The husband and wife team Ginger Marvin, Cathy, and Chris join Doug and Danna and chat about how they balance their business and family, and more, striving to be consistent, authentic, and persistent in their business and across their active social media.
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the ecommerce 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.
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Transcript
Doug
Today we welcome Ginger Marvin, Cathy, and Chris to the Seller Community podcast. Happy to have you. Happy to see you again. We were in Colorado a few weeks ago. Saw you there. Nice to be able to chat with you today. So let’s hop in and tell us how the name Ginger Marvin came along and how you started up your brand.
Cathy
So Ginger Marvin was just like a nickname of mine in general. Obviously, my real name’s Cathy or Catherine, but, Ginger because of the red hair. Honestly, it was just my Instagram handle, just from my personal life at the time. And then I heard about the reseller community on Instagram. So I just started posting posts from my main account, just and putting hashtags for reseller-related things.
Chris
Just have no intention of ever…just being a part of the community.
Cathy
Yeah. Just normal stuff. And then, yeah, when it, I don’t know if it was what I was posting, which was just package picks or, just the hashtags took off. I don’t know, a lot of people started following me, and then, yeah, it turned into several thousand people and then a couple of years after that we started YouTube, so we wanted to keep the name consistent everywhere. So that’s just yeah, we just kept it, that.
Chris
It just worked.
Danna
Yeah. Absolutely. It’s, so impressive. You both have come a long way as a team and I think our listeners, I know as parents, grandparents it’s interesting cuz I was looking at your, I was stalking you a bit earlier and so I was looking at your Instagram and oh, your Christmas picture was just so cute and your sons and it was just so cute and I, all that you guys do, I think that there are so many people that would be interested to hear how do you manage your family, your business, and we’d love to have some tips, if you don’t mind sharing
Chris
Yeah, I, you know what, it’s not easy. Sometimes, right, like there, there’s a lot that goes on. And it’s fun. We try to involve the kids as much as we can, but we really do. We do get a lot of our work done when they’re at school or when they’re, sometimes grandma will watch them.
Cathy
TaeKwonDo, things like that. So we try to work when they’re not really around, just so that they don’t feel like we’re just working.
Chris
Which can be hard cuz sometimes work, has to take the forefront of it. And we try to make up for that when that kind of stuff happens. But they understand and sometimes they want to get really involved and they’ll help bag some inventory or and It’s not always very helpful, but yeah, as long as they feel like they’re helping and we’ve implemented in the past where we’d pay them like 10 cents to, to bag a pair of shoes or something like that. Try to make it a, yeah, it sounds like it’s a learning experience.
It’s really about learning about it and we’re trying to be responsible and all that. There are times it’s not easy and Yeah. It, it’s, I’m not gonna lie about that. There are hard days with any other kind of business. You have hard days at work. When you work for yourself, you have hard days too, and sure, I think it’s just more about, just keeping going and doing the best you can and accepting that’s good enough.
Doug
Yeah, exactly.
Danna
It’s funny because I know when I was first starting as a single mom with three kids, it was like the beauty of it all at the end of the day is that you can drop everything and tend to your family. Do you feel the same about being in control of your family and your business and priorities?
Chris
Yeah. I think ultimately that is like the biggest benefit of, for us working for ourselves is, yeah, is being able to, okay, it, it’s a snow day. We don’t have to worry about it. We can get ’em home, we can take care of it. We might have to get a little work done here and there, but no you, It really has blessed us in that way of being able, like we started doing, a lot of this stuff during the lockdowns and stuff, and so our kids were doing e-learning and that kind of, really taught us how to manage and shift and really just do the best you can and like I said, just great. It’s as good as, it’s good enough, right?
Doug
Yeah.
Cathy
It’s not great. If you’re ever in our Thursday night lives, there’s almost always a problem right in the first five minutes. just something, from the week or that day, but…
Doug
You have a huge social media following, across the board. As you said, you do your lives, you do those all the time, super regularly. What social channel did you launch on and do you have a favorite?
Cathy
So I basically just launched on Instagram. I was literally never thinking anything of it. I mean I watched YouTube at the time. I don’t even know if I did at first. I think Chris told me that “people on YouTube do reselling. You could like maybe learn something.” So I started watching some people then I’m very shy, oh, I never ever thought like I would be doing YouTube. But yeah, like Chris mentioned during the lockdown is when we, what else do we gotta do? Let’s start a YouTube channel, yeah. So yeah, we started on Instagram, and then…
Chris
I think it grew Instagram to 10,000.
