Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how sometimes making a drastic change can help you hit your goals with your flipping business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Rob & Melissa Sometimes Drastic Change = Amazing Results
Rob: Alright, guys, on today's episode, we're talking about something that has been on my mind for a while, and I haven't voiced it out loud to Melissa until today, and she's going to help hold me accountable. So stay tuned!
Rob: Alright, guys, so Melissa and I are just coming back off of an amazing week last week. We actually went to a conference in Mexico and had a blast.
Melissa: It was more of a mastermind than a conference. It was kind of a conference, I guess there were 600 people there. So it wasn't that small. It was kind of like a conference. And we found out later that we took up two thirds of the whole resort.
We didn't even know there's a lot of us there.
Rob: An amazing all-inclusive resort. We had a blast, we took our kids. We took my sister and my nieces. We had a really, really great time and we learned a lot of stuff, which is, that is the best part about this.
Melissa: And we want to share something with you today.
Rob: That's right!
Melissa: And you might notice that we'd missed a couple of podcast episodes.
Our goal was to have them prerecorded before we went, but we didn't. So here we are, we're a week and a half late, but it's all good.
Rob: That's right! So better, late than never. We're going to talk about some of the principles, some of the stuff that we did learn at this conference.
Melissa: And first, one thing I wanted to add too, is that I know we've talked about this before on the podcast and, maybe other Facebook live or something.
When we did that conference back in the fall, one of the speakers had told us that if you're not, surrounding yourself, not surrounding yourself. If you're not like working with a mentor or a coach or somebody, you're moving backward, like if you're not doing something like working with, well how did he say it?
Rob: Well, the common misconception is if you're not doing anything that you're staying still, and that's not the case, it is you're regressing if you're not moving forward, you're either moving forward or backwards.
Melissa: You're not just staying still. And that really took, like, I really was like, wow, that's interesting. And so, but, and the speaker who said it was actually at this mastermind and he was standing behind us in lunch and I told him, thank you because that really hit me hard. I thought okay, that's really cool. So anyways, as a side note, but
that was really interesting.
Rob: It was awesome. And this conference, talked about mindset. It talked about so much great stuff. That I was convicted. I was convicted that, about something that I thought about for probably the last couple of years, that is a hard, hard step for me. But Melissa and I, well, I knew that I needed to do this. I don't have great willpower. I have a mindset, that I want to do something. And then when it comes down to the willpower, sometimes I lack that.
Melissa: And you have some of the best positive mindset that there is. But then by the end, you want to get all this stuff done. And then by the end of the day, you get tired. So we created some big goals for ourselves, like.
So we wanted to make sure that we can get those done. And we, you know, we have two parts of our business, so we coach people, and we're flipping. We flip and then we talk about it on the internet, which we create content. So it's a two-fold business. So we want to have goals for both of those.
Rob: That's right. And one of the exercises that we actually went over in the conference was one of the speakers, actually the developer of the software that we use, he actually gave us a calendar, a week calendar.
And it was from 5:00 AM to 12:00 AM the full day. And he wanted us to write down exactly what we're doing. And Melissa and I figured out that we
Melissa: He gave us a blank slate calendar and we're just filling it out.
Rob: We had a lot of time allotted to spending time with each other, spending time with our kids, you know, taking the kids to school, spending time with them after school, that kind of stuff.
Melissa: It was like dropping off the kids. We'd go for a run. Then it's already almost lunchtime.
Rob: We do lunch together and then we have to go back and pick up the kids. So our day surrounds really our family and our relationship together. And we fit into the small pockets, our flipping and our coaching. But one of the things that I felt like I needed to do, for a short amount of time, which we set it at a 90 day sprint, we want to be able to increase our flipping sales.
So we want to sell a lot more items in the next 90 days.
Melissa: We're gonna hit that $100K goal this year.
Rob: We are. We're going to hit the $100,000, flipping goal this year.
Melissa: We hit $90K last year.
Rob: And our coaching, our coaching. There's a lot of portions of our coaching. We have to actually make content. We have to put content out there to help people.
And yeah, it's really it's, we have a lot of stuff going on and I was trying to figure out where can I squeeze some more hours into the day, that I can get some of these tasks done that I need to get done.
