Latest / Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast / Reselling, Unfair Advantage, People want to Buy from People

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Reselling, Unfair Advantage, People want to Buy from People · Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast

• 0:01
  Dave Hamilton: Business brain episode 772 for wednesday july 22nd world brain day 2026,
• 0:13
  Dave Hamilton: i know that matches perfect like how could we have done anything else right
• 0:19
  Dave Hamilton: that's it that's how it is world brain day,
• 0:22
  Dave Hamilton: greetings folks and welcome to business brain the show where we take some ideas
• 0:26
  Dave Hamilton: we crunch them we dissect them we use them to help tune our business brains
• 0:31
  Dave Hamilton: so we can each keep on living those charmed lives
• 0:35
  Dave Hamilton: our sponsors for this episode include a,
• 0:38
  Dave Hamilton: scribe.how slash brain which is where you can go,
• 0:42
  Dave Hamilton: and book a demo and you mention brain and you get your first month of scribe
• 0:46
  Dave Hamilton: capture for free you can also visit fanview.com f-a-n-v-u-e.com where you can
• 0:54
  Dave Hamilton: start your own creator journey and start making some money.
• 0:57
  Dave Hamilton: We'll talk about those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham,
• 0:59
  Dave Hamilton: New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.
• 1:02
  Dave Hamilton: And I'm back in Lafayette, California. I'm Shannon Jean.
• 1:05
  Dave Hamilton: And Shannon, because it's World Brain Day, I figured two brains isn't enough.
• 1:10
  Dave Hamilton: We need to add 50% more brain, but let's be perfectly candid here.
• 1:15
  Dave Hamilton: We're adding about 150% more brain.
• 1:18
  Dave Hamilton: Also here in Durham, New Hampshire, joining us today with some questions for
• 1:22
  Dave Hamilton: you, Shannon, is Lisa Hamilton. Woo-hoo.
• 1:25
  Dave Hamilton: Happy to be here. Hey. Thanks for coming on the show. Excited to be here. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:29
  Dave Hamilton: Definitely. Yeah, so why are you here?
• 1:32
  Dave Hamilton: So I got into this phase about three months ago where I could not stand the
• 1:38
  Dave Hamilton: clutter in our home anymore. And I started cleaning things out and realized there was a lot of stuff.
• 1:44
  Dave Hamilton: So I didn't want to just bring it all to goodwill.
• 1:47
  Dave Hamilton: I wanted to start selling it. And so that's what I've been doing and selling
• 1:54
  Dave Hamilton: a book here and there. And then I started buying some collectible dolls and trying to sell those.
• 2:00
  Dave Hamilton: Wait, so you were cleaning out the clutter from our home, and that part I was
• 2:05
  Dave Hamilton: there with, and then you said you started buying extra clutter to sell?
• 2:09
  Dave Hamilton: Am I getting that right? Yeah, exactly. Well, it got addicting.
• 2:14
  Dave Hamilton: I sold stuff, and then I was like, wait, well, I can buy this,
• 2:19
  Dave Hamilton: and then I can sell that for more money.
• 2:21
  Dave Hamilton: And so, yeah, now I'm like addicted. I'm on eBay constantly checking my listings,
• 2:30
  Dave Hamilton: adjusting my listings, reselling.
• 2:33
  Dave Hamilton: But I want to talk to the master and find out what I can do to make even more stuff happen.
• 2:42
  Dave Hamilton: That's awesome. That's great. Yeah, it is very addicting, especially when you
• 2:46
  Dave Hamilton: have those small wins and selling.
• 2:48
  Dave Hamilton: And that's exactly how I tell everybody to get started is don't go buy anything,
• 2:51
  Dave Hamilton: just sell stuff you have around your house.
• 2:54
  Dave Hamilton: And you could sell a lot. I'm sure you can find all kinds of stuff of Dave's
• 2:57
  Dave Hamilton: that you want to get rid of.
• 3:00
  Dave Hamilton: And it's great because you get to learn,
• 3:04
  Dave Hamilton: The system, you know, the customer service, the listing, the photos,
• 3:08
  Dave Hamilton: the taking video and shipping and all that stuff is excellent to learn while
• 3:14
  Dave Hamilton: you have no financial anchor, right?
• 3:18
  Dave Hamilton: You can just play around with it. And then once you get kind of things figured
• 3:22
  Dave Hamilton: out, you get some questions answered and then you start buying stuff.
• 3:25
  Dave Hamilton: Awesome. It's massively addicting. So I guess that's my next question is recommendations
• 3:31
  Dave Hamilton: on like where to start buying stuff.
