Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about whether success in business creates deficits.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast – Rob & Melissa On Does Success Create Deficits?
Rob: What's up guys, on today's episode, we are tackling the question does success create deficits?
Melissa: So this was an interesting thing that we heard at a presentation recently, and I wanted to kind of dive into, just have a conversation about it, cuz it was really, it was really thought provoking. So, yeah, we're gonna dive in.
Rob: So does success create deficits?
Melissa: So what we recently heard a presentation, it was a past, presentation at a conference, from Alex Charfen and he was talking, he, it was all about business and different levels of business. And, he said something, but then didn't elaborate on it. So I was really kind of confused on it is that he said success creates deficit and he said it once or twice, but didn't really dive in.
Yeah. And so I actually, I tagged him in a post, like, like we loved his presentation and I reached out and I said, do you have anything on like talking to a podcast episode, talking about this topic? Yeah. This topic, because it's really, I was, was curious, what do you mean by success creating a deficit and like, we we're thinking we're growing.
So how does, how is being a negative, like, how is that negative? So we did, he sent me two podcasts and, we dove into those today, so on our run.
Rob: And his podcast is called momentum.
Melissa: Yes. I think. I'd have to double check.
Rob: He talks about momentum.
Melissa: We'll tag it in the show notes. I'll tag it.
Rob: Yeah. It talks about momentum in businesses.
And I mean that you your apply that to anything, whether it's your flipping side hustle, whether your full-time gig, whatever it is talking about, getting into momentum. And this is where this came from is success when you're creating success and he broke it down on the podcast, talking about, deficit, really defining deficit, as I think a better I'm in my terms is uneven or, like imbalanced.
Imbalanced. Exactly. So when, excuse me, when you do have success, It will bring imbalance to something else because you have success.
Melissa: So one thing that we kind of, as we were thinking about it, he's was basically taking it as, you know, you grow in your business. Well, now you're creating more sales or, and now you have to have more fulfillment.
So you've created this positive, but now you have a negative here because, you need to create this. You have a hole here, and we kind of brought it back to reselling and specifically to our reselling business. Rob does all of the finding picking, listing, shipping, all of that stuff. And he'll dive deep into the, get excited, motivated, clean list, whole bunch of stuff.
And then now like, say five sales come in in a week. Now he's got, I mean, they're bigger sales, so he's palleting stuff. And so now he gets away from listing. It's just a big cycle. So now, and then after that, then the sales slow down. And so it's just a cycle that keeps re repeating. So once you have to ship, then the deficit is you haven't listed in two weeks.
Yeah. So, it was just an interesting thought.
Rob: It was, and Melissa even brought this to my attention and I'm like, that's exactly how it is. I mean, I go through a cycle of listing. And then we get 'em sold and they start selling. And then I go through the shipping cycle and it takes me a week to fulfill probably, I don't know, four or five pallets when I'm doing heavier stuff.
And then that week doesn't get listed. So it's one of those things that it's like, okay, well now I see the cycle. So what is the objective for us? And we've known this for a while and the objective is really to hire some more people who can help me do the listing and who can help me do the detailing and palleting, and that kind of stuff to.
We don't have to go through these, these highs and these lows of, okay. We just made a ton of money and now fulfilling it. I'm shipping it out.
Melissa: And we're not getting anything else listed.
Rob: Exactly. And nothing else is getting listed. So that's what we realized. And we've known this for a while. We've never just related it to our business this way.
And it totally made sense after we listened to this podcast, yeah, this is it. And this is our business. Now every business is different.
Melissa: But it relates to everybody.
Rob: Absolutely. You can, you can figure out the highs and the low. It's more of, okay, when you do have success in this area, did something else drop and is it, a direct result of that success that you had?
Melissa: Or not, not always necessarily drop, but now you've created this much here. Now you need to keep up with it. Yeah. Like if you, you know, you need to keep up with what you created. So there is, I guess it would be a drop or a hole right here. Yeah. And one thing he said is if you can see this, like, you can recognize it.
Like we'd never really thought about, we know that that happens. We never really thought about, oh, that's actually a cycle. This is actually something that has happened. You create success and now we have to, there's a hole here, so how do we fix it? You can crush it, crush those obstacles a lot faster once you realize that it's there. So now we know, and we've talked, we talked about this a lot this year is our next step is we really need to hire somebody to clean. And you used to do that. You had, well,
Rob: not just clean, but actually to listing what I bought. Yeah. And list, but listing, cleaning, listing and pictures.
The thing that I'm really, really good at and that I could really go big in our resale business is finding deals. I can find deals every day, any day of the week. It's not that hard for me to find amazing deals so I can find those. But I'm the bottleneck to bottleneck, to where it comes to if something has to be fixed, it takes me time to fix it.
And then it takes me more time to clean it up and get pictures. And then once it sells, it takes me time to actually pallet the item up and get it shipped out so you can just see it. So for us, knowing that next level is hiring some people in these positions. If this is our goal, to get our flipping business grow exactly, to grow and to more consistently, make that money, because we do have some type of system that we put into play.
