Porch Pickup

Jeff shares his journey of self-discovery, entrepreneurship, and embracing life's chaos after leaving a traditional job. He discusses his creative projects, selling adventures, and lessons learned along the way.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

God, that's awful. Shut up and listen. My God, friends. My God. I could give you a plethora of reasons I haven't uploaded in a while, all of which are good life issues to have, great problems to have, mostly. Well, the first thing was the basement flooded. And that wasn't, I'm gonna use that as an excuse of why I haven't podcasts, but it it would have made no difference. I don't know why. My brain, if you're into Enneagram, uh I'm a seven, and I think I I mean I've never been tested, tested, but you know, the ADHD's there, the ADDs there, but like that's what makes it fun. Like that's what I've learned to embrace is like, yeah, your brain's nuts. No one else, everyone just has a normal, stupid brain. Like, embrace it, it's awesome. Um, so yeah, I just kind of bounce around and then um just trying to make life work. All right, so I've been off of a W-2, I haven't had a technical job for going on six months now, and I've just been a complete grind it out situation. So I'm gonna tell you some things I've been doing to make money, how I've making it work, what's the struggles, what's the fun part, um, and just completely letting go of everything that I've known to be normal. So that's gonna be a deep, deep little subject. And then we may get into a little bit of uh answer the internets. Sarah's is Sarah is uh remove this, and then we may get into a little bit of answer the internet. Sarah is on a trip, she's out in Cali right now. She she's never even been on the show, but now here's the here's the reason I'm doing this podcast right now is because I got some new equipment. All right, so before it was very complicated, it was a lot of wires, and this was five years ago when I probably got this equipment, if not more. Maybe going on 10 years. Um, so yeah, it was kind of necessary, but now with technology, the equipment doesn't have to be as grand because the editing is so locked in. So I simplified my equipment. I'm using uh different microphone setup. I'm it's pretty much completely different, other than the editing process. So uh give me some feedback somewhere and let me know what the sounds like. Um if you uh you know, background noises as anything, or there's a hum, something. Uh just kind of give me some feedback. I'd love to hear from it. So, anyways, sit back. I don't know what you're doing. You're driving to work? Yeah, hell yeah. Love it. You uh you just getting off work, ready to go drink, have a smoke, you know, relax. Hey, welcome. Just shut up and listen. It's gonna be about nothing, it's just about stuff that happens. So if you if you like some storytelling, then by God, let's stick around. All right, I'll be right back. Oh, so many topics and so many ideas, but then you just gotta kind of wade through them and think which one do you want to tell? So let's set the scene. I'm in Sarah's living room. She lives here. This is her home. Um shout out to Ivy Hall. You know why. Um so I'm in the living room. It's this big yellow couch. It's this big, massive, comfortable couch. It's a U-shape and it fits perfectly within the two walls of the living room. So I'm just like lounged out on it. I got my feet up. I'm not sitting at a desk to do a podcast. I'm not sitting up. It is my way of saying, like, no, if you're gonna tell a story, if you're gonna do something, just do it the way you're comfortable doing it. It doesn't matter what any other podcast does in the world, it does not matter. I'm gonna do it this way. So I'm like, yes, this is my jam, this is what I want to do. So I'm testing out the mics, making sure I get it figured out because last time we tried to finally record together is oh, I think that was it. That was the last time my podcast was. We went down to do one together, and I just got so frustrated because there's so many wires. It all looked like my brain just it's always just in a big pile of just everything going on, and that's what my podcast setup looked like in the basement. And it was dark and it was a basement just because I don't know, go outside and do it. The lighting, you don't have to do lighting. