Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about setting big goals for their flipping business in 2024.
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Setting Big Goals!!
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about big, audacious goals.
All right, guys. So today we're talking about those big, scary, audacious goals that you set for yourself so you can really, really go to the next level in your business.
Melissa: So Rob comes up with new ideas all the time and is telling me all this sometimes crazy stuff or stuff we need to do, whatever, but he brought this to me and I thought for a minute, like, that's crazy.
We can never do that. But then I thought, what if we could do it? Like what? What if we could? So I'll let you explain what you can.
Rob: It's a big goal. It's huge.
Melissa: Because it will take some effort to achieve this, but I think the end result will be pretty cool.
Rob: We definitely want to achieve it. And that's what we're talking about today is actually setting those goals, setting those scary goals.
So you have something to reach towards and it keeps you on track. It, you can, you can evaluate what you're doing month after month and see if you're going to that next level. And that is our goal for this one. So for this one, if you guys don't know, if you're new to us, we love to travel. We love going with our kids for the last three summers in a row.
We've actually taken a trailer and enclosed trailer with us after the kids get out of school. We pack them up and we start traveling around the U.S. And we've gone all over the place. Last year, we actually drove to California. We went on a cruise from, 16 days, from California over to Hawaii and then back.
And, it was one of the best times we've had with our kids. It was paid for by one flip. It was, and I did a little bit of sourcing over in Hawaii and found some cool stuff as well at thrift store. So we had a blast. It was really, really fun. So. This is the next goal in our journey. And that was just last year.
Like I said, for the last three years, we've been doing this. We've traveled around the U.S. gone to amazing, parks, showing our kids some really, really cool stuff. We're able to work while we're doing it. So we're finding cool stuff around the country, and doing it. So it's just a lot of fun. So.
This one, which wasn't even thought of by myself. It was one of our, our students. One of our friends, our friends came out and said, hey, I want to do this. And when I started thinking about it, I was like, wait a minute. This sounds amazing. Let's see if maybe we can jump on board with this. And I was expecting Melissa to squash it and be like,
Melissa: I don't squash all of your ideas.
Rob: You don't, but some of them you do, and this is going to take some really, really big effort on our part to be able to pull this off. So it's going to be some work.
Melissa: And we're also not, one of the reasons we wanted to come out here and say this is because it'll make it true. Like we could always not say it out loud.
And just if we don't make the goal, then we don't make it. And we know ourselves, but now if we're saying it and it's out there in the world, on the internet, wherever, on a podcast, on YouTube, we're saying it now, like we have to, we have to do it.
Rob: And you guys can hold us accountable. You can check in with us a month from now, two months from now and just say, hey, how's it going?
So, all right, tell them already. Here it is. What we have set for ourselves is to do a world cruise in 2026. Now remember, this is a big audacious goal. This is not me saying, okay, in the next six months we're going to pay for this cruise and we're going to go on it. This is we're giving ourself almost two years from the time of this recording of this podcast video that you're watching.
We are trying to work towards a world cruise with our family, with our kids.
Melissa: Paid for all by flipping. All by flipping and making enough to still pay our bills and do everything else.
Rob: Exactly. And flipping is a big portion of our income right now is we live on that. So this is a big goal for us to be able to do it.
So I'm going to tell you kind of how I've broken it down for ourselves to be able to do this and then how, , moving forward our strategies for being able to do it is really going to, going to play out. So, by the end of this year, we have to have the deposit for the cruise. I'm estimating the cruise and this is huge guys I'm estimating the cruise probably to be about $75,000 to go on a world cruise goes through I think 30 different it's 4 months long.
Yeah goes through I think 30 different countries that we would go to ports at and do different fun stuff like that. But I'm estimating it be about $75,000. So I'm planning on by the end of this year To have in the range of probably $25,000-$30,000 that we can put towards the down payment on that cruise. That's what i'm going to work on and remember this is all flipping money.
This is us by buying and selling. It's a lot easier for us to do this because we go for those high profit items We have items that sell for ten thousand dollars. We have items that sell for five thousand dollars that we're not paying that much money for so we can definitely chunk at this, to be able to do it.
