Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper interview Dalton from Dealing With Dalton about his shoe flipping business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Dealing With Dalton Interview
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's podcast, we're so excited to talk to Dalton with, dealing with Dalton is the name of his brand.
Super excited to dive into his business, learn a little bit more about what he does, how he does it. So Dalton, thanks for jumping on here with us today.
Dalton: Of course. Thank you so much for having me.
Melissa: We're excited to talk to you. We got to learn a little bit about your business at the recent reseller summit. So we wanna dive a little bit more into that and, and yeah. So, we can just kick it off with how did you get even started in reselling? Like, give us a little background about you.
Dalton: Okay. So the way I got into, like, the officially reselling, because I've definitely sold things like on eBay and flipped things here and there before this, but, it was never looked at as like, a business and way to actually generate income.
But I worked in the hotel or the restaurant slash hotel industry, for a while before reselling and I was working at a hotel here in Orlando and made, made friends with, my buddy named Carlos. And one day, I'd never had the thought of going into like a thrift store and reselling or going into like, retail stores and flipping things from there.
It's always just been like, oh, I have this. Let me just sell it on eBay. I don't need it. Instead of donating, that's, that's my background of selling on eBay. But then one day at work, Carlos is just like we were about to get off. And I remember him saying like, I'm about to go to Ross to flip some football cleats,
And I'm like, what are you, what are you talking about? That makes, that made zero sense to me. I'm like, how are you gonna go into Ross and buy some shoes from them and then sell them online for a profit? Just didn't make sense. But I went along with him. And long story short, we did not make any money reselling football cleats from Ross, but, but that did like kind of take us down a rabbit hole. You know, we got on YouTube and seen other people having success doing similar stuff. Eventually stumbled across, I'm sure Rally Roots was the first one. And at the time they were really big in the garage sale scene. So me and Carlos would like go to the garage sales every single weekend.
And it got to the point where like it was garage sales taking priority over work. I remember one day, like noon rolls around and my buddy from work texts me. He's like, hey bro, are you good? I'm just, I'm at a garage sale and it's not the kind of guy that just like checks in on me. I'm like, like, yeah, I'm great.
What's up? He says, you're supposed to be at work at 10:30. I'm like, oops. I am. I am at work . And so, basically that, that's how I got into reselling. It just kept going up and up from there to the point where obviously I quit my job and I've been doing it for a few years now.
Melissa: Awesome.
Rob: Awesome. That's really cool.
Melissa: How long did you do it kind of part-time before this became your full-time?
Dalton: Right. Good question. So I, I don't know an exact timeline, obviously, but I'd say probably four to, four to six months at that job, I was doing it part-time and then I got fired from my job. As you can probably imagine from that last story. I got fired from my job.
I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna go full-time at reselling. And it, it completely flopped. It lasted about a couple months, and then I went and got a, a part-time job as a server at Bahama Breeze here in Orlando. Instead of going back into a full-time job, I just got a part-time job to basically supplement, supplement my bills so I could focus on the reselling side.
And then, I'd say another, probably three to four months after that, I went full-time and haven't looked back.
Melissa: Awesome.
Rob: That's awesome. For sure. So that probably, I mean, the first initial jump into it, when you tried to do it full time, what, what was it that pushed you back into it? Was, were you not prepared for it or what caused you not to be able to go full time the first time?
Dalton: So there was, there was a lot. Basically the, the initial time that I was just garage selling and just dabbling and going to thrift stores, I, it felt like a business because I was making a lot of money, but I wasn't, you know, treating it like an actual business where I was setting aside money to reinvest in inventory.
I wasn't paying myself, quote unquote. So after I went full-time as a reseller, it was. I was still, I was just selling everything at that point. Just anything I could get my hands on at garage sales thrift stores. And it, when I was working, it felt like I was making a lot of money because I had that fulltime income and then it what felt like a full-time income on top of that from reselling.
