On this episode of The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly and Listing Party, we welcome our friend Diane Lassonde who talks about community, reselling, and more! We also have Seller Shout Outs, a Trish Tip, and Reseller News.
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
Doug Smith (snoop.dougie) linktree
Trish Glenn (Super Sale Trish) Instagram
Episode Links
Community and Selling with Diane Lassonde
Intro
Trish: Welcome to the Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly and Listing Party.On this episode, we feature Diane Lassonde. Who many of is my best friend and she and I run the New England meetup here in New England. She was great fun to have on. And we’ll have a second part with her really soon.
We also have seller shout outs, a Trish tip, and of course, reseller news.
Thanks for joining us.
Community and Selling with Diane Lassonde
Trish: Hey, everybody. I have the great pleasure today of introducing my BFF Diane Lassonde.
Diane: Hi everyone.
Doug: Welcome to the show, Diane. We’re thrilled to have you here. And these ladies are true BFFs. I’ve seen it in action for years. I met them both at the same time in Boston.
Brian Burke and I were on a multi-city East Coast whirlwind tour and Boston was our second stop.
Where are we going, Brian? And he said we’re going to Diane Lassonde’s house. And then we’re going to go to the meetup at some Italian restaurant. And I remember we went to this giant, beautiful house and Diane whipped the door open and she was so welcoming and took me on a tour.
I got to see the Wizard of Oz room. I got to see the back patio and the yard. And I was reminded that we could host big seller events here if we needed to. I saw, I did make note of all the Patriots, New England Patriots stuff. Cause we’ve got some bad blood, just kidding. And then we went to the meetup. We had a great time.
And then obviously multiple eBay opens, multiple seller events, but I do love both of these ladies and Diane. Is and always will be one of my favorite sellers. And ladies.
Trish: The grand dame of eBay.
Diane: You missed one part. You went into the basement, which we call the cellar, and you got a tour of my work area, which was…
Doug: oh, that’s right.
Diane: Yeah.
Doug: Very nice.
So let’s start because I know some of your stories. There’s probably some you don’t want me to know. Maybe some I don’t want to know, and we have…
Diane: Some don’t want to know,
Doug: …and we’ve had some adventures together, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, but Diane, I want you to tell one of my favorite stories. So tell us a story literally of how you and Trish met.
Diane: I was very forceful. I went to her store. She had a brick-and-mortar store and it was beautiful and it had tons of jewelry and clothes and pocketbooks. And I went in and I said to her you should have these online. You need to do this. And I started immediately with all the ways that I thought that I could help her to make more money.
Trish: Wait and she got there because she had a meetup group and I went into the meetup group and I just wrote oh I’m in the Abington area. I’m thinking I should really be doing this Hopefully I can come but I was open late on the nights that she had the meeting. So that’s how she got there.
Diane: And her dad was sick. And so there were a lot of things in play why she wasn’t doing the things that she wanted to do. And so I went in there. I’m like it’s only one night. Like, I can come help you do stuff here and then you can come and then I guess I did it well enough because she did come and then I made her.
Trish: First she comes around the..
Diane: Oh, I did. I went around and started working on her computer.
Trish: Right next to my cash register. I don’t know this woman. I have never seen this woman. I love Di, but she is a forceful kind of gal. In a nice way, she wants you to do what’s best for you. Not what she’s doing.
Diane: Yeah, it’s not for me.
Doug: This could have easily been a Nightline episode and that’s when things went terribly bad for Trish.
Trish: So she’s around my thing, she’s in my computer, she’s showing me things, and I literally remember standing there thinking, what’s happening? What’s going on right now? So in my head, I’m like, okay I’m gonna do this one night one blah blah blah. So one night I think it was on a Tuesday You have them and I showed up… It was the, I think I want to go to eBay open night.
Diane: Our topic of the meeting was we would review a listing. And so we had a wheel and we would spin it and if it landed on your name, we’d go to your store. And so then I berated her store again.
