Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how to create quick cash by flipping items that you can use to invest.
Successfully Unemployed Podcast
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How To Create Quick Cash To Invest (Interview With Dustin Heiner)
Rob Stephenson: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we got a special treat for you guys. The interview we did with our buddy a while back, Dustin.
Dustin Heiner with Successfully Unemployed helps people find real estate and properties and invest in them. And he interviewed us as kind of a way to quickly come up with a down payment.
So using flipping to be able to come up with that down payment for those properties. So we hope that you enjoy this episode. It was a couple years back, so a little throwback. And we hope you enjoy it. Enjoy!
Dustin Heiner: All right, guys, I am super excited to have Rob and Melissa here with me. They are fantastic business owners. In fact, business that I thought was like, wow, how do you do that? Well, but he explained it even more because this is amazing. And one thing that I loved was they told me a story of how they found a chair that was being thrown away and they flipped that to get $100, 000 worth of inventory to sell to buy real estate.
So. Fantastic story. Rob and Melissa, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having us, man. We're super stoked to be here. I'm going to jump right into it. How do you guys make money and be successfully unemployed?
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, we own and operate Flea Market Flipper, but we buy stuff.
We find stuff out of the trash. We buy stuff from local thrift stores, yard sales, flea markets. We turn around, we take pictures of it. If we need to do a little fixing up, we do that. We sell them, but usually in local markets and on eBay. And that's how we provide for a family of five. That's how we make it full time living right now.
Dustin Heiner: And thinking about that, it seems like it's going to be a lot of work, but at the same time, you're, you're getting things, either you finding it or you're, you're being able to flip things, but you're really just. Independent, but you don't have to worry about anybody else. So when you're doing that, is it, is it a ton of work?
Is it not a lot of work? How does that play out?
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, it all depends. Sometimes we find items that don't need any work at all. We turn around and resell it, but we are independent. So whatever we decide to do, you'll see our three year old. But yeah, you know, whatever we find, depending on what it needs, if it needs anything at all, we grab it.
We, uh, just this morning. We were actually coming back from a run and Melissa actually found, she saw on the side of a dumpster on one of our normal walks. What was it? Five teak chairs? Five teak chairs somebody threw out. Because they look like they were worn. Some people don't know what teak is. It looks like it's worn, but it just needs to be cleaned and oiled. And we'll probably make over $1,000 on those five teak chairs. They were just in the dumpster.
Melissa Stephenson: They were sitting by the side of the dumpster. So. We ran back to the truck really quick.
Rob Stephenson: We looked up.
Dustin Heiner: That's awesome, man. That is super awesome.
Now, I'm thinking that I would have to... Almost know the value of a lot of things, but probably in the business, as you're doing it, you're going to learn a lot as you go. Is that correct?
Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. And now with the smartphone and the internet at your fingertips, it's so much easier than it used to be.
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, for sure.
Dustin Heiner: It's not like you actually need to have a, I don't want to say like a thesaurus or a dictionary, but whatever, like a buyer's guide. It's not like you need that. Like you said, you have a phone and you're like, hey, that looks like it could be of value. Let me see if I can actually figure out how much it's worth, how much it costs.
In fact, when I, so before I became successful and employed, I would do all this stuff. Try to make money. I love making money. It's the business. It's like, it's almost a game to me to make money. I just love it. And so one of them was to actually find items that are for sale, like at discounted at Walmart, like our clearance items or like an auto parts store.
I'm like, hey, there's, you know, they're selling it for like 30 percent of what it's worth. Let me look it up. I could sell it on eBay for like. You know, make $50, shoot, I'll buy as many as I can and sell them. And so, it's, it's a great, great business to do. Now, you're able to provide for your entire family, is that correct?
Rob Stephenson: That is correct. Yeah, and and back to your your original the the cool thing about it is back when I started this You didn't have smartphones. You didn't have that kind of stuff. So you were taking a chance at that auto parts store at a flea market at a thrift store you bought something hoping that it was worth money, and then you got it back to the house and you looked it up.
Nowadays, you check it out right there. You see it at a retail store, see what it's selling for all that kind of stuff. So it's a really, really amazing, what you're able to do nowadays with all the features, all the smartphones and all the, the technology that we have around us, it's, it's pretty sweet, but yes, we do provide for a family of five this way.
