The Reseller TRAPS That Nobody Talks About! | S08E01

In this episode we are talking about the reseller traps that quietly kill your business whilst you THINK you are working hard...

Plus the usual honest interactive reseller chat you've become accustomed to!

My YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@CarBoot_Chris?sub_confirmation=1

My Website - http://www.carbootchris.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, we're talking about the reseller traps that quietly kill your business while you actually think you're working hard. My name's Chris, aka Carboot Chris, and I'm a full-time UK online reseller. I operate mainly on eBay, but also on vintage and whatnot. I'm bringing a regular podcast all about reselling with a bit of fun thrown in too. Hopefully to keep you company to entertain you and maybe a little bit of education. Who knows? Welcome to the Everything Reselling Podcast. Welcome back, everybody. It's a podcast. We've been a couple of weeks off. Well, one week off really. And we're we're starting series eight. We do these podcasts in blocks of 10. So each 10 is a series. We're on series eight. It kind of gives us a chance to have a little break in between. Yeah, because it does take a lot to get the shows together, especially if we have guests on, which I will hopefully be bringing more guests on in this series. But welcome back. I'm Carboot Chris. I'm a full-time reseller. I buy and sell things online. I flip things for profits, and that's what I do to make a living. That's how I pay the bills, that's how I pay the mortgage, and all that stuff. So yeah, that's me. And I've been doing this for 11 years. Firstly part-time, now full-time. I've been full-time for pretty much seven years now, full-time. So it's good going. I'm still doing it, so there's got to be something in it. People message me and say, oh, you can't do that. You can't make a living out of that. You can't make a living buying and selling stuff, you know, out of your house. I don't even have outside storage, guys. So if you think you can't be a full-time reseller without outside storage and without all warehouses and without stock, you know, storage options, you can do it if you're smart about it. I'm proof of that for seven years. I've been doing it from my house. Well, from about four houses, actually. Could be more in the future, you never know. But yeah, you can do it. You definitely can. You've got to be smart about it, though. Tonight's show or today's podcast, for those listening, is all about reseller traps. It's a trap. That's the only thing I really know about Star Wars. And when I say reseller traps, I'm thinking about things that stop you working, things that prevent your progress, things that stop you earning as a reseller. Have a think about that, guys. For those watching live, have a little think about it. And as we get to that point in the show in a little while where we're going to talk about the reseller traps. It's a trap! I should have got a clip for that, shouldn't I? Then please chip in because there's nothing worse than being left to deal with all the all the content myself. I need you guys to help me out. Because what's a trap for you might might not be a trap for me and someone else. So I just thought it was a very interesting conversation because I've heard some people online talking about this kind of thing over the last week, and it got me thinking. I've been thinking about it today, what we were going to talk about. So, yeah, welcome everybody, and welcome if you're listening on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Alexa, and all that stuff. Welcome. I thank you so much for listening. We're actually getting to almost a tipping point with the audio of the podcast and here the visual, the live like YouTube version of the podcast. We're almost getting to tipping points where some episodes are getting more audios now than visuals like on YouTube. So more downloads on Spotify and Apple Music and stuff than actual views on YouTube, which is really interesting because that is when I first started the podcast when it wasn't a Monday night, that was kind of my aim was to really hit that audio audience. But I still rely very, very heavily on you guys when we're live to make the show. Because without it, it's just me just you know giving my experience without allowing you guys to chip in, and it's really important for you to chip in. Anyway, let's say hello to as many people as possible. Belle's not here today, and the reason for that is today was her first day at school. I mean, her new job. Um she started a new job at the council today, and she's absolutely wiped out. She was gonna be on tonight, but when she got back from work, she was kind of like, I'm absolutely wiped out, and it's kind of understandable with the chronic fatigue and stuff, like stress of starting a new job, the new day on a first day on a new job will definitely kick off something like that. So she can't make it tonight. She's hoping to be back next week, fingers crossed. So you just stuck with me. But I'm gonna say hello to as many people in the live chat as possible within the one-minute time period. So get your hellos in, and then we'll uh we'll chat about a few things. We've got some shout-outs to do, some thank yous. We'll talk about reseller traps, eBay live, and I need a bit of help with something too. So that's all coming up. I need some help with content. It's all coming up. Some interesting content. Let me see if I can get this ready now. It's been two weeks, I've almost forgotten what I'm doing here. So let's get the one-minute music going. Here we go. Are we on? Yes, we are. Uh Jeff Davis is in the house. Not the mama is in. Welcome to you. That's a new name. Cavalis, Deb Sardine, Lynn Lynn. Uh, we've also got Cloud9, uh, Karen Evans, Helen Graham, Babs, Rosie Mars, and Lisa, Kevin Hallfun, all the way in Florida, Sharon Island, Fluffy the Muffin, Lizzie Scotty, flip, flip foot, flip-flop, flap, speed foot flips, Mark Hill, Deborah Tardine, Rachel Fantastic, Pumpkin the Picker, um, who else we've got? Mr. Crummy, Ian G. Uh Chris Tyler. Hope I'm not missing anyone. Richard Payne, M's Den. Welcome. Uh let's carry on, carry on, carry on, Chris. Aaron Sells, Dizzy J. Tracy Davis, welcome from North Carolina. Alknax, married to reselling. Wow, that minute gone quick, hasn't it? That minute gone quick. I can't even speak now. Uh, I think that's it. Retrohawk. That's it. Welcome everybody. We've got 67 in the live chat. Almost is six and sixty-seven that stupid thing where it's six and seven. I don't even understand it because I'm old, basically. Or is it six and nine, sixty-nine? I don't know. It's one or the other, isn't it? But because I'm like 40, I'm basically old, so I don't understand it. Sound is very patchy. Is any everybody anybody else having problems with sound? Six and seven, thanks, Lisa. Anyone else having problems with sound? I prefer 69. I'm just checking my mic. Everything anyone else having problems? Can you all hear me? It's pretty important that you can hear me. Not so important that you can see me, because that's just shit, basically, in it. Let's see. So just let me know if everything's alright with that. Everyone else says it's fine, so it seems to be, I don't know, maybe one or two people having a bit of sound issues. Hopefully it's okay. Do let me know if there is a problem. I need to do a shout-out actually, and I've not used my little shout-out thing for a while. Shout out. Two shout-outs to do. Big one for Babs in the Attic. Well, it's not Babs in the Attic anymore. What is it again? Babs. Hang on, I'm gonna have to find it now. Has Babs changed her name? Or is she just Babs now? Or Babs? Oh, I can't find Babs anymore. She's gone. She's disappeared. She's gone. Babs, just Babs. Well, big shout out to Babs because we went down to Devon and Cornwall for Belle to say goodbye to her old work colleagues and to see some friends. And we stopped off at Babs and we met Babs and Dave, Babs over half, and they served us up with some bacon butties and cakes and stuff like that. So very nice to meet you, Babs. I know you've met Belle before, but nice to meet you. So thank you so much for being so hospitable. Also, a big shout out to Rachel Fantastic, who provides tonight's duck race prize. It's an amazing duck bucket hat. And if you want to be in it, you need to you needed to have commented on last week's show. If you want to be in the duck race tonight, so if you're listening, like on Spotify or Apple Music, if you're listening on any of those channels and you want to be in with a chance of winning a future prize in a duck race, you need to come over to YouTube and comment on the show, and then you'll get into next week's duck race. So thank you very much. Great to meet Babs. Thank you very much for Rachel. Fantastic. Go follow Rachel, who's got over 8,000 subs. She's absolutely flying at the minute. She is going to overtake us, no problem, this year, I reckon. This year, before the end of the year is out. Great channel, and thank you very much for the prize. Really appreciate it. Let's get back into the chat and see what people are saying before we move on. If I've missed any comments that are important, let's see. E by gum. Has anyone sold anything on there yet? Don't think so. Let's see. Lots of fellows. Aaron's got something here. Not so much of a trap, but if anything delays my start to the day, it can quite easily become a write-off. You know what, Aaron? That is actually uh true. Sometimes, like a late get up, like a lie-in, or if you're late doing your like for me, I do my parcels in the morning. If I'm late doing that, kind of knocks the day out of sync. It can be quite easy to knock your day, can't it? Like, or you get sidetracked with something else, something non-reselling related, like home life or something. You can really, you can really get sucked into that, and then your day's gone and you don't really seem to be able to get back on track, do you? So yeah, I totally understand that one. We'll come back to some more traps shortly. Oh, Ian says podcasts are perfect, just like radio, you can work while you're listening. I guess you can still listen to the YouTube, can't you? But