Rob & Melissa from Flea Market Flipper talk about steps they are taking to scale their reselling business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast – Rob & Melissa On Scaling Your Reselling Business
Rob:What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are excited to talk about something that's a little bit different. It's a look into our business and how we can scale.
Rob: So scaling, what exactly does that mean in your reselling business?
Melissa: So we've kind of got to this point in our business where we figured out that Rob is pretty much the bottleneck of the business, and we wanted to we're working on the part of scaling the reselling portion of our business, and we wanted to document it as we go.
So we figured let's jump on a podcast and kind of talk about where we're at, what we want to do, like how do we get you out of some of the physical parts of the business, and yeah kinda walk through that process, and then do an update, you know, in a little bit and see how it's going.
Rob: Absolutely. So right now I'm the one who has, I'm finding items, I'm flipping or fixing items, picturing items, listing items.
And then I'm actually doing the fulfillment. I'm packaging 'em up or putting 'em on a pallet and doing it. So, you can only do so much of that before your hours are gone, especially between a family between kids, between.
Melissa: And then I need you to do videos and I need you to do all this content stuff for our other part of the business.
Rob: Podcast, videos, all that kind of stuff.
So you only have so many hours in the day. So we realize to go to that next level, we need to hire some key people in our business, and that's what we've really come to the realization of. We're gonna do it. So one of those things that I have in the past had a guy that I could actually pay to go and clean up stuff and get stuff ready for me to take pictures.
He was doing a fabulous job. He'd clean, 'em up. Make 'em look like they're brand new, detail 'em really, really well. Didn't matter if it was a huge piece of equipment or something very small. He was very, very good. But recently he has kind of slacked in his, he's not paid as much attention to detail as I would like.
So we have not been able to use him that much lately. So I still need to find somebody to do that. But the three things that will take us to the next level in our business is being able to find somebody who can fix items. If you guys don't know about us, we do larger items. And a lot of the items that I get really, really, really good deals on are items that might need something small, might need something fixed, a part ordered, something like that.
And I get I'm really good at finding those amazing deals, but then they sit at my storage to where I put 'em on the back burner and I forget to do 'em and one of those things that adds up really, really quickly. So the first thing I need to find is somebody who is a handyman, who I can pay to come in and start fixing these items that I have.
Melissa: Yeah. Cuz it's kind of like at the it's almost like it's your death pile, but not just the stuff that needs to get listed. It's stuff that needs to get fixed. And then you look at it like, oh, there's a project, there's a project, there's a project. And it just gets overwhelming.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: And then I don't think you want to tackle any of them.
Let's go find some more items that we can.
Rob: The fun part, finding those amazing deals, which I'm very, very good at. So that is one thing that I would not hire out. I'll keep doing that because I am very, very good at that.
Melissa: And that's your favorite part.
Rob: And it is my favorite part of the process. So.
Melissa: I wanted to add too that so this whole time aside from having that one person that helped you clean for a little bit, you've been doing the whole part yourself. So, and I do think a couple years ago you were not on board with like, well, I don't think anybody else can really fix stuff or, you know, get it cleaned up or as well as I need it to get done.. So I think you were kinda like, I need to get it, do it all myself.
Rob: Absolutely. So, and now my mind shift has changed. Yeah. Because you can only go so much with what you're doing.
So that is the first person I need. The second person I need is somebody who will do listings for me, which we are gonna find somebody who, I can, once I have the pictures, once I have all the, information about the item, I can have somebody go in, do the listings, get it all set and get those listings going out every single day, for the stuff that we have. That will help us out a ton.
Melissa: Yeah, definitely. That is a big part of your, and that can be somebody, it could be the same person. It might end up being the same person, or it could be somebody that is totally different. Not even that lives here. It could be somebody that just is online, that you send 'em stuff and they get all the listings done.
So, we'll have to see how that pans out and plays out.
Rob: Yeah. The first person who's gonna be fixing the stuff also probably could do the detailing. Yeah to where they clean it up and get it ready to sell. That's what my hope is. But we are gonna try to find a couple guys, see what happens with that.