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I could I could go on and on, but I will digress. I'm trying it out here tonight. No idea where my train of thought was. Oh, but that's what got me stopped um podcasting. It was just it wasn't easy, it was a pain in the ass, blah, blah, blah. So I don't know. I know there was another like sub conversation to that, but let's get into I left you off with on the intro, kind of like starting over how I feel like the last couple years has been like a huge start over. Like I was able to start completely fresh. I think that is like you know, I spent a couple years like so mad about what I lost. You know, like you go through a divorce, you do lose a lot, you lose a lot of money, you lose a lot of friends, you lose your identity as a husband, you lose a lot of weird stuff that you don't expect to lose. Um, and so for you know, a couple years, I again time means nothing to me. I don't even know what date I don't have, I have no idea anything after like 2020 means nothing in my brain. So bear with me. We're just gonna make up years that that are probably aren't even relevant to the story. So um, but you lose so much and you spend so much time dwelling on what you lose, but then when you finally like touch down, you realize like you have a brand new life. Right? Like I lived a complete life before. I raised I raised a stepchild from two, three, somewhere in there, and he's still in my life today as a 20-year-old. I had all the elementary friends, you know, the the parents, the friends. I've had the awards banquets and the baseball games and uh the graduation. I've had that in my life. I have lived that life. Now I feel I am on a complete different book of Jeff. This Jeff is consuming information he's never consumed in his life and finding it fascinating. You could ask me a question about my past, but it seems like it's like 200 years ago. All right, like I literally have done this already once, and maybe that's just like being a parent with a much older sibling. I don't know, but it's really throwing me off. Uh, but I've been able, I have been gifted the absolute space to find Jeff. I have just been given free reign, not free reign, but I have been given I've been met with a level of grace I've never been met with before to find out who I am. And when that process is not rushed, like when you're not rushing that process to fix yourself, and you're literally just being like, oh, this may be two years. It's incredible. So what have I been doing? What's the okay? This is all great, cool. You've you've made but so what do you what do you do? How do you make any money? What do you well? Step one is to get rid of absolutely anything. Anything. What is like something that I've sacrificed that I used I I don't know. I used to get uh I will wrap it all up into consumerism. I just don't like buying new things, I don't like buying things, things that does not make me happy anymore. That used to be my thing. I'd buy things. Oh, and I even knew I even knew it was just temporary excitement. Like I already found that out about myself, but I was not willing to change it. So yeah, you let go of so much shit fluff in your life, and you know what? That's impossible because like if you're married to a person that isn't, that does want to buy bye bye, like yeah, you just fall into it. But I think when a lot of I always laugh at like what I put my clothes in, or what what cloth what clothes I put my kids in, because I remember landing scratch that. I remember when my stepson would come home from his dad's, like she my ex would always be like, Oh, his clothes, oh his dad's clothes. You know why dad's clothes are chill? Because we don't care about fucking clothes. Uh so it's just super simple. Um yeah, what do you what have I been doing? What what does a guy like me do when his main goal in the summertime is raise your kids, watch the kids, you take care of the kids, and figure the rest out. Okay, so that's kind of like my instructions. That is the instructions that I have gotten um how to navigate this. So in my mind, I if I have them, I'm gonna make it work. Okay, so here are the things that I have done since I quit taking a W4 when I quit working for someone. I sold tools, I went in my wood shop, and I even knew the part of me, the woodworker product part of me, was dead. Like I've I have I avoid my shops, I still have to go there and do some things, and I'm avoiding it like the plague. You guys, I can't even make myself drive there, and it has nothing to do with like oh the memories. I it makes my stomach hurt. I feel like I when I look started closing the business, I was just in such a bad freaking spot, and it was no longer feeding me to do good at that. You know, like my whole my marriage was about that. My marriage was, oh my gosh, I can get like if I get this much money, I'll get this much like affirmation. And I was just constantly like, and this wasn't like uh this was a subconscious thing. I didn't really know it until it's like one of those things you don't know it until it's gone. Well, I didn't know this was a thing until looking back, I'm like, Jesus Christ. It's like my