Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about the importance of investing in yourself.
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Podcast With Grant from Millennial Money
Reseller Hangout Podcast - Do You Invest In Yourself?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about investment. Do you invest in yourself, invest in the knowledge to grow your business?
All right guys, so today we are getting into the nitty gritty of investment and more specifically investing into the most important thing yourself.
Melissa: I was just gonna add, now that you're listening to this podcast, you're already investing in yourself. So we know that you're one of those kind of people who do, but we kind of wanted to break this up a little bit. Absolutely. It's something that we fully believe in and do ourselves and listen to it on podcasts.
And like just recently we've, we listened to a lot of Alex Hormozi stuff and, he talks a lot about the investing in the s and me before the s and p. So like, if you're gonna go and invest this money in the stock market, but you haven't invested in yourself in skills that can keep paying you over and over again.
He's like, you gotta start at the s and me. So you're paying, you just keep investing in yourself. Yeah, which is a pretty cool way to think about it.
Rob: It is. Absolutely. And rewind a little bit this whole episode, we're getting ready to go on a mastermind, a week mastermind with the coaching that we invest in. So that's how it's kind of sparked.
We're gonna be transparent with some numbers, throughout this podcast. Hopefully you guys like it, hopefully you guys, yeah, you relate to this, but, the biggest thing, like Melissa said, is our goal. And we are, we're not just telling people this, this is what we do. This is how we've lived our life for, I don't even know how long we've done this.
I mean, absolutely for the last eight years since we've been in business doing Flea Market Flipper. We've done this, we've lived this, and that's why we believe in it so much. So that's kind of where this all sparked from. Like I said, in, in a couple days, we're actually going and we're, we're, encompassing, not encompass, immersing ourselves.
Yes. And, a mastermind with other like-minded people. So that's why it's on the front of our minds right now. We wanted to talk to you guys about it. Kind of give you a breakdown of what we do and how we invest in ourselves.
Melissa: Yeah. One thing that I already am looking forward to, I know when we come back, like we're gonna just be so like, excited and energized and ready to go and just do a whole bunch more stuff, which then we'll have more things to share with you guys.
And it's just, I don't know, it's a, it, it re-energizes you. So. Business is hard. Like it's, we have two parts of our business, the eBay business and the coaching part. And there's a lot that goes into a lot of it. Yeah. And sometimes it can feel like you're doing a lot of things all the time and you can feel drained.
And if you don't put yourself with people who are trying to better themselves and better their businesses and grow and help people, like it's just, it can be draining. It can be lonely too, I would say. Absolutely. Like entrepreneurship can be lonely. Like even if just in your eBay business, if you're just like doing the daily grind, like you're shipping stuff out, you're not really talking to people.
It can be lonely. So putting yourself around people is, is important.
Rob: Is a key. Absolutely. And we will, so we'll break down, if you guys don't know, we have two portions to our business, to our income is definitely our eBay business, where we're buying and selling items on eBay.
Melissa: Which you'll never quit.
Rob: No. And the second part is our coaching. So we're gonna break down eBay first for you. So, we've been doing this, I've been in this game, I've been selling on eBay for 27 years. All the knowledge that I got from eBay, trust me, there's, we can't find anybody who's further along than us on this portion of the business on buying big items. On big items, yeah, on selling big items. Nobody offers trainings on this other than us. We can't find that. Had I been able to find that 10 years ago, guys, you have no idea where I would be right now. So that's one of the things that we can't invest into that portion of the business other than really doing it ourselves, living it day in and day out, making mistakes, growing from those mistakes and helping our students, not make the same mistakes.
Now, what we teach is the school of hard knocks. I've gone through the school of hard knocks for 27 years. I've learned everything by doing it the wrong way, fixing it and doing it the right way, and then teaching other people how to do it the right way so you don't make those mistakes in your business.
So that's, that's one aspect of us. And we can't, like I said, if there was somebody we could invest in, to go to that next level in the eBay business, i, I've never found anybody, I've never located anybody who actually teaches how to go to the large items, go this bigger scale on the large items. And that's what we're trying to do.
We're trying to be relevant with what we're doing. We're constantly buying and selling. I mean, just what, two nights ago I shipped out, two, two more stretchers sold, and they went on a, we only have two left. They went on a pallet and I shipped them out because I want to be relevant. I wanna be relevant with my students, with everybody that we're helping grow to that next level.
