735: Meet the Master Reseller Who Gets Literally Tons of Inventory for Free

23:45Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. What do you use to manage all of the inventory? You've got to imagine it's beyond spreadsheets at this point. Well, it's actually just through eBay. So it is sort of an spreadsheet. Okay. But the amazing thing is on eBay, when you're doing the listing, the items still stay there for up to two years. So if something that you want to sell right now that I know for a fact I sold it a year ago or something, I can literally just reuse the same template, if you will, or the same listing and just come and I do the changes that I need to or upload a different picture and obviously fix the price.

24:16But everything is there. So eBay has amazing tools for success as a business owner, as an entrepreneur. And that's all that I'm using right now. Just keep it simple. It has worked out really well for the last 18 years for us. What do you like for shipping? Like, is there negotiated rates with certain shippers or do you tack on shipping to the buyer? How does it work? So I offer free shipping on all of my items and there is a psychology to it. You know, it sounds a lot better when somebody says it's free shipping instead of me saying, well, this item is$10, but I'm going to charge you$20 for shipping, right?

24:50People feel like, what? Like, it's a, you know, rip off. So I include it. And then, like I said, I accept the offers from the buyers based on location because I know how much that item is going to cost me to ship, you know, so close, so far, or why not? But what I love is eBay has a very robust system for printing labels. And as a corporation, as a company, they get a huge volume discount so that when you're printing the labels, you're already getting like 40, 50 % discount on a label. Like if you were going to go to the, you know, physical location of the postal office or the UPS. And so that has been golden for us.

25:28And we just get to decide if we're going to ship it, you know, Ground or Priority or FedExpress based on how expensive the item is. If something is very expensive and it's small, I usually do like FedExpress because I know in two days will be final destination and it's less handling and it makes people feel a lot better when they're buying something so expensive. And it's taking forever. You know, they get nervous. What's taking so long? You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. But communication is key, right? As soon as I print the label, the buyer gets the tracking information. And then I, it's funny because today we're in the world that we want everything yesterday.

26:03Sometimes people buy something and, you know, like last night. And then this morning at four in the morning, I already had emails. It's like, hey, when are you shipping the item? I'm like, you bought it around 12. Relax. Let me at least get to work first. Let me sleep. I mean, we do sleep. You know, we're not robots. It's a human company. We're not Amazon or something like that. So yeah, Amazon has got everybody spoiled by the same day or next day shipping. Yes, but having the communication and making feel people good about, you know, the way you ship and how long it's going to take potentially and everything.

26:34So it makes them feel really good. And it's just that trust that you build with them. When you're creating the listing and it's a laptop and it's five pounds and it's 15 inch laptop, does eBay give you an estimate of how much that shipping is going to cost? so you can kind of mentally bake it into your ultimate price if you're going to offer free shipping? So they have a calculated shipping, yes. But because I have the free shipping, I just put the measurements and the weight. And I sort of already know after 18 years of trial and error how much it's going to cost me. Yeah, yeah. But I'll tell you, one of our biggest mistakes, and we only discovered it like two or three years ago, it was that we were shipping the laptops in a box that was like 16 by 12 by 4.

27:16And we were able to get our hands into a smaller, a little smaller laptop box, which was like 14 by 12 by 3. And that extra two inches in the side was able to bring the shipping costs like$3 to$5 per laptop. So we realized that for so many years, we've lost thousands of dollars because we were shipping on a box that was two inches too big. You learn so much. It's an ongoing, you have to adapt. It's painful, but you go. It's our lives. Yeah, I mean, better to have learned it than never learned it, for sure. Do you ever worry about the inventory sourcing drying up with the companies saying, well, maybe we'll have our summer intern list this stuff themselves and they can sell it over the course of the summer?

28:04Or somebody else comes in and not only undercuts, they're like, well, we'll pay a little bit to let us take away this obsolete tech. I don't know, it's kind of reliant on the steady demand of buyers, which I don't see going away, but also the steady stream of supply coming in. Yes. So do you worry? Yes. But then you make the changes necessary and you build the relationships necessary to make sure that that sort of doesn't always happen. And by that, companies pay a lot of already expensive salaries and overhead for employees and trying to start a learning curve, you know, get into this big selling online learning curve just so they can make a little bit extra money.