Trish: Why do you have pink? Why do you do this? Why do you do that?
Diane: Why is this 7. 99?
Trish: I literally have never been here before. Could you just be nice to me?
Doug: Let me hop in here for a second. So you say how forceful that Diane is, and it’s not like you’re a pushover yourself, Trish.
Trish: Totally, which is why I think the next part happened.
Diane: Have you ever seen Trish quiet?
Doug: I don’t think so.
Diane: Just make fun of her store, it was part eBay Open is happening in Las Vegas and I think we should go. I think a bunch of us should go. I don’t know. And I was talking it all up because really meeting in person is the best way to do anything. These are beautiful and nice and I get to see you, but a real hug is way better than this. So we finished the thing and I said to her, you’re going to go with me. I didn’t ask her if she wanted to go with me. I said you’re going to go with me.
Trish: We’re in front of the whole people. No one has said they want to go. No one. She looks at me and says, you’re going to go with me. And I said Vegas? She says, yeah. I go, now I’d never been there. And if you know me, that’s the thing, cause I want to go to all the places. So I go, okay. And she goes, okay. And then she’s like, all right, we’re sharing a room. I’ll book it. I was like, okay.
Diane: And that was that. Fast and furious.
Doug: A match made in heaven, Lucy and Ethel, Thelma, and Louise..
Diane: Laverne and Shirley.
Trish: Me saying yes to going to Las Vegas, honestly changed my life for the better. And I know that not for just reselling, but for Diane’s family. My daughter’s really good friends with her daughter now. And her grandchildren, I’ll get choked up. I probably won’t ever have grandchildren and I just love them to pieces, and I think I bought them stuff at Christmas and Diane said to me, why’d you give them so much stuff?
I was like, shut up. I can do what I want. You know what I mean? But Di, so tell us how you first started reselling.
Diane: So my, Dad was the biggest bargain hunter in the whole world. And he would go to yard sales. It was when the yard sales were in the newspaper, and you had to circle them, and then you had to make your route. So I would go with him because I just thought it was so much fun. And he would really berate the people and get every, if he paid a quarter for something, that was too much.
But I collected the Wizard of Oz and eBay was the place in 1997 98 where I would buy lots of stuff on eBay Wizard of Oz items. And so because of that, I would get, two of this, two of that, and I only wanted one. So I turned to eBay to then learn how to sell it. And those days when you sold it, you got a dollar bill and change taped to a piece of paper in an envelope sent to you. Or you had to wait for a check to clear when they sent you a check in the mail. It was very different, but that’s where I started on eBay.
Trish: But tell me how that went to, I know only because I know you that you owned an estate sale company. So tell us how that came about.
Diane: So I also worked many jobs outside of selling. And I worked as an office manager in radiation oncology, and I have a lot of different skills. And when I left there, I decided that just doing eBay was not enough for me. I needed to do something more with my time. Rick’s mom was living with us at the time, so I needed to be home, and, yet I could do something else part of the time.
And estate sales, I know a little bit about a lot of stuff. And so doing an estate sale is, was pretty easy for me. Cause I could sort things and know what was valuable or not valuable. And if I didn’t know it, you don’t have to know everything. You just look it up. And now it’s even easier for people because they have Google image and you could take a picture of it and it tells you exactly what it is.
Doug: So all that life experience, all that work experience, how do you think it’s made you a better online reseller?
Diane: I think that I’m pretty open to trying things. You’re not always going to get stuff right the first time. But I think if you’re not willing to look at new options or new things or, look at trying List Perfectly. List Perfectly came about because we all wanted something. We all were looking for something, and they came to our aid. And Trish and I we were like in the first group of people who were like, this is great, let’s check it out.
Trish: And we all know those people, they’ve been doing something a certain way and that’s the way they do it. Even if there’s a more efficient way, a faster way. I talk about the process all the time in mastermind class. And I reference Diane, I don’t know, 10 times a week, probably in these classes.
