Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk to Jon from Flippin Aint Easy about how he got into flipping, liquidation pallets, and his YouTube channel.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Interview with Jon From Flippin Aint Easy
Rob: What's up, guys? Today we are super stoked to be talking to Jon with Flippin Aint Easy, super excited to hear about his business and all this great information that he's going to bring to the episode today. So, Jon, thanks for jumping on here.
Jon: Hi, how are you guys doing?
Rob: Awesome.
Melissa: Thanks for talking with us today about your business.
Jon: Great to be here. Appreciate you guys inviting me.
Rob: Sweet. Let's go ahead and jump right in. So Jon give us a little bit of background. So how did you get started in flipping?
Jon: Well, it's been a long time. I started back in 2002 actually. And back then a friend of mine had mentioned, hey, you know, there's a site called eBay and we're looking to make a little side money.
I was working full time, you know, like 3:30 to midnight, so I had time during the day to do whatever I wanted. And so we sort of went in like a partnership on this. We'd go to the computer swap meet they'd have every Saturday. And at the time I had my it's a Nokia flip phone and oddly enough, you could go on to eBay and go to the search and with the numbers type in the name of the item and do a search for whatever you're looking for and you can even find the comps and not all the phones had that ability, but mine for whatever reason had it. So it worked out great. So I was able to go to the swap meet, find an item, try to pull up the comps. And you know, you didn't have anybody at that time saying, oh, well it sells for $30, $40 on eBay because that wasn't really a thing.
Right. So, I was able to get some pretty good deals, like $2 to $5 for hundred dollar items. And, you know, we bring them back and test them out and, you know, they didn't work. They would sold them, sell them for, you know, it's broken. But, for the most part, they work fine. And we made a little good side hustle there for a while.
And then, it evolved into something that I just did off and on. And, well, I guess there's other questions you're going to ask about that, but I've sold all kinds of stuff on this platform.
Melissa: I've never heard that a Nokia or a flip phone could do that because we've always like, oh, we finally got in to smartphones whatever year that was, that smartphones came out.
We can look them up. I've never.
Rob: And it's such a game when we're able to do that.
Jon: It was a slow process. I mean, to pull up an item, took about five minutes to find the comp, right. Cause you had that letter, that number letter keypad, and you had to hit it like five times.
Melissa: Yeah. It was like a three times for each letter.
Well, I need to go to this letter. Oh man. I remember texting like that. That was a long time ago.
Jon: It was a black and white screen. So it was like a monochrome screen. So it was, was an adventure, but it worked, we got it to work, so.
Rob: Okay. That's awesome. And so did I hear you right at the swap meets where it was for computer components pretty much? Is that what you guys were looking at?
Jon: Yeah, and it was an antique swap, one part was an antique swap meet and the other half was like a computer side. And so we'd go to the computer side and we would, find some pretty good stuff. We'd usually end up dealing with a few vendors. I have a really, a quick story if you want me to tell you.
And I think this is sort of, I stopped going to the swap meet after this because I had so much stuff. Well, what happened was I met with this guy and I said, okay, I'm buying all these, remember those PDAs, this PDA devices, then they never connected to anything, but they're like little handheld, like, you know, tablet.
And so he had all these wireless Bluetooth keyboards that would fold up, you know, have like little case and everything. And I'd buy them for like $5 to $10. Right, and I said, well, you keep bringing these and you know, I buy them, well, let me just buy all of what you have. And he's like, no problem. Meet me here.
On Saturday at one o'clock. Okay. And I guess it was his house. So I drove there and I got there and, met with one of his, one of his workers there. He's like, yeah. He told me to show you the, these keyboards. So he had literally like 12 boxes full, I mean, each box had like 3,000. Maybe 50 keyboards in them.
And I'm like, okay, cool. I want them all. I said, what's the price? I'll do like $1,500 and I'm like, wait, wait. That's like, like 600 or 700 keyboards, at least in here. That's like a dollar or two a piece. He's like, okay, fine. So I gave him the $1,500, I had the cash on me and I called my buddy, because I thought it was like 10 or 12.
I think it was like more like 15. My buddy had a truck. I said, I need you over here to get, help me with this stuff. So he came with the truck, we took it away. Literally that evening the guy called me, he was angry. He's like, why did you he's like you ripped me off. I'm like, what are you talking about?