• 3:34
  Dave Hamilton: Is that really the best place to go? He interrupts here with the master talking.
• 3:42
  Dave Hamilton: Like, I think we might have skipped over the beginning of this a little bit. Like, maybe not.
• 3:48
  Dave Hamilton: But it seems like we're getting, we're starting to get into the,
• 3:53
  Dave Hamilton: like, 301 course when maybe the 101 course is still here.
• 3:57
  Dave Hamilton: I want to get to, we will get there. Don't get me wrong. But it seems like we
• 4:01
  Dave Hamilton: might be putting the cart before the horse only because that's where you are now Yep, that's fair.
• 4:06
  Dave Hamilton: No, but but I yes and so I guess my next question going backwards as Dave suggested
• 4:14
  Dave Hamilton: is are there certain sites you recommend are there?
• 4:20
  Dave Hamilton: Tips and tricks on pictures and writing listings and yeah Yeah, all of that.
• 4:28
  Dave Hamilton: So probably the first step is to learn about your market.
• 4:34
  Dave Hamilton: Like how do you want to sell? If you're going to sell on eBay and you're going
• 4:38
  Dave Hamilton: to ship stuff, what do you want to sell? What are you interested in?
• 4:41
  Dave Hamilton: Like you mentioned dolls or some people like fashion or different things.
• 4:46
  Dave Hamilton: To start doing the research. Again, don't buy anything, but find who's doing it the best.
• 4:52
  Dave Hamilton: Like go on eBay and use the eBay product research. So it's ebay.com slash research.
• 4:59
  Dave Hamilton: And you can search three years of listings. It's all available and you can see...
• 5:05
  Dave Hamilton: How many of whatever category you want to sell? Let's say you want to sell dolls,
• 5:09
  Dave Hamilton: which are actually, it's a pretty interesting category. It can be very profitable.
• 5:13
  Dave Hamilton: Collectibles, we'll call it.
• 5:15
  Dave Hamilton: And you can look and find out who is selling the most.
• 5:20
  Dave Hamilton: And you can study how they're doing it. And you can do two things. One, you can copy them.
• 5:26
  Dave Hamilton: And two, you can figure out what you can do better.
• 5:30
  Dave Hamilton: Do they have video in their listings? If they don't, you should definitely have
• 5:34
  Dave Hamilton: video in every single listing because that'll move you up in the algorithm.
• 5:38
  Dave Hamilton: You're trying to learn the platform's preferences.
• 5:45
  Dave Hamilton: What you need to do to get exposure on that platform. And so you can do all
• 5:49
  Dave Hamilton: that stuff without buying anything because the minute you start buying stuff,
• 5:52
  Dave Hamilton: then you have this pressure. Like, okay, now I got to sell it.
• 5:56
  Dave Hamilton: I mean, if you only buy a few things, that's fine.
• 5:59
  Dave Hamilton: Then the next step, once you've started to document this stuff and you've done
• 6:03
  Dave Hamilton: this research, is to figure out, am I going to just go pick a few things up?
• 6:10
  Dave Hamilton: Am I going to go on estate sales or do different things?
• 6:14
  Dave Hamilton: Or am I really going to become a reseller and do I need a resale permit for New Hampshire?
• 6:21
  Dave Hamilton: And you need to figure out, do you charge sales tax in your state? We do not.
• 6:27
  Dave Hamilton: Then there is not one. So there's probably some form though.
• 6:33
  Dave Hamilton: That you have to fill out and then you can give that to sites like bstock.com,
• 6:39
  Dave Hamilton: which is where I recommend people get started there.
• 6:42
  Dave Hamilton: And then they won't charge you sales tax when you buy things from them.
• 6:47
  Dave Hamilton: And then if you sell it on eBay, eBay will collect the tax on your behalf,
• 6:50
  Dave Hamilton: but well, they don't have tax in New Hampshire, so you don't have to worry about
• 6:53
  Dave Hamilton: it. That's great, I love that. It's like the opposite of California.
• 6:57
  Dave Hamilton: Everything is taxed. That's ridiculous. So yeah, so the key is research right now.
• 7:03
  Dave Hamilton: You're in this research mode, but I do suggest you start looking at bigger things
• 7:11
  Dave Hamilton: because it's kind of entices you to, it kind of pulls you forward.
• 7:16
  Dave Hamilton: It's like a, you know, you're kind of pulling this string.
• 7:19
  Dave Hamilton: It's like, wow, if I bought collectibles, what if I bought a bunch of these?
• 7:24
  Dave Hamilton: Or what if I, how would I find it? So again, once you're registered,
• 7:28
  Dave Hamilton: like on a site like B-Stock, you can download a manifest of stuff that they're selling.
