March 7, 2025 • 40 mins
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I help teach people how to make money selling books on Amazon, leveraging the platform's vast reach and the profitability of reselling used books. How to sell books on Amazon? Selling books on Amazon can be an excellent side hustle or a full-time endeavor, particularly if you enjoy thrifting through places like Goodwill for hidden treasures. How to start selling on Amazon is accessible, and with my guidance on how to sell books, DVDs, CDs, and other media, beginners can quickly learn the ropes. Utilizing Amazon FBA streamlines operations, allowing sellers to focus more on sourcing and less on logistics. As a reselling coach, I provide tutorials and guidance on navigating challenges like ungating and optimizing listings for maximum visibility and sales. Whether you're looking for a part-time side hustle or aiming to become a full-time reseller, I will teach you the ins and outs of thrifting books and selling books online and can pave the way to creating passive income streams and achieving business growth.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
(00:03):
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
(00:25):
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny.
Johnny doesn't know the topic.
I like to keep him on his toes,
keep him young in the mind and the reselling world of things.
And the topic today is we are challenging everybody.
Johnny doesn't even know, but he's a part of this challenge for you to not go to a
(00:48):
thrift store for the next month and see what happens to your business.
The immediate thought is the end is near.
And I believe the exact complete opposite of branching out sources,
because I've seen what it's done for my business and leaving the lowest hanging
fruit of the thrift store, usually the most expensive hanging fruit as well.
(01:09):
The thrift store behind.
So Johnny, give me your input here on this, uh, this idea.
I kind of just threw you in to be a part of.
I already do this.
I hardly go to thrift stores.
I don't know in the last, last time I went was when the electricity was out
last year and I was like, well, I let's try thrifts.
I haven't done that in a minute, but there's just so many better ways
(01:32):
than thrift stores. I get it.
It's cheap books, right?
We all want the cheap books, but there's money to be had at the thrift stores.
I'm not saying there's not, I just think there's better angles and better
quality you can get outside of it.
Not to say there isn't the outlier.
Oh, it's the magical dump it in the bin.
Somebody's personal Eastern press collection.
(01:53):
How this got out from the back.
I'll never know, but I'll take it.
Yeah.
Those are one-off scenarios or in Caleb's antique book collective, he got a
$15,000 book at the bins.
Good for him.
Those are really, really, really rare outliers, but everybody likes
playing the lottery, right?
Um, if I go to a bookstore, everything's categorized for me 95% of the time.
(02:18):
Um, sometimes there's bookstores where they don't organize books are in the
floor and there's no rhyme or reason to anything.
Um, yeah, you're going to pay up.
You are.
Um, but again, if you want cheap, there's also auctions.
There's plenty of online auctions.
I'd either have it mailed to you.
You do local pickup.
You don't have to go to a live auction to do auctions.
(02:38):
Um, there's library sales.
Those are pretty cheap prices too.
Um, and the benefit of those is they're cheap and usually organized as well.
Um, then there's yard sales.
I don't think you can get much these days and not to say you can't, but, um,
you never know what they're going to have.
So they may have a box of books.
(03:00):
They may not, uh, a pro tip there.
If you go to a yard sale and they don't have books, ask if they have books for
sale, maybe they didn't think to bring them out.
That's a good tip.
And maybe you can get some books there.
Um, there's Facebook, Craigslist, Nextdoor, all these applications to get rid of
things for profit.
There's even Facebook groups.
Um, come buy my DVDs, CDs, books.
(03:23):
Uh, you've mentioned the CD record stores and the pawn shops.
If you're into disc media, um, there are game stores or a second in Charles.
Even you can pick up stuff there, even from mainstream or, um,
probably couldn't do it at Barnes and Noble, but, uh, there, there's, uh,
half price books.
Um, what's that one in the Northeast you guys have, we don't have them down here
(03:46):
in Texas, say,
McKay's that's like a, a book.
That's a chain store.
There's Sabres.
That's another thrift kind of store.
I guess, uh, you guys get your stuff in bags, which is funny to me.
I think the problem is we all start with thrift stores, right?
I'm not saying that we're not going to get thrift stores.
We all start with thrift stores, right?
(04:07):
I'm not saying it's, I'm not telling you if you're brand new, don't go into a
thrift store, but I think there has to be a natural progression of better
sources throughout your reselling career.
And what I mean by that is sure.
Like Johnny said, you can go to the thrift store.
You might be able to get a few items.
When I started, my business was like 85% relying on goodwill thrift stores.
Right.
(04:27):
But this was over five years ago where the thrift stores didn't look things up.
I mean, now you go into even smaller thrift stores.
Got a glass case and they're looking a lot of these items up.
So it's harder to find the slips through the cracks, right?
It's next to impossible to find some of the stuff we used to be able to find.
And the prop, the bigger problem is, I think, is when people are
(04:51):
consuming reselling content, it's usually always the crazy.
Flips from the thrift store, because when you, when there's an infinite
amount of content creators and everybody's fight fighting to get views,
you have to have the catchy flashy, oh, the crazy item flip from the thrift store.
So we just assume that we can only go to thrift stores and it's such a limiting
(05:13):
belief, especially in the land of media.
And I would even challenge any category that if you just go a little bit upstream,
in most cases, your price goes down and the quality goes up because anybody in
the universe will tell you, if you go buy directly from somebody versus going to
the thrift store, the quality is going to be 100% better every single time.
(05:33):
When you're buying directly from the person that has had it in their house
or in their storage unit for X amount of years.
Right.
I mean, there's even, um, you go to your local churches, they all got libraries.
They're all looking to downsize because they buy religious books.
I'm not even talking about, I will, I am taught I'll include the Christian
(05:53):
churches, but try a synagogue.
I'm telling you there's great money in synagogue, uh, reading material,
absolutely amazing stuff that sells for good money.
Um, I, I would stay clear of storage units.
You can try it if you want to just to say you did, but instead of doing that,
I'd rather deal with the storage unit guys out at the flea market, honestly,
make my connection there than me doing storage units myself, not to say you
(06:16):
can't make money in it, but you're going to get more than just what you want
doing that game.
Um, there are so many other ways, um, even making connections with local
booksellers, or even if you're in groups like this, like I get solicited all the
time for paperback stuff.
It's great.
And so if you put yourself out there on what you buy, um, stuff will just
(06:37):
naturally get thrown your way.
Um, what was the other one?
Um, yeah, if you just, you go to places where you normally wouldn't
think there'd be books, right?
Um,
you don't know until you know, I guess, right?
That's the argument that people make was, well, I've only known that
(07:00):
thrift stores and I've only known, uh, this or that.
And if you just, cause this has happened to me over the past few years, I've
expanded my sources almost to a point where I didn't, I net, I rarely go into
Goodwill maybe once a month.
So I went from 80 plus percent relying on Goodwill.
So now I'm in one Goodwill maybe once a month because it's on one of my routes.
(07:21):
And I just want to pop in just to see how terrible it is.
What's up Amazon sellers.
We wanted to take a second to talk about go-to lists or the software, me and
Johnny both use to list and manage our inventory and grow our businesses.
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(07:41):
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Mike, or using the link in the description below.
It's, it's tough for thrift store resellers.
I see them all the time.
I hear the eBay dings when they're scanning on their phone and these thrift stores.
And the first thing that comes to my mind is you were in a Goodwill in 2025, and
(08:06):
you're trying to have a profitable eBay business go into Goodwill where their
prices are astronomical when instead, if you went to the estate sale, the place
before they actually took everything to the Goodwill and you could have got a lot
more better quality items for a lot cheaper.
I don't know what else to tell you besides you literally
(08:28):
paying more now for items that have been picked over by the people shopping
the estate sale and the thrift stores.
It's, I don't think the thrift store model works.
If you want to scale this business to six figures plus, unless you are
literally in a metropolitan area where you have hundreds and hundreds and
(08:49):
hundreds of thrift stores, because even if I had a thousand Goodwills around me,
Johnny, and I'm selling media, there ain't no way I'm going to be able to bring home
enough inventory just because everything's scanned.
They scan everything.
I literally, you literally get the table scraps at the Goodwill when it comes to
media now because they scan everything.
So even if there was an infinite amount of these places I could go to, I'm just
(09:12):
spinning my tires for nothing.
Right.
And here's the other thing, store closeouts.
There's been a lot of them recently.
You know what?
Sometimes they got good media at these store closeout, either
in books, more likely DVDs, maybe CDs as well.
But like Best Buy, they got rid of all their disc media for movies, I think
(09:32):
this year or last year, maybe they stopped.
We're like no more.
That's a good time.
And there were, there were a few other big box change that like, we're going
out of business guys, everything's on clearance.
That those are good buying times to pay attention to your news cycle.
I think it's very important for stores going out of business.
And I think you're right.
(09:52):
It's like, where has the stuff been touched the least by other resellers?
Whether that's a mainstream reseller or your main competitor in your town.
And there's two of you, right?
