Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about what they've been up to with their reselling business over the last several months.
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The Pro Flipper Show Is BACK!
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are stoked. We are back. We are excited to tell you what has been going on in the pro flipper world. We want to talk to you guys and we're super excited to do it.
Melissa: We're super excited to be back.
Welcome to the Pro Flipper Show. We're your hosts, Rob and Melissa Stephenson, founders of Flea Market Flipper, and veteran resellers who have been selling on eBay for 27 years. We are committed to helping you start, grow, and scale your flipping business while still having time to enjoy. Other things that you love, learn the strategies, tools, and tips you need to get ahead.
Join us on this flipping journey to success. So let's go.
Rob: Woo hoo. So, what's been going on? If you guys have not noticed, we've had a couple of pause in our podcast.
Mm-hmm. We've taken a little bit of time off.
Melissa: We haven't released one since November.
Rob: Wow. Definitely a couple months. Did not know that. But the time has flown by, since November, since we had the actual last episode. So all that being said is we wanted to tell you guys what's going on, what we are working on this year, what has been going on in the last couple months, that kept us from creating the podcast.
And yeah, just let you guys know where we are right now in the world.
Melissa: Yeah. So we have released 330 episodes. I just looked, which is a lot, which is amazing, and I love doing the podcast, but we have not done it for three months and we are back and we are excited too. Be back and be more consistent if you're watching this on YouTube, 'cause we do release them on YouTube as well, that, that you'll notice that we're in like a different background. We have a different, we don't even have our studio set up. So it's really like looking behind the scenes. It's not all set up, it's all, it's all weird. So anyways.
Rob: Yeah. So what's going on?
What kept us from creating podcasts? We've had a lot of stuff going on to where we actually moved our house, where we're actually living now. And then we actually have enough property and enough space where we're actually living, that we're in the middle of moving our warehouse over. I don't know if we've released that, if we've told anybody, that on the podcast yet.
So it's
Melissa: no, 'cause we haven't done one since November.
Rob: Cool. Then it's been a big, a very, lots.
Melissa: Lots of change.
Rob: A lot of stuff going on in the last couple months. And that's what's kept us from doing the podcast. Like Melissa said, we don't have a studio set up yet. Right now, we are in kind of the bonus room of the new house and we are coming to you with that.
We will get a studio built out to where we'll be able to record from there. But right now. That's what's kept us busy is getting the house moved and who knew how hard a move is. Melissa and I haven't moved in, is it 13 years, 14 years?
Melissa: Yeah, 14 years.
Rob: 13 or 14 years. We've been where we were, since Roxy was born.
And it was time for a move. We outgrew that house, we needed to find a little bit bigger house, with some property. So we did that didn't move too far away from our initial or the old house. Only about 10 minutes. So not super, super far, but. Just a really, really cool piece of property that we were able to get.
That has a beautiful home on it that's bigger. Actually has like an eight car garage. It's got a five base storage unit, on the property itself.
Melissa: So really a reseller's dream for storage and we're excited. I think the biggest thing about this move too, like it. It forced you to go through your stuff.
So like, this has been really good for us to go through some inventory, get rid of some inventory, clean out, you know, sell some stuff on marketplace and that you're still in that process right now. Like that is kind of the next thing that you're working on, is getting all that cleaned out. But I think it was, it was really good.
I mean, it's a lot of work, but it was really good for us.
Rob: No, for sure. And that was the biggest thing is the house that we were living in. We had that thing jammed full. Like I said, we outgrew it. So we were able to go through that, get it all out and done, and go through that stuff. We still have, we packed some stuff up that we'll have to unpack some boxes, but for the most part now it's onto my shop.
I've been bringing stuff over from the shop, for the last week, and I probably will have the next 20, 30, 20 or 30 days, that we'll be moving stuff over from the shop, getting it set up at the new property. So, so we
Melissa: won't, we won't have to pay rent on a storage facility anymore. We won't. Which is really exciting.
A nd also in that. What was I, I had a thought on what you were doing, moving the stuff over. I lost my train of thought. Oh no, I lost it. Go ahead. Sorry.
Rob: No, so that's what we've been working on in the behind the scenes. Have not done a lot in the eBay business, which surprisingly something sold two days ago that I'll be shipping out today. But I'm getting ready to take my whole store down right now and I'm going to repi everything that I have, get it set up in the new shop, to where I can get new pictures, new videos, and then start from scratch on my eBay store and then go with it.
I think right now I only have like 40 listings up, so I don't have a lot. We try to stay at about a hundred, a 110 listings, and in the last
Melissa: a thousand I thought. Oh well, a
Rob: listing, well, a hundred to 110 listings is typically what we have in our eBay store. That's what I like to stay at. And we've been selling out for the last year.