• 7:33
  Dave Hamilton: Like there's sites that sell Pokemon cards, Costco sells Pokemon cards,
• 7:38
  Dave Hamilton: or they sell toys and they sell stuff. So you can download the manifest without
• 7:42
  Dave Hamilton: buying anything. We're not buying anything yet.
• 7:45
  Dave Hamilton: And you can put that in your Claude or whatever and tell Claude to use eBay
• 7:52
  Dave Hamilton: product research and it'll show you the delta.
• 7:54
  Dave Hamilton: It'll just say, oh, hey, Lisa, you can buy all these items and if you pay this
• 8:00
  Dave Hamilton: much, here's the difference between what they sell on eBay, here's the 15% eBay fees, all that stuff.
• 8:06
  Dave Hamilton: And it'll give you all the, again,
• 8:09
  Dave Hamilton: all that research, all that great data before you've spent any money.
• 8:13
  Dave Hamilton: Perfect. That's number one.
• 8:16
  Dave Hamilton: And we've got links to all those things, the eBay product research,
• 8:19
  Dave Hamilton: the bstock.com, all that stuff will be, of course, in the show notes here at,
• 8:23
  Dave Hamilton: businessbrain.show for anybody.
• 8:25
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. And so along the way, you're going to kind of, you know, oh, this doesn't work.
• 8:30
  Dave Hamilton: I can't figure out how to make money on the category or whatever.
• 8:33
  Dave Hamilton: And of course, I'm biased, but I also think you should be around other people
• 8:37
  Dave Hamilton: that are reselling because you get lots of questions answered and you don't
• 8:39
  Dave Hamilton: have to do it by yourself.
• 8:40
  Dave Hamilton: That's why I created my community, the Reseller Mastermind, because everybody has questions.
• 8:48
  Dave Hamilton: So if you get in a group and you could join my community or you can find people
• 8:53
  Dave Hamilton: locally, but it's great to have people talk about best practices,
• 8:58
  Dave Hamilton: just like we do here every week. And shared crisis too.
• 9:00
  Dave Hamilton: Shared crisis, business therapy. This didn't work. I lost money on this. How do I do it?
• 9:06
  Dave Hamilton: What's the condition of the... There's thousands of questions,
• 9:11
  Dave Hamilton: and if you get into a peer group or you start one,
• 9:15
  Dave Hamilton: a lot of times you'll have easier access to those answers for sure.
• 9:20
  Dave Hamilton: Totally makes sense. Yep.
• 9:22
  Dave Hamilton: All right. Any other questions.
• 9:28
  Dave Hamilton: That aren't about 301? Because that's where we're going to go next. Yep.
• 9:31
  Dave Hamilton: But before we do that. No, I think adding video, so far I've kind of stayed
• 9:37
  Dave Hamilton: away from video, so I think that's super interesting thinking about,
• 9:41
  Dave Hamilton: like basically I've been selling books at this point has been my big.
• 9:46
  Dave Hamilton: I realized that I have this lovely collection of Stephen King books that are
• 9:50
  Dave Hamilton: almost all first editions. Oh, that's killer. I was like, oh, this is fun.
• 9:55
  Dave Hamilton: That's great. Yeah, so that's basically where I've been so far.
• 10:00
  Dave Hamilton: That's great. I also recommend that...
• 10:04
  Dave Hamilton: With your listings, you add two things that most people forget.
• 10:08
  Dave Hamilton: And the first one is a credibility statement.
• 10:11
  Dave Hamilton: Like, why should they buy from you? Who are you?
• 10:14
  Dave Hamilton: You know, do you have, especially if you're new and you don't have a lot of
• 10:17
  Dave Hamilton: great feedback, but once you have feedback, then you can talk about that.
• 10:21
  Dave Hamilton: But one or two sentences at the beginning of your listing that talks about, hey, I'm Lisa.
• 10:29
  Dave Hamilton: This is what I do. I'm involved in my community.
• 10:32
  Dave Hamilton: I have these first editions or whatever. Just a quick blurb that makes you stand
• 10:37
  Dave Hamilton: out a little bit more, then all the product information.
• 10:40
  Dave Hamilton: And then the last thing I think you always wanna add is what your noble cause
• 10:45
  Dave Hamilton: is. Why are you selling this stuff?
• 10:47
  Dave Hamilton: Are you prepping? Are you, you know, it could be, I'm trying to pay for my daughter's
• 10:52
  Dave Hamilton: wedding. I'm trying to, you know, cover my kid's school. I'm trying to get out
• 10:57
  Dave Hamilton: of debt, whatever it is, whatever, or I'm just, I'm really interested in this.