I felt my gauge in life was determined on how much or how successful I could be running this business for for two things for my wife at the time and probably a lot of like my dad in there. I wanted to do it for the wrong reasons. It wasn't for me, it was how I thought I was supposed to do it. That's how that's how I thought my life was supposed to look. I thought I had to do XYZ and then everything else will follow. That was in my mind. So, either way, yes, sold tools. That was my first answer. So let's clean this shop out, and I was like, at that point, I think I was still hoping for some sort of um like creative response to a clean workspace. I was expecting to have it so polished up that it would ignite something in me and it didn't nothing. I couldn't get that place rented fast enough. I didn't I am so tired of seeing that place. Uh so commercial property, Peoria, Illinois. If you want to buy it, that'd be great. It is for sale. Get a hold of me. Um so soon thereafter, and I found all this information. Uh I just looked through my pictures, and so I'm sure like things have been skipped, but I've just wrote down like as I scrolled from the day I quit all the way down to today, it's just what I wrote down notes. So you're getting just what I saw. Um, so I started working on this podcast. I saw the first picture of the logo I wanted, which it's just AI. It's not like anything. It was the first rendering of this logo. This logo's AI. I don't whatever. What do you want me to do? I have no money. I got no money. Uh then I went and got to know Josh Lanning a little better. So uh Bride O'Bagels, a proud sponsor of the podcast. A proud, you know what? As a chef, he's probably like, yeah, man, just it's fine. Everything's fine. But they've been a proud sponsor since day one. Thank you, Josh. Scratch all that. And then I went to work at Bright O'Bagel with Mr. Josh Lanning, a premier sponsor. A premier sponsor of the podcast. My God. Long time sponsor. Um, no, I just started uh I don't know. I just wanted to do things. I wanted to do anything and everything possible, and I wanted to video it, and I wanted to make it a whole thing. And that's how it started. That's how I just I was like, listen, I don't know. Let me come work for you, let me come make something. And then I thought, holy shit, delivery guy. So guess who was delivering bagels for the next four weeks? Me, every Friday, delivering those freaking bagels all over Peoria, baby. That was awesome, that was fun, and then I was just done. I'm like, well, okay, that was fun. I enjoyed it, and I'd still do it, Josh. I'd still do it. You give me a call. Not every Friday anymore, but you know, but I remember this this feeling, this time in my life. It was very strange because I was still motivated to do. But I think the I it was like the con I got out of woodworking and I dipped my toes in the construction world, and that just put like you know, like it's not a good hit, for instance, but you know, just put like a terrible taste in my mouth for the industry as a whole. So I'm like, okay, what else can I do? And that's just what kind of got me coming, and that was just kind of what got me coming around on like the content. Like I've always loved content, I always love sharing. How do I wrap those up in a bow? So that's kind of where I'm at right now, still still trying to wrap things up. Um, but it's it's constant momentum, it is constant momentum, and that's the way I look at it now. Every day, if you get momentum, you just add it to the day before, and it just keeps going and going. So we're working on it, we're working on it. Prank calls. I did some prank calls, those are always good. Down in the basement. I would be here during the week doing some of these podcasts and uh doing a lot of days like today, like really just a content day, a thinking day, a planning day. How can I get better? Who can I bring in? Um yeah, how can I do this better? So that was that day, prank call day. Had to throw a prank call in there, probably have to take a break. Then I went to Indiana, worked with Mr. Curtis, he's an Instagrammer. Uh, we've been um buddies for years, and he I don't remember if I reached out to him. I know I needed the cash. And or he reached out either way, I probably reached out to him. I probably needed the work. He said he had one. Yeah, that's right, because he said, Well, I got one in Ohio and it's about a five-hour drive, and I said saddle up. Let's go. I need an adventure, my adventurous heart needs to go somewhere, but I also need to make money. This checks both of them off. Hell yeah. Was it worth a drive? Probably not. It put some it put some cash in my pocket. Was it worth a drive to Ohio? Probably not. But those were two different things. One was