Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how to make money in your flipping business while on vacation.
Check out our free workshop: https://learn.fleamarketflipper.com/flipping-workshop-new--0b9f0
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fleamrktflipper/
You can find us at: https://fleamarketflipper.com/
Making Money While On Vacation
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are combining two of my most favorite things, making money and going on vacation.
Rob: All right, welcome. We are excited about today's episode.
I'm excited about every episode. But this one is a little bit closer to my heart because I love traveling. I love going on vacations. But what is more fun than going on vacations? Actually making money while you're on vacation. So that's what we figured we would talk about on today's episode.
Melissa: Yeah. Rob pretty much works to go on vacation.
Like, that is what motivates you really to to work, is so that you can go and have fun and travel. And it's something that we've loved to do with the kids, and it's something that we turned into making our flipping i- able to go on some long road trips, and we're gonna talk about that today and how we were able to do that, kinda crunch some of the numbers, and because we're also getting ready to do it again this year, so.
Rob: That's right. Summer is coming up, and we want to get out there. We want to find some cool deals. We want to go see some cool stuff around the country. So we are planning one right now. Cannot wait to get on the road and have some fun, but also find some amazing, cool deals, that we can actually make money while we are traveling.
Melissa: Yeah. So just a little backstory. I guess this started in 2020, but it actually really started before that at the 127 Yard Sale. I think that was 2017 or 2018 was the first time we did the 127 Yard-
Rob: Wow, that's a long time ago ...
Melissa: I know, 'cause Brody was pro- like, two, I think, when we did it. And we... Our kids have been road trips, like, they... since they were babies, so they've learned to be in the car, and they do really well. But we went to the 127 Yard Sale. It was, like, four days, I think- Yeah ... long, of... from Georgia to Michigan, and we did it a couple years in a row, actually. Yeah. But that was the first time we, you know, made it a road trip to go find stuff to flip.
And it was a f- it was a fun experience, and we recorded it. We made some videos about it. And then in 2020- We ended up, my brother-in-law, our brother-in-law passed away from a brain cancer. And so that was in the spring of 2020. And so we're like, "Well, let's pack up his sister and, or his other sis- two of his sisters, our four nieces, our three kids."
He bought a 15-passenger van. And I know we've told this story on the podcast before, but if you're new, this is what we did. And we, I told my nieces, "Go find some places for us to go out west. Like, let's go explore." And so we put together a plan and bought the van, and we went on the road.
Rob: Pulled a trailer. Originally, we pulled a trailer for that first trip, not really thinking about-
No ...
buying and selling items. No ... while we were on the road. But we needed the trailer because it was a 15-passenger van ... a lot of people, and we needed a place to put our luggage. So I had an enclosed trailer that I use for work.
We actually pulled that enclosed trailer,
Melissa: With the van ...
side note, this is pretty cool. My niece, one of my nieces is kind of like an artist. She's really, really cool. Draws cool drawings and stuff like that. So we decided when we were gonna do it, she was actually going to, draw all these drawings of the places where we were gonna go, and we were gonna put them on the side.
We actually make them into, like, a wrap or whatever it's called.
Yeah. She got, like, big stickers. It was, like, stickers that we put on the van and on the trailer, and we said, "Epic road trip," and she put all these places of all these national parks, Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, like all these places we wanted to go visit, so it was pretty cool.
Rob: And she drew all the pictures, and then we actually put them on the van and the trailer. Yeah. It was pretty cool. So anyways.
Melissa: You still have that trailer.
Rob: I do, I do. And we didn't take the stickers off- No, the stickers are still there ... so we still have one of the trailers with, the art on it. But, anyways, back to the story.
We didn't originally do it for that, and then, probably a week or two into the trip, I'm like, "Well, we have all this extra room in the trailer because all we have is our luggage in there, so I probably could buy a couple things." And then I started looking. I started looking on Facebook Marketplace, and we started finding some really cool deals.
So we actually bought... I don't think we bought that many that first trip that we did. I don't think we bought that much stuff, but I s
Melissa: I can tell you how much. Oh, you. We bought seven items.
Rob: Sweet. So seven items. ... Not a lot. Anybody can deal with seven items. We bought seven items, put them in the trailer.
And yeah, then we brought it back, and then that's when we really started to get the itch of, wow, we could do this probably every year and make some money while we're on the road trip. And that's really what got us started on doing traveling and picking while we're traveling. Mm-hmm. So it was really, really cool.
Melissa: Yeah, 'cause we'd never even seen any of the national parks before out west, so we, that was our first time. Every, everybody who went with us, your sisters too, and so it was really cool, and we kind of got hooked on going to visit these places. And we're like, "Okay, how many can we check off the list?" So the next year, we ended up going further 'cause we didn't make it to California. Yeah
that first year. But the second year we did, to hit, hit up some of the parks out there, and it was just, it's just been a cool tradition. And then for the last two years, we haven't done it in the summer, and so we're very much itching to go and do it again. So we are planning it. We don't know where we're going yet.