You told me to deal with your employee. He told me $1,500. So I don't know what he told him to sell them for, whatever. I don't even know if he gave him all the money, but it's like, hey, this is who you told me to deal with. This is what I dealt with. So, you know, that was, I made a lot of money off of that. I mean, you're talking at each one.
It was probably anywhere between $40 and $60 for the keyboards. And, hey.
Rob: That's crazy. That is so cool though. Yeah, but don't put your boy in charge of your business if you don't want him to sell the items.
Jon: Said go there and ask for Mike. And I asked for Mike and he's like, yeah, I don't care. $1,500.
Alright, cool. I mean, there was even no negotiating. He gave me the price. I took it. So.
Rob: That's awesome. We love that.
Melissa: When you can buy in lots like that, that is a really cool, yeah, it can save you a lot. So you get it for such a little price point and then it keeps selling.
Jon: You're like five different items. So there's like five listings and everything else was, you know, I just had to go through and test them.
And, I think these are all like customer return items. You know, you have about a 10 to 20% margin where they don't work well. And.
Melissa: Yeah, for $2 a keyboard, I mean.
Jon: That was pretty good. Pretty awesome actually.
Melissa: We did that with the Christmas lights. Remember the first year that those star shower Christmas lights came out.
I think a vendor at the flea market got a whole bunch of the returns. And we went through it's about the same, like a temporary center, so it doesn't work, but we tested all of them and we sold them like within three days, like a hundred of them locally, too. Cause it was right before Christmas. Everybody wanted them and they couldn't get them at the store anymore.
So it was pretty funny, but it was interesting though. Just buying them in bulk like that, so, and testing them out.
Rob: So cool. So you said this all started about 2002. Fast forward us now to where you're at right now, give us kind of an idea of what you're doing and
Melissa: are you doing it full-time part-time?
Jon: I am full-time since 2019 and it wasn't really by choice.
I had a 26 year career. And I actually worked at a call center, through Amtrak is who I worked for, and they had a call center in California and on the east coast. Well I worked in California. And, I was just taking calls for the first what 12, 13 years of my time there. And then I got into management. And so it became a career I'm doing pretty well.
And like literally two months before they closed their office, they came to us and said, we're closing the office. You can either go to Philadelphia, the east coast, step down from management. So take a pay cut, or you can take a severance package and, you know, separate from the company. So it was a tough decision, but I was already selling part-time as it is.
So I figured, you know what? I can make this work. I think I can make it work. And so thankfully I've been able to make it work. So far, it's been an adventure though. You think, you know, as a part-timer, you know, the things you need to know to be full time, and then once you become full-time, you really find that you didn't know as much as you thought you did, if that makes sense. And so that's the scary part, you know, you're like, oh, you know, going out when I first, literally like the day after they closed the office, so we did a road trip to like Marshall's, Ross, all the stores got the shoes, did the things that everyone was telling you to do on YouTube.
And I even took pictures in front of my merchandise, posted it on Facebook was all proud and then listed it all. And it's like, why isn't it selling? So it was a definitely an awakening that's for sure.
Melissa: Yeah. And sometimes you need that, that push though too.
Rob: Our story is similar. We were pushed into flipping full-time, because of a situation similar to yourself.
Melissa: Lost health insurance with your job.
And so it's like, well, what if we jumped in full time, but it is. You're right. That it is a lot different because before, when it was your extra money, that side hustle money. Like, okay, well we can do maybe these fun things or save up for this vacation or use it for bills or whatever, extra bills. But then when it's your, when it's your real, like, this is what you're living on.
You're like, okay, well we gotta make this every month. Yeah.
Rob: Which kind of goes with your name Flippin Aint Easy because it's work. So you probably would agree you are your own boss and there's nothing like being your own boss and being able to work those long hours, if you really want to see the results.
And that's one of the coolest things about what we do for sure.
Jon: Right, and it's actually different. If you work a nine to five, you know, you get up and you dread, ah, I got to go to work today. And then you're at work, you're looking at the clock and it's like, wow, I can't even believe it's not even lunchtime yet.
We eat lunch and you get sleepy. And it's like, ah, I don't think I can make it til five o'clock or whatever. Right. With reselling I don't really have those moments. It's like, I get up, I have a routine. And, there's days that I'm like, I'm good to go like three, four more hours, you know, I've got nothing planned.