We wanna be relevant. We wanna be relevant with the eBay process to know if eBay's changing, we have to update our students with it. We have to update you guys who are investing yourselves with this podcast, with this video. We wanna be relevant with what we're doing, and that's how we do it on the eBay side of business.
Melissa: But what I was gonna say, no, go ahead. But when we started, Flea Market Flipper, the brand blog or whatever, we started as a blog in 2015 and we didn't, I actually had a health and fitness blog, so I understood a little bit of WordPress, but I didn't, I didn't fully, it was mostly just for my training clients.
Like I put recipes and workouts on there and that's kind of was the basis of it. It wasn't really looking for SEO or trying to really, you know, rank or anything. It was more just for my clients so I could have a reference for them. And then you had the idea, to start, you actually started to build a, a website first and then I, it ended up being my thing, but, but yeah, we didn't know really WordPress.
We didn't know how to build all this stuff, and so we had to go find the people that knew this stuff to help us with it. And that's what we, we create the shortcut because like what you said, it took 27, it's taken you 27 years to get where you're at right now in eBay. If you could have taken a shortcut, you would've liked to.
Absolutely. But, and probably if you knew back in like where you're thinking about college versus now, you probably would've rather invested in something like this than go through all those other odd in jobs. Absolutely. But, but now, like we wanted to invest and shortcut our way a little bit. And I say shortcut, we've been doing this now for eight years, so like we're still, we're still learning every day and we're still investing, but.
Rob: We are, but we have found the people in our coaching side of business, so we're switching over from eBay to the coaching side. We have found people who are further along than us, they, they get their name out there so people can see them.
So people can really yeah, take note of what they're doing and, and understand what they're doing. So that's been our goal for the coaching side for the last eight years now. Okay.
Melissa: I was gonna say, I remember our first initial investment. Our business and the Flea Market Flipper brand or blog or whatever, was with our friend Caitlin.
She actually is the one who came up with our name, Flea Market Flipper. And you had just sold something that was, I don't remember what you sold, but it was a, a couple thousand dollars. Yeah. Cuz we were and this was 2015, we were very.
Rob: Well set the stage for this because this is when we decided we were going all in. Melissa just had our third child.
Melissa: Well, I was pregnant at that point. Oh, 2015 is when we started the blog. Okay. And then you hadn't gone full-time yet, so.
Rob: So we're both walking away from our careers. Yeah. At that time. And money was not a luxury that we had. It wasn't, we didn't have tons of money in savings, anything like this.
But we did have a friend who was successful. She was successful teaching people how to do what she did. And that's where it caught our eyes. Yeah.
So go ahead and, yeah.
Melissa: So then she put together this course and this, training program. We met like once every other week or something and and it was a thousand dollars.
And we're like, okay, it's worth, we wanna learn this. Like do we do it? Do what do we do? But then you just made that sale and it's like, We, okay, we have the money, which didn't, we didn't always have the money. We had a thousand dollars we could spend on this. Do we jump in and really try to make this work?
And then, so we just did it. And, and it, and I can't say the rest is history. Like we still like had to, it's a constant journey.
Rob: It's a constant journey.
Melissa: But we learned a lot. and then, and built out our, our stuff. And then I was like, why is nobody coming to it? Why is nobody reading? And then I go back and I'm like, yeah, I'm glad nobody was reading these things back, this blog post back in 2015, because they're not very good.
So, you know, and you grow over time, but you have to keep, keep moving forward and keep learning. And I think that is one thing that we both value is learning. And I've always been, I, I don't know. I love to learn when it was health and fitness, nutrition. Like I just love to keep learning on things.
So when it was this, I'm like, I'm all in to learn how to build a website, build, like I wanna learn this stuff. So, and then, and you like to learn when it's stuff you like. So you found that out about yourself? Yeah. You don't like school. School's not your gig.
Rob: Nope.
Melissa: But you like to learn, like when we go to conferences, you love to learn about all this, like all the business stuff, but it has to be stuff that you're interested in.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: Otherwise you're not.
Rob: Absolutely. And that's me. That's me personally. So that was our first, 2015 was our first main investment into, somebody who coaching, knew where they were. They, they knew how to do what they were doing. And we, we invested in that coaching in 2015.
Now, fast forward couple years, another year, I think, was it next to next year?