Melissa: We wanted to, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I was gonna say we wanted to, we'd been talking about growing our YouTube channel and really helping people that way and getting videos out there for a long time and we do it and then crickets for a couple of months.
That was another goal that we have.
Rob: It is, it's hard. So I decided that, once we listened to this, like I said, the speaker, the conference and that kind of stuff, I really felt like for the next 90 days, I wanted to take our TV off the wall. And this goes back to my willpower. I made the decision before that I wanted to not watch TV.
Now my normal schedule, my normal routine is, you know, we do stuff we go through out the day, nine or 10 o'clock rolls around at night after I'm done working, and I want to sit down and I want to watch.
Melissa: Unless you're building a pallet, sometimes you build pallets late.
Rob: Yeah, but for the majority of the time, I'll sit down and I'll start watching TV.
I'll watch it for probably two hours, sometimes maybe even three hours, depending on what show I'm watching or what movie or anything like that. But it's how I unplug. Well, I felt like for this short amount of time, I have to take the TV down off the wall, which I'll be doing today, and keeping it off the wall for 90 days.
This doesn't just affect me because our kids love to watch the TV. We only let them watch it on the weekends. But they love to watch TV shows and stuff like that. So, Melissa, we have a Friday night that we actually get together with the kids and we do a movie night.
Melissa: We do a movie night on Friday nights. That was one of the first things I asked him about.
Rob: We order pizza and we watch a movie with the kids and it's kind of fun. It's interactive and yeah.
Melissa: And they love it.
Rob: They do. They love it. And so this is going to affect not just me, it's going to affect everybody, but I really felt for what our goals are and what we're pushing towards this is one of the ways that I can contribute and really get some results by taking that TV off.
So I can't get weak in my time of want. And I can't turn it on and watch TV. So that's why I'm physically removing it. I'm going to take it down. I'll wrap it up in a blanket and we'll throw over to the storage, so I can't just throw it back up on the wall and we'll be able to watch it, one of those things.
So that is my commitment. That is what I'm going to do for the next 90 days. And like I said, this is, it's a short term. It's not for the rest of our lives, we'll never watch TV again or anything like that. It's something that I really am convicted, or I really want to do to try and move the needle in both of our businesses.
It's what is going to help us meet some of those goals that we have set for the next 90 days.
Melissa: Yeah. I was going to add too, we talked about the kids movie night, so we wanted to replace that now. So it's not like we will never do it again. They love it. We love it. It's a great family time, but now we're just going to do game night instead.
We'll do a Friday night game night so we can order pizza and have popcorn and then they love games. So we'll try that for a little bit and see how that goes until the summer. So the goal is when they get out of school in the summer, and then we'll take the summer off with them.
Rob: That's right. So we have 90 days until they're out of school.
And that's when we, like I said, we wanted to see the needle move on both portions of our business. We're very, very excited to see the results of this. We'll keep you guys in the loop. I'm sure. Every couple of weeks, we'll tell you guys, hey, how it's going. It's been miserable or it's been amazing.
Whatever. It's brought our family closer together, whatever it is. But implication for you guys, maybe think about something, set some of those goals for the next 30, 60, 90 days, and figure out where your schedule is. If you wanna do the same exercise, we did get this calendar. Print that week calendar and see where all your time is going right now..
Melissa: All seven days from 5:00 AM to midnight, like what are you doing in those hours? And I mean, without TV, you'd probably go to bed earlier, too. So we might find another hour in the morning before we have to get their kids ready for school.
That'd be cool.
Rob: For some of us. It's not negotiable. Taking the kids to school, I do that in the morning. Melissa and I both get up and we actually get the kids ready for school. Melissa makes their lunch. I'm the one who makes their breakfast and then I drive them to school. That's time that is non-negotiable. We want to do that. We don't want to replace that time. We want to find out what time we can replace.
Melissa: We don't want to cut out our run either.
Rob: Exactly.
Melissa: Cause that's what gets us in a good head space.
Rob: And it keeps our bodies in shape. It's one of those things that we need to do. So you have to figure out where you can cut what you can do, and you might be at a place right now where you can't cut anything and that's okay.
That's all right. But for us, I feel like this is what I need to do and where I need to cut. And it might not even be TV for you guys. Maybe you don't even have TV right now. Maybe that's not one of those options, but for me, that's one of those things that I know I can squeeze another probably at least hour to two hours in of work time at night to get some goals, to get some stuff moving for sure.