So, that is what I want to do. And in the following year, 2025, my goal is to be able to pay the whole entire cruise off before we actually go on it on 2026. Doing that, we have to pay it all off. We absolutely do. So that is really, really what we're doing. We're super, super excited and stoked for this adventure.
The challenge to be able to do this in our business. Yeah.
Melissa: And we're going to get the kids involved too. And we're going to create a little, we might put it back here. I don't know that a little chart of what we have to make a poster board, what we have to make, what we have to get to. And yeah, so it should be a fun challenge to see if we can make it happen.
I mean, it would be really cool. This is not the first, this is probably the craziest one, but this is not the first time that you've come up with something like this. Like we did a transatlantic cruise, and we got a really good deal, cause it was two weeks, was it two weeks out?
Rob: I think it was a little bit longer than that, maybe a month out, yeah.
Melissa: It was a month out, and you're like, let's do this! It was like in the summer, it was 2010 before we had kids, and I worked at it, I had a job, I had a manager, but I was, oh, more than one time I would sell, I did personal training, I'd sell like a big personal training and bring in money for the gym and then I'd ask for a vacation because Rob always loved vacation.
So we did that and we're like, hey, can I go on this two week cruise to a transatlantic cruise? It was two weeks?
Rob: Oh, yeah. Or one week. Two weeks. No, over two weeks. Yeah. I think it was sixteen, four, maybe fourteen days. Fourteen days. So two weeks.
Melissa: Yeah. Transatlantic cruise. And anyway, so, but when he first came to me, he's, he's like, can we do this?
I'm like, well, we don't have the extra money, but if you go flip something, then sure. I mean, I don't have a problem. As long as I can get off, I don't have a problem with it. So I mean, it'd be fun. But, and he did. I don't know what you sold, but you flipped enough to go pay for it.
Rob: Treadmill, NordicTrack, couple, couple things that were the larger profit items, that we did at that time.
Melissa: It's funny, that's what motivates you. Like, okay, I gotta work harder. Because you like to enjoy and, and, you know, hang out, but If you're like, all right, I have a goal. I'm going to work harder and that's what sometimes it takes for you. Now you have motivation. I guess it would be the word right?
Rob: So I've never tried to plan something out two years in advance.
So this is gonna be very very interesting.
Melissa: A month to two weeks. Yes. So.
Rob: This is gonna be very very interesting. But Melissa and I have been talking about and it's like what better thing to plan out than a cruise that goes to 30 different countries and the kids will be a fun age to do it. They're gonna have a blast like we had so much fun this last year and that's really really what perked me up thinking about how much fun we had for a Hawaii cruise out of LA over to Hawaii and back. We didn't know how well it would go as a family, but it was the most amazing.
We didn't want to get off. We did not. The most amazing time that I would have stayed on that cruise as long as they would have let me. We had so much fun. It was just such a, such a blast. So thinking ahead in the next two years, I mean, that's a, that's a long stint of time between now and then, but working, never plan something that far in advance.
No, working that far out. I mean, working towards that is just going to be so much fun to be able to do it. And like Melissa said, we're going to help get the kids involved with building a chart. We've already told them about it and they were excited. Our oldest was a little bit nervous, about doing it.
I think as we get closer to it and we really start talking it up and talking about the different ports that we're going to actually be going to and the different things that we're going to be able to see across the world, it's just going to be so much fun to do.
Melissa: Yeah, so it's something that we're working on.
So we want to know what are your big goals for the year or two years from now. We can stick with a year or if maybe it's something like that. So it could, you're planning out longer. Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. If you're watching this video, you can comment below or, shoot us a message on Instagram or Facebook and let us know what are your big goals for 2024 this year, what do you want to see from your flipping business and we'd love to hear them and hopefully, you know, maybe hold you accountable to them because we're throwing it out there.
This is what we're going to do and hopefully we can stick to it. So I'm giving myself an out. I shouldn't say, hopefully. We're going to stick to it. We're going to do it. So it's out there in the world.
Rob: So you guys are awesome. Have an amazing day and we'll see you on the next episode.