We haven't planned out the map yet. So give us your suggestions where we should go visit. We visited a lot of the national parks out west. Our kids have been to every state except for, what did we say, North Dakota?
Rob: Alaska and North Dakota.
Melissa: So we have to hit up. We probably won't hit up Alaska, but North Dakota, this summer, so we got to get some pictures there so that we've hit that up.
But I wanted to share some of the numbers from those. Absolutely ... those years and to see if we can be consistent with it this year.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So that first year in 2020, we hit, we bought seven items, like you said, only the second half of the road trip, for $1,235 is what we paid for the items.
Rob: Cool.
Melissa: And we came back and sold them for $22,175.
Rob: What? $1,200 invested?
Melissa: To, to make $22,175.
Rob: Yeah ... $22,000. Guys, that's awesome. That was not a typo. That's exactly what we did, and it goes back to our business model, really finding those high value items and making as much money as possible on those items that we can.
So that was the first year that we actually just tested it out.
Melissa: Yep. So, 2021, we bought 14 items for $870 and came back and sold them for $17,000. 2022, we bought 17 items for $1,455, came back and sold them for $25,250. 2023, we ha- bought eight items for $1,100, came back and sold them for $21,350.
Rob: Woo-hoo. So. So averaging over 20k a trip.
Melissa: And about $1,000 invested, so.
Rob: $1,000 to $1,500 invested and turning that into 20k, traveling around the US, having fun with our family, it's an amazing, amazing thing to be able to do. We absolutely love it. That's why we're so excited to be able to do it again.
Melissa: And you would also sometimes list on the road. So we would stop... Like, my mom lives in Colorado. We have some friends in Arizona. So we would stop and visit people, and sometimes you'd pull stuff out, take some pictures, and then get it listed so while we're visiting people, which was pretty cool, too, 'cause then we could also sell stuff from the road.
You did sell a couple things on the road. We did ... before we even got back.
Rob: We did. I even shipped out that wallpaper thing we bought in Colorado.
Melissa: Oh, yeah that was from a thrift no, a hardware store?
Rob: A hardware store went out of business. A going out of business? Yeah, I don't remember ... yeah, and it was right by
Melissa: Rocky Mountain
Rob: Keystone
Melissa: Before we went to Rocky Mountain ...
Rob: Keystone and Breckenridge. Yeah. It was right there by that when we were staying one night. Found it on Marketplace. Ran over and grabbed it, dirt cheap. I don't remember what it was. It was a commercial wallpaper remover.
Melissa: I think like, $30
Rob: $20 or $30. Yeah, $20 or $30,
Melissa: Made like $700. I think you sold it for.
Rob: Yeah, and then we actually sold it within a couple days. Yeah. That I actually had to ship it out on the road. So that was really, really cool. So those are just fun memories of being able to do this and make some really, really cool money.
Not to mention we spend less than $20,000 on these road trips. Mm-hmm. So not only are we paying for our road trip, we're bringing back and creating income while we're out there having fun. It's just so much fun to be able to do that, when you and do have this as a flipping as a career.
Melissa: Yeah, and we're not qualified to give you tax advice, but it also can be qualified as a write-off for the parts of it that you are sourcing for your side hustle or your full-time business of flipping.
So we definitely take advantage of that because, I mean, why not?
Rob: Absolutely, absolutely. Every little bit helps. Yeah, and we love having fun. We love making money. We love traveling. So it's really, really cool for us to be able to jump on the road, and do that. Plus, we were even talking about this.
So we haven't done this in, the last two years, two summers, yeah ... we haven't gone on the road trips, and I'm starting to miss it. And our kids, like our youngest, Brody, it's, I don't think he remembers some of the parks. I know. From when we did it originally. So it's gonna be fun to get back out there, see some cool stuff.
Now our kids are even older. We've done the Narrows up in Zion. I love hiking the Narrows. Our kids are older, they're bigger. We can hike further, have a lot more fun. Mm. So we'll be able to have a, a really, a really good time, a lot of fun. And maybe even meet up with some of you guys on the road. I just thought of a great idea for the new upcoming software that we're working on. But I'm super, super excited about that. But a meet up.
Melissa: We haven't even talked about that on the podcast yet.
Rob: Oh, sorry.
Melissa: So.
Rob: Sneak peek
Melissa: sneak peek that you've been working on something behind the scenes that you're, yeah, super excited about, and we can't wait to get it to you guys.
