Doug and Trish show you how to transform List Perfectly into your virtual assistant! Whether you’re just starting or looking to scale your reselling business, this episode provides actionable tips and strategies to streamline your workflow, save time, and maximize productivity using List Perfectly as or WITH your virtual assistant!
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the e-commerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and a hub for information on growing your business. Find out more at thesellercommunitypodcast.com, leave a message, or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email us at podcast@listperfectly.com.
Links
Seller Community Podcast on Anchor
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Trish Glenn (Super Sale Trish) Instagram
How to Make List Perfectly Your Virtual Assistant
Doug: What’s up, Trish?
Trish: Hello, people! So I would just like to say that, we get a lot of regulars and we really appreciate it.
We have Listing Party. If anyone is not a member of List Perfectly who is here, we’d love you to join us, but when you use List Perfectly, you automatically get a subscription to Listing Party, which is like our community arm and it’s a interactive platform where we have meetings and we do we do meetings, but we also do I do a Mastermind, Monday through Friday.
At Mastermind the other day, We were talking about getting to the next level and whether you hire people, whether you use virtual assistants, things like that, and this topic came from that.
And so the other day during Mastermind, one of the things that somebody said was that they have stopped using a virtual assistant because Pro Plus has given them the ability to be their own virtual assistant because of listing assistant and how much faster they can list.
And how much faster they can get things done that they no longer use a virtual assistant. And that was the germ that started the seed, right? And Doug and I talked about it and thought about it. And so that’s what this is about. This is about how You can use this tool to your advantage and make it your own virtual assistant.
I think a lot of us get virtual assistants too early. I think a lot of us I just think that’s the way that everyone uses a virtual assistant and that we all need it to be able to get enough done. And I think a lot of us jump to spending money before we should, before we’re proficient enough at listing, before we’re listing enough on our own, before we’re getting enough work done to really justify spending the money to have somebody else do it. And so that’s what this topic is about. And I think it is really interesting.
Doug: And this is not to knock VAs. Theresa Cox has had VA benefits for years.
Trish: I used VAs and I am not anti VA. I think VAs have an absolute integral part in a reselling business. What I worry about is when you start out and you start using them too early because. You need to be able to be proficient enough in your listing and having a consistent listing habit that you can justify everything else.
Doug: Developing those early habits and then and and we’ll talk about this when we get in a little deeper in, but if you do have a VA or some type of VA, maybe somebody that’s taking your pictures. Pro Plus can also make your VA more efficient as well.
Trish: Absolutely.
I really think that there are a lot of people who get VAs too early. And VA’s absolutely have their place when they absolutely can help you get to the next level, but they can also keep you trapped at a certain level because all you’re doing is making enough to sustain what you’re doing and paying them and sustain and sustain instead of growing. And if you’re going to use a VA, you want to make sure you’re in a position that you can grow.
And so for me. All of this comes down to the basics. You really need to know your numbers. You really need to know what you’re making per listing. You really need to know how long things take you to do. You really need to know that your shipping is really dialed in. You need to have a really good inventory system.
All of those things, to me, are much more important Get those bases done and solid before you try to build up the next level. One of those bases I think is really learning how to use LP in the most efficient way so that you get the most out of it. And when you get the most out of it, then when you do go to the next level, you will be that more proficient.
You can teach somebody that much better because they all come to you. Especially if you find them through our like professional VAs like through Fiverr or through Upworks. When you find these people, they are already doing this for other people. So they’re doing things the way other people want them to.
And so you’re going to have to be able to explain what you want, why you want it, how you want it. And if you can have a really good system in place, a really good process we’re always talking about process if you can have your process really dialed in that will help this whole situation.
Doug: All right. That was all without a breath.
Trish: Sorry. I’m a little passionate about this.
Doug: When you start, there’s so much you can do, so many platforms, so much information, so many people out there telling you what, like us, tell you what to do and what not to do.
And you do some things like you get. Oh, I need a virtual assistant. Oh, I need to oh, I need to order a crap ton of free shipping stuff from the post office.
Obviously we know a lot of sellers And I know a lot of sellers that have been selling a long time like Trish and sellers from the 90s and have seen it come up from where you took your picture on your disposable camera and you went to the drug store to drop it off and picked it up in three days and you got your check or your money or your change and now now It’s faster easier more efficient, but I am starting to see some sellers newish Sellers That literally don’t want to do anything.
