Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper share an interview they did with the ChooseFi podcast about how to double your income by reselling on eBay.
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Rob: What's up Pro Flippers! On today's episode we have a special treat for you. We were interviewed on the Choose Fi podcast a while back and it was such a fun interview we wanted to play it for you guys. So we hope you enjoy. Their podcast is all about helping people get to financial independence so we hope it's beneficial for you.
So thanks guys!
Jonathan: Hey, everyone. Today, we're going to be looking at the second hand market. And we are talking with probably one of the world's foremost experts and they built a niche for a living for themselves, a business for themselves in a space that you just don't hear everyone talking about, and they built a skillset, which now they are teaching others and it has afforded them.
Amazing lifestyle and for their students, an amazing lifestyle as well. And we are getting the opportunity to speak with Rob and Melissa Stephenson, the flea market flippers. They built a six figure business learning how to use arbitrage, not at FBA, not just going to Walmart and trying to scan to see what the difference was on Amazon, but actually finding items that other people didn't realize there was value there and then scaling that to an unbelievable level today, they're coming on the show. They're going to share with us kind of the tactics, the secrets, the skill they built, and now what they're teaching others. So to help me with this, I have my co host Brad here with me today.
How are you doing buddy?
Brad: Hey, Jonathan, I am doing quite well. And yeah, you're right. When I first heard flea market flipper. com, I was just super excited to learn more about what they're doing, because to your point, arbitrage, we've heard about that, right? Taking advantage of the differences in price.
Between markets, right? And most people do it through that FBA, the fulfillment by Amazon, but they're actually doing this via flea markets and they're making not only a full time living, but, but a wonderful, wonderful income for their family, and it's just really incredibly interesting because it's about skills at its heart.
That's what we're doing here. We're learning the skills and Rob and Melissa are going to teach us what they're up to. This is so cool. So with that. Rob and, Melissa, welcome to choose FI.
Rob: Thank you guys so much for having us.
Melissa: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Jonathan: We're excited that you're here. And I think we're actually all, all of us, Brad and I, but our audience, we're going to learn a lot from this conversation and Rob, I think it's going to start with you because when you and Melissa were dating, I don't even think she knew what you did. Tell us, let's talk a little bit about that. Melissa college degree, Rob, you got this awesome skill set that you're continuing to get better at. What is that conversation look like?
Rob: Yeah, it's more of Melissa coming into the relationship and trying to explain to her mom what exactly I did for a living and yeah.
Melissa: I really like this guy. I don't really know what he does, but I mean, so.
Brad: He spends a lot of time at flea markets though. I know that.
Jonathan: So the flea market flipper, he clearly, I love, I love the branding. I can't remember the last time I actually went to a flea market. Brad, do we have flea markets here in Richmond?
Do they, are they here?
Brad: I don't think so. I've never seen one. I suspect there are, but I've never seen one. I know there were back in long Island where I'm from originally, but yeah, I don't know about Richmond.
Jonathan: All right. Well, let's just, we can, we can start there, but actually I want everybody to hear the skillset that we're talking today is how to identify and capitalize on arbitrage.
How to buy low and sell high for significant profit. But we're going to talk about it first through the lens of flea market flipper. Rob, how did you stumble onto this? And where do you even begin? Are you an eight year old kid going with your parents and just notice something, like just talk us a little bit through what that looked like for you.
Rob: Yeah, for sure. I come from a bigger family. I have six older sisters. I'm the youngest and only boy. My parents,, went to yard sales growing up. They took us to yard sales over the weekends and we'd find cool stuff. My parents did this to a smaller scale, the whole time I was growing up, they would buy commercial stuff from yard sales, and then they bring it home and sell it in the classified section, taking it from a smaller market.
You're only reaching so many people at a yard sale through a weekend. And then you bring it back and throw it into a larger audience, the classified section that gets a larger audience that they're able to sell stuff to. So I was modeled it as a kid and I did it. I mean, growing up, I had side jobs, I did other jobs and I always did this on the side, never realizing the full potential of what kind of my parents instilled in me from a young age.
So yeah, that's kind of how I got into it.
Melissa: And then, well, eBay started when you were around 16, that was a way bigger market to get into.
Jonathan: So, so the epiphany that I guess we'll kind of start to get into is. For your parents or for past generations, it was buy local, sell local. And for you, it's buy local and scale the whole world is your market.
