Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about when you should get a storage unit for your reselling business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - When Should You Get A Storage Unit For Your Business?
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are talking about when should you get a storage unit and possibly do you even need a storage unit for your business?
Rob: All right guys, so a big question we get is when should I get into a storage unit for my items that I'm reselling? That is what we were gonna dive into today. And, yeah, just talk about it.
Melissa: And do you even need to, at what point in business does that make sense for you? So we wanted to kind of unpack that.
Cause a lot of times people, I think you, you jump into this reselling thing and then you, you're like, okay, well, before I can do anything, I need to get a truck, I need to get a trailer, I need to get a storage unit. And that's before you even started. So we're gonna kind of unpack that. So.
Rob: Absolutely. And we'll take you back to my, my journey.
When I started out, actually, after I moved outta my parent house and I started doing it more. I started out with my spare bedroom. I had a duplex, that I lived in one of the bedrooms. I had a spare bedroom, and I.
Melissa: That's when we met.
Rob: It is. And I put the stuff that I would buy into the spare bedroom. I used that as my office, my storage, everything that I did.
That's pretty much how I started. Granted this was back when I was 24, 24 years old. Yeah, and that's kind of how I started my business. Now, fast forward to where we're at now. We have a huge warehouse. I mean, huge. I shouldn't say huge. That's definitely relative, but, I have like 14, 1500 square foot warehouse.
Yeah, we have multiple trailers, multiple trailers, trucks, all that kind of stuff. So.
Melissa: But it didn't start there.
Rob: It did not, And this actually,
Melissa: I think, this question, it comes up a lot, but it also came, if you were talking to somebody the other day on one of our, coaching, coaching calls, you were, doing a strategy call with somebody and he had mentioned that he didn't know if it was time to get a storage unit.
Yeah. So. Go ahead and you can.
Rob: No. And then I started diving in deeper with one of our coaching students, talking kind of where he was at in his business, kind of what he did, did appliances and other stuff like that. And he told me that he hasn't touched his income. He was doing this part-time and hasn't touched his income.
As of yet, everything that he's made, he has it in a separate account, hasn't had to use any of it, and he was up to like $30,000. And I'm like, If you enjoy this, you've proven that it absolutely works. And for you to go to that next step, you need a little bit more storage. It's a very, very small cost to go into that next step.
So, that's kind of what I told him when we were talking, for that strategy call that we did.
Melissa: Yeah, so basically it, it boils down to knowing your numbers. So knowing what you're making each month and does it make sense for your business? So, cuz you can go run a storage unit for a hundred to $200 a month, but it you know, that is a expense for your business.
So you don't wanna take a recurring expense unless it makes sense for your business. So if you, you know, you an extra $200 is gonna give you the freedom of, now it's not in your spare bedroom or it's not in your garage, and now you kind of treat it more like a business then too. So if you're going from hobby to business, then you probably will start selling more because you're treating it like a business.
Rob: So, absolutely. And like Melissa said, when the, the money is there, to go into that storage unit and you've done this weekend, week out, you've enjoyed it even. Part-time. You've enjoyed the process. You love that hunt. That's like me. You love the hunt for the deal, in the whole process of it.
And then to grow, you need to have a little bit more room to work. You need to have a little bit more room to store stuff. Then yeah, as long as the money is coming in and you can go to that next level, 100%. Now, if you just look at this and it seems like a great idea and one of those things that you're gonna jump into, go get a storage unit, go get a truck, we never recommend anybody doing that, we recommend you starting off slow. Back to my story, when I started this, I had two vehicles. I had an SUV, Tahoe, a four door Tahoe, and then I had a little convertible car. That's what I used. And both of those vehicles are all that I started this business with. And I still did some larger items.
I still did exercise equipment. I still did some bigger stuff.
Melissa: You had a lot of Nordic Tracks in that convertible.
Rob: I did, I did. And it was one of those things that, yeah, that you can start where you're at. You do not have to go. And I didn't go run out and get that, that storage unit. Actually, truth be told, when I did go to the next level, I still didn't do a storage unit.