28:45They have no interest. For them, just like you said, though, they say, hey, would you just pay me a little bit for this? Right. So they want to get more money out of that. And I'll tell you something that has been amazing for us in the last two years and that we've been able to scale our business big time. Selling on eBay has, after 18 years, we have a fleet of trucks. We have 13 employees. They're all full-time. We have a 10 ,000 square feet of warehouse. We've been able to collect like 10 million pounds of e-waste in the last 18 years. And we sell about 1 ,200 to 1 ,500 items a month. Now, in the last two years, we were struggling because the economy has been so uncertain.

29:26And, you know, 2024 was like an election year, so nobody knew what was happening. So even though the companies didn't want to recycle, they didn't know if they were shutting down, if they're just expanding. There was just so much. And so everybody was sort of froze. So we were able to apply for a seller capital program through the eBay platform. And it's a system they're providing to all of their sellers. And we were able to get all of this cash advance, all of this money in advance. And we're able to pay to have flexible payments. And like traditional banking systems, right? You have a monthly fee with them, with eBay, a seller capital program.

30:01If you don't sell, you don't pay. And so we picked a percentage of what we felt comfortable, right? You get to pick between 10 % of my sales, go to the seller capital or 10%, 15%, whatever it is that you feel comfortable paying back, right? So we were able to hire two more people because we had a lot of like a bottleneck inventory, like backup inventory. We just needed extra hands and were able to repair our trucks, which we were paying a lot of money daily leasing a truck because to repair our truck was very expensive. So we were able to put that money into it, get back to work. And now we're actually buying back really high end inventory from companies, especially like high end servers and gaming laptops and gaming computers.

30:45So now we're able to be at the same level that bigger corporations could be making purchasing in big, right? And now with the seller capital has opened up all of this door for us. So since last year, in 2024, 25, our sales has spiked, you know, 36%. And so we've been able to compete high. So I'm not really nervous about somebody else taking my thing. We're just coming up with different ways of making money and approaching the companies. how we can serve them better. We got it. So some people are asking you now to pay them a little bit for this old inventory? Yeah, yeah. The companies are like, yeah, we just actually need money too.

31:27More with Angie in just a moment, including getting more eyeballs on your eBay listings, an expensive mistake to avoid, plus some future initiatives for Angie's Green Go surplus, all coming up right after this. Bring us this natural reset point. And if you've been putting off dealing with some of the messier parts of your business, well, maybe now's the time to do a little spring cleaning. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. This is the smarter way to upgrade and streamline your business communications. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 3 ,000 reviews, and it's built for how modern teams work.

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32:37That's quo, Q-U-O dot com slash side hustle. Quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. So last month, it was time to replace the air filter in the car, which is about the level of vehicle maintenance I'm qualified to do. So I Google up the part number, I find this random store that is selling it, and then to my absolute delight, I see that they're running on Shopify. How could I tell? That little purple ShopPay button at checkout. It meant not having to create yet another new account. It meant not having to find my wallet. I am paid and checked out in just a couple clicks. You already know that our sponsor Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including that car parts website and dozens of side hustle show guests.

33:17And you probably already know about the built in store templates and marketing tools that make it easy to get your store online and get found. But what you might not know is that Shopify can also help manage your inventory, ship products internationally and even handle customer returns. On top of that, you've got access to their award winning 24 seven customer support if you have any trouble. So let's see less carts go abandoned and more sales going with Shopify and their ShopPay button. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash side hustle. That's shopify.com slash side hustle.

33:50One more time, it's shopify.com slash side hustle. There's a lot of moving parts in this business where if I was to start this myself, I would try and do it on a very small scale. Like if I knew a friend of mine or like, or even my own company was like upgrading their equipment, like, could I test the waters without a 10 ,000 square foot warehouse first or without this team of people? Like, could I get, you know, a handful of inventory in the door and see if I could resell that and then kind of level up and scale up from there. Curious if there's anything else on the tools or technology side that you're loving right now to help you manage everything.

