February 8, 2024 • 25 mins
Welcome to the show. We are introduced today to a master reseller (I like to call him junkman) and how he takes what many people might see as throwaway items and turn them into gold. Matt Brock is a reselling genius and wants to help you sell your 'stuff' too!
https://www.youtube.com/@RustyTheReseller https://www.youtube.com/@whatsold https://www.youtube.com/@postcardplanet
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
(00:10):
Every single day, people take unwanted or unused items to thrift and antique stores across the country.
But as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure, and we're here to prove it.
Identify valuable things before you throw them away.
Join us as we show and tell of treasures found and sold by a full-time reseller with the hopes of helping you find some treasures of your own.
(00:32):
Welcome to the What Sold Podcast.
[Music]
Hey, welcome everybody to the What Sold Podcast, the first ever edition of the What Sold Podcast.
With my friend Matt Rock, who is the king of the What Sold World.
You might know him as Rusty, the reseller. He has many different known de plumes and aliases, but all of them are the same madman in this.
(00:58):
So Matt, welcome. Good to see you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Oh man, I'm really happy to be here making this happen.
This is exciting.
I know you've been doing a lot of things on the YouTube and other places, but today we're actually officially launching the very first.
I don't want to call it the Matt Brock Podcast because it really has a lot of things, but it really is the Matt Brock Podcast.
(01:20):
And we're going to be talking about What Sold on this thing.
Now you already have a channel on YouTube called What Sold. Can you describe that a little bit?
I do.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's basically just how it sounds.
All we do is we talk about things that were purchased with the intention of reselling.
We put them on a platform, usually eBay, but it could be other things when we sell them.
(01:44):
And then the show is really about displaying those oftentimes.
We're just showing the actual eBay store.
So this isn't a, hey, I got this thing and I sold it.
Made tons of money, but you're not really singing it.
I mean, this is very transparent.
Look at my eBay store.
This is the picture of the item.
This is what it sold for.
We tell you what we paid for it.
How long we've had it.
(02:05):
Whether we were happy with the sale or not.
And any information we want to give.
Then we can sometimes I'm like, guys, I'm going to be honest, I'm really disappointed in this one.
But usually it's, it's really more about, hey, these are things you can find in your community.
Maybe you have it at home, you know, or it's at your parents house.
That kind of thing.
Really about education.
And hopefully inspiring or just letting people know that this isn't a magical world.
(02:30):
This is something that anybody can really do.
It takes a lot of steps to do it full time and make a living out of it for sure.
But you have to start somewhere.
And there's a lot of people who do a part time out there, you know, and they enjoy that.
And it's great to have extra money.
But that's what the show is about in a nutshell.
Oh, that's awesome.
So the idea of the show or the idea of what you're doing really is.
(02:53):
Creating a, almost like a secondary market, right?
We all know Amazon and all the other sort of commercial websites out there that's buying.
Sell stuff.
eBay.
Obviously is a big one that people sell stuff on.
And people have had varying levels of engagement with eBay.
But your site is almost like a third tier.
(03:14):
If I can use that it.
It's sort of saying I'm not selling as a platform, but I'm finding things out there.
For instance, all of us, I have things or I'm looking at things.
I have a watch.
Pretty nice high end sports watch that I need to sell.
Like, ooh, I need to sell that.
You don't specialize in any one thing though when you sell, right?
You kind of just decide what it is.
(03:35):
If you think it has value, you purchase it or someone gives you however way you do it and then you sell it.
I don't have specialties necessarily.
In the beginning, I started this type of work really out of necessity.
And so in the beginning, as you can imagine, it was all about what can I make a dollar on?
Anything I can find that I can make money on.
That's how I do it.
(03:58):
But as I learned, as I do things, you kind of, I married my own personal interests with what made sense for the business.
And I've become a, I've become someone of this specialist on certain categories of things based off of my experience with it.
How well they sell, how easy they are to acquire and what I personally, I really like artwork.
I really like instruments.
(04:20):
I started selling on eBay in like 2000, 2001.
Wow.
And just part time, you know, just not even part time, just like sort of from home.
I'd find an instrument, I'd buy it, I'd play it for three months, I'd sell it for a hundred bucks.
Hey, that was a great experience.
I learned about an instrument, you know, in the process.
But I've developed some knowledge more and some fields than others.
(04:43):
And now I target those because I'm getting better at finding them, paying less for them.
And then the longer my store goes on, the more people follow it and more likely I am to sell it, if that makes sense.
Okay, so that's a good segue to start talking about, you know, this is our first ever show.
And I can imagine people that have followed you or listening in on this or, or like me, when I was like, wait, you do what?
(05:08):
Your job is what?
And one of the reasons why we decided to do this podcast is because it was just a fastening story.
So let's back up a little bit, let's rewind the tape, yeah, back up maybe not maybe not to 2000, but to the point where you decided, hey, I'm going to make this a job.
And now not everybody that's listening is going to be doing this as a job, but let's just imagine, let's take your story, Matt story about how you got become rusty reseller and how you sort of launched into this.
(05:36):
Give us a background on how you got here.