Rob: Yes. And it really goes to numbers. Even like we, we do flea markets. That's probably where our main game was, where we got a lot of deals originally when we started this. Now there's so many apps out there that you can buy, use stuff from people getting rid of it. And then you can take it from a lower market, which in our area, you're dealing with anywhere from 40 to 60, 000 people using a single app because it's locally, it's in that local market of the town or the city that you're in, and then we buy it there low, and then we throw it onto eBay and sell it to a lot larger audience, a huge audience that are looking for that item so we can ask more money for it in a larger audience.
You have how many registered users? Yeah, eBay, 181 million registered users on eBay. So just the numbers alone, you see. When you're dealing with smaller numbers, going to larger numbers. I mean, you're going to deal with a lot more people looking for that specific item.
Brad: So I guess my, my first question is, are we talking about, about individual items or are you talking about lots of things or trying to get things in bulk?
How does this work when we're talking about like these particular apps and flea markets in particular?
Rob: Yeah. Our business model is a little bit different than other resellers. We capitalize on larger items. So locally, when we find those larger items individually, for instance, a commercial exercise machine, a commercial restaurant equipment, we don't only do that stuff, but we're looking for those items locally for a business that went out of business and they have to get rid of the stuff or just an individual who has it and they're moving and they're getting rid of stuff.
We look for those higher retail items that are going to make us a ton of money when we get it to a larger audience and they're willing to pay more for that. So, yeah, we don't, we're not doing both. There are some resellers that do both. They buy pallets, they break it down. Last year, how many sales did we have last year?
89. So we did 89 sales last year to produce $80,000. So our business model is work less, but make more money on the flip higher profit items is where.
Brad: Oh, that's incredible. So you're getting something expensive, like a multi thousand dollar piece of exercise equipment and selling it for a thousand dollar profit or some such.
So I guess my, my question is at that higher price point, is there less competition just by sheer virtue of. People not having the cash to pay for something like that is, and therefore, is there a higher margin on the more expensive items?
Melissa: You have less people looking for the item, but the people looking for, we're still selling it for half of retail.
So somebody looking for the item, they want this for their restaurant. They want it for their gym or whatever it is, or even personal, people want it for their personal gym or whatever it is. But we're still half a retail, so it's still a great deal.
Rob: Yeah, I'll give you an instance. I just shipped out a range last night, like, and this wasn't a commercial one, it was a kitchen, but it was a 40 inch range.
So it's a little bit bigger than normal. The retail on it was about $4,500. We paid $200 for the range on OfferUp while we were traveling over the summer, right? We did a road trip. But that's beside the point. But anyways, we paid $200 for that range. We brought it back to Orlando and we sold it on eBay and less than two weeks for $2,800. So that gives you an idea the local markets. You won't have so many people looking for that exact item when you throw it to a huger, a large audience There's just a lot more people that are willing to pay the money and they're looking for that specific item.
Brad: Yeah.
That's fascinating. It's funny. I think we're always trying to find reasons that, oh, that can't work for me. Right. And I'm even finding myself saying that like, before you're explaining this, I'm thinking, oh, a range or, oh, a huge treadmill. Oh, I wonder what the shipping is on that. And, oh, that could never work for me.
Jonathan: Or, oh, I have, I have a 2003 Honda Civic and it doesn't have a big enough trunk.
Brad: Yeah, strap the range on top, but, but when we're talking about a $200 item that you're selling for $2,800, even if it's multiple hundreds of dollars to ship the thing, there's still an enormous, enormous profit. So I guess ultimately that's the game here, right?
It's just fine. These things where there's just massive profit built in.
Rob: Yeah. And to your point too, you might be looking at it with a Honda Civic and you're like, how could I ever do that? You can go rent a truck from Lowe's or Home Depot for $20. Go pick up that item, bring it back, take pictures of it.
And that item costs me $135 to ship. We have the corner on the market for free shipping. That's why we teach it. But we've learned throughout the last five years, we've worked with different freight companies. We've got really, really, we honed in on our freight skills that we're able to ship and amazingly hot, large and heavy items.
We're very, very reasonable prices anywhere in the country. That thing, I think went to Illinois from Florida to Illinois and cost me $135, which is insane. It was a, it's a big range on a pallet. So, but yeah, that just goes to anybody can do it. We don't always recommend people just jumping in, finding, flipping, and then saying, okay, I'm going to figure out how to do this.
Melissa: I'm going to go buy a truck, buy a trailer. We definitely do not.