Where is he not going that I can or she's going that I'm not going to go?
Because the less competition you have, the better.
I'm not saying competition is unhealthy by any means, but we're greedy, right?
(10:13):
Let's remain greedy.
Let's try to get as much of it as we can.
That's been untouched with the least amount of reselling hands as possible.
That's the end goal right there.
Maybe putting a local ad in your paper or marketplace ad or, or going down to
local events, just again, building awareness and networking.
(10:34):
Like have you been to a book club and business cards in a book club?
These people are known to read.
And if they're anything like what I think of as a book club owner, they have more
books and they know what to do with, and they're happy to downsize it.
Cause you know what they want to buy more books.
That's their shtick.
(10:55):
And networking is so important, even on, on the CDs and movies.
If you still have like a traditional movie store, maybe a rental store in town,
there's still a few of them out there.
Maybe make an extra trip to podunk town.
Number 10 is worth it to network with the one and only still remaining rental
store or trying to resell movies and stuff in CDs too.
(11:20):
There's just so many opportunities.
And I haven't even mentioned the easy one, the easy one.
Let's go onto eBay and let's look at some lots.
Let's look at some book lots.
Let's look some DVD CDs and video game lots.
Why aren't you doing this?
No, cause the thrift store is the only place you can get any inventory.
And I'm here to tell you it's the complete opposite.
I'll give you a real life example.
The beginning of I think it was, it might've been last year, might've been
(11:42):
late 2023, a place where nobody would expect to get DVDs from good old
fashion, Rite Aid, your pharmacy store.
They were literally doing two for a dollar, all brand new sealed
DVDs and they even had CDs.
Well, myself, I went to probably 50 local Rite Aids.
I'll tell you right now, people in the group traveled States and went
(12:05):
to every single Rite Aid and the amount of money I made off Rite Aid.
Was absolutely silly and stupid, but here we are.
I can only go to the goodwill.
I can only go to the salvation army.
When I am in Rite Aid filling up bags for next to nothing, a
brand new sealed medium.
This is what I want people to start thinking about.
(12:26):
The thrift stores can be there.
It can be your safety net.
If worse comes to worse, if you just go a little bit further, one
step into a pawn shop.
I mean, the last video I did at my pawn shop, I was like, Oh,
last video I did at my pawn shop for $4 DVDs.
They got thousands and thousand.
The pawn shop, Johnny even has books.
(12:47):
Who would have thought a pawn shop has books and guess what?
The books are good.
They're not, you know, uh, Danielle Steele, they're all graphic novels
or video game guides for a dollar a piece.
Every time I go into this pawn shop, they got up in books and it's not books.
It's graphic novels and it's video game guides and that they're literally
like 50% except right every single time.
(13:08):
But you don't know until you know, that's the whole point of this is me telling
you to spend the month.
If you don't want to get crazy with the month, spend two weeks.
Don't go to your thrift stores.
You can, you can always come back the third week.
All right.
You'll be fine.
Um, and go to other places and then you can come back and thank us because
you're going to be getting much better quality items and at a much, you would
(13:32):
think, right, Oh, the thrift store is the cheapest.
It is not the cheapest.
I literally have bought personal collections of first edition Stephen
King books, every single one for 15 cents a pound, 15 cents a pound.
I literally have bought full sci-fi collections of, I forget what a masters
(13:53):
of Gar or something like that.
Dragon Lance, 15 cents a pound.
I mean, and these are literally from somebody's bookshelf, somebody
that collect these items.
So they are in pristine condition.
It is cheaper and the quality is better than the thrift stores.
And you would think, well, if I'm buying directly from somebody, I'm
going to have to pay more.
(14:14):
No, in all the cases I've dealt with, I paid less.
And if you got to pay more and the quality is better and it's not picked
over, then of course you're still going to pay more because you know, you're
going to make money on the back end.
I'm going to say something here that Mike's probably going to squint and
shake his fist at me a bit on.
So after the stores have closed, it's after hours, you're not finding
(14:37):
anything on marketplace or eBay.
So the very last stop I would say for you to do, because it's the slowest
in my opinion, outside of traveling, is hop on whatnot.
There's plenty of failing booksellers on there where you can get sold out
for a dollar or $2 each, maybe 20 or $30 on Amazon or even 20 or $30 on eBay.
(14:57):
But in my opinion, that thing is slow because you got to be careful
that thing is slow because you got to wait for them to finish their spiel,
wait for the bidding to end before they go on the next one.
So that is also a decent place to source from, but just realize with live selling,
well, that's the price.
You got to sit through the live entertainment value, right?
There's other places, Macari.
(15:19):
There's lots of good stuff on Macari.
You can get relatively cheap.
You could try even, you know what?
They got books on Poshmark.
They aren't moving because it's a clothing selling platform.
So if you message those people to make you like a custom bundle,
they're more inclined to do it more than likely.
I got one for you.
We used to have a little old lady named Joanne and she hopped on one of our calls
(15:41):
and said, hey, I went to a, I forget what it was.
It might've been like, it was one of the big bookstores.
And what did she do?
She drove around back and there's this wonderful thing called a dumpster.
And she's probably five foot nothing.
She said, I got my little, my little stool.
I went into the dumpster and I got a bunch of profitable inventory for
(16:05):
$0 and zero cents.
Now I'm not saying go to your local dumpster and get arrested for trespassing.
I'm just telling you that type of thought process is how you're going to grow your
business and how you're going to be able to get the quality items.
So you think, oh, it's the dumpster.
There's go, it's just going to be trash.
And it was not the case.
I mean, she would literally send me photos of these brand new, basically books that
(16:28):
she was pulling out of, you know, McKay's dumpsters for free.
And all it took was her getting a little step stool, thinking outside the box and
saying, Hey, I'm going to go grab everything loaded in the car and scan it when I get
home.
So I did a little research after this thing and talking with Joanne, fun fact,
Texas is the number one dumpster diving state in the United States.
(16:50):
So it's a okay to do under the following circumstances.
There are no, there's no signage out back that says leave our stuff alone or no
trespassing.
If Mr.
Ride-along cop rolls up and asks you to leave, don't argue with them.
Just do so.
Cause if you try to fight him, he will haul your butt to jail.
(17:11):
Number three, notice we said dumpster.
If you hop in, hop in something in star wars, we call the trash compactor and die.
That's on you.
You've been warned because of this podcast.
Don't be going in trash compactors dumpsters are okay though.
I'll throw out another controversial one since we're going from dumpsters.
(17:31):
There's a little, there's little things around everybody's neighborhood and
they're called little free library.
Oh yeah.
I'm pissing off all the book lovers now because their resellers are going to go
raid all the little free libraries.
These are little two, three bookshelf, a little, basically a little bookshelves
out, usually by parks or by, you know, places of interest in your town.
(17:53):
If you don't have a lot of money, I guarantee you will find better quality items.
If I did a challenge, how much money I can make from five little free
libraries versus five good wills.
I would be, if I was a betting man, I'd probably say I'd come out with more
profitable, better items from my five little free libraries than my five
local good wills.
That's just the reality of it.
(18:13):
Now, sure.
People have honey holes, right?
Some people live in areas where goodwill doesn't scan and you still can make a
lot of money, but I'm here to tell you them days are numbered and it's better
to be prepared and start ironing out some of these relationships.
So when it does come to your little town, right?
Evil comes to your little town.
Then all of a sudden you have a plan to not really be worried about it.
(18:34):
Because if I still relied on the good wills, I don't exist today.
If I still just reliable only on the thrift stores, I don't exist today, but
I've literally replaced all my good wills with other smaller, better
sources and just because they're smaller in square footage, the quality's better.
The quality is better.
And sometimes I pay up at a record store, but I know the disc is in the case.
(18:55):
I know the disc isn't scratched.
There's less work that goes into it.
So how much is that worth when it comes to your money and time you're spending?
Absolutely.
Here's another couple of ones.
If you're on a trip or you happen to live in like a coastal or beach town, they got
books in there from local authors.
They're worth the decent money because they only come out of that shop.
(19:15):
They are produced for that shop, but because of the scarcity, they're a little bit
valuable.
So go into all the little beach shops, looking for local authors or the mountain
towns, looking for local authors that can do you a big service.
And hey, these are $50 bills on Amazon because this is the only place that produces
them.
They're selling for 20 in the shop or 15 or whatever.
(19:37):
Easy money.
You can buy cases of them because they want to sell stuff, right?
I think the excuse that your thrift stores don't have nothing for you and that's why
your business goes away.
It's so lame anymore because I think to myself, like, man, we just name like 20
different feasible sources for people to go to in the next two to three weeks.
(19:57):
And you wouldn't even have to set foot in a thrift store.
And it's just, okay, well, let's think outside the box.
Let's reach out to our local recycler and say, hey, any books you get, you can
take any books you get, I'll take.
How much are you, how much are you charging to have somebody recycle books or how
much are you paying per pound to have you recycle people's books?