We absolutely love it. We're passionate about it. We, we, yeah, we just love doing what we do.
Melissa Stephenson: And we jumped in about four years ago now. And before that it's always been a side hustle since you were like 16. Yeah. And then years, and then I married into it, so.
Dustin Heiner: That's awesome. So. What, one thing I love about the Successful Unemployed show is I love bringing on normal people like us, just people that are enjoyable to be around.
Now, if somebody's a jerk, more than likely you're not going to see them on this show just because I only want to talk to people that I like and I want to talk to. So, you guys are normal people. So talk to us a little bit about how you first started. And the business said, or as you're building the business, but you have jobs before that, tell us a little bit about that and how you got into this.
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, definitely. It started out as like Melissa said, a side hustle. When we got married, she married into it. I grew up, my parents actually did yard sales. They did stuff like that. They made a side income. It was never full time income for my parents either. But it was a hobby and a side income for them.
They modeled that to me. So ever since I can remember, we went to yard sales, we went to flea markets and stuff like that. I did it as a side income when we got married. Anytime we wanted to go on a vacation, anytime we wanted to go on a trip or anything like that, Melissa was like, go find something to sell.
You got to make the money on the side. So that's what we did for what the first 12 or 10 years, nine years. Yeah. The first nine years of our marriage, that's what it was. It was just a side hustle. And then we got kind of got thrown into it. I'll let Melissa tell you a little bit more about. He ended up going full time.
Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. I was actually, pregnant with our third one who was running around, and he, our, we had just decided that we were gonna, I was gonna step back from my personal training job, so I was a personal trainer for, our whole marriage. And then I was like, okay, it's crazy at home with three little kids, three under, I gotta stop.
So I was gonna stay home. And then that right off, a couple weeks later, his job told him that they were cutting health benefits. And so that was the only reason he really had that job was for the benefits, because we always paid money extra with flipping. And so he's like, all right, do we jump full into this?
Like, is that what we're going to do? So we kind of got pushed into it, but it was a good that we needed that push. It was amazing. So we, we pulled it off.
Dustin Heiner: Yeah, that's, that's great. I've had quite a few friends that have either been laid off. In fact, my brother, so he was working at a corporate job. He's working as a general manager of a restaurant.
He eventually worked his way up into the corporation. He was working well in there, but the entire corporation, the parent company of his corporation sold that company, that which was acquired this company. Anyways, long story short, that literally the morning at 10 a. m., as soon as escrow closed on the business that they were selling, the new company came in and fired everybody in the corporation.
So he literally was without a job. And I was like, I said, this is going to be rough. And it's going to be rough to hear, but I'm excited for you. And the reason why I'm excited, this is going to force you to actually do something. And this is something similar. I had another friend. He also, the job just went away.
Like, it basically was gone. You know what? With your skills and abilities you can do and everything you know, this is exciting. It's going to be rough. It's going to be hard. It's going to be trying. But this is exciting because this is the path that you're going to go down. It's gonna be great. So now let's take us through that journey of now transitioning from having a job, getting out of that now doing the flea market flipping full time.
How did that transition and how do you scale that to where instead of being a side business now going it to be able to provide for your family?
Melissa Stephenson: That's really where we had to kind of, we obviously had to step up our game a little bit. We weren't really doing it a lot of hours. Yeah. Figured we were probably about, you know, 5 to 10, maybe 15 hours a week on a busy week.
Yeah. When we were part time. So we're like, okay, well we can scale that. We have more time now, we can put into it. But, you, that's when you started doing freight shipping. Yeah. Because we had to get the bigger items.
Rob Stephenson: Yeah. Do you want numbers? Kind of like numbers of where we were when we were? Okay, that'd be great.
Yeah. We'll, yeah, we started keeping track before this. We never kept track of it. When we started like a hobby. Yeah, it was a hobby when we started keeping track of the part-time, how many hours we working, like, we're like,
Melissa Stephenson: like five to 15 and we, averaged about $40, we got $42,000 a year on that, on hour on part-time.
So we're like, okay, we have these numbers we can work with that we can, you know, make this full time.