Can you tell us a little bit about New England sellers? Why do you think the groups are important in general, not just ours? Friendships, camaraderie, et cetera whatever it is you would like to say about those things.
Diane: I feel like just being together and in one room, we always had a topic for our meetup. Doug and Brian came to our meeting and they had their topic and they presented to our group. But maybe the people that were there went to them with different questions because they had a question about what they were working on at home that was giving them trouble. And they could go over and talk to either Brian or Doug about that. And then if they didn’t have the answer for them, they would say, Oh, I don’t know the answer for that. I’m going to find out, give me your information and I’ll get back to you. Where else do you get that? If you’re sitting in your basement or cellar by yourself, you don’t have that opportunity to reach out to someone actually in eBay who cares and who wants to answer and help you to get bigger and better.
Trish: Diane and I, that first year, so I met her twice. We’re going to go to Vegas. I call her maybe three days before my dad’s cancer went to his brain and three days before we were going to go to Vegas and he had to have an emergency brain tumor removed.
And so we went to a local hospital near us and they didn’t get it all. So the day before we’re leaving for Vegas. Now he has woken up. He has talked to me. He told me, I want you to go to Vegas. And I said I’m not going to Vegas. And he said I want you to go to Vegas. My father is somebody who is very difficult to say no to.
But I wasn’t going. Like me! I wasn’t going to tell, it’s true. I wasn’t going to tell him, but I wasn’t going. And so I called Diane. I say, look, I’ll pay for my room. I don’t, I’m not gonna, this isn’t your fault. I’ll give you the money, but I can’t go. This is what’s happened. And she says to me, what hospital?
I said, excuse me, what hospital is the, are they bringing him to? So I go Mass General. She goes, Nope, you’re still coming with me. Jennifer, that’s her daughter. Jennifer works at Mass General. Jennifer will go in and find out who the doctors are. She’ll find out who the nurses are. She will go visit him.
Jennifer will call us every day and tell us what’s happening. And she will tell us the truth. And if something is wrong, we will fly home together. And Jennifer called me every day and I had never met Jennifer and now, I could call her right now and say, help me and she would drive over here and do anything I needed from her and I feel the same way about her.
I would do anything in the world for her, and before she met me, she met my very sick father in the hospital room. She just walked in and was like, Hi, Mr. Marini. Blah, blah, blah. And after I got home from Vegas, my dad said to me who’s that really pretty girl who came and saw me?
But that’s more about Diane and I interpersonally Diane would do that with anybody. If anybody was in that position, Diane would have done the same thing. It just turned out that Diane and I clicked and ended up being inseparable, but that is just who she is.
Diane: It’s true. It the being together and figuring things out together at the meetup groups, like they did remember, oh, everyone needs to do free shipping was one, one big topic that if you’re home by yourself and you’re trying to figure that out, you’re like, I don’t know, do I have to do this? How am I going to fix all these?
Doug: Let’s shift a little bit to some Diane Lassonde mentorship. So what are a couple of top tips you have for online resellers that are just getting started?
Diane: I think that you need to list two things a day. When you first start. I know it gets to be overwhelming and you think you have to do everything perfectly, but you don’t. Just go in and list two things a day. Whatever your process is, get two of those items listed by the end of each day.
Trish: So what do you think are some of the biggest changes you think you’ve seen on online selling since you’ve started other than getting money in the mail?
Diane: You’d get an envelope and you’d open it up and there would be a quarter a dime and a nickel taped to a piece of paper with your ones and fives and tens and cash in the mail. And it was like crazy.
I was strictly eBay. That was it. Or Craigslist. And I still do both. But now with List Perfectly, I’ve ventured out more. So I do Etsy and Poshmark and Macari. But I don’t think I would have ever done that if it weren’t for a List Perfectly.