(20:18):
I'll pay you that.
And then you wind up paying eight, nine cents a pound.
And all you do is go every two weeks and you load up the car with books.
There's two, two, two, I feel like we could literally just sit here and talk new
sources into existence for people like that.
That is how easy it is.
But all you see on YouTube is, Hey, I'm at the thrift store.
(20:39):
So this is, look, what I found is a hundred dollar item.
I paid $2.
See thrift stores to me are like the whatnot of the internet.
Yes, it's viable.
It works, but I do think there are better ways.
Yeah.
Let's try the better ways.
Um, and I'm not going to say it's 100% better because if you're good, well, they
(21:02):
don't scan well, good on you.
They don't scan there, but vast majority of them do these days.
So unless you're outside, you're an outlier, goodwill, let's ignore the good
wills for a minute, the salvation armies, the savers, and let's experiment for 90
days, we're, we're, we're going to rewind this podcast.
We're going to write down everything Mike and Johnny said, and we're going
(21:25):
to experiment for 90 days.
You got the good old Google machine.
Google up the bookstores, Google up the pawn shops, Google up the free
libraries, Google up the regular libraries, Google, Google, Google.
The only thing that's going to be wrong on Google is the store hours.
Honestly, you're going to roll up.
Things are going to be closed.
You're going to write down the actual hours or make an angry phone call and
(21:45):
hope they call you back of when they actually open.
That's the only downtime I see in this outside of your initial
research of where is this located?
What else is in this random town?
That's the other thing.
Got second bubble, good places you've never been before.
You've probably already hit up all the things that are within spitting
distance at 30 minutes from you.
Let's, let's increase the bubble to two hours, maybe three hours.
(22:07):
Let's get adventurous.
Let's get Bilbo Baggins on the ship.
Motherfucker.
Yeah.
Your turn, Mike.
I think I got another one.
Antique malls.
Oh, I was thinking of that one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Johnny, why would you ever go into an antique mall?
Nobody sells books, CDs or DVDs.
You're a liar.
(22:27):
Okay.
I'm not saying every antique mall you walk into is going to be just
like a blockbuster, right?
Like, but I'm here to tell you, I got one by me where they literally,
the whole booth is DVDs.
Uh, and they're super cheap and they restock every two weeks.
And I go once a month and I get two of those little carrying baskets.
(22:47):
Cause I know at least two of these suckers are getting filled up.
And guess what?
You walk around the antique mall.
Some people have just random DVDs or last time I went, somebody has
somebody had, you know, brand new sealed video game guides for great prices.
Uh, some of them have a little bit of CDs in there or DVDs mixed in.
Uh, why aren't we going in these places?
(23:09):
Because you think on face value that it's an antique mall and all they got
is old dusty knickknacks and Hot Wheels cars.
And I'm here telling you that please just go stop with your next one that
you come across, put it in a route, give it a shot, and, uh, it only takes a few
of these, they're not all going to be home runs.
I'm not sitting here telling you every pawn shop, record shop, antique mall,
(23:31):
every dumpster is going to be loaded with liquid gold.
That's not the case, but you only need a handful of these sources to
multiply your business.
Cause all of a sudden, if you're getting an extra 500, a thousand units a month.
All right.
That's literally, I mean, what, what more do we need here to grow any business
eBay or Amazon, if you're getting extra thousand units a month to
(23:53):
list that are quality items.
That's it.
You're just rinse and repeat.
And then you get to a point where down the road, all right, well, you need
more inventory, well, then you start thinking the next level, next level.
But stepping out of the thrift store mindset is the first way to start seeing,
okay, this business is feasible.
I have these ongoing relationships, right?
It's kind of like the relationships we have with libraries, as long as we
(24:16):
are on planet earth, you probably could even put it in your will.
If you wanted to the connection we have with the library is ours.
Nobody else is ever going to be able to take it from us.
You literally have a relationship in perpetuity unless something bad happens
in the library, don't want to do it for no reason, but in my experience, it's
(24:37):
every single month, the phone's ringing.
Mike, it's time to go load up on the best quality books at the best damn prices
out there.
And all it was, was a stupid relationship that I built by having a single
conversation.
All right.
Here's another good one for you.
Colleges.
I'm not even going to touch textbooks.
That's what I want to talk about.
(24:58):
They have books beyond textbooks at colleges.
They just do.
It's a place of learning.
And what do you do to learn in colleges?
You read.
There are plenty of people who have non-textbooks at colleges.
Even the college bookstore has non-textbooks in there because we always preach, stay
away from the textbooks.
I don't disagree with that, but it's a, it's an institution of learning and they
(25:20):
got books upon books.
Now the other key thing is there were find out where the books come from before
they hit the college store.
Well, at the college store, find out when they turn over their inventory at the
college store, where, where do they go after you turn over your inventory?
They go someplace.
Where does it go?
(25:40):
Also, that's a great place to hand out business cards.
Like, Hey, Hey, starving college kid.
Here's my business card.
If you ever want to make a few bucks, selling some books, you can go to the
books, uh, hit the, uh, the language arts section or whatever, wherever they meet
and congregate at, or anything that has to do with literature, those people
(26:02):
love to read bottom line.
I'm not saying go to the computer science department.
I'm saying go to the, go to the source, the people, the consumers that read,
uh, business cards.
Another key part of this, um, Mike can mention routes.
So I think on a route, especially if you listen to us, wow, they listen to us,
right?
(26:22):
You decided to be adventurous.
You're going outside your bubble, go to the farthest place on your list and
work your bay back to your home.
If you go, if you try to go to your closest, you're not going to hit very much.
Um, and you're not going to get as much time per store.
Also working outward inward over the course of the next few weeks or a few
months, you would have explored everything that was worth exploring on
(26:45):
that initial two hour bubble, that three hour bubble, that hour bubble
you extended yourself on.
So there's another sourcing solution and everywhere you go, those business cards.
I mentioned, give them more than one, give them like five and mention in your spiel,
give them to your friends and family because odds are they're like the person
you're talking to.
Maybe, maybe not.
(27:06):
Or your solution to, Hey, I got books in the attic.
Can you come haul them out for me?
Uh, what about this crazy idea that I have?
You get a little pop up tent, plus like 60, 70 bucks from Lowe's.
You go set up on the flea market and you put in all your local flea market
groups and you know, rummage sell groups that, Hey, I'm at this flea market
today and I'm buying books, CDs and DVDs and here's what I'm paying.
(27:28):
And you literally go, you just set up a little folding table.
You don't even need a lot of space for this.
I might even be able to fit it all into the ultimate Johnny.
You don't even need a truck.
Pop up tent, foldable table, cash in hand, put in your Facebook account.
Your Facebook groups, exactly what you got going on.
I, I've never tried this.
I'm intrigued about the idea of trying to do this just to see what the results
(27:51):
would be, just to see if people would show up to sell you their, their media.
And all you would do was sit there and hand out cash on the spot.
Um, and it was something they thought was valuable.
You can look it up and pay a fair share price, but overall, I'm going to say,
Hey, I'm paying 20 cents per CD, per DVD.
I'm paying 15 cents per pounds of book.
Bring it.
I'll give you cash today.
(28:13):
And then, I mean, you could probably, you could probably load up the whole car
and a few hours, if you actually put in the effort, you can't do it.
Okay.
So the caveat to this is you can't just show up randomly and put up a tent and
expect people to walk up and have their books ready to go.
It takes legwork of getting into Facebook groups, putting that you're doing this
ahead of time so people can prepare if they want to sell you their things.
(28:34):
You could even have a little bookcase full of does so people can take some
books for free if they want why they're there.
And we just got to do a little bit more than the thrift stores.
And I promise you, you're going to get results.
Okay.
Where else do they have books?
I've ran out of all, I've ran through Johnny and Mike's list here.
It's a short list.
I need more.
(28:54):
Okay.
For you extra greedy people.
Here's another one.
A book fair.
It's a place of books.
You're going to deal with some book dealers.
You're going to deal with a curated collection of really, really expensive
books, but I guarantee you the closer that show ends.
They still got a table full of books.
They're going to want to play.
Let's make a deal because they don't want to lug them back.
(29:16):
They are specialists.
They know what those things are worth, but they don't mind taking a deal
because they paid to be there.
They paid to set up a booth to sell books or ephemera or whatever.
And I'm sure there's something for CDs and DVDs as well.
Conventions or whatever, but book fairs are totally a thing and they're
(29:37):
totally awesome books if you can get them for the right price.
And it's at least worth networking.
Like, Hey, here's my business card.
My price range is down here.
Maybe I'm looking for certain things that you don't sell, but if you come
across it, give me a ring, they will call you because they deal in books all the time.
I got a little bit of a crazy one here.
(29:57):
What about if you went and search Facebook marketplace?
And I know some of these exist on eBay because I looked at this a long, long time ago.
What if you bought donation bins and set them up around town at some hotspots
and promoted them in your local groups that, Hey, I have a clothing donation bin.