So I'm going to keep doing whatever I'm doing. And, you know, it's just a different feeling when you're your own boss, you know, it's no one's pressuring you to do a certain quota of things like you would at work. And that's why I think to be successful in this business, you have to have some kind of a self drive, because if you all your life, you've been accustomed to someone pushing you or telling you, you need to do this, or you're fired, you don't have that.
And for some, that's why they don't succeed.
Rob: Yeah, that's such a great piece of advice. You guys definitely take that you have to have some type of motivation, some type of drive to be able to be successful at this business. So Jon that is yeah, that's excellent for everybody to understand. My drive is my wife, so she's the one who keeps me on the tracks.
Because if I didn't have her, I would be a party. For us, it's a partnership. She keeps me on track and it's good because we balance each other out very well.
Melissa: Do we really need to go by that, or can you go sell some of the stuff that you haven't listed yet? Get those listed. Don't get too excited to buy some more.
Rob: Cool. So let's go back to, you started with computer components now, nowadays, is that where you kind of have you branched off of that? Are you still on track with that kind of idea?
Jon: Well, that's, that's where I started computer components. And then, you know, stopped doing that. You know, of course the family spending time with family stopped selling on eBay for years, and then, had an opportunity to, someone had a bowling alley, they just bought a bowling alley and they wanted to get rid of the pool tables that they had in there.
I don't know why they had some Harley Davidson coin-op pool tables. They had like four of them. And, he asked me if I'd help him sell them. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. Kind of like the items that you sell a large items, but, I said, okay, we can do that. I think we did the auctions at that time. And the first one went for like a little over $10,000 and local pickup.
And then the demand kind of went down for the other ones. I think like $7,000 or $8,000 was the minimum we got for the last one. But that was interesting. And then that same person, he was from Taiwan. So he was bringing in all this merchandise that he'd have. And he asked me if I wanted to sell some of his merchandise and he had boxes of like cases of stun guns.
And so I'm like, yeah, I'll try to sell those. He had stun flashlights, stun sticks, just different kind of stun guns. So I started listing them on eBay and then I got my first suspension. Well, my first warning saying that I can't sell this flashlight as a stun gun okay. So I didn't do that. You can't sell stun guns that represent the everyday item.
So then I went to the stun stick and they ended up taking that off and suspended me for three days and what's going on here. So I stopped using the term stun stick and I used stun wand and I sold those out. They didn't catch that and so, that went well and, you know, I just I've been selling. And then I even sold diamonds on eBay.
Friend of mine was buying loose diamonds out of the diamond district in LA. And he was wanting someone to help you know, sell this stuff. I'm like, fine. You know, he'd get a little cut because he, you know, he's the middleman type of thing. And so what we would do is these I clarity diamonds that had imperfections.
And you can even see them. We put them on a scanner and it was scanned the diamond. So be a nice little picture of the inside of the diamond. And if people weren't happy with it, now they'd spend like $150 for a one carat diamond, $200, not much because of the clarity, if they weren't happy with it, for some reason they'd call him and he uses magic and he'd upsell them on a thousand dollars.
So, so we did that and you know, over time I started buying, I bought like a lot of like electronic cables and stuff and sold out on Amazon and eBay, but always did this as a part-time thing that stopped for a while and started getting back into it like 2017. Tried the whole bulk thing, bulk.com.
Don't do it. That's not a way to make money. But just trying different things. And it just was, I even did the drop shipping thing. I don't know. You've guys have done that. I did that for about, I'd say eight months and yeah, you'd make a couple hundred bucks a month and it was just kind of a side thing.
That stopped and went back to liquidation on a part-time basis and then found out that I was losing my job. So I figured, well, I can jump out here in the job market or I can just try to make this work. And so that's kind of what we did.
Rob: That's awesome. So where do you source most of your stuff right now that you're, that you're selling?
Jon: Well, we have some local liquidators here that we deal with. We also do, you know, bstock, you know, liquidation.com, different different sites like that. If you've watched my videos lately, I can tell you that I have been dealing with a shortage of liquidation. And I think my theory is that it's a lot of these bins stores popping up that are really demanding a lot of the merchandise.
And I know that because I'm a member of a lot of the co-op, the well, the bin store co-op, sites and some of the people who buy the truckloads of items and there's a big demand on those, those forums for merchandise or people just can't fill their bin stores fast.
