Five Ways To Take Your Flipping Side Hustle To The Next Level. Interview With Nick Loper.
Reseller Hangout Podcast - Nick LoperDownload your digital copy of The Progress Journal here: https://nickloper.lpages.co/progress-journal-reseller-summit-bonus/Check out more flipping resources at https://fleamarketflipper.com/Rob: All right, guys. Welcome. We are so honored to have Nick Loper here with us today to give some awesome advice and nuggets in this realm of side hustling, side hustles. Nick has been doing this for over eight years. He's been interviewing all different types of individuals who have side hustles, and has done over 400 interviews.So he's got some great wisdom, some great knowledge on information that [00:01:00] he can, he can bring to all of us in the realm of side hustles and on the flipping aspect of it. So, Nick, thank you so much for jumping in here with us. We're so excited to have you today. Nick: You bet. I mean, you were one of the early guests, I want to say 2014 or something. It was pretty early days for the show. Rob: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That Nick was actually our first Flea Market Flipper, he was our first podcast interview. And I still remember talking to Nick on the phone before the podcast and not knowing what I was doing, but he pulled me on and it was awesome.Had a great time with him back in the day. Nick: I love it. That's what brings me the most joy is like trying to like scoop these up and coming stories, of people like yourself who just have cool creative, interesting businesses. And, well, how does that work? You know, just play in playing the curious host and seeing where that takes us.Rob: That is awesome. And we're so thankful that you do do that because you give us so much great information and insight in all different side hustles. So, but today we are actually going to focus on, some key aspects of our side hustle, how [00:02:00] we can get more out of flipping and more definite about if you have a full-time job, how do you, how do you balance it?How do you balance that time that you're spending on the side hustle? And how do you, how do you keep your full-time job and without going crazy and throwing kids into the mix of it? So, yeah, let's go ahead and jump into it. We'll go ahead and ask Nick some questions and, get some, some great feedback from him, for sure.Melissa: Yeah, first, before we started, we wanted to ask you, Nick, what got you started in exploring sides hustles? Nick: I mean in the very early days, I was the person who just knew they didn't want to climb the corporate ladder. It's like, there's gotta be, there's gotta be a different way. There's gotta be a way out. My original side business was a comparison shopping site for footwear.So I've been playing mostly in the online space. You know, for, for my entrepreneurial journey, but prior to that I painted houses. I was the kid like trying to sell candy to my fellow, Boy Scouts at summer camp, that kind of thing. But the house painting gig [00:03:00] definitely like solidified like, oh, you're, you know, it's a lot more fun to kind of like be in control of your own destiny in, in some way, more stressful, but more rewarding as well.So I started the shoe business while I was working corporate. It was three years of nights and weekends before I felt comfortable. Yeah. Giving my notice at work, turning the keys to the company car and said, all right, I'm going to make you go with this. I kind of thought like that could be my thing.Like, I'll just be the guy who sells shoes on the internet. Like a lot of businesses, they had a finite lifespan, and I'm really fortunate and grateful to have started a bunch of other side projects while the shoe business was running, most of which for full disclosure, you know, died a quiet death in some corner of the internet, but a couple of stuck around.And one of those was, the sidehustlenation.com blog and the Side Hustle Show podcast. We started in 2013. So it was like, you know, five years deep into being a full-time entrepreneur full full-time side hustler at that point. And so it was kind of a result of my own. And you kind of do [00:04:00] some of the questions that a lot of people will, will turn back to you.If you're like, well, how do I figure out, you know, what to do? And so the questions would be like, well, you know, what do you never get tired about talking about? What lights you up? What do other people come to you for advice for? And, you know, since I'd already done the thing and quit my job, people were naturally at well, how did that work?You know, how are you able to stay at home and do it and stuff? I found, I really enjoyed, you know, deconstructing other businesses like you know, where does, where does the money come from here? You know, how did you market that? Like, you know, all that stuff is, was instilled is really fascinating to me.So that's kinda how the, the podcast got its start. Rob: Awesome. I love it. I love it. And one of those big things is what lights you guys up? That is the big thing. Most of you guys that are here right now, you are lit up like me when you're out there searching for awesome stuff. You're looking for those deals, whether it's in a flea market, a thrift store, whether it's