But then when you got to the point of needing to pull from that income to invest in more inventory and really needing to budget for every single bill that you have on top of buying more inventory, that's, that's where I went out, because I basically just ran outta money, couldn't pay my bills, and I couldn't buy more inventory, so I needed to go get another job.
Melissa: We can definitely relate to that. Absolutely, absolutely. Full time, like it's great when it's your side hustle money because it's like, oh, this is like extra money, or we wanna go on a vacation, go make, go flip something and make some money. Like let's go fund this, whatever we need to do, or even whatever, unexpected expenses or whatever.
But then once it's your full-time income, you're like, oh, okay, now we gotta actually gotta work this a little bit different. Gotta be a little bit different than when it wasn't just a side hustle. So we definitely can, we've had those moments where like, oh, okay, we gotta put this money aside. And it makes you like, all right.
Rob: That's cool. So, and you said in the beginning you would just buy anything. You'd sell anything. You'd do that. And now we know a little bit more about your backstory, but tell everybody kind of, where you're at now and kind of how you honed in on what you're doing right now.
Dalton: All right. So that transition from going from the full-time job at the hotel to trying to be a full-time reseller and then getting that part-time job, when I got that part-time job to focus in on my reselling, what I learned after going through all my numbers and spreadsheets, the little spreadsheets that I had at the time, and just looking at how much I was profiting on each individual item, I decided to go just all in on just selling shoes. So right now I don't sell anything, but shoes, and the reason I came to that conclusion is because whenever I looked back on what I did wrong, when I tried to be a full-time reseller the first time it basically revolved around me wasting a bunch of time with a bunch of other stuff because at least in the area that I'm in, I can get enough shoes to supplement basically all of my inventory, and I don't need to worry about anything else.
And when you, to me, at least when you're doing one single category, you have an idea of how much is it gonna cost per pair, and how much am I getting back after I sell it per pair? So then you can break it down to like, this is how many I need to sell per week in order to pay my bills and buy new inventory.
So it was less, it was more methodical and less just like, oh, I hope I find a really expensive item at the thrift store for cheap this week to, you know, cover everything. It was more, okay, if I wanna be full-time, I have to sell a hundred pairs of shoes this week and 50 of those shoes are gonna cover my bills and 50 of those shoes are gonna cover my, reinvestment into more inventory.
Right, absolutely. Just to dumb it down a little bit.
Rob: Cool.
Melissa: Yeah, that's a, yeah. The way numbers is just really a numbers game. Like you have to know your numbers and that's something I think that a lot of resellers probably fall into, especially, I mean you do too. Like it's a fun thing that treasure hunting and going, and it's fun. And then when you're doing it just kind of as a hobby and you're like, oh, now it's really a business, I need to keep track of my numbers. Yeah. You said little spreadsheet. So how do you, how did you keep track and what do you do? Like, how do you keep track of your inventory now?
Dalton: Okay, so now it is vastly different from in the beginning. Now it's pretty minimal to be honest. When I was starting, when I was selling everything, I just had a basic Excel spreadsheet and I tried to enter in everything that I had and like how much I paid. And, but it wasn't very accurate. I was just like kind of guessing on fees and just, just not putting enough effort into it.
And then when I went full or I went back to a job to try to, you know, assess what was going wrong with my business. I started paying a lot more attention to my spreadsheets. So I would literally, every single pair of shoes that I purchased, I'd have a whole entire spreadsheet it, it had the skews on one side so I could just search it up when it sells.
And I put the exact fees from eBay, Poshmark, wherever it sold, the date I picked it up, the date it sold, so I knew which brands were, you know, selling quicker, which ones I should start avoiding, what models are doing better. But after doing that for prob, I probably did that a whole year. And as you can imagine, doing all that is a lot of work.
And I do think that it's very necessary in the beginning cuz it taught me so much about my business, but a lot of, one thing that I think a lot of resellers get wrong is that's, that's not necessary once you get to a certain point. People think they need all that for taxes. And at this point, like I, I know what I need to pick up and I know what I'm gonna profit on certain stuff.