the trip, the other was the work. So for me, it was just like, yeah, why hell yeah, I'll drive anywhere for work. Are you kidding me? Some guy wanted someone to race his car in New York. I told him I'd be there. Never did it. It was just a thought. Airbnb trip was super special. Okay, so this had been about the time. Um I kind of like stopped recording. So Sarah took me to an Airbnb, and I want to say Galena, but it's not. Um actually, I'm gonna find the information because the owners are freaking incredible. So please hold, we're gonna cut this part out. We're gonna cut the pause out. Let's go. I don't know what it's called. Um, I'll find it. I'll put it in the description. I say I don't I'm gonna do that, but it's near it's near Galena. It's like an old church, stained glass, Airbnb. Either way, Sarah got it for the we I forgot what weekend it was. I don't know if it was my birthday. No, that's in March. It could have been my birthday. Yeah, it was my birthday. It was my birthday. She bought me an outfit. Oh, sweet. Uh, but she took me there and something clicked that trip to where I just I don't know, whether it was just like a different lens. I wanted to look through the world. I just wanted to look at everyone and everything in a different lens. And then I don't know. Something on that trip just kind of like slowed me the fuck down. It got me creative. Um, I don't know, inspiring, some would say. Some would say it was just a good inspiring, you know. I learned uh like where we're we always talked about like a house we'll build or a barn will build or something. Um, but they had like a cool area between the kitchen and living room. It was just like this, you know, no TV. Well, I don't think there's a record player there, but if it was me, I'd have one there. So like a FM radio, but we just like sat. Like we ate, or we'd snack in the kitchen or come home. I don't know. But then like we would just sit in the sitting area naturally, like it wasn't, it was just like a good like stepping stone to the living room. So I don't know, it was cool. It was just nice to be like enjoying someone's company, right? Like, I don't know, just a nice freaking trip, and my mind just kind of reset, which took us to the first Evan bed um prototype. Not the first prototype. I mean, the Evan bed, I have a bed I sell, which trying to restructure all that. So, either ways, I'm trying to get a new we've built these beds for children with special needs for years. It's called the Evan bed. Um, and it's always just kind of a little project I have, and I'll get all ramped up and I'll start doing them, and then it'll fall off, and then like the business side will crash. Um, and I'll just be like, well, I don't know. Or like the technology side will crash, the website. Like, I don't know. I don't know. I could keep up with it. I have learned, if anything, I am not a manager of myself by any stretch of the imagination. I hate managing my myself. I hate it. Um, you know, I think back, I don't think I've ever really had to do it on my own. Like my mom did a lot, God bless her. My wife did, you know, for the most part, finances, schedule, stuff like that. Never did it. Briefly, you know, maybe a year and a half on my own with the boys. I felt like I locked in pretty good. Well, now Sarah, the scheduling queen, I'm not scheduling nothing. I ain't scheduling nothing. It's crazy. So I'll have all these websites set up and I won't. So anyway, I am letting go of all that. So I have a company in uh out of Indiana that is building uh prototypes, so they'll be able to like mass produce these. So at this point, I just got the picture from the guy, and it's like the first time seeing the Evanbed built by someone else's hands, but like a company that I like have a lot of trust and love for, if that makes any sense. So that was big, that was exciting. So still floating that one around. Sold some more tools, so I was using pretty much my shop as the bank at this point. So the shop was full of tools as I needed cash, getting rid of them, selling them. Then I got a table job. A designer reached out um wanting a table built. And she goes, Hey, you building furniture? I said, Yeah, what you got? Blah blah blah. Cool, awesome. Here's the price. This is the this is the price that I could never get in business because you can't. You have bills to pay immediately. So you can't put out a number and like pray. You can't put out a number just to get it, and then still expect to live off of it afterwards. And I never got that, right? I never knew that in business until I've learned it. So yeah, it's like now that I don't have the overhead and I don't have that crunching fucking feeling of needing to pay bills and keep this business afloat. I can yeah, I'll