• 11:02
  Dave Hamilton: I've been a lifelong learner, dah, dah, dah, dah.
• 11:04
  Dave Hamilton: People wanna buy from people. And so that's a huge unfair advantage and you
• 11:10
  Dave Hamilton: need to lean into it. I'm Lisa, I'm not eBay user 559, 678, 910, whatever.
• 11:17
  Dave Hamilton: I'm Lisa, I have these books because I've done this and I love to read and this
• 11:22
  Dave Hamilton: is why I do it. Brilliant, yep.
• 11:26
  Dave Hamilton: People buy from people, folks. I like that. That's, it's true that we talk about
• 11:31
  Dave Hamilton: that a lot here. All right. Yeah, whether you, yeah, go ahead. No, no, no.
• 11:34
  Dave Hamilton: Finish your thought, please. Whether you're doing it on eBay,
• 11:37
  Dave Hamilton: Facebook Marketplace, TikTok shops, Poshmark, you're a monopoly of one.
• 11:43
  Dave Hamilton: So your strength is who you are and you should really be talking about it.
• 11:47
  Dave Hamilton: If you go look at my Poshmark account, I've got pictures of my kids.
• 11:51
  Dave Hamilton: I've got my daughter graduating because I was trying to pay for school.
• 11:54
  Dave Hamilton: I have my family and all that stuff.
• 11:57
  Dave Hamilton: That helped me stand out and it connected me with people on another level. Yep.
• 12:04
  Dave Hamilton: It totally makes sense. And you're right. I don't see many people doing that
• 12:08
  Dave Hamilton: at all in the research I've done so far. So that's fantastic. Yeah.
• 12:14
  Dave Hamilton: We'll definitely do that. Awesome. All right. I want to get to those 301 questions.
• 12:18
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• 12:22
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• 14:13
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• 15:30
  Dave Hamilton: All right so now it's time to buy shannon right lisa yes right No, actually,
• 15:38
  Dave Hamilton: I want to back up before we get there and just talk about like sites is like
• 15:45
  Dave Hamilton: I have been focused so far on eBay.
• 15:48
  Dave Hamilton: I know there's Poshmark, which isn't really going to be the best thing for me
• 15:51
  Dave Hamilton: with books. But I think that's more clothing and stuff, although I haven't really gotten out there yet.
• 15:58
  Dave Hamilton: So, yeah, overall, is there –,
• 16:01
  Dave Hamilton: a better good site for resale? Does it depend on the product?
• 16:07
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, a lot of it depends on the product, the category that you're selling.
• 16:10
  Dave Hamilton: Poshmark is mainly fashion, but they have other categories too.
• 16:15
  Dave Hamilton: EBay's phenomenal. It's awesome. I think it's great.
• 16:19
  Dave Hamilton: We may be calling them GameStop pretty soon with their GameStop opening 10%
• 16:23
  Dave Hamilton: of them now. But I also think books, especially like really good quality books
• 16:30
  Dave Hamilton: like that, first editions are great to put on Facebook Marketplace.
• 16:34
  Dave Hamilton: You can ship there if you don't want people to come to your house.
• 16:38
  Dave Hamilton: And then there's sites like Vinted is another one. They sell,
• 16:41
  Dave Hamilton: I don't know about books on that one.
• 16:43
  Dave Hamilton: Depop is another one, D-E-P-O-P, that is great to check out. And just study.
• 16:51
  Dave Hamilton: You're in this learning phrase. When I was trying to figure out how to sell
• 16:54
  Dave Hamilton: handbags, it took me like eight months, but I was like, okay,
• 16:59
  Dave Hamilton: I'm going to build this business.
• 17:00
  Dave Hamilton: I'm going to buy large volumes. And how do I do it? I don't know anything about
• 17:05
  Dave Hamilton: fashion. I buy all my clothes at Costco.
• 17:08
  Dave Hamilton: So just that study and documenting, and especially now with tools that.
• 17:16
  Dave Hamilton: We talk about here all the time on Friday Eye that I didn't have back then,
• 17:19
  Dave Hamilton: but using the Comet browser or Claude, you can just glean so much data from
• 17:26
  Dave Hamilton: these sites about, Like, where's the best place to sell this item and get help with that?
• 17:31
  Dave Hamilton: Definitely. But I would register on all of them. The sooner you register,
• 17:36
  Dave Hamilton: the better, even if you're not selling anything, because it takes a while to
• 17:39
  Dave Hamilton: warm up your account, right?
