Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about whether a community is necessary to grow your flipping business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Is Community A Necessity To Grow Your Flipping Business?
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are talking about community. Do you need it or not?
Rob: Okay guys, we are talking about community today. Do you really need it or not to be successful in a flipping side hustle or full-time gig?
Melissa: And also under that whole genre comes support like of your family and friends. So that is your community that you're with all the time. So, we wanted to kind of unpack that because we know some people dive into this business and at first, if you're the only one in your circle in your circle of friends in your family who is jumping into, flipping as a side hustle or trying to make some extra money, people might look at you funny. And they might think that you're like, What the heck are you doing to make some extra money?
And that might deter you from trying it. Like, is this legit? Is it okay? Like nobody, Understands what I'm doing. So that's what we wanted to kind of talk about today. So.
Rob: So for me, two things come to mind. My mom is the one who really kicked off, this business for me, my mom was kind of my support back in the day when I started.
There was not online support groups. There were not online forums that you could go to. There was none of that. It was, my mom was the one who kind of got on fire for it, got me on fire for it, and we had a great time doing it. So that was for me, that's how it was. So, nowadays you can find communities, you can find other people who are flipping stuff like you, and you can get involved in them.
But is it really a necessity, when it boils down to it, do you really need that? That's kind of what we wanted to unpack and, get into today.
Melissa: So really the answer is no, you don't need it. But is it helpful and it, can it make you be more successful? Absolutely. So there's two, two sides to that coin.
Like you, you can totally put your head down, not do like, not know anybody, not whatever. But it's so much better when you can be around other people who are doing it or, support you. And I will say like, even like we're going back and forth between like kind of internet community versus like you're in life family and friends. Cuz I would say our friends kind of look at us like, what are you doing? Like, that's kind of weird. But now, after knowing us for a long time, they start flipping stuff. Like, they're like, oh, you're making some extra money, dude, I wanna do this. And so they ask you questions and it's pretty, it's pretty funny cuz it's, at first they're skeptical, like, what, what are you doing?
Like, does this really work? Can you really make money at it? And then next thing you know, they're buying stuff to sell. Yeah. So.
Rob: And, and I will totally agree that if you do have somebody personally that is on board with it and excited about it. It helps a ton. If your spouse, your mother, your daughter, I mean, whoever it is, if you do have somebody who is on board with you doing it, you guys can feed off of each other.
That's what I had with my mom. We'd feed off each other, find some cool stuff, get going with it. And it was just a blast. So it is a lot easier if you do have somebody personally that's involved in it. And maybe it's one of those things cuz I think back to one of our members, Stacy Gallego, she started, and when she found even us and started following us, her husband said, no, we're not gonna do this.
And she's like, well I just wanna try it. I wanna see what I can do, and then one of her first flips, she sold something that was like over $3,000. Yeah. And her husband's like wow, I was very skeptical about this, but now maybe this is a good idea. If you just made that much money off of a single flip, maybe we should research a little bit more about this and really get into it.
So that's kind of what I think about. So it's not impossible to do it by yourself, but if you don't do it by yourself, definitely finding an online group, finding somebody who can, be a, you can be in a community, be involved in a community. It will help a ton. For us we have a community of members who, they just feed off of each other.
When somebody has a.
Melissa: They help each other.
Rob: Exactly. When somebody has a hard day or you know, they get a return request or something like that. They can post in the group and really get some great advice from other people how to handle something. Or if they, they made an amazing sell and they want to get, celebrating with a lot of other people, it's a great place to be able to, celebrate and let other people see what you've done and kind of join in, in the celebration with you.
So it's definitely that it definitely, definitely helps a ton to have a community around you.
Melissa: Yeah. Of like-minded people. And I will say too, if you don't have that support of maybe a spouse or a family member or a friend and you feel like, you know, you might need to prove them that it works like they.
And there are so many things that you could do and maybe you might be one that has kind of shiny object syndrome and you go from thing to thing to thing to thing. And so they might be, oh, well this is just another idea that you're gonna do. But if you can stick with it and show them that, look, this can work, and actually show them you bringing in some money, that is like the best thing like best indicator that, look, this works. And then people are like, oh, that's kind of cool. And then they become a lot more supportive, like you said about John and Stacy. But yeah, it's pretty cool to see and a lot of 'em jump in. We know we have a lot of people that start in our group and then their spouses join in after a little while and they're like, well, this is really fun.
Then they start doing it together and yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Rob: It is, it is. So, so it boils down to yes, a community, it's not a necessity, but it does help you a ton in your growth.
Melissa: I did wanna say, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off as a spouse too, of like, I am not a natural born flipper. Like I'm not, it's not in my blood, so I'm married into it.
So if you can also, as you're trying to grow your business, be respectful of the person who doesn't understand like what you're doing and, you know, make sure you are being consistent and make sure you're getting stuff listed and you don't want like, death pile to go all over the whole house. And then, you know, then that, then they get a bad view of what the reseller life is like, you know?
Yeah. So try to keep, keep, you know, understand that where they're coming from, and then show them what can happen, what is possible. So.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: Sorry, didn't mean to cut you off.
Rob: No. Yeah, like we said, it does help to have a support group, which is very, very easily define, very easy to find nowadays, going online again, like internet.
I personally wish I had what we have built inside of Flipper University or even just a support group that I could have went on, but. I just wish I had that coming up when I started this. It would've made so it would've made it so much easier to gain the headway that I've, it's taken me 20, 25 years to get to.
It would've been so much quicker if I had a community that it could bounce ideas off of, learn from, learn from mistakes of other people versus me just having to make all the mistakes myself, , and then go forward with it and keep getting exactly, keep getting better and better. Absolutely. It, it does help a ton, but it's not a necessity.
But we definitely, we recommend getting involved in a community that you can actually belong to. You can have a voice, you can talk, you can discuss stuff with it cuz it will make your journey so much easier.
Melissa: And we do have an awesome community opening up this, it's actually open right now because we have The Reseller Summit happening when this airs this week.
It's starting this week. We have an amazing Facebook group open. You don't have to have Facebook to enjoy the summit. But we do have a Facebook community that is already excited and ready to go, and they're all like-minded people who wanna learn more about different flipping, in areas of flipping.
Rob: Absolutely. Right now is the last day for enrollment. It's kicking off. Sorry. It shouldn't, shouldn't say last day for enrollment, but it kicks off today. Yeah, tonight we have the kickoff
Melissa: You don't wanna miss it.
Rob: For The Reseller Summit. So if you guys have not got your seat for it, jump on there right now. TheResellerSummit.com.
You can grab your seat, you can jump in. We'll be on live tonight talking about the summit.
Melissa: Our welcome party.
Rob: The welcome party, welcoming everybody to the summit. It's gonna be an amazing event for the next four days, five days. Yeah. Four days.
Melissa: We'll keep the party going.
Rob: So's it's gonna be so much fun. So, and it's gonna be a cool community of like-minded people that you're gonna be able to get involved with, create contacts with and you're gonna be able to have such a blast with them through the next four days.
Melissa: So, learning from so many speakers.
Rob: If you guys have not grabbed your seat, like I said, The Reseller Summit, go grab your seat. We'll be so excited to see you guys in there learning from some of the amazing resellers that are speaking through the next four days.
Melissa: So many different platforms, so many different niche topics and we can't wait.
We had a blast last year and this year is just gonna just even better be even better and we can't wait. So we will see you tonight in the community group.
Rob: That's it. You guys are rock. We will see you soon.