I have a shoes donation bin.
I have a books donation bin.
(30:19):
All of a sudden you pay.
When I looked, it was like, you can get a brand new one, brand new donation bin
with whatever size opening you wanted fully decaled out with whatever decals
you wanted for like 500 bucks a pleat piece off of Alibaba and all that.
Alibaba.
So, all right, we'll just say it's $500 a piece.
Then you're going to have to pay the person to where you set it up, like in
(30:41):
their parking lot or whatever, these are usually negotiable, the smaller the place,
usually the cheaper you get off, right?
If it's a big chain, they'll probably tell you to beat it.
So you got to look for small shops on, you know, high traffic areas.
Maybe you pay 50, a hundred bucks a month to have your bin actually sit out in their
parking lot and sure you get junk, but you're not paying much for the junk.
(31:02):
And in the junk, there's going to be good stuff.
Being dead personally, you know, we both lost a lot of weight.
So like, I, we basically donated our whole wardrobe of basically, you know, I had
some vintage stuff that was worth money.
My nice jackets, I got rid of shoes, everything.
So it's like, why don't we go that route?
I mean, 500 bucks sounds like a lot, but I know most, most suckers out there
(31:24):
reselling, they want to spend as much money as they possibly can and then just
spending it all the wrong ways.
I would argue that spending $500 and getting one of these locations set up,
way better than trying to go spend five, I couldn't spend 500 hours at a Goodwill
all year long if I tried.
Now I will preach this because we got a gentleman in my town of 3,500 people.
He has eight of these things scattered across town.
(31:46):
He's got one at each of the $3 stores, one at the daycare, which I would be
terrified of, and then a couple of gas stations for the rest.
Right.
And I think there's a couple others, but he's dominated my town of 3,500 people.
And when I was at the shop, the gas station was right next to me.
He come out once a week in his box truck and just throw it inside his box truck.
(32:08):
He clean up.
I don't know if he's got more outside of my town.
I don't know if he needs more than outside my small town, but those things
are always full, there's always stuff around these things of just clothes.
Yeah.
He's going to deal in junk, but he's also going to deal in bangers.
He's got, I don't know if he sells the junk or just gets rid of it because he
does, he just gets so much, all he's got to do now is pay his rental fee.
(32:29):
Cause he's already paid for these units you talked about and do his route
pickup and then process it all and then sell it all.
But yeah, it's, uh, I mean, the amount of options we've given people
besides their stores, just on this alone is astronomical and it's mind blowing
to me that people will still just say, well, I can't find enough.
(32:50):
Or the greatest part about this is your competition isn't going to do any of
the things we just talked about because the majority of your competition, the
thrift stores are the only way that's the only way forward.
That's the only way to grow this business.
And I'm here to tell you it's not sustainable at sooner or later, you're
going to max out on what the thrift stores can give you.
So it's better to build the relationships now instead of waiting for somebody
(33:12):
else to come in, right?
Cause now Johnny puts out a donation bin.
Well, this guy's already got all the locations.
These people have been donating to these bins for years.
Now Johnny's already behind the, behind the curve here because now he's trying
to get into somebody else's game where they basically got the market corner.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, um, I mean, how would get around that?
(33:33):
Pay 50 more dollars, get rid of his bed.
But anyway, um, it's just amazing.
All the possible ways you could do to get stuff.
Um, if you got a little extra scratch lying around, like you've been doing
this a minute, but you want to increase your sourcing game.
I see a lot of the mid tier to high tier people creating
their own donation websites.
(33:54):
Now, whether it's a, we'll donate a lot to charity kind of spiel or we're
the clean out crew for media or, Hey, I'm looking for these certain titles.
Here's our buy list kind of thing.
You can get all kinds of fancy with it.
You can spend low amount of money to do this.
You could spend a lot of money to do this just depending on how you want to do it.
(34:14):
But there's even another way, create your own silly website.
Um, there are so many ways and I don't even think, I think Mike and I touched
the mid to low versions of the ways, but there's, I guarantee you there's more.
There's 30 of them.
We haven't even talked about probably.
Oh yeah, for sure.
I mean, I'm thinking about one right now is like, okay, well, we covered
(34:36):
basically everything, but nobody would ever go to the recycler.
It's the same idea, like with clothing, like the rag houses, right?
Nobody ever talks about this type of stuff.
And it's there for the taking and you kind of just hit on like clean out companies.
Like I, I personally have phone numbers of clean out companies.
They don't want to deal with this stuff.
The caveat to these relationships is you have to take it all.
(35:00):
Yeah.
I literally have had conversations when I did, uh, outreach through email,
email outreach, what is this?
2001 AOL days and I've gotten relationships from it.
And they're like, you're not going to pick through, right?
You're just going to take everything.
And I got like reassure him like 10 times, like, yes, Johnny, I'm going
to take all the junk you don't want to deal with.
(35:22):
What do you know?
These people get paid to go in, do junk clean outs, junk in quotation marks.
They don't want to deal with the heavy books.
They don't want to deal with the CDs, the DVDs.
So they get paid to clean it out and then you pay them to take it on top of it.
So they get the double dip and all they realize is, oh, I'm going to
get the double dip and all they really have to do is set it aside in a pile
(35:44):
for you, but you have to take it all.
You can't be this picky person.
It's like, I'm going to come in and I want to scan everything and I'm
only going to take this or that.
That does not work with these relationships we're talking about.
You have to be willing to take it all.
And there's work that comes with that.
But as a reseller, you're going to, you know, you're going to have these
relationships, you don't have to rely on a third store, sure.
(36:05):
You can still go there, uh, when the time comes and you need inventory,
but this is how you have a continuous growth pattern in your business.
And you continually have better new sources coming in because once Johnny,
Johnny's junk says, oh man, this guy's great.
Well, don't you think Johnny's junk is related to, or he knows the other
junk companies in his area and they're like, yo, this, I got this guy that's
(36:27):
paying me for all this junk.
It ain't worth nothing to me.
Uh, reach out to them.
Then all of a sudden you ain't got enough time in a day to
possibly source all this stuff.
There's a couple other.
Uh, people that post moving sale ads or moving, come get free stuff, message them.
You got books, you got CDs, you got DVDs, you got video games.
I'll buy right now.
Be there same day.
(36:49):
Uh, you being there same day and offering cash money goes a long way with people.
Uh, church Roman shells is another one, um, that goes outside the
church libraries for downsizing.
They ha they usually have an annual or twice a year sale.
Hit those people up.
Um, some other ones, I mean,
there there's, there's places who deal in recycle books online, like, like
(37:12):
second chance to wholesale them off.
You can Google that one.
There's a lot of nuances that go into that, but there's definitely money to be had.
Um, I mentioned colleges.
Where do people go before college?
It's called high school.
A lot of them still have libraries.
Maybe one may want to talk to them because again, they have more than just textbooks.
(37:36):
Usually they usually have a summer reading list.
Sometimes they'll buy, I don't know, palettes of Tom Sawyer or palettes of
Moby Dick or whatever, because it's required reading at the school.
Um, and you're probably going to find these more of the fancier schools here.
I'm going to, here's a little cheat code.
Look up private schools.
Those people got money.
Message the private schools.
(37:57):
Um, I'm going to go to the private schools.
Um, and maybe even the charter school schools as well.
Public schools are going to have mixed results on like, Hey, we shut down our
library 10 years ago and they still got CRT monitors with their 1999 computers.
Cause they got no money.
So let's go with the money with the private schools and charter schools.
Folks.
It's a, I'll wrap it up here with this one.
(38:19):
And Johnny's talking about go where the money is literally.
You could pull up Google maps, uh, median income in your area and you can pull out
Google maps and see, okay.
Well, where is all the money in central Pennsylvania?
Is it over in Hershey by where they make all the chocolate?
Is it in Harrisburg in the city?
Um, and if you've never been to some of these more expensive areas, usually
(38:41):
what happens here is in the more expensive areas, they donate more expensive
items because they have more expendable income.
So usually the locations in these more expensive areas have much better quality
items.
I'll tell you right now, lots of people purposefully go to the more expensive
areas and get super crazy results.
Um, just because they're in a more expensive area when it comes to their
(39:04):
sources.
So that's going to do it.
Uh, we challenge you to leave the thrift stores behind for two weeks, three
weeks.
Um, and you know, see what, see what possibilities are out there.
Get in a dumpster.
Hopefully there's not like spaghetti in the dumpster.
That's just laying out there, right?
Or like spoiled milk.
If that happens, we take no responsibility for you smelling like
spaghetti and spoiled milk, but maybe, maybe there is a $10,000 book in that
(39:28):
dumpster.
Next time you drive by a dumpster, Johnny, I want you to stop, stop and take a
photo.
Maybe that, maybe we should have like a, a forum post in the discord where we
challenge everybody to take a photo inside the next dumpster they see just to
see, you don't got to get anything, but like, maybe we can just look at the
picture to see if there's any potential profit in the dumpster.