Yeah, well, it's my third career and who knows what the future holds, but I mean, I didn't even start this as a, hey, I want to build, you know, an empire of sorts.
It was more, I'm in a tough situation and I got, I got two young children in a family to, to help provide for.
(05:57):
And how do I go about doing that in such a weird time as the COVID era 2020 was.
But my background is in mental health. I got a masters in rehabilitation counseling and I was a mental health therapist for a dozen years.
And that's really working with people serving people with disabilities, serving individuals with mental illnesses was my focus and that's my educational background.
(06:22):
And I sort of moved out of that I'm sorry to say it's still a great field and very, very needed today even still, but it was difficult with the agency is hiring.
And I made less my last year annually than I made after 12 years of doing it, then I made my first year out of graduate school, if you can believe that.
All the while costs are going up, you have a family, inflation, and I just said, it's good work. I just can't afford to do it anymore.
(06:49):
And so I moved in I sort of at that same time, a person I knew a friend of mine had started up a business in the kind of during the craft beer boom.
He started a tech based restaurant bar concept and because I knew him it was small, he wanted to scale it grow it. And so I went to work with him and we we did that for several years, built this thing out, got a bunch of people involved.
(07:14):
It was operating in multiple states. It was a multi million dollar grossing company by the time that it dropped off and that brings us to 2020.
The health crisis people are staying home and this kind of the job sort of ceased to be able to operate both the stores that were existing and also nobody's wanting to open up new stores in that time.
(07:37):
So I found myself very quickly at home with two small children and we're doing an earning income family.
So how do I continue to work? How do I provide for my family both, you know, tangibly in the moment, but also find time to do work.
I was already buying a selling on eBay.
Oh, wait, before you get to the buying and selling part and we'll get to that.
(07:59):
But let's talk about, I mean, I think for a lot of people who are listening can relate with COVID to COVID.
Yes, absolutely.
I became a full-time podcast during that time because I was a teacher and all the school shut down. I was like, well, I don't want to, you know, I'm going to make something happen.
So it is interesting that in some really ironic ways COVID launched a lot of careers because you had to do something.
(08:24):
And so you're at home.
Into the lot and started a lot.
Yes, exactly. So here you are at home.
You've already been sort of dabbling in the buying and selling world buying instruments, right? You're buying guitars and different things.
Yes. You are a talented guitar player. You won't admit it, but you are.
And you like instruments and you play the intro to this show is one and only Matt Brock playing a guitar. So it's really fun.
(08:47):
You got this thing that you liked.
And you said, well, I've got to do something.
So let's go from there. You got to do something. How do we get from there to rusty to reseller?
Yeah, I just looked around and thought, what is the easiest point of entry to earn income?
So the parameters are no one's hiring. So traditional jobs are out at least at the time I had no idea how long.
(09:12):
This is scary time. I have to be present because I'm taking care of my kids while they're at home from school and until they're back.
I already had experience with using the eBay platform. I already understood the idea of buying things and selling them for more than I paid for them.
That's a simple concept at the foundation.
And I had a computer at home and I had some space to store things.
(09:37):
So I've decided the easiest way to get into it is to use something I already know.
I don't have to start something new or learn a whole new trade.
I just expand on what I already knew, which was very little at the time, but enough to get started.
So that was it. I would watch my kids.
Whenever I did some sourcing online to begin with because again, you can do that from the comfort and safety of your own home.
(10:04):
And when they would come in, I would do what I needed to do to try to photograph or repair those items.
Put them back on a platform and sell them.
So this was a learning on the job situation going on because it wasn't like you knew how to do stuff.
100%.
You just kind of learned it as you went.
Yes. Yes. 100%.
OK.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And I failed many times and I still mess up and make bad decisions.
(10:30):
Buy it off more than I can chew.
There are a lot of things in a lot of things I encounter are not new to anyone who runs their own business.
I started their own thing. This is not unique to me.
Maybe a little bit more unique in the specific thing that I'm doing, but the difficulties and challenges that I face on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis are the same challenges that anyone who has a retail store, anyone who sells a good and probably even services.
(10:59):
It's, it's the thing that there are cyclical times of year when things are better or worse.
You've got to budget.
You have to know how much to save, how much what's your cash flow like.
Here's a great opportunity, but I don't have the money.
Should I stretch it? Should I not?
Like there's so many tiny little things that you have to work out and people ask me on the channel all the time, the rusty channel, the wet sold channel.
How do you know when to buy this or how do you know?
(11:23):
And I think it's kind of them to ask they as if I'm an authority on it.
I have opinions, but I'm certainly not an authority and also that you are more of an authority than most people that are doing it.
I suppose, no, that is absolutely true, but there isn't necessarily a specific answer to every question.
Sometimes, and they don't like this, but sometimes the right answer is different for you than it is for me, because we're in different places with different circumstances.
(11:50):
I just try on the channel to give general information that I think can guide people in the right direction.
And maybe they can learn from things I tell them as opposed to having to make the mistakes I made.
I know you know, but I was figuring it out on my own.
I also watched a lot of YouTube videos.
Isn't that the YouTube university has been amazing?
That's 100%.