do you think you get distracted more when there's visuals? For those on audio, Chris looks sunburned, says Fluffy the Muffin. I don't think I'm sunburned. I'm a bit warm in here tonight, to be honest. It's very sunny here in North Wales, very warm. So, yeah, maybe I'm a bit warm right now. And let's see, what else we got? 6 9, 69, 67, 67. I'm just reading the chat. Alex's retro drip. Welcome to you. I'm just seeing if there's anyone else who's dropped in as well. Life in the first lane. Paul Hillman's in as well. Oliver Ian's here. Oh, thank you, Rachel. She saw the she saw the duck bucket hat and thought of us. Thank you very, very much. Rachel's actually very kind as well because she's going to send it direct to the winner. So I'm fingers crossed for tonight's show. Someone in the States wins. Maybe Jeff wins tonight, and she can send it all the way to North Carolina. So fingers crossed, tonight's the night, someone abroad gets the win, and Rachel can send it on. Well, thank you very much. You're gonna kill me now. Oh, thank you, Babs. It was a pleasure, lovely to meet you. Yes, very nice. Thank you so much. Love the bacon butty. And life in the first lane says, speaking of subs, we only need 30 to break 1k. Come on, people, support your favourite car show related channel. Yeah, guys, if this is Big Steve here, this is Big Steve and Lana. So we know Big Steve and Lana, don't we? Fans of the channel, friends of ours. So if you're not following Big Steve and Lana's Life in the First Lane channel, please go and follow them. They're nearly at 1k. Go and give them a follow. But just don't subs unsubscribe after, otherwise, they'll drop back down again, obviously. Rachel's gonna win tonight. Rachel could win her own prize. I don't know what the rules are if that happens. She gets to keep it and she has to walk around the carboot cell with a duck bucket hat on. Oh, there you go. Ready steady retro has subbed to life in the first lane on YouTube. So nice one. Thank you very much for that. I'm sure they will appreciate it. Okay. So before I talk about this week's eBay Live, which there will be one. I'm just trying to figure out when because I need Belle's help really, and she's not quite up to it yet. So it might be later in the week. There you go. I've talked about eBay Live. There you go. eBay Live this week is gonna be probably towards the back end of the week, maybe Thursday. I'm thinking Thursday. It's gonna be a pop culture, Funko, Toys, pop culture related show. They seem to be the most popular for me, along with the car boot sales show, which I'd probably do another car boot sales show show soon. So yeah, car boot sale show, if you didn't know, kind of just random stuff that you would buy at car boot sale and put it on one eBay live show. I think I saw Rachel do, yeah, I did. I saw Rachel Fantastic do one, and it gave me the idea of just doing one. It did quite well, to be honest. So definitely at the moment for me, eBay Live, pop culture, Funko's, toys, and the car boot sale stuff. Clothing not doing so well on eBay Live for me. So I'm going to veer away from doing clothing where possible, although you may see one or two shows with clothing. But I'm finding the clothing is a bit of a harder sell than the collectible stuff. So yeah, that's that's my plan for this week. So look out, I will advertise it, but look out for an eBay live. I'm thinking Thursday to give Belle a bit of recovery time. And in a bit, I'm gonna talk about a new series that I'm thinking about doing on YouTube. Something completely new, something that nobody, absolutely no one, like this many people, this many, none. I'm holding up a zero with both hands, guys. If you're listening, nobody on YouTube is doing this content. So I need your help with it. I can't do it on my own. It's impossible. So I do need some help. I'm gonna talk about that in a bit. Rachel Fantastic said, I'm planning another car, car boot one. I did good on that one. Yeah, me too, Rachel. It was good. I think it just brings in like also, I think it's good for like me and you have both got like an audience, and we've got people who enjoy following the channel and stuff. So when you do something specific, it only brings in specific people. But when you do the car boot one, brings in a whole range of people who might not stay for clothing or might not stay for Funko's. So I think it did well for that reason. It brought people in just to see what random shit you've got for sale. Here we go. Right, okay, let's talk about reseller traps. It's a trap. And right, I'm an I'm just like you guys, right? I'm on YouTube, but as a reseller, I'm just the same as pretty much all of you. I'm a normal reseller type person. I'm not a big reseller, I'm under the VAT threshold. So I'm earning a modest wage. I'm not a millionaire, and I'm not on the breadline. Okay, so I'm just normal. So I'm not a guru, and I fall from many of these traps myself. So I'm not sitting here talking to you about what to do, what not to do, because that's not generally what I do as a gen on a on a whole, you know, generally, but I'm just a normal reseller like you guys, and so I fall for these traps, and I expect many of you do as well. But have a think about the things that you fall into. Like what things stop you getting work done, like what things stop your progress as a reseller, what are the traps? And I'll start off I've got some notes. So I'll start off. I've just got some key points to raise. So the things that kind of stunt your growth, you know what I mean? You'll you'll understand it more maybe when I get into it. The first thing I wrote down was the sourcing addiction trap. So, as resellers, we love the hunt, the treasure hunt, carboot Chris treasure hunter. That's what I am on on YouTube. That's my name. Well, that's the dangerous bit as well. Like sourcing, it feels productive, it feels like you're working, it feels like you are buying and investing in your business, and it's fun as well. We love it, we love trying to find stuff that's worth money. Buying the stock is easy, right? But listing it and getting it sold is a lot more difficult. So I see like the sourcing of stock as being a trap as well, because many of us source way too much stock than we ever list. We never seem to catch up. So it can be a bit of a trap because you get addicted to it and you want you you love the thrill of the hunt. It's like you gotta when you have a stock problem, it's like you've got a shopping addiction that's fueled by your business or your hustle. Thank you, babe. Oh, that's fucking hard. Jesus. Ralph just bought me a brewing, handed it to me at the bottom. And burnt my like burnt my I don't think I've got any like what do you call them? Fingerprints. Night she's going to bed. She burnt my fingerprints off. So listen, uh, I'm thinking like sourcing is a trap, right? Yes, we have to source, but many of us, myself included, we source way too much. We source way too much stuff, we spend too much money, we hoard we don't list it. We can't list as a one-man band, a sole trader working from my home, I cannot list fast enough to clear stock that I've bought. And we'll get on to death piles in a bit, but are we sourcing because we need the stock or we enjoy the buzz? We're buying faster than we can list. Your stock room grows grows, your bank balance goes down, your cash flow is cash flow is killed. It's tied up in the death pile out there. And sourcing makes you feel like you've worked, even if nothing gets listed. I don't really class it, like I know it is part of my job, but I kind of don't class the sourcing bit as working, although it is when I do my numbers, when I say I work 70 hours a week or whatever it is, I do class it then, I calculate it then. But when I'm actually doing it, it's not don't feel like work. And I think unless you are on top of the listing side, the sourcing is a trap, and you gotta be careful of that. You gotta be careful that you don't get overrun. Let me know what you think, and if you've got any other traps you want to talk about, put them in the in the chat. Not the trap. This put put your traps in the Chat. That's what I was trying to say. Let's see. Let's see. I've got a few traps in there. I'm gonna say I'm gonna save these traps that you guys are putting in. I'm gonna save it. Yeah, I'm seeing lots here. Babs on this matter says I can't list fast enough, and I think that is the case for most of us, especially when we're working on our own, Babs. It's like you literally cannot keep up with the amount of stock that we buy. So yeah, definitely. Debs says, I absolutely love sourcing stock, but I'm rather in over my head at the moment. I have the biggest stock problem. My new shed is full, and our garage and mum's shed. Wow, Debs. This is it. This is a trap. You are caught right in it, Debs. And I'm getting there as well. I cleared my entire backlog like a year ago. Well, all of a sudden, right, you your stock levels go through the roof really quickly. I've just had like a few wholesale orders come in. I've got a bit of a backlog of boot sale stuff, and we're just getting into boot sales season. We're not even in full flow, are we? And before you know it, two, three weeks, and you're way behind. Like you're at a point, you're at a point where you can you just can't catch up anymore. And then you start saying to yourself, right, I'll just sell that cheap, you know, just to get rid of it. Or I'll, you know, I'll do something else with it, or you know, it it doesn't hold the same value if you don't deal with it straight away, you know what I mean. Rachel says, I like the security of having too much stock, something to fall back on if need be. Yeah, but there's too much, Rachel. But there's too much and there's too much. It's like it's good to have a bit of a backlog, you know. For you know, if you have a couple, especially for you, you rely heavily on car boot sales to both buy and sell. So, like, if you have a few weeks of rain, obviously, you know, that does help. But is there really too much? And especially, I think it's worse if you're paying, if you're paying for storage, if you've got a container unit, if you've got an office space, if you're paying for it, every moment, every hour that that