I have a friend, bless her heart. She sells on Poshmark and Depop. Nice girl. I’ve known her a long time.
She came to me and she said, Hey, I want to get started on eBay, but I don’t understand the shipping, all this. So I gave her some super high-level tips, and she said I really want to sell on eBay, but I don’t want to do that measuring weighing stuff.
Trish: If you start on Poshmark, your idea of what reselling is, I think is skewed. If somebody came to me and never Resold before. I would tell them to start on eBay. Now, there are going to be some people who say, No, it’s hard. Start on Posh. I think start on eBay, because if you get eBay under your belt, you can sell anywhere. Because eBay is always the hardest.
Doug: And it used to be harder even a year or two ago than it is now.
Trish: Totally. It has gotten easier and with AI, it’s all getting easier and with our listing assistant. When we use listing assistant And then we bring it in from List Perfectly into eBay. We then almost exclusively just click the boxes that are already filled out by eBay, the suggested ones. So she doesn’t, I still go into some of them. She doesn’t go into any. If it doesn’t have a suggestion, T is not clicking it and she doesn’t think it holds back her sales. So if item specifics are the bane of your existence, I would say, try that trick and see if it helps and if your sales, are hurt by it.
Does List Perfectly’s AI identify eBay VEROs when you create the listing or before you post? No. So here’s the thing. You can have your own list of items inside List Perfectly that will alert you when you use the words. Okay? Velcro. Being one that we all know we shouldn’t use. Onesie being another one we all know we shouldn’t use.
So you can have this, there’s this thing in List Perfectly called Word Alert and you can put those words in so that you don’t use them. The thing about, there is no real published Vero list. eBay does not give us a specific list that says, Do not list any of these things. There are some on there that we all know, but there’s nothing concrete and they do that for lots of reasons, eBay does.
So there is no exact list. You can create your own and put it in the word alert and it would alert you every single time if that’s what you wish.
So one of the things I really think you need to do is be really honest with yourself, and I talk about this in Mastermind every once in a while, is, to be honest with yourself about your business and about what you will do and what you will not do. I do not do accounting. It’s just not my jam. I hate it.
And if I wasn’t, I pay somebody to do it. And it’s worth the money for me, because I may end up in prison for tax evasion. Because,
Doug: yeah, you in prison would be like in Goodfellas when they’re in prison and they’re making the dinner and chopping up the garlic. I’ll be in the corner
Trish: crying but I am not going to do the accounting and I don’t, I’m not like, I talk about the differences between Theresa and I a lot, I think that like I would rather pay somebody and I have an accountant that I pay once a year to do everything and I just drop it off and I do the piles and I make sure it’s all neat and everything. But I am not going to sit down and do the spreadsheets and figure out to the penny and things.
I’m just not going to. I know what I make. Monthly, I Know What I Spent Monthly, and I Know How Many Items I Did. So I can make, I have a very good idea, not to the penny, but I have a very good idea of what my average cost is and what my average sold price is and what I’m making per item. So I’m not saying to be self-delusional.
I’m not saying you need to know these things, but you need to be honest with yourself about what you will and will not do. And if you’re somebody who loves to shop. If you’re a really good sourcer, if you love sourcing, if you’re really good at it, maybe you need to concentrate on exploiting that about yourself and figure out a way that you can, and maybe that means hiring VAs, maybe that means hiring an employee, but you have to make sure it’s financially responsible for you and your business.
You have to make sure That you are putting in enough work, and some of us, I think, and no disrespect when I say this, so please no one be angry at me. But I think there are some of us who are not doing enough every day to justify paying somebody else.
Doug: Yeah. So you’re saying self-exploitation instead of self-deception.
Trish: I’m saying self, no, not self explo, yeah, self-exploration, yeah.
Doug: Not exploitation.
Trish: Not exploitation. Oh, no, wait.
Doug: Explor exploitation, not exploration.
Trish: That’s a totally different show.
Doug: What you say is that it’s a good point.
It’s the harsh reality. It’s If you wanna do this full time, you have to, again, goes back to me like two to two to four-ish books a week or so, which is fine with me. I’m building up. If I wanted to support myself or do this as a job, I’m gonna have to put a lot more time into it.
Trish is, where’s my little note? I have a note, Trish, that says five drafts a day, five lists a day, five, five banks a day,
Trish: five lines, five lines, five banks.
Doug: And
Trish: I don’t know what the last five is. Five Redos? What was the fifth one?
Doug: The last one is keeping in mind scheduling eBay out.
