Rob and Melissa Stephenson, from Flea Market Flipper, talk about a tool that has helped them make over $500K in their reselling business.
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A Tool That Has Helped Us Make Over $500K! Are You Using It Too?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we're talking about a tool that has helped us make well over a half a million dollars in this flipping game on eBay, and the last probably 10, 15 years. And the best part is it probably costs less than one monthly car payment that you might be paying right now.
Rob: All right, so you might be thinking, what the heck is this tool? What is it that is responsible for making over a half a million dollars in your eBay business? Well, guess what, guys? We've made well over a million dollars in our eBay business.
But I wanted to be conservative with this tool. Now I've had this tool for over, what did we say over,
Melissa: you said you were 16.
Rob: So th almost 30 years I've had this tool, and I've been able to put it to work, but like I said, conservatively, because of what it is. I didn't wanna say it's the only responsible.
Responsible for your business. Yeah. Everything that we've made in eBay. So, this tool is pretty cool. Like I said, I got it back when I was 16 years old. It has seen me through a lot. And guess what? I still have it today and I still use it, use it today. I just used it last week, actually two weeks ago when I bought that golf cart.
Oh yeah. So are you curious what this tool is? Can we tell any other stories about it before it go it? Or should we talk about it?
Melissa: No, just we'll talk about it.
Rob: So cool.
This tool cost me $350. Actually, even I thought your dad gave gave it. I was gonna say, I didn't even pay for this. My dad paid for this back when I was 16 years old.
Melissa: Did he buy it used?
Rob: He did.
Melissa: I mean, I would assume he did.
Rob: He did. And guess where it came from? A yard sale. My dad bought this from a yard sale for me when I was 16 years old. Alright, here's what it is. A trailer, a four by eight trailer is what my dad bought me back when I was 16 years old to start a landscape business.
Now I've had this trailer for almost 30 years, and I have used it in my eBay business. It is my favorite trailer. Now. We have multiple trailers, guys. We have enclosed trailers, we have, we've
Melissa: collect, he's a collector of the things and then
Rob: I use them. They're tools. They're
tools of course.
Melissa: Like everything is like, oh, that's just gonna, that's gonna be a great story or that's a great tool. I need it. So, but yes, he likes to collect trailers. So over the years we have many big trailers, many enclosed trailers, all different kinds of trailers. But this trailer is one that we use the most.
Rob: My favorite. Definitely my favorite. Absolutely. It's easy, it's small.
This one has made it around the whole entire country. We've pulled it on road trips. We have, we,
Melissa: no, we pulled it in closed trailer.
Rob: Yes, we have. We pulled this one too. We pulled this one back to get stuff. Yes, it has. Absolutely has. Right. So we've made this trailer, so many miles and I don't know how many sets of tires.
It's a small trailer. It's a four by eight, so not really big. If you think of the size of a sheet of plywood, that's what the base is of. This is the size of a sheet of plywood, four by eight. Has smaller tires. I think they're 12 inch rims on. It won't hold a ton of weight, but it, we'll hold up to probably 2,000 pounds.
Probably rated for like 1,200, 1,500, but I've held a lot more weight on it. It's an amazing trailer, so this is a tool that has definitely, definitely, been responsible for us making a ton of money in this business. Very, very easy. Pick it up with my hand, walk it around, put it on the back of the truck.
But no,
Melissa: the trailer, but it also tilts, it tilts down. So you just walk it up with the dolly and put it on the thing, and then sometimes you, even if you bring it back, and sometimes you'll, even if you're going to ship something out for freight, you'll build it up in the back of the little trailer and ship it off.
So it just makes it so easy. So, yep.
Rob: And just recently, what I can think of, a range that we picked up over on the coast, which is about 45 minutes to an hour away. We got that, that alone, $5,000. Another oven that we, picked up a double oven , that will make us a couple thousand dollars on that. All these are just little things, and for me to be able to take our SUV and then throw this on the back of it, very, very, very convenient for us to be able to do that.
So a lot of people get hung up on not having a trailer. I think of a lot of our students even Stacy comes to mind, not having a trailer and doing this business for two years before she actually bought a trailer. Very, very similar to ours.
Melissa: She made a hundred thousand dollars before she even even bought a little trailer.
So a lot of times people are like, oh, I need, I need all of these things before I get started. But our encouragement to you is to start where you're at and then. A $350 investment into a trailer. Or you can find them, you know, at at yard sales or auctions or whatever. Or you can, Harbor Freight has those nice little. Absolutely. Trailers for sale.