I'm more educated on what like the comps are showing me and I can do the stuff in my head. And now all I'm recording really how many units I'm picking up per month and how much I'm spending per month. And then all the other inventory or all the other numbers I'm pulling from eBay from Poshmark, such as like the gross revenue and all the fees that I'm paying, shipping I'm paying.
But the really detailed spreadsheet did help me understand my business more, and I do think that's very necessary. But once you get an understanding of that business, I think that it's really, you know, a waste of time to a certain extent.
Rob: For sure.
Melissa: Yeah, that's interesting because yeah, it did help you to know, you know, what is worth it and what do you have a, like a low limit on, like, you're only gonna make it this much profit, so you're not gonna pick up this shoe because it's only X amount.
Like how much profit do you have to make on an item? On a shoe?
Dalton: So right now my average, picking up shoes for around $10 and I'm selling them for about $30 after shipping and fees, before taxes. So I'm turning $10 into $30 and I like to stay around that, obviously. That if, if I'm picking up a ton of shoes every single week, obviously I'm gonna hit some home runs and find some like hundred dollars profit shoes.
And sometimes, you know, I'll find some kids' shoes that are like $3 that I can sell for $15 plus shipping. And like, I can justify that ROI as long as there's not too much work going into it. So it's, it's really just about averages. So I just, like I said, I like to stay around that $20 profit per pair mark.
Rob: Yeah. Cool. What about how many shoes are you, are, are you actively doing right now and what are you doing for storage? Like how, cuz I, I think of the stuff that we sell as big and, a lot of the times I can't misplace, you know, an oven somewhere in the shop and shoes. I mean, I think when you get to so many of 'em like how do you keep track of that and how do you find 'em once they sell and that kind of thing?
Dalton: Yeah, so luckily, the spreadsheet that I mentioned earlier really set me up for success in that ballpark because each shoe is individually, added a skew. Yeah. A close pin, I use a close pin and I write the SKU that shows what shelf and what row it's on.
So when it sells, I can go right into that, the eBay listing, see what SKU it is. I also take a picture of the close pin and put that in the listing just in case there's any typos. I can see it with the shoe. And then I use a storage unit to, to store everything. So that's, that's pretty much it.
You know, we got the close pin, the inventory sheet that I was talking about, the spreadsheet. Initially, that's why I started doing that. So I could see like, when it sells, I can just search that number and then I can put the numbers in. But then once its scaled up to this point, I have, 850 shoes in inventory right now.
It makes, it makes things so much easier. Like the inventory system is something that you need to put in place like very early, cuz it's hard to, you know, fix that towards the end.
Melissa: Yeah, and when you can't find something after it sells, it's not very cool.
Dalton: Oh yeah. Yeah, I've been there.
Melissa: It's kind of annoying because then you're like, ah, I don't wanna refund them, but I have to find this item and get it shipped out.
Rob: I think I just had to refund somebody let, or like last month, for an owner's manual, I typically don't do small stuff, and sometimes I'll pick up something, an owner's manual that I got out of the trash, sold it for a hundred dollars, and then I could not find where I put the owner's manual.
Cause it's not that big. It's easy to lose. So, no, I agree. Yeah. Your inventory and how you're storing it and how you're keeping track of it is very, very important. So that's really cool. I like that way that you're doing it and ]yeah. It, you even have the picture, did I hear you right? You have the picture in the eBay listing or Poshmark listing.
So you can, all you do is go to that picture and then you can find exactly where it's at in your, inventory.
Dalton: Of course. Yeah. Cause I've, I ran into issues in the past where, like, you know, you're trying to get work done as fast as possible and you're trying to put up as many listings as you can and like get done for the day.