And then, yeah, like I said, the listing portion of it, it does not have to be somebody here. It can be a VA overseas. It can be a VA anywhere. You can have somebody do that kind of stuff. Cuz they physically don't have to touch or see the items.
Melissa: We just need the pictures and the descriptions.
Rob: Exactly. Pictures and do the descriptions and get them listed.
And then finally, the third person that I need to hire out is definitely having somebody, the fulfillment portion of it, boxing, throwing stuff on pallets, strapping, getting all that stuff done. That is the third person that I really, really needed to get. Once we get three people like that, the, the business will run so much smoother and I will not be the bottleneck.
So it can actually go really, really big on hiring those three people out.
Melissa: Yeah. And that kind of goes back to the other day on the podcast, we talked about, the idea of success creates deficits. So like you do you list all this stuff and then it sells. Now you have to just spend your time fulfilling it.
So is your time better spent going fun to find more stuff, or in listing and all this other stuff.
Rob: Or paying somebody to do the fulfillment.
Melissa: Exactly. So how do you get past the mindset? Cause a lot of people, you know, you might not be to this spot and that's totally fine. You've been doing this for 26 years.
It's about time that you start hiring some of this stuff out. But what do you like somebody like, oh, I can't get rid of that profit. Like that, that brings my profit margins down. So how do you get past that?
Rob: Absolutely. And for us, we sell high profit items. We definitely have more money into these items, more wiggle room, exactly where we could pay.
We definitely have the profit there to be able to pay people. Now, if you're only doing $5 and $10 profits or $5 or $10 sales, $20, $30 sales and with only $10, $15 profit, there's not a lot of wiggle room that you can actually hire stuff out. But when you're at that, that next level,
Melissa: Unless you're doing a crazy amount of volume. You have to do a lot of to make.
Rob: Excuse me. Yes, absolutely. So if you are doing insane volume, you can do it. But for us, we don't, we try to keep the volume down and go with a higher profit. So we definitely have the wiggle room to be able to hire somebody to do that. And maybe that's at where you're at with your business right now, or you have the crazy volume and you have the money, but you don't have the time and that's where you need to outsource it, and get that other stuff, hire those people to help you do that, for sure.
Melissa: Yeah. So right now we do the high profits, but our volume's low, but if we can even raise our volume because we've hired more people with the high profits, then that just increases our overall revenue for the whole company.
Rob: So, absolutely.
Melissa: So that's kind of, it's a different way to look at it too.
And, and I think our money is always made we say this all the time is made in the purchase of the items. So as long as you're getting your items, you're finding 'em at such a low enough cost, and you can build that into your cost of running the business.
Rob: So, absolutely. So the other cool part about what we're doing right now is we have one on one students that we are actually helping implement this stuff, finding these people, to scale their businesses as well.
So not only are we going through it, but we're actually coaching and helping people do the same thing.
Melissa: Helping them outsource some stuff.
Rob: Yes.
Melissa: And so they don't even have to physically, you know, pick up some of the big items. So it's been fun. And so we are wanna share some of our experience with you guys.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: So we've been having fun and I, I'm excited for you to start getting these people in play and start. So we're gonna start with, just running a couple ads, not like paid ads. We're just gonna post a couple in our communities, see if anybody's available.
Rob: Yeah.
Melissa: That's kind of our first step step into this, into this thing. Like, well, who's available who would want to maybe work a couple hours a week or what it whatnot.
Rob: Yeah.
Melissa: So we're kind of hoping for maybe like a college kid or somebody retired who has some time and maybe has some, you know, mechanical experience. So it's kind of the, the people we're hoping for. So we'll see.
Rob: Absolutely. So we'll keep you guys posted, but that is kind of where we are at in our business. Hopefully you can relate it, wherever you're at or where you, you plan on growing to, to that next level, where, like Melissa said, we're gonna document this and be able to share it with you as well.
Melissa: Yeah. And if you are just starting, you know, know that you can, once you feel like I can't do anything more, you there's other ways that you can grow and keep growing. So.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: We're always try to keep growing. So thanks guys, for listening.
Rob: You guys rock have a great day, we will see you on the next episode.
Melissa: Bye.