death pile is sat in a storage unit or an office space or something that you're paying extra for, it's costing you more money than what it did when you bought it. Like a tiny percentage, you might have bagged, you might have hundreds of things in a container, but split the cost of the monthly container on those hundreds of things and how many months they stay there. All of a sudden, some of those items are going to be unprofitable, they're going to end up costing you more than what you sell them for. That's the reality of it. Not everything, but something that costs you one pound, if it sits in your unit for a year, maybe you could say it's cost you two pound. Maybe it's cost you three pounds. I don't know. It's gonna depend everyone's gonna be different, aren't they? Babs says I've not been ref I've not been refusing hardly any offers to try and clear some. I have not been refusing hardly any offers to try and clear some. Sorry, I had to read that twice in. Yeah, I've don't worry, I have starred some of these. I'm gonna come back to it. Because I'm gonna cover some of these as well. Procrastination, we've got working from home, clap cash flow, we'll come back to that. Uh Rachel says, Is a garage full too much? Maybe. The thing is though, Rachel, you've got a way of like if you want to clear, like you do boot sales every week, every weekend. Like, I think multi- I would assume multiple boot sales for selling. So if you want to like have a clear, or you do you just a couple of boot sales and you can have a massive clearance, can't you? So you can move stock quick when you need to, which is a good like outlet, isn't it? Helen says oversourcing is a huge issue for me, and it's overwhelming trying to deal with it at the moment, yeah. And it can be, can't it? Like, once you get overwhelmed with stock, it's so difficult to get on top of it. Because once you get to that point, there's only one way to do it, and that's either to clear stuff really cheap in bolt loads, end up losing money on what you paid, which is pointless, otherwise, you shouldn't have bothered buying it in the first place. Or the other way is you've got to work bloody hard, you've got to list more to sell more to get rid of your backlog, so you've got to work harder. And we've all been there. I'm I'm guilty of it too. I'm right now, I'm in that. Like today, I listed 21 items, I could have listed more. But for the next few weeks, I want to list more than I usually do. I'm gonna have to, I need to work harder to in order to get my backlog down a little bit. Debs says, the thing is, we love going out to all of the boot sales, it's a day out, and we just cannot resist buying the bargains. And I always imagine it's it's set out on my stand at the fairs. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it, I totally do. And if you do fairs and like Demise Family do Comic-Cons, I guess you've just got to keep buying, otherwise you're not going to have the stock to do those fares. So it's a fine balance, isn't there? Very fine balance. Yeah, job lots, says Bab. Job lots leave you with some shitty items, don't they? You pick out the best stuff in a job lot, and then you've got to deal with the shitty items. Oliverine said you're in a unique situation, Chris. You're sourcing for multiple platforms. Yeah, that is true, but you still get very much overwhelmed with the amount of stock that you're dealing with. When you do, that is true, when you do source for different platforms like eBay Live or whatnot, or eBay itself, or if you sell on Facebook Marketplace, I don't really. You can buy things for different purposes, can't you? You can buy lower value stuff for certain things, you can buy higher value, larger, bulkier items, electronics, and put them in different places. As long as you are actually listing them in those places. Well, I think we've laboured the point on this one. So I'm gonna just go back to some starred comments now. Mr. Crummy says a trap getting stuck on the initial listing price. That's really interesting, actually, Mr. Crummy. One that I didn't think about, and this is why it's really great when you guys comment and give me different ideas. Yeah, like when you list something, we all get a bit attached to that first price, don't we? The initial listing price. I've kind of got out of that phase now. I used to be very much like that, Mr. Crummy, definitely. But now my prices get dropped every single month. Every month that an item is listed, its value gets dropped until it's sold. And when I'm dropping prices, when I'm doing bulk editing on eBay and dropping prices, I have a set routine that I go through. I've done a video on it in the past if you want to watch it. I have a set routine, a set way of doing it. Every single day I do this in the morning, it takes about 15 minutes to do it. And every single item gets reduced in price. And you know what? I don't now I don't even look at what the item is. It gets a price reduction. It's generally, I do like gen roughly 10% every single month, an item will be reduced until it has sold. So yeah, I'm a lot less attached, but I know a lot of people that are like this. Very, very attached to that listing price. Thank you for that, Mr. Crummy. Wet Beaver. Wet Beaver says working from home, it's a trap. Ooh, there's good and bad to this one. I'll tell you what, there's a lot of distractions working from home. And I was talking to Belle about this subject, and actually she brought up one that is kind of a trap, and it's part of working from home, and that is my wife, Belle. She is she's not a trap, but she called herself a trap because or did she say tramp? No, she definitely said trap, but basically a distraction. Working from home is distractions everywhere. Maybe one day I won't work from home. Maybe one day I'll have some kind of office space. I'll I'll never rule it out. But it's a very big distraction. Get distracted with all kinds of things. You think you name it. And because Belle works from home as well. We distract each other, really. I wander around the house, I go through the cupboards, go and find stuff to eat, and then I'll go and see what Bell's doing. I see how work's going on, and I'll say, Do you want a brew? We'll go sit in the garden, have a brew. It is definitely a distraction. It is a trap. Geordie Reseller says, My biggest trap is not having the space to put what I buy. Yeah. Geordie, do you have outside space, outside storage, or do you work from home, garage, whatever? Let us know. But yeah, certainly buying more than you can store. That's when it's it's like death piles, isn't it? When it gets out of hand. And we'll come to that in a bit. Steve says procrastination and overbuying are bad combo, and I'm the worst for it. And you know what, Steve? I think most of us will come into the into this category as well. Like, also, when those two things come together, like you said, there are a bad combo. Like, you've bought too much stuff, you've got a death pile coming out of your ears, and it kind of just stops you working. It feels feels overwhelming, and you end up doing nothing or doing very little because you've just got too much, too much to focus on. The old pug. Welcome to the show. I reckon one of the biggest traps is cash flow. Yeah, that's good. Cash flow. You know what? The live selling live really helps you with cash flow. It really does. Yes, you have to sell things cheaper. Most things go cheaper on live, like on whatnot on eBay Live. Most things go cheaper than what it would if it was listed on normal eBay or even vinted. But the good one thing it does do is it brings the cash flow in. And when you've got the cash flow, you can then spend it on things that perhaps sell a bit better or perhaps sell for a bit of a higher price. That's the idea, anyway. Don't always work like that, but it certainly gets the cash flowing. That's my opinion, anyway. Let's get back to the chat. See where we're up to on here, and then I'll I'll give you my next one. Oliverine said for the live stuff, you need high quantities. Ideally, yes, you do need stuff in high quantities. Steve says, being too much of a perfectionist is a problem for me. Steve, I've got this written down on my list. I'll spend half an hour on something, find a floor, and then put it in a pile to deal with later. And then it'll be there for months. Absolutely, yeah. Secret Carper says, I never look at the listing price when offers come in. I go look at solds and go from there. Oh, that's an interesting way of doing it, Carper, yeah. I must admit, I do look at the listing price when an offer comes in. But I can appreciate that way of working, would be quite good. Because if you've got something listed for six months and someone makes an offer on it, that listed price, if you've not reduced it, assuming you haven't reduced it, the listing price is really it's out of date, isn't it? So you can only really go off what the current rate is. Yeah, so it's a good point. Wet beaver, mine is dogs, kids, and other people. Yeah, working from home as well, isn't it? Uh assume you're working from home. Jeff says a trap. As a collector first, my biggest trap is not wanting to part ways with the cool stuff I find. This leads to my hoarding condition. I need to get into the right mindset as a seller and soon. Yes, Jeff. I'm a collector as well. Every all you guys know my collect I collect Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, uh Walking Dead, Killer Clowns, and a variety of pop figures. So when I find this stuff, I do end up keeping it a lot. But I have improved a lot on this, and I intend to clear through some more of my collection in the near future. I may part with Back to the Future and Jurassic at some point in the future. I don't want to let go of my killer clowns collection just yet. But yeah, I'm considering it. It's just stuff, Jeff, innit? If you think about it, right, it's just stuff. I've been selling all my old city shirts, and I would a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have dreamed of selling them all. But to try and fund our trip to North Carolina later in the year, which is going to cost us a few thousand pounds. I've been selling through some of my old city shirts, and I had a lot, I had about 