And, you know, typos happen, like sometimes I'll put the wrong shelf number or put the wrong letter at the beginning of the skew and then it's like I gotta go through everything to find it. And then that's what leads not being able to find the shoes. So I was like, a good solution to this is just when I'm photographing the shoes, stick that clothes pin in front of the shoe, snap a picture so I can visually see the clothes pin with that shoe.
So if there is ever a typo and I go to that shelf and it's not there, I can just pull up that picture and it'll take me right to it.
Rob: Nice.
Melissa: Yeah. Cool. And have you ever got any questions like what's the clothes pin for? Like, just?
Dalton: Surprisingly, no, I really, I really haven't.
Melissa: I feel like there's somebody out there that would just what is it?
Dalton: It's probably gonna happen.
Melissa: Yeah. So how much are you, what is your goal, like, as far as listings go? Like what are, how many are you trying to keep listed each month? Like what's kind of your goal
Dalton: yeah. So right now my goal every single day is to get 20 listings up every day. That's my goal for like a month.
I'm looking at it like a, like a monthly period. So I wanna average 20 throughout the month, but I obviously need to be listing every single day, cuz that's just how eBay works. But I, I haven't yet hit a month where I've averaged 20 a day. I've hit 15. And for some reason I, I don't, my brain doesn't work to where I can just jump up to 17.
I just, I make it hard on myself. And then, to a round number. So I'm, I'm right now I'm working to hit that 20 a day mark. This month has been tough cuz you know, it's the holidays. Yeah, it took basically a whole week. Not completely off, but, you know, parents came into town, had to go have Thanksgiving, so this month might not be the first 20 months, but that's, that's the goal I'm working for.
I'm staying above 15 on average, but I'm still working to hit that 20.
Rob: Yeah. Cool. And on average, how many are you shipping out a day? How many are you selling and shipping out?
Dalton: About 12. 12 to 13.
Melissa: Cool. Okay. Yeah, sales are coming in. So what, what is an average? I know like with reselling, you're very much a numbers focus, which is awesome, but you know, reselling can have very ebbs and flows in your, in your income.
So what would be like your average month, would you say, and eBay, that you sell most on poshmark too?
Dalton: I sell on eBay and Poshmark, but eBays, eBay's the bulk of it.
Melissa: Okay. Awesome.
Dalton: This is, this is one area that I, I'm, I'm not super keeping track of the, down to the numbers of profit. I recently read a book Profit First.
Have you guys read that?
Melissa: Yeah. That's good.
Dalton: Yeah, so I'm, I'm like halfway through it right now and it's just like, opened my eyes. I'm like, I need to, I need to figure this stuff out and get actual numbers, but I'm assuming like a 40% net profit before taxes. And an average month is about $15,000 in sales.
So I'd say right now my before tax income's like $5,000 to $6,000 a month.
Melissa: That's awesome.
Rob: That's really good. Yeah. That's awesome.
Melissa: Yeah. And about how many hours, cause I'm always curious, how many hours a week are you putting towards your business?
Dalton: So putting towards, yeah, putting towards the shoe business I would say I'm around that full-time mark the 40 hours, but like, it, I'm working a lot more than that because I mean, I, I look at content creation as a side hustle. Yeah. And it takes up a lot of time. So I'm, I am working over a fulltime, full-time hours. But like, I, I love it. I feel like the content creation is more just like, for fun, like a hobby and it doesn't feel like work.
And like I don't have deadlines for anything. Like I don't have to post something every day. I want to, but I don't have to. So it's, that feels more like a hobby. But I do feel like the shoe, reselling part of it does take up almost, probably, almost a full time schedule.
Melissa: Okay. Yeah. People don't realize sometimes what goes into creating content. It's a lot, it could be a lot of work. So it is for sure. Yeah. But it is fun. It is fun. I had a thought that you just said I can't.
Rob: Content creation?
Melissa: No, it was about issue. Oh. When you said, you know, the other part of side, side hustle being content creation, but then you have another part of your business where you are selling shoe trees, right?
Yes. And this came from your business of selling shoes. So how did that come about?