Rob Stephenson: We have more time to do. And that's what we figured if we're working, you know, tops of 15 hours a week and we actually throw another 15 to 20 hours on top of that. If I get rid of my, my original job. We should be able to jump it up.
And then, yeah, that our first year full time, we, we hit over $. So that was what we were able to do. And it was pretty cool. Just because of the side hustle grew into the full time.
Dustin Heiner: Wow. And so $130, 000 doing this, this, this is just mind blowing to me. It's, it's absolutely fantastic. And so I just quickly, my brain goes in, we don't have to go in deep in it.
I'm just curious. So is there taxes? Like, is this the income or how do you do with taxes and all that?
Melissa Stephenson: That's our, our gross, so, sales, but we buy stuff at such low cost, so our, our cost of inventory is very low, we try to 10x our profits, like what we put into it is pretty much 10x as our normal, but then, yeah, so we have to pay taxes, we pay income taxes, and then now sales taxes, like eBay takes care of it for us, so, and then we pay it to our state.
Rob Stephenson: But the cool thing is it's different than a job, a job, they take care of your taxes for you, they pull the money out. When you're self employed, you can write off so much stuff. We can write it off because it's our business. So we can write off gas. We can write off the, you know, what exactly all that stuff can go into effect of what you're able to write off to make more money, to keep more money when you, when you keep track of what you're putting into the business. So, which is really, really amazing.
Dustin Heiner: That's something I absolutely love about any type of business is being able to write off those expenses. You know, if you have a regular job, like you said. You can't, it's just the, the business takes that care of all that.
Now, now from taking this now, give us maybe a step by step, like a one, two, three, like if somebody is going to get started, how do they actually get started doing this?
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, definitely. For us, it was a side hustle. So it was something that I had experience in. If you do not have a side hustle that's making you money right now, think of what your hobbies are, what you're passionate about.
And maybe that's where you dive into. You figure out the different aspects of what you can do that you really enjoy doing. And then that's where you just put a game plan together and you can jump into that. Like I said, us, it was a side hustle. We knew the money was already there. We just had to put more of our time, more of our effort into it to make it actually sustainable for our family of five.
Melissa Stephenson: But somebody just getting started, too, in flipping, like, one thing that we help our members with is to get started with just stuff around their house. Yeah. Like, that is a huge, like, because people are like, okay, I don't really know what to do with listing, all this stuff, like, just start with stuff you already have, because most people have a lot of around their house that they need to get rid of. So that's where we help people get started. You know, getting comfortable listing, both Facebook, eBay. But there's other apps too. But that's definitely the easiest way to get going. For sure. So before you even invest any money, you know, make sure it's something that you get around stuff.
And then there's so many ways to get free stuff. We already talked about. Go today. Yeah, just in two days ago. We go for a walk to our downtown fairly often, but it's only a mile. Like in this mile, there and back, we find stuff like regularly in the trash that people throw out. We're only going by like one strip.
One street. So it's kind of crazy. Do you follow us and you find
Rob Stephenson: this week, the Dyson, Dyson, small vacuum cleaner and a golf bag.
Melissa Stephenson: Found like $200 right there at the two of those things. So it, and they're just sitting by the road.
Rob Stephenson: That's it.
Dustin Heiner: Anyway, that is, I mean, that's just mind blowing. I mean, that's, that's free stuff. That's things that you're just picking up somebody who thinks that, hey, this is not worth anything. But I love your idea of utilizing the things that you currently already have that you might think, hey, this is junk. You know, it, it, you might think it's junk, but somebody else might pay $20 for it.
That's $20. You know, that's something you didn't have. And it's easy as just taking a picture, like you said, going to Facebook or eBay and putting it on. Well, eBay is a little more eBay is more because you have to ship it and everything like that. But Facebook, the marketplace, people come to your house, Craigslist as well.
That's, I know that's something that's not as like Facebook is getting more popular. Am I correct in saying Facebook is more popular than Craigslist?
Melissa Stephenson: Oh yeah, mostly Facebook to sell.
Dustin Heiner: Yeah. Got it. Yeah. So you are able to just take a picture of it, put it on Facebook marketplace and people come to your house and pick it up and pay $20.
