Goodtrepreneur
Good people with good ideas for a better world
The podcast for people interested in ideas, innovation and creativity to create a better world.
Speaks to the creators of brands, nonprofits, communities and more whose core purpose is to to help solve an environmental or social problem.
A must-listen for anyone thinking of starting a purpose-led organisation or simply wanting to enjoy some good news in the world of sustainability.
Goodtrepreneur
Community as the antidote to consumerism. Andrew Valder, Barbara 'Babs' Gill & Barry Du Bois on how community and connection make the Garage Sale Trail Australia's #1 day of reuse. Episode 3.
How much stuff have you got in your life? Go on, count it in your mind…
Every book, pot and pan, every sock and pair of jeans. The couch, the stuff behind the couch. And so much more.
According to the LA Times, the average US home contains around 300,000 items. Most of us don’t need most of it, but we still buy more, using up our home planet’s resources in the process.
For 10 years the Garage Sale Trail has been swapping consumerism for community and making it more fun to buy second hand than new.
In this episode we speak to Co-Founder Andrew Valder, GM Barbara Gill and long time supporter, trail lover and TV legend ❤️ Barry Du Bois about:
👯 The power of community to drive sustainability
💥 How sparking creativity sparks change
👕 Barry's awesome idea for tracking which clothes you wear and which you don't
👩💼 Working with local councils to create Australia's biggest day of fun and reuse
😁 Why getting rid of your old stuff is even more rewarding than getting new stuff
Want to know more? Here's what AI had to say after we gave it a listen...
Ever wondered what happens to all that stuff accumulating in your home? With the average US household containing a staggering 300,000 items, our consumption habits have reached unsustainable levels – if everyone lived like Australians, we'd need four Earths to support us.
The Garage Sale Trail offers a brilliantly simple solution that transforms waste into opportunity and strangers into neighbours. What began as a small community initiative in Bondi Beach has evolved into Australia's largest secondhand event, helping millions of people buy and sell pre-loved items while creating meaningful connections.
Co-founder Andrew Valder, GM Barbara Gill, and longtime champion Barry Dubois share the remarkable story behind this movement that's changing how Australians think about consumption. Their conversation reveals how a "glorious accident" became a nationwide phenomenon that's kept mountains of useful items out of landfill while addressing social isolation.
The magic isn't just in the environmental benefits – it's in the stories. A Barbie camper van purchase leads to an ongoing friendship between neighbours who would never have met otherwise. A woman regularly spots her neighbour wearing the favourite jeans she sold her. A man finds a vintage bicycle identical to one from his childhood, creating an unexpected bond with the seller. These connections form the true heart of the Garage Sale Trail experience.
The initiative has become a catalyst for creativity and community building, with participants giving their sales unique names, creating themed displays, and turning transactions into celebrations. Perhaps most remarkably, about one-third of shoppers had never previously bought secondhand goods, showing how the Trail is shifting consumer behaviour by making secondhand shopping fun, social, and rewarding.
Ready to join the movement? Mark your calendar for November 8-9 and 15-16, and discover the treasures – both material and relational – waiting just down your street. Visit garagesaletrail.com.au to register your sale or find trails near you.
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I'm gonna change this world today, make those bad things go away, hey.
Ben:Just give me those levels one more time.
Andrew:One more time.
Ben:One more time. Okay, here we go. How much stuff have you got in your life? Go on, count it in your mind Every book, pot and pan, every sock tea and pair of jeans, the couch, the stuff behind the couch. According to the LA Times, the average US home contains around 300,000 items, and in the UK the average child earns 238 toys but plays with just 12. With so much stuff in the world, chances are, whatever you want, there's already one in someone's drawer, wardrobe, cupboard or garage somewhere. But how do you find it?
Ben:The Garage Sale Trail is on a mission to make it more fun and rewarding to buy secondhand than to buy new. Started in Sydney's Bondi Beach in 2010, it's helped millions of people buy and sell mountains of clothing, sporting goods and other stuff that might otherwise have gone to landfill. It's also Australia's biggest day of community, creating connection among the half a million people who hit the streets every year. With me to talk about it are co-founder Andrew Valder, gm Barbara Gill and long-time champion and participant Barry Dubois. Hello everyone. G'day. Hello Ben. Hi there Ben. So Babs stuff a lot of us have too much of it, yet as a society, we keep buying more. Why is that a problem?
Babs:Yeah, so look, Australians are amongst the biggest consumers of stuff in the world we're second only to the US and every single new item requires energy, it requires water, it requires raw materials to make it. In fact, there's a really shocking statistic that if we all lived like we do in Australia, we'd need four earths to sustain our use of materials. So really, at GarageSailTrail, we're about talking to the fact that there's a simple solution here. If we all just extend the life of the stuff we have by reusing it, repairing it, repurposing it, we're making the most of those raw materials and energy to create things.
Ben:So Garage Sale Trail as an idea. What is it, how does it work and how does it start to solve that problem?
Babs:So Garage Sale Trail it's a national movement. Really. That's about helping people declutter, make some cash and avoid putting stuff in the bin just by selling it. We run a nationwide campaign from September. That's really about galvanising Australians to either sell or shop secondhand over two big weekends. If you're selling, you get a listing on our website. It's a bit like a modern day version of the old classifieds you saw in movies like the Castle, and people have heaps of fun with it.
Babs:They give their sale a name. We've seen sale names like it's a Divorce. My favourite being a child of the 90s, of course is Honey. I Sold the Kids, so people really go to town. They have loads of personality setting up their listing. If you're shopping, you go onto our website to find an interactive map. You search for what's happening locally, build a trail and really it's about making it easier for people to buy and sell secondhand. You could have a garage sale at any point in the year, at any weekend, but what's special about garage sale trail is you're all doing it together and by doing that you're making a really big impact.
Babs:Yeah, so you say that it's keeping stuff out of landfill as such, do people throw away stuff that is already useful? Do you think I mean if we entered that sort of society where, oh, I know it's useful, but it's too hard to find a new owner?
Babs:Yeah, I think we absolutely have. Like what we find when we talk to people that do garage sale trail is as much as 40% of the stuff they're selling would have gone in the bin otherwise. So absolutely, people become very throwaway.
Ben:Wow, 40%. Yeah, that's nuts.
Babs:Yeah.
Ben:So people are literally throwing out, or it's still good stuff out there.
Babs:Yeah, absolutely
Ben:What do buy and sell. ?
Babs:What don't they Ben? Pretty much anything and everything is listed on the trails of clothing, tools, gardening equipment, books. The Jenny Kee jumper I'm wearing right now was bought on the trail. But what we love to see every year is the weird and the wonderful that gets unearthed from cupboards, sheds and garages around Australia. We've seen a handmade coffin. We've seen real costumes that ballet dancers have worn for the WA Ballet. But my favourite of all and this one's really kooky the ultimate multi-purpose tool the barbecue toilet.
Ben:Wow, tell me more about this and how it works.
Babs:Look, it's a very useful device when you go camping, because you can both cook your meat and do your business Really.
Ben:You may want to do this only once.
Babs:I'm going to say that one didn't sell.
Ben:Right, but it makes for a good social media post right.
Andrew:That's a niche market.
Ben:Very niche market. So, Barry, I'm going to throw to you look, we already have charity stores like Vinnie's and like buying and selling is nothing new as such in this world, you know, but you're you're both an ambassador but, more importantly, a long time participant. So what makes it in your opinion is essentially just as an everyday person who this sprung up in Bondi, originally in your suburb. Why has it been so successful in bringing a whole new world to secondhand, where we already had things to do secondhand?