Dalton: That, that came from the business of selling shoes and the side content creation, because that, The number one question that I'd get in my dms or in comments like, what are those things you're putting in your shoes when you're photographing them?
And for the longest time I was just sending affiliate links to Amazon and making a couple pennies. And I'm like, I to the, at that point I had had built up a decent following on Instagram. There's a great community within the reselling area where everybody likes to support each other. And I was just like, you know what, let me just try to private label these.
And I purchased like 4,000 shoe trees. Just had 'em shipped to my door, I crossed my fingers. They'd work out. And they've been doing really well. They've been doing very, very well. Yeah.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: So are you selling 'em mainly on, I mean, just, social media, is where you've been selling 'em, like people pretty, how people know about 'em?
Are you advertising for them?
Dalton: Yeah. So I have a Shopify website and I just have 'em listed up on there. All of the traffic is driven from Instagram and YouTube. I have ambitions to get more into the, like, the Pinterest area, cuz as I'm sure you know, Pinterest is like a search engine. And, just like people go on YouTube to search, you know, how to photograph shoes.
When you type into Google how to photograph shoes, sometimes there's Pinterest that pops up. That's another thing, like we said, content creation takes up so much time. It's, it's, it's on my plate. I've posted a little bit on Pinterest trying to build that up, but I, I can see potential over there. But right now the majority of my leads are coming from YouTube and Instagram.
Melissa: That's awesome. That you saw, saw that problem.
Rob: Yeah. That's awesome.
Melissa: So it was worth it, that risk of four, was it 4,000 that you bought at one time?
Dalton: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 4,000, and I mean, I, I honestly love it, like the feeling of like getting that Shopify notification come in. Like, it's like selling shoes is cool, but like I, I made a product and people are buying it, and it's like, I'm so addicted to that feeling like I'm like, I, I private label this, I wanna private label this and I don't have enough room for it in my apartment, so gotta take it slow.
Melissa: But the one thing that's cool about that is they all, all those things work cohesively. Like it's not like you're doing the scene market. Yeah. Separate things. Like everything builds on each other, what you're doing.
You found a product that works for the people that you're talking to. So it's like it all works together, which is really cool.
Rob: Yeah.
Dalton: A hundred percent. Yeah, and I, the, I've always like known about the private label space, but it's never really caught my interest because the majority of people are like, you know, like private labeling, some like random thing on Amazon that has a good sales rank and nobody, like, they're not marketing it themselves.
They're just tossing it up on Amazon and like, that's awesome if they're killing it. But like for me, that doesn't, that doesn't excite me at all. But whenever the thought of like, this is my brand is selling shoes and this goes perfectly with it, it's not a super expensive product. It's a $15 product.
Like, and it will be useful. It's better, like I. I was thinking about like, you know, selling merch like everybody does. And I, I, I do that and I love doing that, but like having a product that people can get and use and it, it's awesome. I love it. Yeah.
Melissa: And so this is for people photographing with the trees, is that what you use it for?
Dalton: That's the, that's the main thing. I use them for cleaning shoes as well. I've, that's, that's probably like phase two of my marketing cuz right now it. I've only been talking about the, the utility of photographing them, but I also use them when I'm cleaning my shoes. I pop 'em in there and like, if you're ever trying to like scrub the uppers of some shoes, having them filled up, it just makes it the cleaning so much easier.
And that, yeah, cleaning and photo photography, those are the two main, main uses for 'em.
Melissa: That's really cool. That is. And are you doing mostly, like what kind of shoes are doing, are they all used shoes? I mean, you're going to?
Dalton: I mean the, yeah, the bulk is used shoes.
Melissa: Cause you're not doing like sneakers, like the, I mean like the new sneaker drops and stuff like that. That's a whole different.
Dalton: Yeah. I mean, I, I've, I've dabbled in that in the past, but the, like it's a lot funner to do that, like having a shipment of like, Jordans come to the door, right. It's, it's cool. It's cool to look at, but like you're making the same amount of profit, give or take, like, it obviously depends on the shoes.