Cathy
Yeah. Before we started YouTube.
Chris
It’s not like she had the plan and anticipation of growing. It was just like,
Cathy
Yeah, that was, it was weird. It’s still weird to think about.
Chris
And then, yeah after 10,000 followers on Instagram, I talked to her, and coaxed her into starting YouTube.
Cathy
Because I was always showing him my hauls, hey, see what I got, as if he even cares. He does not care.
Chris
I’m like, “people do this on YouTube. I could be recording it and, other people could see it.” And so I’m a YouTube guy. I learn everything I need from YouTube, right? If I have a question, I go, “how do you do this? How do you tie a tie?” So my natural thing is just to be like you’re showing me how to do this, and other people can see that. So I think my favorite platform is YouTube. And yours is probably Instagram.
Cathy
Yeah. Like Instagram, you’re each day you’re seeing what happened new that day you can interact with people on the spot.
Danna
Yeah. So tell us about your live shows. How did that come about and how did that get started?
Chris
We’ve actually, it’s been over a year now, just about it, just over a year that we started doing a weekly live show every Thursday night, 8:00 PM Mountain Time, and really just came out of like our, I’ve always felt behind on like our channel. Like me, it’s always overwhelming how many tune in, watch, comment, or have questions. And so I feel like I don’t ever get to answer everything, right? And so it just was a way for me to be like, okay let’s check. Just get in, the grit of it. Let’s get in with everybody. Anybody can ask any questions that they have.
Sometimes Cathy will work, she’ll use List Perfectly live to show other people how we do stuff. And then if any time there’s a question that we can answer and it’s grown even more to others, there’s a lot of knowledge that comes to our shows and so often we’ll get behind in the questions and those questions will already be answered by other viewers.
Cathy
And for me, it’s just fun to chat. Yeah, it’s good too, it’s boring, reselling all alone all the time by yourself, so Yeah.
Chris
So it checked a lot of boxes for us. Just to be able to talk with other people. When we’re here working for ourselves, we don’t get out. I used to work at a school district, I got to work with a lot of people. And so yeah, that’s a part that’s missing now. And so being involved with the community has really, I think the live show really helped that too.
Doug
Which marketplaces do you sell on and where do you sell the most?
Cathy
Because of List Perfectly, honestly, before List Perfectly, I was doing like, Kidizen honestly was like my main platform and now it’s like my least main platform. I do eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, and Kidizen, I was doing Facebook Marketplace for a while, but I don’t like the lack of customer service there, so I quit that last year. Right now I’m doing the most on eBay and Poshmark is a very close second. I definitely could not cross-post to all those platforms without List Perfectly though.
Danna
So I did also notice you on the List Perfectly at Listing Party. I saw you in the directory. So how did you discover List Perfectly?
Cathy
Honestly, it was actually…
Chris
Through the community, I think.
Cathy
Yeah. Her name is Savanna. She goes by Street Savvy. She used to do YouTube, but now she mainly just does Instagram, I think. So I, she was using it for a while and I was like, oh, that’s something. I’ve been wishing for and wanting and then I started trying it. This was way before…
Chris
This was when you had to sign up on a waiting list to get in.
Cathy
Like right in the beta program.
Chris
Since I think as, as early as we could be. Yeah. I think we were probably one of the first few waves that got on the list so…
Cathy
And I’ve never looked back. It’s been amazing for all those years.
Doug
So do you have a favorite feature or favorite features of List Perfectly?
Cathy
Obviously, bulk cross-posting is, awesome. Just the ease of adding measurements and stuff, cuz some, measurements are an annoying thing to do in general. So just like having templates and being able to just plug in the numbers really fast.
Chris
I think the thing I like is no matter where you are as a reseller, if you’re just starting out or if you’re, some people got 15,000 listings that they, I think List Perfectly can really fit anybody in any stage of their reselling and however they resell for themselves.
Cathy
You can use every feature, or you could use one feature and it’s gonna help you out. I don’t really do a lot of listing, so Cathy does a lot of listing, but I try to pick up off of her and try to express that to viewers.
Chris
And I’m not good at technology, so honestly, List Perfectly, anytime there’s like an update, I’m like, “what do I do?” So he does all of that.
Cathy
I go to YouTube, right?
Chris
So we’re a good team that way.