And that's kind of what he talks about on his podcast is creating those systems.
Yeah. Creating the systems and, and play.
Melissa: And yeah, it was just a, I don't know, to me, it was very thought provoking to think of okay, so I wanna have growth. I wanna have success in this area. So where's the deficit gonna show up?
And that can be in, in different things. Like maybe you're, you are to the point that you need to scale your flipping business. And so what are you the bottleneck of your business? And like, can you hire some things out, and start to get people to list underneath you? Yeah, and I was thinking of,
what was it the other day that we were listening to? That maybe it was him. I can't remember. We listened to a lot of podcasts when we run. But saying like, you think you are the only one that can do it, but people you can train people to do it just as good or people can do it a lot better than you can't think you're the only one that can do it.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So you can have people that are working with you.
Rob: So, and even one of our mentors and one of our coaches, he said something did you write that down?
Melissa: Yeah, I was gonna talk about that too.
Rob: Oh, cool. Okay.
Melissa: I don't know if I wrote it down. Oh yeah. And in extreme times of success something may have to give and like it's okay to be imbalanced.
Yeah. Something like that.
Yeah, it wasn't exactly that.
Rob: No, but it's to the point. It's the same point is when you are seeking or you're really driving your business towards success. Something else is gonna suffer in that, to where it is something. And it's not a, I mean, it's not a total, yeah, that it's gonna be that way forever.
But when you are spending time and Melissa can, and I can relate this too in our businesses. We've given up TV for a while at nighttime, Melissa, a little bit less than me, but I, I like to sit down after I'm working all day and I like to sit down and, and I'll watch TV for an hour, two hours sometimes.
And Melissa still, I mean, she doesn't deal with this, but I do to where I can be more productive to reach that goal that we're trying to reach. And I just have to give it up and we gave it up. I think it was what, a couple months ago we gave it up for what spring? We had a goal of like 90 days.
Melissa: We made it 45 days.
Rob: I think we made it to 45.
And then, yeah, something came out. a of the, I tested one of the, the, yeah, you tested the TV. I tested something I bought to resell. Just LCD. Yeah. Just never went back. I just never went back to, we left the TV out and then we just started watching TV a little bit, but anyways, it's one of those things that, yeah, that's what I was willing to give up that, to try and get to that next goal for myself, because I know of the imbalance.
I know how it's gonna be. So, anyways, it's, it's pretty good point. It's pretty cool.
Melissa: Yeah. Cuz like wherever you're at in your business, maybe you are just starting out and you have to think, okay, what? I, I know I want growth. I want success. So like I want to do more of my business, but I don't have enough time in my day.
Like I don't have, something's gotta give, so something has gotta give. And what is that gonna be? That's kind of how you were talking about TV and it might not be TV. It might be social media. Social media is my challenge. Like TV's yours, social media is mine. I'm on there. And I say, oh, I'm doing this for business.
This is, I mean, our business is online. We have to do social media, but then I just get stuck in the scroll of TikTok or Instagram reels. And it's like, ah, an hour of my life is gone and I'm just, what did I do? Absolutely nothing. I did not reach my goal of what I wanted to get accomplished from that last hour.
So sometimes, you know, it's just yeah, give and we all have that give and take the whole time you're growing in your business.
Rob: So typically we all have that to some extreme or the other that where you can give a little bit, somewhere else in your life to get the results that you're looking for. And like I said, it's not an end all be all.
Hey, this is where it's gonna go the rest of my life. It's kind of like, I won't even go there, but anyways, it's one of those things that, you know, it's not gonna be that way. You can, you can give it up for a short time, to where you can get some results of what you're trying to get. So in the flipping business, that's one of those things that you have to really think about.
Melissa: Yeah. And I think one point that he made to a lot, and we'll link to his podcast that he talks about it. He dives deeper into more like he deals with a whole bunch of different kinds of businesses. But was that if you are seeing these deficits. That means there's growth. Yeah. Like that means that you're, you're having growth.
So if you expect them and they don't throw you off and don't like paralyze you, and you know that this means growth. Like we are growing, this is a good thing. And you keep going from there. Then you look at it as a positive thing. His whole thing is like that. There is work involved. It's not like people promise you all these shiny things and there is work involved in anything.
If you wanna actually grow, you have to work at.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely.
Melissa: So, so yeah, so we'll definitely link to his, his podcast. It was just a very thought provoking thing. This is cool to start the day that if you have success, there's gotta be another place there's a deficit. And then know that you're growing from that.
Rob: You know, even look into our own business and be able to see where we're at right now. It's really cool. It's cool to be able to see that and, realize what you're doing and what the growth that you have. It's really.
Melissa: Now we might need to hire some people to start helping you get stuff listed.
Rob: That's it. So.
Melissa: Awesome.
Rob: Cool. You guys rock. Thank you so much for jumping on here, guys, if you have not done it yet, please subscribe, like, we absolutely love doing these videos, trying to get people the realization of what their potential is in the flipping arena, so like I said, it'd mean the world to us, if you guys could do that. Have a wonderful day.
Melissa: Thanks guys.
Rob: See ya!