Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about can you be a skeptic but also find success at the same time?
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Can You Be A Skeptic And Successful At The Same Time?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about skepticism. Can you be skeptical and successful at the same time?
Rob: Alright, guys. So we are talking about people who don't always believe what is going on in other people's lives right now.
So we want to dive a little bit deeper into this topic because we do get comments on social media, just about skeptical people about getting results in the flipping world.
Melissa: Yeah. So we get, we run ads, so of course you get comments when you run ads and when if any social stuff goes more viral, you get like comments from all kinds of people. So it's pretty interesting. And you do have to have a thick shell if you could put yourself out there on the internet. Absolutely, 'cause we have some amazing, amazing people in our audience, but then there's always the people that are more negative and tend to comment.
And we noticed this more on ads and so that's why it kind of brought this thought in my mind. I wanted to talk about it 'cause I think it's pretty interesting. Like some of the people in the comments on ads either they're skeptical about this business working, like they can't, don't think it could work.
They, it's can't, like the way you do it with, nobody could ever sell those higher value items or they'll never sell, or they, you can't find them. Nobody can find those for cheap anymore. And just the comments like that, and it's like, well, have you tried, have you followed anything? Like, you know, I don't know.
So I just wanted to kind of talk about that and like, if you come at the world with a lens of skeptic being skeptical about everything. Can you really be successful at it if you can't try it because you're too skeptical to try it? So anyways.
Rob: No, that's a good point. And even to our you running ads, kinda the point of you running ads and people commenting and saying, hey, this is, you paid somebody to say this.
Yeah. Or you did something like that.
Melissa: That's a big one.
Rob: That's not the case of anything that we do, but at the same time, that type of person, there's something deeper going on in somebody who's skeptical about somebody actually going out and saying something about the program that we offer and that we do.
And what really drives that? What causes that skepticism? And, that's kinda what we wanted to talk about. Yeah. What causes that? And if you do have that skepticism, can you really be successful in, maybe not flipping, but anything.
Melissa: But how can you change that mindset maybe?
Rob: That's good. That's really good.
Melissa: A lot of times too, if somebody is, you know, the, the one of the things we do get sometimes is, oh, you pay people to leave those nice comment or to say that they've had success. I'm like, no, we, I mean, we don't, we, we live in integrity and with ethics and it's not something we do. We just get, go on with our lives and if they happen to comment, they happen to comment.
And we, you know, we always love it when they do 'cause I think it's pretty cool. Yeah. But the people who are thinking we do, that, they miss out on what could be like they're missing out. Like if they would just maybe learn or maybe they're skeptical about us. They don't wanna learn from us 'cause they've been scammed in the past.
And that happens. Like people get scammed and they don't, yeah, then they don't trust. And that is a completely legit thing. But then maybe dive into the person you're listening to. We have a ton of free content on the interwebs everywhere. So maybe go learn more about those people before you just shoot down the idea that maybe that could be the thing that helps you and yeah.
Rob: That's a huge point. And if you are looking for something to do, not even just considering us, but if you're looking at anything before you, you know, rush to a conclusion of this is not true, this is unreal. Go do some research, you can do research online now very, very easily. I mean, for us, we've been doing this for eight years.
Not only do we coach people how to get results, we still get results every single month on what we're teaching other people how to do. And that's a very, very easy thing to go and track on anybody. You can look at our social, you can look at any other stuff online that we've been in the business, we do what we do.
We have tons of people that we have helped, hundreds, if not thousands, of people that we've helped. Make an extra income from flipping. So, but that is such a great point that Melissa made. Do a little bit of research before you throw yourself out there and say, this is impossible. These people are fake.
They're doing that 'cause the other thing is that we totally understand are there's a lot of people out there that are trying to coach and teach people how to do stuff, and they have no business doing it. That's true. They don't know how to do it. They are not getting their own results, they haven't got their own results, and they're out there doing that.
So, we understand the skepticism when you do see something like that, but there are other actions that you can take to find out if it's legit or if it is not legit. Because you can see these people are getting the results that they're telling everybody they're getting. Yeah. And it's time and time again.
So, that's kind of deeper in what Melissa just said about doing the research.
Melissa: Yeah. One of the things that you've always looked at whenever you're looking for a coach, even before like some of these people have had coaching programs, you're like, you find out about the person. Maybe we'll go, we've gone to a conference once or twice where you like we approach the person afterwards, hey, do you do coaching? Like we'd really love to work with you because we already, we see what they're able to do, we see their results and we want to work with them. And that is just consuming more of their content and getting to them, maybe going to events and that kind of thing.
And we're not talking about just like us, like this is in general. Absolutely. Like if you've been looking into doing things as a side hustle, but then you think everything out there is a scam and I don't wanna say with a grain of salt 'cause there are. There are scams out there. So you just have to be cautious and you have to really invest in and look, do your research, do your research into a person and consume their free content because everybody should have some stuff out there.