build it for sure. It's gonna be worth my time. A thousand percent. Absolutely. Is it still worth the price tag? A thousand percent, one hundred percent. Because now I have the time. I'm not rushed and I'm not freaking out about everyone. So cut out a lot of communication. That's like a lot of the driving force that I hate is do I really need to communicate with this person right now? Do they really need to call me right now? No. I just cut it out. You don't need it. Stop it. Stop it right now. And then I got a deck job. So in the cul-de-sac here at Sarah's house, uh my neighbor, her neighbor, uh mentioned he wants a deck build. And Sarah said, Well, by God, I know a guy that can build you anything. So went over, talked to him, and actually just this week he said he wanted to do it and gave me a check and said, I don't care when this is done. So that's gonna be the good part. I'm home every day with the kids this summer, so it's right in the cul-de-sac. So though I'll be able to get them, come home, they can do whatever they want. Fucking daddy's out there building deck. Alright. I ain't got time for this. What else have we done? Oh, then I hit like a two to three week, I can tell by all the pictures, like a two to three week just flat line. Just a flat line. I must have had some cash saved up, you know, had a little bit of a cushion, and you boy, just flat line. I didn't care. Now, what happens when you have just time to be yourself? What happens? You think and you figure shit out, you start going on more adventures, you start kind of peeking out in public with your social media a little bit more, uh, getting the confidence up. One day I had my phone, my phone screen broke, so I took it into Peoria and had it fixed, and guys, like it'll be about an hour. And at this point in my life, my mood is just like I don't give a shit. Like, take it. I don't, I like I love it for work, I love it for selling stuff, I love it to make money, but anything else is a hindrance, and I don't want to touch it. That is just the fact, Jack. So he's like, it'll be about an hour. I said, Oh, that's cool, it's not a big deal. Uh so it's super close to White Oaks Mall, and I was kind of one of those spunky afternoon moods that I get in that I just like I don't know. There's there's afternoons where I'm just like I could talk to everyone, I can go out in public and just it's so fun to make people laugh. And this isn't like a video, this isn't this is just me in public. Like if you've ever stood with me in a checkout line, if you've ever if you've ever sat by me in a restaurant talking to the waiters, you would understand like I love razzing people. And Sarah told me it's so funny to them because or she goes, it's so funny because you don't understand what you look like, and I don't, I have no clue. I don't I for I picture myself as a 12-year-old child. So the thing that people look at me and think there's a grown man in here is beyond me. I don't understand that. Um, so when I talk to people, I don't think this way, I don't think I'm an intimidating person. So you mix that in with someone that's like super like sarcastic and kind of funny. She's like, you catch everyone off guard, like you're scaring these people. But like she loves it, she laughs, she knows the shtick, she knows when just to walk away and be like, Oh, here he goes. Jeff's on his customer service bullshit. But yeah, that was uh that was a flat line, but that was a good thinking. It was just like uh get fat, don't care. It was almost like flushing the rest of the world down. I'm like, all right, whatever the fuck just happened, like in these past 36 years, like if there was a time that was disappearing, it's like right now, is where I'm just like, all right, you either fucking do it or you don't. And what is it? I have no idea. But I'll let you know when we get there. It's not gonna be on this episode, like it's not something I I don't know, but I'll let you know when we get there. Yeah. Flatline, uh, flatline's a good time. Honestly, if you're ready for a flatline, just flatline, everything will disappear. You're fine. Like, just uh when you realize how I don't know. It's a long story, it's a long rabbit hole to get down. But when you finally say, Oh, I'm not concerned with this group, I'm not concerned with this group, I'm not concerned with these people, I'm not I I I don't they don't bother me. I'm not affected by them, I don't hate them, but when you can narrow down like the handful of people that you would stop everything for, like that actually matter, and then the rest of it is just like, oh, sit back. Oh, if I wrestle your feathers, please understand that I just it's it I'm sorry. I'm sorry it's not as fun for you as it is for me, because this is fun. Um, but