70 or 80 city shirts going back all the way to sort of 1998, 99, that kind of like 25 years worth of shirts. And I've been selling them. And no, I don't wear them, they're just in a box. I I collected them. It's just stuff. I'd much rather that money went on memories and things that we can do together, me and Belle or the family, whatever, go to places, travel. I would what much rather that than have a box full of stuff. Because that's all it is at the end of the day, innit? It's just stuff. So I'm I'm learning to let go of stuff. Stuff like with that mindset. Yeah. Got pushed through it, haven't you? It's difficult though, innit? It's hard. Oh, Krillin, thank you very much, and welcome. Welcome, Rob. A$5 super chat. It's normally$2, isn't it? So you've gone up. Thank you very much. Did you see the interview on Justin Riesell's YouTube channel of the GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen? They might buy eBay. It would be great. Yeah, I've seen I've seen that they're looking or they're looking to put an offer in for to eBay. I have seen the the thumbnail for that video, but it's on my watch list. I haven't watched it yet, Krillin. But I'm hoping to watch it soon. But yeah, we've I think we've all seen that news. I was going to talk about it tonight, but to be honest, I'm I couldn't be bothered. I thought I'd try and think of a different subject. It's been spoken about a bit already, so I didn't see the point of doing it again. But interesting, I'm going to watch that, probably watch it tomorrow. Another thing to stop me getting stuff listed. Another trap. YouTubers. Deborah says, Death pile. I've got a death pyramid. I've had stock at the back of the garage for 10 years due to me piling in new stock I buy in front of it. At least it will all come into fashion again. Yeah. Let's see what else we got here. Bounty Hunter. Just listed all my villa shirts and shorts, flags. While the stock is high, European, final, etc. Yep, yep. Oh, and on that, on that subject, Bounty Hunter, I've got a ton of England shirts. Like I must have 20, 25 England shirts from all different years going like last 25 years mainly. So I'm going to start listing those soon as well. I'll put them on my personal eBay because it's all my personal stuff. So I'm going to start listing them soon as well because you've got the World Cup coming up, haven't we? So it's perfect time to get your England shirts on, or any of your national team shirts that are in the World Cup. Okay, let's get back to my list. Sourcing addiction was one thing. Death pile trap. The death pile trap, and I think most of us again fall into this one. What does the death pile really represent? The death pile is much deeper than too much stock. It can represent procrastination, poor buying decisions, guilt, avoidance, lack of systems, a fear of pricing, boring stock. That's true, isn't it? That's probably more true than any of it. Like if I don't fancy listing it, because I think it's boring. At some point I thought it was a good idea, but then it's boring. Lost cash flow. Yeah, terrible. We've got so much cash tied up in our death piles. Old versions of your business. Yeah. Especially if your death pile has years worth of stock in it, then it might be stuff that now you don't even buy anymore. You don't even want to list it because it doesn't fit your business model. Something uh that we've got down here. Your death pile is often a museum of who you used to be as a reseller, and that must apply to some of you. I'm not sure it quite applies to me because my death pile is not old enough for that. I've cleared through a lot of my old stock. My death pile goes back about the last six months, probably, so it's fairly relevant. But the death pile is something that is a massive trap, and it links in with the sourcing trap as well, doesn't it? Let me know. I mean, we kind of talked about death pile, but it's a massive problem, isn't it? Some people like having a death pile, and like Rachel was saying, she likes the comfort of having some level of stock behind her, and I think that's okay. But I guess the question is when is the death pile too big? Difficult one to answer. Only you can probably answer it for your own business. When is it too big? It's hard to say because we don't know how much you list in a day, we don't know how quickly you work through your stock, we don't know how much you need on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. We don't know how you source. There's so many questions for that that I can't answer it for you. But I think right now I'm kind of at the limit of what I want my death pile to be. It's kind of a six-month accumulation. Like some stuff I buy in and I get it listed straight away. Like I've listed some stuff today that only came in last week. Yeah, I've listed that and and let yeah, I've got six months worth of stuff out there. Why have I not why am I not listing that first? You kind of fall out with it, don't you? Like you've had the thrill of buying it, you've had the thrill of finding it, you've got the great deal that you believe you got and then the thrill's gone, hasn't it? Because now the real hard work begins. So you if you don't list it quickly, while it's on your mind, while it's fresh, the thrill's gone, hasn't it? And it becomes boring, it becomes stale. Yeah. You kind of fall out of you out of it, don't you? You fall out with it. You know what I mean? Or am I just talking absolute nonsense? Babs says, when eBay is quiet, I lose interest. If I have a good day, I get really enthusiastic. Yeah, that really does happen, doesn't it? But also d also, Babs, do you think that sometimes when you have a really good day, you can then get lazy, can't you? Because you think, well, sometimes you think I've done enough work, I've made enough money this week. You know, I've had a really good week, so I can take it, I can take my foot off the pedal a bit now, because I've had a good week. So maybe maybe I'll only list five things today. Because I did a really good week last week. So, you know, I can kind of be a bit lazy, I can do my own thing for a couple of days. You know what I mean? That can happen as well, I think. Ready, steady retro, dirty stock, excessive cleaning required. Yeah, this happens a lot as well when you buy wholesale clothing. You look at the stuff that's dirty and it gets put in a pile somewhere, doesn't it? It doesn't always get cleaned, and then it gets left, and yeah, that that can soon mount up as well. The only time that that doesn't happen with me is like because I list a lot of sports jerseys. If I get a load of jerseys in, if some of them are dirty, I normally immediately get them cleaned. I clean them immediately because actually I want to list the sports jerseys quickly, like your NFL, your NHL, and your NBA stuff. I normally, as I find dirty stock like that are jerseys, I normally clean them immediately, but other stuff can end up waiting for a long time. Secret Carpa, I wasn't reselling when COVID was here, but I bet a death pile helped then. Yes and no, Carpa, it depended a lot on what your sort of reselling strategy was. Like you could still you could still buy tons of stuff, like everyone was buying wholesale clothing during COVID, you know. You you could get stock delivered to your front door, and I had tons delivered. I I did not have a shortage of stock. I think initially, when COVID first started, I think there was a bit of panic. Like, how are we gonna sell? How are we gonna buy? And it soon settled down, and you just find a way. Life finds a way. Reselling finds a way. Jeff says the death pile is too high when and if it collapses, it could crush more than three people. Just three, not two. So if it crushes two people, is that okay, Jeff? Welcome, Les. Les on Facebook. Welcome, come and join us over on YouTube. Come on, come and join us. Uh Les says it's just waiting for a customer. True. Oh, Chris Tyler's got one here. The trap of buying something that you then subsequently dread packing. It happens so many times, Chris. You buy something, you think, yeah, this is a great deal. This is a bargain. And you get home and you think, why did I buy this? It's gonna be a nightmare to pack it. You remember that video last year at a boo sale? The guy convinced me to buy that bloody Mario gaming chair. It was way out of what I buy. I don't I can't be asked listing big things like that, but he gave me an offer I couldn't refuse. I ended up selling it. We we sold it to the neighbours across the way, Sue and Sarah, and they bought it off as they saw it and thought, yeah, I want that. So luckily, luckily, but I would have hated to have packed that. Yeah, and sometimes really like heavily breakable things. I sometimes wish I've not bought them. Richard Payne says, I bought a hundred items yesterday. It will be a faft to list, but good profit. I find I need to deal with that type of stuff soon after buying, or I will lose interest if I leave it. That's what I was saying, Richard. Like, you gotta deal with things quickly, and I'm the worst for it. Uh, I wish I could deal things a lot quicker, deal with things a lot quicker than I do. I tell you know what I do, and you this is another thing, I cherry pick. Like if like you there, Richard, if I had bought a hundred items, the first thing I'm doing is I'm gonna pick out a few bits, and I'm gonna say to myself, what's gonna get me my money back? And I'll cherry pick the best and most valuable items in that lot. I'll list those with the view that okay, I'm gonna get my money back on these, and the rest is profit. But the problem is the rest ends up sitting in the death pile or the profit piles or whatever. It ends up sitting in there, it doesn't come out for ages, so then you've kind of yeah, you might have listed enough to get your money back, but you've not listed your profit, and that's the worst thing, isn't it? Because your profit is sat doing nothing. Welcome to Noska. Noska says, I'm here now. You know me as guitar man and Les. Oh Les, welcome. Glad you could join us. And Bab says I definitely get incentives when I get sales. Yeah, okay, that's good. It's good though, innit? But you got list list list more, list better stuff, and then you get more sales, and