Like sometimes there, there's a, a Travis Scott collab that you can sell for a $500 profit, but the majority of those, those drops you're making like $20, $30 profit and you can make $20, $30 profit on used shoes at the thrift store, and one you have to pay $200 for and one you have to pay $10 for. So, I choose the one that doesn't look as good, isn't as cool, but, you know, same profit margins.
Rob: And less outta pocket for sure.
Dalton: Right, right, right.
Rob: Which is good. Yeah.
Melissa: So are you going mostly to thrift stores in flea market and garage sales still? That's kind of your?
Dalton: Yep. I don't, I don't go to garage sales because it's I, I like to go to garage sales cuz I like I, I like treasure hunting. I like, I like going, to antique malls and like seeing what I can find out there.
But it's never really to resell at this point. It's just to like see what I can find for myself because with garage sales, you, you don't know if they're gonna have shoes and you don't know how many shoes they're gonna have. But I know I can go to the, the main thrift stores in my area and they're always gonna have shoes on the shelves.
The flea market vendors are always gonna have shoes out, so mainly stick to thrift stores and flea markets.
Melissa: Yeah. That's awesome. Cool. We love, I love you going to yard sales because I, it's just, you never know what you're gonna find. Yeah, but he doesn't like to, he prefers the flea market or thrift store.
Rob: Well, I grew up at yard sales and I loved yard sales, but the problem is the yard sales back when I was a kid were huge.
And they had tons of stuff. Now you can go to a yard sale and it can have a couple things out front, and you're like, okay, I just wasted my time driving to this place. This one vendor or this one homeowner has a couple things and I wasted my time. And now you go to our flea market. Our flea market's got like couple hundred vendors of all the type of stuff that's at a yard sale and you can get one hit.
Melissa: It's like a bunch of yard sales in one shot.
Dalton: Right. And honestly, I haven't tried to go to yard sales, since they got rid of yard sale treasure map. So it's just like, it seems like a headache to try to find them, you know what I mean?
So I, yeah. I've given up on 'em lately.
Melissa: We have some community yard sales, like they'll see signs yard this Saturday. So we'll go and then, but most of the time we're disappointed. They like, people are sitting out there with like five things and they're like, that's not really a yard sale. Yeah.
Like we do yard sales probably twice a year cuz our kids like, they have so much fun with it and then like we get rid of some of their toys or extra inventory or whatnot. And we want a big yard sale. Like it's a like come much.
Rob: Right. It's out front. It's pretty sweet.
Dalton: Oh yeah, those are the best.
Melissa: One of the last questions I had that I was thinking when you were talking, when you first stopped, like, or, or went back and got a part-time job, did you have it in your head that, cuz I've had this disc, like we've had this discussion, we've done this, we've yeah.
Like, did you have in your head, okay, well this isn't gonna work. I have to go back or I gotta, or did you always know you were still gonna do it? Or did you wanna go back full time? Like, what was kind of that thought process? Cause it's hard, like that's kind of a hard spot to be in.
Dalton: Yeah, a hundred percent.
No, I, I didn't have that thought in my head whatsoever. Mainly, I don't think I've ever even talked about this. This is just the first thing that came to my head. Whenever I went full time after getting fired from my job, I went home. My family lives in Kansas and I went home and I was having lunch with my friends and I was, they were, they asked what I was doing.
I was like, I got fired from my job. And, they knew I'd been like, reselling on eBay and stuff. And I was like, I'm just gonna do this full time. And they laughed at me. They like, not, not in like a rude way, just like how boys like will, will, your friends will laugh at you. You know, doubt you sometimes just in a playful way, in a competitive way. But they, like I could see in their face, they genuinely believe that I would not do it as my full-time income. And so like, having to go back and get that job. I was like a little devastated. Yeah. I was like, I, like I, I have to face these guys the next time I go see 'em. And, just having that was enough to be like, no, I'm getting a part-time job.