not in like an asshole way, right? You know what I mean. If you've been here for any part uh any portion of time, you will know. And then you boy started selling shit. Alright, so I was always a notes are down. It's notes down time. Now we're speaking from the heart. Uh through this past couple years, I've thought of a lot of stuff. I even just text my dad the other day. We don't talk a whole lot. Um, but I did text him the other day and I said, hey, I've been saying a lot of dailisms. I've been saying a lot of dailisms lately. And something that I remember my dad would always say, I just I don't like selling shit. I just I'd rather see it go. That's what it is. I'd rather see it go. That was one of them. So that's kind of the way I've always been. I don't know. Just take it. What just I don't I don't want to deal with it. I don't want, I don't want I I when it came to my business, I could price stuff good. We could price stuff good. But when it comes to like selling personal stuff, I'm like, no one wants this. Like uh, say for instance a kid's bicycle. If I had, and I have many, many a time, dragged stuff to the side of the road that I could probably either A, take the junkyard, or B, sell it on Facebook Marketplace. How many hundreds of items have I given away? I just don't want to deal with it. I would rather throw it away than make five bucks on Facebook Marketplace. When I see anything listed for less than five bucks on Facebook Marketplace, I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing? I don't understand. Like, it doesn't make sense to me. So, well, as I was cleaning my shop out, I had a pretty good pile of things I wanted to sell. You know, not necessarily just tools, but items. A nice fan. You know, I had a nice, I don't know. I had a toolbox, for instance. And I thought, well, I don't have the room for this. I'm consolidating everything into my one-stall studio. One stall studio. That's what I'm naming it. Um, so I said, well, let's just let's just put it on Facebook Marketplace. So I haven't posted on Facebook Marketplace enough to know how to do it. You know, I'm not like swiping, swiping fast. I'm I'm learning it. Alright, blah, blah, blah. Alright, click sell. I'll be damn. Like all of a sudden I had like 70 bucks. And all of a sudden I had like a hundred and forty bucks. Then it was off to the races. It was it was so fun to learn Facebook Marketplace when I was in a comfortable spot. Like I had the time to play with it, and then I got like super into just cleaning things off. You know, I had just shit. Just things. We had uh two sandboxes because I saw one on the side of the road one time and thought it was cool because it was a turtle. Never used it, just sat there. So what did I do? Uh soap deep up that thing. I grabbed my scrub bush, my power washer. Oh my god, I scrub things. I had a long pole with a brush, so I wasn't bending over and like, you know, like in the grass the whole time. I like to work at gentleman's height. I like to work up. It was so nice. I cleaned everything and I'd set it on the porch, and then I got in the habit of just put it on the porch, put it on Facebook, message me for address, cash pickup, blah, blah, blah. People coming to my house, whatever. If it if you knew where I lived, I don't think they'd mess with it. I'm gonna take all that out, scratch that. Scary. Uh, but I just became addicted to selling stuff on Facebook Marketplace. So everything that I was like, oh, let's just see if I can sell it. And I just gets it's amazing when someone just, yep, here's cash. Awesome, talk to you later. It's all cleaned up, everything's displayed. I got a little porch pickup system going on. So yeah, I started doing that. And then I started thinking, well, who's cleaning up garage sales? Who's taking all the shit? We take the goodwill, corporate goodwill, because oh yeah, it's so easy to draw, it's just so easy. No shit, it's easy because I can afford to make it easy. Yeah, hell yeah, everything easy. McDonald's is easy, of course it's easy. It has to be easy because it's not good. Ooh, it has to be easy if it's not good. Damn, that's a lost art. But I didn't want, you know, that's where they're taking it. Goodwill, I don't know. Churches, that's great. I love that, but it's still just a lot of shit for a church to process. Right. I don't want to sound like a hero here. I'm not gonna sound like I'm doing a good deed. I'm starting somewhat of a business, right? It's a way to make money, it's not a business. I will never own a business ever again in my life. Um, but it's just a way to make some cash. Just uh some little bit of earning. So as my my ideas progress, I think, well, who gets all the garage sell stuff? And I thought someone needs to. So at this