I've been dropping that, dropping that, not, and we've added some things, but for the most part, we've just sold more stuff than we've actually re-listed. So my goal is to get that suck sucker, everything re-listed. I'm going to really start doing some YouTube videos, trying to get to a hundred thousand dollars in inventory as quick as possible. You guys be able to see that. We'll talk about that on the podcast as well. What's going on? What's getting listed? New pictures, new videos for all the stuff that we're doing. I just wanna make a fresh start where we're at. So that's kind of what's going on on the eBay side of the business.
Melissa: No, I was, before you say, I, I remember what I was gonna say is that when you're going the, the reason why you shouldn't really have all the inventory that you have, your biggest bottleneck, which we've talked about on the podcast before. Your biggest bottleneck is getting it listed. And I think that a lot of other resellers can relate to that because that is the fun part, is the hunt.
The fun part is finding the deal and then sometimes you don't get it listed. And I like what, Stacy always said it didn't go in her storage unit until it was listed. And I think that was a really good, like she'd clean up in the garage, then take pictures and it would go in the storage unit once it was listed.
And so I think now you have that to where you can do that in the garage and I think that'll be a good, a good thing, to get it, get going.
Rob: Absolutely. Most resellers have a death pile or a
Melissa: money pile.
Rob: Money pile, whatever you wanna call it, of who knows, a thousand dollars, a couple thousand dollars, whatever it is.
My money pile. It is over probably two or $300,000 worth of stuff that has [00:06:00] not been listed. So, that's one of the goals why we're moving everything over, is to get everything sorted through, go through the stuff that needs to be fixed, cleaned, pictured, all that stuff. There's a lot of stuff in my shop that.
I bought, I got a great deal on, put it in the shop, never got it listed. So we will be doing that. And we'll be videoing and taking you guys on that journey as well. Thank you. Documenting the journey so you guys will be able to see that, everything that's going on because that's what we love to do.
I love buying and selling. We were just down, a couple weeks ago we went to a conference. It was about two hours south of us. And if you guys don't know, I love this business. I love what I do. I'll always do it. I found two items down there that we paid. What did we pay? Just under $300? I think the, like 1,
Melissa: $125?
No, it was one 20 and then you accidentally gave him an extra
Rob: more money,
Melissa: $40 instead of $20.
Rob: It was alright. I'll make a ton of money on that. So.
Melissa: He delivered it. He delivered it.
Rob: I'm not that worried about it. But anyways, we spent two items and I said just under $300 on those two items. We should, the return on those should be around $5,000, between $4,000 and $5,000.
So we just did that a couple weeks ago. I got it up here. Started cleaning the items. Same thing. We'll get those listed. We'll get all that stuff. You'll be able to see all the stuff that we've been doing behind the scenes. Now we're [00:07:00] back. We're actually in full swing and trying to get this year, 2026 to really, really take off and make it a killer killer year.
Melissa: And another thing is you've always been a one man show. So that's another thing this year we're working on. See if we can hire somebody to help, help you get some of the listings done as well. And we'll keep, keep you posted on how that goes. I know we've mentioned that before. And we've had people here and there, so we'll see if that can, that can happen.
But you've always just done it by yourself.
Rob: I have.
Melissa: Like, it's always been just your gig.
Rob: I'm not a workaholic. I love having fun. I love spending time with my family and I don't want to have tons and tons of employees. No. I will have maybe two, three people who will help us out doing some stuff. That's all that I really need.
And still with two or three people, I mean, we can go, the sky's the limit with how much money we can make in a year, just off of a couple people. With the volume sellers. I mean, they gotta have teams of 10, 20 people. Yeah. Doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Really moving some crazy volume to see some crazy numbers.
We don't need that.
Melissa: Even the guy that you talked to at eBay Open, we were talking to, I can't remember his name. You talked to that one guy at dinner that one night, and he had, do you remember his, how many employees he had? So he was the foreign guy. a lot. Yes, he had, but he ran millions of dollars through eBay and Amazon and
Rob: monthly. Monthly
he did millions of dollars
Melissa: monthly, millions. And like he was telling us, he's like, but he can't stop. Like he has so many employees and like, it's just a machine. And he was like, felt kind of trapped. Like he was telling us he was kind of trapped 'cause he has to keep it going or you know, his employees don't get paid.
So it, and he had a, I can't remember it. A hundred. Yeah. At least a hundred people in it.
Rob: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. But he had to keep feeding the beast, he said.
Melissa: That's what he said.
Rob: Yeah. I gotta keep feeding the machine. I have to keep going with this, because of all, no, these people depending on me.