34:27So because what we sell is a lot of computers and servers and all of that nature when it comes to technology, we do use a software called WipeOS. And it's a certified data destruction software. And so that corporations can trust us. That's how we're wiping their data from the hard drive so that we can resell them. And so that's a big one. That's our biggest software. And then we just use eBay with all of their tools and the marketing tools. And what we love about eBay is that it allows you to grow and scale as much as you want to. We're utilizing a lot of the marketing and a lot of the advertising as well.

35:03So it makes us look like we're a big store. We get to create promotions, accept offers, counter offers, send newsletters to the people, to the buyers. And that just keep us engaged with being proactive with the buyers. I mean, there's a lot of people that have their items in the cart because sometimes they're not sure about pricing or whatever it is. And then we get to see that in the back end through eBay. So we're able to send an extra, hey, here is an extra 5 % or 10 % and push for those sales. And that's just amazing. Okay. So they will do that on your behalf because they want to make the sale too, so they can get their cut.

35:38Oh, this person's had their item in their cart for 10 days. They might need a little nudge. Hey, did you forget about this? Okay. I like that. And then they have the kind of your buyer list. And so they can say, you know, a monthly blast of like new inventory from the store that you bought from the past. Yeah, well, so I get to send a newsletter to all of the past buyers and say, all of my laptops are on sale or new inventory coming or, you know, whatever it is. So, yeah, it allows us to be so active. Got it. Okay, so you can do that. Anything else to promote the listings once they're live? Like, do they do featured lists?

36:11I don't know. Do you mess around with any of that stuff? Yeah, there is a lot of promoted listings. I also do, you know, a little bit of the social media and promote some of my items and stuff like that. But eBay alone brings billions of eyes to the store, to the platform, just because there are like 190 million buyers around the world. So it's a lot of people. And I think it's something like 2 billion listings. So somebody is coming to the platform to look for something, and then they get attracted and ended up shopping for something else that was not in the list. But yeah, so eBay definitely does a lot of work to bring buyers to the platform.

36:42And then in our side, I get to use their tools like Promoter Listings. So I get to pay like, say, an extra 2 % or whatever I feel comfortable, 3 % for my items to start showing up in the search flow. Or I get to create literally the marketing like, hey, this item is 20 % on sale. So they will be showing up in high real estate, you know, so people can see it. There is just so many tools that they provide. And we've grown so much and we are who we are because we're truly just utilizing them. And they only win when we win. So they need to make sure that we have the right tools. Yeah. Right. Well, there's so much social proof, too, when somebody lands on a listing from your store and they see the volume that you've done and the volume of positive feedback.

37:25And it's like, OK, this gives me a little more confidence buying used electronics. Absolutely. Has anybody on your team messed around with live selling at all? Like this is the latest craze of like, oh, I'm going to go live. So so we haven't done live selling on eBay yet or any other platform because of they're doing live selling in categories first. So they've done like live selling for purses or luxury bags, fashion. And then they've done it like in the comics, you know, cars and collectibles. So they've sort of expanding. But as soon as they open it up to electronics and everything, you bet I'm going to be there.

38:00Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we've got another upcoming episode about that. I'm so curious about, is that the future of, you know, another channel to flip some inventory for? It's definitely going to be the future. It's even more trust. People are seeing you selling the stuff and it's like, oh, it's a real person, you know, doing it. And yeah, there's just so much noise per se, right? So we have to like stand up somehow. Where is your time going today as the overseer CEO of this operation? We're doing a lot of AI classes and taking courses and everything. So we're learning how to utilize that for our company and the processes.