then it will circulate upwards, won't it? List better stuff. Richard said COVID was the closest I ever got to clearing my death pile, and I still had lots left when boot sales reopened. Some of it I still have, and it's actually decent stock, but I never get to it. Yeah, definitely I'm with you on that one. Noska says, I do that, then you say that doesn't owe me anything. Yeah, I know, but that's your profit, though, innit, Nosuka. Like you're in this game to make a profit. So what you do is you first list your best items, and you say to yourself, I'm gonna put my money back on those. I'll list the rest later. Then you never list the rest, so you never make actually make any profit until you've got the rest of it listed. Stupid, really, isn't it? Flippin' Rich, welcome. Hello, first time listening live. Oh, welcome. That's brilliant, that thank you very much for joining us, Rich. Appreciate it. Okay, let's get on because I've got a lot more to get through. This is an interesting one. They're all interesting. The Soul Trader Forever Trap. This one really, right, this is a thinker. I'm not saying everyone should become a limited company, I'm not, yeah. I'm not saying everyone should be that registered, I'm not, yeah. Because, you know, that's a choice for every business. It depends where you want to go, it depends how much you're turning over and what your plans are for the future. But the trap here is to avoid the question completely. That's the trap. I've been facing that question for the last two years. I think at the end of the end of last year's Q4, the end of last year, last year's tax return, I was I was quite close to the 85k. I was I was question I was speaking to Aaron, QuickBooks chap. I was kind of seriously considering it. So I I definitely wasn't avoiding the question, and I'll face it head on in the future if it comes. But the trap is to just avoid it and not think about it. And some some resellers stay small because they're scared of VAT. Some people are scared of the company setup. I'm kind of in a little bit of the company setup thing and the VAT. I'm a little bit scared about going into it, but I'm I'm gonna do it if I have to, obviously. Some resellers are scared of proper bookkeeping, payroll if you've got staff and you want to pay them in as employees, separating personal and business money, hiring help, becoming too official, not sure about that, and crossing a turnover threshold like the VAT threshold. So I guess the key the key question is are you staying below that level because it suits your life or because the next level actually scares the shit out of you? That is it, isn't it? And for me, I'll be honest, it kind of suits me to do what I'm doing now. I can't I sit naturally under the VAT threshold. I'm I'm not throttling myself or anything, I'm just sitting naturally. The thing is, the way my business is set up is I work from home, all my storage is at home, everything I do is at home, so my outgoing costs are minimal, absolute bare minimal. So that means my profit margins can be bigger, and that means that when my turnover goes to 70, 80, 90k, it's never hit 90. But when my turnover goes up like that, I'm still making fairly healthy profit margins. Now, if you've got bigger expenses like storage and business rates, and maybe you've got an employee, your margins are gonna be much slimmer. So I can still afford to earn a decent wage, but not have to be VAT registered and not have to be a limited company yet. So that's where I sit. But I'm also if the time ever comes, and like if Belle decided that she was gonna come and join the business, we would be all in. We would go limited company, VAT registered because we would have to. Only because we would have to turn over twice what we turn over now to pay two wages. I would have to turn over 150k turnover, probably more because we'd have outside storage. I'd probably have to turn over 160, 170k in order for two of us to earn a average wage at the end of it. So in that case, we'd have to go all in. So I'm prepared for it, but also a little bit scared of it. I mean, staying small is fine if it's a choice, and for me right now, it's a choice. I'm naturally under it, but it becomes a problem if it's all about fear or if you dress it up. Like, be honest with yourself. Do you dress up the fear as it's your strategy? Is it really your strategy, or are you just afraid to make the next step? It's everyone's question, it's a question for yourself. I don't know. It's like many of these things are we're just being honest here. Ask yourself the question Do you naturally sit under it? Are you forcing yourself to sit under it? Are you curbing your own growth as a business? Because that's the trap. It's okay if it's your lifestyle and that's what you want. But if you are purposely avoiding it, there's a trap. That's what I think anyway. Flipping Rich, suppose the thing is if you cross the VAT threshold, you must smash through it. Absolutely, yeah. Not just cross over it by a few thousand, otherwise it's a pointless loss. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But it's whether you're willing to smash through it, or you just too scared to have a go, and that's the thing. The trap is being for me, I think the trap is being fearful of it and not wanting to have a go at it. I'm saying half. I mean, I would have to work a lot harder than what I'm doing now if I'm gonna smash through the VAT threshold. You have to now to make it even worthwhile, you've got to be going well over a hundredk turnover, like 110 probably to even make it worthwhile, and then even then, you're giving away a fair percentage. I'm I'm where I would have to work all hours, God sends, or change the way I work, change my business model completely. I'd probably have to go into replenishables, I would have to go into repeatables. That is something I wanted to do this year anyway, but right now I'm not there. But yeah, if if I was doing that, if I was doing replenishable, replenishables, repeatables, higher turnover, higher quantities, then yes, you can then break through the threat, the VAT threshold without issue. Krillin says our version of VAT, by the way, Krillin is in the US for those that don't know, is now collecting collected by eBay since the last five years or so. It's much better for us this way. We don't have to worry about different types of status. Oh, okay, Krillin. That's interesting. I didn't realise that. Hmm. Nosca says you have to weigh it up. I'm a pensioner and I have an accountant and I pay tax, but I do keep it low though, because I sell guitars, they move slowly, but I have hanging stock. I think you'll find to stay small and enjoy. Absolutely. I'm not saying that you have to go through it. I'm saying that if you are small, if it's if it like for you as a pensioner, it's a side hustle, really, isn't it? You know, you'll probably have a pension of some kind, even if it's just a state pension. So it becomes an extra income, doesn't it? An additional income. So in that case, it's absolutely fine to stay small. Definitely. Bab says, yes, staying below now to suit my lifestyle. If I was younger, I'm sure I'd be up there in the VAT bracket. Yeah, fair enough. Mr. Crummy says I dread packing, got a guitar hero drum kit, been sitting on my death pile for 12 months. I sold a guitar hero drum kit at a weekend at the boot sale for a fiver. It's worth way more than that. But for this reason, Mr. Crummy, couldn't be asked with it. I just could not be asked. I know you can break them down, can't you? But could not be bothered. Richard Payne says I'm naturally under the VAT at the moment. Have thought about it, but since moving last year, I have lots of projects in the house that need doing, so I don't have the time available to put the work in. Yeah, fair d'es. Fair dudes. Like I said, my situation is I'm naturally under it. I'm not close enough to kind of now that it's gone up a little bit, I'm not close enough to worry too much about it. But if Belle were to come into the business and we work together, we would definitely go limited, we would definitely register for VAT, and we would be all in because we would have to double our turnover because we both need to earn basically what I'm earning now. So we'd have to double everything, and maybe double and a little bit more to account for the fact that you've got extra VAT and you're probably gonna have an outside storage to pay for. So yeah, that's where I'm at. Let's go on to the next one because wow, we've been on an hour talking about traps. The YouTuber trap. Oh guys, the YouTuber trap, terrible people, those YouTubers. Right, okay. For the this I'm looking at this mainly from the point of view of resellers like me who actually make content as well. So the trap is that you start making content about reselling, and then slowly the videos become the business and the reselling just becomes a prop. You know what I mean? That's not me, by the way. Reselling is uh easily the priority in my business. The YouTube is the side hustle to the reselling, if you like. It's an additional income stream, a relatively small income stream compared to everything else that sells. So that's the trap, is uh unless you are uh really big and that uh YouTube income starts overtaking the reselling. Yeah. And so I've got here a few talking points buying video worthy stock instead of profitable stock, spending six hours editing instead of listing, doing lives like this, you know, filming every tiny little thing until your work becomes a theatre feeling the press this is big actually for us as resellers and YouTubers, feeling the pressure to find amazing items every week. You know what? Right, you guys just watching, you probably don't realise this, but there's a lot of pressure. Certainly, I feel it. Like when I'm out and about sourcing and I've got a camera on, I feel the pressure to buy stuff. Sometimes I buy things just so that I've bought some stuff for the camera, which is bad anyway, because that ends up in your death pile. You know, it's profitable, but ends up in your death pile, or sometimes you feel the pressure to find those amazing items, and most of the time you don't find amazing stuff. It's like very it's rare that you actually find