So we appreciate y'all listening and watching over YouTube.
(39:50):
We'll talk to you all next week.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube
members, along with the weekly zoom call and private discord, head on over to
youtube.com backslash to use book guy and consider joining for as little as 2 99
a month.
Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
(00:03):
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses from the ground up.
We also have a weekly zoom call and private discord for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash use book guy to join the channel and gain
access to the full length podcast zoom call and private discord today.
(00:25):
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny.
Johnny doesn't know the topic.
I like to keep him on his toes,
keep him young in the mind and the reselling world of things.
And the topic today is we are challenging everybody.
Johnny doesn't even know, but he's a part of this challenge for you to not go to a
(00:48):
thrift store for the next month and see what happens to your business.
The immediate thought is the end is near.
And I believe the exact complete opposite of branching out sources,
because I've seen what it's done for my business and leaving the lowest hanging
fruit of the thrift store, usually the most expensive hanging fruit as well.
(01:09):
The thrift store behind.
So Johnny, give me your input here on this, uh, this idea.
I kind of just threw you in to be a part of.
I already do this.
I hardly go to thrift stores.
I don't know in the last, last time I went was when the electricity was out
last year and I was like, well, I let's try thrifts.
I haven't done that in a minute, but there's just so many better ways
(01:32):
than thrift stores. I get it.
It's cheap books, right?
We all want the cheap books, but there's money to be had at the thrift stores.
I'm not saying there's not, I just think there's better angles and better
quality you can get outside of it.
Not to say there isn't the outlier.
Oh, it's the magical dump it in the bin.
Somebody's personal Eastern press collection.
(01:53):
How this got out from the back.
I'll never know, but I'll take it.
Yeah.
Those are one-off scenarios or in Caleb's antique book collective, he got a
$15,000 book at the bins.
Good for him.
Those are really, really, really rare outliers, but everybody likes
playing the lottery, right?
Um, if I go to a bookstore, everything's categorized for me 95% of the time.
(02:18):
Um, sometimes there's bookstores where they don't organize books are in the
floor and there's no rhyme or reason to anything.
Um, yeah, you're going to pay up.
You are.
Um, but again, if you want cheap, there's also auctions.
There's plenty of online auctions.
I'd either have it mailed to you.
You do local pickup.
You don't have to go to a live auction to do auctions.
(02:38):
Um, there's library sales.
Those are pretty cheap prices too.
Um, and the benefit of those is they're cheap and usually organized as well.
Um, then there's yard sales.
I don't think you can get much these days and not to say you can't, but, um,
you never know what they're going to have.
So they may have a box of books.
(03:00):
They may not, uh, a pro tip there.
If you go to a yard sale and they don't have books, ask if they have books for
sale, maybe they didn't think to bring them out.
That's a good tip.
And maybe you can get some books there.
Um, there's Facebook, Craigslist, Nextdoor, all these applications to get rid of
things for profit.
There's even Facebook groups.
Um, come buy my DVDs, CDs, books.
(03:23):
Uh, you've mentioned the CD record stores and the pawn shops.
If you're into disc media, um, there are game stores or a second in Charles.
Even you can pick up stuff there, even from mainstream or, um,
probably couldn't do it at Barnes and Noble, but, uh, there, there's, uh,
half price books.
Um, what's that one in the Northeast you guys have, we don't have them down here
(03:46):
in Texas, say,
McKay's that's like a, a book.
That's a chain store.
There's Sabres.
That's another thrift kind of store.
I guess, uh, you guys get your stuff in bags, which is funny to me.
I think the problem is we all start with thrift stores, right?
I'm not saying that we're not going to get thrift stores.
We all start with thrift stores, right?
(04:07):
I'm not saying it's, I'm not telling you if you're brand new, don't go into a
thrift store, but I think there has to be a natural progression of better
sources throughout your reselling career.
And what I mean by that is sure.
Like Johnny said, you can go to the thrift store.
You might be able to get a few items.
When I started, my business was like 85% relying on goodwill thrift stores.
Right.
(04:27):
But this was over five years ago where the thrift stores didn't look things up.
I mean, now you go into even smaller thrift stores.
Got a glass case and they're looking a lot of these items up.
So it's harder to find the slips through the cracks, right?
It's next to impossible to find some of the stuff we used to be able to find.
And the prop, the bigger problem is, I think, is when people are
(04:51):
consuming reselling content, it's usually always the crazy.
Flips from the thrift store, because when you, when there's an infinite
amount of content creators and everybody's fight fighting to get views,
you have to have the catchy flashy, oh, the crazy item flip from the thrift store.
So we just assume that we can only go to thrift stores and it's such a limiting
(05:13):
belief, especially in the land of media.
And I would even challenge any category that if you just go a little bit upstream,
in most cases, your price goes down and the quality goes up because anybody in
the universe will tell you, if you go buy directly from somebody versus going to
the thrift store, the quality is going to be 100% better every single time.
(05:33):
When you're buying directly from the person that has had it in their house
or in their storage unit for X amount of years.
Right.
I mean, there's even, um, you go to your local churches, they all got libraries.
They're all looking to downsize because they buy religious books.
I'm not even talking about, I will, I am taught I'll include the Christian
(05:53):
churches, but try a synagogue.
I'm telling you there's great money in synagogue, uh, reading material,
absolutely amazing stuff that sells for good money.
Um, I, I would stay clear of storage units.
You can try it if you want to just to say you did, but instead of doing that,
I'd rather deal with the storage unit guys out at the flea market, honestly,
make my connection there than me doing storage units myself, not to say you
(06:16):
can't make money in it, but you're going to get more than just what you want
doing that game.
Um, there are so many other ways, um, even making connections with local
booksellers, or even if you're in groups like this, like I get solicited all the
time for paperback stuff.
It's great.
And so if you put yourself out there on what you buy, um, stuff will just
(06:37):
naturally get thrown your way.
Um, what was the other one?
Um, yeah, if you just, you go to places where you normally wouldn't
think there'd be books, right?
Um,
you don't know until you know, I guess, right?
That's the argument that people make was, well, I've only known that
(07:00):
thrift stores and I've only known, uh, this or that.
And if you just, cause this has happened to me over the past few years, I've
expanded my sources almost to a point where I didn't, I net, I rarely go into
Goodwill maybe once a month.
So I went from 80 plus percent relying on Goodwill.
So now I'm in one Goodwill maybe once a month because it's on one of my routes.
(07:21):
And I just want to pop in just to see how terrible it is.
What's up Amazon sellers.
We wanted to take a second to talk about go-to lists or the software, me and
Johnny both use to list and manage our inventory and grow our businesses.
With the fastest listing speeds out there and built in profit analytics.
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(07:41):
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Mike, or using the link in the description below.
It's, it's tough for thrift store resellers.
I see them all the time.
I hear the eBay dings when they're scanning on their phone and these thrift stores.
And the first thing that comes to my mind is you were in a Goodwill in 2025, and
(08:06):
you're trying to have a profitable eBay business go into Goodwill where their
prices are astronomical when instead, if you went to the estate sale, the place
before they actually took everything to the Goodwill and you could have got a lot
more better quality items for a lot cheaper.
I don't know what else to tell you besides you literally
(08:28):
paying more now for items that have been picked over by the people shopping
the estate sale and the thrift stores.
It's, I don't think the thrift store model works.
If you want to scale this business to six figures plus, unless you are
literally in a metropolitan area where you have hundreds and hundreds and
(08:49):
hundreds of thrift stores, because even if I had a thousand Goodwills around me,
Johnny, and I'm selling media, there ain't no way I'm going to be able to bring home
enough inventory just because everything's scanned.
They scan everything.
I literally, you literally get the table scraps at the Goodwill when it comes to
media now because they scan everything.
So even if there was an infinite amount of these places I could go to, I'm just
(09:12):
spinning my tires for nothing.
Right.
And here's the other thing, store closeouts.
There's been a lot of them recently.
You know what?
Sometimes they got good media at these store closeout, either
in books, more likely DVDs, maybe CDs as well.
But like Best Buy, they got rid of all their disc media for movies, I think
(09:32):
this year or last year, maybe they stopped.
We're like no more.
That's a good time.
And there were, there were a few other big box change that like, we're going
out of business guys, everything's on clearance.
That those are good buying times to pay attention to your news cycle.
I think it's very important for stores going out of business.
And I think you're right.
(09:52):
It's like, where has the stuff been touched the least by other resellers?
Whether that's a mainstream reseller or your main competitor in your town.
And there's two of you, right?
Where is he not going that I can or she's going that I'm not going to go?
Because the less competition you have, the better.
I'm not saying competition is unhealthy by any means, but we're greedy, right?
(10:13):
Let's remain greedy.
Let's try to get as much of it as we can.
That's been untouched with the least amount of reselling hands as possible.
That's the end goal right there.