In fact, so I went and bought a refrigerator. Our refrigerator was working just fine. The ice maker was a little giving us, being a little finicky. And my wife was saying, you know, it's a few years old. Let's go ahead and get a new one. So I got a new one, got a really good, I'm really frugal. So I got a discount on top of the discount on top of the discount.
So we get in the house and they said, Hey, do you want us to take away your refrigerator for free? I'm like, why would I do that? Why would I give you something I can literally sell? So I sold it for $450. I was like, shoot, that just cut down in half by the refrigerator I just bought.
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, sure.
Melissa Stephenson: Yeah, people don't want to deal with it.
And that's why they offer to take it for you. You know, they don't want to deal with it, but that's another $450 you just made.
Rob Stephenson: Yeah.
Dustin Heiner: Absolutely. And so now if we're getting into that I love the idea of taking the things that you already have now from there scaling it up Is it now going to stores and looking for deals because I knew of a lady back?
I don't know about 15 years ago. She would go and during the Christmas time or Black Friday And find as many good deals as possible, buy them and then sell them on eBay. And she had, she said she made as much in that, I don't know, two months as her entire job, like the entire year. So what are your thoughts about doing something like that too?
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, it's definitely possible where you can find the deals. I mean, all of our money's made in the buy. So wherever you can get the best deals, we don't typically do the new stuff. We, we capitalize on, used stuff in our local area that's undervalued that we get for pretty much like next to nothing, and then we put it on eBay because it takes a bigger market to actually be able to sell that.
But she sound like, sound like she's got a great, a job, not a job, but you know what I mean, a great business plan, where she knows what she can buy. She has experience on, what sells cool that she can buy from Black Friday and, Cyber Monday and then turn around and sell it. So, yeah, that's, that's just another aspect of flipping, which is awesome.
Yeah, we, we, I mean, we deal with all different aspects, but, that sounds like she's got one built in that's really, really sweet. And ours is just a little bit different, but yeah, it sounds amazing. A discontinued item.
Melissa Stephenson: Yeah. Because you'd be surprised what people pay for a bottle of shampoo that's discontinued because they've let used it for their whole life or whatever, like they've used it for so long and they want it and now they can't buy it anymore.
And like, people be like. I don't know, $50, $60, $80. Like it's crazy. Like it depends what it is, but yeah, all kinds of discontinued stuff.
Dustin Heiner: That's great. And I think the longer, it seems like the longer you're in the business, the more knowledge you're going to get. But at the same time, like you said, with the phone, it's going to make it super, super simple.
But what it really comes down to is just be perceptive and seeing, Hey, can I make money on that? Or can I make money on that? Or walking by something that's like, I know in my area. I think twice a year, there are garbage days where people just throw a bunch of stuff on the curb and leave it there, and then the city comes by with a big trash hauler and move everything.
But I see lots and loads and loads of people, number one, they get the metal, like big trucks, they get all the metal and they recycle that. But I see a lot of people also just picking up other things as they drive around and they, because they realize there's money in that stuff. So what, how often are you driving around or I know you do your walks and everything, but do you do anything else to further find more, more good things?
Rob Stephenson: We could.
Melissa Stephenson: Yeah, we totally could. But we, we don't cause we have a good inventory right now. You have no problems finding stuff.
Rob Stephenson: But one of my main contacts that I stuff from, that's what he does every week. The trash days, we have large pickup one day a week in our area. And there's a scrapper, that's what he does.
He picks up metal, but he also gets any other cool stuff, good looking stuff. He takes a picture of it when he gets it out of the trash and puts it on his truck. He texts me the picture and then sells it to me. And I give him a little bit of money for it. But I give him a little bit of money for it. I throw it on eBay a lot of money on it.
Dustin Heiner: You have, you have a built in supplier. Man, that is awesome. Good for you.
Melissa Stephenson: Yep. And that's another thing we talk about too, though, is, is contacts. Because it's really, like you could building relationships. Yeah, building relationships is huge. And we, that's something we never did.
Like, we never wanted to tell people what we did. We just kind of, you know, like, we resold whatever. But now, like, we tell like, our brands, we tell, well, obviously now we have a whole website, but we tell everybody because you never know, like, people give us stuff all the time. Yeah. So, for, what is it? The, that bed and the place that we've sold people stuff all the time and they give us stuff.
