip to the hardware store here? And then who do you call to get quotes for the, you can't, you can't roll up to the post office and say, I, I need to send this motorcycle sidecar across the country.
Stacy Gallego: There's free pallets everywhere. You can go grab a free pallet from any grocery store or.
Places that people are giving 'em away and you can measure it. If it fits, you can use it. Just strap the item down to the pallet and cellophane it. Put the plastic wrap around it. And then our personal, the freight company that I use, they require that you put sides on it, sides on the pallet. So basically it's more like a carton or a crate.
Yeah. It's not as hard as you think. You just get a few nails and pour it together. And pretty soon you're shipping it out. And then I just take it down to the freight terminal and I set up the pickup for the person who bought it.
And we communicate until they receive it. I follow it all the way to to them, make sure everything goes smoothly. And you know, we've sold quite a few things that way and it's gone really well.
Nick Loper: What did it cost to ship this thing?
Stacy Gallego: The motorcycle sidecar.
Nick Loper: Yeah, what did it cost to ship the sidecar?
Stacy Gallego: Now, that one was a little bit more expensive cuz this one was going to New York, which is the furthest place from me.
So I think it was $550, which that's the, not the norm. I would say. I can ship anything across the US for $300, 350, you know, if it's huge. But I'd say the average is around one 50 to 200. So it's not that expensive.
Nick Loper: Yeah, if you, I mean, if you have $3,000 worth of margin built into your product, you're like, shoot.
Yeah, I'll pay 500 bucks for shipping. Right. Do you list it as free shipping on eBay, or is it like T B D Based on the quote that I get back,
Stacy Gallego: sometimes I try to do free shipping with my items just because it opens up, people get nervous, believe it or not. People who buy from you with freight shipping are as nervous as the person shipping it.
We think, oh my gosh, you know, am I gonna be able to figure this out? But they're actually as nervous as we are because most people don't deal with things, don't get freight shipped to 'em very often. So I try to do free shipping because that just gives them a little bit more security that they're not gonna.
Some people won't even bother with it if they just see, call me for a freight quote, cuz they'll assume it's gonna be very expensive. So I try to build it in into my price. So
Nick Loper: do you have a buy it now price in mind or that you set versus
Stacy Gallego: auctions? Right? I don't deal with auctions unless there's something.
That's like a specialty item or something like the skateboard, you know, where you just don't know how much it could go for. Those kind of things I'll do in auction, but most of the time I do a buy it now. Okay, so
Nick Loper: you're arriving at that, buy it now price from just looking at what comparable products have sold
Stacy Gallego: for.
Yep. I do the research and I find out what I kind of compare the condition of my item compared to the other condition, you know, of the item sold and then I just. Put together a price and, and sometimes people will, you know, send me a message, would you take a hundred dollars less? Or, you know, I have that option.
If I wanna do that, I can, I can do that or not. Yeah. So
Nick Loper: it's, there is some built-in negotiating that can happen on, on the eBay platform, is that the primary sales outlet is like, Hey, this is the. The overarching strategy, find undervalued items locally and then resell them to a nationwide audience.
Stacy Gallego: Yep, that's it.
Because you know, I think eBay has 180 million users. The local market here, I think I maybe 60,000 people could see it. So I mean, if you wanna get it sold, you know that's the way to do it. And they just have so many people that. Are willing to pay for it cuz maybe they can't get it where they are.
Nick Loper: I was gonna ask, I have a guess at your answer, but I was gonna ask if there's any areas of specialization here where it's like the motorcycle, sidecar, automotive accessory type of stuff, medical equipment, sporting goods.
Like have you found a category of products to be better than any
Stacy Gallego: other? Well, I think one of my favorite things that I like to sell are sleep number beds. That's probably my favorite thing. I can get them very inexpensive here. People in Tucson move quite a bit. People are just trying to get rid of their stuff or they upgrade to, you know, the next.
Greater Sleep number bed, that's $5,000, and they now don't care about their bed that they've had for 10 years. But for me, I can sell it. I split the bed apart and I sell the parts, and I do very, very well, very well with that. And I enjoy. Very much selling them. They're really fun to sell, and I also like cooktops or commercial equipment or anything weird like I just recently found.
It was like a money counter that was fun. A money counter and then a coin counter. The guy sold me both of them for $75. And I sold them each for $600. Wow. So I just find strange stuff. I've, through working with Rob and watching him and learning from him, I've developed that eye for very expensive things that are undervalued.