38:33And how can we make sure that everything that is repetitive, it gets automated, right? And so that builds us some efficiency. We're actually also moving our warehouse. As we speak, you know, it takes us a couple of weeks to transfer everything. And so we're doing it because we are going to be a lot more efficient, a lot of just one way in, one way out kind of flow. And we're looking for thousands of dollars on savings just by doing that. And so we're finding, you know, we've always done this because we love it and we're passionate. So one of our coolest things that we just started last year, at the end of last year, and I want to share with you guys, is we partnered up with One Tree Planted, which is a company that plants trees around the world.

39:16So for every pickup that we do and every laptop that we sell, we donate to get trees planted. So one laptop, one tree planted. One pickup, one tree planted. You know, we have a big event, so then we just do a big batch of trees planted. And I love the fact that, you know, today's era is all about sustainability and people is more eco-friendly and conscious. And so they love what we're doing. They support it and they say, hey, I'm buying this because, you know, it makes me feel good that we're doing, you know, that you're planting trees and all that kind of stuff. So we're marketing some different programs.

39:48We're also partnering up with another group. It's Been Too Better. It's high schoolers that are just fully going for sustainability. And so they're repairing items and they're learning all about technology and teaching the younger generation. We just had some events. So we did a couple of videos and we posted on our social media. But we're just stepping back a little bit from the everyday of the company and finding more purposes and more things of what we love to give back to the community. And, yeah, so that's a little bit where we stand. Yeah, I think that's important to note, too. We're always talking about, well, the business and the dollars and the cents and the supply and the demand.

40:22But it's like the core. It's like, well, we're keeping a ton of stuff out of landfills or at least postponing its journey to that landfill or to that scrapyard. And so there's that sustainability element to this business as well, which I think is really cool. If you could go back in time and give some advice to your younger self, like what mistakes might you avoid or what anything you would do differently? How long do we have? Mistakes, there's a lot of mistakes. And I would separate the mistakes in two different, like the product and the entrepreneur itself. Right. As entrepreneur, I will say my mistakes were not delegating on time.

40:58My husband and I, you know, we sabotaged our own growth for a long, long time. And, you know, now we learned that it's just better to get processes done with flaws than not at all. I mean, motion, we need a motion and we didn't do it because we were so caught up in him and I doing so many things the way we wanted it. Right. And so definitely I would say my biggest mistake was not starting hiring more people earlier, not delegating more tasks earlier, and not coming up with processes. What we found ourselves is that we were putting up with fires all the time. And that's just like the everyday burn, burn, burn, burn, instead of like creating a process that, you know, it's easier for everybody to follow.

41:37So it makes it easy for you when you go on vacation, when you're sick, when you don't come to work, right? So instead of us being the entrepreneurs, the visionaries, the owners, we became the operators for so many years. So I think that's one of the biggest mistakes, I will say, from the entrepreneur side. And then in the resale part, before you get too excited with an item, like, oh, my God, I can make money on this. It's like, OK, step back a little bit. Go do research on eBay. See how much they're selling for. How many hundreds of thousands of millions of people are listing the same item. See if it's worth it.

42:10See if the shipping, how much it's going to cost you. Because shipping can make you or break you. So that's definitely like my biggest mistakes, which is like no calculating shipping the right way, no getting things in the right package or just no packing properly. Oh, my God. I think one of the most painful things I sold on Mac, it was like$1 ,500, an iMac. Super nice, everything. We pack it and arrive cracked. So I was so sad because we didn't pack it enough, right? It was like too soft for the packing. It wasn't like sturdy. And yes, we learned, but that was a painful learning moment because we have to refund him the money.

42:50And then we also had already spent money on the shipping. And, you know, and then there it goes, the$1 ,500 plus that we lost. So, yes, there is a lot of mistakes that you learn. Yeah. Do you do like shipping insurance or product insurance on any of this stuff? Yes, we do. And guess what? The insurance only covers if you have so many inches, you know, like a wall, like how thick the wall is. And before it gets to the item, right? I didn't. So the insurance will not cover. So yes, you learn all of these things with time. So just make sure to pack it with the right protection and padding and everything like that.