Maybe putting a local ad in your paper or marketplace ad or, or going down to
local events, just again, building awareness and networking.
(10:34):
Like have you been to a book club and business cards in a book club?
These people are known to read.
And if they're anything like what I think of as a book club owner, they have more
books and they know what to do with, and they're happy to downsize it.
Cause you know what they want to buy more books.
That's their shtick.
(10:55):
And networking is so important, even on, on the CDs and movies.
If you still have like a traditional movie store, maybe a rental store in town,
there's still a few of them out there.
Maybe make an extra trip to podunk town.
Number 10 is worth it to network with the one and only still remaining rental
store or trying to resell movies and stuff in CDs too.
(11:20):
There's just so many opportunities.
And I haven't even mentioned the easy one, the easy one.
Let's go onto eBay and let's look at some lots.
Let's look at some book lots.
Let's look some DVD CDs and video game lots.
Why aren't you doing this?
No, cause the thrift store is the only place you can get any inventory.
And I'm here to tell you it's the complete opposite.
I'll give you a real life example.
The beginning of I think it was, it might've been last year, might've been
(11:42):
late 2023, a place where nobody would expect to get DVDs from good old
fashion, Rite Aid, your pharmacy store.
They were literally doing two for a dollar, all brand new sealed
DVDs and they even had CDs.
Well, myself, I went to probably 50 local Rite Aids.
I'll tell you right now, people in the group traveled States and went
(12:05):
to every single Rite Aid and the amount of money I made off Rite Aid.
Was absolutely silly and stupid, but here we are.
I can only go to the goodwill.
I can only go to the salvation army.
When I am in Rite Aid filling up bags for next to nothing, a
brand new sealed medium.
This is what I want people to start thinking about.
(12:26):
The thrift stores can be there.
It can be your safety net.
If worse comes to worse, if you just go a little bit further, one
step into a pawn shop.
I mean, the last video I did at my pawn shop, I was like, Oh,
last video I did at my pawn shop for $4 DVDs.
They got thousands and thousand.
The pawn shop, Johnny even has books.
(12:47):
Who would have thought a pawn shop has books and guess what?
The books are good.
They're not, you know, uh, Danielle Steele, they're all graphic novels
or video game guides for a dollar a piece.
Every time I go into this pawn shop, they got up in books and it's not books.
It's graphic novels and it's video game guides and that they're literally
like 50% except right every single time.
(13:08):
But you don't know until you know, that's the whole point of this is me telling
you to spend the month.
If you don't want to get crazy with the month, spend two weeks.
Don't go to your thrift stores.
You can, you can always come back the third week.
All right.
You'll be fine.
Um, and go to other places and then you can come back and thank us because
you're going to be getting much better quality items and at a much, you would
(13:32):
think, right, Oh, the thrift store is the cheapest.
It is not the cheapest.
I literally have bought personal collections of first edition Stephen
King books, every single one for 15 cents a pound, 15 cents a pound.
I literally have bought full sci-fi collections of, I forget what a masters
(13:53):
of Gar or something like that.
Dragon Lance, 15 cents a pound.
I mean, and these are literally from somebody's bookshelf, somebody
that collect these items.
So they are in pristine condition.
It is cheaper and the quality is better than the thrift stores.
And you would think, well, if I'm buying directly from somebody, I'm
going to have to pay more.
(14:14):
No, in all the cases I've dealt with, I paid less.
And if you got to pay more and the quality is better and it's not picked
over, then of course you're still going to pay more because you know, you're
going to make money on the back end.
I'm going to say something here that Mike's probably going to squint and
shake his fist at me a bit on.
So after the stores have closed, it's after hours, you're not finding
(14:37):
anything on marketplace or eBay.
So the very last stop I would say for you to do, because it's the slowest
in my opinion, outside of traveling, is hop on whatnot.
There's plenty of failing booksellers on there where you can get sold out
for a dollar or $2 each, maybe 20 or $30 on Amazon or even 20 or $30 on eBay.
(14:57):
But in my opinion, that thing is slow because you got to be careful
that thing is slow because you got to wait for them to finish their spiel,
wait for the bidding to end before they go on the next one.
So that is also a decent place to source from, but just realize with live selling,
well, that's the price.
You got to sit through the live entertainment value, right?
There's other places, Macari.
(15:19):
There's lots of good stuff on Macari.
You can get relatively cheap.
You could try even, you know what?
They got books on Poshmark.
They aren't moving because it's a clothing selling platform.
So if you message those people to make you like a custom bundle,
they're more inclined to do it more than likely.
I got one for you.
We used to have a little old lady named Joanne and she hopped on one of our calls
(15:41):
and said, hey, I went to a, I forget what it was.
It might've been like, it was one of the big bookstores.
And what did she do?
She drove around back and there's this wonderful thing called a dumpster.
And she's probably five foot nothing.
She said, I got my little, my little stool.
I went into the dumpster and I got a bunch of profitable inventory for
(16:05):
$0 and zero cents.
Now I'm not saying go to your local dumpster and get arrested for trespassing.
I'm just telling you that type of thought process is how you're going to grow your
business and how you're going to be able to get the quality items.
So you think, oh, it's the dumpster.
There's go, it's just going to be trash.
And it was not the case.
I mean, she would literally send me photos of these brand new, basically books that
(16:28):
she was pulling out of, you know, McKay's dumpsters for free.
And all it took was her getting a little step stool, thinking outside the box and
saying, Hey, I'm going to go grab everything loaded in the car and scan it when I get
home.
So I did a little research after this thing and talking with Joanne, fun fact,
Texas is the number one dumpster diving state in the United States.
(16:50):
So it's a okay to do under the following circumstances.
There are no, there's no signage out back that says leave our stuff alone or no
trespassing.
If Mr.
Ride-along cop rolls up and asks you to leave, don't argue with them.
Just do so.
Cause if you try to fight him, he will haul your butt to jail.
(17:11):
Number three, notice we said dumpster.
If you hop in, hop in something in star wars, we call the trash compactor and die.
That's on you.
You've been warned because of this podcast.
Don't be going in trash compactors dumpsters are okay though.
I'll throw out another controversial one since we're going from dumpsters.
(17:31):
There's a little, there's little things around everybody's neighborhood and
they're called little free library.
Oh yeah.
I'm pissing off all the book lovers now because their resellers are going to go
raid all the little free libraries.
These are little two, three bookshelf, a little, basically a little bookshelves
out, usually by parks or by, you know, places of interest in your town.
(17:53):
If you don't have a lot of money, I guarantee you will find better quality items.
If I did a challenge, how much money I can make from five little free
libraries versus five good wills.
I would be, if I was a betting man, I'd probably say I'd come out with more
profitable, better items from my five little free libraries than my five
local good wills.
That's just the reality of it.
(18:13):
Now, sure.
People have honey holes, right?
Some people live in areas where goodwill doesn't scan and you still can make a
lot of money, but I'm here to tell you them days are numbered and it's better
to be prepared and start ironing out some of these relationships.
So when it does come to your little town, right?
Evil comes to your little town.
Then all of a sudden you have a plan to not really be worried about it.
(18:34):
Because if I still relied on the good wills, I don't exist today.
If I still just reliable only on the thrift stores, I don't exist today, but
I've literally replaced all my good wills with other smaller, better
sources and just because they're smaller in square footage, the quality's better.
The quality is better.
And sometimes I pay up at a record store, but I know the disc is in the case.
(18:55):
I know the disc isn't scratched.
There's less work that goes into it.
So how much is that worth when it comes to your money and time you're spending?
Absolutely.
Here's another couple of ones.
If you're on a trip or you happen to live in like a coastal or beach town, they got
books in there from local authors.
They're worth the decent money because they only come out of that shop.
(19:15):
They are produced for that shop, but because of the scarcity, they're a little bit
valuable.
So go into all the little beach shops, looking for local authors or the mountain
towns, looking for local authors that can do you a big service.
And hey, these are $50 bills on Amazon because this is the only place that produces
them.
They're selling for 20 in the shop or 15 or whatever.
(19:37):
Easy money.
You can buy cases of them because they want to sell stuff, right?
I think the excuse that your thrift stores don't have nothing for you and that's why
your business goes away.
It's so lame anymore because I think to myself, like, man, we just name like 20
different feasible sources for people to go to in the next two to three weeks.
(19:57):
And you wouldn't even have to set foot in a thrift store.
And it's just, okay, well, let's think outside the box.
Let's reach out to our local recycler and say, hey, any books you get, you can
take any books you get, I'll take.
How much are you, how much are you charging to have somebody recycle books or how
much are you paying per pound to have you recycle people's books?
(20:18):
I'll pay you that.
And then you wind up paying eight, nine cents a pound.
And all you do is go every two weeks and you load up the car with books.
There's two, two, two, I feel like we could literally just sit here and talk new
sources into existence for people like that.
That is how easy it is.
But all you see on YouTube is, Hey, I'm at the thrift store.