Rob Stephenson: Gifts are giving us, yeah.
Dustin Heiner: And especially since the people are already thinking, hey, this is, I'm just going to throw it away. Ah, just give it to Rob and Melissa. I'm like, yes, I'll take it.
Melissa Stephenson: Right. Yep. So it, it definitely pays. And then also, you know, finding contacts that people who do the same thing and like the, the guy you've met him a couple of years ago and now he's like, here, he'll buy that from me, you know?
So
Dustin Heiner: it definitely helps. So how are you able, it seems like I can understand it, but explain the process of now sharing it with your kids and showing them the option of doing something like this. Like, what are you guys doing or what can you do to help them to understand this?
Melissa Stephenson: Well, they go with us a lot to the flea market and thrift stores and, like they, we can get all their toys basically from, like, we don't buy them new stuff very much. But like they're, they know that this is how we make money and that this is our, our job. We got to go. And they, they, they like it, they enjoy it. And we're starting to now, you know, do more tours and do, you know, give them money for chores so that they can go and they go to the flea market and bring their wallet, they're bringing their money and they can spend their dollars, spend whatever. So, so we're trying to, you know, start that and see that they can see, okay, I can spend the money I make here. But yeah, it's, it's interesting.
Dustin Heiner: That's great. Now it seems like something like eBay or Facebook marketplace for somebody who's not very tech savvy that might be a little bit cumbersome. Is that something that would be hard to learn to actually list things for sale?
Rob Stephenson: Anything new is it takes a little bit to get the hang of it, but no, they're very, very user friendly now back in the day. Yes. We had to do HTML. If you wanted special stuff in your listings, you had to do a lot of different stuff, to get your listings up to, and you had to take a picture with a, a digital camera, upload it to a hosting site, and then put it on eBay. So back in the day, it was crazy. Now, if you have a smartphone, you can literally list on Facebook or eBay in a matter of minutes, just by using your phone. So it, but you got to understand anything does take, it is a learning curve.
You have to learn how to do a little bit of it. And then the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Dustin Heiner: I love that. That's fantastic. So. Now, looking at somebody that's going to be starting, is there anything that we might have missed? Is there anything that we should know if we're going to be starting doing the flea market flipping or finding proper items and flipping those?
How would we get started? Is there anything else we might have missed?
Rob Stephenson: The way we recommend everybody doing is starting with free stuff, so.
Melissa Stephenson: So not putting any money down. And then also take the money that they have made and take a portion of that to start to reinvest. So you're not ever putting a lot of money into it.
We have one of our, our members. She started with 50 cents. I don't even know what she bought. But she just kept re rolling it in. And she, now is at... Over $25,000, and they're buying... Her whole thing was she wanted to flip to buy an RV. Yeah. That was their RV money. So they have.. I think three and kids still best at home. And then she flips part time.
Rob Stephenson: She's a nurse. So she flips part time and took her a year and a half. I think it was a year and a half. Yeah. A year and a half.
Melissa Stephenson: She has $25,000, and now they're looking for an RV, but she only ever put 50 cents into it because she just kept, you know, putting money back into it.
Rob Stephenson: Yeah.
Dustin Heiner: I love that idea.
And same thing with like real estate and you guys are real estate investors as well. It's same thing with real estate. If you make money, use that money. And just like in business and real estate, use that money to build it, your business or your investments. To be better to make more money. You know, if I buy one rental property, it makes me a minimum of $250 a month or more.
I take that and buy another one that makes me another $250 and just so on. And so we just keep growing that, that business and get it bigger and bigger. So I love that. Now we have covered a lot of ground. Now I want to jump into the fire round. Now the fire round, we're going to be talking. These are quick questions, but they're a little deeper.
So be ready for it. I think you guys are gonna do great. Now, the first question is. Because now you guys have a job, or it's not a job, you don't have a job, but you have a business which you have to work in. But getting out of a job, we're stopping working for somebody else. We might have a little more time, we have a little more energy to give to something else.
What are you guys doing to make the world a better place to help or to really just make things better for other people?