retail shops, wherever it's at, wherever you can find those deals. That's what lights you up. And like Nick said, that makes it [00:05:00] awesome. That makes your profession or your side hustle is so much better when you actually have a great time doing it. Melissa: Because there's always going to be something about it that you don't like, but if you really love, you know, the most part, what you're doing, you're slightly passionate about flipping.So, Nick, what would you say, what makes some people successful with their side hustle while others might struggle to make it work? Nick: Oh my gosh. I mean, there's lots of different things that we can, we can get into, but one of the biggest at the very start is this willingness to step off of the ledge, or maybe, you know, that, that connotes a following.So maybe like taking that step first, step up the mountain, you know, not necessarily knowing the rest of the path, because it's, it's so easy to stay stuck, kind of on the entrepreneurial sidelines with the side hustle sidelines, like trying to map out the entire route, trying to map out this entire path.And I just, I don't know if that's super realistic in getting started. It's like, okay, choosing what's next doesn't mean choosing what's forever, but like, you gotta be [00:06:00] willing to do that first thing and seeing, okay, what kind of reaction it gets? Do you find it something that you enjoy doing? I mean, that was, that was the podcast. It was, you know, $50 mic in the corner of the living room. Is this thing on? Yeah. I was like, am I going to run out of people to talk to? What did I just commit myself to? But it was something that I found that I enjoy doing. It was seeing just enough traction to justify, continuing to do it.And I think you either find that or you or you don't and then you say, well, luckily it wasn't a life-threatening experiment. I can kind of go back to the drawing board and try something new, but that hesitation to get started for fear of failure or fear of not knowing steps two through 10,, I think holds a lot of people back.Rob: Great point for sure. That's awesome. And you have to, like Nick said, you have to be willing to take that next step. Even if you do have some failures in the business, I've had tons of failures myself, but it's one of those things that you're willing to do. You're willing to course correct along the way.And yeah, I think that's a huge point, Nick, that you'd have to be willing to go that next up the mountain, [00:07:00] take that next step in. And it, the pay off is huge when you find it and you get there, but yeah, that's an awesome point. Yeah. Nick: Did you guys meet Todd Tresidder at one of your fin cons over the years?Melissa: I don't think so. Nick: So Todd is kinda like my dad's age, so he's kinda, and he's like a long lean guy and like a really good skier. So I like, he reminds me of my dad in a lot of ways, but when Todd was on the show, he kind of, and I'm going to butcher this quote, but he's like, the of, you know, wealth creation is, you know, probability times, outcome or, you know, so he had some weird formula for it, but what he was trying to say was, you know, if you minimize your downside risk and you have positioned these, you know, side hustles or businesses or startups in such a way that the upside is large enough, it just becomes a matter of taking enough swings. Like it's like your, your wealth almost becomes inevitable as long as you, you know, minimize that downside on each one. And same thing, you know, [00:08:00] starting flipping it's like, well, what, what are you comfortable with investing in initial inventory?You know, for, for all my online stuff or a lot of my online stuff, it's like, well, domain name and hosting. It's like, you know, a hundred bucks, you know, you'd get stuff off the ground really, really affordably. So kind of managing, you know, managing the risk and then, you know, positioning it. Well, how does this scale, like three to five years down the road, if it hits.Is that a win for me? And sometimes yes, sometimes. No. And so that kind of, align that with your goals. Melissa: Yeah, that's awesome. Rob: I love it. I love it for sure. Melissa: Would you say there's any common traits or characteristics or habits like of all these people that you've interviewed in your that are doing a successful side hustle?Do they have any commonalities among them that you've picked up?Nick: I think. Well, let's talk about the, the time aspect first. And then, and then we got five traits that I think, will make you more effective in your side hustle and, and some of the common threads and themes that we've seen from, from the years of the interviews.First off, like at the time, and I don't [00:09:00] know about you, but I have found myself guilty yet. I didn't have enough time. I would do that if I just had the time and what I have been trying to force myself to reframe that as is I prioritized something else. It's a little more honest. It's a little more brutal, but I prioritize something else.I've got this post er, you know, we just moved. So it's still like sitting on the floor. We haven't hung it up yet, but it's a little artistic print and it says, you know, everything in life got so much easier once he realized