So I’m listing, so I have five going out every day.
Trish: But
Doug: Then I’ll be listing and I’ll forget to schedule it and I’ll be like…
Trish: there are people who want to make six figures and If you want to make six figures, figure out what your average sale price is for the last month. Then figure out how many of those items do you have to sell to grow six figures.
And then figure out on a 50 percent margin what you would need to sell to net six figures. And figure out how many items that is. And that, I think, will be eye opening to a lot of people.
Doug: And then, set up your systems, have processes, get, obviously always be willing to open and learn.
But it’s I don’t know, Trish, that I used to work at eBay.
Trish: Doug, you, I have known you for so long, you have never told me that.
Doug: I always have little secrets in my pockets, Trish, so you never know. But, no, but when I was at eBay on the community team, a lot of people would blame eBay for their sales being down.
And then it’s I remember having a meeting, a heated conversation on one side more than mine. about a lady that sold a very niche thing. And she was like 10 years ago I sold at this level. And now I sell at this level. If you look up this item, let’s say for example, it was rubber duckies.
So if you look up this item on Google, she said, all my stuff comes up. Must be something on the eBay side. Why are my sales down? And so my response was. Maybe people aren’t into rubber duckies anymore.
Trish: Or maybe rubber duckies are easier to get now than they were 10 years ago. Maybe you can get rubber duckies at Walmart or the dollar store or wherever. That’s the other thing. Being honest with yourself. Yes, and it’s tough. Listen, we all love things we like to sell. We all love things we like to list. But if those aren’t selling, it doesn’t matter if we like it or if I can get it You For free, or if it’s really easy to list.
If no one is buying it, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters. Is it somebody willing to buy it at a price that I can sell it at? That’s it. That’s the only thing that matters.
I say, reverse engineer, figure out what you want to make, right? Figure out what you want to make. And then see how is it possible to do that. And if you’re somebody who is willing to, I listed between 40 and 50 a day, 7 days a week, when I was really working my business. That was not easy. But I got there and my, and I’ll be the first one to say it, my listings were not the best listings.
They weren’t, they were about a solid B. I’d give, if I got to an 80 percent out of a hundred, it was good enough. And I kept it moving because having the velocity in my store and having the items go up for an item that was only going to sell for 25 bucks was more important than a perfect listing.
Some of people get obsessed about having the perfect listing, having the best keywords, having the best title. And I’m not saying that these things aren’t important, but they’re only as important as the amount of money that you can make from it. If I’m only going to make 25 bucks off this listing, that listing cannot take me an hour. It has to be five minutes or less.
Doug: That’s right. Yeah. And one quick thing, since we’re talking about goals, and I’m not the expert, but from what I know about, working with people and doing stuff is a lot of people make either unattainable goals or they make goals that are too big.
A goal should be narrow, measurable, and something that is actionable. So it’s instead of saying, so more, be like, list five a day. for a month and then move up to this and move up to that. Something you can measure and something that’s attainable because you don’t want to set insane goals and discourage yourself.
Trish: I agree with you in philosophy, but here’s the thing for me, if I’m going to do five a day for a month and I can’t feed myself, okay, that isn’t good. So I think you need to understand what the reality of the situation is. That’s why I think knowing your numbers is important. I think you need to know how much you’re making now per item.
I think you need to know what you’re, roughly how much you make on that. 50 percent seems to be a good calculation if you don’t want to figure it out. And then you need to know where you’re trying to go, what you could, where you’re trying to be. And then I agree with Doug, once you know the bigger goal, what is a realistic goal that you could actually do, then you can start to break that down into smaller pieces.
And I think Doug is right. You don’t want to say, I’m going to go from three a day to 50 a day, starting tomorrow. That’s unrealistic. Except for then you harness List Perfectly and you harness the listing assistant. Get better at it. It’s a great tool. You should be able to double your listings in no time at all using that tool.
And I also think that the more you use it, the faster you’ll get. The more you use it, the more you’ll understand what it’s going to spit back out at you so that you can work with what it’s doing and knowing these things, harnessing the power of listing assistant. I honestly believe this.
Theresa, we were in a meeting yesterday. And Theresa said she thinks that Listing Assistant is as powerful right now in our community as cross-posting was in 2018 because nobody was doing it in 2018, right? And when List Perfectly came out, there was nobody doing cross-posting unless you were doing it like by yourself on a spreadsheet, and it was pain consuming, and it was a huge process.