And I'm learning to take some risks too, you know, and just learn as I go. Which, which has been, you know, and that's part of the business too.
Nick Loper: This is fascinating. Sleep Number beds. I, I found a ditch in Sleep Number Beds. Again, a super bulky thing, but if you got a system, To figure out how to sell those. I mean, same thing with all of this stuff is looking for something that is pretty specialized and is gonna have a hard time selling locally.
And so it makes sense to open that up to this nationwide audience. I dunno if you do anything internationally, but this nationwide audience that if they're gonna find it, if they're wanting to not buy it new from the manufacturer, then eBay is the place.
Stacy Gallego: Right? And believe it or not, with sleep numbers, they come apart.
You unzip them. Take the air out of 'em, I fold them up and put it, people are shocked. They, I come to pick one up and they say, oh, you didn't bring a truck, cuz you know, it's all inflated and everything. And I come in, unzip it, take it down. They're like, we had no idea that you could actually do this.
They're like, you have done this before, right? They're easy to ship, they're easy to store, and they're really fun. Really, really a fun. Little niche and I enjoy it.
Nick Loper: That's awesome. Now, I imagine that some of this stuff doesn't sell right away. Like you're waiting for that perfect specialized buyer to find your listing on eBay and say, yes, I need that.
But in the meantime, you have collected a garage full of random, assorted sleep number beds and commercial cooktops and stuff. Is that it? Is it, is it the garage stacked to the brims, or is there a different storage solution? Well,
Stacy Gallego: when I started out, it started getting a little stacked up, but then I realized with these specialty items and the larger items, it does take a little bit of time for people to buy them.
So you might hang onto them 30, 60, even 90 days. But the way I figure it for if I paid a hundred dollars for something and I'm gonna make $3,000, It's worth keeping it around. So, but as I got started and started kind of accumulating more things, I just went and got a storage unit and that was just because my husband likes to have things tidy.
Well, I do too, but, you know, and I don't like my garage filled up with stuff. I, I can't fit my car. And it was worth it for us to invest in that. It's very close to my house. When I sell something, I just go grab it and ship it. If it's a large item, we take the trailer over there, go pick it up, and. Put it on the pallet and take it down to the terminal.
So it works really well for us. Although I don't recommend people starting out that you just go right away and get a storage unit cuz there's so much you can do on smaller items just to kind of get your feet wet and get some, a little experience before you invest in a storage unit. But
Nick Loper: do you need a truck to do this
Stacy Gallego: business?
You don't. We didn't have a truck. We don't have a truck. Actually. We have. For the first year and a half, we just had friends that would help us out. I'd give 'em 40 bucks to let me use their truck, and I'd take it down to the terminal and you know, it worked out good. Or we'd do trades, you know, I'd do something for them and then they'd let us use their truck.
But then as we started really doing some freight shipping where it was getting more and more common, we bought a $300 trailer. My husband put it together. And we went and took one of our vans and put on a tow package, and that's how we do it. Very inexpensive to get the job
Nick Loper: done.
So yeah, I'm always curious about like, well now I gotta move this giant thing and I've got a small S u v, but okay, here's the trailer attachment. I don't know. I might have a tow package. I don't know. It wouldn't, it wouldn't hold very much, but it might. It might work. Have you had any inventory that's sitting at this storage locker for.
Six months, nine months, like it's just not selling the way you thought it would. You're like, I, I gotta get my money out of here. Curious if there's any goal metrics on like, inventory turning.
Stacy Gallego: Right. It doesn't happen to me very often, but it does happen and I, I actually just, I had a pair of boots. They're brand new.
I got 'em at a yard sale. This is when I was starting out and I probably paid too much for them, and I had those things listed for I think two years, and I just sold them yesterday. So it happens. I just try to recoup my money. If there's, if I get something and it's not what I expected, I just won't lose money on it.
I'll sell it to get rid of it, or I just wait. Right now I have a, a viking oven that I haven't sold yet. It's beautiful and mint condition. I just haven't found the right buyers, but I have a lot of people that are watching it, so I have no doubt I'll, I'll sell it. I may have to lower the price, but I'll still make a really good profit on it.
Yeah. That's
Nick Loper: kind of the, there's a patient's side of this game that you don't always see, well, well, I picked it for 20 bucks and I sold it for 150, and they're like, This is awesome. Like, I want in, but it's like this, the waiting game. Like, oh, I, I, I'm waiting for this payday and you know, I'm getting nervous, like I haven't sold.