there was exactly enough time for the priorities in his life or for the most important things in your life.And it's like, we kind of know that instinctively where we, we vote our priorities with our time and you know, I'm not faulting anyone because there's, there's different seasons in life too. Like we were just at the park with a couple of friends of ours. They've got like twin one year olds. It's a different season in their life side hustle.Not really on the radar right now. And that's, that's totally fine. But, being honest with yourself, so 168 hours in the week, asking yourself, well, where is that [00:10:00] time going today? Do you really? Cause I've been there too. Like, there are days where, like I did not have you know, a minute to just like, you know, breathe and focus in like, you know, do this.But if you zoom it out over the course of a week, 168 hours seems a little bit more manageable, more doable. And so what I've recommended in the past is like to do this time tracking, audit in there, you can do that, like on your phone. I think a time of blogger was an app that was recommended. Toggle is another one T O G G L.I was, you know, if you're working from your computer, you might find it, you know, just have an Excel file. Like start time, stop. What were you doing? And just being able to tell you that up at the end of the week to say, oh, you know, I spent, you know, three cumulative hours, like getting kids ready to go out the door or, you know, on some sort of like, maybe it was my commute or maybe, you know, trying to get a log of like, where, where those hours are actually going.And it doesn't mean I'm, I think you guys are like the examples of like multitaskers extraordinary, like [00:11:00] with your morning runs like, oh, we got we're working on our fitness and we got, you know, we got the kids with us. We got some family time going on. Oh, we're listening to a podcast or like doing the entrepreneurial education thing.Oh, by the way, we might, we might spot something that's worthwhile to source while we're out there. It's like the ultimate multitask. But, but starting there, you know, with this time audit and getting honest with yourself, like, okay, if it's a priority to me, I will carve out the time and make it a consistent habit.Even if it's 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, like something like that, because it's easy to. It's easy to build positive momentum, but it's just as easy to build negative momentum. You skip it for a day, skip it for two days. I think that's James clear to roll. Like don't ever take two days off in a row.Cause then it's like, oh, it's a slippery slope to go down from there. But I've got five habits that I think will make you a more effective side hustler, more effective flipper, more expective, entrepreneur. And the first of those, I'm bringing my list here, but the first of those is like [00:12:00] tracking.Your, your key performance indicators, like identifying your, the metrics that matter in your business. And those, you know, are the levers that you have some influence over that you can test different things and maybe it's. You know, the hours I've spent scrolling on, on offer up, or maybe it's like the offers made.Maybe it's like the percentage take rate on your offers and maybe it's the target margin that you're shooting for. Maybe it's, you know, the ROI on certain flips. So the second thing that I think will make you more effective. At least I've found it to be helpful for me is instead of, you know, year-long goals or even like, oh, here's my five-year goal.I think that it's good, but it's, it's kind of just a wild guess at that point. So I like to set what I'll call like sprint goals, short-term sprint goals. These are maybe, you know, four weeks, eight weeks, something that has a, a tangible deadlines, kind of like, you know, registering for a half marathon.That's two months out. Like, okay, I [00:13:00] better get training for that. Versus like, if I registered for something next year, I got some time I'll figure that out. So like an urgent deadline with some urgency or a goal with some ideas, especially for like project based stuff. Like I want to get this book done.I want to watch this summit. I want to launch this podcast. I want to hit $5,000 in eBay sale, whatever it is. So kind of these shorter term goals. The next thing that I have, number three, is this habit of writing down your top three priorities for tomorrow the night before. And I feel like when I get up in the morning and I have done this, I know exactly what to work on.And in what order, before I dive into reactive mode, someone else's agenda, I want to be moving my own life forward my own goals forward. Before I dive into Facebook, dive into email and start like this. You're putting out fires, right? It's like, okay, if I can, if I can get, you know, one, maybe two of those done, you know, before going into seeing what the rest of the [00:14:00] world has going on.I, I know that's going to be a much better day. And so that's kind of the, the third habit like this, you know, writing this down and like, and then trusting that. You know, cause it's easy to be like, oh, that's what yesterday Nick said like, is that really important to do that? And then at