Melissa: Yeah. We went to a conference cuz that's another way to invest in yourself is conferences. So I think we found this group of people, which was really cool. It's called, a FinnCon community. So if you're into personal finance, we found this community and they did a conference once a year.
And so like, let's go meet some of these bloggers and these people that are doing, like blogging was a lot bigger. It, well, it's still big, but it was a lot like blogging was the thing. There wasn't all this social media content that was being created. Now. It's more like short form videos and all that stuff.
But it was like, blogging was a huge portion of it. And so there was bloggers and YouTubers were pretty much there. Yeah. And so we wanted to go and meet some of them and learn. to better our business. So we did, and then we listened to somebody speak, Grant, and we listened to him speak and tell his story.
Grant with Millennial Money, and we've had him on the podcast before. Oh yeah, I don't remember what episode it was. But he was talking about flipping domains. So anyway, he's really like, great with website, it's great with seo and after his his talk, you're like, we gotta go meet that guy and go see if he'll coach us.
So, yep. And that's one thing you said is you like to see people who have done what you wanna do and he doesn't, like, he didn't say, oh, at the end of his speech, here, come work with me.
Rob: This is what I do. He doesn't do that. No, he didn't do coaching at the time. We actually went up to him because we were related to him.
We saw that he had results. He was very, very smart and we just wanted to work with him. So we went up to and asked him, and he says, it's not something that I typically do, but let me think about it and I'll get back to you. Got back to us and, gave us a total, which blew our minds, but at the same time, we knew we needed to do it.
And it was $10,000. That's what he told us to come into our business and help us work. And it was a three month process, that he would go through, he'd help brand, help rebrand us and do that kind of stuff. But you remember our first one was a thousand dollars. A year later we're doing $10,000, for a three month process. And we knew we didn't have the money to do it, but we had to do it to help us grow. And then that was the second coaching that we actually did.
Melissa: Yeah. Which was, and it, like, every one of 'em, like every time we did coaching, I feel like, okay, this is it. Like we're gonna grow, grow, grow. And we, we did grow, like we learned a lot, but it just wasn't quite as fast as we had hoped, I feel like.
Yeah. But each time you take away something, something positive and something like, we still use all of the branding that he did. Yeah. Like, we, and it was, we learned a lot and learned so much over time. So.
Rob: And that's part of the mindset too Yeah. Is really being in coaching, learning, not coming out of it and being like, oh, the, yeah, this wasn't worth it.
Because we didn't go as far as we had hoped with Grant in those three months, but we did gain so much, so much knowledge, so much help.
Melissa: Well, we were, we were lacking so much. Like after you go through, you're like, oh, like we don't have, we think we have all this stuff in play. We think we have at that time, like, you know, pillar posts for blog posts that are bringing in seo like Google rankings, and we didn't, like, we didn't have a, a lot of stuff at all.
Yeah. So he had to really work it from the ground up.
Rob: But turning that mindset to really take the positive stuff and learn from it and just, and just realize, okay, well I didn't have this, I didn't have this, hey. And he helped me get to that point. That was one of the big things that we have to learn throughout coaching.
So, I mean, even when we go into coaching, sometimes we have expectations of, oh, this is gonna be amazing and we work through it, but we are still so far behind and what we really need that we make stepping stones and it's not like we're gonna stop our coaching, with what we've done. But yeah, so that's just the process, our process that we've gone through.
So, now that's year two into our business. Now, was it year three that we.
Melissa: I don't remember it at this point.
Rob: Year three or four, we found somebody else who was going
Melissa: We went to that same conference actually the next year, I think it was. We were talking to our friends and we knew them through people, but we wanted to kind of scale some more and get more visibility and learn Facebook ads and learn like how can we grow our reach and stuff.
So like there was still so much we didn't know. We, I, we still don't know a lot of stuff, but, so we again, we saw Bobby speak and you're like, we need to go talk to him after we talk to him. Yeah. Set up a call with him and said, hey, would you guys be interested in coaching us?
The same thing thing.
Rob: Well, you talked to him and he said, absolutely that he should bring in Mike too. Yeah. He's like, Mike has a lot to offer, so, so, yeah. But the same thing when we talked to them about it, they didn't coach, we asked them if they would, and they said Absolutely. Well, I think that he, he got back to us, so it was the same thing.