Doug: What would you say is the single biggest mistake online sellers make on a regular basis?
Diane: That they need to be an expert at things. And they spend an inordinate amount of time researching things, and then they don’t have something listed. Just get your items up and list them. You can go back later and fix it.
Trish: Thank you for coming. Is there anything that you would like to add?
Diane: I think it just goes along the same lines of being fearless, right? You have to fear less and just Put your toe in the water and see what happens.
Be kind to other people. I think this world right now is very unsettled and very mean. And I think we get caught up in listening to all of that chatter about negativity and bad things. If anyone knows me, I have no time or space in my brain for that. I feel if you keep allowing that in, then you’re going to be that negative person. And nobody wants to be around that person.
I taught my kids from the beginning, that it doesn’t matter what you have or what you do. You have to be kind to other people. It will come back to you.
You have to come from a genuine place in your heart and people will know that and you will just become a better person, a better seller, and you’ll be happy.
So that’s all I got, I think.
Doug: Thanks, Diane. We love you. Thanks for coming on. Always a joy to speak to you.
Diane: Love you both.
Trish: We love you.
Seller Shoutouts
Doug: What seller shoutouts do we have this week Trish?
Trish: Theresa Cox and I went to ASD in Las Vegas and we were joined by our own Suzie Eads and Crystal/Rosie’s Closet. So we had a great time.
Crystal and I had a really fun time walking. around not knowing what to buy or what to sell. So we had a good time, the two of us. And I also think we really learned a lot from Suzie Eades. She is at a different level than most of us. And so watching her negotiate with Chinese factories and buying things in quantity and deciding what to buy, was really interesting. So I just want to thank them both for coming and hanging out and, Suzie, especially for really teaching us a little bit more about her world, which is a lot different than the traditional reseller land, I think.
Doug: Yeah. And that, that, that was super cool. The stuff you did from ASD, we did a Listing Party. We did a live and so Suzie, Crystal, you and Theresa were there. Of course, you’re in Vegas. You got to see Katy and Vikki.
Trish: Which we did. Yep. We went to dinner and of course, they were great. And we went to the One World Resort afterward to, play some slot machines afterward, because anyone who knows me, there’s this special beer slot machine that I really enjoy. We weren’t there long. And then we left. We were walking out and we ran into Resale Rabbit whom we had met at the BOSS Reseller Remix this past year. And so we spoke to him for a little while. So it was great. Get to see a few resellers that we don’t normally see. So it was really fun.
Doug: And then you also had lunch with eBay’s Kayomi Kayoshi right?
Trish: Yes, we did, which was great. We met her. That was Theresa, Suzie and I, which was really fun. This was the first time I’d seen her since she had her new position. Brian Burke has retired as we’ve talked about before. We got to talk to her for a while. We talked a little bit about, what eBay is hoping to do with seller events and meetups.
She’s really in charge of the meetups now. So we talked about that and we talked about her new gig as the Co-host on the eBay for Business Podcast. I was really glad to see her in person and I want to thank her again for coming and meeting us for lunch.
Doug: That’s a good round of seller shoutouts, Trish. All right.
Trish Tips
Doug: What’s your Trish tip this episode, Trish?
Trish: My seller tip for this week is be open to new possibilities. I really think that sometimes when we’re resellers, we think of only certain products, certain things, going to estate sales, going to yard sales, flipping things, onesies at a time.
And one of the things that ASD did for me personally was open up my mind to there is a huge world out there of stuff that you can resell. And there were people out there who just had closeouts. There were people there who had anything from toothpaste to peanuts to vape stuff to anything that you could think of tools, clothes jewelry.
Maybe be a little bit more open to the possibility. And if not, if opportunity knocks listen, because it doesn’t always come again. So be open to different things. And even if it’s not in your niche, if it’s not something you sell, if it’s not something you’re really familiar with, you never know what it will lead to.
So just pay attention and be open.
