This week on The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly and LISTING PARTY, Doug and Trish welcome Margaret, Texas Gal Treasures, VERY well known in the seller community! We talk about her vintage selling, YouTube channel, and more, and cover some very interesting UFO stories! We’ve also got Seller Shoutouts, a Tip from Trish, and Seller 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
INTRO
Doug: What’s up, Trish?
Trish: What’s up, Doug? How are you?
Doug: You’ve been sick. You were ill. How are you feeling?
Trish: I’m still a little ill. You’ll have to excuse my very sexy smoker voice.
Doug: Thank you for bringing it up, Trish. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Four seasons, multiple podcasts, different podcasts, Trish, and every once in a while, I’m sure you do too here and there, every once in a while I get complimented on my voice. Somebody a couple of weeks ago mentioned that my voice reminded them of Mr. Rogers, and I was like, thank you? Question mark? No, it was a very nice compliment. They meant very calming things like that. And then this weekend, a gentleman was speaking to me and he was saying that he had listened to the podcast and he enjoyed my voice and he was enjoying this moment just getting to talk to me and I was like, thank you so much.
And he said, your voice is a gift from God. You’re like, in a lot of ways, like Whitney Houston.
Trish: No, he did not.
Doug: Do you know what? I agree.
Trish: I am the voice of a generation.
Doug: Trish, I just want to dance with somebody.
Trish: Douglas, I’m sorry that these people fill your heads with such nonsense.
Doug: But the important question is will you be my Bobby Brown?
Trish: I think I am. It’s really sad when Bobby Brown’s the stable one of the group. Okay. So welcome to season four, episode two of the Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly and LISTING PARTY. This week, we’re very excited to feature Margaret Texas Gal Treasures, very well-known in the seller community for her jewelry.
We talked about her vintage selling. We talk about her YouTube channel and much more. And we cover some really interesting stuff about UFOs.
We’ve also got some seller shoutouts this week, a seller tip from Trish, that’s me. And the news.
Let’s get into it.
Texas Gal Treasures
Trish: Today, we’d like to welcome Margaret Texas Gal Treasures to the show. She sells vintage items on her eBay store, including jewelry, purses, toys, coupling, tie tax, and ties. I think that’s about it. She also has a YouTube channel where she dives deep into tips on reselling, print on demand, and much more. You can find Texas Gal Treasures on Etsy, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, and I believe some other places. But thank you for joining us. It’s lovely to meet you.
Margaret: You too. Thanks for having me.
Doug: Thanks for coming on. And yeah, we’ve been excited to get you on and learn more about what you do.
We noticed that you have quite a following on YouTube, 150, 000 subscribers. Can you tell us a little bit about your YouTube channel, and what we can expect to see on there?
Margaret: I do a lot of videos. I do a lot of tutorial-type videos, but then I’ll have jewelry unboxings and sometimes I do live hangouts, print on demand tutorials. Just about everything. I’m focused on one, trying to make it entertaining, but also informative and community-building.
Trish: So what inspired you to start Texas Gal Treasures? What was the catalyst?
Margaret: I used to teach public school. I taught public school for 15 years at elementary school. When I quit teaching public school when my eldest was going into kindergarten, I quickly realized that I’m not a stay-at-home, bake-the-cookies kind of mom and this is also something that’s like my passion for people, it turned out that I was becoming more aware of the relationship I was in was not very healthy.
And so I needed to figure out how I could make my own money. And then eventually it led to, I need to be able to support myself and the kids so that we could leave this sticky situation. And so starting Texas Gal Treasures, the reselling part of it was just to start making money. And then I would get excited about stuff and want to talk about it.
So I started the channel and then it just snowballed. And then that ability to be able to become independent was important. And it’s so important for so many people that I wanted to share that like in different ways to make money. Not everybody’s in a bad situation, but it’s very important to be able to support yourself. So it was really important to me to share that.
Doug: And are there any unique challenges you faced over the years running your business and how did you maybe overcome some of those?
Margaret: Yeah to make sure I’m diversified, so I don’t want to have everything like all in eBay, all in Etsy, all in YouTube, which I just actually had a big YouTube thing happen this year, which was a wake-up call.
And so the challenge is juggling as many different things as I do with the print-on-demand and the reselling and YouTube and affiliates. I’m just all kinds of stuff, my own website and I’m a one-woman show. And I homeschool my kids now. And so it’s a lot. So just. Taking the time to juggle. That’s the challenge basically is figuring out all the pieces and where to devote your attention.
Trish: Okay. So I have no idea what the YouTube thing that you made reference to. I don’t know what that was. So if you want to expand on that, feel free. But I also would like to know, if social media then playing into that.
How much does that affect your business? Do you try to leverage platforms like Instagram and Pinterest? Or do you mostly do YouTube? I know you have a Facebook group that’s very big and popular. What’s the social media aspect?
Margaret: What happened was YouTube, a lot of the creators on YouTube, there was a big glitch with the AdSense, Google AdSense, and so a lot of creators, their ad revenue dropped 90%. Right, huge. They were just not sharing what was going on or how to fix it, and it was big because I had all my stores on vacation mode because we were moving.