Jonathan: We're talking about your business now, after doing this for well over a decade. I want to talk about the evolution and where like people start, you know, because. Even in the early days, if we were to go back, maybe five or six years when your business was probably making, you know, $20,000 to $40,000, somewhere in that range, your model and the apps that were available, et cetera, probably look different at that time.
So I'm curious, how were you able to put your foot into this without committing to, all right, I'm gonna buy a 20,000 pound piece of equipment that I have no idea how to ship, no idea how to store, no idea how to price like in the early days, what did the risk free version of this look like that allow you to kind of dip your toes in the water and be confident with the underlying skillset, which is how to assess value on something that no one even knows what it is.
Rob: Yeah, definitely.
Melissa: Well, I was just going to say, Rob's always shipped the little bit larger items. We didn't get into freight shipping until about four years ago. That's when we really jumped into the freight shipping, but he's always done like the FedEx and the UPS. So the little bit bigger items and not the shipping through the post office and that.
That still separates us from a lot of resellers. Cause a lot of resellers do just the smaller items. So, and people are still afraid to ship items that go in a box. So just learning that shipping and getting comfortable with that has helped a lot too.
Rob: Yeah. And we, when we teach people how to do this, we tell people, start where you're at.
You don't know if you're going to like this business. Don't go out and buy a truck. Don't go out and get a storage unit. Don't go out and get a trailer, all that kind of stuff. You start with the small stuff. We, all of the students that we coach, we tell them to start with stuff in their house that they're going to donate to Salvation Army.
Learn the system before you actually jump into it feet first. Learn how to, how to do pictures, how to do a sale on eBay, and then slowly but surely build your confidence. And then start to, if you enjoy it, if you love it, then start to progress up to the next level. And that's exactly how we did it. I didn't have a storage unit when I started.
I had a spare bedroom that I took pictures in. I boxed everything up. I stored stuff in my closet. I mean, that's how I started. And now, yeah, we're a lot bigger.
Melissa: When we first got married, we lived in a 575 square foot house with no storage, one bedroom, one bathroom. And so we bought a little shed finally for the backyard.
And that was where we, that we just did everything out of the little shed. And that was it.
Jonathan: Yep. What is the amount of time on average that you end up holding onto items that you end up buying and obtaining and purchasing? Like, do you still have stuff that you're still trying to offload from three or four years ago?
Or do you kind of have a give up point where it does just go to salvation army?
Rob: The majority of the time we do the research on an item before I buy it. So I'm sure you guys will get into this a little bit more later, but you can research everything with eBay before you actually buy it and we're making crazy.
I was at the flea market over the weekend. I found these two crazy looking. I didn't know what the heck they were, but they were, it looked really expensive. So cool. And it had a price tag on it from like a thrift store of $400. The guy was only asking 10 for these things, 10 a piece. That was his price. He got them from a thrift store, whatever it was, it was stainless steel.
I knew one of the valves on it was worth $20 and they're, like I said, it's, it's, it's a weird looking thing. I had no idea what it was. I walked away, did some research, saw that the retail on these items were over $1,500. I don't know where the guy got them from. I have no idea, but he was just trying to liquidate them.
So I paid him $10 a piece for him. I brought them home, took some pictures of him and listed him on eBay for $1,000 a piece. So for a $20 investment, we should be able to make $2,000 on it. Now being, getting back to your original question, that stove that we sold, we had it for two weeks. We do have some stuff where the profit is so much higher that we do.
We'll sit on some stuff for a while, just because I want to get the profit out of it. And I know we're usually 50 percent on retail for an item. So I know that people are getting a good deal, but it takes the right person to see that item and need it before they'll buy it. So yes, we do hold on to some things for a while and some things we don't, they sell in a week or two, and it just depends on what we get, but we do all the research before we actually buy an item.
Jonathan: But to clarify, you have nothing that you've been sitting on for three years.
Rob: Yeah, I probably do, but the profits are there. Okay.
Jonathan: No, no, that's, that's fine. So you're saying there's a $20,000, $30,000 profit here. I'm going to keep figuring out what it needs to find the right buyer. And in that case, I'll sit on this, you know, a year or more for a couple of items.
100%.
Jonathan: Now, I think you actually teed us up for really the heart of this question, which is what are the skills? That you have had to learn, like, as you've kind of worked through these. And I know you guys teach some of this stuff. So obviously like you have a whole course for this, but at a macro level, it's not just one skill set.