You can harness this power of the listing assistant and get yourself in a position where you can actually start to make real money at this business. I honestly believe in my soul that anybody can make money at this. This is not a secret thing. All it is hard work. All it is putting your nose to the grindstone and getting it done every day.
And unfortunately, some of us get stuck on certain things. I want it to look a certain way. I want it to feel a certain way. I want it to be a certain way. And some of us get like paralyzed fear about what if I under, what if I, I sell this too cheaply? What if I overprice it? And I’m telling you all, The other stuff will work its way out.
I’m not saying to put a brand up without looking. I’m not saying that if it’s really expensive, you need to do your research. But if it’s a used piece of clothing, put it up. It doesn’t matter. Get it up.
I’m not a great sourcer. I don’t want to go to the thrift store. and go through all the clothes and decide what I want to buy or what I want, what I don’t want to buy. So I have set up that I buy from consignment stores and I buy their old inventory.
So inventory that’s already been on the floor. I buy it and I buy it for between a dollar and $2 an item and I buy it blind because I’ll just buy it all. So I get it at that price because I’m going to buy everything and I’m not picking what I want. I take everything. And then out of that, maybe. 10 percent I cull and I get rid of, right?
Maybe 10%, sometimes less, sometimes none. Because this is stuff that’s already been on the floor, so they, it already had a certain standard for them to take it into the consignment store. This is how I like to do it. So sourcing for me is one of the things that I’ve taken out of my Equation.
I don’t source much. I do go to the bins maybe every three months or so, and I will go for two solid days and I buy hundreds and hundreds of pounds when I’m there because I don’t want to do it again for another three months. So I always have a lot of inventory. And I always have, and then, I have a process for when it comes in, but I am not deciding what I’m selling.
I am just getting it at a really good price and moving forward. Now, this would not work for a lot of people. A lot of people would hate this. And a lot of people would find that I’m buying stuff, I’m selling something. For 10 bucks, because that’s all it’s worth, but I already got it. So what the hell, let’s just get it listed.
And a lot of people would disagree with that. That’s fine. But this is got my sourcing so down low that I’m able to do other things that I mean, have a job at List Perfectly. I do other things now with my time. So we all have to figure out how much time we have, what we’re going to list, how we’re going to list it and what works best for you and figuring it out, how you can make it work for you and your business. If it’s 99 cents, it’s coming home to me. That’s how I feel, right? It’s cheap, I’m buying it. Let’s go.
Doug: I love the term cull because I believe it’s a Bostonian wailing term, which reminds me of Moby Dick. To the last I grapple with thee.
From hell’s heart I stab at thee for hate’s stake. I spit in my last breath.
Trish: That was pretty impressive there, Mr. Douglas. Quoting Moby.
Doug: Technically, wait, stop the show. Technically, I was quoting Khan from Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. He was obsessed with Moby Dick, and obsessed with Captain Kirk and Revenge. So you could say that Captain Kirk was Khan’s Moby Dick.
Trish: I think Captain Kirk was Khan’s Moby Dick. Isn’t that kind of the whole, that was a great movie. Yes. That’s a revenge film. It’s a great movie.
I think you all need to decide, and be open. I don’t wanna make it sound like you have to decide this is what I’m gonna have for a business and that’s all I’m ever gonna sell. I’m not saying that at all. I think we all knew need to be open to the possibility of something being dropped in our lap.
And the longer you do this, the more opportunities what will come to you and that you will hear about and that people will offer you. And that is why it is so important to go to things like Boss. To go to eBay open, to be involved in your local meetup community. And if you look on, look online, find your local meetup.
I run one, Starr runs one Cheryl Hinton runs one. There’s lots of them all over the place. Get involved with your local meetup because Starr may find somebody who’s gonna, get rid of whatever and they might say, Hey, do you know anybody? And she’ll say, Hey, yeah, I might know someone. And she’ll call Doug and say, Hey, Doug, I got a guy who is going to start selling books.
They’re all Star Wars. Star Trek, would you be interested in buying them? So you need, you can be open to the possibilities of things happening. And that is what being involved in this community will get you.
I love having my fingers on the pulse of the reselling community. It is one of those things that you’ll know, you get the feeling, you understand people will, and you get, you understand what’s happening and what’s happening next. And maybe the new things you should be looking at.
Doug: And this is something I’ve always thought. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. And like you said, too is if you’re selling long enough, you’re going to find somebody that’s going to be like, will you sell this stuff for me, or will you sell blah, blah, blah.