something incredible. Well, I guess a viral video can pay the bills, actually. So that's not really right, is it? But I think what I mean when I say viral videos don't pay the bills is chasing a viral video doesn't pay the bills. You can try your best, like sometimes you make a what you think is a great video, you've got a hook, you've got an amazing find, there's a fight, something like that. Sometimes you can make a video and think this is gonna fly. You put a ton of time into it, and it doesn't fly, and you might make 20-30 pounds out of it out of YouTube revenue, but in all the hours spent making that video, what could you have made listing stuff and selling it on eBay? A lot more. It's a question I ask myself a lot about YouTube. You know, it's a trap. There's a only a very small number of people, and definitely in the reselling is such a small niche on YouTube that there's only a handful of people who are really amazing and like turning in the views. There's a handful. I can probably you can probably say less than one hand that are really turning in the money, making it potentially turning in more on videos than you do actually on reselling. And I guess you know, there's another there's another like ethical question in that as well, and that is that if you're a youtuber and a reseller and your YouTube is much bigger than your reselling, how how relevant is what you are putting out content-wise? If really what you're doing is you're just you're just trying to grow your YouTube channel to earn from it, which is all fine, all good. I would be there as well if I could. Like, I'd even ask myself this question like if I was on I'm talking about people, if you're on like 100k, like how much reselling can you actually be doing if you are turning over a channel that's got 100,000 subs? You'd be making a decent amount on that, like a pretty much a full time wage. So then how do you have time to actually do the reselling bit? Like, your channel would just become a highlight reel, wouldn't it? Because there'd be no need for you to. Put out, you know, your lower stuff, you know, going around the boot cell and picking up two things, you wouldn't even put it out, would you? Because you're such a big channel that your channel would become a highlight reel and not like a real life reselling channel, wouldn't it? That's kind of what I'm thinking. I don't know until I I would never get there, but I'm on I'm kind of stuck under the 20k mark on subs. It's just an interesting one. I I think about it a lot, this kind of stuff. Like how much time should I spend making videos, going live? I've cut back a lot, you know. You've probably noticed on the channel, and it's probably affected the number of subs that I'm on at the moment. I've cut back a lot because you have to put you have to weigh up the value that you're that is coming into the business from the time you spend making videos, six hours editing a video, or six hours buying and selling stuff. You have to weigh up where you put your time. You know, I ask myself these questions all the time. Maybe I wouldn't ask myself if I was really big, if I was 50 or 100k subs, maybe my business would go in a completely different direction. Emsden says making videos is a massive time trap, but we love making them, but it does have an effect on the business. It absolutely does, Emsden. Absolutely, yeah. It really does. And do you guys ever question? Like I said, I do all the time. I question how much time I'm spending on videos and YouTube. Do you guys ever question that? Noska says, I think you manage it quite well. I thought we might lose you when you went to WhatsApp, but I think it's great. I tried doing a month and that was enough. Fair enough, Noska, no problem. Yeah, but um, we've got the Discord now, so we don't do the WhatsApp anymore. Fluffy the Muffin, viral content doesn't build a reliable business. Yeah, that's true because what is what the content that is popular right now might not be popular next year. So I guess if you're a YouTuber and you're doing really well now, I guess you've got to really follow trends and like be aware of how things change in the YouTube world, what people are watching and what they're not. Like I change how what content I put out because you get that feedback with the number of views, and you start thinking to yourself, okay, if that if a video like that's only going to get me 500 views or a thousand views, then I can't put the time into that kind of video. So I'm going to focus on the videos that get me the most views and therefore the most ad revenue. Because once you get to a certain point on YouTube, whether it be a thousand subs or five thousand subs or ten thousand subs, you do get to a point where you start getting some kind of small re reward for your time. So the more you put into it, the more you have to say to yourself which things give me the best result. And of course, the ones that get you the most views, you you have to focus on those. And the ones that are viewed the least, I tend to like do less of. And I guess that's only natural. I don't know if you guys think that's quite a cynical way to make videos on a channel, but that's the reality of it. I can't spend six hours making a video that I know in the past has only got 200 views or 500 views. It's just not worth it. I love sharing a journey, but it has to have it has to have its place. You know what I mean? Uh flipping Rich said, I know a guy who started videos when I did and made it big with his boot sale videos on Facebook and TikTok. His whole business is now mainly that income, just has loads of stuff in storage. It works though. Yeah. That's good if it works. Rachel says, I'm guilty of spending six hours editing one video and not listing. We've all done that. All of us YouTubers have done that. Babs says, I wish I had the confidence to do YouTube. Anyone can do it, Babs. If you've got something interesting to share, anyone can do it. Keep dreaming big. No. The problem is, Rachel, right? If I really wanted to go like big, I'd have to sacrifice now my income. I'd have to sacrifice it because I'd have to spend I'd have to spend a lot more time making videos, putting maybe three videos out a week instead of one plus a live. I'd have to sacrifice income now in order to do it. I'd have to sacrifice time and income in order to achieve bigger viewing results and bigger subs. And I can't do that right now because when you're a sole trader, and you'll know as well, I can't sacrifice the now for what might happen in the future. And maybe that's a negative way to look at it. But I already put enough hours in. I put enough in already. Creating content is very long tail return, says Flippin' Rich. You have to put so much in for long for so long to reach a point where it then hopefully changes your life. Yep, a very long tail. Noska says, I think you get good feedback, but we get good info too. I've got to be honest, the last thing I want to do after three garboots is sit behind a camera. Exactly. And sometimes that is the same. I put it off. I put it off. Emsden UK, yes, we question it all the time, but we love the interaction with the people who watch the videos, and it keeps us from going insane by just listening and working all of the time. That's a fair point, isn't it? It's enjoyable as well. So, yeah, it's kind of a hobby, it's enjoyable. And if your hobby can bring in a little bit of extra money, that's something, isn't it? Uh Krillin said, I'm going to the city tonight for a private pick. Last time this guy had some game used player jerseys. Oh, very nice, Rob. Very nice. Best of luck. Let's go through. I've got loads of them on my list, but we're never going to get through it. I'm going to skip through because looking at the time, it's quarter past. We're done four, we're done, we've done an hour and fifteen. We're not even at a duck race yet, guys. And I also have something else to talk to you about. I'm going to skip through these last few. The social media trap. And this is different from YouTube, by the way. Social media feels like a business activity, but most of the time it's just death. Doom scrolling. You're going in social scrolling reseller groups, arguing about eBay fees, watching endless hauls. Please don't please carry on watching my endless hauls, by the way. Checking other people's sales, posting pictures and videos instead of actually listening, and doom scrolling on on TikTok. Social media is either a tool or it can be a time vampire. How many listings could you have done, say today? If you hadn't been scrolling on social media, you can get so distracted with it. You get so distracted. Bab says, all you do is scroll, hours of nothing. It's such a waste, isn't it? You get addicted to it though. TikTok, Instagram reels. Oh, there's so many times I think to myself, I'm just gonna delete this. What am I doing? Why am I spending an hour there doing this? I could have listed 20 items with you know, listing monster instead of scrolling through this crap. And it kind of moves on to the procrastination trap. We mentioned it before, someone mentioned it. This is probably the boss level trap. Resellers, we procrastinate everything all the time. I need better photos, I'll research it later, I'll sort out the stock room first, I'll start that on Monday. That's a good one, isn't it? I'm gonna start that on Monday. I just need to tweak this and do that. I'm gonna list the easy stuff first. Oh, I'm just waiting for some motivation. There's one, isn't there? We procrastinate, we get distracted, we find other things to do, we faff about, we faff about a lot. Like if I think to myself in a day of working, oh the procrastination trap is terrible. I'm a faff of me. I get distracted so easily. I've I've got down here, procrastination often doesn't look like doing nothing. It feels like you're doing something, but you're actually doing nothing. It's it's it's doing everything except the thing that actually matters. It's it's terrible, it absolutely kills you. Procrastination. We all do it. I think we all do it. Anyone here can honestly say during a day that they just get shit done and with very little procrastination. I get so distracted, whether it be doom scrolling, whether it be oh, I'll