• 17:42
  Dave Hamilton: And I would do the same thing with social accounts. If you're going to build
• 17:46
  Dave Hamilton: a business, you should have an Instagram account. You should have an account on X.
• 17:50
  Dave Hamilton: You should have an account on Facebook. And all those things you can just start.
• 17:53
  Dave Hamilton: It doesn't cost any money and just let them sit there.
• 17:55
  Dave Hamilton: But it's better to have one that's six months old or a year old than starting,
• 18:00
  Dave Hamilton: oh, tomorrow I'm going to go post on Facebook or that kind of thing.
• 18:04
  Dave Hamilton: Yep. Totally makes sense.
• 18:07
  Dave Hamilton: Do you have a source for pricing?
• 18:12
  Dave Hamilton: How do you set up your pricing? How do you figure out where you're going to sell something at?
• 18:19
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 18:22
  Dave Hamilton: All the profit is made when you buy. Right.
• 18:26
  Dave Hamilton: So in your case, since you do selling stuff that you already own,
• 18:29
  Dave Hamilton: you know, I would consider it 100% profit and I would just go use like on eBay,
• 18:34
  Dave Hamilton: I would use a product research tool that they used to charge for that.
• 18:38
  Dave Hamilton: It was like 50 bucks a month. It was a company called Terra Peak that ran it,
• 18:42
  Dave Hamilton: but then they've absorbed it and now it's free.
• 18:45
  Dave Hamilton: So you can just go look for sold listings of that first edition book for the
• 18:51
  Dave Hamilton: last three years. You can do trends and you can look and see,
• 18:56
  Dave Hamilton: what was the highest price this sold at and why?
• 19:00
  Dave Hamilton: Is it condition? How are they rated? Are there like standardized things that they do?
• 19:06
  Dave Hamilton: Is it important to take pictures of the first page or whatever?
• 19:11
  Dave Hamilton: All that information is right there at your fingertips to figure out where to price that product.
• 19:18
  Dave Hamilton: Other marketplaces are a little different, but you can still pull that data out.
• 19:23
  Dave Hamilton: When you start buying things, you never want to buy anything until you know what you can sell it for.
• 19:31
  Dave Hamilton: That's like the first rule because you don't get in trouble, right?
• 19:35
  Dave Hamilton: And I always say buy with math and sell with emotion, right?
• 19:40
  Dave Hamilton: Not the opposite because if you buy with emotion, you usually wind up spending
• 19:44
  Dave Hamilton: too much money because you're just like, oh, I really want this and I know it's, I like it.
• 19:49
  Dave Hamilton: But you're not your customer, right? You're selling stuff. You're not buying
• 19:53
  Dave Hamilton: for yourself. So you have to look at the...
• 19:56
  Dave Hamilton: So if you have a manifest, if there's a, let's say, a pallet of books or a pallet
• 19:59
  Dave Hamilton: of whatever, you have the data. Don't ever buy anything without a manifest because
• 20:03
  Dave Hamilton: that's like your roadmap.
• 20:05
  Dave Hamilton: And then you just research that, dump it into Claude, put it into Perplexity,
• 20:09
  Dave Hamilton: whatever you use, ChatTBT, say, okay, I want to research these things.
• 20:13
  Dave Hamilton: Here's the part numbers, here's the UPCs for them.
• 20:17
  Dave Hamilton: It'll go research it for you and give you some basic guidelines.
• 20:22
  Dave Hamilton: Then what I suggest you do is find the top, the most expensive items on that manifest.
• 20:28
  Dave Hamilton: So if you're gonna buy a pallet full of books and let's say it's, I don't know, $300.
• 20:34
  Dave Hamilton: Well, oftentimes there would be a small section of those books that you could
• 20:41
  Dave Hamilton: sell to get your $300 back.
• 20:43
  Dave Hamilton: I would identify what those items are and I would put all my effort in the beginning
• 20:48
  Dave Hamilton: into selling those items so you could get all your money back.
• 20:51
  Dave Hamilton: Whether it's clothes, whether you're buying pressure washers,
• 20:55
  Dave Hamilton: where's the cream that you're going to sell quickly?
• 20:58
  Dave Hamilton: Because this is a long-term business, right? You don't sell everything real fast.
• 21:01
  Dave Hamilton: And so once you cash out of that buy, that auction, or whatever you bought,
• 21:07
  Dave Hamilton: you can just kind of breathe a sigh of relief and then keep selling stuff where
• 21:11
  Dave Hamilton: that's all your profit. And while that's stuff selling, you're looking at the next deal.
• 21:16
  Dave Hamilton: So research, research, and talking to other people. That's another reason to
• 21:21
  Dave Hamilton: do it. It's like, I'm thinking about buying these. Does this look like a good deal?