the end of the day, I try and do kind of like, I called it, my I'd done this habit for a lot of times. There was, I think there was a service that maybe still is called, I'd done this, which is just like it sends you an email, or it did, and you just reply back with like, what'd you get done today? So that I had rigged up a system with like Google sheets.And so you could kind of combine all that, and say, well, what did you get done today? Like recorded this episode. And I updated this thing and I, you know, met with resellers, you know, all these different things, but like, it's easy to, because that's the, that's the like, look in the mirror, honesty, honesty question.Like, did I do work [00:15:00] that mattered today? Did I make progress today? And sometimes, you know, you spend a lot of time on maintenance mode or, you know, things that kind of feel productive, but if you have your short-term sprint goal in mind and this, you know, I've done this habit, you know, you kind of have to be honest, did I, am I making progress toward that goal that I said was important to me and, and go from there?Number four is, something that I have found like personally beneficial, for, you know, habits that I want to change because I was, I would be the person, you know, who, who would look at, you know, December 31st and say, okay, new year's resolutions, what are we gonna do? Like, okay, well, I'm gonna, you know, get up at 5:30, I'm gonna drink a healthy smoothie.I'm going to journal and meditate and I'm going to eat no sugar, no carbs. And, you try and change too many variables at once and you do it for a day, you do it for two and then kind of fall off the wagon. So the fourth thing is what I call like micro habits. These are like one small tweak [00:16:00] to your day that you want to experiment with that, that you think might be meaningful for you.And so this could be starting a meditation habit. This could be, you know, doing 10 pushups, doing 10 burpees. This could be making the bed, this could be, you know, a dietary change of, you know, avoiding processed sugar and stuff like that. It could be a reading. I'm going to read a chapter of the book, you know, of some book every night, I'm going to write a chapter of my book every night, or I'm going to write 500 pages, one page, you know, kind of this, you know, building this daily habit, positioning it as, as an experiment, like, okay.And if I try and make it too small to fail, like one of the first ones I did was, just pushups and it, you know, the, the micro examples, like, well, if I just do one push-up, I can check the box and make that away. And if I just floss one tooth, I can check the box and make that a win. But what I ended up doing was like, well, how many pushups can I do?You know? And I think I did like 27 on day one. And then every day we'll try and do one more kind of could I beat yesterday's [00:17:00] record? And by the end of the month it was like 70 something. So I was like, oh, okay, just trying to stack up these, these little incremental improvements. And so that's kind of the, where I think you'll find there is like this slight edge or this compound effect of, you know, stacking up these marginal gains, you know, establish one tiny habit at a time until it becomes ingrained and then on to the next thing and onto the next thing.And it kind of comes from Amazon. I read at one point, Amazon is testing like a thousand different variables. They're running like a thousand different split tests on their site. You know, the position of this button, the shape of the size of this text, all of these different things like trying to eke out an extra point, zero 1% of conversion rate or something, because like, you know, with the volume that they're doing, that would be significant to the bottom line.And I think you can apply that same. Always be testing mentality to yourself, always be experimenting on, you know, one little, one little thing. And then the fifth thing, and there's a lot of data to back this up is this gratitude, practice, [00:18:00] gratitude, journaling, you know, what were you, what are you thankful for?Because I find when, there's always fires to put out. There's always stuff that goes wrong. There's always like, you know, one brother kicking the other brother in the neck. It's like easy to get, like today was just nuts, but a little bit of a pause to say, What am I grateful for? And I kind of combine this with the priority task for the next day.I say, what I get done today? What am I grateful for? What do I need to tackle tomorrow? And I find that that leads to a happier and more effective, Nick for sure. Rob: I love it. I love it. And I like how you break down and it's not, it's not about that thing. Like you said, creating those goals that are unattainable.It's not like doing that a year in advance. You're making these small incremental, wins that you guys can stack up. And I relate it more to, I mean, something that came to my mind while you're talking is Dave Ramsey talks about, getting out of debt and stuff like that. But one of the keys he always talks about is taking your credit cards and paying off [00:19:00] the lowest credit card first or the lowest balance.And then go to the next balance and then the next balance and