Trish: And that’s another thing. So think about that too. I ran a very very unsuccessful consignment store. It was an abject failure. It was terrible. And from that experience I had a very successful eBay business from that really bad thing that happened to me or that I made to happen to myself.
It could be up for discussion. From that really bad experience, I ended up with a very successful eBay business. And from that eBay business, I got a job at List Perfectly. And I honestly believe all three of those things are connected in the sense of without failing at that consignment store, I would not have put so much work into my eBay business.
I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, that I could pay everyone back that I owed money to, that I could pay my dad back, that I could put the money I took from my family in my, like my family pot and put that back in. And I did all of those things. All of those things made me want to be able to do a really successful eBay business.
And I did, and that was because I refused to give up. But without failing, I wouldn’t have known that consignment, now, I’m not saying consignment is a bad thing. I’m talking about my consignment store, physical locations, where it was, that was a bad decision. Okay. I’m not saying consignment in general is a bad thing.
And so being open, if somebody called me now and said, would you be willing to, consign, it would have to be worth a certain amount of money for me to do it because I wouldn’t want to split 10 bucks or 20 bucks. So consignment is an interesting thing and it’s a good way to get inventory. If you’re starting out and you are new and capital is an issue for you, consignment can be a godsend.
Doug: There was that momentous day when Trish was pittering around in her empty store and the door opened and she heard that bell and Diane Lassonde walked in and sat down, crossed her arms and said, what are you doing?
Trish: What are you doing? There was two things that happened and I hope that anybody who’s here today, maybe Doug and I could do this for you also, but there were two things that happened to me when I was failing miserably.
One was, Diane Lassonde came in. And the other one was I paid Casey Paris 50 bucks to look at my store. He was doing store reviews at the time. And I still had the physical location, the eBay store, the physical location of the consignment store. And then I also had my eBay store. And I paid Casey to look at it.
And he basically was like, you suck, man. Basically. And I needed that. I needed someone to say to me. This isn’t good. What are you doing? And he also basically said to me, how much are you listing a day? This means you’d only ever make this much money. You live in, you live outside of Boston.
Can you live on that kind of money? And I’m like no, I can’t, so I needed somebody to point out to me. That I wasn’t doing enough. And without him and Diane both telling me, what the hell are you doing? I don’t know what I would have done. I think I probably would have just went back and got a job in construction like I had before.
And yeah, Casey says that to everyone, but you know what, I needed it. I needed to pay the 50 bucks and I needed someone to yell at me. And so I’m glad that he did and I am forever thankful. I know that he can be wise as anything on here. He loves a clickbait title. But the kid has got a good soul, man.
He is, he really did help me out when I needed it, and he went out of his way. And ever since then, he’s gone out of his way to make sure, help me with anything I needed. And so I have nothing but nice things to say about him.
Doug: There you go. Yeah.
Trish: I wonder how you guys would like this. I love the idea of maybe doing our own store reviews on Listing Party, and seeing if, some of you guys, I promise I won’t be like, I’ll be nicer, but it would be nice if we could, some of us would let us look at our stores and say, this is what I would do. I think this would help. Maybe this isn’t exactly blah, blah, blah. I do think it may be useful.
Doug: That’s a fun idea.
Trish: Yeah.
Doug: So a couple quick things before we wrap up. First of all, thanks everybody. We appreciate it. But this was fun. Thank you so much for tuning in. We appreciate it.
But then I do have to tell my other quick story. Yesterday, Trish knows this one, but so yesterday I did a video on cause I, cause it’s good for booksellers, video game sellers the barcode scanner function on mobile and desktop.
So I did a video for it yesterday and I’m filming the video. And when It scans, it beeps on both. And Moose, who is down here I couldn’t figure out why, because they usually don’t move, but they’re usually always right here. So I’m ending up the video with, and that’s why, and he’s up wanting to go out, wanting to walk out.
Then I rewatched the video today because it was put up on social media, and the beeps happened again. And I realized that he hates beeps because he thinks it’s a smoke alarm. And then, so I let him out again. And after, so after I watched the video, he wouldn’t come back in the office for a while.
Trish: He, so you just tortured the poor dog. That’s what we got from that story.
Doug: I feel terrible. He doesn’t understand. I thought it was a fire too .
Trish: Exactly.
Doug: Thanks everybody. This was the Hoot. We’ll see you next time.
Outro
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