Melissa: You might not have to be so drastic as taking the TV off the wall, but you might have to. It might have to be something that just shifts. So that's when we talked to, we listened to Nick Santonastasso at the conference too. He said sometimes like when you get in that habit, that same thing.
It's like you put the kids to bed. You're tired. You want to go, but now the TV's not there. You've totally changed that habit. Or you go and you do something else to change your mindset at that same time. So if you know, you have a habit and you want to get out of it, you might have to do something different at that time in order to change that habit.
Rob: And for me, I feel like this will bring our family close together. I think that's going to be
Melissa: Or there might be a few upset kids at the beginning.
Rob: Some kids at the beginning will be upset.
Melissa: I don't think it's going to be easy for them. Especially the first week they're going to come home from school today and it's going to be, where is the TV? They're going to be upset, even though they're not allowed to watch TV during the week, but still they're going to be upset.
Rob: But like I said, it gives you room to do different things, to try and make up time otherwise like we will do the game night on Friday night. We'll also, I mean, I want to go, we have a local place where we go ride bikes and they do an outdoor movie and that's one of the things that we can do, you know, maybe every, every other week or something like that to where we can, it allow us to do some more stuff as a family, bring each other closer together.
So it'll be really, really cool. So, but what does that look like for you? Take inventory or take, what's the right word? Yeah. Just reflect back on what is going on right now in your life. Maybe print out that calendar, and see if there is a place that you can actually cut some time, to reach those goals that you want or that you need.
Melissa: I was going to say, a lot of you are probably doing this part-time like, as a side hustle for extra income. And sometimes, you know, when you're working full time, kids, you have a family, like it gets hard. There's a lot of balls to juggle and it's easy to say, okay, well, I'm going to get 15, 20 listings done today or this week or whatever it is.
But unless you have that time, like a lot it out, it's not always that easy. So this might give you, if you find something that's not really serving you. You know, and nothing, there's nothing against TV. There's nothing against relaxing after a hard day. But you know, for a time, you know, at least four nights a week, you're going to be working on that stuff.
Rob: Exactly. You do those sprints, that's where you will see. And the other thing was who was it? Was it Russell talking about, imbalance?
Melissa: Oh yeah.
Yeah, that was really cool too. He said something about along the lines of, nothing ever amazing has come out of a time of balance. So if you can, you might have to be a little imbalanced for a time.
Rob: That's us right now.
Melissa: That's not forever it's for a time. And as long as nothing else gets sacrificed, like you don't want your family to be sacrificed for it.
Rob: Your spouse. You don't want to drop the ball on any of that other stuff.
Melissa: Yeah, no, no, but if, you know, you need to set your set high goals for yourself for a little bit, then you can forward from there.
Rob: That's it, but that's when great stuff comes from radically imbalancing.
But like Melissa said, you definitely take this away. This is not about, you know, leaving your family in the dust. It's not about sacrificing. Melissa and I spend a lot of time together, for our marriage. We spend a lot of time together with the kids. So, we don't want to go off the deep end with that and just totally put that on the back burner so we can excel in business or excel and flipping and coaching and all that kind of stuff. That's not what we're talking about, but I do feel this is a radical thing for us to do pull the TV down, not spend as much time watching TV. I think it will definitely be a good result for us.
Melissa: We'll talk about it for the
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: next couple of weeks, because it's going to be interesting. And one other things I wanted to add is definitely try to get around like-minded people because going to this, I mean, we invested in this coaching and I'm so thankful that we did because just going to this conference, like my head was not in a great place when we left and like going there just really helped me.
Rob: Absolutely
Melissa: And just being around people who are driven, people who are wanting some of the same things and just creative minds, and also it didn't hurt that it was a very beautiful place. Everything was outside. You see nature, you see water. It's just very recharging. But other than that, but also just being around those people, it actually inspired us.
Maybe we'll be doing a live event at some point in the future because that, I mean, you want to be around people who are doing the same, like on the same goal. So, so try to find those people, find your tribe of people who are doing what you want to do.
Rob: That's it.
Alright, you guys rock. Have a great day and we'll catch you on the next episode.