the next balance. And when you do that, you get this quick win. It's a quick win, but it's also this feeling of accomplishment. I just did one, man. I can go do another one. And then you just start getting that. And the same thing that Nick saying, you're getting these accomplishments because they're not unattainable, they're micro, but at the same time, that's what's going to push you to the next level. You get those successes and then you keep going and you adjust and you keep going with it. So excellent, Nick. That was awesome. Melissa: We both took good notes too. Nick: So I'm like, I I've been back and forth on this. I'll get your guys' take on it too. Here's like process oriented goals versus outcome goals. Like the outcome goal is I want to have a billion dollar business. The process oriented goal is like, I want to do the thing that will maybe, hopefully get me there. It's like, I will write. 500 words a day. I will ask for raises from my affiliate partners.I will, you know, make sure I list 10 items a week. You know, it's [00:20:00] kind of this process oriented goal versus this. Cause you have more control over like, you know, I dunno. So I've gone back and forth on that because I think you need maybe a combination of both, versus. What do you, what do you guys think?Melissa: I like the process oriented just because you can, I can control that then the other one, but then it usually leads to the other one. But when we are talking about goals, we usually go to the outcome goal, which it should be more of a process oriented. Rob: I think of it as people want, they get into a side hustle, they get into a flipping and they want to make an extra thousand dollars a month.But exactly how is it going to be? And then that's where you make the commitment of okay, money comes in when I list stuff, whether it's offer up whether it's Facebook marketplace, whether it's eBay, wherever it's going. So what can I do to get to that thousand dollars? I need to list one thing a day. I need to make sure I list one thing a day, at least one thing, maybe two things a day, and you have to get to that.And that's the goals that you have to set and then you have to stick behind them. But I agree with you, Nick. You're the more that you do that and you start to get those [00:21:00] wins. Also, the habit is building of you listing one thing a day by the end of the day. Just like your push-ups, you're going to be there because you're making the commitment and you're following through with it.And it's not something that's unattainable. So I a hundred percent agree that. Nick: Yeah, I think if you're trying to reverse engineer, like the revenue flow in your business, and maybe that's where your, you know, your KPIs, your key performance indicators come into play. Maybe it is this, listing one, you know, one item a day. Again, the painting business, it was, you know, leads to estimates, to sales, towe're doing the work, like going and painting the house. And so like really the top of the top of the funnel, so to speak was leads. And those were mostly cold calling like door to door. And so hours spent cold calling was kind of the lead domino for a lot of this. A lot of everything that came after.Rob: Yeah, I love it. Melissa: Yeah. So for us, it's like sourcing those good items and getting them listed is always the bottle for most, most people, it is, and then get them listed and then, cause they can't sell if they're not listed. Rob: For most people who like [00:22:00] reselling the problem is not finding items. We can get out there and we can find some great items and we can find lots of them.It's the bottleneck is they're sitting up in that death pile of stuff you bought and you don't have it listed yet. So you got to get a list of, to make that money. Melissa: So get those KPIs going, exactly. One thing that I really love that you said, Nick, was the top three priorities the night before, because I think that is so important because it's so easy, especially now in to get distracted, like there's so many distractions in our life, you wake up in between emails, social media.I look at this screen time. Pop-up you spent this much time on screen time, like, oh yeah, it was all work. It was all work that I was on my screen. Nick: That's what I try and justify too. It's like you spend an hour and 20 minutes on your phone, you know, last week or something and you know, a per day per day.Melissa: Yeah, I try to justify it, but yeah, I know a lot of it was not, so that was that's wasted time and I should have been doing something else and getting my priorities. Then if you work on those top three, because I have a tendency to go, well, what's my top 15 priorities for the day. Like, and then too [00:23:00] big it's too much.And I get overwhelmed and then I go to social media. So, so having three it's very good. Nick: And breaking them down into like the smallest actionable steps. Cause I've been the person, you know, where the item, it just sits on the to-do list for. For weeks and for months. And you're like, why, why is this not getting done?And then again, you look in the mirror, well, it's on you dummy. You know, if you don't take action on it, nothing's going to happen. But it, it sits there because you never going to have this