Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how to get past limiting beliefs so you can grow your flipping business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast – The 1 Thing That Helps Me Bust Through Limiting Beliefs
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are talking about the one thing that helps me crush and bust through limiting beliefs.
Melissa: We have very different mindsets, so this is gonna be a fun conversation.
Rob: Okay, so you guys might be wondering, oh, what that one thing is that helps me crush the limiting beliefs that I have, even by myself in business and almost everything that I do. There's one thing that has always helped me. And we wanna dive into that.
Melissa: Yeah. I, I definitely tend to have a little bit more limiting beliefs, but then watching you be able to just kind of bust through these things, and yeah, so we wanna dive into it and hopefully this helps you too, to bust through your limited beliefs.
Rob: That's it. So six years ago when Melissa and I went full-time into this business, we knew Melissa was giving up her job.
I was giving up my job and we were gonna fulltime flip. We knew that something had to give, we had to figure out how to make more money flipping. And the, the thing that we ended up doing gravitating tool towards larger items, because they were higher profit. Typically you could find a larger item in a local area, buy it, and then it would have higher resale value, that people were not willing to ship that.
So that was one thing that we dove into reselling and we really started, exploring what was possible with that.
Melissa: So you had bought this from an auction. I believe this furniture set. It was a huge dining room table.
Huge is
Rob: an understatement.
Melissa: Chairs. And yeah, like it was like for a massive dining room.
And, I had, what's the hutch thing called?
Rob: A buffet.
Melissa: A buffet with it too. And it all matched and it was very elaborate, very detailed. Like it was an elaborate thing. So he got it for $350 at an auction, $350, and listed it on Facebook Marketplace. Cause that's always where we would list stuff that was larger, larger items.
Who's gonna ship that? So, so we thought and so you listed it for, I think it was listed for about a month, for $750 and it didn't sell and we were starting to go full time, like, okay, we need to figure this whole thing out. Like we need to be making more money. So what are we gonna do?
Rob: Yeah. And we actually had it listed for two months.
Oh. And we had it listed for $750. I was willing to take $700, hopefully doubling my money. And it did not sell, as you guys know, we've been selling a lot longer than we went full time as a, as a family. We've been in this business I've been for over 20, 25 years, doing this on and off. But, we were selling on eBay, but not with larger items like Melissa said. It was one of those things that, large items, we found them. Sometimes we threw 'em on Marketplace, so we wouldn't have to ship 'em that kind of thing. So I jumped in eBay and I checked some comps on a, a dining room set like this. And like Melissa said this huge, big, beautiful dining room set.
I think it was eight or 10 chairs, a hutch or whatever it's called, a buffet. We had all that stuff. So I'm looking and I'm noticing on eBay, the ones that are selling, the only reason that they're selling is because they're offering shipping and I'm going, okay, this is crazy. And it's not just a little bit of money.
These were selling $3,000 $5,000. They're selling for quite a bit of money, but they were offering shipping. So I told Melissa, listen, we're gonna take this on. If we can sell this, I will figure out how to ship it. So we actually ended up throwing it on eBay, getting pictures, really, really good pictures.
Cuz you need better pictures on eBay. Ended up selling it in a less than a month. This is the kicker. Get this, instead of selling it for $700, $750, even a thousand dollars guys, we boosted it up to $2,300, which I thought was crazy, but I wanted to do it $2,200 or $2,300.
Melissa: That was $2,200.
Rob: $2,200. Remember this is like seven years ago.
So, but I thought it was crazy that there was no way that somebody would do it. And it kind of was dealing with a little bit myself knowing that I was gonna have to ship it. It's like, okay, well, do you really want it to sell. And I did, but I didn't at the same time. So we ended up putting it on there, sold it in less than a month for $2,200 plus an extra, was it $400 or $500?
Melissa: $500.
Rob: $500 in shipping.
So when that sold, I was like, okay, this is insane. We did it. We actually got it palleted up. We got it shipped out and we figured out how to do it. Now you guys might be wondering, okay, how does this story tie into everything? Guys, this is it. I looked on eBay and saw that other people were doing this. And I saw that it was a possibility all, I need that one thing that crushes everything for me in almost every aspect of my life, knowing that only one person has done it, somebody has figured out how to do it.
Guess what I know I am. It's possible for me to do it. If somebody else has done it. And, and this is, this will get you in trouble sometimes, but in the most part, it's good. It's a good, motto to live by because nothing's gonna hold you back. A lot of people will look at something and go, okay. They did it well, I'm not like them.
I can't do it. I don't let that hold me back. If somebody else has done it, I'm gonna figure out how they did it and I might not get it the first time. And, and that's true in this as well. I probably didn't get this shipped near as cheap as I possibly could have, but I kept getting better at it.