Barry:Yeah, for me it's not about the business, it's not about the consumption or even the sustainability, it's about the simple human connection. You can walk around your neighborhood. I love what Babs said about the themed sales. You can learn about people's personality as you walk up to the store. It's like you've opened the forward of a book. You can work out who these people are and you can like them before they even talk or be interested in them before they even talk. And to me there's nothing more powerful than human connection. So to be able to wander around my streets, my local streets, and talk to people about something they've purchased they may have purchased it from a garage sale truck and you learn so much about people and to me that's what gives me purpose is meeting people, being more curious about their personality and their drivers. So for me it's all about connection.
Ben:So you can literally see what that person's like by looking at what they're selling.
Barry:We definitely get a snapshot, don't you? I mean, as you say, I've got a great little story. When my daughter was about six, we saw the Barbie camper van, which in Barbie world is a pretty cool thing to have, and the lady who was selling it was her daughter's, who's now married. We bought that and that struck up a relationship with someone who lives eight houses down on the other side of the road. Never would have met them because of this.
Barry:Out of that, we find out that they have two daughters. Both the daughters are married. One lives overseas, one lives in a state have two daughters both the daughters are married one lives overseas, one lives in a state and they got to see Arabella my daughter's reaction to the Barbie camper van, which was the same reaction that their daughter had. So that transaction, if you will, was able to. They get to relive the beautiful moment. They purchased that for their daughter and they could see in my daughter's face the joy that she was about to have for the next close to it was about seven years before we let it go.
Andrew:And reclaim that little space in the house that the Barbie camper van took up.
Barry:It was the bane of my life, that thing, because it's gigantic. And I said, babe, I reckon it's time we moved the Barbie camper on, because it's an Airbnb in Bondi.
Andrew:I've had that exact experience with my fellow co-founder, Darryl Nichols, when he had a whole bunch of kids' toys and he was having a garage sale and I drove up with my kids and basically he just forced all these toys that he no longer wanted that had been filling up their house for however long and obviously my kids were delighted but I could see the equal delight on his face. There was a minor transaction involved, but that was kind of secondary to.
Barry:I've just got this space back in my life it's interesting how you see it and how I see it, because I wasn't seeing it like that For me. I'm a mental health advocate, I'm on the board of directors of RUOK Day as well, and I know the importance of connection. What meant so much to me, both in the purchase of that and letting it go to the next person, was the simple fact that you might not have journaled that day when your daughter at age eight got that thing. And then, 15 years later, you get to remember that precisely as you remembered it. You know what I mean.
Barry:It's like you're getting to look back at your life through someone else's life. We have a fantastic connection. I mean, we're not at each other's dinners parties every week, but we how are the girls? I start off most of my conversations with that neighbour as howl at the girls. What are the girls up to? And, as it happened, I let him know that we were going to put the Barbie camper up for sale and he let his daughter know to see if they wanted to come and see it and be part of it. The ripple effect for me and the benefit to community of that is just you can't buy that.
Ben:No, you can't, You've got a similar story, Babs, about a pair of jeans. Is this true? I?
Babs:Sure do. Look, we've got so many stories that we've heard over the years, and this is a great one. We heard about this lady at a garage sale locally here in Sydney and she sold her favourite pair of jeans to a neighbour. But the best of the story was hearing about how whenever she sees her neighbour on the street, she's seeing her wearing her old pair of jeans I mean, one of my favourite.
Babs:I mean, I'm a sucker for an intergenerational friendship. You know that's what like some of the real magic that happens on the trail, because these are friendships that wouldn't have been forged otherwise. And there was this awesome story about these two young bucks, back from a night out hadn't gone to bed wandering through the streets past some garage sales, and this older lady took them in, redressed them, gave them a whole new look and a new friendship was formed, a friendship that would never have happened otherwise. And you know there's some scary data out there about how lonely we are as Australians, and Baz will know this much better than me, but it's something like one in three, I think, barry, that feel lonely at some point in their lifetime.
Barry:And as an add-on to that statistic is that a month of loneliness is the equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day. Wow, the physical health result of that sort of loneliness can take you to a really bad space, as well as a really dark space in your own mindset.
Barry:Yeah, if you think about what are some of the joys of Garage sale trail, but just having a garage sale. For me it's just sitting out in the front of your house, slowing down, not thinking of your list of things to do that's as long as your arm but just sitting out in the front of your house, hanging out and talking to people who come up to whatever it is that you're selling and, as you say, baz, creating that connection that you otherwise wouldn't have with those people.
Barry:And the connection has an incredible ripple effect. I mean, I've been introduced not on my street, on a street on the way to our cafe, to a friend of that person. This is the guy who brought the Barbie camper. Yeah, you know, they've discussed this at a dinner party and then, by chance, you get to meet that person. The ripple effect of that connection is so powerful. What a legacy.
Andrew:What a legacy.
Barry:It is a legacy.
Barry:The more connected we are, the more powerful, the stronger our community is, and I know you have as well, Ben. We've got young children in my opinion for so long, particularly went through that period of the 80s where it was all about consumption. We disconnected terribly with social media. To an extent we're disconnecting again and that is weakening our society. Connection human connection makes powerful individuals weakening our society. Connection human connection makes powerful individuals. Powerful individuals make a strong society and it's a strong society where my children will thrive in a strong society. In a weak society, we'll all be weaker.
Ben:So we've looked at a few things here. Obviously, like when I read about Garage Sale Trail, some of the stats you throw out are the three quarters of a million items bought and sold just last year alone. It's been going for 16 years. 40% of those could have gone into landfill, or 41% people say that could have gone to landfill. So fundamentally we begin the story with an environmental benefit, but it very quickly rolls into actually a community benefit that we want to know each other.
Ben:And of course, there's the declutter benefit. I want that spot back that the massive Barbie bus has taken up and, as you said, you know the smile on the face of the person selling it is almost bigger than the smile on the face of the person buying it. And then you get some money too. So there's all these benefits and what I'm always interested in is what makes a good idea a good idea. Which of these things truly drives this? Because it has been massively successful in its flagship cause of creating environmental benefit. But it sounds to me like we're creating that benefit through other benefits and perhaps that's not top of people's mind when they get involved.
Babs:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're right, it's good for your wallet, it's good for the planet, but honestly, the real power of it, it's really fun. There's a few other factors we make it easier. Anyone can do it. It doesn't matter if you live in a unit or you have a house or you're at a school or a community group. It's easy for anyone to do. It's social. That's definitely part of it. As you mentioned, it's really rewarding. So you're getting something back, whether that's that connection or it's decluttering or it's a bit of money. But I think people want to do something about waste but they don't know how to. They're not sure where to start. So it feels good, but really the magic sauce for me is fun, it's the fact that it's like a festival. It's all happening at the same weekends. You're joining together with hundreds of thousands of Australians and it's super fun.
Andrew:and whether that fun might be that you get to meet your neighbour and have a chat, or the fun might be that it's this fantastic little microcosm of self-expression.
Babs:Yeah.
Andrew:So that people go to town on their sale names, they go to town on their signage. They might bake, they put a playlist together, they get dressed up. You see little kids' bands playing around and I really the lemonade stands. The lemonade yeah, they're an incredible part of it.
Andrew:Yeah, you just see that self-expression and I think there's something. The funny thing about a garage sale is that there's something in it for everyone, whether it's wanting to connect with another human, which is the fundamental thing, of course, in life, or whether it's to express yourself and be a part of something, whether you're sitting in a cul-de-sac feeling like you're by yourself, but you know that you're a part of a couple of hundred thousand Australians on that weekend who are buying and selling at garage sales across the country.