Rob: They fold up into your garage. Yeah. You can put it up against their garage wall. Yeah.
Melissa: And they run discounts a lot. So there's ways to do this and if you don't have a truck or trailer, you know, starting out, if you do decide that you wanna do this business model, um, you can rent one.
There's so much profit in our items that you can even rent a trailer for the day and it makes. Still makes total sense to make sure that you wanna do this business.
Rob: So yeah, the, and the majority of the stuff that we use with this little trailer is the dolly. I have a hand truck, a hand truck that I tilt something back, pull it up onto the trailer, push it up onto the trailer.
However, I do it, and it's not like you need a forklift. With this, you can move so many, so many items and probably. I would almost say adventure to say 80 to 90% of our items are, the trailer and the dolly are just the trailer and the dolly. We don't have to have a forklift, we don't have to do any of that stuff.
But it enables us to do so much more , having this trailer , versus having to go out and rent one. But where you start, like Melissa said, if you're worried about that, you do not have to buy one to start. You definitely can rent one, you can borrow one. And then when you're ready to it, you see how much, I mean, just think of one flip, that one range that we have for $5,000, a $350 investment to be able to move that thing around.
Come on. That's just crazy, crazy, crazy that we're able to do that with a $350 investment. And then that's not even the only, like I said. Over half a million dollars we can account to being, moving items. Whether it's buying items, whether it's putting on a pallet and then taking them to, the freight carrier if I do that or moving them around, whatever I do with this trailer, it's enables us to make a lot, a lot of money for a very, very, small investment of $350.
Yeah.
Melissa: We had that grab that chiropractor table I remember on that. Yep. We've used that thing for so many things. I was trying to go through some of the things that we've done.
Yeah.
Rob: It's just so easy, so light, so easy to maneuver, like I said, you can pick it up with a hand, so you don't need some crazy trailer either.
Yeah. If you are at the point where you need to buy one, you don't need some crazy trailer that's, that's gonna be 16 foot long. That's gonna be, you know, 2,000 pounds. You don't need that. You can start with a very, very small trailer, and this is the longest out of all the trailers that I have, this is the one that I have had the longest.
I absolutely love it. It's just a great tool.
Melissa: Didn't he buy it for you, for your landscaping business? He did at first.
Rob: Yeah. That's what originally for, he bought it from a yard sale , and I made money with a landscaping business where I put a mower up on the back of it. My dad actually built a gate for it back, back in the day.
So this trailer looks pretty cool. It sits flat. There's a little latch on the tongue that tilts back and you can drive a mower up on it or you can load stuff on it either, and then it flops, you flops back down and it goes with it. But my dad originally built a gate that folded down, and that's what he used for the landscape trailer.
Since then, I pulled that gate off. You don't have that gate anymore? No. I like it better just with the flat end on it because it does tilt so you can do whatever you want with it. But a very, very, very investor, very useful, very, very useful tool. And if you're at the point right now and you're making money in your flipping business and this is what's holding you back, is going to a larger item, like a range or maybe even a bigger cooktop or something like that, this is the investment that will take you to that next level is getting something small, a small trailer.
Melissa: And the cool thing about this business too is that you're in the business looking for deals. So you might even come across one for a, I see them all the time for a great deal. And that is one thing I love, even just. Even just today, I told him, I was like, hey, you know, our fridge is kind of on its last leg.
I think you need to be on the lookout for a new fridge because we're not gonna go to the store and buy one new, like, that's just not what we're gonna do. But if you can be on the lookout, our, we've had our nice stainless steel fridge. We got it, we did get it from Lowe's. We got it scratch and dent for super.
I don't even remember. It was,
Rob: I think it was less than 300 bucks.
Melissa: Yeah, I think it was $300 cause they lost the handles and they were inside. Anyway, we've had it for probably 18, probably, I think since
Rob: 17 or 18 years.
Melissa: I think you, since you redid the other house. Yeah. So 18 years. Yeah. So we've had this thing, so it's, yeah, it's on its last leg.
So, but he's in the business of looking for cool stuff and, and good deals, so we always can get a good deal on the stuff that we need. So that's pretty cool while you're doing this business. But we never recommend going out and investing in a whole bunch of tools, a whole bunch of things for this business.
Just start with what you have, because you can make money as you grow and as you can bankroll this into something and grow it bigger and bigger and bigger. So.
Rob: Absolutely. You guys are amazing. Thanks so much for spending some time with us today. Hopefully this has been helpful. We will see you guys on the next episode.