• 21:24
  Dave Hamilton: You know, and getting access. Who's bought these things before? And that's where...
• 21:31
  Dave Hamilton: Getting in a group that's spread all over the country, especially like most
• 21:34
  Dave Hamilton: of the, well, I don't want to say most, but a large percentage of people in
• 21:38
  Dave Hamilton: our masterminds sell on Facebook Marketplace.
• 21:40
  Dave Hamilton: Well, they share everything because they don't really compete,
• 21:43
  Dave Hamilton: right? Because that's a hyper-local business and you're selling people come
• 21:47
  Dave Hamilton: to your house or your storage unit or your warehouse.
• 21:50
  Dave Hamilton: So you get all this great data. It's like, oh, don't buy those tables because,
• 21:54
  Dave Hamilton: I couldn't do anything with them.
• 21:57
  Dave Hamilton: Rugs don't sell good in my area
• 21:59
  Dave Hamilton: because people have carpet. Rug's so great because everybody has tile.
• 22:03
  Dave Hamilton: There's lots of really great information that you can get. Interesting. Yeah.
• 22:08
  Dave Hamilton: Totally makes sense. All right. Crazy.
• 22:11
  Dave Hamilton: Now you know. Yeah. So I guess now comes the big question about recommendations
• 22:16
  Dave Hamilton: on sourcing and where do we get all this stuff to resell?
• 22:21
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. You know.
• 22:26
  Dave Hamilton: It goes back to that category. I always try to sell things I'm interested in.
• 22:30
  Dave Hamilton: Like i like outdoor stuff i like to fish hunt camp all that kind of thing i
• 22:34
  Dave Hamilton: like tools this kind of thing but,
• 22:38
  Dave Hamilton: if you sell stuff that you're at least a little bit interested in it it kind
• 22:42
  Dave Hamilton: of helps move you forward because it can be a grind like every business right it's not
• 22:47
  Dave Hamilton: it's i love sitting here talking about it and i make it sound exciting and sexy
• 22:51
  Dave Hamilton: and it's great because i love it i've done it for a long time but it's definitely
• 22:55
  Dave Hamilton: a problem solving business so,
• 22:57
  Dave Hamilton: you find the categories that you like say okay well i i like to sell this or,
• 23:02
  Dave Hamilton: another way to look at it what can you use yourself,
• 23:06
  Dave Hamilton: like i have vacation rentals so i buy lots of like outdoor patio furniture because
• 23:10
  Dave Hamilton: people go through that stuff like they just destroy it so i'm always looking
• 23:13
  Dave Hamilton: for that stuff because i can use it if i can't sell it for some reason so i
• 23:19
  Dave Hamilton: suggest you start at like,
• 23:21
  Dave Hamilton: a site like b stock because it's it's a super uh.
• 23:27
  Dave Hamilton: What's the word it's a very safe place to buy there are hundreds maybe thousands
• 23:33
  Dave Hamilton: of quote wholesalers out there selling pallets of stuff,
• 23:38
  Dave Hamilton: most of those people or companies some of them are great a lot of them are not
• 23:42
  Dave Hamilton: so great um you you want to get as close to the supplier as possible and like
• 23:48
  Dave Hamilton: a site like b stock when you buy from their costco uh,
• 23:53
  Dave Hamilton: marketplace or target which are jave's showing on the screen you're buying directly
• 23:58
  Dave Hamilton: from target b stock is just a marketplace they're all ex ebay people,
• 24:03
  Dave Hamilton: uh they've been around for 16 or 17 years they're really cool they like they
• 24:07
  Dave Hamilton: they really want to make sure people succeed and,
• 24:11
  Dave Hamilton: uh they're not cherry picking the good stuff which often happens with pallet
• 24:15
  Dave Hamilton: resellers uh they're not marking up the products you get to see,
• 24:19
  Dave Hamilton: every single fee or expense and all that kind of stuff you can have things shipped
• 24:24
  Dave Hamilton: to your house If you want, they don't care.
• 24:27
  Dave Hamilton: There's a residential fee, all kinds of stuff. So I love this site.
• 24:32
  Dave Hamilton: I always suggest this is where to get started. There's like this week alone.
• 24:38
  Dave Hamilton: There's like over 500 Costco auctions just, you know, on this site.
• 24:41
  Dave Hamilton: There's hundreds of Target auctions on and on and on. And there's like hundreds
• 24:46
  Dave Hamilton: of sellers selling up here. So it's great.
• 24:48
  Dave Hamilton: Other sites I like for local stuff, I like GovDeals, G-O-V-D-E-A-L-S.