It's several it's, and I love for you to kind of share different tools and what you found valuable, but if we were to work through them, one is where do you find the deal? So, right. So that's one. And then two is how do you research and assess the true price? And then three is how do you make the strategy for making the offer?
How do you make a compelling offer to get it at a low price? And then four is how do you create a funnel of like, how do you market this to the outside world? What tools do you use to market it externally? And then five is. How do you, you know, take graphics and images? That's all kind of a subtitle under that marketing thing.
How do I use pictures and media and graphics to allow myself to rise above the competition? And then six is how do I deliver like, and am I missing anything else? Is there anything else that you would add onto this?
Melissa: I think it's a lot simpler than it's that you're making it sound. And that's the, that's the crazy part is it's a really simple business and like anybody can do it.
So, I mean, he has some skill.
Jonathan: You have skills. I'll reserve this for the masterclass one day. I don't know. It's just, it's just six bullet points. I didn't think it was too bad, but that's great. Break it down. Show me how easy it is,
Brad: but it can be both, right? It can be both simple. It'd be that complete list of skills that Jonathan.
So like, I know you're being self deprecating, but Jonathan's right. Like those are discrete skills that most people do not have. So obviously pat yourself on the back a little bit, because those are all skills that you had to learn at some point, like right now, it probably does seem simple. And I suspect after someone got into it, it is pretty simple, but like.
Each of those things like that, those are important skills that are then transferable potentially to other businesses, right? Like how do you market coming up with strategies for making offers? Like these are incredible, incredible things. So yeah, I mean, Jonathan, do you want to.
Jonathan: Yeah, thank you, Brad. I, I realized now, after you say that, that this was them being self deprecating about their own skills, they have an incredible talent stack here.
They just take it for granted how it's just all come together, but they've probably worked on these over a period of a decade and it's become intuitive. But at the outside world, trying to figure it out, these are the pieces that. I have to all come together to be able to pull off, not just a $10,000 a year side hustle, but a hundred thousand dollar a year business.
You're very good at all of these. And you do them so quickly that it's just, it's just reflex. It's just whatever. So yeah, let's start with, you know, let's say there's six items that we want to cover though. Where, where do you find your deals and where do you recommend now that people in 2020, you know, and the world's changing very, very quick.
Where should they be spending their times? Is this going to Walmart and looking for, you know, the clearance items?
Melissa: Yeah, we definitely don't spend time going to retail stores and finding clearance items. That's just, a lot of people do, but that's just not our business model. And finding items is his absolute favorite thing to do.
Like he, he feels wired to do it, right?
Rob: So you talk about it. No, definitely. I mean, the tools that we use back when we started doing this, I got almost everything. I, I bought almost everything from the flea market. Our flea market is a hodgepodge of people who go throughout the week to storage auctions now, they buy stuff from storage auctions in bulk. They bring it to the flea market and they sell it piece by piece. I don't have to buy it a storage auction because I go to the flea market and buy from these vendors. Exactly pick out what I want I pay a lot less than they paid for the whole lot for the item But I know how much it's worth before I buy it and i'm able to do that now that being said when we first started The business that's what we had to do now.
I can sit in my lazy boy for 10 minutes at night And I scroll off my two favorite apps, the tool, like you're asking for the tools. My two favorite apps are OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace. I can look on there at night, at any given time of the day, I can jump on there. In Orlando, we have a pretty, I mean, they're posting tons and tons of stuff every single day.
I can jump on both of those apps at any time and find an item that I can buy or offer somebody some less money for that item than where I can make a good profit on it. And you can do that almost any time in larger cities because people are liquidating people are getting rid of stuff. They need to make money and that's what they're doing it. So those are two tools that you can sit in your house and you can source from your lazy boy chair And then you have to go out and buy it or get the people we have people in our course that get Individuals to bring it to their house and deliver it to them to where they can take pictures of it and then resell it So yeah, there's just many many ways but that is your first question.
The tools that we use are offer up I mean, there's tons of them out there offer up Let go. Craigslist is one of the oldest when we're traveling. I jump on Craigslist and look for items for sale, LetGo, OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace, any resale app. There's yard sale apps as well. Yeah. So any of those, those are the best tool to be able to source your items from.
Jonathan: And you're still looking local?
That's that's within an hour of your home. Is that accurate?
Brad: Yes. All right, guys. So that all makes sense about where you're finding it, but I guess my next question kind of ties into. That research and trying to figure out, like, is there a market? Sure. There's, there might be a price that also you need to determine, which is a big aspect of this.