Doug: And that’s interesting because we always say, always be willing to learn because the marketplace has changed so much, the e-commerce world changes so much, AI is coming and it’s interesting too that you and Theresa, when we did the live this week, you guys talked about all the different stuff at ASD, and then you were both looking to adapt your businesses, maybe look into something new, try something new.
Trish: I for a while have thought that I’d like to change what I’m doing. I’m in used clothing and I’ve been in used clothing for about eight years now, and used clothing is a really great. stepping stone because it is the barrier to entry is very small and anybody can get into the used clothing business.
But now that maybe I have a little bit more money and a little bit more knowledge, maybe it would be nice to spend a little bit more time. Finding a product than having to worry about listing the product. If that makes sense, use clothing, you can get easily it’s fast, it’s cheap, but you have to spend a lot of time like doing the listings and onesies at a time and all the measurements.
And so you make up the time that way and you’re spending less money. I’m thinking I’m in a boat, a point where maybe I’d like to spend a little bit more money and see what I can do. I really went there with an open mind, so we’ll see what happens.
Doug: So did you see anything there at ASD? You maybe want to look into more or are you just still researching?
Trish: Yeah, honestly I should have spent more time in the closeout area with the closeout guys. I should have spent a little bit more time figuring that out.
It was really overwhelming to be quite honest with you. There was so much stuff and it was so big. And I felt like I needed to see everything. And by the time the third day came around and I saw everything, I realized I should have spent more time over there. So I would really like to go back. With the purpose of maybe seeking out the closeouts and how it works.
I saw a million things that I thought might be worth buying, but nothing that made me think, Oh, I’m going to now be a, a widget seller.
Doug: Thanks Trish, for those seller shoutouts and revisiting ASD as well. And we’re happy to join you in your trying to source new things journey. You could always come out here and source from my garage or my storage bin, or help me sell all those books that I’ve had sitting around.
Trish: I should, your wife would be very happy if you got rid of it. It would be a miracle.
Seller News
Doug: And now over to the news desk over to Trish.
Trish: Thank you, Doug.
On the eBay for Business Podcast recently, it was revealed that they are changing the name of the podcast from eBay to Business to eBay for sellers to be more inclusive.
Doug: I don’t know if you know this Trish, but I used to work at eBay.
Trish: You did?
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. So when I worked there I worked on the podcast and when we launched it, I want to say it used to be called the eBay for Sellers Podcast. It drove Griff nuts to change the name, but eventually, he did it and we did it. And it’s been the eBay for Business Podcast for, I don’t know, what, four years now.
Trish, I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but lots of changes over there. Brian is moving on to new pastures, moving stuff around new co-hosts for the podcast with Griff, a new name. I don’t know. It’s interesting. We’ll have to keep an eye out.
Trish: Yeah, I think it’s good. Everything changes. I’m a new co-host and look how good this is working out.
Doug: You’ve been here a while. Yeah. I think we should change our podcast to blah, blah, blah for business.
Trish: Yeah. Seller Community for Business.
Doug: Since it’s open now. So anyway when I put this together, I was like, I didn’t want to be too eBay, but there’s a lot of eBay stuff right now. So I think it makes sense.
eBay is our biggest platform. In other perhaps related eBay news, eBay’s Adam Ireland is moving to a different role at eBay. Dawn Block, who’s been there a while will be taking Adam’s place as General Manager of the US Marketplace, moving from her role as VP of Collectibles, Electronics, and Home. What do you think about this Trish?
Trish: I think it’s interesting. I think the fact that Adam Ireland said he’s staying, but hasn’t announced where, I think that’s very interesting to be quite honest with you. I’m interested to see what happens with that.
And I think having somebody who comes from within eBay like within one of the categories, I think that’s really great because she has an understanding of how the eBay process works and what you need, items, specifics, things like that. So I think that could be good instead of bringing somebody in from something that’s more tech or something like that.