(12:12):
So we're going to take basically two dreams of thought on the show.
One is actually talking about the physical things that we sell.
The other part is just sort of answering what you're saying now.
So what the rusty, the reseller and the wet sold YouTube channel.
You go in and it's COVID's there. You decide, well, I'm just going to record myself.
Now for those of you that do not know what rusty reseller is and have no idea what we're talking about right now.
(12:37):
Matt has an alter ego and his name is rusty the reseller and you basically video yourself going into these different places and buying stuff.
And it could be all sorts of things.
And we're going to on the what right this what sold podcast is the real Matt Brock.
And we're going to actually take a look at some of those items and talk about it.
Yes, specifically we're going to choose a couple items each week to talk about like what sold why didn't it sell?
(13:00):
Where do you find stuff like that?
But let's talk about rusty first.
What was the impetus for rusty?
Well, once I was able to start going out and looking for items in person.
On a regular basis weekly, I started to encounter other people doing what I do.
And they've been doing it much longer in some cases than I was doing it.
(13:22):
And I started to I live in Western North Carolina for those who don't know.
And there's a like any region of the country.
If you're there long enough, you start to get a vibe of the locals and the people who have been in this region for a long time.
This is their region, the Appalachian people and the it is is it's a certain subtype.
And the the the world.
(13:46):
The subculture of the reseller world is fascinating to me because of so you know my background being in
psychology and counseling.
I might view interactions a little differently than the average person.
But that is to say I encountered lots of similarities.
And so when I decided to start doing the YouTube channel and it became channels.
It was again out of hey listen, I'm going to already be doing this stuff.
(14:09):
People had told me for a while maybe you should try a YouTube channel.
You know, you can you can even revenue off of that.
Didn't know a whole lot about it.
And thought well, I'm already doing this work.
I don't have to do much extra work in order to record myself doing it.
But to be very perfectly on I don't know if I've told maybe anybody other my wife this but the primary reason if I'm being totally honest that I did a character was that I was a little embarrassed.
(14:34):
That I was doing what I was doing.
And I didn't necessarily want people I knew knowing that I was I was doing this really so.
There is a little bit of a stigma around being a reseller.
It's got a term.
I think a lot of that has to do with interactions that people at retail stores have with people who are quote unquote resellers.
(14:55):
When they are pushy or demanding or just simply not kind in their interactions with people.
And that has you know started to become a thing that it's almost like they look out for you and they're like, I don't know about this guy or this woman.
And I definitely sense that when I started out and kind of like I knew I needed to do it but I didn't necessarily want to be associated with that culture because I didn't feel like that was me.
(15:20):
And so I thought one reason was I don't feel comfortable being myself.
And maybe just some personal you know insecurities.
But then secondarily I thought what if I created a caricature of sort of the amalgamation of people I'm seeing when I'm out and I make a name and I become I become like a backwards.
(15:43):
Appalachian guy who's just trying to make a buck.
But you know I try to be kind and try to try to be helpful in encouraging as well.
So that's kind of where it came.
It also was kind of fun for me.
I don't necessarily have like a big acting background but I'm certainly yeah I have a flare for it a little bit so it made it interesting for me I'm not just being myself putting it all on the table you can kind of hide behind a façade a little bit.
(16:06):
I'm sure that's very characteristic of actors and actresses.
There's a comfort in hiding yourself maybe while you're doing it.
I don't know.
Yeah and I think that it's interesting you mentioned that about like sort of the insecurity about me being a reseller.
I think I you know I am a complete outsider to this world. I've never been a reseller I've never even thought about I'm obviously I've sold some stuff on eBay and had a couple of bad experiences never want to do it again.
(16:29):
So other than Facebook marketplace and maybe Craigslist which most of this that's sort of most of us but then there's a segment of people that are in between.
When I think about a reseller I think about the flea market guy who's like you're like yeah what is this that I'm buying here and most of the time I think that people like to go to those places because they want a barter and they want to do different things.
So I think you're probably speaking and correct me if I'm wrong but are you speaking a little bit to that character the kind of the flea market person selling.
(16:56):
I am yeah yeah there's a there's a place I'll you know it's called smiley's it's out in the region I live in and it's like a gigantic outdoor market.
And it has a certain reputation.
It's like if you can find things out there that you can flip and make money on you're also going to find a lot of people who all they did was go to good will the day before and buy a bunch of stuff cheap and go out there and try to sell it for 10 times as much.
(17:23):
Also if something stolen in the area the first place the police go to the next day as smiley's to see if they've got it for sale really.
And yeah yeah I know multiple times when people were found just hawking things that they had taken not to say that that's just for whatever reason sometimes it draws that proud makes sense right.
It's an easy way to get to move some but I think this the thing is there are I don't want to paint such a bad picture about there's a lot of resellers out there who are very honorable who are very kind in their interactions with people.
(17:55):
But then there are people who come in and it's price three dollars and they're like what you take 50 cents and like really man it's just $3 and you just what why do we have to do this so that's kind of the stuff I like to stay away from and I sure will talk on future episodes about my particularly my particular event events towards how I interact with people because I think building relationships talking with people not haggling them is actually much more productive than trying to take a $3 sale down to a 50.