So it was really relying a little more heavily on the ad revenue, even though it wasn’t everything. And so it really opened my eyes to, okay, you’ve been putting too much, too many of your eggs in that basket. Yeah, you need to start spreading the wealth. Yeah. Again, as far as social media, this is an area that I wanna get better at because it is just me and my kids.
And I’m one woman. So most of the time my social media ends up being just for fun. Like I’m sharing fun things I see on YouTube and on Instagram or things to make you smile, something uplifting. Before I used to do a little more with Pinterest and creating Pinterest boards, but it just and I did a lot more of that with my print-on-demand stuff, honestly, because then I could get more of those things.
Trish: I guess I just was wondering, I too find social media difficult. I also think it’s a little bit of an age thing. We didn’t grow up with it. So now we’re trying to figure it out, my daughter. We’ll immediately start taking photos and posting them while things are happening.
I never I never think of, Oh, we’re at this good restaurant. I may think of it tomorrow. Oh, look what we did yesterday. She’ll do it while you’re there. So I do think it’s a learning curve for us. I think
Margaret: That’s for sure. Yeah. And right. I do think about that. Like when my sister got, she’s a beekeeper or she does bees and she has bees and she got stung on the hand and had to go to the fire station and get her ring cut off. And I was like, please tell me you recorded that. It’s like YouTube gold.
Doug: And then so you’re a one-woman show, you’ve said, you’ve got all this stuff on your plate, selling YouTube, family moving some other stuff we’ll get into later, but how do you balance it all and what advice do you have for somebody that’s in a similar situation has to balance all these different things?
Margaret: One is to have grace with yourself, whether I’m not particularly religious, but I definitely want to make sure that I am, I give myself care and if I make mistakes, give myself time and know the big thing is that I know that this is a choice.
And so when I do start feeling overwhelmed and I do start feeling stressed out, I remind myself I don’t have to homeschool my kids. They could be in public school. I don’t have to work myself. I could go back into the classroom and be a teacher. I could put my kids in school. I could resell. I have more time for that.
But because it’s something that I choose and it’s the life that we want, then that’s just something that I have to say, you know what, would I have it any other way? Not really. I just remind myself that.
Maybe I could be selling more because I know some people get into that, like hustle harder and some people get, it’s really easy to get sucked into I’m not doing enough, and then no, I know I could be doing more and when my kids are out of the house, which won’t be that much longer then I could do more because my eldest is turning 16 and my youngest is 13.
So really it’s five years. That they’re going to be both adults. It’s not very long.
Trish: And do you think that reselling and homeschooling are like a natural thing? Do you think those things balance well together? Or do you think it’s, I don’t know, it sounds from the outside that it could really work.
Margaret: Oh yeah. And that, the thing that I remind people that are homeschooling and that are interested in and actually a friend of mine Just I just had a video chat with him because he and his wife are homeschooling and they’re struggling And I said, you’re trying to replicate school at home and that’s not what we’re doing you know, you’re you have the opportunity to Teach your child the things that are important to you, and Some of the things that the schools are teaching, yeah, there’s the three R’s and all that stuff, but ultimately, what do you want your child to grow up learning?
And most people wouldn’t say, I want to make sure they know all the states and capitals. By the time they’re 18, it’s no, I want them to have drive and I want them to be resilient and I want them to be go-getters. And, if there’s something in the world that they want to experience or create, and it’s not there to know, Hey, I can create this, somebody made this and somebody made this and somebody made that.
And I get to make this if I want. So having that. That’s what I want to impart to my kids. And so a lot of the stuff that we do, we have the curriculum stuff that we do, but they get through that part pretty quick. And then they’re working on projects. My eldest is really super into stock market stuff.
They, both of my kids are, they have the ability to create projects, and so for me, I just say, okay, we need to give me some kind of plan, a proposal so I’m able, should I ever get audited by the school, whatever, and they’re like how is this, your kid’s creating a game on Roblox? Okay here’s their proposal and here’s what they were going to do. And here’s the, so there’s all the steps of what they’re doing. And then like us, we joined Toastmasters. So just all of these like really cool entrepreneurship opportunities that they wouldn’t necessarily get to explore in public school.
Trish: And so you made reference to it a little while ago, you have a homeschooling channel. So are these some of the things you discuss?
Margaret: These are the things I would love to discuss.
Trish: Okay.
Margaret: I just started partnering with a company. I’m actually onboarding later today to help me with my time management better. So I can go in and say, these are the things I want to do. This is the time that I have. Help me figure out how I can do all of these things. I’ll be up till one in the morning, thinking, Oh, I need to come up with 10 video ideas and scripts. Let me do that now. Or you know what, I’ll spend four hours working on print on demand and then realize, wow, I was just spinning my wheels. So somebody to help focus my attention on where it’s really going to be best used. And yeah, because that’s definitely something that I feel strongly about as far as the homeschooling aspect.
Cause that’s not a lot of the, yeah, the Texas Gal stuff doesn’t get a lot of that attention, but it’s something that I’m very, especially coming from the classroom.
