Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about why you should stop learning.
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Why You Should Stop Learning
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are gonna talk about why you need to stop learning.
Rob: Alright guys. So today's episode, we are telling you to stop in your tracks what you are doing. Stop that learning. And what does that mean?
Melissa: That means we're gonna stop learning and start taking action. So we are very much proponents of learning. We are always listening to podcasts, listening to audio books. We don't read a ton, but we do listen to a lot of audio books. But it, and we're always like, we go to conferences, we go to, we, we sit on Zoom calls, we do coaching, we do all this stuff.
We're big advocates of that. You should always be learning, but there's a point where you need to stop consuming and stop learning all the things you can learn and start doing.
Rob: So yeah, this will surprise you. Melissa and I probably spend upwards of $40,000 to $50,000 a year on continuing education. We are going to masterminds, we are going to events.
We are learning as much as we possibly can. Melissa and I, I do a jog almost every morning and we are listening to a podcast. We are listening to either an audiobook or something to better our business, both of our businesses, everything that we do, we're constantly trying to learn. Now, when does that become a problem?
When your learning overtakes and all you do is learn and you never take the next steps of implementing. You don't go to that next level because instead it's just so much easier to learn, learn, and learn, but you never do what you're learning. So that's what we wanna come back today.
Melissa: Yeah. And a lot of times you'll notice that the people who are really making things happen, they're executing, like they're executing on these ideas, they're making it happen, and you're like, well, why am I not as far along as they are?
Or, you know, you start comparing yourself. But the biggest thing, most people will become successful because they've started executing and usually it looks messy in the beginning. Like it's not anything that, you know, it's, it's just a, a mess. But then you grow from there and then you learn. You learn by doing and then you get better.
So, absolutely. So kind of, how does that relate to your flipping business? I wrote down a couple notes, like, do you right now, if you think about it, do you really need to learn more? Like, okay, so maybe there's some things you don't know about this business, but do you really have to know everything before you start? Absolutely not. Like even when people jump into our program, we have them want getting stuff done right in the beginning. Like, you don't have to know A to Z everything about eBay or freight shipping or all this stuff before you get your first item listed. Like, we want you having wins right away.
Like, don't, and we see this all the time. I feel like now we've been doing a lot more with one-on-one with people. So we get a, we get to find out more about people's businesses and go deeper, which is really cool. It is. You've been having a lot of fun doing that, but the amount of people who don't do something.
Rob: I'm so surprised about this. Yeah, this is, go ahead. You can talk about it. Yeah. It's just so surprising to see how many people actually jump in to our course will jump in and they want to go to that next level, and then they do not take action. They learn, they see the steps that we've taken, that we've put out the blueprint, but they do not do it.
And they just continue to learn, but they will not go that next level, that first step, which is everything when you take the first step. One of the things, I mean, we've been doing this for over 27 years. I have made hundreds and hundreds of mistakes. The cool thing about mistakes are that's when you learn, when you make a mistake, that is when you learn, you learn how to not do it again, and how to get better at whatever you're working towards.
That is the process of learning, is making mistakes and then learning. So.
Melissa: I think that, and that's kind of been the common theme. I feel like with some of the people, it's, I wrote some of the things down that we've noticed is it's confidence is one of them. You don't have the confidence to do it, or you're scared that something's gonna go wrong, and you're scared of making a mistake.
So those are some of the things that could be, why you're not taking action. I wrote down another couple, maybe you're overwhelmed, maybe you're a little overwhelmed with the amount of stuff. Oh. So maybe you have taken action in the past and now you've created this death pile that you're, you, you're overwhelmed with.
So I, I wanna give you some solutions to some of these in a minute. Absolutely. But, so overwhelm, lack of motivation could be another one. So, and then time is another one. I feel like that people deal with. Absolutely. I dunno if you wanna elaborate on any of those, but.
Rob:No, absolutely. These are all pretty much excuses that you will, it will cause you to stop where you're at and either keep learning and trying to learn more, and you're thinking, all right, well, I'm not ready to go to that next level. So I wanna keep learning and I wanna keep listening to podcasts or audio books or conferences.
I wanna keep doing this, but I just am not taking that step to get the results that I'm learning. I can't get those results until I take that next step and start what I need to start.