Like, is there a market, what type of profit margin are you looking for? I know you're saying these, more significant profit margins, but like, what does that mean? I guess, like, what would be the floor, the minimum profit that you're looking to make from an item?
Rob: Yeah, definitely.
Jonathan: Or maybe even for your students at this point who are just getting started, you're probably a little bit more risk tolerant with as much time as you've had in the game.
Yeah.
Rob: And definitely the cool thing about this is back in the day when I started this. It was a gamble. You were gambling with an item when you found it at a thrift store, when you found it at the flea market, you were gambling that, hey, that might be worth, you know, more money. It looks like it's expensive.
So I'm going to buy it and take the risk on it. And then I'm going to get it home and I'll do the research. But now with our smartphones. You jump onto eBay, you eBay has some amazing tools. You can jump onto eBay and check everything for the last 30 to 60 days that has sold. So you can do what it's listed for, what it's sold.
Brad: That's huge, right? Because you're determining, is there actually demand? Not just, are there a lot of these for sale at X price? Like have these actually sold? Is there a demand?
Rob: Yes, that's the cool part. I mean, it's similar to MLS. It's similar to the, the housing market. You can ask whatever you want for a house, but until the houses that are comparable have sold for that, that's your market.
I mean, that's where you're going to be able to get the money. Now we do the same thing. I go on and find, and if I can't always find, because we like doing. Odd stuff that has a high markup on it, but the people don't know how to sell it While we were away this quick side note while we were away, on our trip over the summer We did a long trip. I found a bus wash which is insane. But I found it in a local town that was listed on Facebook Marketplace. We paid five hundred dollars for that and I have it listed right now for fifteen thousand dollars. The retail on it is $24,000 and it only has three hours on it. So it's like brand spanking new, but, yeah, that those are the kind of deals that we're looking for, but I couldn't find that bus wash.
Well, I found one that was similar on eBay that had sold for $10,000, but in a lot worse condition. But then I went and I found the retail online. You go on to Google and you do that research. If you can't find it in eBay, you try to find out what retail is. And then a good, yeah, rule of thumb is 50 percent depending on condition.
Remember conditions, everything. If it's in good condition, 50 percent off a retail is typically what you can get for an item, you know, when you're reselling it.
Jonathan: So that's how you price it. But I'm just curious, you have this rough idea, but the market's going to tell you whether you got it right or wrong.
How do you, what's your strategy for making sure you don't screw that up? Like for instance, Hey, I'm gonna do an auction. I hope someone pays more than $5 for it. Maybe if I start low, it'll, you know, work, you know, walk us through the actual pricing strategy. And then if you do price it wrong, how you recover from that.
Melissa: We don't really do a lot of auctions anymore. We used to do a lot more and we'd start them on a Thursday night, run them 10 days till they go out for two weekends, then they go out on a Sunday when everybody's kind of home at their computer, but we don't, we do very few auctions now. So everything's buy it now.
So it doesn't matter when you list it. And you, we list it for the price that we want, but we're willing to go a little bit less usually. So we'll accept, we don't put accept offers, but sometimes he'll get an offer.
Rob: And eBay is trying to get as close. I mean, people who don't know the arena, eBay is trying to get as close as they can to Amazon.
When somebody wants something, they jump on Amazon. You buy it, you pay for it. It shows up at your door in the next couple of days. So auctions don't let you do that.
Melissa: So buy it now is a little bit more favorable now.
Rob: Using the steps of, Hey, this is what it has sold for in the past. You can see what the item has sold for in the past multiple times. You have a pretty good idea on pricing. If you want to sell the item quick, you price it a little bit below of whatever it has sold for in the past. And the next person who sees that item and needs it, they're going to jump right on to it. They'll buy it. And yeah, that's, that's the best way to price your items.
If you have great feedback also comes into a huge play. You have to build up your feedback, so people can understand that you're a legit seller, that you have good feedback on items. For us, we have items that we've sold for up to $25,000 that we get good feedback on. And that's not every day, but the majority of our items anywhere from $500 to, you know, $7,000, $10,000.
And we get good feedback on those items. So when the next person sees something they want from us, they can go and look at our feedback and they can see, Hey, yeah, this is legit. This guy's legit. He's not a scammer. So I'm going to buy from him.