point, I'm driving the current vehicle I have now, a 2008 Chevy Suburban, which is very close tied to the poverty community. I just say it like it is, I drive one, don't come at me, I don't care, it doesn't matter, it's not offensive, it's just saying most rusted out white Chevy Suburbans are pedaling methamphetamines. It's just a fucking fact, all right? Jesus. So I make this AI flyer, and I think Jack is home with me this summer, so we need stuff to do. Garage sale pickups. I'll throw a few flyers out there. Jeff doesn't throw just a few flyers, it he makes it his complete identity. He admers immerses himself in the garage cell culture, the garage cell ways, the thrift store ways, the vintage stuff. He's not waking up in the morning to go get the stuff. Uh-uh. He's waiting until he's the maggot. He's coming in afterwards. Alright. I just send a little flyer out. It says, hey, shoot us a text, your address, and what time you want picked up. Buddy. People got stuff to get rid of. It's insane. Uh, so we do a few. We pack the suburban. Knox, Jack, scratch that. Both my sons pack in the suburban. We can barely fit in it. My first load was from front to back. There's a tote in between me and Jack. There's a tote in between me and my son. And we are just laughing because he loves it. It's he loves a dopamine hit. You take that kid to O'Reilly's. He's gonna ask for an alternator. He asks for something everywhere. Everywhere he goes, he asks for something. So here you go, Jack. Start grabbing it. And we do. We've done um, you know, we did that the first house. I went out the next day. I was hooked. I needed a taste. I needed another taste. Got another good load, a lot of home goods. Um, she turned out to be hilarious, by the way. I don't know if I can describe the text mix up. Uh, but she turns out to be an artist. Like she's really freaking cool. It's been a great experience. And then, oh, did I hit the mother load? Lady calls me very direct. Sir, we have a church rummage sale every year, and we need someone to haul off this year. And I said, Oh, sure. Do you think I'll need a trailer? She sent me the bird's eye view of this garage sale setup. It looked like it was down in the fighting align. I court. It was huge. So then it's like, well, what's going to be left? So I don't even look at the pictures. I don't even want to look. I don't even want to know. That's how my brain works. I don't even want to know. Um. So here comes D-Day. And I'm turning down. Oh my god. I was getting now. I'm getting bicycles on the side of the road. I'll see a bicycle and think, holy shit, there's 10 bucks. And I'll get it. I'll take it, clean it up, post it. 10, 15 bucks. It's free. It's free money. It's insane. A little Tex basketball hoop. 10 bucks. Come get it. Sold. I've sold so much shit. I've sold everything. It's so much fun. I love it. And then I put it all in an envelope. So, anyways, we get the mother load call. I got the horses ready. Me and my son, Sunday afternoon pickup, two o'clock. We roll deep. We got GoPro set up. Me and Jack are just in hustle mode. It's hot. And we're just like, I was like, bro, the faster we load this trailer, and when he starts picking and he starts getting that excitement, and he's grabbing stuff and finding stuff. Oh, dude, it was fun. We loaded this fucking trailer up. It was a 7x14 enclosed trailer, and it was packed from the top to the absolute bottom with boxes. They had it all boxed up, a lot of loosey goose, but mostly boxed up. So it was listen, it was a trailer full of surprises. Do you know that feeling you get on Christmas morning if you like to receive gifts? I love gifts. I love receiving gifts. I've lived a life my entire life saying I don't need gifts. I don't want gifts. I don't need gifts. Listen, I need gifts. I want gifts. Bring me your gifts. So for me to have this trailer with pro I don't hundreds of boxes of all shapes and sizes, sealed, taped. Guys, I about I just couldn't comprehend how much fun I was about to have. I couldn't put in words how excited I am to open the tailgate of this trailer and go nuts. And go nuts I did. This is this is all documented on TikTok. This is all on there. Um I I've just put out kind of short ones, but I have every day is filmed. And the shit that I found. Um the first day I was just throwing shit everywhere. I didn't have a system. And that taught me, Jeff, you have to have a system. So the system's gonna be super important for sorting. You gotta have a good system, a good flow. You gotta get rid of the stuff, you gotta keep it away from you, and you gotta keep it organized off the jump. And I have found for clothes, it's stacking men's, women's. Doesn't matter, kids, girls, boys, doesn't matter. Girls boy, girls boy, girls boy, girls