Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how their flipping business has saved them in the last few months.
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How Our Flipping Business Has Saved Us In The Last Few Months
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we're talking about how flipping has really saved us in the last six months.
Melissa: This year has been a tough one, so we're gonna dive into some of that.
Rob: All right, guys. So on this episode, we are going to be a little bit vulnerable with you.
Tell you a little bit about what's been going on behind the scenes for the last six months. That it's, it's been a rough year. 2023 has really kicked our butts, in some business aspects for the last six months. We're going to break it down for you guys and I, just talk a little bit more about it openly, transparently with you guys about the business.
Melissa: And how our flipping gig, side hustle really now at this point has really saved us in this whole time and how many times it saved us in the past. And we're so thankful that we have this skill of finding valuable items and being able to sell them on eBay or locally because it really has saved us. So this year has really just It's been a tough year online. And we are in masterminds. We're in different things with people and it's not just in our like it's across the board. A lot of people have had issue like Facebook ads, increased their, it's more expensive to get in front of people. There's just a lot of, a lot of noise out there too. And I don't know what exactly the thing is, but it's just, it's been a tough year for a lot of
people.
Rob: It has been. And for us, we have two portions to our business, which thank the Lord we do. We coach, we teach people how to do what we do on one side of it. And that really takes up probably three quarters of our time is the coaching aspect of it because we make training videos, we coach, we have groups, we have all these different ways of coaching, but we always flip as well.
And flipping has always been our side hustle since we went full time almost nine years ago into flipping, and then we slowly transitioned into coaching and flipping. We'll never give up flipping because I love it. And just like I'm talking about right now for the last six months. It saved our butts.
This is what actually kept us afloat was our flipping income, that we know how to fall back on and we know how to make a lot of money at it. And that's why we teach it. That's why we coach it because we want other people to have the freedom of what this business can allow you to do. If you do get into a pinch, if you get to a point where you need that extra income, this is what this business can do.
Melissa: I mean, there were a couple of times this year that I was like, well, what if we just go all in on this flipping thing and stop doing everything we're doing and that's not our heart like it's not what we want to do, but sometimes it got, it got a little crazy. So, but, you know, like you said, we've had a lot of great sales on eBay and Facebook lately, and that has been really helpful.
And we're restructuring some things for the next year. So next year it's going to look a little different probably, and we might have to do things like get sponsors for ad for our the podcast, it might not be ad free and like we've tried to keep our podcast ad free. We've, our blog, there's no ads because but like Ads used to pay our mortgage on our blog like but we want we cut them because better experience. It was a better consumer experience.
They come to the blog. They're not bombarded by all this stuff. Like I hate recipe blogs are the worst because you go in there like there's just so many ads and that's not a good experience but you're there you're gonna go get the recipe and I know that's how they get paid like they get money from the ads but we were really concerned about the the whole experience the customer journey so but we might have to change a couple things and and yeah get some business revenue coming in from other places like sponsorships.
Rob: So right now we're ending up the year. It's, we're coming, closing out the year right now. The last two months, we just did the podcast previously on kind of our numbers for November, which we just sat down today and actually started looking at the numbers, but we know what has been coming in.
December was even better than November. I think we're, we're pushing probably $12, $15,000 in profit in December. And that's on the flipping business. That's what we know how to do when we put our mind to it is really go all in and create that income, like we said, it's really for what the last six months has been in our coaching aspect of our business.
We our income has totally, totally dropped down a lot. And like we said, we don't know exactly why a lot of digital marketers, a lot of people out there are experiencing this, it's not just us. So it could be the economy. It could be where we are at right now and it could be the noise that there's so many people out there trying to teach what they think they know.
They just have a little bit of, exactly a little bit of success. So they're out there trying to teach that. And it's just a lot more noise for people to have to, mumble through to find the people that are doing it and are getting great success at it.
Melissa: And I think a lot of times too that there are, because there are so many people out there, it's hard to know who is telling the truth and who, I mean, obviously we believe in living in integrity and telling the truth and we don't like inflate our numbers.
We try to be very transparent, transparent with all of our numbers and yet people still come out like there's no way you sold it for that. I'm like, well, go check comps on eBay or there's no way you found it for that. And it's like, well, I'm can't, whatever, no matter what proof I give you, you're not going to believe me.
So that's fine. Like it's fine. It's not, everybody's going to believe what we're saying is true, but hopefully if you've hung out with us enough, you know, like that's our heart is to definitely tell the truth and not inflate anything. And and yeah, so, so that was kind of like. It's like, maybe that's one of the reasons.
I don't know, but kind of the main point of this podcast was to really tell you how much flipping has saved us in the past. Like it has been a huge one this year. We should be over six figures this year in the flipping business. So.
Rob: And remember that's only part time hours. We're spending at maybe at the most in a single week, we have up to 10 hours , five to ten hours, and typically it's five or under, in our flipping business. And with this was even us taking months and months off during the year to where you know, we're actually throwing high, high numbers in in a few months to get our numbers up there.
Melissa: But cause we did like the beginning of the year we did high numbers the first couple of months and then the end of the year.
