Rob and Melissa Stephenson, from Flea Market Flipper, kick off 2025 by talking about their goals for the podcast and flipping.
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Kicking Off 2025!
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are kicking off the new year. Our first episode of 2025. Stoked to be here with you guys kicking off this brand new year.
Rob: All right, guys, we are excited. We're excited for 2025. Hopefully you guys are too. Hopefully you got some big audacious goals for the new year. We've had a lot of stuff going on in the background for the last couple weeks, actually probably the last two months.
Melissa: Probably the last year. Yeah, it's been crazy.
So we're excited to be back and back on here on the podcast. We've had a couple of people, you know, reach out and be like, when are you coming back? So, yeah, we're back and it is exciting. It's January. It's flipping freezing right now in Florida. Like it's snowed in northern Florida this week. Like what?
Like a lot, like, and not just like a flurry, like it's flurried before. It like actually snowed like seven inches or something ridiculous. So not where we are, but.
Rob: We didn't get snow down here in Orlando, but still it is flipping freezing. It is in the 30s outside, which for us is cold, so that's why we have sweaters on because it's cold.
Melissa: It's flipping cold. Yes. Anyways. So it makes it a lot harder to do stuff. So you guys can take your winter weather somewhere else and bring back our sunshine. That's it. But we are super excited. We are. For this coming year. Last year? Like I was trying to think, we are going to do a full recap of last year.
Like all of, like some of our finds, our profit margins, cause that is super important and we like to be transparent in our business, as we do, you know, fines, as we do flips, what we bought it for, what we sold it for after shipping, all the fees, like what is the actual profit? We, we think that's important cause we're big into big profit margins.
So to run your business. So, so we will be diving into that pretty soon once we run all of our numbers. I did want to also say, congrats to Beth Benfield for being the $50 Amazon gift card winner for our drawing for because we didn't do that because we haven't been on a podcast again for our 300th episode, which was a couple weeks ago, maybe now like a month or two ago.
So congratulations, Beth. Send us an email and I have your email, so I'll reach out to you and get that sent to you. So yeah, so that's exciting. So congratulations and thanks guys for just being here. Like we're excited to be back and share with you our finds and flips for the coming year.
Rob: That's it.
And we will try to get into a more normal routine. Like we said, we've had a lot of stuff going on in the back, the back behind the scenes for the last couple months. So we have pushed the podcast off a little bit. You guys, we appreciate you. We love you, that you have reached out and said, hey, where's the podcast?
So you guys, those mean the world to us to know that you guys are getting value out of the podcast. So we thank you for that. Melissa just asked me what my goal was for 2025 and my words are work less, vacation more. So just so you know who I am, that is my goal is to work less and vacation more for 2025, which a lot of you might not relate to it.
I don't know if you do or not, but what I do, I work so I can spend time with Melissa, with the kids and vacation. That's why I do what I do and our hours in this last year on the business aspect of it, were very, very slim slim on the business aspect of it. I did not list near as much as I needed to. We still made sales.
We still made great sales, but I I did not go that hard into the business this last year So, like Melissa said we'll get some numbers together. Let you guys know what's going on moving forward, yeah, reach out to us too. If you have some stuff, some topics that you guys would love us to talk about, we'd love to hear from you as well on that. Anything that we can help you out in your business, scaling your business, starting your business, whatever it is, let us know.
We, we want to hear from you guys, how we can help you in 2025, go to the next level. Cause that's what it's all about is going, where you want to go with this business.
Melissa: Yeah. I did write down that one thing that we definitely want to do. Cause last summer we didn't go on our normal cross country road trip that we've done the last, we've done it four years in a row. And then a couple other years, we did the 127 yard sale so but we've done that for a lot of summers and we didn't do it last summer and it really felt like something was missing. Like I feel, didn't you feel like that something was missing and so we're gonna be back doing that again and I ran the numbers for that for one of the something we spoke on and each year for those four years,
we picked up pretty much 10 to 17 items for roughly $25,000 of inventory and only spending like $800 to $1,500. So of that's kind of an average of the last four years. And I'm like, that's, that's not bad for a cross country. We come back and we sell it. And that's what we sold. That's not even like, I think when I ran the numbers, if we still had stuff from the previous year, cause we only listed like half of it.
So yeah, but that's, that's not bad. So I was, it was pretty good. It's pretty exciting to be able to go on a road trip and you always make it a game to play to pay for it on the road trip.
Rob: So when I say travel more, when we're traveling, I'm always looking for items that we can buy to flip to pay for the trip.
So that's just something that's built into me. If I'm doing something fun with the family, I'm trying to figure out how to pay for it while I'm doing it, which is awesome. I enjoy that. We'll do the same thing on a road trip over the summer of this year and like Melissa said, our average for the last four years, being that road trip around 20k on average is what we're making, spending four weeks to six weeks on the road, doing that, which is insane.