(18:24):
So one time and never come back.
Yeah no it makes perfect sense relationship is everything you know once you build trust with people they know you're not going to try to rob them or you know steal from them.
Yeah exactly no one likes to feel taken advantage of I call it the mechanic rule.
If you find it honest mechanic.
Oh sure they they have to turn business away because people want to trust them.
(18:46):
Yeah and it's also 100% there's a level of I don't know enough about this thing I'm going to trust you as the expert until you screw me and then I'm never going to go back and if they get a reputation of that they're in trouble so if you are going out and you're buying and selling things and you have a reputation of as a sneaky you know shady character.
(19:07):
People probably are going to deal with you in the same way so I imagine that's also part of it definitely for sure it is.
Yeah so that's that was the impetus for starting the channels and then once I kind of got a taste for it that was the same as eBay in the sense that I knew nothing in the beginning had to learn all of it not all of it I had to learn a lot of myself I had a friend who lives in another state and city he is a feature character on there as well at times.
(19:31):
Together we worked on building that first channel but once we realize how to do it we discovered some things and that kind of let us to starting some other channels which is the namesake of this podcast the what sold channel with sort of refining what we were doing and packaging it in such a way that.
We could really just give the main details to people who are trying to learn like I was in the beginning so let's in our last you know minute or so here and this is really just introductory show just to give people sort of a flavor of what we're going to do but if you were going to say.
(20:08):
I imagine when you started you weren't like this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life and it may still not be what you know the rest of life but if you were to say what is the.
Thing that drives you to continue to do it outside of money like everybody does there's an economic reason why you like to do what you do and that's a good question.
I mean money is a big driver it is worth of course but I think the thing that.
(20:33):
It is exciting because mainly because of the education so my channels are really sort of taking the things I've learned and sharing them with other people but I had to learn them first right so when I started in 2020 I was just trying to make money but the thing that's really interesting about.
This work is how much I learn and the learning is then translated to the YouTube channel so for example if I were to walk in an antique store into a booth there may be hundreds of different categories of items in that booth and I might have only known about 20 of them when I got started but now three years later I might know about hundreds of different categories of items enough to be dangerous.
(21:12):
I to recognize without even have to look them up on my phone and so I have I'm ahead there and every week it's the same thing I learn about new things every week and for as many years as I do this I will still be learning and that is fascinating me it's very interesting I'm not going to win trivia games necessarily all the time with this knowledge but it helps me for my work and it it translates to help other people that I know personally to sometimes people.
(21:40):
Have things I need to get rid of or they're in need and I'm like oh well you know if you just saw this thing.
I didn't even know I was just going to throw that out I mean I hear that all the time I don't donate that I'm just going to throw it out so.
Well it's interesting because you and I are friends off of the show and I you I ran into you and you would found just a little little segway story here that kind of maybe sum up that whole thing is that you would found a pocket watch.
(22:03):
And the person sold it and you know you're you're a buyer so you're not going to say hey do you realize what you have there and I'm not trying to paint this shady picture you're trying to say they were selling this for a lot more than they had purchased it for but it turns out that watch was worth a whole lot more than what they thought they were selling.
Yeah so and have I even told you that it sold no it's it's already sold it did sell yeah you don't know this oh yeah I pay it $120 for it and sold for $900.
(22:30):
Two days later yeah so yeah was 14 care it was solid gold you know and that's I don't get scores like that all the time but you know when you do feels good and I bet to those people bought it for 10 so in a sense there's a winner all the way around yes and I don't you know certainly don't want to take advantage of people and that's why like I don't.
As a rule really haggle with people if they're asking a certain price if I'm not willing to pay that price I walk away if I want that price you know if I wanted I'll buy it at that price and I find that if you do that and you don't mess with people or you don't.
(23:06):
You don't have all them a lot of times it other cooler even better bigger opportunities come along and it can be a win win for everybody involved yeah that's more that's kind of a life principle I think for some people for sure it is for me well Matt we're going to be launching into this show we're going to be talking about some very specific items but we wanted to give an overview of what we're doing we'll filter in as we go along to talk about as things come along and maybe you get another watch that you find or whatever but I'm very excited to be doing this with you I'm going to be.
(23:35):
I'm going to be doing this with you I hope those of you that are out there listening to this maybe pick up something learn something from Matt that you might apply in your own life if that if this is an area that you like to spend and I think that the truth is is a fairly universal thing we all have little items that we want to sell but most of us are like like I don't want to go on Facebook marketplace because I know I'm going to be dealing with all sorts of craziness and maybe there ways you can help us to sort of understand that so as we move forward that's we're going to be doing on this show yes that's the stuff that we're going to be talking about.
(24:04):
Talking about so Matt thank you so much for the first intro episode we have here we'll be back with a new episode yes it'll be posting next week so we look forward to people being with us remember to subscribe to the podcast right it's the what sold podcast yes please and we in the show notes will be given links and all sorts of things and an email so if you have any specific questions can promise that's going to be able to answer them all but at least you can you can send them a message I will answer them all.