Yeah. Cause this summer we, we have taken off before and, but yeah.
Rob: The coolest part about the business is that's why, how we're able to do it in five hours a month or 10 hours a month. Sorry, 10 hours a week, five hours a week is because we're selling high profit single items. Just last month we did six sales total for the month with over $8,000 in profit.
That's those are the numbers that we really love and the reason we're able to spend less time in the business. And making those type of profits is because we're seeking out those high profit flips that we're able to get. We're getting them for an amazing deal and then we're able to turn around and sell them.
And we're not price gouging either. People are typically getting 50 percent at least 50 percent off of retail when they're buying our items, when they're buying what we're, we're selling because they're getting an amazing deal on those items. And that's how we're able to do what we do.
Melissa: Yeah. And it definitely like our, the other part of the business has been in the red a little bit for a while.
So, but the flipping businesses helped it come back and we make sure, you know, everybody gets paid and it's been a little shaky, but we're, we're excited about this next month or this next year and to try a couple new things. So the structure of this show might change a little bit. Like I said, we might be adding some ads, into it, but what was I going to say?
The other thing, the time that flipping has saved us in the past there, I can think of two right now off the top of my head, was the, whenever I switched jobs. So that was the first time when I switched jobs and started personal training. You start with a base pay. You don't start with, you don't start with like your commission.
So I'm what you're selling because you obviously haven't sold anything. So you don't get commissions on what you're sold. So we, we got a base pay and it was like, not very much at all. So you just flipped a couple extra things to get us through that first couple of months as I grew my clientele and was able to grow my personal training business.
Rob: So yeah, no, it's huge. It's been able to supplement our income. Yeah. multiple times throughout our marriage, throughout my career in this business. And we just keep honing in on the high profit items. The high profit is what allows us to do, like I said, high profit items allow us to work less time in the business and make more money in that less amount of time.
Melissa: Yeah. And another time too is whenever I was on, took maternity for our kids. I didn't get paid maternity because I was a personal trainer and that was not a benefit that we had. So it was like I had, and I only took six weeks because I, I knew I needed to get back to work, but you always just supplemented it with getting some more items listed, getting some more stuff going and selling.
And then I started out when I was on maternity leave, even helping you more. I would start doing some of the listings because then we could increase what we were doing. So, it's just saved us so many times. And I know we've talked about this a lot is for vacations. It was always like, we need more money.
Go flip some more stuff. You need more money. Go flip some more stuff. And it's just been, it's so, it gives you a little bit of a piece to know that we have that. That skill set that we can go do that and we love teaching it to you guys and we love sharing it and seeing the stories that come in, especially from our members group, that people, what they're doing with this skill set and how they're making extra money for their family and how many people have even gone full time and, and done some amazing things for their own families.
Rob: So yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing to be a part of other people's stories and knowing that we have a hand in helping what is going on. So. That's why we have debated whether and close everything down, stop the podcast, stop all the trainings and all the coaching and go full time into our flipping. Cause I know I could build this business into something huge if I focused all my time, effort and energy into it.
But that's not where our heart is either. We love being able to help people. We love the stories that people come back and tell us, hey, we were able to do this. I mean, we just got a message from somebody who, you know, went through our seven, a 7 list of 10 items that we actually gave. They bought one of the items.
Spent $200 on that item and it will sell for like $2,200 and they just were writing reaching out to saying thank you. Thank you for what you guys do. We appreciate it now We just are gonna be able to create $1,500, $2,000 of revenue off of this single item. Off that one resource. Yeah, love that. We love being able to help people make that extra money because that is a game changer.
That's a, that's a mortgage payment for some people. It's two car payments for some people. It's just a really, really big deal to be able to help people do that. So, yeah, like Melissa said, you guys know what our hearts are in this business. It's been really rough for the last six months, months, transparently with you guys, we're just full transparency.
It's, it's been rough. And at the same time, it's been really reassuring that we still got it. We got the flipping gig. It's so much fun to be able to do it and create the income when we need to create that extra income.
Melissa: If like the economy or if that is something that like, we're still trying to figure out like what, because like we said, it's a lot of our friends too across the board.
It's just different things that like, what is it that kind of why sales are slow? Is it like algorithms blocking things? Is it ads just get too expensive or what is it? But if the economy is a, a factor, this business is booming in this economy. Like we are selling so much stuff on eBay so that it's, yeah.
So it is, it's good. It's always, it was great for through the last recession. I don't know. This is a weird economy. Cause some things like the numbers look up, but then they look down and people are spending and then they're not spending. So it's all over the place. And I'm not a financial expert by any means, but I just know like, you can definitely feel something that people are more careful how they spend their money.
But this our business is doing well on eBay for sure and Marketplace. So.
Rob: So yeah, it's awesome. Cool. Well, hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. Thanks for hanging out with us for a little bit.
Melissa: Letting us get a little more vulnerable with you guys. So.
Rob: We can't wait for 2024 to watch what happens in the flipping arena.
It's going to be so much fun and we will see you guys on the next episode.