Melissa: Yeah. And we're not do saying that we are not, we're not immune to any of these things either. No, absolutely not. So these, and I will even say right now, I've gotten to a place of overwhelm.
Like I we're trying to build out a, a couple of different projects right now, and I've gotten to a place where I feel overwhelmed. So, I've even had to stop listening to some podcasts right now. I can only listen to things that pertain to the exact thing that I'm working on right now. And that's it. If I listen to anything else and Rob is the king of ideas. Like, I'm like, I can't listen to another idea. Right? I just can't, like, I can't handle it 'cause I'm overwhelmed. So I can only listen to the things that I'm working on. And I've had, like, it's kind of made me stop executing and so now I'm getting into this new thing of, okay, well now we gotta execute, we gotta make sure this is happening.
So I don't know what some things that maybe you like deal with on that list too, but.
Rob: Yeah. Definitely for me it's listing. Right now our kids are out for summer. They're going back this week, so it's kind of motivation and time. Right. But it's been that having them at home, spending time with them, for me to get back to my normal listing routine and doing that.
And it's been hard, it's hard to find the motivation to push through being at home with the kids, spending time with the kids, going and doing fun stuff with them to still stay working and stay listing items. And I have slacked, I'm totally slacked on my listing. So my goal is definitely once the kids are back in school, they go to back to school in two days.
That's when I will be able to kick it off and I still love learning, but at the same time, I'll be able to start my listing process again with our eBay business. And my goal is to do it once a day, get a listing in every single day, to see the results. Yeah.
Melissa: And one thing, did you wanna say what you heard from that Hormozi said that was pretty interesting on one of the podcasts?
Rob: Yeah. Remind me because I just forgot.
Melissa: I wrote it down. When the pain is bad enough, that will motivate you.
Rob: That's it. So one of the, podcasts that we listen to is Alex Hormozi. Amazing business leader.
Melissa: But he's one that gives us a lot of ideas. He does. So you can't listen to him whenever, we, when I'm focused, I'm focusing on something.
Rob: But we enjoy listening to him and he, one of the things that he has, he talked about before is he, is a, he turned, he started out as a personal trainer. And he would try to sell people into the personal training sessions. Melissa used to be a personal trainer, so she can relate to this. Yeah. And he used to tell people they would come in, and he would be telling them, okay, we needed, this is the program.
Yeah, this is the program. We need to set you up with an eating plan. Set you up with a, he says a whole bunch of funny stuff, but this is the one thing that stuck out to me, is the pain that you are in has to be stronger, than the results that you want. Did I say that backwards?
Melissa: No, well, the pain has to be bad enough.
Like for you to want the, to change. Yeah. And he, to have the change that you want.
Rob: He gave an example of he was sitting in front of a girl, and he was trying to sell her a personal session, personal training session and he asked her, so how many pounds have you gained in the last 25 years, or, sorry, in the last three years?
And she said, 25 pounds. And he said, well, If you're not ready to jump in, you might need to go another three years and gain another 25 pounds before you'll realize, all right, this is too much pain. I am gonna do this session and I'm gonna stick to this game plan. And that's what it really boils down to, the pain that we feel where we're at.
How is that gonna push us to start what we need to start, no matter what other obstacles or, or things that are, are in our way. The pain is so great that we know we wanna get the results and we're gonna start it at whatever the cost is. So.
Melissa: Yeah, and that's one of the things you can also relate it to, like say your side hustle.
Like if you need to make money right now for a certain thing or you know, pay your credit cards or that your credit cards are like, you don't wanna wait till you get to the point they're maxed out or whatever, but you know, you get into a bad situation. Then you go like, and we've done it even for vacations or you know, you have something pressing that you want and then you go make money.
He's like, oh, it's amazing. If I'm stressed, I can go flip a couple things. Yeah. And make a couple grand. Like, that's kind of what, what you've done. So, yeah, it's, it's just interesting.
Rob: It's cool. And one of his outlooks is also, if somebody, you know, something crazy happened in your life and you needed to make $10,000, because that's what we're relating to.
Yeah. If, if it was like a life or death situation, could you make it happen? And the answer is, yeah, you could. You totally would go and figure out how to do what you need to do to get that point.
Melissa: And yeah, so why aren't we doing that normally when well, how come we're not using? Pain's not great enough.