Brad: Yeah, that's cool. And I guess the next thing on Jonathan's list here was, was how to market this.
So it sounds like eBay is your. Your preferred option, I guess, are there others that you consider for certain items or is it eBay exclusively? And I guess kind of tied into that would be what type of fees does eBay take? Like, are they competitive? Is it, I assume that's probably one of, if not your biggest costs based on what you're saying, you source a lot of these items for us.
So, so is it exclusively eBay and talk about the fees, if you don't mind.
Melissa: Yeah, we sell about 85 percent of our items on eBay and the rest pretty much through Facebook marketplace. So locally, we usually cross post them. We've tried to sell a little bit on Mercari here and there and a couple other apps, but eBay is always the winner.
So, and it has stayed consistent and we want to, you know, still know the new up and coming apps, but it's still always been eBay reaching the most people. And I guess people may be trusted more for some certain items if we're selling the higher dollar items, but yeah, it's the fees are totally worth it.
Yeah. For the reach that we get.
Rob: So I dunno if you wanna elaborate on that. Yeah. eBay fees, they're just now changing. They, they switched out, if you guys have known eBay, they've partnered with, PayPal. They're phasing PayPal out by the end of this year, and they're doing their own processing fee, or they're processing, so it's called managed eBay, managed payments managed payment.
So they're switching over that. We actually just switched over to it two weeks ago. And yeah, their fees are roughly, when it was PayPal, you paid 13%. PayPal charged you roughly 3% for the transaction. For the processing fee and then eBay always got their 10 percent on top of it. So, but when you look at the amount of money that you can make on eBay, that 13%, the markup that you can ask to a larger audience, it's well worth it to pay that type of fee to be able to sell it and sell it to that larger audience.
Jonathan: Well, and you know, to Brad's points, you got the fees there, but actually the marketing to my mind comes to, it's, it's three things. It's graphics. So pictures is actually your presentation, how you're organizing things, and it's your copy. And I'm just curious, you have an item that you don't even know what it is.
It's after research is that you're, you're going to the retail site and grabbing some of that copy and pulling it over. Are you really good at copy? Is there an art form here? That's blending the two. Is there a process that makes that faster? I mean, is that, is that some of the secret sauce is our ability to present better than all the other listings where they just mailed it in?
Melissa: Yeah, pictures are huge. Taking good pictures, good clean pictures, nothing in the background. You'd be surprised at how many pictures people post of just stuff in the background and you're like crazy. Yeah. And you can actually get good deals on those items locally when you can't even tell what they're trying to sell, but on eBay, you know, just good clean pictures.
And they don't, we don't, we still use our iPhones for everything. So we don't use a professional camera. We just have a nice clean background, clean pictures and good titles, descriptions, or you can talk about descriptions, but titles having as many words in the title that somebody's searching for, because it's a search engine, eBay is a search engine.
And those searches come up on Google too, which is super helpful.
Rob: So yeah, your title is the most important and it doesn't have to really be about copy. It has to be about the buzzwords that somebody, you know. What's your buyers looking for? What they're going to type in to find that item. So titles are everything as for the description.
Absolutely not. I mean, my descriptions are horrible. I give three or four sentences about the item. We always give disclosure since we sell you stuff, almost every item that I sell, I'll, I'll say this item's used, please expect normal wear, scratches, scuffs, scrapes. I want people to have. I want to under promise and over deliver on my item.
So, I want people to have realistic expectations when they get the item. That's the other thing that you have to remember. When you're selling online, not in person, they're only going by your pictures. So, if they're thinking that thing, and pictures can always look way better than what it does in person, so if they're thinking that thing is an amazing condition and they get it and it's not, yeah, you're going to get negative feedback and you're going to have some problems with the buyer.
So, that's something that I learned years and years ago, yeah, by promising, over promising, and under delivering. We've learned not to do that anymore. So we're always doing that. But as for copy, no, it doesn't have to be crazy. People can see the pictures. 12 pictures. We tell people use all those 12 pictures.
So people can have a good idea of what they're buying.
Brad: Do you find that on a lot of these higher price items? Like do people reach out to you and send you a message via via eBay? Or is it just, Hey, they've, they've got 12 pictures. The proof is in the pudding. They can see it and they just buy.
Rob: Yeah, that's cool.