If all you're getting is just an ad and you can't find them anywhere else on the internet, that might not be a good thing. So. One thing I wanted to also, 'cause this was in that same context of, you know, people saying that we pay for people, and then this one guy who's one of our members commented last night, and I thought that was, it was so, so cool to see and to think if he would've not, if he would've been skeptical, he wouldn't have had these results. Like he wouldn't have jumped in and he wouldn't have had these results. So I was just gonna read it real quick. Steve wrote on one of our ads, said, I just wanna say FlipperU didn't just help with learning how to do it, but gave me the confidence to actually do it.
Anyone can know how to do something. It's taking the next step and having the push and support to make it happen. Not gonna lie, if I didn't find it and join, I probably would've never have started, which now I'm over $20,000 to $25,000 in sales.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: And that is so cool. And it just, I mean, it feels so, it selfishly it feels good to just see that Yeah.
Like, I don't know, like you just, it makes you feel good to, to be able to help people and do that.
Rob: So, and to be honest with you guys, we've never met Steve. He's gone through our program and in our, our support group, but we've never met him in person and we've never even had a, a conversation.
Melissa: It's a dialogue. Yeah.
Rob: Exactly. A conversation or like an email that was super nice dialogue with it, but that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool that we are able to help people get to that point. And $25,000. Come on guys. That, I mean, that's amazing to get to that point with this side hustle or full-time income even, that's just amazing.
It's really, really cool to see those type of results.
Melissa: And I want to share an example, another example about being skeptical. So, and even doubting Rob's ability to sell some things. So there have been multiple times where I get nervous about him investing a certain amount of money in items like the jetskis, what'd I write down, the tower, the stretchers.
How many times have you said, I got this, I, I can do this. And then, it always turns out that you make the money, but I like really, if it was up to me, we wouldn't invest the money. So, yeah, absolutely. Right.
Rob: And that's what, is that deeper in you though? What is causing that skepticism in you?
Melissa: I don't know, it just makes me nervous to go out more money, even though sometimes it's not even a ton of money.
Sometimes it is. I think anything over a couple hundred dollars makes me nervous. Yeah.
Rob: When we get into thousands, a couple thousand dollars that we're investing.
Melissa: Yeah. That, those makes me nervous. Yeah. But, and I, it's not that I don't, I haven't seen you do it over and over again. I don't know why I get skeptical that you won't sell.
Yeah. But you keep proving me wrong over and over again every time. So.
Rob: Almost all of our huge investments that we make and we turn around and we make a lot of money on it. She has told me that she doesn't want me to do it.
Melissa: I mean, those stretchers, how much we made on those?
Rob: We were in $40,000 to $50,000 off of a $2,500 or $2,200 investment. Investment.
Melissa: The tower we just talked about in the other podcast was, yeah, $25,000. That was a big investment for us though. Yeah. That was $5,000, which is a big investment. Absolutely. But, you made 20 grand on it profit jets.
Rob: The jet skis jet, we spent $5,000 on the jet skis and sold those for $17,000 or $18,000.
Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. It was close to $18,000. So.
Rob: Multiple items that we have done that Melissa has disagreed that
Melissa: I would've said no. And how much money would we be missing out on if, if we wouldn't have been able to do it. So.
Rob: I mean, those alone were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least a hundred thousand dollars on that stuff right there that we've done. And that's, I mean, these are the bigger items that Melissa actually, yeah, we have the talk. We figured out, and sometimes I will listen and I won't do what she says, but when I'm pretty confident because of the research that I know how to do and the results that I've had in the past, I'm pretty confident that we will sell it and sell it.
I mean, the biggest thing is the beginning of this year with those, those stretchers, she did not want me to do the stretchers and like I said, $40,000, $50,000 and they sold fast too quick. That was money in the bank. Super, super quick and we're, that's no small chunk of change, $40,000 to $50,000, and we only put out like $2,500 to buy $2,200, whatever it was, $2,200, $2,500.
That's crazy to buy them. That's a, that's a sweet flip. That's so much fun to be able to do that.
Melissa: So what are some reasons why somebody could be skeptical? Is maybe they were burned in the past or they've tried a lot and failed. And I think a, a big reason too is they're unhappy with their circumstances and so they're just going to blame on the external circumstances instead of looking at what could they do to improve the situation.
And I think that's a lot of the negative people that comment on the internet are tend to fall into that camp. So, but what if you do find yourself being like, kind of skeptical about something, like, can you really do this? Is it you, do you not think that you can do it? Or you don't have faith that the business model works?
What is it? And then try to combat that. And I think it's important to be cautious in this day and age because there are scammers out there and there are. With ai, like that is a whole new world that's gonna open up. I was listening to a call, it was yesterday and they're saying, you know, like even videos now are going to, you have to watch out 'cause there's can be all AI pretty soon.
And so it is, we live in a crazy world, but I think if you really take the time and do your research, like you said, yeah, and get to know somebody and get to know or get to know the business model, you can learn so much. And that's the thing is there's so much free information out there in the interwebs that you can learn so much and learn so much about a person or a program or a business model that you wanna follow and follow it.