He was kind of thrown off by it because that's how I, like, I, I wanna see people doing, getting the results that you want. Exactly. And then that's how I approached them and I asked them. So we did that and we ended up coaching with them. What was it, how much do you remember?
Melissa: Well, the first three months they said $6,000 and then we asked them if we could renew. Okay. So like, can we renew? Cuz we wanted to keep going. So we ended up $12,000.
Rob: Yeah. So $12,000 for 12 months is what we ended up paying them to really learn and grow. And they helped us a ton. It was great, great coaching that we did. But yeah, that's led us into where is that our last one before we jumped into?
Melissa: Yeah. And like we've always pretty much had a coach and then there was a little time that we didn't, for a little while. And then last year we jumped into the other coaching program, so that we're in.
Rob: So the coaching program that we're in right now, so as of last year, and this is the big investment.
So, what we're doing as we're just showing you, I mean, we believe in teaching people, we believe in this process. If you really break it down, it goes back to the whole, the college process. You're going to college, you're learning a skillset that you're coming outta college and you're hoping to better your knowledge and to be able to provide for your family that.
We do the same thing with our knowledge and there's not really colleges for what we, what we're doing and what we're growing. Like I said,
Melissa: it's amazing. I wonder if they start to teach more of this stuff in college, like growing. They need to growing. Yeah. Like marketing has changed so much and like, I don't know, go social and all that stuff is crazy. So yeah.
Rob: Anyways, so anyways, back on track. So as of last year, we actually jumped into a coaching program. And it was a year coaching program, but it was $30,000 for the year, which we renewed after last year. We did the same exact thing we've done this year. They have masterminds included in it where we get together in a group setting with a like-minded people who are really trying to get results in their business. So we do this, but these are the things that we've done throughout the last, actually the eight years of our growth. We've constantly been investing in our business, investing how to get better, how to coach better, how to, just be all around better leaders in what we're doing, for our students.
That's what we're trying to do, so.
Melissa: And I have to add, and it's not because we have that money sitting in a bank account that we can Oh, absolutely not like it is. It's an investment. It's a very, it's been tough at some points and so, but we know that we need to keep growing. Yeah. So we know if it doesn't, if we don't have some skin in the game, like, we're not gonna do the things we need to do to make it happen.
And that's, that's just our personal belief. Like, if we don't have something, like, to make it hurt a little bit, like we gotta, we gotta keep moving forward. So I think that that it, it's not that it's just easy for us cuz it's not.
Rob: No it's not.
And we'll always be doing it. This is what we believe in. We believe in getting better in helping our people more, but learning how to be better leaders, how to, how to lead our business better and we'll constantly be doing it. So right now, I mean even we're just giving you the coaching portion of it is $30,000. For us to go to Mastermind's, travel and do stuff.
I mean, we're probably between $40,00 0 and $50,000 a year that we're spending on extended education, or is that what it's called? Extended or ongoing education. Yeah. We're spinning that a year, and I really wanna get to a hundred thousand dollars a year because I constantly wanna, I'm committed to growing and bettering myself better.
Melissa: Better sell some more stuff.
Rob: That's what I wanna do. I wanna do it. And that's the thing, like I said, the eBay business. We'll always do it. I love eBay. I love buying and selling items. I'm, that's part of me, it's part of my DNA to do that and help other people do it. But it's just so much fun for me to do it.
So as long as I can possibly do it, I will be doing it. Now the coaching side of it, we're gonna do the same thing. We love helping people get results. It's amazing to watch people, their families change, their themselves change, and be able to quit their job when they want to. It's just, it's really, really cool to be able to do that.
But we can't do that if we don't equip ourself. If we don't learn how to be leaders. Yeah. Better leaders, how to, really be relevant in the marketplace and how to do stuff like that, we can't do it. So that's why we're committed. We're committed to keep coaching ourselves. We want to keep investing in coaching so we can better ourselves, better our business.
So that's one of the biggest things, and it really goes back to what, I mean, and these are coachings that we're doing. But guys, we're constantly listening to audiobooks. We're constantly listening to podcasts of other people, successful people trying to learn how to get successful in our business.
But it really goes back to like what Alex Hormozi says. Are you investing in the S&Me? Which is, you know, are you?
Melissa: S&Me, not S&P.
Rob: Oh S&P, S&Me, or are you investing in the S&P? And it's the stock market. So you throw money into that, or are you really investing in your knowledge?