I'm gonna figure it out. And like I, yeah, the day, day one of that job, I was like, I know I'm gonna quit eventually.
Melissa: Yeah. That's cool. Yeah.
That's awesome. Cause it's hard to go. It is. You're like, it's more, yeah. Having those friends and having that thought of, I have to go tell them. Like, that's not fun, do it. I gotta make, make it happen.
And how long ago was that, that you went full-time? The second time. How long have you been full time now?
Dalton: Like three years.
Melissa: Okay. I saw you said.
Rob: No, I was gonna say I had the same feeling. I mean, even when we did it as a part-time when we were first married for years we did it. I didn't think it was legit. Like you couldn't legitly be a reseller.
And this was probably before social media and all that stuff. Back in the day, we didn't think that that's,
Melissa: it was just always our extra money.
Rob: Yeah. And, but I would tell people about it and they'd be like, dude, how much did you make on flipping that? That'd be like $300, $500. And they'd go, whoa, that's awesome.
But you never put it. Hey, you can do this full time. It's pretty sweet. Right? So, no, I totally get that too. That's, that's pretty cool.
Melissa: But we have had moments too where we're like, okay, I not you, you never do it, but I, like one of us needs to go back and get a real job. And luckily not so much recently, but we had that conversation for a while.
Rob: Yeah. We went full time. Yeah, for sure.
Dalton: I mean, I'm not gonna lie, sometimes that that thought does creep in. Cause like, you know, like in the, if I went back and got a job, I'd hate it. I know that. So if I like have that thought creep in, I'm just like, what are you thinking, dude? But like, sometimes it's like when you, when you own your own, like you do your own thing, you own your business, you, you're doing whatever, you're your own boss.
It always feels like you're working. At least for me, I haven't figured that out yet. Like, I can't just shut it off. And that's the one thing, the only thing I miss about having a job is like when I clocked out, like mentally I clocked out. Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah. That makes sense.
Rob: No, we trust, we do the same thing. I mean, we're up till 12 or one o'clock sometimes doing social media stuff or, stuff for the back end of the, the course, anything like that.
Melissa: So, recording a podcast like last night.
Rob: It is, you kind of envy people who get a clock out at five o'clock and they get to go home and do whatever they want, but then at the same time, they gotta be to work from nine exactly till five and it's like I like my freedom. I wanna go do what I wanna do when I wanna do it.
So this other part is worth it for me.
Melissa: And you're not really employable anymore.
Rob: No. Heck, there's no way you work it. No way to get a job.
Dalton: Yeah. And not to mention, like when I had a job, I, I like the hotel that I worked at in January, every year they gave you a sheet and you had to like rank your holidays.
So they, they seen who liked which holidays best, and that's how they determined which two holidays you could take off for the year. And like now, I haven't missed a holiday in three years. It's, yeah, like I, I can't go back.
Rob: That's awesome.
Melissa: No, you don't realize. Yeah. It, it can be stressful, but man, that like, just having those holidays, being able to take off when you want to is, yeah, that's definitely something that's awesome.
Rob: Yeah. So, well dude, hey, give everybody who's listening, somebody who might be on the verge of doing this full time, give 'em one piece of advice that, you know, helped you, get through where you're at. What could you tell somebody who's right there on the fence thinking about doing this full time and wanting to do it, reselling, whether it's shoes, whether it's, whatever it is. Do you have any, any, any good advice that you could say?
Dalton: Yeah, so I, I definitely, this is like a super controversial topic, as I'm sure you know. I, I only sell shoes and I don't think that everybody should like completely niche down to only one thing, but I do think that like, have like the 80, what's it called, the Pareto principle, the 80 20 thing, like having 80% of your business, one thing makes it so much easier to, you know, for every aspect of the business, like we talked about earlier, you know your numbers, like, you know exactly how much of this item you need to sell every month to pay your bills, to reinvest. And then you still, if you don't want to go all in on that one category, you still have that 20% to play with.