43:23So yeah, because carriers, they just throw boxes in the warehouse and bigger things on top of the little ones. And so you have to make sure that the little ones are packed properly. And, you know, just a mix of so many things. Okay. They'll cover it, but they're going to make sure you did your part too. Exactly. All right. Today we're implementing AI and some of the repetitive processes. We've got the partnership with One Tree Planted. We're moving warehouse. We're just continuing to work and grow and improve the business. What does the future hold for e-waste, direct, and GreenGo surplus? We're going to grow bigger and smarter.

43:56And e-waste is just the fastest growing waste. Now we're all about higher consumption of electronics. It comes with a shorter product life cycle or lifespan, and then it's just becoming limited for repairs, right? There is certain laptops that you cannot repair and you open it up and then, you know, you remove the guarantee. And they're just things that you cannot fix yourself because companies are making it a lot harder for you to repair. They just want you to buy again and buy again. But there is a huge growing demand for refurbished electronics and reuse clothing for anything and everything, really.

44:32We're just embracing re-commerce. We're just so fortunate that we've been able to be selling for so long, but now more than ever, and with the economic situation and Gen Z and Gen Alpha are going to be the pioneers of re-commerce and they're the ones normalizing use everything, use clothing, use toys, use, they give things that are used. It's amazing. So we're just super excited for the future. Well, I'm excited to see where it goes as well. eWasteDirect.com, where you can find the pickup side of the business. And of course, we'll link up the eBay store for Angie's Green Goal Surplus as well. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation.

45:10This does not have to be eBay or reselling related. This is whatever entrepreneurial wisdom you'd like to share. There is so many entrepreneurs, people like me, but they don't know how to start and they don't want to start until they get ready. And honestly, you're never going to be ready. you're not going to wake up tomorrow. It's just like, I'm ready to go for it like today, right? It's like, just go for it. Start your idea. Dream big. The sky's the limit. This is the world of information. So anything that you want to accomplish, you can Google the information is there, how to do it. AI will help you, you know, whatever it is.

45:43And you do not have to be an expert. Most entrepreneurs, most business people do not start a business because they're not experts. You do not have to be an expert. You can surround yourselves with experts, but you are the visionary, so you just need to get started. Yeah, and with something like this, you could start with your own phone next time you upgrade, your own laptop next time you upgrade. See what it's like to go through this reselling process and see if it's something that you like and can see yourself doing on a broader scale. Yeah, 100%. And if some people want to start with zero money, there is ways to do it.

46:15You go to freecycle.org or you go to a Craigslist in the free section. You go to a group that is called Buy Nothing Groups or something near you. and there's people putting stuff for free. Just go get it for free, do some research, resell it, make some money and then you can kind of like start doing stuff that is investment, like going to a garage sale that now requires money so you can go and pay a little bit and buy stuff and then just scale it from there. But there is many ways of doing it. Yeah, I love the creativity behind it. I think it's a really unique way to kind of insert yourself into some of this product flow that was probably going to happen anyway, but you can raise your hand and say, look, we'll take it off your hands.

46:54solving a problem for the companies and being a valuable service to the buyers on the other side. I like the call to kind of build, especially as the business has grown, investing in repeatable systems and just making sure that everything kind of goes through the pipeline in a way that's going to make the most sense, going to be efficient, going to maximize profits there, and then reinvesting into the business, into the warehouse space, into the trucks, into the team members to keep it all spinning. If you're wondering what to listen to next, we've got over 700 episodes with killer entrepreneurs, just like Angie in the archives.

47:27If you want to build yourself a personalized side hustle show playlist, all you got to do is go to hustle.show, answer a few short multiple choice questions. You can do it right on your phone, and it'll build you a custom curated playlist of eight to 10 of our greatest hits episodes based on our answers. That's a great place to start to dive a little bit deeper into the side hustle show and hopefully some more episodes that are relevant to you and what you're looking to build. Big thanks to Angie for sharing her insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Sidehustlenation.com slash deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.

48:03That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. Fire off that text message. Let them know, hey, you got to go check this out. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.