(24:33):
I'll answer them they won't be right answers but it might be totally wrong but it will definitely answer I'm happy to answer whatever I can all right thanks Matt we'll be back with the new episode very soon take care everybody.
everybody.
[Music]
(00:10):
Every single day, people take unwanted or unused items to thrift and antique stores across the country.
But as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure, and we're here to prove it.
Identify valuable things before you throw them away.
Join us as we show and tell of treasures found and sold by a full-time reseller with the hopes of helping you find some treasures of your own.
(00:32):
Welcome to the What Sold Podcast.
[Music]
Hey, welcome everybody to the What Sold Podcast, the first ever edition of the What Sold Podcast.
With my friend Matt Rock, who is the king of the What Sold World.
You might know him as Rusty, the reseller. He has many different known de plumes and aliases, but all of them are the same madman in this.
(00:58):
So Matt, welcome. Good to see you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Oh man, I'm really happy to be here making this happen.
This is exciting.
I know you've been doing a lot of things on the YouTube and other places, but today we're actually officially launching the very first.
I don't want to call it the Matt Brock Podcast because it really has a lot of things, but it really is the Matt Brock Podcast.
(01:20):
And we're going to be talking about What Sold on this thing.
Now you already have a channel on YouTube called What Sold. Can you describe that a little bit?
I do.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's basically just how it sounds.
All we do is we talk about things that were purchased with the intention of reselling.
We put them on a platform, usually eBay, but it could be other things when we sell them.
(01:44):
And then the show is really about displaying those oftentimes.
We're just showing the actual eBay store.
So this isn't a, hey, I got this thing and I sold it.
Made tons of money, but you're not really singing it.
I mean, this is very transparent.
Look at my eBay store.
This is the picture of the item.
This is what it sold for.
We tell you what we paid for it.
How long we've had it.
(02:05):
Whether we were happy with the sale or not.
And any information we want to give.
Then we can sometimes I'm like, guys, I'm going to be honest, I'm really disappointed in this one.
But usually it's, it's really more about, hey, these are things you can find in your community.
Maybe you have it at home, you know, or it's at your parents house.
That kind of thing.
Really about education.
And hopefully inspiring or just letting people know that this isn't a magical world.
(02:30):
This is something that anybody can really do.
It takes a lot of steps to do it full time and make a living out of it for sure.
But you have to start somewhere.
And there's a lot of people who do a part time out there, you know, and they enjoy that.
And it's great to have extra money.
But that's what the show is about in a nutshell.
Oh, that's awesome.
So the idea of the show or the idea of what you're doing really is.
(02:53):
Creating a, almost like a secondary market, right?
We all know Amazon and all the other sort of commercial websites out there that's buying.
Sell stuff.
eBay.
Obviously is a big one that people sell stuff on.
And people have had varying levels of engagement with eBay.
But your site is almost like a third tier.
(03:14):
If I can use that it.
It's sort of saying I'm not selling as a platform, but I'm finding things out there.
For instance, all of us, I have things or I'm looking at things.
I have a watch.
Pretty nice high end sports watch that I need to sell.
Like, ooh, I need to sell that.
You don't specialize in any one thing though when you sell, right?
You kind of just decide what it is.
(03:35):
If you think it has value, you purchase it or someone gives you however way you do it and then you sell it.
I don't have specialties necessarily.
In the beginning, I started this type of work really out of necessity.
And so in the beginning, as you can imagine, it was all about what can I make a dollar on?
Anything I can find that I can make money on.
That's how I do it.
(03:58):
But as I learned, as I do things, you kind of, I married my own personal interests with what made sense for the business.
And I've become a, I've become someone of this specialist on certain categories of things based off of my experience with it.
How well they sell, how easy they are to acquire and what I personally, I really like artwork.
I really like instruments.
(04:20):
I started selling on eBay in like 2000, 2001.
Wow.
And just part time, you know, just not even part time, just like sort of from home.
I'd find an instrument, I'd buy it, I'd play it for three months, I'd sell it for a hundred bucks.
Hey, that was a great experience.
I learned about an instrument, you know, in the process.
But I've developed some knowledge more and some fields than others.
(04:43):
And now I target those because I'm getting better at finding them, paying less for them.
And then the longer my store goes on, the more people follow it and more likely I am to sell it, if that makes sense.
Okay, so that's a good segue to start talking about, you know, this is our first ever show.
And I can imagine people that have followed you or listening in on this or, or like me, when I was like, wait, you do what?
(05:08):
Your job is what?
And one of the reasons why we decided to do this podcast is because it was just a fastening story.
So let's back up a little bit, let's rewind the tape, yeah, back up maybe not maybe not to 2000, but to the point where you decided, hey, I'm going to make this a job.
And now not everybody that's listening is going to be doing this as a job, but let's just imagine, let's take your story, Matt story about how you got become rusty reseller and how you sort of launched into this.
(05:36):
Give us a background on how you got here.
Yeah, well, it's my third career and who knows what the future holds, but I mean, I didn't even start this as a, hey, I want to build, you know, an empire of sorts.
It was more, I'm in a tough situation and I got, I got two young children in a family to, to help provide for.