Barry:It's really important. It doesn't matter if you want to be a sustainability advocate, if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to clear up some space in your house, if you just want to refresh your life. The hardest step you're going to take is the first step and I believe and as a participant, what makes it so successful is these guys have made that first step so easy. I want to be a sustainability advocate. Okay, all I've got to do is go online, put in the things I've got for sale, my themes, all these things. You make that first step easy. And once you've got that first step, and then you make your first connection. The next thing we've got in front of us is momentum, and it's just for me, as someone who's I come around in September and join the crew, don't I? I mean a little bit earlier I helped with social media. It's something I really believe in. But I've watched this thing grow incredibly and I think about, like you said, that first garage sale trail in Bondi.
Barry:A lot of people were really nervous about it. A lot of people were thinking, oh, you don't want people seeing what you've got and what if you don't? You do all this work and you don't sell it. The guys made it really easy to attempt something you've never tried before. What that does is give everybody that tries that a little bit more resilience, because they learnt into something a little bit difficult and they realise that wasn't just easy, that was fun. And look, there's my jeans going down the street that haven't fit me for three years.
Ben:Because you had too many of the lemonades.
Barry:I'm not talking about me
Barry:Speaking for a friend, can I say something? I learned this literally over the weekend. I was amazed about it. You know, when you buy a car, about it. You know, when you buy a car, you use it 5% of the time of its life and 95% of the time it sits in a garage. When I heard that and I knew we were going to chat about this and I thought I wonder what percentage a pair of jeans get used or that t-shirt that's your favorite t-shirt that you never wear because you don't want to wear it out, and too often we see things that are thrown away that aren't worn out at all. Like I said, that Barbie camper. It seems to be the star of this chat. It's still going around the country. It's fantastic. New set of tires maybe. Well, it's all plastic, so it doesn't deteriorate, unfortunately, and that's another reason why this is so cool.
Ben:I actually heard a stat on that with clothes that you have to wear something 30 times for it to have been valuable, to have been made to start with, before you start to make the embodied like water, carbon, et cetera worth having done. Yeah, and look, I started looking at that in my own wardrobe and going what have I actually worn 30 times? And it's quite surprising how much you haven't.
Barry:Yeah, a great little tip on my show, the Living Room. We talked about this a lot and I do it at home. So all the hangers, the hook faces me when I wear it. I face the hook the other way
Andrew:Do you really
Barry:yeah
Andrew:Wow
Barry:At the end of the year. If there's any hooks facing me, they're in the garage sale trail
Babs:Wow
Andrew:Alright
Ben:Gee
Barry:Yeah, I don't know if this is the point to bring it up, but the most exciting thing that's happened to me thanks to garage sale trail was the fact that there's an amazing artist, Paul Ryan. I don't know if you remember this.
Babs:Yeah, of course.
Barry:And he's been in the Archibald many times, award-winning painter, just amazing work. But his understanding, or his philosophies on life, saw it that he didn't want to be creating new canvases. So he goes to garage sale trails, to council throwouts, to even tips, and he finds artworks and he uses that canvas for his canvas. And in honour of Garage Sale Trial, he did a portrait of me and my name is Dubois. Last name, dubois in French means of the woods, and he said he saw this picture which is a forest setting, and he said that's Dubois. I'm going to paint Dubois on that painting. And he gave me that. Yeah, at the Australian Museum, new South Wales Art Gallery, new South Wales Art Gallery. Just an incredible piece. And again, human connection, reuse has created an amazing ripple effect. I mean, everybody that comes into my home looks at that painting and we talk about recycling, we talk about how this guy reached out to me because he saw my name in a painting and wanted to put my face in it. It's incredible, it's an incredible thing.
Ben:So that's. I mean we talked before about sustainability or waste community, but it seems creativity is actually a big thing, do you think? As a society, we're all kind of slightly terrified to express ourselves and then, as you said, this gives you this slightly fear moment. Will I look a little bit crazy? But then I realise everyone else is doing it. So you almost create this collective ability for everyone to have permission almost to express themselves.
Barry:Around my little area. There's a little triangle there and if you're not having a garage sale trial, you're the odd one garage sale trail, you're the odd one out. And again, I don't want to take control of the mic, but, um, I what we do now because my kids just love it and yeah, that's my friend from school, that and these are how friendships form. So now what we do is there's three or four of us, I've lost track, but um, it'll be at one of the group's place each year. So last year for me it was in Concert.
Barry:The last one we did was in Concert Avenue but there was people from two other addresses coming to that. They've got the big double car carport. Big street fringe had all the makings of a great sale and it was between two cafes. So we knew we were going to, we're going to get get them and we were able to bring a lot of different types of stuff into the one carport. And yeah, my wife always bakes for those sorts of things and other people bring their personality into it. So the next minute you've got this one carport with three or four different personalities thriving in it.
Ben:How many sales are group sales Babs?
Babs:About 20% of them. So we get 15,000 sales a year. About 20% of those are street parties or, you know, big community groups hosting sales.
Ben:Right, so it does show the importance of community.
Babs:And getting more and more. They're getting bigger and bigger, those ones, that's a bigger percentage of people coming together to do it.
Andrew:Men's sheds, apartment blocks, yeah, schools.
Andrew:Neighbourhood houses yeah.
Babs:Yeah right, Fundraisers Are many of them fundraisers, yeah lots of them are fundraisers.
Babs:So actually I had a great conversation last week with a lady who runs a community centre in Melbourne's north, in Leyla, and her area has a lot of newly arrived migrants and refugees and asylum seekers so she had a sale. It was so they could meet people. It was so they could connect with one another, having recently arrived here, but also they could make a little bit of extra money. If they had things they didn't want, they sold it. They made something like $1,500 from that one day. But the power they all said when they spoke to me about it last week was those connections that were formed. They had people to lean on in their community.
Ben:So that's interesting, because I've always thought one of the powers of garage sale trail is you don't have to tell me how to do it. You've taken an existing behavior that people get and you've created a mass of it. Essentially, you've used the internet to get people off the internet, exactly so I could have held it. Everyone knows how to hold a garage sale. Suddenly, though, I'm part of a group holding a garage sale. You don't have to teach me that. You don't actually have to talk to me a great deal about waste. You just have to say oh, you know what a garage sale is, let's all do it at once. It's a very short form conversation, but when you talk about those communities, you're possibly talking about people from cultures where they've never heard of a garage sale yet it still works.
Ben:Why is that?
Babs:Yeah, absolutely.
Babs:Look, it's a really interesting area. I think it's really important that Garage Sale Trail is accessible and open to everyone, and there's a significant percentage it's something like 22, 23% of Australians speak a language other than English at home and we've got a lot of different cultures and communities for whom a garage sale they might not understand what a garage sale is.
Babs:So we've tried and failed with various things to get different communities on board. It's not always been easy and we've done most recently we've done some really in-depth chats with Arabic, chinese, vietnamese community members to go. You know what are the barriers to secondhand. You know let's not make any assumptions here about why they do or don't do it, and the really interesting thing that's come out of that that we're really kind of working on now is doing things for the greater good works across all of those communities. So you know, actually changing money, changing hands for your own personal gain might not be something that they're comfortable with, but actually when it's about the greater good, about community and connection, that's something nearly everyone can get behind. So we've been doing a lot of work with community groups, cultural leaders, that sort of thing, to increase the number of, and diversity of people involved.
Babs:Right. So basically working with them to say this is a great way to get your community together and meet other communities is the key driver.
Babs:Yeah.
Ben:So what sort of tactics have worked with that? Do you have to go around one to one and sort of sell them on this idea?
Babs:It's much more and I guess the whole approach of Garage Sale Trail is about giving people tools to do their own engagement. You know it's really about we provide the tools and the framework.