Yeah. That motivation and that, to take action is kind of, so I wanted to kind of go through some of those things I talked about and just kind of maybe some, things take action that you can do now to help you kind of get over them. So, what can you do to take action today? So if you're, overwhelm is one of them. Maybe get organized, maybe set up your space to be, like for pictures, if you could have one area dedicated to take pictures of your, for your listings, that helps a lot. So then, you know, like, okay, and then you kind of just get a, what's it called? Routine. Yeah, A routine, but a, streamline of, I don't know, you take your pictures, it's right there and you get your system down. So.
Rob: You can batch your pictures. Yeah. Get it ready to go. Yeah, absolutely. So.
Melissa: But getting organized can definitely help. Now, one caveat to getting organized and like getting your office set up and all this is a lot of times people prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare, and like I, okay, I'll get this done once I'm organized.
Once I'm this, once I'm that. So don't like take too long to get organized. Go get organized, and then to go take action. Yeah. So I'm like getting ready to get ready. That's what they call it. Yeah. So don't get ready to get ready. Get ready and do it. So.
Rob: And I feel like making that one commitment, that one thing towards your business. Yeah.
And sticking to it. That one step that's gonna go towards, if it's a listing, what is that one step? You're gonna make it the point you're gonna absolutely take pictures today. Make the place, like Melissa said, that you can take pictures, get one thing pictured, and make those one single steps that will add up to the staircase.
They do. You're doing that every single day you're doing that. You're taking one step, step towards what your goal really is. So that will help you alleviate the overwhelm. You're trying to work towards that goal and you break it down into bite size pieces.
Melissa: Yeah. Little chunks. That definitely helps.
The next one I had down was confidence. So what can you do to gain confidence? Really the best thing you can do to gain confidence is to just do it because you can't gain confidence if you haven't done it. And that kind of also goes with you're scared of making mistakes. It to combat that one, you're gonna make mistakes like I think like you're going to, and it's okay.
You're gonna survive, you're gonna get past it, you'll make mistakes. But the best thing about it being a mistake with something like in the beginning, you're probably just listing something, you know, small. If you make a $10, $15 mistake, it's not the end of the world and you probably will not do it again.
So that's the best mistakes are the best learning curve.
Rob: Absolutely. And when you're starting off, you're not listing a thousand dollars, $5,000, $10,000 items that those really hurt. Yeah. If something goes wrong on those items, you're learning how to do it with the smaller items. Like what we teach is starting out small, starting out with that $10, $20 item that it's not gonna break you.
If something happens and you learn from the process, you learn how to get better at it. And one thing I will tell you too, don't let, when I was early in my stages, I let some of the mistakes rule me and I turn, I, I spun away from flipping. This is an amazing side hustle, a career, but I did let those control me because I got scared of mistakes.
Don't let that do, don't let that happen to you if you make a mistake. Figure out how you can learn from mistake, and get better and better at it and alleviate it next time. Jump over that mistake. Learn how to not make the same mistake again. That was my problem early, early on I made mistakes, got a return request or had something damaged or something like that, and I'm like, oh man, this is horrible.
This is not for me. I gotta go find something else to do. And I wished I hadn't done that. But I did and I learned as I got better and better, I learned how to get better at the mistakes, not make as many mistakes. And the process is so much better now. Now we're 27 years into it, and I can pretty much, I have confidence in what I'm doing, that I'm doing it the right way and I'm taking every single application or every single precautionary thing that I need to do to really make this the best possible business that I can build.
Melissa: Yeah. So you will make mistakes. Absolutely. And it'll be okay. And you'll learn from them. And that's the, the best way to learn. For lack of motivation, that one's a little bit harder, I would say. Because motivation can be like external or like it comes internal. You have to be motivated, but then you can let external things happen and then it demotivates you.
So you kind of, there's a, a quote and I'm gonna butcher it. It's like creating a goal, but you're gonna still do it with the intentions of when you set it, I messed that up anyways. Like you wanna still be able to, keep at it even when, how like the environment you set those goals in, that leaves you. Like, a lot of times, you know, you get excited, you're gonna set these goals and then now you're home and you're staring at your death pile and like, oh, well that's not exciting anymore.