• 24:54
  Dave Hamilton: Really amazing. You can go down a rabbit hole.
• 24:58
  Dave Hamilton: You know, I love looking, you can sort by location and see what your school
• 25:04
  Dave Hamilton: districts are selling and what the parks department is selling.
• 25:08
  Dave Hamilton: And you can find lots of cool stuff.
• 25:10
  Dave Hamilton: And you can search by zip code. So if you click Dave on location search,
• 25:14
  Dave Hamilton: you can put in your zip code and just say, okay, within 100 miles, 25 miles, whatever.
• 25:18
  Dave Hamilton: And it'll come up and tell you who is selling.
• 25:22
  Dave Hamilton: So there's every one of those places, University Systems New Hampshire,
• 25:26
  Dave Hamilton: they've got two new listings.
• 25:28
  Dave Hamilton: You'd be shocked to see what you can buy here. Dude, we can buy a postal machine
• 25:32
  Dave Hamilton: for 20 bucks. That's what we need. Right here.
• 25:36
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, we need that like a hole in the head. Yes, but you can buy stuff like
• 25:40
  Dave Hamilton: 3D printers, you know, tools. I mean, all kinds of crazy stuff.
• 25:45
  Dave Hamilton: Buildings. I mean, this site is wild. I was going to say, you found a house
• 25:48
  Dave Hamilton: in like Mexico or something to buy. I did.
• 25:51
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, exactly. It's crazy. It's crazy. So I love this site. I think they're great.
• 25:56
  Dave Hamilton: And they have another that you'll see at the top, they have some different sites.
• 26:00
  Dave Hamilton: And then another one I really like is called BidSpotter.
• 26:04
  Dave Hamilton: And it's just a, they're kind of an aggregator of auctions all over the world.
• 26:09
  Dave Hamilton: And they do lots of industrial and lots of different things,
• 26:12
  Dave Hamilton: but it's great. Great place to get started.
• 26:15
  Dave Hamilton: The key is just to do your research. So, you know, you should never,
• 26:18
  Dave Hamilton: it should never be a question in your head that, oh, I'm going to buy this and
• 26:22
  Dave Hamilton: see if I can make money at it.
• 26:25
  Dave Hamilton: That's the opposite. You work the deal backward, right? You just know,
• 26:30
  Dave Hamilton: if I'm going to buy out patio furniture, I'm going to know on Facebook Marketplace
• 26:34
  Dave Hamilton: what it sells for in my area.
• 26:36
  Dave Hamilton: So I know, okay, Costco's selling this $10,000 load.
• 26:40
  Dave Hamilton: The most I can pay is, I know I can pay $3,000 because I think I can sell it for five.
• 26:46
  Dave Hamilton: Shipping is 1,000. So the most I can pay is $2,000.
• 26:50
  Dave Hamilton: It's just cut and dry. It's all math. And then they use automated bidding.
• 26:54
  Dave Hamilton: So you can say, well, my max bid is two grand.
• 26:57
  Dave Hamilton: You put $2,000 in there. You don't automatically go up to 2,000.
• 27:00
  Dave Hamilton: It just kind of increments you if other people bid.
• 27:04
  Dave Hamilton: But you bid and you walk away. You don't watch it. Because when you watch it,
• 27:07
  Dave Hamilton: that's when you run into problems. He says this.
• 27:10
  Dave Hamilton: There are times we get together and he's like, well, hang on.
• 27:13
  Dave Hamilton: We can't start yet because I got this auction. It's gone. That's different. That's different.
• 27:18
  Dave Hamilton: I want to watch and see what happens. Of course. Yeah. But you're just a spectator
• 27:23
  Dave Hamilton: at that point. I just want to see. Because you've already set your ceiling.
• 27:26
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. Exactly. You don't want to go and say, well, I could pay a little more.
• 27:31
  Dave Hamilton: I've just seen it time and time again where people just they they ride the numbers up and.
• 27:35
  Dave Hamilton: I mean i talk about you know we used to do this deal with um the fruit company
• 27:39
  Dave Hamilton: in cupertino and uh they would pay us in gear and we would put the you know
• 27:46
  Dave Hamilton: we got way more gear than we needed and so we'd,
• 27:50
  Dave Hamilton: scrape off the stuff that we wanted and then i'd put the rest on ebay and these
• 27:54
  Dave Hamilton: were like not technically used but officially used right because it was you
• 27:58
  Dave Hamilton: know this computer was three weeks old or a monitor was you know three weeks
• 28:01
  Dave Hamilton: old because that's when we'd gotten it,
• 28:03
  Dave Hamilton: And oftentimes the auction on eBay would sell for more than you could buy it directly from Apple.