We're releasing it to our members first, and they're gonna have first access, and then we will release it to the public. So we will have a wait list if you're interested in, but we'll talk more about it. Yeah. But, anyway,
Rob: you were gonna tell them about. Anyways, it was on the tip of my mind because of
I wanted to create something inside of the software we're doing for meetups. So I probably shouldn't have said anything, but I did. So now the cat is out of the bag. But anyways, we're gonna have a lot of fun. It's gonna be a lot of fun. We'll document. We'll do pictures. We'll do videos. We'll do all that kind of stuff so you gu- guys can see exactly, what it looks like to get on the road and make some serious money, have a lot of fun.
I love having fun, and we'll be doing that on the road trip.
Melissa: And I wanna do, like in the past, sometimes it's been hard for us to keep up with, you know, episodes of the podcast while we're traveling, but I'd like to do it even if we do it in the car and we're just talking what we just found, where we're going, all this stuff.
I'd like to keep it up. And it will just be like we're not sitting up with a camera. It might just be audio. Who knows, like, what that's gonna look like. It's just us, you know, talking. We're, I mean, we're pretty casual on our podcast anyway. It's just us talking back and forth. It might just be a little, little even more casual.
But I'd like to still get stuff out there so we can, hang out with you guys because we love hanging out with you guys. We love, you know, talking to you and, and I think the podcast is super fun. So. It is. There was one thing I wanted to add to it, and I forget what I was gonna say. Oh, for people who want to do this, like, what is something that you, like, you're like, "Okay, I could do, you know, maybe a week road trip or two week." Well, what does that look like? How does that... Like, what do I need? What are some things that you guys do? 'Cause we've had some of our members do this now. So, I know Jenny, I know Gina have gone, and they've done road trips where they go find stuff, bring it back, and sell it, and more than pays for their trip.
And it's so much fun to see people doing it and having fun. So what are some things to think about, like, if you're gonna take a week or two and go, go somewhere that you need to think about to bring. Yeah.
Rob: Checklist for- checklist for us is definitely I bring the enclosed trailer, just so we have a place we can either put our bags in and be able to buy the items and put them in there.
They're secured. It ca- locked up. Um, you could take an open trailer. I- but ours are a little bit more secured inside the enclosed trailer. Uh, inside the en- enclosed trailer, which I recommend, we have rails on both sides of the, uh, enclosed trailer that we can actually strap stuff to the walls. It makes it a lot...
Everything gets, uh, handled a lot safer while it's on the road. So we have straps. We have blankets. Um, sometimes styrofoam. We'll have stuff where we can package everything in there nice and tight to where it won't move around in transit. Very, very important if you're buying stuff, you want it to be safe while you are traveling.
Um, so that's the most stuff that I think about that I bring with us on the road trip. I always bring tools. I always have tools. Uh, we don't drive new vehicles. No. We drive 25-year-old vehicles. Um, and if something happens on the road, I have to be able to improvise and fix it where I don't have to put it inside of a shop.
Um, I can do it myself a lot of times, or I can find YouTube videos to help me diagnose stuff like that. So I do bring tools as well. Um, uh, ratchets, uh, screwdrivers, uh, uh- Just stuff that would- ... sockets ...
Melissa: normally keep you safe on, you know-
Rob: Exactly ... like, uh Something that I could- ...
Melissa: a nor- normal road trip ...
Rob: I can do, uh, manual stuff or I can do, um, light stuff if I have to on the vehicle itself.
I think about that 15-passenger van that we bought, um- Oh, my
Melissa: goodness. We bought it, like, the month before we left.
Rob: Uh, less than a month. I think it was, like, two weeks before we left. So we didn't even really try out a lot of stuff. But three days into the trip, uh, the AC went out in the, the van.
Melissa: In Texas- In-
in June ...
Rob: in Texas in June. So it was flipping hot, and I had to figure out how to redo the AC. So I put a new compressor in it. I think I put a new, uh, dryer in it. A couple things to the whole system in the parking lot of, uh- Hotel ... the hotel that we were staying at. So-
Melissa: That wasn't the only time you had to fix something at the hotel.
Rob: Yeah.
Melissa: So.
Rob: No, I had to do the-
Melissa: The radiator ...
Rob: radiator- Yeah ... at the hotel, too.
Melissa: I know. That's what I said. It wasn't the first time.
Rob: Oh, I thought you said- Or was- ... that was the first time ... no,
Melissa: it was the, it was the first time, and then there was another time that you had- Yeah.
Rob: And the other thing in the van, the radiator went out, uh, couple-
weeks later, uh, while we were at a hotel, and I think that was up, uh, by Ida, uh, the-
Melissa: I don't remember ...
Rob: the big, um, the, the big crater, like, uh, Grand Canyon. Where is that at? Idaho?
Melissa: Oh. Oh, the... Yeah, I- It's up there. I don't remember who it
Rob: was. I forget it. Anyways, the radiator went out and we did that. So all that being said is, yeah, we do bring tools with us as well.