Ben:What sort of tools?
Babs:So we have translated materials. We make sure we're speaking to them in their own languages. We make sure we're showcasing the people doing the program that come from different communities so that you can see yourself in the campaign. The really big part of the campaign being successful is that whole thing around social norming. If you see yourself doing something, if you see everyone's doing it, you want to do it too. So we tool up community leaders, community groups. We help them then to make it their own and engage their communities in a way that's right for their community, rather than us trying to do it and undoubtedly getting it wrong. Sometimes it's about leaning into that community and getting them to be the ambassador and the driver locally.
Barry:love about what you've just said, babs. As you were saying, it was in my mind what a fantastic opportunity to have your culture valued. Can you imagine what it's like out in some of that? I know out at Parramatta, the Indian community. Out there, every time I go out there, there's a street that just does Indian food and it's because I spend a lot of time in India. It's like you're in Delhi or Mumbai, so can you imagine the value on their culture? I can't imagine the different types of things they may have brought to this country, but also the way they cook. We get a really good understanding on what they use to cook and stuff like that.
Barry:That would be a fun way to look at it. It's a chance to showcase their culture. I'm thinking out loud now I'm going to head out to either Parramatta or Cabramatta next garage sale trial and see Now, personally my garage sale trial experience is about my children being open up to community. But as you were saying that, I'm thinking I'm definitely going out to either Strathfield, Cabramatta or Parramatta at the next one with the kids and walk around an area which has a different cultural influence and there could be. You're not going to get aplastic barbie bus, you might not get as many plastic barbie campers, but you might get some incredible copper pots or something like that.
Ben:So I'm making a list in my mind here, because of course, the big question is here what makes a good idea a good idea, what makes these things work? And there's so many pieces I'm adding as we go. So obviously I'm finding that the key benefit, say, is like we reuse things and we help protect our planet by not bringing new things in and using stuff we've already created. But really it's community and creativity. I'd say that's an extension of creativity, what we've just said there. You know the idea of cooking. Cooking is kind of the ultimate creativity, right, there's like a painting's great, you get to hang your dubois in dubois on the on the wall and talk about it. But food to me has always been the ultimate creativity, because you've spent all this time and then, like an hour later it's gone, it's all over. So the idea of self-expression and creativity, which in itself to me is linked to fun somewhat, but I want to ask that question a little further about the importance of, as they say, if you can see it, you can be it.
Ben:You know the ambassador Like again, these are the drivers, but how are we overcoming the barriers? Oh, that all looks good, but I'm too scared those sorts of things. Oh, I'll put in all that effort, but then no one will come. And it seems that ambassadors are one way to do that. If I see photos of people like me doing it, then I go. Well, if they can do it, I can do it. How important is that ambassadorial kind of role and Barry, you've been an ambassador, but how important is it in driving this?
Babs:Yeah, it's really important. An ambassador for us can be Barry you know someone that's really well known or it can be Joan on a street. Anyone and everyone's an ambassador for us because it's about seeing people like you doing a thing and actually importantly, when we're doing kind of our formal ambassador programs, we're always thinking about people outside of sustainability. We don't want to just be engaging with the people who are already on board, who are already highly engaged in buying and selling secondhand. We want to be getting to people outside of that echo chamber.
Babs:So you know, we've worked with sporting personalities, we've worked with musicians, but I think the magic is really at the community level. You know, working with that cultural leader in a mosque in Western Sydney or the lady in Melbourne who sings AFL songs every time she makes a sale and tooling those people up to spread the word. We know from the data we collect that the average person having a sale will tell about 100 people. You multiply that by the 15,000 garage sales and that's so many people hearing about it and seeing that modelling around secondhand is something everyone's doing. It's super fun and I want to be a part of it.
Ben:Are there any communities you've struggled to engage or things you've tried that you thought would work, that didn't?
Babs:Yeah, look, culturally and linguistically diverse communities has been tough. We've been trying for a few years. We're getting good at it now. But you know, initially we just translated things and we made so many assumptions. People don't necessarily know what a garage sale is. So guess what you have to start by explaining this is what a garage sale is. Unit blocks is another one. You know, we know that they don't have a lot of space. How do they have a garage sale? So we've worked on pulling together these group sales, what we call group sales. In community centres, in really high-density areas, you can literally pull down your suitcase, join others, spread out your picnic blanket in a park, whatever it might be, and really it's all about understanding what is the barrier for that community and then how do we make it easier for them to be involved? In the case of a unit block, it's about space.
Ben:So you literally have to go community by community, and that can be a culturally diverse one or it can just be as you say a community is a bunch of people living in an apartment.
Babs:Yeah, exactly.
Ben:Yeah, right. So I'm going to now get you guys to rewind back to the start, because we've talked about how it's successful and kind of why it's successful and how we engage people on essentially what could be a pretty boring issue to some people, but made it fun, made it creative, all those sorts of things. But rewind me back to day one. So, andrew, you're sitting there with Daryl and you guys think, okay, we want to solve the problem of too much stuff in this world and waste. We'll do the garage sale trail. How do you come up with an idea like that?
Andrew:As I always say in answer to that question, since I was a young boy, ben, I've dreamed of establishing a weekend of garisales, a two weekend. No, not at all. It's a normal cause. No, it's one of those fantastic accidents.
Andrew:So how this thing came about was Daz and I were working together. I had a little marketing agency. We were two people who were living in Bondi Beach. We were super engaged in culture and surfing and film and music and art, and actually what happened was we lost a client. It was a client that was fundamental to our little business and I could see the cash flow runway was like six months until something drastic was going to have to happen in terms of people who are working in the business and no longer working in the business. So I was like let's just try something totally different. Let's do a community festival.
Andrew:Daz and I got together and went let's do a community festival in Bondi. We know it, we kind of live it, we feel like we're really a part of the community. And we put this community festival together that had all the stuff that we thought was super cool surfing, film, music, art, blah, blah, blah and we thought, oh, we should definitely include garrisails, because they're everywhere in Bondi and you see all this stuff left on the side of the road and you know, maybe there's a connection there somehow. Don't know, haven't really thought too much about that. Put all our effort into the surfing film, the music side of things, but also put a little bit of effort into this garage sale element of the Bondi Community Festival and, lo and behold, the thing that kind of proliferated organically was the garage sale trail element and we realised that the world didn't need another surfing event, it didn't need another music event, it didn't need another art event.
Andrew:But what was so incredible was putting this little dinky website together and that someone did pro bono God bless them and seeing what we never thought or realised would happen. People started to populate the website with their own names for garage sales and we were like, oh my God, this is incredible. And of course they weren't the kind of garage sales names that you'd come up with when you're working in a marketing agency. It was people expressing themselves. And then when we walked around, it just happened in Bondi Beach and there was a truckload of garage sales in a small area and people were just kind of lingering in the street and we kind of did a bit of speaking to people hey, how's it going and we realised what the magic of it was and it's back to this community thing is that no one likes to see something go to waste. It feels wrong when you put something in the bin on some level. So there was all that good stuff, but the real magic was being in your local neighbourhood, kind of moseying around and talking to your neighbours, and that was the moment where we were like lightbulb moment, where I was like, oh my God, this thing's incredible. This is potentially scalable, because the idea of hanging out in your local community isn't something that's just relevant to Bondi Beach, it's relevant to everywhere.