Should I lower my price? Should I stick to my guns? I can feel a little bit of that here where especially, you know, if it's still at the stage where your husband is skeptical over this thing and he's like, sure, you made 3000 on this one thing, but how much more you got tied up in inventory in there, you know?
Stacy Gallego: Yeah, you know, my husband is like, he's so happy about it now cuz he just retired at the end of December and it's just been such a fun side hustle for both of us. He is very valuable to my business. I mean, he does such a great job. He's got a really good eye for detail and I kind of struggle with that so he can look at something.
And figure out if there's a piece missing, if it's broken. And sometimes I'll miss that cuz a, I don't know a lot about the thing that I'm selling and I just don't have that attention to detail. So it's really fun to work with him. And he's just really, it's just been really a great little. Side hustle for us, you know, for retirement.
And it's been great. That sounds
Nick Loper: like it's, it's paying the bills and, and then some, so I'm excited for you guys. It is. Have you had any of those that, maybe those items that you shipped out where a part was missing or it, it needed some sort of repair and the, the buyer comes back and says, Hey, you, you misrepresented this item.
It, you know, wasn't received as described. Some eBay sales of mine, and from what I've heard from other people, can turn into this. He said, she said type of stuff like I, I swear it was genuine. It was working when it left my house.
Stacy Gallego: Right. I had that happen. Gosh. And this was a freight shipment? It was some kind of an exercise machine, and I got it for free.
The guy just had it listed. He said, I just wanna get it outta my garage. So I sold it for $700. I had it shipped out and we had tested it right before we got it on the pallet. And when she got it, she said it wasn't working. So I'm like, oh no. So I just thought, well, it was only $120 to have it shipped to her, so I'll just have her ship it back.
So she shipped it back to me and my husband took it apart and realized she had plugged it into some kind of electric that was faulty and blew the little electric part of it. So that happens. Oh geez. I sort of panicked and refunded her before I, because she was like really pressuring me and she was really upset.
I understand you've paid. $700 for an item you want it to work. But if, if I had handled it a little different because I'm a top-rated seller, they said that they would have not refunded her. So I just panicked and refunded her and then I was out, basically just out the shipping, but it can happen. And I just recently did this.
I sold a nice vacuum cleaner. I had got it all cleaned up and then the bag was full and I was gonna have my husband change the bag on the vacuum. So I kind of pulled it out halfway and I thought, oh, I'll have him do that. And then he can do deodorize it and kind of dust the inside of it. Well, I forgot.
To pull the bag out and I sent it and the bag dumped out all over the inside of the vacuum. Oh no. And this lady was so upset and she's like, I cannot believe you sold me something like this. I paid for this, and I'm never buying anything from you ever again. And of course I was crushed cuz I realized, oh, that was totally my fault.
But I just decided I'm gonna take responsibility, which I did. And I always read the scripture that says a kind word turns around, turns away wrath. So I just thought I'm gonna be very kind to her. Everything turned around I, she decided to keep the item. I refunded her a small portion of it and she was happy and said, I'm not gonna report you.
I'm not. I'm gonna buy something from you again if you have something I'm interested. So she was super happy. So definitely there's mistakes that we make. It's just all in how you handle them, I think. I think anything can be fixed.
Nick Loper: Is there anything as a seller, that you can do to protect yourself against.
People claiming that an item is a knockoff or you know was not in the condition that you promised?
Stacy Gallego: Well, I think that's where the real attention to detail comes in, and that's really why I'm so happy to have my husband, because he just really does have that attention to detail and he can notice things.
And I think just taking your time, photographing anything that could be wrong with it. Making sure you're very clear in your description. I do put terms and conditions in every one of my listings that, you know, these are the things I will do. These are the things that I won't do. And I think just really making sure that you take your time and let them know exactly, exactly what they're getting.
And when we ship larger items that are more expensive, we have, since that happened with the lady who. Said that we got this item and it didn't work. We video test everything. That was one of the total quality management things that we added to our business that we can date the video and say, we are putting this up on the pallet.
This is working, and just do a total test of it on video, and that way we can prove that it was working.
Nick Loper: Yeah. Here here's me plugging in the, the treadmill, walking on it, verifying that it works. Like don't blow the, don't blow the motherboard on it. Okay. That makes sense. Do you have a target profit per item that you look for, or like if there are any minimum metrics that you're trying to achieve?
Uh, per flip,
Stacy Gallego: you know, it used to be $25. If I could make $25 I would buy the item, but now it's more. Because I've gotten so much better at finding items, and I know that the deals are never gonna dry out. It stretched it out probably more to my, I wanna make a hundred dollars, I'll pick something for $25.