So how are you gonna combat that? So something, you know, set goals and write them down. That helps a lot. That helps me. I write everything down in a paper planner, like I'm not. I don't like putting my calendar on tech stuff. I'm more pen and paper and that helps me and write down my goals. And then we have whiteboards in the back of here that we like to write stuff down too..
Rob: But one of those things that goes along with that is maybe get an accountability partner. Yeah. Maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a friend, somebody that you can say, listen, these are the goals I've set out for my business, for my flipping business. I really wanna reach these goals. I know I have to take small steps to get there.
Can you help keep me accountable? Can you ask me every day or every other day, can you ask me if I did the one thing that I told you that I'm gonna do on my goal sheet of what I'm doing? Yeah. And create that accountability partner. Maybe you have somebody else that would love to start flipping as well to make a little bit of extra money, and you want to have them hold you accountable and you can hold them accountable.
Find that accountability partner and that will work wonders in your goals and being able to step towards your business.
Melissa: Yeah. For sure. You could also gamify it so that it's like, make a, make a game or give yourself, set yourself rewards. Like if I list every day this week or like I'm going to go get a Starbucks or something, you know, something small, something, but like that's a reward that you might not normally do or so, you know, just something, you, you know yourself.
Like what would be a fun little thing, motivation, yeah to get to, like, okay, and you're gonna give yourself a little reward. So, it kind of, it helps to motivate you. Yeah, absolutely. So, and then the other one's, time. Time is always a hard one for a lot of people. Like everybody's busy, like, and then we are consumed by social, every media and like, there's just so much going on all the time, information everywhere.
So really it's comes down to you creating a schedule for yourself and blocking time out. And you hate schedules. I do, but you also have to realize sometimes you need them. So.
Rob: And maybe that's a challenge to you right now. If it is time, time is your biggest obstacle for getting results in your business, maybe start with checking how much time you're scrolling on social media, how much time are you spending on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, all these other avenues. And maybe just try to chunk it off instead of maybe you're spending two hours a day scrolling through and looking at some of that stuff, but you really wanna get results in your business.
Maybe you're down it to one hour a day on social media, set a timer, spend that time on it, and then spend the other hour doing something that's moving you towards your business. Some of those goal sheets that you're doing that you can totally work towards that. So just take kind of a this is our challenge to you is definitely take a survey of where your time is going right now.
And figure out where you might be able to cut a little bit off. And social media by far is the easiest. So many people get sucked into social media and it just drags them down a rabbit hole. That's easy for you to say it. It's not money 'cause it doesn't drag me down. It's an easy one that doesn't grab me.
Melissa: You can tell everybody else to do it so.
Rob: Well, and and it's true. But that's where we're at right now is social media is one of the biggest things. I don't know what the studies are showing right now, but spending time on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, on other platforms is, is consuming people. And it's not getting you any closer to what your real goals are.
Melissa: That's true.
Rob: So really taking, like, taking evaluation or evaluating what you're spending time on and then figuring out, is this more important than what I'm trying to work with my business or is it more important on my business? And can I, and I'm not telling you to cut it all off and be done with it, I'm just telling you to try and be aware of what's going on. Yeah, yeah. Be aware of what's going on and try to pull a little bit of time from somewhere that you can pull time to work towards the business that you're really trying to build.
Melissa: Yeah 'cause we definitely know, like busy schedules, we know, and if you have kids or grandkids or like it gets, it gets busy. But you do, if it is a priority, you have to be able to fit time in and maybe, you know, you know, like during the week it's just not gonna happen.
So you're like, okay, well Saturdays is my only day. So you block out, you know, a chunk of hours on Saturday to take pictures and list, and then maybe you drip those listings out during the week. Absolutely. 'cause dripping them out does help otherwise than just chunking and listing all of them at one time.
Yeah. Yeah. So that does help the eBay algorithm a little bit more. So, so that is it. I'd love to know what you guys, what you're gonna do to take action today. So, if you hit us up on Instagram, let us know what you're doing today to take action in your business and kind of what are some of your obstacles that you deal with.
We'd love to hear from you. And we've also just recently, well we're actually, this is our last week. We're taking applications for the working one-on-one with one, one us. So we are, if you wanna go check that out, you can fill out the application. It is fleamarketflipper.com/workwithus and then we're kicking off the next round of group coaching.
So we're super excited.
Soyou guys rock. We cannot wait to see you on the next episode. Have an amazing day.