Cathy
Yeah. I think. And great for me because of that is probably my favorite is the fact that I can go on the Facebook group or anywhere that you guys are, and if there’s an issue that we’re having, it’s probably already being talked about or already like in the works of being fixed. And I found that we have not really had to contact customer service very much, just, the stuff I can just tell it’s already in the works. Either you’re working on it or it’s even fixed before we even knew it was a problem.
Chris
So I guess, yeah, customer service, even though I’ve never really had to deal with it.
Danna
Yeah. I actually was on my first onboarding call the other day, and I thought it was just amazing how helpful you could just log in and book a call and it’s available for you, and Pat or anyone from the team at LP will walk you through it. And I just, I was like, wow, I didn’t even know it was there. So that’s there if you guys ever need it. Yeah. Keep that in mind. But as far as someone that’s like never sold before, do you have any advice for them just getting?
Chris
With reselling I, I think. The advice that is, that I see a lot of people need is just to get started, right? I feel like a lot of people get hung up on okay, I gotta know how to do this. I have to know how to ship. I have to know how to, what if I get, what if I do a typo wrong? Am I listing or, yeah, there’s a lot of grace in reselling? and that’s how you learn. You make mistakes. For me, that’s the biggest way I learn.
Cathy
And that’s how you learn how to do it. Yeah. Like I didn’t know how to do shipping. Like I didn’t do eBay before List Perfectly cuz I was like, there are too many things to fill out and all this. And I was like, okay, I’m gonna do it. And then yeah, I took a hit on shipping a couple of times, but then I figured it out. Yeah. And so…
Chris
That $10 extra that you paid on shipping is gonna be more valuable than hours and hours of not doing it right.
Danna
I always say that’s a cheap price to pay for education when you make mistakes like that.
Chris
I would say it is important to have a good inventory system knowing how to find your stuff. Your business is not gonna fail if you can’t find an item, right? But if you can help prevent those kinds of little hiccups by just doing a little bit of work, making sure you know where your stuff is. There are lots of different ways…
Cathy
Our boxes aren’t here anymore. But if anyone’s ever watched our channel like our whole wall here was full of banker boxes, which are now just at a storage unit cuz we’re fixing everything in here. Before that, Chris built all the inventory. I was just putting stuff in bins, not even labeling the bins. I was just going by my memory and so you can imagine every day when I’d make a sale or two, I would be spending 20, 30 minutes to find one single item cuz I didn’t remember what like I thought I would where it was.
Yeah. 20 to 30 minutes sucked away every single day is a lot. And now I can ship 20 items in that same time, so having the inventory, but then just like thinking about growing into it, like I just did a bin, and then I was like, oh, now I need another bin. And then it turned out to be a lot of bins and then I wasn’t thinking about growing at the time. I was just like, oh, I’m selling 10 items. So…
Chris
Don’t trust your memory.
Cathy
Unless you’re Kevin Commonwealthpicker. That guy knows where everything’s at. So…
Doug
I’ve never had a ton of volume, I’m lucky if I have a hundred things up, but I have some clear plastic bins and probably five or six of them. I always used to rely on my memory like you were saying. And then sometimes you’re like, “I can’t find that. Did I sell that?” And now they’re labeled, much more organized. But especially early on, even before List Perfectly, I’d be like, “I sold that. I was sure I saw that in one of these bins the other day.”
Cathy
There’s plenty to go around at least for thrifting and reselling. I know some people don’t thrift necessarily. They might do pallets or whatever, but I’m always like, oh, I gotta get there because what if they run out of the thing that I’m trying to buy to resell? But there’s always gonna be more like…
Chris
A scarcity mindset.
Cathy
I’ve been to the same Goodwill every day this week and every day I’ve found at least five pairs of shoes. Don’t necessarily have a scarcity mindset. There’s plenty to go around. I feel like a lot of people try to keep secrets of good brands and things like that, cuz it’s. go away or something. But I don’t think that’s true.
Sell what you like cuz like I love selling shoes. Yeah. So whether or not I’m making $10, or $20 profit on an item, I’d rather do that than sell, say, I don’t know, something electronics that I could sell for a $300 profit for one item. I’d rather just not, cuz I don’t like it, I don’t know about it. So whatever your thing is, whatever you’re interested in, you’ll be more likely to do it if you’re interested.
Chris
I’m not quite a reseller just yet. I’m more of a social media guy.
Cathy
He doesn’t actually resell yet.
Chris
But obviously, I’m in the community and I know enough to know that…
Cathy
You’ve watched 700 what’s sold videos of my own?