Those are my main packing list that I bring with me. Um, I don't know about Melissa. Melissa does more packing for the kids.
Melissa: I will add, well, for when we do with the kids, like if we go for four to six weeks, I usually just do a week of clothes and then just do laundry. So it's not a ton of packing. Like, for the summer, you know, everybody bring an extra sweatshirt or whatever.
Um, and then just the weeks of clothes, and then it's just, it, it's easy to just do laundry on the road, um, 'cause we just stay at hotels, and we usually book it the night before. Like, we don't plan it out- Yeah ... which is pretty funny. Like, we just go wherever we can make it to, and then, um, I go on Priceline and see what I can, uh, book for the night, and we book and we stay, and then we go.
So-
Rob: That would drive a lot of people crazy 'cause we have a lot of friends that that drives crazy. But we are more kind of free spirit. We get on the road and, uh, we have kind of a, an idea of where we want to go- Where we want to go, yeah ... where we're headed, but we do not book. And that also, uh, lies back on we don't drive new vehicles.
If something happens and we've already booked three days- Yeah ... out in advance and something happens, or we want to stay at a place longer- Yeah, exactly ... we're not tied into that. So we typically are booking, she's on booking, uh, the places that we stay probably three hours- Yeah ... before we stop, um, every
Melissa: single- Sometimes the day before if I know where we're going.
Yeah. But, and that's also where you're, uh, you're sitting in the hotel the night before looking at Facebook Marketplace, and you're kind of like, "Okay, where are we going tomorrow?" It's our
Rob: route, yeah.
Melissa: What is our ZIP code? You look at it, and then that's how you kind of find some things on, on the way. Yep.
Um, and before he would find stuff, like really, like, "Okay, we gotta drive an hour out of the way." And now, like the last time we went, you were really close to the r- route, which was pretty nice. Yep. So you didn't have to drive very far out of the way. Yep. So, and I will give one tip for if you do book on Priceline, don't book after midnight, 'cause if you book something after midnight, it's for the, like it messes with their system and they can't...
I don't know. It, we had such a hassle trying to do that when we booked after midnight. So don't do that. Book before midnight, uh, for the day that you want, so just a little tip. Yep. And I would also add, bring a map. So I know nobody- uses a physical map anymore. But when you're in, like, the national parks or you're in somewhere with no service, GPS does work typically, but not always.
Like, every once in a... If you're trying to find something, you like, just have it just in case. Like, it, uh, it's just peace of mind for me to know if I don't know where I am, 'cause we don't know w- where we're going. Like, and if GPS doesn't work, then you're kind of, like, out of luck. So bring a map and that helps, so.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: Any other tidbits?
Rob: Nope. I think that's it. That's pretty much it. Hopefully, um, even, like we do longer ones, but even if you did a weekend getaway or a week getaway, you're able to do that with your work schedule, hopefully these are little tips that will help you to try and plan something out like this.
Because you can totally... That's the other thing is when Melissa and I go, uh, we just came back from a conference a couple weeks ago, or a month ago, um, that was two or three hours south of us. We did the same exact thing. When we are down there at the conference, we're learning, um, uh, stuff about our business.
We're doing stuff. We're working actively towards the business. I'm also looking for stuff to buy, and I'm doing the same exact stuff that we're talking about right now. It's just more on a three-day trip than a, you know, a three, a two, a three, a four-week trip. It's just a little bit different. So hopefully this gives you some ideas of what's, what's available.
The other thing that we can add on this as well, maybe you're in a rural area and you feel like you can't source that well. Maybe this is the time to take a three-day road trip. Go for a weekend into, you know, an hour, two, three hours away from you into a, a bigger area that you can actually jump in and find some really cool stuff, and then bring it back with you.
Um, that's a lot of fun stuff. That's probably how we started years and years ago doing this, and then now it's evolved into something that's a little bit different, a little bit more intense. Um, but you have to start somewhere, so maybe think about that. And hopefully we've just given you some ideas, some tips, um, really how to take your business to the next level and how to have more fun.
Because ultimately, I love having fun. That's what it's all about is having fun with your family, with your kids, um, and being able to make money while you're doing it.
Melissa: Yeah, so you're all about having fun and going on vacation, so and this, uh, enables us to do that, which is really cool. And Rob talked about it a little bit, so I'll go ahead and add that he has been working on with a developer some software that we are going to release soon that is going to change the way that you, uh, find deals, and it's gonna be so cool.
Um, but if you want, if you're interested in learning more about it, just l- check out the link below for, to get on the wait list, and you'll be the first to know about it after our members, it's released to our members. Um, and you can check out the wait list and get on there, and we'll let you know.
Hopefully it's gonna be sooner than later, so it's, it's pretty cool, so.
Rob: Awesome. You guys are amazing. Thanks for spending a little bit of time with us today. Cannot wait to see you on the next episode.