We sold bigger items, we sold more items and I got better and better at the whole process to where we've honed in the skills on freight shipping to where we can ship it cheaper than anybody else, but it was that one, that one push that I needed knowing somebody else was doing it, that I could figure it out and I could get better and better at it as I did it.
Melissa: Yeah. And I think that that is such a good mindset to be able to shift to because like, I don't go there first. If I see that somebody's done that I'm like, well, good for them. They can do it, but I can't do it because I don't have the XYZ skill set or whatever, but you take that and you're like, well, okay.
Let's just figure it out. Like if somebody did it, it can be done. So, and that kind of motivates you in a lot of things, I think. Yeah. So I don't know where you're at.
Rob: I even said this to Melissa the other day, cuz this came to my mind and I didn't know all the details about it, but I've known people have talked about Roger Banister.
Is that name Banister?
Melissa: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah. Roger Banister. If you guys don't know who he is, look it up. But I've heard many, many people use this story before or talk about his story and it was in the fifties.
Melissa: Yeah, 54, I believe.
Rob: So the, I think. From the beginning of time or recorded time, where people were actually doing races and stuff like that.
Nobody had broken a four minute mile. Nobody had done it and he was the first one to do it back in the fifties. Everybody thought, your body would break down. Your heart would explode if anybody ran it faster than four minutes. He was the first one who did it. After he did it, I think even the first year after he did it, so many more people broke his record and went even lower in that, that four minute mile.
Melissa: I checked it. And now over 1,600 people, 1,663. At that time, it was like a year ago, have broken the four minute mile. Now it's like a middle running standard, which is crazy insane. They, you know, they, somebody, we were, they were working so hard. Like that was the goal is to break four minutes, break four minutes, and then somebody did it.
And now all of a sudden, like, you know, you okay, they did it. We can do it too. I can do this. So, yeah, it just easy, crazy interesting how, but it is it change your mindset.
Rob: One person had to do it before other people are like, wait a minute. If somebody can do it. I'm gonna train and I'm gonna do it as well.
And that is I that's what I'll challenge you and encourage you guys today. If, if there is something in your life, it doesn't have to be all about flipping either. If there's something in your life, that you're getting stuck on, find somebody who's done it and just know that it's been done and you can absolutely do it.
Like I said, that's what helps me bus through any any obstacle that I come across, that I'm trying to conquer. I just find somebody who's done it, know that it's possible, try and study and learn what I can do to get better. And it's not gonna be a hit, you know, that takes time for some people just think about the mile, that guy didn't just go out one day and break the four minute mile.
You have to train for it. You have to do it. And that's one of those things, just know that you can do that. Know that it's possible. That's our biggest, you know, takeaway from this is know that it is possible. If you really want to do it, you absolutely can do it.
Melissa: And, and if you don't go there at first, like that's not your first, like you can kind of train yourself to get to that point because that's not where my mind goes at first at all.
I would like, for an example for me, I deal with imposter syndrome a lot. Like, I, I don't really like doing videos. I don't like, like, this is all stuff I've had to grow over time. Like even talking into a microphone, not my favorite thing, but it's you learn how to do this stuff. And last year we hosted our first, reseller summit, and I know people host online summits.
I know like I've learned about this stuff. I've modeled, people doing it. Took courses like learned this stuff, but then I'm like, who am I to be like, cuz I do most of the backend stuff of, of, of.
Rob: All the backend stuff.
Melissa: Well now we have a team that helps us and they're amazing, but you know, it's kind of all on me to get that thing going.
And I was like, Well, who are we to, who am I to be hosting this? And like having these speakers come and all this stuff, and it's all the limiting belief. And it, like, we had a great time last year. It was so much fun. We had like 20 some speakers, like 6,000 people registered. Like it was a great time.
And then, and I don't know, it was just, it's interesting how, like, leading up to it. I was like, oh, I'm so I can't do this. Like, I, I just, my mindset's not there. Who am I to do this? I'm imposter, blah. And then it turned out really fun and a little plug that we are in the process of planning this next year's, one is gonna be fun.
So don't miss it. Don't visit me at the end of October. There'll be stuff coming out soon, but we're really excited for this year's summit. And, and yeah, so it's normal to have those limiting beliefs in whatever you're working on, whatever you're doing and seeing that other people can do it. Like, why do you think that you can't do it too, but you can like, there it's being done.
You can, so you might just have to learn some new skills or brush up on a, you know, a, a certain thing, but you don't let, just that you think you can't do it be the thing that stops you. So just had to add that into there. So, so yeah, so bust through those limiting beliefs, somebody did it, people are selling stuff.
People are selling on the, whatever platform you wanna sell on, you know, learn from them. You got this.
Rob: You guys rock. Have a great day. We cannot wait to see you on the next episode.