boy. And then once you got your girl boy stack, you separate them, get the boys out of the way, girls, front, center. Now, in my perfect in my perfect world, I'm standing at a tall bench, um, and I've got huge totes. Think it like the carnival when you're playing the throw the ball, you gotta keep it in the tub, that big tub, plastic one. Think of those, you know, stacked three high, four high, four wide, and it just says like, you know, the men's are say men's are maroon tubs and sizes. Chuck them up there, chuck them up there. Girls, chuck them down there, chuck them down there, over, over. Oh, shoes, belts, accessories, either way. I dream about this now. Because now that I'm doing it, I'm like, oh, this could be so efficient. A drive-thru bay, like a lean two, and right there you got wash tables, kids' toys, hits the wash table. Um, electronics, get them in the electronics bin. We got clothes on hangers, cool. We got we got a cable going all the way around this place. We got it, we got a cable going all the way around this place, hang them up. Um like um, like a wash bay. And you got bigger toys, we got a power washer right there, ready to go. Spray it down, scrub it, slide it over. We're gonna slide it to the picture bay. Everything gets photographed. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Size, clothes, get wash, washer. Either way, this is now I'm just dreaming, but that's not the point. The point I'm not here to tell you about my dreams of resale, of owning the resale kingdom. Um, my story. What was my story? Oh, so we get the church load. And I just can't describe a lot of glassware. It wasn't, I never really got that one thing that was like, okay, this was worth it. There was a uh shop vac, you know, I've sold some golf caddies. I've sold a lot of stuff, honestly. Uh, but nothing like that really was the crim to the crim. So, but at the same time, it was awesome, and it was fun to film, and I enjoyed making content with it. I enjoy just being myself and and pretending that is work, you know, putting in the actual hours I needed to put in, actually dedicating time to something. There's a YouTuber that I've watched for a long time, Ross Creations, and something he said in one of his more serious videos recently was when he started taking his videos seriously, he said, if I don't do it the best I can possibly do right now, I will half ass the rest of my life. And he talked about other endeavors that didn't work out for him. And he was, and I he's one of my most genuine favorite YouTube print guys in the world. He's one of the best real people, always has been the best, never sold out, you know, got a little trouble not too long ago, but nothing terrible, just with the animal community, might have been a little worse. So that kind of resonated with me. So I have really been taking the time to use my microphones and uh think about my lighting, think about my thumbnails, and just start diving harder into this. So that's kind of led me to where I'm at now. Is is is one Sarah loves my content, she loves filming, she understands when my phone comes out, she wants to help me with the shots. That encouragement there is like the absolute freaking best thing in the world because it's always been something that's been stupid, right? Every it's oh my god, you know, stupid, it's stupid. And it's just like yeah, I know it's stupid, but I enjoy it. So when I we first met, I wasn't really making content at all. Um, so she's kind of slowly watched me like integrate it back in my life, and now that like she gets to be a kind of a sweet part of it, uh, you'll see her more on TikTok. Yeah, there you go. Go to TikTok. Let's put a face with that name. Um, so yeah, I just having the space to do that, the time to do that, and just making it work. There's there's lessons I have learned down I don't want to say in the it doesn't feel like hell. It feels like a I I've learned some lessons in the past couple years that I it it'll it's one of some of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned in my life. The most valuable core beliefs I've ever felt in my life. Um and I all it took was just time. Uh someone granted me the time to do that, and fucking how cool is that. So that's what I've been up to, you little shitheads. I've seen you commenting. I saw your comments talking about where'd the podcast go? Shove it up your ass. I got things to do. I got go through a trailer. No, but it was just fun. I hope this recorded. Um, and honestly, if it didn't, it was awesome. It was awesome just to talk. Um it's called self reflection. We'll get into that. It's a long road, but we'll get you healed. All right. All you gotta do is shut up and listen. Ooh, it's a healing channel now. Alright, I love you. Goodbye.