Chris
Like I was saying before, just there’s a lot of grace, right? I’m a perfectionist at heart, right? If something minor goes wrong, I often let it get me, and it doesn’t need to be that way with reselling, if you have to cancel an order on eBay, , you’re gonna survive, right? It’s gonna hurt a little bit, but yeah, it’s not the worst thing in the world. And there’s recovery. There’s time, like great bad feedback, right? If you get bad feedback it’s gonna go away. You just gotta keep moving, right? Keep doing better, and learning from your mistakes.
Danna
So basically, you’re saying don’t overthink it.
Chris
Yeah. I’m overthinking it by trying to say…
Danna
Don’t overthink it.
Doug
Don’t overthink overthinking it.
Danna
I tend to do that too. I overthink way too many things. Yeah. But it would be interesting. Doug likes to put this out there. So if you could have three adjectives that you could use to describe Ginger Marvin, for each of you, would you have three different adjectives for, each of you?
Chris
I don’t know. I think they’d be pretty, pretty similar. The first one that comes to my mind is just like consistency. Like we, we know that there is value in being consistent. That’s why, Cathy has her listing goals if she can do this amount of listings a day, that consistency over time.
Cathy
I feel like I’ve been on autopilot with reselling for years. If I list 15 items a day, I’m gonna sell a hundred items a week. Like it’s just done that way. And I just feel like that’s from the consistency, not necessarily even the items or things that I’m selling. Just Yeah. The action of doing it over and not having huge breaks in between.
Chris
Yeah. Which is something that, that pours over into every aspect of your life, right? Cathy’s been very consistent with going to the gym, right? Over the past six months, and it’s showing, I have not been consistently going to the gym and it shows right? But the consistency with YouTube, right? Like I don’t think we have any magic information that has made us grow into what we are. So I think it’s just been the consistency of always showing up. Trying to show up for every life that we can. We’ve been failing in the consistency of our lives lately. And videos. We haven’t put a video up in a week. It’s probably the longest been the longest. It’s the whole time, huh? It’s probably in a while, but we’ve been. We’ve been renovating this room we’re in right now, which is the headquarters of our whole operation for both of us.
Cathy
Everything’s a little outta storage, but just making it through. We’re still consistently listing every day.
Chris
Easygoing.
Cathy
That’s, it’s like chill…
Chris
Go with the flow?
Cathy
Doing the best we can type things. I think people like to say that about us even yeah. We just seem like we’re just being ourselves, which is what we’re trying to be.
Danna
That’s right. Authentic.
Chris
There’s a third one there.
Cathy
That’s a better way to say probably what we’re trying to say.
Chris
I think being able to, not take things so seriously. It is just reselling. I do think reselling is something that anyone and everyone can do. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or anything like that. What about a third one?
Cathy
Persistent.
Chris
Persistent. Consistent, persistent.
Cathy
Is that the same thing?
Chris
I think it’s a little different cuz. Persistency is more like being consistent when kind of things are more against you, right? We’re pretty persistent.
Cathy
That’s us.
Chris
Yeah, that’s Ginger Marvin.
Doug
So anything to add before we close?
Cathy
Thanks for having us on the podcast.
Chris
Doug, it was great to have lunch with you. Danna, I know we, met but we didn’t really get to talk much when we were up there. But that’s one thing I really do like about Lis Perfectly we went to FlipCon this last year. You guys helped sponsor the show. And just the fact that List Perfectly is able to get out and be with the community it’s more than, you’re more than just a service, right? You guys are part of the community.
Cathy
I’m thinking of even Clara, like every event I’ve been to, she’s just a social butterfly talking to everybody, like a CEO of a company, like actually talking to everybody, which is amazing. Always willing to answer questions. She always personally tells me, Ginger, please let me know if you need anything at all. You can message me directly. Things like that. I love that.
Chris
I think it sums it up. It’s when you’re reselling and you’re working for yourself, if it, if you’re doing it full-time, especially, some of, some people do this part-time and have outside jobs, but for us, we felt disconnected. And just to be able to have another outlet, makes a lot of difference.
Doug
Thank you. We appreciate that. Yes. And you guys are a great part of the seller community too.
Danna
I hope to see you at another eBay meetup very soon.
Chris
Absolutely. Guys. Thank you so much for having us on.
Cathy
Our socials are just Ginger Marvin, which is pretty much just Instagram and YouTube. But if we ever start TikTok it’ll be Ginger Marvin too.
Doug
We’ll include the links. We appreciate you joining us today Ginger Marvin, Cathy, and Chris.
Chris
Thank you so much.