Andrew:And, as I always say, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, with all our expertise and resources of which we had pretty much next to none of either it seemed like a perfectly logical idea to go from doing it in Bondi Beach to trying to take it national the next year, which we did. How did you do that? Well, we kind of fumbled our way through year one with the Bondi Community Festival by somehow creating a partnership with Waverley Council God bless them and through that we learned that this whole idea of a garro sale was really important to them because it could decrease waste to landfill. And we'd come up with that fantastic tagline around don't dump it, sell it, have a garage sale, kind of thing. And we thought, well, if Waverley Council liked that, I wonder if other councils might like that.
Andrew:And then we kind of spent the next two, three years in aeroplanes and hire cars and motel rooms all over the country putting PowerPoint presentations together and talking to council officers and elected representatives.
Andrew:And it was a really new idea and it was really kind of different and there's nothing more powerful than doing something new and different in terms of getting attention and traction. And we went from kind of one local government in Sydney to maybe the next year, I think we had 13 to 25 to 50 to 100, literally on that kind of trajectory and it just grew really quickly and people just liked the idea of it. We didn't kind of have all the data that we have now and we didn't have any of the bells and whistles and all that incredible process that's been built over hours and weeks and months of working on it. We just had this idea and a fantastic looking PowerPoint presentation and inordinate amount of working on it. We just had this idea and a fantastic looking PowerPoint presentation and an inordinate amount of enthusiasm and passion about it to take it from Bondi Beach to proliferating around the country.
Ben:So I want to break that down much more practically. When you say you're talking to a council, who in that council are you talking to and why are they buying? Because the business model of this is of course, I buy from you and that's the money. Right? Garage sale trial doesn't get any of the money of the individual person's transactions. It's actually well explain it to me, but the councils actually pay to have it in their areas. This is not true. Therefore, my big question to you is if that's the business model, at some point you've got to get somebody in that council to approve a budget to say I like this idea, we'll buy in. Talk to me about that.
Barry:Can I jump in for a sec? This is really important. I lived in Jaques Avenue and I remember the day perfectly and it's really interesting. I don't think there's a place on earth that could have worked as well, and I'll tell you why. In Jaques Avenue there was a pseudo backpacker hostel. Up the road in Lamrock there was at least four houses or blocks of units where they this is before COVID and everything where there was a lot of transient people. I think there's 11,000 odd transients in Bondi, something like that. We were very accustomed to big piles of stuff what we would call waste in the front of someone's house where there was some really good shit. Okay, there was some.
Ben:?
Barry:no, no no no no, no, that came later.
Barry:No, I mean book cabinets and lounges and stuff, that little piece. And someone who at the time was working in TV and I was all about restoring and recycling and reusing things. I would say to my team at the TV hey, come to my place now, and this is a story for us. I'm going to turn something that someone's throwing out into something that we can sell for a thousand bucks. Then what the guys stumbled on Andrew, maybe you stumbled on it, maybe you didn't they turned waste into an asset on two different levels. The council had to pay a lot of money to have guys come and pick up that rubbish and take it to a tip, and that's exactly what they did. It was a big burden. I was also on the precinct committee, so I know it was a burden on the taxpayer.
Ben:So it's costing councils money to pick up stuff that people have dumped on the verge.
Barry:Was that part of your thinking Andrew, because whoever's done this is a genius, because you're taking the load off the council, and I think if that was Woollahra or further afield or in the greater western suburbs, it wouldn't have worked, because people wouldn't have been as au fait with going through other people's stuff and seeing the value of it.
Andrew:I can't sit here and go. It was part of a grand plan, you know.
Barry:I just set you up as having the greatest.
Andrew:After years and years of no, not at all. No, as I say, it was a glorious accident. We definitely got the connection between knowing we lived in a suburb where there was so much really good stuff left on the sidewalk you know the beds, the barbecues, all that kind of stuff, the TVs, stuff that was in perfectly good working order that was going to go into a hole in the ground and all you had to do was go and pull your car up and put in the boot and you're a winner. So, yeah, we definitely were connected to that relationship between Garasales and the stuff left on the side of the road and came up with that tagline don't dump it, sell it. But we had zero idea about a business model, zero.
Andrew:And, as I say, it was an accident that we somehow connected with Waverley Council because we were doing something that had the word community festival into it. We're like, oh, maybe we should call the council, and somehow we got filtered down into the waste team and sustainability team at Waverley Council and then we went on this giant learning curve, exactly what you're talking about, that rate payers effectively pay to come and have people garbage trucks come and collect people's waste and if they can reduce the amount of waste that needs to be collected, then local governments or councils are winning and conversely or equally, so are rate payers. And so that was the little nugget, the little thing where everything clicked. And, Ben, back to your question of how did we went from one council to 100 in relatively four or five years time.
Andrew:That happened through just good, old-fashioned blood, sweat and tears and making a million mistakes, doing everything the wrong way. You know doing the PowerPoint presentation with the previous council's name in it that you've just presented at, and you know fumbling your way through it. But ultimately, I think people identified that we were for real and pretty passionate about what we were trying to do and trying to do something good, but we really just learnt how to do it, and there's no right way, I wouldn't say, to do it. There's elected representatives is one way to engage in a local government.
Ben:So that's the mayor and the councillors.
Andrew:Yeah, yeah that's one way to do it, and some elected representatives, their role in life is to solve the issues of waste within local governments. And then there's local government offices, whether that's directors or whether that's waste education officers or whatever it might be. In the early days we just did whatever we could to create an inroad. Over time, that process has really refined and really developed. But we just, we just went, as I say, we just went on a giant learning curve, sitting in high cars and motel rooms and
Ben:so is it a case of finding the right person in each council?
Ben:and that's a different person in each council, like could be the mayor who goes okay, I see the value for both community, but also for waste, but then you might, as you say, have a waste education officer. I've got to do waste education. I don't know how to do it. You're giving me a plug and play solution. Is it a different person at each council? You have to sort of research that council, or do you always enter through the same door?
Andrew:Over time we've developed a process. That is what's the process? Well, it's going to the waste department and trying to identify someone in the waste team. Then you might get moved to the community development department. You know Babs will be able to talk, probably better than I would now, around what the ratio of council support is. That's from waste funded to community development.
Andrew:But waste is a big deal in local governments all across the country. I think, roughly speaking, it's about 20% of a local government's budget. So they have budget and they have serious problems to solve. And when a little community organisation comes along, that's going to mobilise the community to effectively do the work for that local government.
Andrew:I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that in an absolutely fantastic way and make a few bucks and make a few friends and have a good time and decrease loneliness and express yourself and whatever it is in it for you. Yeah, that kind of made sense for local government and when we first started this, talking about reuse to a waste team was a little bit like what, because it was really about just picking up a bin and getting into a hole in the ground. But you know, so this is now 15 years old. It's amazing how, over that period of time, it probably was I don't know five or 10 local governments that we used to work with who had reuse in their waste strategy. And now I would say, Babs, you're better placed than I am on this, but now you would. I would say almost every single local government has reuse as a part of their waste strategy.
Babs:Yeah, absolutely
Babs:Every single one. It's interesting. I was just thinking, as Andrew was talking about, how do you get that council engaged. And it's kind of not dissimilar to what we do with participants and making them ambassadors. It's about making it easy. You'll get one person really excited about it at council and invariably that'll be someone that works in a waste team. But that person then has to sell it to their manager, to a board, to the elected reps. You know it's hard, it's difficult, there's a lot of steps to engaging government. So what we've developed over time is resources that make it really easy for that one person to convince others in their team that they want to be involved, because ultimately you're asking them to do more work. You know you're asking them to spend money and do more work at council because they're not just funding what we do, they're also helping promote it and get the word out through their channels.
Ben:And you give them all those tools
Babs:Yeah and we give them all those tools already made.