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, I mean, definitely with what we do and even pulling stuff out of the trash, we're keeping stuff out of landfills when we're able to see that, which is a better place is recycling stuff, making money on it.
Sorry, our three year old's going a little crazy. Yeah, we're, I mean, that's one aspect of our business of what we're doing. And then we also teach other people how to take control of, their finances, being able to invest and make money, doing the same stuff that we do. We teach other people how to do it.
So they can, if they choose, if they like what we do, they can leave their job and they can make a full time income or make great supplement income to be able to pay. Whatever bills they have or to pay off yet.
Dustin Heiner: I love that. Yeah, that's great. Helping other people wherever they are. And I have especially finances.
Finances is really, really rough for many people. I know before I learned how to be better at finances, I was horrible at them. So that's, that's great. Now, the next question is. If you were to go back for both of you and give your younger selves great advice for whatever it is, it could be flipping, it could be anything in life.
What advice would you give, first Rob, what would you advice would you give your younger self from the very beginning? I wanted to listen to Melissa's. Okay, we can go with Melissa first. Yeah, let's go with Melissa.
Melissa Stephenson: Worry less, I think would be it because I tend to be like a more of a higher stress because he doesn't stress about anything. So that like I feel like I have to stress about it. But you know, even finances or whatever it is, like I tend to be more of a worrier about whatever. So I think the last.
I've, I've been working on it and now like, I, I don't worry as much. So pray about it and give it to God. And that's, that's, it works.
Dustin Heiner: Absolutely. That's a good one. I love that.
Rob Stephenson: I think mine definitely would be start off sooner than later going full time into something that I definitely feel like I'm wired to do what I do.
I love it. I'll do the rest of my life, no matter what, just because I so enjoy the hunt for the deal, finding the deals, making money on them. I absolutely love that. So I'll do it. I wish I had done it 10 years earlier than I actually started doing it full time, 10, 15 years, even, instead of doing it for a side hustle, doing it full time, going into putting hours into it and just learning from then on.
Yeah. We'd be in a different place, but I love where we're at right now.
Dustin Heiner: That's great. I think starting sooner or getting yourself to start sooner than you want to, like you might think. Like even just starting a podcast, you're thinking, man, we'll get to it eventually. If you just started it now and just started having running, you realize, man, I should have done it a year before, like it's always.
And so I love the saying, when's the best time to plant a tree? Well, it was 20 years ago, but when's the second best time it's right now, like literally do it right now. So I completely agree with that now with your business and in life in general, give us one or two or however many tools that you currently use.
It could be an app. It could be something else. Tools that we can use to help ourselves be more successful.
Melissa Stephenson: The phone for sure with our apps, looking stuff up. And one thing we didn't really talk about is, he likes to look stuff up, online too, like, OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace stuff to buy. So, like, we're not just going out.
He likes to sit and might come out of the trash, yeah. Sit in his chair and scroll, see what he can find. And there's free stuff too on, on these apps. Yeah, and there's good deals too. So, you know, just having OfferUp is one of your favorites to buy. And then eBay is our favorite to sell on.
Rob Stephenson: So definitely my, my three top apps to add would be OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace and eBay.
Those are the ones, yeah, you can make some in a smartphone. So those four things, you can make a lot of money in this business for sure.
Dustin Heiner: So utilizing OfferUp to acquire. And then Facebook Marketplace and eBay to sell and you basically are the middleman connecting them, right?
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, and we use Facebook Marketplace also for buying.
So we sell and buy on Facebook Marketplace, but I like shopping on Facebook Marketplace for deals as well. Then I can buy locally and then I can sell them on eBay. And then Melissa kind of posts some of the stuff that's better selling local, she'll post it on Facebook Marketplace and we'll sell it on there.
Dustin Heiner: Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. So if anybody listening or watching this that wants to get started, is there anything else that they need to know? Like you're going to do one thing. Do this.
Melissa Stephenson: Be consistent, because that is one thing that, I mean, all the algorithms favor it. They like it when you're active in it.
You know, some people will start, post something on eBay and be like, well, I posted one thing and it's not selling. But you have to be consistent, and even if it's a couple little things, it likes that activity. And just be anything you're consistent with. How you're gonna make, you know, strides forward.