So, yeah. And yeah, go ahead.
Rob: Melissa actually pointed on that too 'cause we invest in coaches every year. We invest in our knowledge and how to get better at what we do, whether that's eBay, whether it is our digital products that we do, our creating, creating more content for everybody. We're always investing in doing that.
And if I told you how much it was, you guys would flip out because we do, we invest a lot of money into that, but it's not easy. Like Melissa said with our coaches, I, we're not just looking online and we find somebody's real and then we're like, all right, let's go invest in this guy. That's not what we do.
We have to see the results of what they've done. And typically it is somebody that we've heard at a conference, we've been able to
Melissa: and then we consume their podcasts typically. Exactly. We like, we love podcasts. And that's not everybody. Some people are more YouTube. You do like YouTube too. But I think we, we listen to a lot of podcasts and that's the way we get to know somebody, I feel like.
Yeah, absolutely. So it's great that you're listening here guys, and we love that you're here listening, but, but yeah, I didn't mean to cut you off. Sorry. No, you're good.
Rob: So the moral of the story is you can be a skeptic and be successful, but you guys just dig into it. If, if you find yourself right now, realizing that you're doubting everything that you see, that's not a total bad thing.
You should definitely doubt some things and then do the research to find out if it is true or if it's not. And.
Melissa: And if you find yourself doubting every single thing that's, that you're not gonna be able to make steps forward. And there might be times that you jump in and it wasn't the right program or it wasn't the right thing for you, and that's okay.
You still fail forward. Yeah. Like we've done stuff where we've coached with people. We always think, oh, they're gonna bring us to the next level. And it's like the they do and we get one piece, but it's not everything we wanted, so well, we thought it would be alright, but, but each time we grow more.
Yeah. And more and more. And we learn more and we'd have some failures, but we keep learning from them and keep growing from them. Yeah. So I would, I would say so.
Rob: Absolutely. And that's the one of the things you can take away is maybe it's not exactly what you expect to get out of the program or, when you're doing something for us, we know that you can't have that mindset of skepticism and then you go into the program that way because. Or into the business. A business. Yeah, exactly. Whatever you're doing, because you can always find some cool things no matter what you're doing, whether you're investing in yourself, whatever you're doing, you can find some cool takeaways and really run with those.
And that's what Melissa and I have done too. We've been disappointed with some coaching programs we've invested in. We still will constantly invest in programs because we believe in growth. We believe that you have to pay for knowledge, and we want to continue to do that, and we want to be growing in everything that we do.
We don't want to be stagnant, we don't want to stand still, because in actuality, you're going backwards if you're being stagnant and standing still. That's true. So we constantly want to learn, integrate, and do stuff to better our businesses, better our lives better, everything that we're doing. So, yeah.
Melissa: One thing I, one last thing I was gonna say was some of the comments that get me the most are when people say, oh, this stuff will never sell, or, oh, you can't, eBay's dead, you can't do it. And it's like, we are doing it every day. We have people like it, like we literally just sold something yesterday. Like, you know, like it, I don't understand. Or when people, this is another one that I know and this one might hurt for some people, but when I see the comments like, well my area doesn't have anything, and it's like, yes, there are areas that will have more stuff and 'cause we source all over the country for people too.
And there are areas that are better than others, but at the same time, if you have that mindset, you will never find anything. Yes. Like you have to think, okay, well if my area is harder, am I not looking in the right spot or am I not looking for the right things? Yeah. Or maybe I need to just travel 30 extra minutes out of the way or an hour to go to a bigger city.
Yeah. Or whatever it is. But there also is stuff. There's a lot of stuff everywhere there is. Like we go on our road trip and you find stuff right on our path, absolutely on our path.
Rob: And I'm only typically using one app. So maybe you're in that app saying you guys have amazing stuff in your area, but there's nothing in our area.
Guess what? There's thrift stores, there's flea markets, there's yard sales, there's stuff everywhere. So just because you might not think something's in your area doesn't mean that there's nothing in your area.
Melissa: Maybe you just need to train your eye a little bit more. Absolutely. And start looking for some different things than you're used to looking for.
And the apps are your favorite way. Absolutely. So that was just, that's one comment. Yeah. We see every once in a while and it's like, well if had we not sourced a lot of places over the country and gone on road trips and it like, then maybe we say, can say yes, you know. Florida's great. Or central Florida's great and it is like we have gotten a lot of great stuff, but there's a lot of stuff everywhere too.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Anyways, we'll end with that. So hopefully this is a little more mindset. If you find yourself getting, you know, like skeptical, skeptical about everything, just kind of think, okay, well why am I thinking that? And maybe it's something that I need to work on on myself. Maybe mine was I, why would I think that?
Like I do trust that you could do it. So maybe I need to work on that myself. So anyways, that's awesome. So.
Rob: Guys, we greatly appreciate your time. Greatly appreciate you spending some time with us. Hopefully you got a lot out of this episode. Guys, we cannot wait to see you on the next episode.