uninterrupted 37 hour block of time to tackle it. And so it's like, okay, if I were to chip away at this, okay, what could I do to, you know, start working on this?I had a book project this summer and it took like nine months, 10 months. Like it took way longer than I ever expected it to. Cause it was, it was a really intimidating project to tackle it. So I never felt like, well, I don't have time. I don't have the bandwidth to deal with this right now. But you know, there was a hundred stories in the book.Like I could have made the habit. Well, let me just do one a day. Let me just go through edit one a day. [00:24:00] And, you know, I would have been done in three and a half months instead of 10. So, it's a, it's a do, as I say, not as I do kind of thing with that example. Rob: I love it. Good, for sure. Melissa: We just had a couple quick more questions, was, so you've interviewed a wide range of resellers. So what are some of the different niches of sellers and flippers that you've had come across that you've seen? Nick: Oh, my gosh. We've had people doing, phones, doing books, doing, cars. That wasn't a, that was just a post on the site doing sneakers, doing appliances, which, that was one of the earliest ones that we did that was Ryan Finley from, Re Craigslist.I don't know if he's still active, but it really opened my eyes to the possibility of what was available. And it's like, could you imagine like a heavier bulkier, more difficult to transport type of item to, to go out and flip, but he was doing well, supporting his family, doing that stuff. And in a couple of things that he stood out, in that call that were really interesting [00:25:00] was, you know, in the early days set yourself a daily goal, I'm gonna go find 50 bucks where the profit today I'm gonna go find a hundred bucks worth of profit today.And I think he did that until he had erased his debt. And then. It's like, oh, if I can do this consistently, this could be a full-time thing. And the other thing that he said was, you know, opportunities become visible once you're in motion. And at that time, you know, going back probably 2014 timeframe, I kind of dismissed that as like, yeah, that sounds like kind of hippy-dippy advice.But I have seen it to be 100% true. Like the conversations that you have, the ideas that get sparked while you're out doing the thing. Those, those are sometimes worth way more than the thing itself. Like I was working on a failed one of my failed side hustles or like this wine related site and no reason to exist.I have no, I know nothing about wine. And it was just kind of a garbage site while I was doing research for that, I happened upon this website that was reviewing wine clubs as an affiliate, like an affiliate model site. And I was like, well, that's kind of cool. Like, what else can I pivot that to? Like, what else could I [00:26:00] start creating your crowdsourcing reviews for?And one thing that had come up in my. You know, personal, pains and struggles as an entrepreneur was hiring help. So I started the site called virtual assistant assistant, which just sold about a year ago, but ran this thing for nine years, it was one of my most successful side projects that was clearly a result of this idea that was sparked while I was working on something completely unrelated, but it was just like, okay.Opportunities become visible once you're in motion. So that was one that definitely stood out from that call with. But we've seen people flip. I mean, all sorts of things. I don't know if anybody goes any bigger than you guys in terms of the industrial equipment, but we talked to Stacy Gallego, student of yours who was doing sleep number beds, like sometimes kind of bulky stuff.She's like, yeah, freight shipping was, you know, it's intimidating until you do it once and then it's not so bad. And w you know, we're finding as new homeowners, we're finding the same thing with home improvement projects. It's. [00:27:00] Until you do it once. And you know, it was so bad. We just swapped out the sink and dishwasher this weekend and like, Okay.You know, of course it took a few more trips to the hardware store than we had originally planned, but we'll feel more confident for the next one. Every, every step of the way it kind of builds up. Rob: It is for sure. And with YouTube out there, you can do almost anything. The more you do it, the better you get at it.Melissa: So, people always ask how he can like fix a lot of stuff and yes, you're handy, but you, he looks up a lot of stuff on YouTube. Rob: But I am handy because I've done it. I've done it over and over. Swap out a sink once, you swap out a sink twice, three times, four times, by the time you do, I mean, you're pretty much a pro.Same thing for dishwashers, probably 15, 20 dishwashers. So it's not that it's anything. That's the thing with anything, the repetition, the more that you do it, when you're listing items, it takes you 10 minutes to list your item. The first time, one item, by the time you do 100 of them that you're doing it in like two or two minutes, you know, a minute and a half to get an item listed.So that is, it's a good point that the [00:28:00] more that you do something, the better you get at it, for sure. Nick: Like thrift store finds, you