(05:57):
And how do I go about doing that in such a weird time as the COVID era 2020 was.
But my background is in mental health. I got a masters in rehabilitation counseling and I was a mental health therapist for a dozen years.
And that's really working with people serving people with disabilities, serving individuals with mental illnesses was my focus and that's my educational background.
(06:22):
And I sort of moved out of that I'm sorry to say it's still a great field and very, very needed today even still, but it was difficult with the agency is hiring.
And I made less my last year annually than I made after 12 years of doing it, then I made my first year out of graduate school, if you can believe that.
All the while costs are going up, you have a family, inflation, and I just said, it's good work. I just can't afford to do it anymore.
(06:49):
And so I moved in I sort of at that same time, a person I knew a friend of mine had started up a business in the kind of during the craft beer boom.
He started a tech based restaurant bar concept and because I knew him it was small, he wanted to scale it grow it. And so I went to work with him and we we did that for several years, built this thing out, got a bunch of people involved.
(07:14):
It was operating in multiple states. It was a multi million dollar grossing company by the time that it dropped off and that brings us to 2020.
The health crisis people are staying home and this kind of the job sort of ceased to be able to operate both the stores that were existing and also nobody's wanting to open up new stores in that time.
(07:37):
So I found myself very quickly at home with two small children and we're doing an earning income family.
So how do I continue to work? How do I provide for my family both, you know, tangibly in the moment, but also find time to do work.
I was already buying a selling on eBay.
Oh, wait, before you get to the buying and selling part and we'll get to that.
(07:59):
But let's talk about, I mean, I think for a lot of people who are listening can relate with COVID to COVID.
Yes, absolutely.
I became a full-time podcast during that time because I was a teacher and all the school shut down. I was like, well, I don't want to, you know, I'm going to make something happen.
So it is interesting that in some really ironic ways COVID launched a lot of careers because you had to do something.
(08:24):
And so you're at home.
Into the lot and started a lot.
Yes, exactly. So here you are at home.
You've already been sort of dabbling in the buying and selling world buying instruments, right? You're buying guitars and different things.
Yes. You are a talented guitar player. You won't admit it, but you are.
And you like instruments and you play the intro to this show is one and only Matt Brock playing a guitar. So it's really fun.
(08:47):
You got this thing that you liked.
And you said, well, I've got to do something.
So let's go from there. You got to do something. How do we get from there to rusty to reseller?
Yeah, I just looked around and thought, what is the easiest point of entry to earn income?
So the parameters are no one's hiring. So traditional jobs are out at least at the time I had no idea how long.
(09:12):
This is scary time. I have to be present because I'm taking care of my kids while they're at home from school and until they're back.
I already had experience with using the eBay platform. I already understood the idea of buying things and selling them for more than I paid for them.
That's a simple concept at the foundation.
And I had a computer at home and I had some space to store things.
(09:37):
So I've decided the easiest way to get into it is to use something I already know.
I don't have to start something new or learn a whole new trade.
I just expand on what I already knew, which was very little at the time, but enough to get started.
So that was it. I would watch my kids.
Whenever I did some sourcing online to begin with because again, you can do that from the comfort and safety of your own home.
(10:04):
And when they would come in, I would do what I needed to do to try to photograph or repair those items.
Put them back on a platform and sell them.
So this was a learning on the job situation going on because it wasn't like you knew how to do stuff.
100%.
You just kind of learned it as you went.
Yes. Yes. 100%.
OK.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And I failed many times and I still mess up and make bad decisions.
(10:30):
Buy it off more than I can chew.
There are a lot of things in a lot of things I encounter are not new to anyone who runs their own business.
I started their own thing. This is not unique to me.
Maybe a little bit more unique in the specific thing that I'm doing, but the difficulties and challenges that I face on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis are the same challenges that anyone who has a retail store, anyone who sells a good and probably even services.
(10:59):
It's, it's the thing that there are cyclical times of year when things are better or worse.
You've got to budget.
You have to know how much to save, how much what's your cash flow like.
Here's a great opportunity, but I don't have the money.
Should I stretch it? Should I not?
Like there's so many tiny little things that you have to work out and people ask me on the channel all the time, the rusty channel, the wet sold channel.
How do you know when to buy this or how do you know?
(11:23):
And I think it's kind of them to ask they as if I'm an authority on it.
I have opinions, but I'm certainly not an authority and also that you are more of an authority than most people that are doing it.
I suppose, no, that is absolutely true, but there isn't necessarily a specific answer to every question.
Sometimes, and they don't like this, but sometimes the right answer is different for you than it is for me, because we're in different places with different circumstances.
(11:50):
I just try on the channel to give general information that I think can guide people in the right direction.
And maybe they can learn from things I tell them as opposed to having to make the mistakes I made.
I know you know, but I was figuring it out on my own.
I also watched a lot of YouTube videos.
Isn't that the YouTube university has been amazing?
That's 100%.
(12:12):
So we're going to take basically two dreams of thought on the show.
One is actually talking about the physical things that we sell.
The other part is just sort of answering what you're saying now.
So what the rusty, the reseller and the wet sold YouTube channel.