If I get multiple items of the same item, you know, where I can list it once and still make $25, then I'll do it. But for the most part, I try to stick with, if I'm gonna make over a hundred dollars, 50 to a hundred dollars, I'll do it.
Nick Loper: What's been the impact of. Covid on your operations here.
Stacy Gallego: That's the really beauty about flipping is it's totally recession proof.
There's nothing that has really affected it. In fact, I think it's probably increased my business over the last several months. There's people at home cleaning out their houses, keeping busy, dumping stuff, you know, at thrift stores and. Having yard sales, people are selling things that they're not using because maybe they need the money or for whatever reason.
So I think it's really increased. And the thing is with during recessions, not everybody's struggling. You know, a lot of people. Went from working in an office to working at home. Well then they have access to their computer and on their breaks, they're on eBay trying to find things to buy because they don't wanna go to the store to buy it, or they're doing a home renovation because now they're spending all their time at home homeschooling their kids and working outta their home office.
So that's where the cooktops and commercial refrigerators come in. So like it really has, I think, increased and I think that's kind of. The beauty of the business, it really doesn't. It's not really affected by Covid 19, and there's still very safe ways to source. You can do pickups, pay for it electronically, have 'em leave it out on their porch, and you just do a porch pickup.
It's very, very safe ways to still source during this time.
Nick Loper: That's what I was thinking of. I, is the sourcing going to be diminished just because people don't wanna interact with other people? Yeah. I'm spending more time at home. I'm spending more time with my family. I'm buying stuff on eBay to support my hobbies, cuz now I have maybe more time to do those things or outdoor hobbies.
So yeah, that, that makes sense. Appreciate you sharing that. That kind of leads to the next question. I'm curious like what's a, a day in the life week in the life, curious about like the time that you're putting into this for the results, for the really, I think, outsized results that you're getting back or the impressive results that you're getting back.
Stacy Gallego: Well, when I started, I think I was working more so I would put in, you know, 15 hours a week. And honestly Nick, I could do it all day. I have to like kind of set. Parameters for myself, because I enjoy every bit of it. I enjoy sourcing. I enjoy cleaning my items. I enjoy photographing them. I enjoy finding a good buyer, shipping, communicating with my person that I sold to, making sure I give them excellent service.
So those are, I could do it all day, but I think more that I'm now working less, I'm putting more, I would say probably 25 hours between sourcing. So, Getting the items listed and shipping, and I do a lot of that in the evening. My kids get done with their homeschool and we have dinner and then I head out, everybody's kind of doing their downtime and I just head out to the garage for a couple hours and get my stuff listed and, you know, ship stuff that I need to get shipped.
And yeah, it's, I have a pretty good little system going. Okay.
Nick Loper: And that's kind of doing the online sourcing, like the Facebook marketplace, OfferUp type, like see what else, what's available,
Stacy Gallego: what's out there? Correct. And you know, I've built a lot of contacts now in the business, so I have people who clean out houses or thrift store people.
And so now they contact me when they find things. So now I have people searching for me and I don't have to do the work. Even though I enjoy that part, it still brings more of a profit to me because I have people now looking for me and they know what things I like and they know what things I sell, and then they just, you know, send me a photo.
Do you want this? Sure. I buy it from them. And so it's just decreases the amount of time that I have to spend searching Also. Yeah. How
Nick Loper: come that thrift store employee stockroom person isn't turning around and selling it themselves?
Stacy Gallego: Well, that's the thing. You know, he had a really beautiful sleep number, and I love sleep numbers.
I mean, it was one of the new models. It had everything, all the remotes, all of the, had a frame, one of the higher end frames that it had on it. And I knew the bed probably was $5,000 new for sure. He had it listed, he wanted to get $800 for it, so I told him, or he told me, cuz we built up a really good relationship and he.
I feel like he really trusts me and you know, I try to give him fair prices for his things. And when I sell things and I do better than I thought, then I'll give him more because they have a ministry and I really appreciate their ministry as well and really, really respect the work that they're doing.
So he said, well, why don't you take it, sell it, and give me the $800 when you sell it. So he had his guys bring it over. I put it into my storage and I sold it like a month later for 3,600. I gave him his 800 and I got to keep the rest. So he knew he couldn't sell it locally because he had it listed even locally, and he wasn't, wasn't getting any, any bites.
So he really needed to have that eBay platform to be able to sell it for what he wanted to get. So that's where I came in and, and it worked pretty good.