know, vintage clothing, like all that type of stuff, but where you got to make it worth your while, or it's like, you know, this was the guy who was, you know, flipping sneakers.And he was like doing like the limited edition, you know, super rare sneaker drops. And sometimes like I was, you know, it was like reselling t-shirts. He's like, okay, that's great. But I make 10 bucks. It's like, I could resell this pair of shoes and make 200. I was like, okay. So it's like the same, same amount of effort really required to do both. And so, you know, trying to aim him a little bit higher as your, as your budget allows, I had a guy who, this is an interview that's just coming out on the side hustle show who was, you know, kind of specialized in flipping iPhones. And it was, you know, you might have several thousand dollars worth of inventory.At any one point before you go out and sell those or resell those, but it was like, you know, pretty clear metrics here. You know, you had a little price sheet. Here's what these phones [00:29:00] are worth in this condition, you know, kind of like. Grid matrix type of thing. So he knows what kind of offers to make aiming, to make a hundred bucks a flip and just kind of was go into town.How do I go out? And his goal, his KPI was to have one deal lined up. By the time he leaves the house in the morning, it would be time by the time he wakes up in the morning, just like, okay, I'm going to go meet the seller over here. I'm gonna meet this seller over here. And he was getting it done. Melissa: Awesome. Rob: Huge nuggets, guys. You guys should be thinking about your business right now and how you can set those KPIs, how you can do that, that next step, because those are great notes. Melissa: Make them watch the replay, too. Rob: Sure. Melissa: Did you have any other tips or advice you want to give the attendees? Nick: The question that, that comes up a lot is like, well, how do I know when it's okay to go full time into this?And that's one question that I always ask you, Rob, it's like, well, you ever worry about the deals drying up? Like it's very much a, you know, a eat what you kill kind of a business. So you gotta always be out sourcing and hunting [00:30:00] for profit. You know, once you develop the skillset and you build the confidence, you kind of understand like the deals aren't going anywhere.Like there's, there's more than enough inventory to go around, but it's like having that, having that practice. And so what I tell most people is I want to see a track record of revenue, you know, going back six or 12 months, like just making sure maybe it, maybe it doesn't fully cover your day job income, but hopefully, you know, you're living below your means and it covers your fixed expenses.So you're, you're not, at least you're not dipping into savings. You're not taking on more debt if you do, make that leap. So you have, you've kind of built it up on the side using these effectiveness habits and, you know, time prioritization habits to the point where it's like, okay, you know, if I had another 40 50 hours a week to dedicate to this I think I could get it to the day job income level and beyond in a lot of cases, what people find. So just trying to, you know, I hear a lot of people, you know, an entrepreneur is, somebody [00:31:00] who jumps out of the airplane and figures out how to build their parachute on the way down. And this is a, a Reed Hoffman quote from LinkedIn.It's like, that sounds terrifying. Like don't do that, you know, proof of concept on, on a low risk scale and, and build it up from there. Melissa: Yeah.Rob: I love it. Melissa: We need to get to get that question a lot too, because people jump in. They're really excited and it's great that you're excited, but get the side hustle going first.So don't just go quit your job. Rob: Nick just gave you the formula guys, if you're at that point where you're trying to figure out if you're ready to scale, ready to get rid of your daytime job, because you love this so much more. There's the formula right there, guys. So you definitely want to be that level.Yeah. Yeah. So where can everybody find you? Nick: Okay. Of course would love to have you tune into the side hustle show where we cover. Not just flipping, but, any variety of a side hustle under the sun through the last eight years, tons of good stuff in the archives. If you don't know where to start, I put together a free Spotify playlist, greatest hits playlist.[00:32:00] If you want to dive in there. Sorry, Sidehustlenation.com/RSSbonus, reseller summit bonus is where you find a free digital copy of the progress journal. This is my personal productivity tracker. That incorporates the five habits that we talked about today. So you can get a free digital, six month version of that over there at sidehustlenation.com/rssbonus.Awesome. Rob: I love it. Awesome. Melissa: Well, thanks so much for Nick. Rob: We greatly appreciate your time. We greatly appreciate all your wisdom and your knowledge in this arena. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We can't thank you enough for doing this and, and helping everybody out with this side hustle. So you rock.Thank you. Have a great day. You guys are awesome.
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