Babs:Yeah, we break it down and make it much, much easier, and really that's the framework of the whole program making it easier whether you're a council trying to do it or a participant that's selling or shopping.
Andrew:Ben, when people say what do you do for a job to me, I say I'm involved in this fantastic thing called Garage Sale Trail and we sell a product to local governments. And that's what we do. We sell a product to local governments to help them achieve their objective around, whether it's waste reduction, whether it's waste reduction plus community development, whether it's just community development and, as Babs says, it's all about creating. Whether it's a case study to go hey, here's a regional council who's done before, or here's a high-density super urban council who's done before, and demonstrating that this is equally as relevant for a regional, low-density community, low-density population, as it is a high-density one.
Babs:And it's the power of FOMO, isn't it Like? So much of what we do is about FOMO, that fear of missing out. You know your neighbours are doing it, whether it's your neighbouring council or your neighbour in your street. It's FOMO.
Ben:It's a fascinating business model because really you've got very much a two-sided model. You're not generating revenue from the participants, you're generating it from the council and the story is quite different to each one. I just want to unpack this again, because if you want to make a business successful, you've essentially it's been said many times you've got to solve a problem for a person. That problem better be pretty urgent.
Ben:So what we're finding from everything you said, Barry, is we really do have a problem with disconnection and people want to meet their neighbor, but they don't know how, and this desire to express herself creatively or just get rid of the Barbie bus. So really dialing that up for the participants and showing others doing it seems to work, whereas for the councils we're telling a very, very different story. We're talking to the waste officer about how we really can reduce their costs fundamentally and engage their community Like you said, Barry, like community kind of gets it. We're in the precinct level engage their community, and so you're actually selling a very different story to both sides, but it's all part of one story.
Babs:Yeah, absolutely, and you know, often at council we're dealing with very different departments too. Like, as Andrew said, we're funded primarily by waste teams, but we've got councils that do it through tourism, like regional councils, where you're trying to convince them to do it in order to get visitors into their municipality. So, you know, it's all about understanding, putting yourself in the shoes of the person who you want to get involved, and working out, as you said, how do you solve their problem, how do you help them achieve that goal in their strategy?
Barry:From a resident, participant angle as well. I was listening to you say how they pay for it and what they're doing is taking away the money from the amount of trucks they have to have on the road and putting it to you. And what that's doing for me is Bondi no longer is a place where you see stuff in front of someone's house because they know garage sales trail is coming up and I can turn this into six, seven, 800 bucks. So they are storing it neatly, but they are, thanks to you, taking that step to get out and sell it on the day, which you know, if you think about it, it's taking hundreds of truck trips off our little streets that generally happen at 4 o'clock in the morning very loudly.
Ben:They are very loud, so that's fascinating too. We're not creating a new budget here in council. What we're doing is taking it out of a budget of, as you say, big trucks driving around the cost of picking up garbage Right, and instead turning into a community initiative where community takes care of that itself.
Babs:Yeah, and I guess what's exciting about that is it talks to the role every single one of us have. We all have a responsibility to help build up, make our communities stronger, to reduce the amount of stuff we're putting in landfill and that's awesome the fact that a council is funding it but your community is really powering it and making it happen.
Ben:It's won a lot of awards for this very reason, because you're finding a very unique solution to what would otherwise. I can see some simplistic answers coming out of people generally, but you found this really creative, innovative solution. You've held sales at MONA in Tassie, new South Wales Parliament House held one WA Ballet Opera Australia. It's even been adopted in the UK by the UK government. But tell me, of all this success, what's the most valuable to you? What's the thing that you think? Okay, we've been hugely successful, but I'm super proud of this thing.
Babs:The thing that gets me look the community stuff. Much like Barry, I love that stuff. That's the stuff that I get up and run into work to do, skip into work, I into work to do, skip into work, I should say to do. But the thing that flabbergasts me every year is actually that we're actually changing people's behavior. You know, so many of the people that get involved have never bought something secondhand, have never sold something secondhand. You know the data on shoppers. For example, I think it was last year a third of people that shop with us had never previously in their lives bought something secondhand. That's like true.
Ben:So what was that number again?
Babs:30%
Ben:Wow, so one in three people, yeah, and this is kind of it's a pretty good tell of the Australian population now because it's so big. So one in three Australians has never bought secondhand.
Babs:Yep, until they shopped the trail. And that's behaviour change Like. Actually we're actually changing the way people are consuming and all the indications suggest they want to keep doing it because you know they have fun doing it,
Andrew:but without saying you should buy a second hand.
Babs:Yeah exactly that's the magic.
Barry:It's a learned behaviour which is really powerful. It's something that my children in probably the last eight years, have learnt. I'm an advocate to not raise children to be consumers.
Barry:It's really important to me.
Ben:It's quite hard these days.
Barry:It's hard but garage sale trial for me has had a lot to do with this. I don't like my children having money. I never have. I provide the money in our house. I buy everything. I like us to be aware of what we're buying and buy quality stuff that lasts a long time.
Barry:When garage sale trial started up, my kids they worked on the store. They did the things. They needed to be compensated for that. So I was very conscious my wife will kill me for this, but my wife is a professional consumer. She's one of the best. There's no doubt about it. I'd go as far as saying the best on earth, and I'm just mocking, but it is a learned behavior of consumerism. So something that I've done, and I'm just mocking, but it is a learned behaviour of consumerism. So something that I've done, and I think everyone should do this.
Barry:When my children got the money for whatever we sold on that day, a percentage of that goes to them for compensation for their work. But then what I did with the other money was put it into jars. I got a hot glue gun and I've told you this, haven't I? And I glue gun little Lego men on top of the jar Every Monday. I put a dollar coin on each jar that they've got. And when they were little ones they said where did the money, where did the dollar come from? And I would say he's your worker, you've invested in him. Now, every week he's going to give you that dollar. That's investment.
Barry:So my daughter, particularly now, has quite the portfolio because after a while she had jars everywhere. It was costing me 50 bucks a week in dollar coins. So I then had to introduce her to the bank where we got interest, which was a dividend. And now she's in Disneyland, she's in Wesf armers, she's in Grain Corp, she's in quite a few. Wow yeah, she's in West Farmers, she's in Grain Corp, she's in quite a few. Wow yeah, she has a really healthy portfolio. But she also, because of that, understands when I say healthy portfolio. I think she's got $1,800 that she has gotten out of dividends and investment in companies.
Ben:All starting from the seed fund of selling something in the garage.
Barry:That's right, something that she had. It didn't cost her anything. So she didn't understand. But now she realises Bennett not so much the same. He would prefer to buy a new pair of shorts, but she thinks, no, no, if I can get more jars, eventually I'll get more money.
Barry:So that's a learnt behaviour that I was very conscious on teaching my children from the outset and things like this. Like Babs has said and Andrew has said so many times, most of this stuff we would have thrown away. If you can turn it into 150 bucks and then show a kid what compounding interest is off is 150 bucks. It's a really valuable learned behavior Because every day, 24 hours a day in our life, we're being taught to consume. If you are taught or you can change that learned behavior for your children, that's why this ripple effect is so important for me. What we'll do is we'll have people buying things that mean more to them and bring a certain value to their mindset, rather than that endorphin they get just from the purchase itself, and then it just goes into a cupboard. They never see it again. So they're the sort of little learned behaviors that I think are really important to developing, to raising and developing children as well.
Ben:Do you find that they're more likely to buy secondhand because of their engagement with Garage Sale Trail?
Barry:To be honest and I think this is a long journey they're more likely not to buy, not to buy at all. Arabella, particularly, is more likely to invest.
Ben:So she's now seen the value of a dollar saved grows over time, whereas the value of a dollar spent has gone a lot quicker than that.