do this on Monday, or I'll put that in a pile over there and I'll do that later. Oh, I just I just procrastinate all day. Honestly, I think it's the boss level trap for resellers, and it such covers such a wide variety of things, things that stop us getting shit done. Another thing I had written down here was the scared of new things trap. It's a bit of a mouthful. The scared of new things trap. This this actually stops people growing massively, and I see this all the time. I see this on YouTube, I see that YouTubers who are resellers. This happens a lot. I see people talking about this in their own videos. Things that they are scared of doing things, and then it stops their growth, it stops them getting things done, and it stops them progressing as a business or a hustle, side hustle, whatever. You know, don't want to go on vintage pro, don't want to do whatnot, you know, don't want to do eBay live, I'm too scared of it. You know, I don't want to use AI, you know, cross-listing tools, scared of new things, scared of things that might actually help you. Uh, I don't want to sell internationally, that's one that I hear all the time. I don't want to buy wholesale because I'm scared of what I might get, that it might be rubbish. Yes, it might be, but you know, try. Try and see what happens. Trying a different niche, buying something different. The scared of new things trap, that's what I called it. There might be a better word or phrase for it. But I see it a lot. Like people often admit this without admitting it on their videos. I won't name names, I won't say who. I see it a lot. You know, everybody. I've probably done it myself, but oh, I'm not doing this because XYZ. Really? That's a trap. The reseller who refuses to learn new systems eventually becomes stock for the resellers who do. Yeah, I've always been the kind of person to be up for trying something new. When something new's come out, whether it be an AI tool or just AI itself, cross-listing tools, anything that's going to help my business do a do something better, quicker. New sites, new selling sites. I've always been ready to have a go. And I think that is really important that you don't fall into the trap of being afraid to have a go. That is a trap. Don't be afraid to have a go at something. I'm just going through, see if there's anything. We talked about the perfection trap before, trying to be 100% perfect. That can be a bit of a trap. The comparison trap, that can actually kill your momentum, can't it? Sometimes people compare themselves to bigger sellers, to YouTubers, to whatnot sellers, to people with warehouses, to people with staff, to people posting 500 pound flips. And that actually kills your momentum sometimes. It kills your motivation. Sometimes some people get motivated by that stuff. But a lot of people a lot of people get demotivated as well. When you compare yourselves to other people, you rarely see the bad buys, the big returns. I had a massive return today, guys. I had a 350 pound return today. It arrived back today. It absolutely killed my week for sales. It demotivated me. I knew it was coming back from last week. But yeah, I had a 350 pound return. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. So it's been relisted, it's brand new. So hopefully, if it sells again, that money will come back in the future. But it's a killer, isn't it? But you don't see, you don't always see those things on like YouTube and Instagram and stuff and TikTok. The big returns, the taxes, the dead stock that we're not dealing with, the debt that some people have, burnout. It's real. Fake confidence. You know, sometimes behind these people, people look confident online. They look confident when they're doing YouTube and stuff. Not everybody is. It's a bravado. And other people doing work off camera, you forget that. Some people have teams behind them. So you're comparing yourself to them, but in reality, they're not doing all the work. So there's that one. I'm just looking through the rest of my list. And I think I think the last one I'll focus on is the burnout trap. I think this is massive. Some resellers are stuck because they're absolutely knackered. They're not lazy, they work their ass off. They're working a lot of hours and they end up with burnout. A self-employed life actually can be sourcing at weekend, listing weekdays, packing in an evening, constantly on social media, making YouTube videos, making content, doing your accounts. And it ends up with burnout. You've had enough. Often we'll have a few days out when it when that point comes where you've had enough, or you know, you work your ass off and then you go on holiday and try and relax. But burnout is real. Burnout is a big trap. I'm not quite sure how you combat it other than try to work differently. Maybe, maybe if you keep, if you repeatedly go into burnout, you have to look at, I think, what you are, how you work, what you sell, and how you sell it, your processes. I think that if you repeatedly hit burnout, then there's something going wrong in there somewhere. And maybe it's time to change how you work or what you sell. You know what I mean? That's kind of my view. But correct me if you feel that I'm wrong in that. But I kind of feel that if that was me, I don't often go into burnout, to be honest. I try to give myself quite a lot of as much as possible time of not working and chilling out and doing stuff. We've just had four or five days. I've just had four or five days going away and doing stuff with Bell and road trip time, and we had fun. So I feel like I give myself as much of that as possible. But yeah, if you if you're repeatedly getting into burnout, I think you have to look at one of those things. And ultimately, you can't scale your business if that's what you want to do. If if you keep getting into burnout, it just doesn't work, does it? That's something has to change. There you go, that's what I've got. You guys have been great. I'm gonna look through the chat and see if anyone else has got any traps that we missed. Thank you, Noska, for joining us. Let's see here if we've got any more. Yeah, Bab says you've got to take a gamble. Yeah. I think in reselling, like you do have to gamble sometimes, don't you? You have to take a chance on a lot of things, whether it be stock or something else. Try something new. Don't be afraid to try something new. It might work out, it might not, but at least you tried, you gave it a go. Def Leopard said it's better to burn out than to fade away. I don't know. Did he say that, Jeff? I'm guessing he did if you said he said that. Is it better to burn out than to fade away? What do you mean fade away completely? Interesting. I don't know if it is better to burn out than fade away. It probably is. But I don't really get it. Unless you take it literally. So there you go, guys. Though those are my reseller traps. Make of it what you will. I hope you found it interesting. Yeah, drop a comment. If you're watching this back or you're listening to this and you want to let me know what your big reseller trap is, just pick one, like pick the main one that sticks out in your head. Drop a comment. Drop a comment in this video on YouTube and let me know what your big reseller trap is. Oliverine said it's a lyric. Yeah, I understand it's a lyric in a song. I know that much, but I don't know if I agree with it. I understand it's a lyric. Jesus. Death Leopard, of course, it's a lyric, but didn't really get the reference. And maybe I'm missing it. I need your help, guys. I need your help. I'm start well, I'm hoping to start, fingers crossed. I'm hoping to start a new series on the channel. Nobody's ever done this before. It's never been done. It's gonna be CBC's. That's car boot, Chris. CBC's that's flipping news. That's my pilot title. And I'm gonna run, I'm gonna do a pilot episode just to see if it's any good or not. If it doesn't do very well, probably won't carry on with it. If it does well, might do another one. But it's gonna require a lot of work for every single episode. But this is where I need your help, guys. So basically, what I want to do is I want to kind of pull together like a roundup of hopefully funny, amusing, or interesting bits from different reseller YouTube resellers from their videos. I'm gonna bring it all together as like a news report kind of. Like a news report. That's flipping news. That's that's my working title. So I want to what I can't do is watch every single video out there made by resellers. There's too much content. I might have been able to do that five years ago, but not anymore. So I need your help in this. If you watch a video, or if you even make a video yourself, you can self-refer. And you think that something funny happens, something dramatic happens, something worthy of that flipping news by carboot Chris, then please send me a message. Send me a message, and ideally tell me, give me the link of the video and the timestamp of roughly when it happens. And if you guys can send me clips now and again, I've asked the guys in the Discord as well, then that's gonna help me massively because I'll it will help me pull together an episode. I don't know how many like clips or pieces of news it's gonna take to make one episode. It depends how long they are and stuff, but I'm gonna need a fair bit of content if I'm going to carry it on on a regular basis. Once I've done one or two videos, I'm hoping people will comment on those with other potential clips. But yeah, please keep it in your mind, right? When you're s when you're watching videos on the tube, if you see something funny, amusing, or you see something that like has a cli has a clip or some wording that could be framed as funny, you know, then please drop me a line in some way, send me a message and tell me about it. Because that's what I want to do with that's flipping news. That's what Jeff says, is your show going to be comedy or weird happenings? I I want it to be a bit of everything, a bit like a news report, Jeff, where you have the light-hearted bits, you know. Oh, and this is an example, non-reselling example, you know, like on the news where you might have something really dramatic. Someone has a fight and it's caught on camera, or and then the next