And I think, the small guy like myself who relies on, you know, two, three pallets at a time, not necessarily the truckload is sort of getting squeezed out, I think, but things that the last week or week or so has been a little bit better, for me. So let's just hope that there was just maybe it was a glitch or in and out, you know, anomaly that, haven't been able to find the merchandise.
So that's, the biggest problem that I have in this business for myself is the sourcing part of it. That's the toughest.
Melissa: I did want to ask you also, when you were talking about, you know, you're selling stuff for people back in the, you might still do that too, but that's a really great point that a way people can get started too, is selling other people's stuff.
If they want it sold, where these relationships you already had, they knew you were selling. Did you tell them like you're selling on eBay? If you have anything, how did you create those relationships?
Jon: My ex wife. She was my wife at the time she worked at that moment. She was the manager of that particular bowling alley.
And so she had mentioned to him, he had all this merchandise that, you know, I sell on eBay if he needs help move in it. And, there's you know, so we tried the whole pool table thing. And I guess it went well enough where he's like, hey, I got more stuff in Taiwan that they'll ship out here, like, all right, cool.
So that's kind of how that went. Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa: I think that, yeah, creating those relationships can always be a good thing. Cause we always, I feel like in the beginning, when we did this as a side hustle, we really didn't tell anybody what we did. Our friends knew, but generally kind of didn't want anybody to know what we were doing.
It's I don't know. Reselling on eBay, but then the more people that found out and knew like the more stuff like, hey, we have this, you want it? Just take it and sell it. Like, no, we have enough things, but they will, like people come out of the woodwork.
Jon: With that is you have to manage their expectation because, you know, maybe they think it's worth this much, but you can only get this much for it on eBay.
And then heaven forbid you get a return and then you have to say, well, you know, the money we made on this, we have to give it back. You know.
Melissa: It's true. So having clear expectations upfront for sure. So what would you say your average, like monthly income from your reselling and what platforms are you on right now?
How many?
Jon: I'm mainly on eBay. I do, well, I did last year, a little bit of Mercari and some Amazon, you know, finding that amazon would be an ideal place to sell, but you're just gated in almost every major brand. So it's very tough to get your foot in the door. But no for me eBay $10,000-$12,000 is sort of the range.
Just depending on the type of merchandise I can get my hands on. Really, I tend to see that, summertime slows down. Yeah. And I think that's like a historical thing. A lot of, lot of sellers have issues reselling in the summer, but, no about $10,000 to $12,000 is the gross. Now you can take that.
And then your margin is where you really want to focus on we're at about a 50 to 60% margin after eBay fee shipping cost of goods, that type of thing. So it, it works. It pays the bills.
Rob: Yeah, that's awesome.
Melissa: For sure. Have you had any of like a most memorable flip that you could think of?
Jon: That's pretty much the one. I mean, lately, no, I mean, you get, you get home runs every once in a while. I buy liquidation pallets, you get your thousand dollar items. They're like, wow, you weren't expecting it. Yeah. I have a memorable transaction that didn't go well initially.
Well, it went well, it was a HP switch and that's like a computer server kind of thing that I got in the pallet. And it was like brand new. And of course I couldn't test it. And it had came with an Australian plug and I listed it as like $1,200. And I think the guy, it was like $1,100. He offered and I took it.
So shipped it out to him in Minnesota, heard nothing back, you know, that's the best thing. You're always like two weeks in. You're like, okay, great thing. I think we're good. Right. And so nothing the first month. And literally I think like on the 50th day, I get a thing from eBay saying there's a charge back. No, no return, nothing, a charge back.
So, the charge back said it came burnt out and it, you know, this, that other thing. And, they had mentioned that they had shipped it to Europe. Well, you can't do that on eBay. So I fought that. I fought that charge back. And of course you guys know that when you try to fight charge backs on eBay, they give you one photo that you can upload.
Well, how do you explain your side of the story on a charge back with a photo? So I had to figure out that you use a word document, you type up your side of the story on one page. And then do a screenshot of that word document and then submit it as a photo. I won my case, you know? Yeah. So that's a great feeling.
You're like crap, you know, they put a $1,200 hold, a $1,100 hold on my account. And you know, finally they release it and I get the money. It's a relief, you know, when you're, you're looking forward to that $1,100 can make it or break it for you. Absolutely. So, that's probably one of the most memorable flips.
I mean, it's always good to get a good item and sell it and not ever hear back from the customer again, that's the perfect scenario, perfect world.