You go in and it's COVID's there. You decide, well, I'm just going to record myself.
Now for those of you that do not know what rusty reseller is and have no idea what we're talking about right now.
(12:37):
Matt has an alter ego and his name is rusty the reseller and you basically video yourself going into these different places and buying stuff.
And it could be all sorts of things.
And we're going to on the what right this what sold podcast is the real Matt Brock.
And we're going to actually take a look at some of those items and talk about it.
Yes, specifically we're going to choose a couple items each week to talk about like what sold why didn't it sell?
(13:00):
Where do you find stuff like that?
But let's talk about rusty first.
What was the impetus for rusty?
Well, once I was able to start going out and looking for items in person.
On a regular basis weekly, I started to encounter other people doing what I do.
And they've been doing it much longer in some cases than I was doing it.
(13:22):
And I started to I live in Western North Carolina for those who don't know.
And there's a like any region of the country.
If you're there long enough, you start to get a vibe of the locals and the people who have been in this region for a long time.
This is their region, the Appalachian people and the it is is it's a certain subtype.
And the the the world.
(13:46):
The subculture of the reseller world is fascinating to me because of so you know my background being in
psychology and counseling.
I might view interactions a little differently than the average person.
But that is to say I encountered lots of similarities.
And so when I decided to start doing the YouTube channel and it became channels.
It was again out of hey listen, I'm going to already be doing this stuff.
(14:09):
People had told me for a while maybe you should try a YouTube channel.
You know, you can you can even revenue off of that.
Didn't know a whole lot about it.
And thought well, I'm already doing this work.
I don't have to do much extra work in order to record myself doing it.
But to be very perfectly on I don't know if I've told maybe anybody other my wife this but the primary reason if I'm being totally honest that I did a character was that I was a little embarrassed.
(14:34):
That I was doing what I was doing.
And I didn't necessarily want people I knew knowing that I was I was doing this really so.
There is a little bit of a stigma around being a reseller.
It's got a term.
I think a lot of that has to do with interactions that people at retail stores have with people who are quote unquote resellers.
(14:55):
When they are pushy or demanding or just simply not kind in their interactions with people.
And that has you know started to become a thing that it's almost like they look out for you and they're like, I don't know about this guy or this woman.
And I definitely sense that when I started out and kind of like I knew I needed to do it but I didn't necessarily want to be associated with that culture because I didn't feel like that was me.
(15:20):
And so I thought one reason was I don't feel comfortable being myself.
And maybe just some personal you know insecurities.
But then secondarily I thought what if I created a caricature of sort of the amalgamation of people I'm seeing when I'm out and I make a name and I become I become like a backwards.
(15:43):
Appalachian guy who's just trying to make a buck.
But you know I try to be kind and try to try to be helpful in encouraging as well.
So that's kind of where it came.
It also was kind of fun for me.
I don't necessarily have like a big acting background but I'm certainly yeah I have a flare for it a little bit so it made it interesting for me I'm not just being myself putting it all on the table you can kind of hide behind a façade a little bit.
(16:06):
I'm sure that's very characteristic of actors and actresses.
There's a comfort in hiding yourself maybe while you're doing it.
I don't know.
Yeah and I think that it's interesting you mentioned that about like sort of the insecurity about me being a reseller.
I think I you know I am a complete outsider to this world. I've never been a reseller I've never even thought about I'm obviously I've sold some stuff on eBay and had a couple of bad experiences never want to do it again.
(16:29):
So other than Facebook marketplace and maybe Craigslist which most of this that's sort of most of us but then there's a segment of people that are in between.
When I think about a reseller I think about the flea market guy who's like you're like yeah what is this that I'm buying here and most of the time I think that people like to go to those places because they want a barter and they want to do different things.
So I think you're probably speaking and correct me if I'm wrong but are you speaking a little bit to that character the kind of the flea market person selling.
(16:56):
I am yeah yeah there's a there's a place I'll you know it's called smiley's it's out in the region I live in and it's like a gigantic outdoor market.
And it has a certain reputation.
It's like if you can find things out there that you can flip and make money on you're also going to find a lot of people who all they did was go to good will the day before and buy a bunch of stuff cheap and go out there and try to sell it for 10 times as much.
(17:23):
Also if something stolen in the area the first place the police go to the next day as smiley's to see if they've got it for sale really.
And yeah yeah I know multiple times when people were found just hawking things that they had taken not to say that that's just for whatever reason sometimes it draws that proud makes sense right.
It's an easy way to get to move some but I think this the thing is there are I don't want to paint such a bad picture about there's a lot of resellers out there who are very honorable who are very kind in their interactions with people.
(17:55):
But then there are people who come in and it's price three dollars and they're like what you take 50 cents and like really man it's just $3 and you just what why do we have to do this so that's kind of the stuff I like to stay away from and I sure will talk on future episodes about my particularly my particular event events towards how I interact with people because I think building relationships talking with people not haggling them is actually much more productive than trying to take a $3 sale down to a 50.
(18:24):
So one time and never come back.
Yeah no it makes perfect sense relationship is everything you know once you build trust with people they know you're not going to try to rob them or you know steal from them.