The one of our secret sauces is we do, since we do freight shipping, like on this oven that we just sold for $2,800, I do free shipping on that. I knew anywhere in the US I can ship that for roughly $200, you know, give or take $20. So I knew that was it. So I put built in my shipping into the, into the price to where if somebody, and I think just about myself, if I'm jumping on there and I find an item that I want, I don't really want to email the buyer and start going back and forth with the buyer trying to figure out, okay, is this going to be right for me? Is it this and that? And the guy that bought the oven, he didn't ever email me once.
I never got an email from him. In the transaction, he put my shipping address as commercial because that's what I, I require for the shipping. But that was the only the correspondence that we did back and forth, was him buying it, leaving me one note, then I packaged it up and I shipped it.
Melissa: But you do have some people for some larger items to write, write in and ask questions.
That's normal. We just answer the questions.
Rob: But that's our, I mean, we like to do free shipping and that, that just expedites the whole process. Not everybody does that, but we try to do that just because if you do have somebody who's ready to buy, they'll buy it quicker with the free shipping. But. Yeah.
Jonathan: So guys, we have a lot of mutual acquaintances and we actually got a chance to talk to you at FinCon in Orlando. And that's kind of this, this conversation is overdue, but it's a direct result of us being introduced there. And we knew we wanted to have this episode. Having said that you guys have created something awesome.
It's beautiful. It's fun. Everybody can watch it from the outside. And I think all of us recognize what you, you know, you two have built for yourself. It's kind of like a board game. Like it's fun. It's something you're doing together. It's allowed you to build a lifestyle together that I can't imagine either of you at any point, regardless of your finances, actually walking away from just curious, you know, you know, we have a financial independence show.
Is that language that you guys use internally? Is that, is that a goal for you? I mean, what is your own perception of what you've been able to build?
Melissa: Yeah. We love being a part of the FinCon community and it's actually helped us to really be more. I don't know, analytical with everything. Cause I feel like he's definitely a free spirit.
I'm a more of the analytical one, but we, we feel like we're already retired. Like we, we love what we do and we wouldn't really change anything. No, even if we hit that FI number. Tomorrow like we probably wouldn't change anything except for I would probably sleep more a little bit.
Rob: We enjoy our kids we travel we we yeah, it's our lifestyle right now. Like I said, it feels like we are retired.
We I'll do this until I die. I'll do flipping and it's just because I love, I love it. It feels like it's what I was meant to do. So, yeah.
Brad: I mean, that's incredible. And that's what fi is all about, right. Is it's finding what we genuinely love about life, whether it's, you know, this tiny little portion of your life, which is your job, if you will.
Family community, all these things that, that we want to get out of the precious time we have here. And I I'm curious. So just actually talking about the time spent, let's say, forget, I know you guys do teach other people this, but let's just talk about, I think you said, Melissa, like 89 items you sold last year or something right around there.
How much time would that take up just in and of itself? You did nothing else. It's just, Hey, we want to make about. $80,000 in profit for a year, we're going to sell about 80 or 90 items. Like, do you have any estimate of what that would take in a, in a given calendar year?
Melissa: He really is the primary flipper. I do more of our work on our blog and stuff.
So that's about 20 to 25 hours in a week.
Rob: I'm the brawn. She's the brains.
Jonathan: You make a great pair. What, what happens when you guys, like, this is a board game and, and you guys have, like, we said, the model is buy local, sell at scale, sell to the globe. What happens when you take a trip? What happens when you go on vacation?
What happens with the business? Then I have, I have trouble imagining you leaving it behind when what's probably going through your mind is, Oh, I think of all these deals that are probably everywhere. And we're finally getting to see them. Like what happens?
Melissa: Traveling is one of our favorite things to do for sure. We do a lot of road trips.
Rob: But we have an enclosed trailer that we love to pull with us. Our goal on a, on a trip, and we just did a trip over the summer. We did a 30 day road trip throughout the U S we visited state parks. We saw some family in other States. But our goal is to be able to pay for the trip by flipping while we're on the road.
So we're able to buy stuff in those other markets all around the US bring them back, sell them and make our money on it. So, yeah, we had an amazing 30 day trip where we were able to bring back 8 items for a total of $24,000, in inventory.
Melissa: We spent $1,400 on the inventory and it'll make us $20,000. It'll sell for about $26,000.
Jonathan: Did they go inside the van? Did they get shipped back to you? Like, what did that look like?
Melissa: We brought our trailer, so we had our enclosed trailer with us. So we go everywhere with that thing. It makes us money.
Brad: Just for argument's sake. So if you wanted to just be on the road, could you theoretically with the shipping that you have figured out, can you just sell from the road?