If you think about that much time being on the road, seeing some amazing stuff with our kids, building some
Melissa: We're going to national parks, we're going to state parks, we're seeing the whole country, which is just crazy.
Rob: Building some amazing memories with our family is awesome to be able to make money while we're doing it.
Just really, really. It's a cool thing that we're able to do. So, you will hear definitely more on our part of stuff that we're doing that allows us to travel allows us to have fun and also allows us to make money while we're doing it. We'll be, I'm sure we'll be talking about that our flips. We're still flipping.
I mean just last week I shipped out $2,500 worth of stuff, and two items one item was just over two thousand dollars for some, Absen LED wall hardware to actually hang LED, LED panels. We sold one of those, those lots was 12 of those for just over $2,000, I think. And then the, what else did I ship out?
A wheelchair. A wheelchair, which was awesome. The lady was so appreciative for the wheelchair.
Melissa: You got such great feedback from her. Oh my goodness.
Rob: I love it. I love it. And she was so excited to get the wheelchair. I'm assuming how I'm picturing is a little old lady, she had a wheelchair, that was not suiting her very well.
It was a heavy, bulky, big old wheelchair. And this one was one that could actually, the wheels, everything pulled apart. And she's like, I need one that I can actually pull the wheels off and put it in the back of my car. Can this do that? And I told her absolutely. And she was asking the weight of it and it all fit her criteria of what she needed, to be able to use her wheelchair.
She was so thankful and so happy and we shipped it to her super fast. I actually paid for upgraded shipping on it so I could get it to her. She wanted to use it before church on Sunday. So I actually paid extra to have it, second, I think second day delivery is what I did on it. Cost me a little bit more, but at the same time I was trying to, accommodate her.
I wanted to make sure that she was happy with it and she was more than thrilled with it. So, the wheelchair, I think roughly $300 to, no, maybe $230. It was $230, yeah. Oh, so $230 sold the wheelchair. Not a huge profit on it, but I wasn't worried about the profit on this one, that much. I was, I was excited to get it to somebody who really needed it.
It was like brand spanking new. It wasn't electric or anything, just, just a manual wheelchair. And then the other ones.
Melissa: She had it the next day.
Rob: Yeah, because she was up in Georgia from Florida.
Melissa: But you didn't do next day.
Rob: I did two days on it. And they actually got it there within 24 hours of the thing which she was super thrilled with. So like I said, really really cool.
We'll be doing those. We'll tell you guys those stories as we do them. Those I just shipped out last week. Close to I think it was around $2,500 after shipping and everything done, but those were two sales that we did to kick off the new year. Excited, we're excited to see what we'll be selling this year, what we'll be finding this year. We'll keep you guys in our travels and let you know what we're finding and what we're doing so you guys can give us feedback. Like I said anything that we can help with let us know.
Melissa: Yeah, and one other thing that we're doing in the beginning of this year is right now, we're in the process of finding all of our, decluttering the rooms, and getting ready for a yard sale.
So, right now we're doing the kids rooms, and
Rob: it's crazy what we've accumulated.
Melissa: What do they, they keep so much stuff, like, It's ridiculous. So we've been going through their rooms and taking, and they're actually doing pretty good at like, okay. I said, okay, here's the trash. Here's yard sale. Here's keep.
We're not keeping a lot of stuff like where you have to get rid of stuff. And they're like, well, if I sell it, do I get the money? I'm like, sure. So they're kind of motivated to sell their stuff. And they're actually putting a lot in the, for sale box. So we're going to have a yard sale. It's probably going to be three-fourths of their stuff, like a whole bunch of stuff.
Rob: So, and anything we don't sell, we'll donate it back to the salvation army, goodwill, a thrift store, something like that. So,, but that's one of those things. And I don't know if any of you guys can relate, but we've been in this house for 13 years. Has it been 13 or 14? 13. Yeah. 13 years. And the amount of stuff that you accumulate over a 13 year span inside of a house.
When you have, kids that are growing up, toys, all kinds of stuff.
Melissa: From being babies to now, yeah. We almost have a 13-year-old. That's just crazy.
Rob: It's crazy. So that is what we are working on immediately in the beginning of the year is trying to declutter some of our bedrooms and some of our,
Melissa: and if it's not, and, and some of our inventory too, I wanted to touch on that a little bit.
So it was like some stagnant inventory, but typically it's not inventory that you have listed. It's inventory that you just have it. It's more of a project. So sometimes he'll get something he thinks it's, you know, it's a project. You'll get even stuff for free. You'll get stuff for like next to nothing, but it's a project and it just sits there.
So then that kind of stuff will probably end up in the yard sale, and not so much, but the stuff you have listed, even if it's a little stagnant, you still won't. We're not selling expensive stuff, yeah.
Rob: I'm not offloading expensive stuff, so.