news report is a load of little ducklings crossing the road, and then the next report is it's Granny's 105th birthday, and she's the oldest woman in North Carolina. It's that is that's flipping news, it can be drama, it can be funny. I want to frame it in a very light-hearted way. Maybe I'll take things out of context just for fun, but that's what it will be, just for fun. Okay I'm not known for my comedy, but I thought I'd have a go. So if you see something, please, and you think it might be worthy of putting on an episode, please send me a message and let me know. Otherwise, it's gonna be very hard for me to carry on because I just cannot cover enough content, and there's a lot of procrastination there, and that's a trap, remember. There you go. Before we carry on, I need to say a massive, massive thank you to all our members, all our VIP members, all names going across the screen at the bottom. We have over 60 members at the moment. It's$2.99 a month. Please, if you do decide you want to sign up, please do it via a desktop rather than an iPhone. iPhone will charge you extra. It will be$3.99 on an iPhone,$2.99 on a desktop. It's less than a Greg's coffee, and you get to join our lovely little Discord group with lots of fellow resellers and non-resellers in there. A really lovely group of people. We chat about reselling and non-reselling stuff, we help each other out where we can. And I appreciate everybody who signs up as a member. And if you click the button underneath the video, it says join. You can find out a bit more about what the benefits are, and then you can decide. Maybe you just want to come along for one month, that'd be$2.99. And it helps support the channel, it helps me do stuff above and beyond that's normal. We send out prizes, we buy prizes in for the duck races. It all helps to pay for those, and it helps me put out more content like what I'm gonna do, hopefully, with that's flipping news. So thank you everybody for being a member. I really do appreciate everybody's support. Exactly, Jeff, exactly that. The bit in afterlife when they interview the lady who turns 100. Exactly, yeah. Rachel's awkward bias. Yeah, don't worry, I've got a couple of couple of things from Rachel's channel, which I'll I will I will ask permission of everybody who I include content from, by the way. You know, some people might not want me to use it. Send messages where you can do Facebook, you can email me, email in the description, you can send a message on Instagram, anywhere I'm contactable, you can do any of that stuff. You can WhatsApp me if you go to carbootch.com down here, where is it? If you go to carbootch.com, my WhatsApp numbers on there, you can WhatsApp me if you want. Yeah, like Andrew falling over that kind of stuff. And this will be the 208th duck race. Thank you, not the mama. Oh, I know why you've done that, Jeff. Because of the video that was before. It's constantly changing names, it's hard to keep up. Ready, Steady Retro. Sounds like a great idea. Wishing lots of luck. Oh, thank you very much, Paula. Appreciate that. As I say, I'll make one episode and see how it does. If it does terribly, then you might never ever see it again. That's what happens. I really want to do something different. I've really been looking for ages and thinking of something that is a bit different to do on YouTube. Seems to be that everyone's just doing the same kind of content, and I feel like this could be something different. Maybe it'll just be absolutely shit and pointless. But like I say before, never be afraid to try something new. Never be afraid. That's a trap when you get when you're afraid to try something new. That's a trap. Anyway, I think we are ready for the duck race, and again, a big shout out to Rachel Fantastic, who is donating tonight's duck race prize, which is a duck bucket hat, the much sought after. It's the the Summers must-have accessory for the car boot sales. The duck bucket hat. It doesn't get much better than that. And she's gonna send it out directly to the winner. So thank you so much. Right, let's get ready for this duck race. Let's see. Just give me a minute, guys. If you're listening, just give me a second. I'm working on my own this evening on today's podcast. Uh uh-uh-uh uh oh, in other news, this I'm working on do you remember me and Belle did the eBay song during lockdown when we were all going nuts? We made an eBay song we put it out on YouTube. Do you remember that? Well, I've written I've written another song. Kind of. I've written another song. I'm thinking about recording it and putting it out and looking like a complete 47-year-old dickhead. But I've done it, I've written it, I'm happy with the lyrics, but now I've just gotta pluck up the courage to put it out there. It might never see the light of day, but it's done. I just gotta pull it together. Okay, anyway, I'm procrastinating. This is what happens, it's a trap. Let me just get ready for the duck race. Two minutes on the clock. Do it, says ready steady. Yeah, everyone's gonna say do it because they wanna see me look like an idiot. These things stay on the internet forever. That's the problem. I probably will do it though. I spent a lot of time I spent a lot of time writing it and tweaking it. Right. I've forgotten how to start the duck race. Hang on a minute. Share screen. That was a bit I was forgetting how to do. Okie doke. Right, we are shared. We need a release date. Now I'm not giving any date just yet because it's gonna take a lot of time to make it. Just to put it together. So we'll see. Okay, we're ready for the duck race, guys. I think we had about 50 ducks, maybe 50 ducks in the race today. And let's pull a funny face while we move across. Okay, I'm gonna shuffle those ducks. Two minutes on the clock. And they're off. The ducks are out of the traps. It's a trap. No, it's not, it's a duck race. Titch is taking an early lead with Sarah B. Sarah B is up front now. Pixel Fix close in second. Karen verse, speed foot flips, Demise family's up there as well. Karen Vise is leading with the King Duck. Sarah B is second with the judge. And Pixel Fix is third. Titch is fourth. Angel Delight coming up top with a naked duck and Lazy Jane in the middle there with a bee beater. Netespresso through the middle, and it's a very tightly packed race. You can barely read people's names. Netespresso now leads the duck race with the bear duck. And towards the back of the pack, Jeff Davis. We've got Chris Tyler, Dizzy J, Lin Lynn, all towards the back. Rachel Fantastic is dropping out. Thank God it's her prize today. She doesn't want to win her own prize, or maybe she does to save herself postage. Angel Delight leading with a naked duck, Dorothy Watkinson now with the alien duck. And it's all very, very close as per user with a minute left on the race. AMPR is up there for Andy Bentos. Jeff Davis coming back through the middle. Ian G as well there. Close Mark Hill at the bottom there. Mark Hill's still battling COVID. And Ian G is leading with a punk duck. We've got Lynn Linn at towards the bottom Titch and Pixel Fix are still hanging about. Cloud9 and allotment looks like they're out of this. They are floundering at the back. Absolutely no chance of winning. Dizzy J takes a lead with the purple heart duck. And Jamie D's up there as well. Angel Delight keeps threatening to go forward. Tracy Davis in the middle of the pack. Right. Here we go. 15 seconds left on the race. And the pack splits. Ian G, pixel fix. Jamie D all close at the front. Fred Andy Bentos has dropped out. Who knows who's going to win this? We've got no idea. It could be anyone's race. Rosie Marsden's up there. Dizzy J takes the win. Dizzy J wins it. Dizzy J wins the duck race. The 200 was it 208th duck race. Dizzy J is the winner. There you go. Dizzy J. Thank you very much. Is Dizzy J in? If you are here, please send me a message. If you're watching back or listening, send me a message somewhere in my carboot Chris world. Send me a message. Tell me what your address is and where Rachel Fantastic will send you the prize directly. I don't think, unfortunately, Dizzy J is in like Antarctica or something. But pretty sure they're in the UK. Lucky you, Rachel. And there we go. I don't think I don't think Dizzy J is here. But well done to you. I'm sure they'll contact me soon. And that is this week's duck w duck waste. Duck waste. That is this week's duck waste on. What is not the mama talking about? Forever, not really. It will only stay on the internet. Oh, right, until the sun exhausts its supply of hydrogen and then swells to engulf the inner planets and then it will be gone. That's basically forever. That's how long stuff will stay on the internet. So be careful what you put out there. Thank you, Rachel. Appreciate the prize. I'll let you know as soon as I've got an address for that one to go to. Is Dizzy J in? I don't think so. I'm not don't recall seeing Dizzy J's name. Well, that's it, guys. We are pretty much at the end of today's podcast. It's lasted an hour and 45. Wow, you lot have been a glutton for punishment this week. Thank you all for taking part. I appreciate everyone for joining in the chat and talking about your traps. Don't forget, if you've got a reselling trap that's particularly poignant to you, please drop a comment here on YouTube. Not only will it be interesting for me to read your comment, but also it will get you into next week's duck race. And hopefully, Belle will be back next week and joining us again once she's done a week in her new job. So thank you everybody. We're gonna finish off. We're gonna finish off with Chris's final thought for tonight's show. And here it is. Well, today's podcast shows it. Most resellers don't get stuck because of eBay fees or bad boot sales. They get stuck in traps, procrastination, comfort zones, distractions, and the fear of trying new things. The ones who grow are usually the ones willing to adapt, to take action, to keep moving forward. So take care of yourself and each other. That's it for today's episode. Don't forget to like or make a comment. I always reply to comment. And if you're on YouTube, hit the subscribe button. If you're on one of the audio channels, hit the download button, and we'll see you next time.