• 28:10
  Dave Hamilton: And it's like, why are you doing this? Like what happens all the time?
• 28:15
  Dave Hamilton: I know that people buy with emotion.
• 28:17
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, they buy with emotion. And that's especially in auctions.
• 28:20
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah. Yeah. So that's good for you as a seller.
• 28:24
  Dave Hamilton: That's why, you know, when I go back to connecting with people,
• 28:27
  Dave Hamilton: having great photos, having great listing details, having a video,
• 28:33
  Dave Hamilton: all those things are what bring people in and connect.
• 28:37
  Dave Hamilton: And you want them to make an emotional purchase, right? You want them to go, you know what?
• 28:43
  Dave Hamilton: Lisa has this first edition. It's $50 more than user 59 110 that has no good photos, no whatever.
• 28:52
  Dave Hamilton: I'm going to spend the extra 50 bucks because she's putting her kid through college.
• 28:56
  Dave Hamilton: And I love that she stated why she loves this book or whatever.
• 29:01
  Dave Hamilton: That makes you stand out. And I have a question because this conversation has
• 29:05
  Dave Hamilton: happened in the house. She obviously said she's using eBay, right? Which is great.
• 29:11
  Dave Hamilton: Every piece of advice that you have found online tells you not to use auctions
• 29:16
  Dave Hamilton: to use only buy it now. What do you think about that, Shannon?
• 29:22
  Dave Hamilton: At least for what I'm selling. Sure, sure. It varies by item.
• 29:26
  Dave Hamilton: But for my books and the couple of electronics pieces that I've seen,
• 29:31
  Dave Hamilton: that was the advice I've been seeing. I think you just,
• 29:37
  Dave Hamilton: control the whole thing better with Buy It Now.
• 29:41
  Dave Hamilton: I don't think you benefit from the auction unless you have some big volume of
• 29:47
  Dave Hamilton: stuff or you're trying to attract someone that maybe you can have,
• 29:52
  Dave Hamilton: a more offline purchasing relationship with, those are different unique situations.
• 29:58
  Dave Hamilton: But yeah, I would agree with that. Interesting. I would agree.
• 30:01
  Dave Hamilton: I think buy it now is the way to go. Yeah. All right. But there's a ton of stuff
• 30:04
  Dave Hamilton: to learn. It's awesome. It has changed my life and it's super accessible.
• 30:10
  Dave Hamilton: You can start like you're doing really stuff like this and go.
• 30:12
  Dave Hamilton: So I love talking about it.
• 30:14
  Dave Hamilton: Thanks for letting me talk for a half an hour. Awesome. Thank you.
• 30:18
  Dave Hamilton: So before we go though there's one thing that we do every week and that is that we.
• 30:25
  Dave Hamilton: Sometimes argue about but certainly decide upon what this episode's big takeaway
• 30:30
  Dave Hamilton: is and then we take that and turn it into a business plan based on everything
• 30:35
  Dave Hamilton: that we've discussed in the episode so,
• 30:39
  Dave Hamilton: I have a vote for what I think this episode's big takeaway is.
• 30:43
  Dave Hamilton: And that was an early thing you mentioned, Shannon.
• 30:46
  Dave Hamilton: Start with the small wins when you're starting a business like this.
• 30:50
  Dave Hamilton: But, you know, anybody else have a thought on that?
• 30:55
  Dave Hamilton: For me, it would be bringing the personalization into my business plan. It might even be better.
• 31:01
  Dave Hamilton: I think that's it. People want to buy from people, especially at that level.
• 31:07
  Dave Hamilton: And like when I, you know, you often want to make your business look bigger
• 31:10
  Dave Hamilton: and more imposing. We've talked about this on the show in the past, Dave.
• 31:13
  Dave Hamilton: Yes. In this case, it's better to be, you know, Lisa, Dave or Shannon.
• 31:18
  Dave Hamilton: That's it. That's your unfair advantage. So I think that's it.
• 31:22
  Dave Hamilton: I love it. I love it. Awesome. Thank you.
• 31:25
  Dave Hamilton: Thanks for doing this. Yeah, this is a blast. It's fun. Fun stuff.
• 31:28
  Dave Hamilton: Yeah, absolutely. This is what we do all the time here.
• 31:31
  Dave Hamilton: Thanks for hanging out, everybody. Visit businessbrain.show slash blueprint.
• 31:35
  Dave Hamilton: You can download that blueprint from this episode and everything else.
• 31:39
  Dave Hamilton: Keep living that charmed life and we will see you on Friday.