Barry:That's right, this is beautiful as well. My children have a lot of stuff. Let's not kid ourselves. We live in the suburbs of Sydney. We've all got too much stuff, but she gets a lot of value. We're connected to a couple of different charities where we just she gets great pleasure out of giving those things away, knowing that someone else is going to get it, but she does. She also loves her little portfolio and she loves how it's growing without any work.
Andrew:Babs do I see a financial sponsor.
Babs:I think you do.
Andrew:Brewing here on the back of this conversation.
Barry:It's all learned behavior and these tribe-like learned behaviours that's where we started, and going back to them will rebuild community in a positive way. I'll say it till I'm blue in the face.
Ben:Do you, babs AV? Having brought this to the world, do you find your behaviours have changed
Babs:Absolutely.
Babs:You know, look, I always was a lover of secondhand. I grew up in London. Mum ran an op shop. You know, I was basically grew up on the floor of a sorting room for an op shop. So I've always been obsessed, particularly with secondhand fashion. But you know, I would always as much as I can look to be buying secondhand before new and always certainly looking for products that are going to last and that can be passed on.
Andrew:Yeah, you can't live and breathe garage sale trailers. We've done for so many years and I guess it wouldn't have happened if our values weren't aligned with this kind of stuff to start with. But we're operating in this reuse space and so we're living and breathing it every day
Ben:Best thing you've ever bought secondhand?
Andrew:Well, as I look over there, I can see a whole bunch of things. I've got this incredible fossil that I bought from a kid it was a crow flies who was on the street corner. It was a Sunday morning. I've been working all day Saturday on Garasail Trail and at the Sunday morning I've walked up the road to get a coffee and there was this kid on the corner and and I bought the Simpsons figurine. And I bought this amazing fossil,
Ben:fossil, and a Simpsons figurine?
Andrew:Yeah,
Ben:there you go, something from like the last 20 years and something from the last 20 million years.
Andrew:Everything's. It's all about the story we connected with and the kid, and it was all. It just was an amazing experience.
Ben:I find that fascinating. I ask you the best thing, but you actually told me who you bought it from. Yeah, rather than that.
Andrew:Yeah you the best thing, but you actually told me who you bought it from. Yeah, rather than that, yeah. Another thing I want to add to that is you know you mentioned briefly Garage Sale Trail got adopted by a couple of councils in the UK, which in excel is a pretty remarkable achievement.
Andrew:But shopping at a garacelle and going to a mansion that was for sale, that some smart person who was selling a house and wanted to generate a bunch of publicity, the house house was built in the 1700s, it was up for sale and then we went down the road to a church that had been turned into a big community sale and you know there was the person who had looked after the church. What's their name?
Babs:Caretaker
Andrew:The caretaker. Thank you, babs. And the caretaker was this guy who was kind of a slightly scary looking man. He had this incredible scareisail selling figurines of chickens, little chickens. So perhaps my favourite thing is that I've ever bought a Garage Sale as a couple of these little figurines from this kind of scary dude who was a caretaker of a church in the middle of somewhere in Yorkshire in the UK. But as you say, it's the experience, that's the magic, not necessarily the thing,
Ben:Barry have you got anything you've bought that can top that?
Barry:Yeah, I don't know if I can top that. Yeah, I was filming a TV show in Leichhardt the Monday morning after a garage sale trial, and there's a lesson in this as well. So I'm doing my piece to camera. And it's really funny in TV. As a TV presenter, you drive from anywhere between a mile and a hundred miles to get to the place where you're going to film the TV, but you always walk down the street to get there. So all my pieces of camera are never driving in a car, they're walking down the street. And as I'm walking down the street I glanced down the side of this house because I saw the garage sale. They had a theme name. I can't remember what it was, because I saw the garage sale. They had a theme name. I can't remember what it was, but I spied this 1975 model dragster, melvin Star dragster, with a banana seat, sissy bar and three-speed column shift.
Barry:I don't know if you know the one.
Ben:Yeah, three on the tree.
Barry:But I had the exact same bike when I was the same age as that day that Bennett. So I said, guys, cut hold the phone. I've got to find out if that's sold. So I knocked on the door and she had made the mistake. And I'll say this as well if you fall in love with stuff, you go broke. So she had a high price on it $400, which I think for a garage sale trail is pretty high, and so they didn't sell it and I said, well, I want it, I want that bike, and I had it. And so two things happened from that I got that bike. It's a gold, limited edition Malvern Star.
Barry:Oh yes and don't want to upset anybody here Found out the value was about $4,000. Okay, I had it completely restored, which introduced me to a whole new group of people who restore push bikes, and so we put this on the show. So again, I got to meet that woman in Leichhardt. My son now has the exact same bike that I had when I was his age and I've come into contact with this group of people who restore bikes. It's just an amazing, interesting group of people and you know again the ripple effect of community, of engagement. But that's my best buy Ripple effect. Oh yeah, the best buy is the Dragster, the Melvin Star Dragster, and the best part about it is the ripple effect as it is for me and everything about the garage sale trial.
Ben:Babs... Best buy?
Babs:Well, I may happen to be wearing my best buy today. And again it goes back to the story. We had a lady in Willara who was having a garage sale and she was the ex-editor of Condé Nast Traveller or something. She had been all over the world collecting the most incredible things. Anyway, this colorful flash of jumper caught my eye and I was like, oh my word, it's a Jenny Key. Knowing Jenny Key from seeing Princess Diana, of course, wearing the famous koala jumper. And anyway she told me the story. It was bought for her by her sister-in-law. She'd hated it Not her style at all, she was much more a classy, neutrals kind of gal. And yeah, 20 bucks bought myself a Jenny Kee jumper which, similar to Baz, I then Googled to try and find out the value of and you know we're talking at least 500 bucks, if I could ever be parted from it, which will be never-
Barry:Can I just add one more, because this is a classic as well.
Barry:It's like I said, my wife loves a lot of purchase, so I think it was one of our first or second garage sale trials. We had an enormous amount of stuff, enormous amount of stuff, and a lot of that stuff still had the tag on it because it had never been worn. And there was this. It happened a couple of times. I don't know if it's happened to you guys, but people would look at this jumper. It's got a price tag on it $110.
Barry:Okay, they say what do you want for the jumper? I say 15 bucks. You know, thinking that's a no-brainer, it's brand new, it's never been. And they go oh, wow, wow, that's great, can I try it on? I said try it on, no worries. And she puts it on. I said I'm going to tell you that looks a million bucks on you. It really does, it looks fantastic. And she said I have to see what my husband thinks. And I said to her listen, I'll tell you what. Just take it. Just take it, and if he likes it, you don't have to take it off. If he doesn't give it to someone else, she goes oh no, I'll get you to hold it for me. She took it off, asked me to put a hold sign on it. Wow, that's one of my best stories.
Andrew:I thought you were going to say. She said I'll give you 10 for it.
Barry:She never came back and got it and I held it for the rest of the day.
Ben:And now you've still got it.
Barry:No, it would have went. Our garage sale trials we give the last. When we've had enough, we just say, if you want to take it, we're packing up,
Ben:So come around to your place last.
Barry:Well, that's the other reason we go with a couple of groups. It can get. I'm a big talker, that's pretty clear from this podcast. So you know, two or three hours on the stand, I'm exhausted. So our neighbours will do the first two hours, Leonie will bring morning tea for them and then I'll step in. And it's not a bad way to divvy out the work and you know, use up just one residence and use the resources of three or four families.
Ben:Takes the pressure off everyone and you get time to go be a shopper as well.