I went and bought, I think it was a $350 shed and put it in the back behind my duplex. And I used that as storage at first, until I outgrew that and I was making enough money to, justify going out and getting more storage. And then that's when I actually upgraded to one storage.
Melissa: Yeah. And before we, No, but, but even before that, we lived in a 575 square foot house that had absolutely, like in the first, was it five years of our marriage? No storage whatsoever. Like we, it was a very small house with no extra room, so he didn't have the extra bedroom at that point. We didn't have a garage, so we did get, we had the shed, and then you built another shed.
Yep. So in the back you kind of built, one that we can put some stuff in because we had no room, but we didn't have a storage unit then. You built a shed. Yep. Back then, so.
Rob: And that might be an option where you're at right now, you can take stepping stones to get to that next level. Maybe you have room in a backyard that you can actually put in a $300 or $400 shed, and that is usually two, three months of a storage unit.
That's definitely a possibility as well, but, the whole point is you definitely don't want to jump. I should say you don't wanna run before you walk. And going and getting a storage unit and trying to do it and then trying to cover that monthly expense when the, the money's already not coming in or the money is not yet coming in, that's not usually a good decision and that's not how we did it.
But it's one of those things that, yeah, it. It just makes more sense for you to grow your business and then outgrow what you're in right now to go to that next level. And fast forward into our journey, Melissa's right when we got into that house, when we got married, I had two sheds in the backyard. I did that, I outgrew those.
And then I went to one storage unit. We got up to four storage units before we actually moved everything consolidated into a warehouse. And that was just kind of our growing. And I didn't go in and say, okay, I need four storage units. I started with one, I started filling up that one unit and I went to the next and I started filling up that.
So this is a journey of even probably within the last six years, we went from one storage unit to four storage units, and then from the four storage units we consolidated and went all into a warehouse. So it's just stepping stones and we make enough money to easily pay for our warehouse. We made enough to pay for, the storage units, but we did it slowly, that slow growth.
And I think that's key in your business is doing that growth slowly. So you don't go out and get a warehouse and you got, $1,500 or $2,000 looming over your head, and then you have to work to get that money to be able to pay for that. We don't ever recommend somebody doing that. Just really causes way too much stress and it's very hard for you to have to live up to that overhead in your business.
Melissa: Yeah, but it, it also brings us to a point like if you are like working out of your house and you have an extra bedroom and that's you're working out of and you feel like you are outgrowing it and you run the numbers and it makes sense, it can be a great thing to move into another space because like I said before, you are treating it more like a business and then instead of just a hobby and you have the space to do that.
And it is nice when it's not in the house too.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: It's separate. Like, okay, this is going to the warehouse, not in the house. And I would say too, another little I guess tip or something, you might not need as much space as you get stuff listed the moment it comes home . So yeah, we probably wouldn't need quite so much space if we had everything listed.
Rob: Absolutely.
And that's definitely my bottleneck of my business is I get great, great deals and it might need a little bit of fixing up and then sometimes I have ADD, so I get something and then I go onto something else before I get it listed. So that's definitely a great point if you're doing this and yeah, we have students that who are amazing at this.
They get something, they get it home, they get it listed. They put it in storage until it sells. They do the same thing over and over and over. And I feel like that is not my strong suit, but I'm working on it.
Melissa: Working on hiring part of that too, so.
Rob: Absolutely. So, and another thing that we kind of touched on was trucks and trailers.
This business you do not need, even at the level we're at you do not need a truck and a trailer to do this. I could do this out out of an suv, I could do it out of a minivan. I could totally do it with whatever I had. Now that growth, I don't have the SUV anymore. I don't have the convertible. We actually have, yeah, well I do have an SUV, but it's a different one. And we have a truck and then a big SUV and I have the equipment, I have trailers, multiple sizes of trailers, but it was the growth of that as well. So you can start where you're at. When you outgrow it and you, it makes sense for you to go buy a truck and a trailer then absolutely. But until that point, even if you only have a small sports car or something like that, saying you wanna try this out? You can go rent a truck. You can rent a truck from Lowe's. You can rent a truck from Home Depot, from U-Haul, all these different places to get to that level, you can actually rent and it's a lot cheaper than going, spending a lot of money on a truck and then not really liking this whole profession because you're not a hundred percent sure about it. So we definitely.