Melissa: Yeah, we have a, I just think of, also knowing if they ask you a million questions before they buy, maybe you don't want to sell it to them because those usually are the ones that want returns.
Jon: As I call it on my channel, having a block party.
Melissa: Yeah.
Rob: That's for sure.
Melissa: So what would you tell somebody, like, if you were to tell yourself when you were starting out, I mean, you have a lot of experience now, but what's something you might tell yourself to help somebody newer starting out like a piece of advice to leave everyone?
Jon: I would say don't quit your day job. And you want to do this on a part-time basis to see if it's something you even want to do, because I had a friend of mine who, he's retired. He actually moved out to Vegas about the same time I did. And he was looking for some side money and I said, let's go in halves on this pallet.
And, let's just try it out. Well, of course it's a pallet that we received that had like six or seven big ticket items in there, like three, $400 items in there and wouldn't, you know, it, every single one was missing. So his first experience was like, this is crap, you know? So I said, just stick with it.
You know, we're gonna work with them to get some of this money back, which wasn't a whole lot by the time it was said and done, but he took his half and I told him, here's what you do, you do this, do that, another thing. And after about three, four weeks, he's like just buy my half from me. I'm done, you know, he wasn't self-driven, he didn't like the returns and he didn't really have the experience to really test a lot of these items nor the patience.
So you really just have to number one, sell things that you enjoy doing. So if you have a hobby or something you like dealing with, try to venture into that. If you can, before you just start selling everything, you know, don't jump into this full-time until, you know, it's something that not only you can do, but you can make, you can definitely make money at, because a lot of people jump into these pallets and they then wonder, well, why am I not making any money?
And it's because you just don't you, first of all, you bought the wrong pallet and B you probably didn't take the time to really investigate what you're doing, you know? So.
Melissa: We get that. We get the question a lot, like, so do I need a truck, a trailer, a storage. I'm like, no, you don't need any of that. Start just see if you like it.
Jon: Don't even buy anything. Start off on the stuff that's in your house that you're not, stuff that's in your closet has been collecting dust for months. And see if you even want to bother with reselling after a couple of weeks of that.
Rob: Absolutely, such great advice for sure. Stick to that stuff that you like, your hobbies, that kind of stuff, and make sure you do enjoy flipping before you go all into it.
Melissa: Then you get addicted to the treasure hunt.
Rob: Absolutely.
Jon: You know, even with, I don't do a whole lot of, well lately, I've been going to like the Goodwills and picking up some like electronics and stuff, but it's really, it's the unknown. I think that gets us, right. It's that it's like buying a lottery ticket and, you know, chances are, you're not gonna win anything, but you couldn't win a million dollars.
So, you know, and it's that one out of every four or five times, you buy a lot and you go, wow, I can't believe I got all this stuff. That's what keeps people coming.
Melissa: Yep.
Rob: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Jon, thanks so much for jumping on here. Let us know where can everybody find you. Give us your handle on your social media and stuff like that.
We'll put links below, but where can people find you?
Jon: Well on YouTube, FlippinAintEasy. There's no apostrophes it's F L I P P I N A I N T E A S Y. It's on YouTube. We have about 10,000 subscribers. And we just talk about eBay issues. I'm sure I'm not eBay's favorite YouTuber because I call them out for some of the things that they do that I think that they should do better.
I think sellers do not get the, sort of respect that we probably should get. If you're a reseller on eBay, you probably already know that. As far as Instagram it's, @flippin_aint_easy2020, that's my handle on Instagram. And then of course, email flippinainteasy2020@gmail.com, but, come on over to the channel on YouTube, but we'll be glad to have you.
We put out about two to three videos a week and we also do live streams.
Melissa: Awesome. I think that's great too, because that, you know, you talk about eBay and because YouTube and podcasts, it gives us a voice to be, you know, the voice for other people that have, you know, something frustrating happened.
Cause they're not, obviously nobody's perfect, but there are things that they could do better. And if they care to listen to the people who are selling. I think that's a great thing to use your platform for that. So that's awesome.
Rob: So awesome. Well, Jon thank you so much. Guys, yeah, go check him out.
We'll have the links below you. You can go check them out that way. Jon, thank you again for all your time. All your great advice that you're giving everybody out there. And yeah, keep rocking, man.
Jon: All right. Thanks Rob and Melissa. Thank you for having me on.