Melissa: Not that he's, he's not against like, no putting money, but it, it's like if you are you, have you learned the skills that can keep paying you over and over again? So, you know, learning the skills and investing in yourself Yeah. Is super important. And I wanted to add to what you were saying, is creating those relationships too with like-minded people.
So like you typically when you're in some kind of coaching program mastermind or whatever it is. Like I love the in-person stuff. Like in-person. You just create so much stronger relationships, I feel like too. So I love going to conferences and that kind of thing. But you can do a lot on Zoom too.
And, but you create relationships with people that are like-minded. They're the people that are gonna energize you. They're gonna encourage you. They're gonna help you when things get tough, versus the people that are gonna try to tear you down and say, no, this business doesn't work, or whatever it is. So cuz there's always gonna be those people out there.
Rob: So yeah. And even think about like JLD is one of John Lee Dumas, his famous saying, well it's probably not him, it's probably somebody else, but. He always quotes it is you're the average of the five people you hang out the most with. And that's where these people that maybe around you, it might be even be your family, it might be your friends, the people at the workplace, they might not be encouraging you, telling you, you can do your dreams, you can do this, you can absolutely do this.
And encouraging you, because we live in a world of it's negativity everywhere you look, the news, media, everything is almost negative stuff. So when you're able to get into a group of people who are hungry, really to grow, learn, and better themselves, I mean, that is gold. It totally is gold learning to be around those people.
Networking with those people. And that's one thing that we did leave out, this whole growth process for us is the network that we've gained from the coaching, that we've done, friendships too, the friendship, the network, all these. I, I mean, it's just been amazing to do that, and that's a huge plus in our growth.
A actually with the, the coaching portion of our business. So, that, that's like one of the main reasons why we joined this one last year, this $30,000, coaching program was really to get involved with these people, network with them, and, and learn in our business to, to better our business.
That's what we've really done it for.
Melissa: Yeah, it actually ended, we were able to speak on stage last year because we were of it too, which was pretty cool. So some different ways that you can invest, like it's all different levels. So start with where you're at. Audio books, podcasts, like you said, like those are great ways to invest in yourself. If you need to put a little skin in the game, like paying for a book, sometimes paying for a small course or a coaching class or whatever it is, masterminds, investing in one-on-one coaching, conferences, all of those things are to help you better your skills. And one other thing that I, we had talked about before that I wanted to add to is we make this more of a priority than, because like I said, we don't have like just extra money.
Like we don't, like we , we really don't. But it is more of a priority. So like we drive used cars, all of our cars are, we have one at 1999 and 2001. Like we don't drive new cars. No, we've not had a car payment.
Rob: All of our cars are over 20 years old, and we don't have car payments. So if you think about the money that we've even, that just goes to show you the, the money that we've invested into coaching.
I could go out and buy a brand new car for the money that I spent last year. This year the same way that's not worth it to us versus not. It's, it's not important other than growing in ourselves, learning how to be better in ourselves, learning how to grow our business. That's the most important stuff to us.
So, yes.
Melissa: So we've sacrificed in other ways because like those things aren't as important to us. Like we don't have a, a huge extravagant house. Like we live in a smaller house. Like those things don't matter as much. Like, I don't know, growing ourselves matters more right now. Yeah. And so that's where we choose to put our priority.
So, so yeah, we just kind of, I don't know, like we're going to this mastermind next week and we wanted to kind of talk about this and like investing in yourself and don't like, I don't know, just figure out where you're at in that timeline. Like where, where can you help yourself grow? And are you listening to positive people?
Are you constantly putting that surrounding yourself? Yeah, surrounding yourself with those people. I mean, you're listening to, to here, you're here with us, which is awesome cuz we love being positive and, and encouragement. We're not here to tear you down at all. We're here to help you be successful.
Rob: So, so what's your call to action after this, this whole video podcast? Your call to action is to really take survey, is that the right word? Survey or of, of your time, of, of your surroundings, yeah, around you. Are you investing in yourself to, or even the people around you? Is that who you're, surrounding yourself with, is those positive people so you can grow wherever you wanna grow? Are you really surrounding yourself with those people? And if you haven't, try to find how you can get into some of those, some of those groups, some of those influences, some of that get around more people that are trying to do good things and really uplifting in what they're doing and uplifting to you.
That's really what the call to action is. So, yeah. All right. You guys rock. Have an amazing day and we will see you guys on the next episode.