Yeah exactly no one likes to feel taken advantage of I call it the mechanic rule.
If you find it honest mechanic.
Oh sure they they have to turn business away because people want to trust them.
(18:46):
Yeah and it's also 100% there's a level of I don't know enough about this thing I'm going to trust you as the expert until you screw me and then I'm never going to go back and if they get a reputation of that they're in trouble so if you are going out and you're buying and selling things and you have a reputation of as a sneaky you know shady character.
(19:07):
People probably are going to deal with you in the same way so I imagine that's also part of it definitely for sure it is.
Yeah so that's that was the impetus for starting the channels and then once I kind of got a taste for it that was the same as eBay in the sense that I knew nothing in the beginning had to learn all of it not all of it I had to learn a lot of myself I had a friend who lives in another state and city he is a feature character on there as well at times.
(19:31):
Together we worked on building that first channel but once we realize how to do it we discovered some things and that kind of let us to starting some other channels which is the namesake of this podcast the what sold channel with sort of refining what we were doing and packaging it in such a way that.
We could really just give the main details to people who are trying to learn like I was in the beginning so let's in our last you know minute or so here and this is really just introductory show just to give people sort of a flavor of what we're going to do but if you were going to say.
(20:08):
I imagine when you started you weren't like this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life and it may still not be what you know the rest of life but if you were to say what is the.
Thing that drives you to continue to do it outside of money like everybody does there's an economic reason why you like to do what you do and that's a good question.
I mean money is a big driver it is worth of course but I think the thing that.
(20:33):
It is exciting because mainly because of the education so my channels are really sort of taking the things I've learned and sharing them with other people but I had to learn them first right so when I started in 2020 I was just trying to make money but the thing that's really interesting about.
This work is how much I learn and the learning is then translated to the YouTube channel so for example if I were to walk in an antique store into a booth there may be hundreds of different categories of items in that booth and I might have only known about 20 of them when I got started but now three years later I might know about hundreds of different categories of items enough to be dangerous.
(21:12):
I to recognize without even have to look them up on my phone and so I have I'm ahead there and every week it's the same thing I learn about new things every week and for as many years as I do this I will still be learning and that is fascinating me it's very interesting I'm not going to win trivia games necessarily all the time with this knowledge but it helps me for my work and it it translates to help other people that I know personally to sometimes people.
(21:40):
Have things I need to get rid of or they're in need and I'm like oh well you know if you just saw this thing.
I didn't even know I was just going to throw that out I mean I hear that all the time I don't donate that I'm just going to throw it out so.
Well it's interesting because you and I are friends off of the show and I you I ran into you and you would found just a little little segway story here that kind of maybe sum up that whole thing is that you would found a pocket watch.
(22:03):
And the person sold it and you know you're you're a buyer so you're not going to say hey do you realize what you have there and I'm not trying to paint this shady picture you're trying to say they were selling this for a lot more than they had purchased it for but it turns out that watch was worth a whole lot more than what they thought they were selling.
Yeah so and have I even told you that it sold no it's it's already sold it did sell yeah you don't know this oh yeah I pay it $120 for it and sold for $900.
(22:30):
Two days later yeah so yeah was 14 care it was solid gold you know and that's I don't get scores like that all the time but you know when you do feels good and I bet to those people bought it for 10 so in a sense there's a winner all the way around yes and I don't you know certainly don't want to take advantage of people and that's why like I don't.
As a rule really haggle with people if they're asking a certain price if I'm not willing to pay that price I walk away if I want that price you know if I wanted I'll buy it at that price and I find that if you do that and you don't mess with people or you don't.
(23:06):
You don't have all them a lot of times it other cooler even better bigger opportunities come along and it can be a win win for everybody involved yeah that's more that's kind of a life principle I think for some people for sure it is for me well Matt we're going to be launching into this show we're going to be talking about some very specific items but we wanted to give an overview of what we're doing we'll filter in as we go along to talk about as things come along and maybe you get another watch that you find or whatever but I'm very excited to be doing this with you I'm going to be.
(23:35):
I'm going to be doing this with you I hope those of you that are out there listening to this maybe pick up something learn something from Matt that you might apply in your own life if that if this is an area that you like to spend and I think that the truth is is a fairly universal thing we all have little items that we want to sell but most of us are like like I don't want to go on Facebook marketplace because I know I'm going to be dealing with all sorts of craziness and maybe there ways you can help us to sort of understand that so as we move forward that's we're going to be doing on this show yes that's the stuff that we're going to be talking about.
(24:04):
Talking about so Matt thank you so much for the first intro episode we have here we'll be back with a new episode yes it'll be posting next week so we look forward to people being with us remember to subscribe to the podcast right it's the what sold podcast yes please and we in the show notes will be given links and all sorts of things and an email so if you have any specific questions can promise that's going to be able to answer them all but at least you can you can send them a message I will answer them all.
(24:33):
I'll answer them they won't be right answers but it might be totally wrong but it will definitely answer I'm happy to answer whatever I can all right thanks Matt we'll be back with the new episode very soon take care everybody.
everybody.
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