Doug: I think they’re doing some things to lean towards a new direction a little bit. Obviously, it takes time and, time to change, especially for a big battleship like eBay.
Trish: eBay made some announcements at their recent seller check-in. What did you think? Okay. Okay.
Doug: What is known, but Trish, tell us about the check-ins, and why they’re important. I know you usually attend and how can sellers sign up for the check-ins?
Trish: So anybody who’s a registered seller on eBay is invited to these. They happen usually four times a year, I want to say. And they are just a presentation by eBay to be able to tell you what’s new, what’s happening if there’s anything that’s going on. I would suggest if you are a seller, you want to go to these.
You want to be on eBay’s radar. It is in your best interest to show up, and have eBay know you’re there. They give away swag. The seller check-in is just a way I believe for eBay to keep its hand on the pulse of the community. And I think it’s really a good use of your time.
Doug: Yeah. And it’s a good way to get information straight from eBay, the latest, and they dropped some big announcements there. I saw that the swag pack was pretty sweet.
Trish: This time the seller pack was really fun. I don’t know if they had anything earth-shattering announced this time. The Adam Ireland thing was announced. They did raise from 30 cents to 40 cents per transaction.
I don’t think that was a huge deal as it was pointed out to me later, though, that 10 cents added up a lot of money to eBay’s bottom line, but. For us sellers, it really doesn’t make that much of a difference.
Was there anything Doug for you this time that you thought stood out?
Doug: I thought this was cool. I saw this product research coming to mobile. So Terapeak coming to mobile. So you can research when you’re on the go outsourcing you’ll see sold prices. You can use keywords, UPCs, MPNs, and ISBNs, and it’ll be free for sellers and available on the iOS and Android app.
If you’re not familiar with Terapeak, get in there. It’s years back of information now, and that’s the thing to always remember.
Trish: I think Terapeak is one of those things that we don’t really talk about much. I don’t think Terapeak is utilized to its full potential by most resellers. And the best thing about eBay is that us as sellers, we can get this information, right? We can see what the top products are. We can deep Dive. We can get our own information about our own stores. Then we can get a deep dive into different products. So I definitely think Terapeak is worth looking at. And now that it’s going to be more easily accessible and mobile. I think that’s great.
Another thing they announced was the background enhancement on mobile. This tool allows you to select studio-quality photo backgrounds for your items powered by AI.
Doug: I’m a fan of AI, Trish.
Trish: I did know that Doug.
Doug: And they also made a mobile update, new shipping options for eBay standard envelopes. Because that’s the thing is like when you have an app, the disadvantage is a different development environment. So not all the updates get across, some updates go to mobile first. And that seems to happen with eBay a lot is a lot of updates and cool stuff seems to go to mobile-first before desktop.
Trish: And then a pilot program called the preloved partner program was announced launching at the end of March. This program will highlight preloved fashion sellers.
Doug: I think they’re trying to lean into preloved clothing sellers, things like that. I think they realize that they’ve got a lot of competition, especially in that spectrum, obviously Poshmark. So it’s interesting to see they’re going to do some things as part of the program there, they’ll display a pre-loved partner badge next to items that qualify.
And eBay is saying that there will be dedicated marketing assets and events, discounted advertising opportunities, and community roundtables and forums.
I think you do have to apply.
And then you have to be an eBay top-rated seller. Your items not received must not exceed 1%. Your items significantly not as described must not exceed 5%. Your seller feedback must be a minimum of 95 percent positive. You must offer 30-day returns.
Trish: I’m really interested in that. So I’m going to look into that. I’m going to apply and see how it works. I’m still in that space. So I’d love to try it.
And finally, as part of this seller check in eBay published breakout sessions from the seller check-in on YouTube. Go look them up. You can watch some of them. They were really fun.
Doug: Alright, anything else in the news?
Trish: No sir, I think that’s all the news that fits.
Doug: Alright, thank you.
Outro
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