And so I think nicheing down getting, cuz I could talk about this all day, like when you, when you only sell one thing, you got one photo set up, you got one inventory system, you're shipping one thing, you've only got 3, 4, 5 boxes that fit that work for every single. It's just streamlines everything. On top of that, one thing that really helped me is making friends with people that do the same thing as you.
Like I, back to what I said about my friend telling me I couldn't do this. I'm super competitive, so like having a few people in my area that are also resellers, like there's some people that view that as competition and they want nothing to do with it. I, I am good friends with most of the resellers in my area, and like, if one of them is just absolutely knocking it outta the park, they're killing it.
I don't wanna be the guy that falls behind, like, I'm not, I'm not gonna let him just like do, do this much better on eBay and me just fall behind having people around you that push you, that motivate you is way more important than people think. And then I guess another, another top tip that I would give you guys, another thing that I noticed, not like I didn't make this switch right when I went full-time after quitting that part-time job, like this took me like a year and a half into my business to finally make the switch is to stop focusing on getting the top dollar for every single item.
When I started being like, you know what just because these shoes are worth $200, I can still sell them for $120 because I got, I picked them up for $10. And it, it's, that's, that's a dramatic example, but like, it, it even goes down to like, okay, I, these shoes are worth $55 and I got a $40 offer. Sure, you could wait out for 15 extra dollars or you could sell it today.
Go to the thrift store, buy three more of that exact same item, and then just keep going. Like, just focus on moving inventory as fast as you can, even if you're taking a lower profit. And just move as much inventory as you can. I think those are good.
Rob: That's really good. Yeah.
I love 'em. I love 'em. And yeah, I think those are great pieces of wisdom, great pieces of advice.
Melissa: And I just wanted to add, when you said, you know, get to know people, other resellers, there's a great community online, so they're, of resellers. So if you don't know anybody in your physical area, you can go online and there's just so many. And we, for long, like we've been doing stuff on the internet, like content creation for seven years now, but we never really tried to get to know many people until the last couple years.
Not really for competition. I think it was. We don't want people to think like we're copying them, we're just gonna stay in our lane. Like this is what we're doing. But then the more that we have, it's like there's some really cool people out there. This has been a lot of fun. Like, so we started this podcast last year, like let's interview some people.
Like see there's so many different ways to do this business. So it's fun to learn about all different ways.
Dalton: So yeah, and I will also mention like that doesn't just because you wanna enter the community, the reselling community online, like you don't have to become a content creator. Yeah. I talk to so many people in my dms on Instagram every single day that have never once in their life put out a piece of reselling content.
And just like just interacting with people in the comment section on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok, wherever you are. Just like being in there consistently, not being afraid to just DM people and say, what's up? You will become a part of the community a lot quicker than you think just by being active in commenting and talking and, and, and all that.
So you don't need to be putting out content, just, just, just start talking.
Melissa: Yeah, for sure.
Rob: That's awesome. Yeah. Awesome. So, cool. Dalton, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for all your great words of wisdom that you've done. How can people reach out? How can they find more about you if they wanna, you know, get in contact with you or if they just wanna follow what you're doing? Let us know the best way that people can contact.
Dalton: Yeah, so I am Dealing with Dalton on all platforms. There's no periods, no underscores, no nothing. Just dealing with Dalton. I'm mainly on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. You guys find me there. And also dealingwithdalton.com if you wanna pick up some shoe trees.
Melissa: Yeah, we'll put all those links. I was gonna say, we'll put the links to to your Shopify store there in the show notes so that you guys can go get a pair of shoe trees. That's awesome.
Rob: That's it. So thank you again so much for doing this. Greatly appreciate your time. Hope you have a wonderful day and go sell some more shoes.
Dalton: Of course. Thank you guys so much for having me. It was a blast.