Nick Loper: Has there been a, a dry spell? You know, maybe you go a week or a month and you're like, the deals, the deals are gone. Like, I'm running outta inventory here.
This is something that would worry me about this business because it's, you kind of have to. What's the phrase? You kinda have to eat what you kill, which is super weird phrase, but like, you always have to be, uh, out hunting for the next
Stacy Gallego: deal. But no, I think that's a fear that you have in the beginning because you're inexperienced.
You don't know that there's deals. You know, I would watch Rob and think, what in the world where is he finding these deals? It was crazy. But then I started learning from him and how to find my own deals, and now I'm certain. The only problem I had was last month I sold so much inventory that was, I had 10,000 in sales, so I had sold lots of my inventory, but I just keep doing what I normally do.
I'm keeping consistent, reaching out to my contacts, searching. All of the apps and you know, my inventory's back up and I'm ready to, ready to sell again, but doesn't make me afraid. I know that it's just a matter of time and it just kicks in again.
Nick Loper: All right. Appreciate you sharing that. There's always deals out there.
There's always people looking to unload this stuff and people like Stacy and like Rob to come in and take it off their hands. What's next for you? Where do you wanna go? Where do you wanna go with this thing? You know, $10,000 months. What's the future hold?
Stacy Gallego: I'm excited about it because I've always wanted to travel.
Even as a kid, 16 years old, my parents gave me an opportunity. They said, you can have a big party. Or we'll give you 500 bucks and you can go and travel with the neighbors who are going across the states. I said, forget the party and gimme the money cuz I am going on a cross country road trip. It's always been my desire.
So it's been really cool because we can live off of my husband's retirement and that pays all of our bills and basically this is our extra money. So we have a couple trips planned and one is we're gonna be going to Israel in the summer next year. So that's, that's just our focus and doing a couple.
Things around the house. We have a couple jobs that we wanna do. We wanna redo our bathrooms in our kitchen and, and it's just nice because we can decide, hey, we need X amount to do this job in the kitchen. And we just, I just start, I make a little goal board and I put the goal on there, and when I hit it, then we can get the job done.
I just love the freedom that I have with it. You know, I can travel, I can put my little store on. Vacation. And you know, with this business, we don't have enough money to do everything we want to do, but we don't have to do anything we don't wanna do. And I think that's like a really good key to a very happy retirement.
And I'm sort of semi-retired because I can kind of not do it if I don't want to. And so it's just, it's a really good, it's just a really good business. So that's my desire. I just wanna have that freedom to spend time with my kids and. Love my husband and do the things that I wanna do, not necessarily working because I have to.
There's profit
Nick Loper: everywhere as you have showed us, and I really appreciate you sharing the ins and outs of how the flipping business has, has worked for you and continues to work for you. Stacy, thanks so much for joining me sharing your story. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.
Stacy Gallego: Well, several years ago I was in a, a group of people and a missionary came to speak with us, and he was from the uk and he said to this group, he said, finish this sentence for me. And he said, anything worth doing is worth doing. And of course, we all said, well, or with excellence, or, you know, we all finished that sentence that our culture says, you know, if you're gonna do anything, do it well.
He said it's actually the opposite. He said, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, because we're never good at everything we try in the beginning. So I just wanna encourage people if you want to, Flip items for profit get started. I've had so many people tell me, well, I would do that, but I would be scared of shipping.
Or I would do that, but my husband wouldn't like me to do that. Or I would, I would do that, but I'd be scared. I would mess it up. We all make mistakes. If you have a dream that you wanna put together some cash. Maybe you wanna get outta debt, maybe you wanna travel more. Maybe you wanna spend more time with your family or leave a job that you aren't happy with.
Get started today, like don't wait another day and learn along the way. Everybody makes mistakes and really the mistakes are how I've gotten so much better because every time I make a mistake, I end up having some idea. To do it better the next time. So, and if Flipping's not your jam, Nick, you know, there's 9,000 other ideas out there that you can, you should never stay someplace in your life that you're not happy with because there's 1,000,001 ways to make money and they're out there.
You just gotta find them and just start, they are
Nick Loper: out there. So true. Anything worth doing is worth doing. Poorly. I think that's a unique bit of advice in over 400 episodes. Really appreciate you. Sharing that it, it ties in really well with, you know what? Every expert was once a beginner. Nobody was born knowing how to do this stuff.
Stacy really appreciates you joining me. Thank you so much once again, and we'll catch up with you soon.