So that's not where I want to get. I like what we do. I don't want to be responsible for tons and tons of employees. I want to, keep ours low key with what we're doing. We're able to do that because we're doing, not volume. We're doing, high, high value items. We're we're selling low volume, but high value items.
So where it really makes a difference with the money that we're bringing in. So, we'll keep working on that. Super excited to document that and show you guys the journey on that, as this year goes by and yeah. And you just brought a project home for Brody that you wanted to work on with and for his eBay store.
So my son is nine now, correct?
Melissa: Yep.
Rob: Brody is nine, Lexi's 11, Roxy's 13, so 9, 11, 13. But Brody's been helping me out a lot with stuff, with the move, with moving stuff around. Really love it. It's fun to invest in him and show him. I told him the other day, I was like, most people my age don't know how to do this stuff.
That I'm gonna be teaching you, that we're working through together, that you're watching me do, I wanna show you how to do that stuff so you have that skillset. And he's excited. He loves to sit by me. He loves to learn. He loves to do this stuff with me. We were changing tires on one of the trailers over at the shop, yesterday, and he's like, can I do it, dad?
And I'm like, absolutely, jump in here. And he grabbed the impact wrench and he was in there taking lug nuts off the things. And I'm, I'm telling him, these are life skills that most people my age don't have. But you're gonna have these life skills. You'll be able to do this, to be able to save you money, be able to have, like Melissa and I have an amazing, amazing lifestyle that we're able to do.
And it's not because we make millions and millions of dollars. It's because we save a ton of money. Why? By looking for deals, by knowing how to fix stuff, by doing all that stuff. So it's really, really cool that I'm gonna be able to pass that on to my son. Now, while we were at the shop yesterday, we were bringing home a trailer.
I have a trailer that, these mowers that I bought a while back. Actually, I think they're given to me. I don't know. We've had them for a while and it's
Melissa: We've had them for a little while.
Rob: I think it's a about seven to 10, right standard 36 inch commercial mowers. They're all sitting on a 16 foot trailer right now.
I have 'em all in there. Just lost interest in it. I didn't really mess with it and I, I thought on the way home, I'm like, you know what? This would be really, really exciting if Brody and I actually worked together to I, I said, listen, I'm gonna give you all these mowers. We're gonna work together. I'm gonna teach you how to either fix some of them, pull them off, part them out, and we'll be putting them on eBay for the parts.
And I'm gonna show him how to do all that stuff while we're making money, while he's listing stuff on eBay and making money. So excited to work on that process and we'll be documenting that as well to where we'll be able to do videos, some YouTube videos and some other stuff of the process. And, we're very excited about that.
Yeah, my, my son is super excited.
Melissa: He wants to make some money.
Rob: He does,
Melissa: but he's gonna have to work for it.
Rob: He is, he is so very excited about that. That's something that will be coming up in the near future. We'll start doing some videos, of the, the progress that we're making on those mowers as well.
Melissa: Yep. And, what else you got?
I think that's pretty much it. We did, I don't know if we talked, maybe we did talk about it. Maybe it was in our group when we talked, 'cause we haven't done a podcast since November, but our daughter, our oldest, did a WhatNot show before Christmas, which was pretty cool. A cool experience. So we're gonna let her venture more into that and see what she like. She loved it and she did a great job. She had a couple sales and we're still kind of learning it. It doesn't really work for our business model, like what we sell. People aren't really, on live auction trying to buy a, a dishwasher or a whatever, like a commercial, thing, whatever.
It doesn't really work for that, but. For the stuff she wants to do, like collected toys and stuff. And that will, that's pretty cool. So I think it'll be really fun to watch that process this year as well. So, but we're back and we're excited and let us know what kind of things you want to hear from us this year.
I know we're already at the beginning of March, but we're excited. We do have a special guest coming on our next podcast, which we're excited about. We're gonna be more consistent with these again. So we have a guest coming on in the next podcast and he has a really cool business model that we're gonna dive into with him.
Rob: Yeah. Actually creating or making. Over 10K a month in residual income. Yeah. And it's in our niche. It's around our world of flipping, or maybe not flipping, but in, in
Melissa: kind of
Rob: that we're interested in that absolutely, you could go to the next level and it is the next level from where we're at, we're stepping stones to get to that next level.
So he generates over $10,000 a month in passive income. And he's gonna be talking to us a little bit more about that, how he built that up. Super excited. Yeah, he's a good friend of ours. We've known him for a little while. And yeah, so it's gonna be exciting. Don't miss that next episode.
We're gonna have so much fun on that, talking to him. So other than that, you guys are, you rock, you're amazing. Thank you for showing up. Thanks for all the
Melissa: hanging out with us,
Rob: all the episodes that you've listened to in the past. We're excited about this year, really hit the ground running with this year.
And yeah, we'll see you guys on the next episode.