Melissa: You gotta test it out first.
Rob: Absolutely. We definitely recommend you taking stepping stones in this business. Then you will appreciate yeah, your growth and it's gonna be way, way better once you get to that next level.
Melissa: And that brings me to think about Lisa, that when she got that double oven, she got it for free.
Rob: Yep.
Melissa: And sold her on eBay for a thousand dollars and she lived in a small apartment. Was it apartment? Yeah. And she had it on her patio, I think, and sold it in a couple weeks. Yeah, I think it was less than a month for a thousand dollars.
But she didn't have a truck, she didn't have space, she didn't have all these things that she could have like not done anything. She'd never shipped something that big before. But we helped her do it and she rented a truck. And even after shipping and eBay fees and all that, she still made $600 profit.
Yeah. So, with running it. And then she said okay then you can see if it really is for you or not.
Rob: So, yeah, and she had to rent a truck to pick it up and then she had to rent a truck. And some people you might know somebody who has a truck that would help you, you can do that as well. But if you don't, she didn't have anybody who had a truck or a trailer or anything like that.
She went and rented one, got it to her apartment, put it underneath her carport, got pictures of it, got it sold within two weeks and sold for a thousand dollars. So, and then rented another truck once you got it on the pallet to actually get it delivered. So it's one of those things that, yeah, you definitely start wherever you're at.
That's what we always recommend our students doing. Starting where you're at and then grow it into something else. If you absolutely enjoy it, you love it and you wanna go to that next level, that's when you start slowly scaling it.
Melissa: I also wanted to add, there's other options then just a storage unit too.
So you already add it said the shed. That's a great idea. Some people even I've seen rent semi truck. What are the things. Like on the back container. Yeah, the container. So sometimes you can get those for a, a good price and it's just a container and you can use that for your business. So I've seen, several people do that.
It might be a cheaper option too.
Rob: And pods. You can have a pod if you have the property. If you have the room, you can have a pod come out instead of a shed. Put that on and you have a monthly fee of renting that pod. You just have to see if it makes sense. Yeah, exactly. You, but you have so many different options nowadays that you can figure out how to do storage, how to do an extra office or whatever you need to do to work out of.
You have so, so many options.
Melissa: Yeah. So if it makes sense in your business, make sure you run the numbers. Don't put yourself into, $2,000 or $3,000 payment and you're not making you know enough money to cover it. Cuz we're all about making more profit. So that is our goal, to have your business be more profitable.
So less overhead, less stuff, money invested in the items and more, make more profit. So,
Rob: Absolutely. And guys, the time that this podcast is live right now, we are opening our, we have open, registration for the Reseller Summit. So if you have not, registered for that, it is a free event, get over there Melissa will have some links below.
Melissa: It's the reseller summit.com.
Rob: There you go.
Melissa: We had a blast last year. This is our second time doing it. We had so much fun last year.
Rob: We did.
Melissa: And we cannot wait for this year. We have over 20 speakers. We have so many different topics, and we might have to do a whole podcast with all the different stuff, but like, we're like, we're talking about Amazon, we're talking about sourcing it all the different things.
The, the bin, Amazon bins, eBay bins, the storage units we're talking about phone flipping. Plant flipping, I'm super excited about, like.
Rob: It's gonna be amazing.
Melissa: You could furniture flipping, you can make money in this business doing so many different things. So we're really excited about it to bring all these, experts together and absolutely, yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
Rob: And an event like this usually would cost you hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Guys, you can go over and register for free at theresellersummit.com.
Melissa: Theresellersummit.com.
Rob: Resellersummit.com.
Melissa: Theresellersummit.com.
Rob: Sorry, theresellersummit.com. Jump over there, get your free ticket right now. And then we'll see you guys in a little less than two weeks, right?
Yeah, pretty soon. A little less than two weeks from start. October 25th. Yeah. Yeah. So this year. So you guys rock. Have a great day. We will talk to you soon. Bye. See ya.