Rob Stephenson: We try to tell people, they go to the flea market, a lot of our friends see us going to the flea market finding some crazy cool stuff, they want to go and check it out. They go one weekend and there's nothing there. So it's like a bust and like, oh, this isn't for me. But it's one of those things, building a couple of consistent routines.
If you don't find something one week, go back the next week. If you don't find something the next week, go back the next week. Building the routines on stuff that you enjoy. That is the consistency is what will pay off.
Melissa Stephenson: And we're not talking like hours and hours and hours. It was like, but we just build it like consistent routines.
Yeah. It, it doesn't have to be, you know, tons of time. He doesn't like, you don't like to work tons of time.
Rob Stephenson: No, work as least as possible.
Dustin Heiner: Awesome. So. The last question is, what is one, actually since we've got both of you, uh, we'll start with you, Melissa. What is one nonfiction book that you would suggest that would help us in life and business or something like that?
Melissa Stephenson: I really loved that. The one thing,
Dustin Heiner: Was it Gary Keller? Yes.
Melissa Stephenson: Yes. Last year. I really liked that because I tend to be all over the place. Like I, yeah, so having focus like on one thing is really help like what is the biggest goal? What are what are you trying to accomplish there? Yeah, but I really enjoyed that.
Dustin Heiner: The one thing great.
How about you
Rob?
I can't think of one I we listen audio books when we drive. I'm not a big reader I'm dyslexic and I can't read fast So, I more listen to stuff, but, definitely one person who has changed a lot of our business and a lot of stuff that we do is JLD, I love his podcast, and I'm trying to think of, where me, Titi, because we listened to his book not too long ago.
Yeah. No, that was, Pat Flynn. Sorry, Pat Flynn. We listened to his book. So, there, there's not really one that I can narrow down. I get great ideas from almost anything and everything that I listen to so, yeah, those are just consistently, it goes back to consistency. Listening and learning from people who are doing, you know, they're trying to teach you, better ways to, to handle your business and do that.
I, I can't, yeah, I guess
Melissa Stephenson: I listened to three times, three to four times.
Rob Stephenson: Yeah, I can't preach enough about investing into yourself and learning yourself, just better ways to do stuff systems and all that.
Dustin Heiner: I think it's a great point. Yeah, definitely investing yourself. The more podcasts I listen to, the more I learn.
In fact, The reason why I got here where I am is not just podcasts, but reading books and just, just trying to get as much information and learn from every single place possible. Now, I know you guys also coach this and that's with Flea Market Flipper. Is that correct? Tell us a little bit about that.
Rob Stephenson: Four years ago, we actually started the university, Flea Market Flipper University. And it's actually a, on a one stop. You go in there, wherever you're at, if you're beginning, you don't know anything about flipping. You go through it and you work through these different modules to get you to get our intermediate and the, yeah, expert. So doing freight stuff. Freight stuff is where it pushed us to the next level.
We were able to make so much more money, doing the larger item because locally, a lot of people will not sell large items. They don't want to ship it. So we go through a whole section of how to package, how to, strap down on pallets, build pallets, crates. How to ship it with the freight companies and that kind of stuff.
Melissa Stephenson: So, that's... Tons of people are able to do it, too, which is so cool to see. So, and we actually thought the, the people who would be most interested in what we were getting, and they are, like, are, you know, males his age, but it's a lot of females doing these pilots. It is. Like, it's amazing. And so, it's, it's really cool.
Dustin Heiner: How can somebody find you if they want to get started, they want to say, hey, Rob and Melissa are terrific. I want to learn from them, or let me just see what they're doing. How would they be able to find you?
Melissa Stephenson: On our website, fleamarketflipper. com is our website, so that's a good place to find us and some of our latest videos and posts, and then, and yeah, that's our biggest thing, place that we're at. Yeah. And we have Instagram and YouTube too. That'll be, and Facebook. But, fleamarketflipper.com is our, our best place.
Dustin Heiner: Well, great. Hey, Rob and Melissa, you guys are fantastic. I love talking to you guys.
You guys are really, I really appreciate your time. You guys are great. So thank you so much for being on the show.