(20:39):
So this is, look, what I found is a hundred dollar item.
I paid $2.
See thrift stores to me are like the whatnot of the internet.
Yes, it's viable.
It works, but I do think there are better ways.
Yeah.
Let's try the better ways.
Um, and I'm not going to say it's 100% better because if you're good, well, they
(21:02):
don't scan well, good on you.
They don't scan there, but vast majority of them do these days.
So unless you're outside, you're an outlier, goodwill, let's ignore the good
wills for a minute, the salvation armies, the savers, and let's experiment for 90
days, we're, we're, we're going to rewind this podcast.
We're going to write down everything Mike and Johnny said, and we're going
(21:25):
to experiment for 90 days.
You got the good old Google machine.
Google up the bookstores, Google up the pawn shops, Google up the free
libraries, Google up the regular libraries, Google, Google, Google.
The only thing that's going to be wrong on Google is the store hours.
Honestly, you're going to roll up.
Things are going to be closed.
You're going to write down the actual hours or make an angry phone call and
(21:45):
hope they call you back of when they actually open.
That's the only downtime I see in this outside of your initial
research of where is this located?
What else is in this random town?
That's the other thing.
Got second bubble, good places you've never been before.
You've probably already hit up all the things that are within spitting
distance at 30 minutes from you.
Let's, let's increase the bubble to two hours, maybe three hours.
(22:07):
Let's get adventurous.
Let's get Bilbo Baggins on the ship.
Motherfucker.
Yeah.
Your turn, Mike.
I think I got another one.
Antique malls.
Oh, I was thinking of that one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Johnny, why would you ever go into an antique mall?
Nobody sells books, CDs or DVDs.
You're a liar.
(22:27):
Okay.
I'm not saying every antique mall you walk into is going to be just
like a blockbuster, right?
Like, but I'm here to tell you, I got one by me where they literally,
the whole booth is DVDs.
Uh, and they're super cheap and they restock every two weeks.
And I go once a month and I get two of those little carrying baskets.
(22:47):
Cause I know at least two of these suckers are getting filled up.
And guess what?
You walk around the antique mall.
Some people have just random DVDs or last time I went, somebody has
somebody had, you know, brand new sealed video game guides for great prices.
Uh, some of them have a little bit of CDs in there or DVDs mixed in.
Uh, why aren't we going in these places?
(23:09):
Because you think on face value that it's an antique mall and all they got
is old dusty knickknacks and Hot Wheels cars.
And I'm here telling you that please just go stop with your next one that
you come across, put it in a route, give it a shot, and, uh, it only takes a few
of these, they're not all going to be home runs.
I'm not sitting here telling you every pawn shop, record shop, antique mall,
(23:31):
every dumpster is going to be loaded with liquid gold.
That's not the case, but you only need a handful of these sources to
multiply your business.
Cause all of a sudden, if you're getting an extra 500, a thousand units a month.
All right.
That's literally, I mean, what, what more do we need here to grow any business
eBay or Amazon, if you're getting extra thousand units a month to
(23:53):
list that are quality items.
That's it.
You're just rinse and repeat.
And then you get to a point where down the road, all right, well, you need
more inventory, well, then you start thinking the next level, next level.
But stepping out of the thrift store mindset is the first way to start seeing,
okay, this business is feasible.
I have these ongoing relationships, right?
It's kind of like the relationships we have with libraries, as long as we
(24:16):
are on planet earth, you probably could even put it in your will.
If you wanted to the connection we have with the library is ours.
Nobody else is ever going to be able to take it from us.
You literally have a relationship in perpetuity unless something bad happens
in the library, don't want to do it for no reason, but in my experience, it's
(24:37):
every single month, the phone's ringing.
Mike, it's time to go load up on the best quality books at the best damn prices
out there.
And all it was, was a stupid relationship that I built by having a single
conversation.
All right.
Here's another good one for you.
Colleges.
I'm not even going to touch textbooks.
That's what I want to talk about.
(24:58):
They have books beyond textbooks at colleges.
They just do.
It's a place of learning.
And what do you do to learn in colleges?
You read.
There are plenty of people who have non-textbooks at colleges.
Even the college bookstore has non-textbooks in there because we always preach, stay
away from the textbooks.
I don't disagree with that, but it's a, it's an institution of learning and they
(25:20):
got books upon books.
Now the other key thing is there were find out where the books come from before
they hit the college store.
Well, at the college store, find out when they turn over their inventory at the
college store, where, where do they go after you turn over your inventory?
They go someplace.
Where does it go?
(25:40):
Also, that's a great place to hand out business cards.
Like, Hey, Hey, starving college kid.
Here's my business card.
If you ever want to make a few bucks, selling some books, you can go to the
books, uh, hit the, uh, the language arts section or whatever, wherever they meet
and congregate at, or anything that has to do with literature, those people
(26:02):
love to read bottom line.
I'm not saying go to the computer science department.
I'm saying go to the, go to the source, the people, the consumers that read,
uh, business cards.
Another key part of this, um, Mike can mention routes.
So I think on a route, especially if you listen to us, wow, they listen to us,
right?
(26:22):
You decided to be adventurous.
You're going outside your bubble, go to the farthest place on your list and
work your bay back to your home.
If you go, if you try to go to your closest, you're not going to hit very much.
Um, and you're not going to get as much time per store.
Also working outward inward over the course of the next few weeks or a few
months, you would have explored everything that was worth exploring on
(26:45):
that initial two hour bubble, that three hour bubble, that hour bubble
you extended yourself on.
So there's another sourcing solution and everywhere you go, those business cards.
I mentioned, give them more than one, give them like five and mention in your spiel,
give them to your friends and family because odds are they're like the person
you're talking to.
Maybe, maybe not.
(27:06):
Or your solution to, Hey, I got books in the attic.
Can you come haul them out for me?
Uh, what about this crazy idea that I have?
You get a little pop up tent, plus like 60, 70 bucks from Lowe's.
You go set up on the flea market and you put in all your local flea market
groups and you know, rummage sell groups that, Hey, I'm at this flea market
today and I'm buying books, CDs and DVDs and here's what I'm paying.
(27:28):
And you literally go, you just set up a little folding table.
You don't even need a lot of space for this.
I might even be able to fit it all into the ultimate Johnny.
You don't even need a truck.
Pop up tent, foldable table, cash in hand, put in your Facebook account.
Your Facebook groups, exactly what you got going on.
I, I've never tried this.
I'm intrigued about the idea of trying to do this just to see what the results
(27:51):
would be, just to see if people would show up to sell you their, their media.
And all you would do was sit there and hand out cash on the spot.
Um, and it was something they thought was valuable.
You can look it up and pay a fair share price, but overall, I'm going to say,
Hey, I'm paying 20 cents per CD, per DVD.
I'm paying 15 cents per pounds of book.
Bring it.
I'll give you cash today.
(28:13):
And then, I mean, you could probably, you could probably load up the whole car
and a few hours, if you actually put in the effort, you can't do it.
Okay.
So the caveat to this is you can't just show up randomly and put up a tent and
expect people to walk up and have their books ready to go.
It takes legwork of getting into Facebook groups, putting that you're doing this
ahead of time so people can prepare if they want to sell you their things.
(28:34):
You could even have a little bookcase full of does so people can take some
books for free if they want why they're there.
And we just got to do a little bit more than the thrift stores.
And I promise you, you're going to get results.
Okay.
Where else do they have books?
I've ran out of all, I've ran through Johnny and Mike's list here.
It's a short list.
I need more.
(28:54):
Okay.
For you extra greedy people.
Here's another one.
A book fair.
It's a place of books.
You're going to deal with some book dealers.
You're going to deal with a curated collection of really, really expensive
books, but I guarantee you the closer that show ends.
They still got a table full of books.
They're going to want to play.
Let's make a deal because they don't want to lug them back.
(29:16):
They are specialists.
They know what those things are worth, but they don't mind taking a deal
because they paid to be there.
They paid to set up a booth to sell books or ephemera or whatever.
And I'm sure there's something for CDs and DVDs as well.
Conventions or whatever, but book fairs are totally a thing and they're
(29:37):
totally awesome books if you can get them for the right price.
And it's at least worth networking.
Like, Hey, here's my business card.
My price range is down here.
Maybe I'm looking for certain things that you don't sell, but if you come
across it, give me a ring, they will call you because they deal in books all the time.
I got a little bit of a crazy one here.
(29:57):
What about if you went and search Facebook marketplace?
And I know some of these exist on eBay because I looked at this a long, long time ago.
What if you bought donation bins and set them up around town at some hotspots
and promoted them in your local groups that, Hey, I have a clothing donation bin.
I have a shoes donation bin.
I have a books donation bin.
(30:19):
All of a sudden you pay.
When I looked, it was like, you can get a brand new one, brand new donation bin
with whatever size opening you wanted fully decaled out with whatever decals
you wanted for like 500 bucks a pleat piece off of Alibaba and all that.