Barry:Go and be a shopper. Yeah, and you know there's people out there that go shopping and buy stuff and bring it back to their stand and try and sell it as well.
Ben:I have seen people go into Vinnie's, grab stuff and then bring it out and stick it in.
Barry:Yeah reselling yeah, why not, why not?
Ben:So I'm going to wrap it up, but before I do, you know if I'm a person with an idea that I think, oh, that might have, you know, good community benefit or a good environmental benefit. What sort of advice could you give someone thinking of beginning, but they don't know where?
Andrew:You've got to be in it to win it and I think it's just a little microcosm of life. You've got to give it and I feel like I sound incredibly cheesy what I'm about to say, but you've just got to try it and I learnt this along the way. Not by design you have to fail so many times and you know we've all sat around today and we've made it sound, I think, to some extent like it's a breeze and it's all amazing and it's incredibly successful. But the reality is it's been an absolute freaking slog, especially for those first five or six years. And I know I'm going off piste on your question here, but I think this is really important because, yes, garasail Trail has connected, the ideas resonated, a couple of hundred thousand people involved, blah, blah, blah, and that's all amazing. But as far as making something happen and going from not existing to it existing, the small team of people involved have been through what is effectively a bunch of hard work, a whole truckload of stress, because we didn't know what we were doing, we didn't have a business model. We made the business model up along the way and to that extent, I would say one of the things I feel like is a real achievement is. I think we've carved a little bit of a path out for other organisations to go oh right, okay, so if I do something like this, I can effectively sell it to local government and build some scale. And I don't think that was so much a thing before we came along, and that certainly wasn't an easy process to get to that point of it being a thing. The other thing, you know, with Babs sitting across the table, that was a fantastic learning for me, and you read about it in textbooks about how to be successful in business, blah, blah, blah is getting people involved who've got different skill sets to your own.
Andrew:I'm a generalist. I'm a really good generalist and have good skills across a bunch of different things. But Babs got involved and she was a powerhouse organizer and process-oriented person, which was just fantastic because we'd just come along. We'd gone from zero to 150 kilometres an hour, but it was pretty crazy out there and I think councils were going whoa, you know you guys are telling us one thing but something else is happening.
Andrew:And then Babs got involved and bought process and then that process, you know, we've been going for five years, five or six years. Babs came along and now we've been going for 15 years. Five or six years Babs came along and now we've been going for 15 years and it's a really well-run machine. But I would say you know things that I've really learnt. You've just got to do it. Seek out expertise wherever you can, because as individuals you certainly don't have the answer. I don't think there's any easy win in terms of making something happen. It's all about the blood, sweat and tears and if you're lucky, like we have been, your idea kind of is at the right time in the right place and delivered in the right way, and it resonates.
Ben:Fantastic. Barry one piece of advice to anybody who thinks they might have a good idea and how to make it happen?
Barry:I'm going
Barry:to semi-disagree with AV in the sense that we don't always fail. If you try something, you may or may not fail. If you don't try something, you'll never know. And I think, like the guys have made it so easy for so many thousands of people, taking the first step's the hardest one. And if it means you lean on someone to take that step, do that. If it means partnering up with someone or even sharing your idea and partnering up, take the step forward.
Barry:I'd rather own 50% of something than 100% of nothing. So for me it's always about just understanding. The more adverse the step, the more arduous the step, the stronger the resolve after it. And that resolve, that strength of resilience, it will get you the momentum to be running in anything in life quicker.
Ben:So again, give it a go.
Barry:Give it a go and take friends along. If you need your friends, take them along. I mean, I think a partnership is 400% more chance of being successful than a single entity.
Andrew:Yeah, I'd buy that 100%.
Andrew:Yeah, like to go through all the crazy stuff you go through where you can't pay the wages, you can't pay yourself to have someone else to turn to, to go....
Barry:Yeah, the other thing that I feel is really important with any business but it's also anything that you want to develop is to have a constitution, Understand what it is that you're setting about to create. I just love the story you told about the fact you want to have this festival, don't we all?
Barry:Yeah, you know, don't we all.
Barry:Yeah, and that's you know. We've been to a thousand great ones, so it must be easy, but the thing that was hardest for you to put the energy in paid the biggest dividend.
Andrew:Yeah, I mean I look back on that now and go what the actual? You know we did that. We went and hustled.
Andrew:You know people left, right and centre in every walk of life,
Barry:and I can only imagine you could see this festival growing and growing, this enormous Ibiza-like festival, yeah, yeah, and it went the complete opposite way, for the benefit of so many people.
Ben:So not just having a go being open to changing your ideas as you go along?
Barry:Yeah definitely Not even different, though, really, thinking back, AV, if you had to have written a constitution on that day, I think community, because I remember Daz and you talking about it when we met at the fishing club. Yeah, and another communal, you know, get together. My recollection, my memory of this was about community and a little bit of sustainability, yeah,
Andrew:and creativity,
Barry:Creativity.
Andrew:It was definitely at the heart of it, Like we'd come out of culture and you know I used to sign bands at record companies and make videos and blah, blah, blah on working music TV and we just thought how fantastic we get all these super cool people involved in a waste program.
Andrew:So you know, there was Angus Stone and there was rugby union captains who've gone on to find themselves in all sorts of strife. There's been people from all walks of life who we were like, hey, would you get involved in this thing? And they're like super cool people and go. It's really kind of about waste, but we don't really need to focus too much on that. If you could just stand in front of a picture where it looks like you're having a garage sale, that will do the trick. That will get people involved in this process where the by-product is, they will reduce the waste that they create and maybe learn a little bit about it along the way too.
Ben:So again, getting people involved. Ambassadors again. But getting people involved. Babs, somebody setting out they've got an idea, they don't know where to begin. What would you give them as advice?
Babs:Yeah, look, I was just as everyone was talking. I was just thinking and I actually say this to all the people, the new staff that start with us when I joined Garage Sale Trail 10 years ago Andrew and Daryl the greatest gift they gave me was this attitude to just try things, just to give it a go, and to see the value in making mistakes and it going wrong, seeing how much further you can come by getting it wrong. You know, it was really hard at the beginning. I'd certainly never worked in waste or sustainability before my background's in fundraising for charities in the Olympics. And the other thing was really about listening. Don't assume you know. Listen Like talk to the people who you want to be involved, understand what the barriers are, understand what they need, what problem you're solving.
Barry:And do you think being curious? I mean my philosophy is everything I do, I can do 10% better. So if you're curious, continually curious, on how I can do something better, even if it seems harder, it's going to build resilience, build strength.
Ben:Never stop learning hey?
Babs:Yeah
Ben:Great.
Ben:Well, thank you Before you go. Everybody at home. Next time you buy, think secondhand and you can get involved in Garage Sale Trail by....
Babs:Heading to our website, garagesaletrailcomau. This year the all important dates are 8th, 9th and 15th 16th of November.
Ben:Fantastic, and should I be following you on social media anywhere perhaps?
Babs:Absolutely. @garagesaletrail Trail on all your favourite social
Ben:Barry, I hear you're a social media superstar
Barry:don't know about that, but you can catch me on @baz_dubois on anything.
Ben:Anything Fantastic, anything to add AV?
Andrew:No, just it's pretty amazing to sit here with three people or two others who have been involved in this over such a long period of time, and it's super cool to go oh, we achieved something really great. But I think it's also really important to go to remember that it's only happened because people have done the blood, sweat and tears and done the hard yards and given it a crack.
Ben:And that's a good reason for everybody out there to get involved
Babs:Absolutely.
Ben:Thank you very much.
Barry:Thanks, Ben.
Singers:I'm going to change this world today. Make those bad things go away, hey.