Like, do you need to be in Orlando or could you sell from somewhere in Illinois or somewhere in California?
Rob: Absolutely. Is the only downfall too would be my tools, having it, but I could easily pack the trailer with the right stuff that I needed to, to be able to ship from anywhere in the US yeah. And you can do it anywhere you're at.
If we're on the road and we wanted to live that lifestyle for a year, we could 100 percent do it and make a great living at it as well.
Brad: Man, this is the gift that keeps on giving. This is, it's such an amazing story.
Jonathan: Yeah. I was just thinking about, you know, when you're, when you're talking about your kids or your family or, you know, people in your sphere of influence and your understanding kind of what you've built for yourself.
And like, Melissa, you went to college, Rob, you didn't. What is your thought on that? You know, the interplay between college degree versus, you know, just skills. And, and what is, how are you messaging that communicating that to your
Melissa: kids? I was definitely on the, the side of, you know, go to college and get your degree and get a job.
And then after marrying him, everything kind of changed a little bit. So my mindset has done a whole, like my, yeah, a whole 180. We really don't think we're going to promote college much to our kids. I mean, we, if they have something they love and they want to do it and they need a degree to do it, then for sure.
But if they're just going just to go to get a degree, then it's not going to be something that we really push for them. We want them to go do something they're passionate
about.
Jonathan: So. All right. So we've been talking very loosely about the, you know, and the underpinnings. We've kind of heard that, that you guys are offering a course and you guys have had, I was just looking on your website, over 600 students actually start to pick up the skill.
And I'm just curious, are they learning what we talked about? Some of the skills that we talked about practically how to implement in their own area and what is the feedback that's coming back from your students?
Melissa: Yeah, this has been so fun to get to see people do the same thing. Like when we, we first started in 2015 and we're like, okay, we know we can do it, but can we really help other people do it?
And so it's been so fun, especially the last couple of years, but we've helped people from absolutely no flipping experience whatsoever, like has no idea to get started. Like that's kind of one group. And then the second group is people who have already had a little kind of dabbled in already, already have an understanding, and now they want to scale their business and go freight.
And now those are the people, those are the ones you're really excited for because he loves the freight shipping. So those are the kind of the second group of people that we've been able to help.
Brad: So was that really the secret sauce, the freight?
Rob: For scaling for us, I mean, to go big, yes, the freight was What took us to the next level is being able to do those larger items and being able to, yeah, it's just a higher profit.
So yeah, a hundred percent. That's what scaled us. I'm
Jonathan: looking on your website here and I've got it pulled up on the screen. And I'm just looking at some of the success stories, how this couple who adopted six kids made $26,000 last year in their flipping hobby. How this family used eBay to pay off $65,000 in debt in 14 months.
How the single mom went from working two jobs to making $5,000 a month on her flipping side hustle. How this mom of six made $3,187 in one flip by gaining confidence and shipping large items. These are real people. These are real transformations. And while everybody, it seems like the entire world is hell bent on saying, yeah, well, if you don't like the choices you made in your mid thirties, you probably need to go back to school and get another degree, you know, to get into another industry.
Or this is a skillset that you can start using right now. No risk. Do you understand exactly what the framework is, what the opportunity is and what you need to do. And you can just transform your life just by adding a few skills. I think that's why we get so excited about this. And then I would just say, Rob and Melissa, if people want to find out more or they want to connect with you, what is the best way for them to do that?
Melissa: Our blog, just fleamarketflipper.Com. And then our email is rob@fleamarketflipper.Com or melissa@fleamarketflipper.com.
Jonathan: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show guys.
Rob: You guys rock. Thank you so much. This is a blast. Thank you.
Jonathan: I hope by the end of this episode, you realize that the, the key word here, the key term was not flea market.
This had nothing to do with a flea market. It had to do with recognizing the value in your secondhand market and giving you the optimization strategies to turn that into an extra 30, 40, 50, and an extreme case, $100,000 a year. They've done this. They've proved this out. They've worked with multiple individuals to do so.
And you can see the pattern. You can see the threads. And it's an amazing opportunity and amazing side hustle that you can get started in with very little startup cost, something that you can do from your lazy boy and a smartphone. So for all those reasons and more, I have been over the moon to have this, you know, this episode.
It's been in the queue for a while. Glad we were able to share it with you guys. We'll see you next time. As we continue to go down the road less traveled.