Melissa: Yeah, so anyways, so we're doing a yard sale. Who else is doing a yard sale?
Woohoo! Yard sale 2025! And sometimes it does help to, to, I mean, some people have this death pile or money pile, like we'd like to call it. And if you feel like it's been stagnant and you don't like you've been staring at it for a year now, and it's still there, even six months or something, maybe it is time to like clear it out and then start fresh.
So sometimes that can help too. So.
Rob: Give yourself grace too. I mean, for what we do, I had high intentions in December, really to go in and list every single day and do stuff. And guess what? I probably got three things listed through the month of December, which I'm very upset about, but I give myself grace.
We had a lot of stuff going on. We did have some travel going on at the same time. And yeah, we just had a lot of stuff on the back end going on. So I didn't get it done. If you were in the same situation of maybe the end of last year, you may be in the beginning of this year. You haven't got everything done that you wanted to get done.
Don't stress about it guys. Let's start. Let's start fresh. Really put some of those goals in front of you. You can't achieve goals if you don't have them, put some goals, try to reach those goals. We'll be here cheering you guys on. We're your biggest cheerleaders for getting this stuff moving and finding some amazing flips this year and flipping some amazing stuff.
So you guys, you know, you have us in your corner.
Melissa: We're excited for this year. It's going to be a fun year. And we still like, we know that one of the bottlenecks of your flipping business is getting stuff listed. So like, we're working on getting that, you know, hopefully hired out and we can share that process with you too, as well, as we get some more of that stuff.
So yeah, I think that was most everything that I had written down. Awesome! Just very excited to be back. And then, for those of you who have thought about doing a flipping side hustle, most of you listening to this probably have dabbled in it, I would assume. I, I can't imagine a ton of people that, or maybe you're just exploring it, I don't know.
I don't know where you're at in your business, but if you have been thinking about starting or wanting to get started for a long time and haven't, now is the best time. I mean, probably the best time was a year ago or a couple years ago, but now is the next best time because this business is not going away anytime soon.
You might have to shift some things, you might have to, you know, change some different kinds of niches every once in a while, but, this business isn't going away.
Rob: This model is age old. It is here forever. It has been around forever. It'll be here forever. Buying low, selling high. We're really good at it on our side of the business.
You can too.
Melissa: And bringing the used item. We, we don't do new stuff. So if you're new to our podcast, we don't do any like drop shipping. We don't do, we don't buy, you know, dollar stuff. We don't buy new stuff and resell it. We're buying used stuff that people have already used and bringing it back into circulation and selling it for roughly half of retail, but there's usually a pretty good profit in there. So.
Rob: And if you are listening to us right now on Spotify, you're listening to it, but you're not actually watching us. We video all of our podcasts and Melissa said, that's one of our things that we're going to be up and coming within the next week or two is Spotify listening.
And it's the watching, right?
Melissa: They let you do video, and we're going to get them on YouTube finally.
Rob: YouTube as well. So go over there if you guys want to see us in person, see what we look like. If you've never seen what we look like, jump over to YouTube. You can give us a like and a subscribe. We greatly appreciate that, or you can watch us on Spotify here coming up pretty soon. We'll get the actual live videos in there. So you guys can look at those, see us while we're talking. I'm very passionate and you'll be able to see that in my face and my mannerisms, why we are doing these podcasts. So hopefully you will enjoy that as well.
And if not, you don't want to see us, no worries, just watch. I mean, just listen, just listen. We're happy to have you guys along for the day.
Melissa: And if you can't stand our voices, that's okay too. There's lots of podcasts out there.
Rob: Go find somebody else. No big deal. We're okay.
Melissa: But we love hanging out with you guys.
So it's a lot of fun and I've missed it. It's funny when we started this podcast, I think it was, it was right after the first summit reseller summit we ever did. I was, I did not want to like, I was like, we've been thinking about it. We thought about it for a long time and then finally we did.
And then I've actually enjoyed it. I was just thinking, oh, it's another thing to do cause there's so much stuff to do on the digital side of our business that I'm in charge of. And, and I was like, that's another thing to do. But then I actually started to really like it and I've been the one and be like, okay, we got to get this going again.
We got to get this going again. So, so yeah, so it's a lot of fun. I enjoy it. And, we hope to bring you some fun topics and some profitable flips your way this coming year. So.
Rob: Most of all, you guys are awesome. We could not do this without you guys. So thank you for your support. Thank you for listening, watching, whatever you do.
We greatly appreciate you guys. And like I said, anything we can help you out with your business, reach out, let us know how we can help you on topics on something that you're navigating. Anything that we can help. We're happy to do that here on the podcast.
Melissa: And there'll be some other resources in the show notes if you want to dive into some more things.
We have lots of things everywhere that can kind of meet you where you're at. So go check those out and we will see you on the next episode.
Rob: You guys are awesome. Have an amazing day and we can't wait to see you on the flip side.