Alibaba.
So, all right, we'll just say it's $500 a piece.
Then you're going to have to pay the person to where you set it up, like in
(30:41):
their parking lot or whatever, these are usually negotiable, the smaller the place,
usually the cheaper you get off, right?
If it's a big chain, they'll probably tell you to beat it.
So you got to look for small shops on, you know, high traffic areas.
Maybe you pay 50, a hundred bucks a month to have your bin actually sit out in their
parking lot and sure you get junk, but you're not paying much for the junk.
(31:02):
And in the junk, there's going to be good stuff.
Being dead personally, you know, we both lost a lot of weight.
So like, I, we basically donated our whole wardrobe of basically, you know, I had
some vintage stuff that was worth money.
My nice jackets, I got rid of shoes, everything.
So it's like, why don't we go that route?
I mean, 500 bucks sounds like a lot, but I know most, most suckers out there
(31:24):
reselling, they want to spend as much money as they possibly can and then just
spending it all the wrong ways.
I would argue that spending $500 and getting one of these locations set up,
way better than trying to go spend five, I couldn't spend 500 hours at a Goodwill
all year long if I tried.
Now I will preach this because we got a gentleman in my town of 3,500 people.
He has eight of these things scattered across town.
(31:46):
He's got one at each of the $3 stores, one at the daycare, which I would be
terrified of, and then a couple of gas stations for the rest.
Right.
And I think there's a couple others, but he's dominated my town of 3,500 people.
And when I was at the shop, the gas station was right next to me.
He come out once a week in his box truck and just throw it inside his box truck.
(32:08):
He clean up.
I don't know if he's got more outside of my town.
I don't know if he needs more than outside my small town, but those things
are always full, there's always stuff around these things of just clothes.
Yeah.
He's going to deal in junk, but he's also going to deal in bangers.
He's got, I don't know if he sells the junk or just gets rid of it because he
does, he just gets so much, all he's got to do now is pay his rental fee.
(32:29):
Cause he's already paid for these units you talked about and do his route
pickup and then process it all and then sell it all.
But yeah, it's, uh, I mean, the amount of options we've given people
besides their stores, just on this alone is astronomical and it's mind blowing
to me that people will still just say, well, I can't find enough.
(32:50):
Or the greatest part about this is your competition isn't going to do any of
the things we just talked about because the majority of your competition, the
thrift stores are the only way that's the only way forward.
That's the only way to grow this business.
And I'm here to tell you it's not sustainable at sooner or later, you're
going to max out on what the thrift stores can give you.
So it's better to build the relationships now instead of waiting for somebody
(33:12):
else to come in, right?
Cause now Johnny puts out a donation bin.
Well, this guy's already got all the locations.
These people have been donating to these bins for years.
Now Johnny's already behind the, behind the curve here because now he's trying
to get into somebody else's game where they basically got the market corner.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, um, I mean, how would get around that?
(33:33):
Pay 50 more dollars, get rid of his bed.
But anyway, um, it's just amazing.
All the possible ways you could do to get stuff.
Um, if you got a little extra scratch lying around, like you've been doing
this a minute, but you want to increase your sourcing game.
I see a lot of the mid tier to high tier people creating
their own donation websites.
(33:54):
Now, whether it's a, we'll donate a lot to charity kind of spiel or we're
the clean out crew for media or, Hey, I'm looking for these certain titles.
Here's our buy list kind of thing.
You can get all kinds of fancy with it.
You can spend low amount of money to do this.
You could spend a lot of money to do this just depending on how you want to do it.
(34:14):
But there's even another way, create your own silly website.
Um, there are so many ways and I don't even think, I think Mike and I touched
the mid to low versions of the ways, but there's, I guarantee you there's more.
There's 30 of them.
We haven't even talked about probably.
Oh yeah, for sure.
I mean, I'm thinking about one right now is like, okay, well, we covered
(34:36):
basically everything, but nobody would ever go to the recycler.
It's the same idea, like with clothing, like the rag houses, right?
Nobody ever talks about this type of stuff.
And it's there for the taking and you kind of just hit on like clean out companies.
Like I, I personally have phone numbers of clean out companies.
They don't want to deal with this stuff.
The caveat to these relationships is you have to take it all.
(35:00):
Yeah.
I literally have had conversations when I did, uh, outreach through email,
email outreach, what is this?
2001 AOL days and I've gotten relationships from it.
And they're like, you're not going to pick through, right?
You're just going to take everything.
And I got like reassure him like 10 times, like, yes, Johnny, I'm going
to take all the junk you don't want to deal with.
(35:22):
What do you know?
These people get paid to go in, do junk clean outs, junk in quotation marks.
They don't want to deal with the heavy books.
They don't want to deal with the CDs, the DVDs.
So they get paid to clean it out and then you pay them to take it on top of it.
So they get the double dip and all they realize is, oh, I'm going to
get the double dip and all they really have to do is set it aside in a pile
(35:44):
for you, but you have to take it all.
You can't be this picky person.
It's like, I'm going to come in and I want to scan everything and I'm
only going to take this or that.
That does not work with these relationships we're talking about.
You have to be willing to take it all.
And there's work that comes with that.
But as a reseller, you're going to, you know, you're going to have these
relationships, you don't have to rely on a third store, sure.
(36:05):
You can still go there, uh, when the time comes and you need inventory,
but this is how you have a continuous growth pattern in your business.
And you continually have better new sources coming in because once Johnny,
Johnny's junk says, oh man, this guy's great.
Well, don't you think Johnny's junk is related to, or he knows the other
junk companies in his area and they're like, yo, this, I got this guy that's
(36:27):
paying me for all this junk.
It ain't worth nothing to me.
Uh, reach out to them.
Then all of a sudden you ain't got enough time in a day to
possibly source all this stuff.
There's a couple other.
Uh, people that post moving sale ads or moving, come get free stuff, message them.
You got books, you got CDs, you got DVDs, you got video games.
I'll buy right now.
Be there same day.
(36:49):
Uh, you being there same day and offering cash money goes a long way with people.
Uh, church Roman shells is another one, um, that goes outside the
church libraries for downsizing.
They ha they usually have an annual or twice a year sale.
Hit those people up.
Um, some other ones, I mean,
there there's, there's places who deal in recycle books online, like, like
(37:12):
second chance to wholesale them off.
You can Google that one.
There's a lot of nuances that go into that, but there's definitely money to be had.
Um, I mentioned colleges.
Where do people go before college?
It's called high school.
A lot of them still have libraries.
Maybe one may want to talk to them because again, they have more than just textbooks.
(37:36):
Usually they usually have a summer reading list.
Sometimes they'll buy, I don't know, palettes of Tom Sawyer or palettes of
Moby Dick or whatever, because it's required reading at the school.
Um, and you're probably going to find these more of the fancier schools here.
I'm going to, here's a little cheat code.
Look up private schools.
Those people got money.
Message the private schools.
(37:57):
Um, I'm going to go to the private schools.
Um, and maybe even the charter school schools as well.
Public schools are going to have mixed results on like, Hey, we shut down our
library 10 years ago and they still got CRT monitors with their 1999 computers.
Cause they got no money.
So let's go with the money with the private schools and charter schools.
Folks.
It's a, I'll wrap it up here with this one.
(38:19):
And Johnny's talking about go where the money is literally.
You could pull up Google maps, uh, median income in your area and you can pull out
Google maps and see, okay.
Well, where is all the money in central Pennsylvania?
Is it over in Hershey by where they make all the chocolate?
Is it in Harrisburg in the city?
Um, and if you've never been to some of these more expensive areas, usually
(38:41):
what happens here is in the more expensive areas, they donate more expensive
items because they have more expendable income.
So usually the locations in these more expensive areas have much better quality
items.
I'll tell you right now, lots of people purposefully go to the more expensive
areas and get super crazy results.
Um, just because they're in a more expensive area when it comes to their
(39:04):
sources.
So that's going to do it.
Uh, we challenge you to leave the thrift stores behind for two weeks, three
weeks.
Um, and you know, see what, see what possibilities are out there.
Get in a dumpster.
Hopefully there's not like spaghetti in the dumpster.
That's just laying out there, right?
Or like spoiled milk.
If that happens, we take no responsibility for you smelling like
spaghetti and spoiled milk, but maybe, maybe there is a $10,000 book in that
(39:28):
dumpster.
Next time you drive by a dumpster, Johnny, I want you to stop, stop and take a
photo.
Maybe that, maybe we should have like a, a forum post in the discord where we
challenge everybody to take a photo inside the next dumpster they see just to
see, you don't got to get anything, but like, maybe we can just look at the
picture to see if there's any potential profit in the dumpster.
So we appreciate y'all listening and watching over YouTube.
(39:50):
We'll talk to you all next week.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers mindset podcast.
Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube
members, along with the weekly zoom call and private discord, head on over to
youtube.com backslash to use book guy and consider joining for as little as 2 99
a month.
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