Doug: You mentioned Roblox, and that teaches good basic planning and programming skills, and then, you can go from there. It’s concepts we didn’t have or stuff we didn’t have available when we were kids.
Margaret: Yeah. And my kid was like the components that I want for this game are not in there. I’m like, and the problem is, so you create them. I don’t know how to do that. Oh, if only somebody in this world could possibly figure that out. Somebody’s done it. So I just want them to have that Oh, okay. It’s not, I want this. It’s not there. Clearly, somebody has done this before. There’s gotta be the information. So just that they have that mindset.
Doug: And you just mentioned you just talked about developing videos and developing scripts. How do you come up with the ideas for your YouTube channel?
Margaret: Sometimes it’s through comments that I get. Sometimes there will be changes in the platforms or things that are selling that are new or things I’m learning about, say, we, I got this big comic book haul with, Mad magazines and national magazines and stuff like that.
And it was just a whole genre or niche that I wasn’t familiar with. So anytime I’m learning something new, I always say, Hey, look at this cool thing that I’m learning and I’m finding out about it. So sharing just things like that, as I go. How else? Sometimes it’s a dream. Sometimes my kids will say, it’d be cool. And then they’ll give me an idea. I’m like, that is cool. Or I’ll see another video in a completely different niche. And I’m like, Oh, this would be a really good idea, but I can make, twist that into this.
Trish: You have a Facebook page and I run a mastermind class. And I just want you to know from somebody on the outside, this gets referenced weekly. In my mastermind when people bring up jewelry and they can’t figure something out, where can they go?
This page gets mentioned weekly there as somebody saying, oh, go join this. They’ll help you, blah, blah blah. You really are looked at as an expert in this field, in the jewelry and the reselling jewelry business. So I’m wondering. How do you feel about that? And how is that Facebook group going?
Margaret: I think it’s going really well. I don’t think of myself as an expert but I’m not afraid to say when I don’t know something and let’s figure it out and to defer to people that do know. This is one of the really important things of that group from the get-go. We wanted to cultivate a place where you could walk in and not know anything and ask a question because honestly, there were some groups and we had some early on. We had to do some major cultivating of the garden and pulling the weeds because we wanted it to be a safe place where people could come and ask questions and nobody was going to belittle them or make them feel bad if they didn’t know something that not everybody knows, just from the highest end collector to the newbie, newest newbie, can walk in and say, hey, I’ve got a question about this.
And a lot of times I don’t answer a lot of the questions. I’m there, but I’m not there a lot. But the group has grown so much and the culture in the group has been cultivated and I think because myself and the admins in the group who are phenomenal have just really kept on top of that and created that culture of safety to learn.
Trish: And I also think, there is a segment of the population and resellers are brand new all the time. There is a certain amount of turnover. You get into this, you realize it is really real work. I don’t want to do it anymore. And they get out. And so there’s always new people getting in.
And so for me. Finding someplace where newbies feel comfortable is the sign of a really good group because it’s difficult. A lot of these groups get very angry at newbies. I don’t want to talk about shipping. I’ve talked about shipping 45, 000 times. I don’t want to answer that question anymore.
So the fact that you’ve been able to cultivate that says a lot about you and a lot about your members. It really is. It’s a hard thing to do.
Margaret: Thanks. I, it’s important. It is because even though I feel strongly about this, and I don’t generally get into other people, how do you put it, other I don’t want to say gurus, but other like people that are senior leaders in the community.
I don’t, I personally am like, if you feel like, at all, like that’s a bad sign because there’s always so much to learn and nobody knows everything. And you’ve got to constantly know everything’s changing all the time. Cause I love selling mugs, that’s another one, they’re so fun, but what sold two years ago doesn’t so I can continue saying I’m the mug guru.
Trish: We’ve all seen people and then they don’t even really sell anymore, but they say they’re experts in the field. And the problem is you’re right. It changes constantly. And the pandemic has made a huge change in the business, I think.
And so it is, you’ve got to be able to be self-aware enough to know that you don’t know everything.
Margaret: Yeah. And that you might’ve known about it last year, but you don’t know…
Trish: what it is. It doesn’t mean it’s true now.
Margaret: That’s why I’m like, I don’t want to be seen like that. I’m just like, I don’t know what I don’t know.
Doug: And we know you are a List Perfectly user. Do you have any tips for our listeners on using List Perfectly?
Margaret: First of all, use it. Second of all, it has saved my bacon. Like this. whole move because I shut down all my stores and I thought this was the perfect opportunity for me to do inventory and I did a video about this. I was biting off way more than I could chew before I moved because I started doing local sales online, and I had moved all my inventory to a storage locker I ended up getting below standard on eBay because of all the, I was taking pictures here, moving it here, that, and there were too many moving pieces.
And so I was losing items left and center. So this gave me the opportunity, this move to shut everything down and I’m going through piece by thousands of pieces, but I am finding listings that don’t have, I don’t, can’t find the item I’m finding things that I have that aren’t listed that are with the listed stuff and because I, have thousands upon thousands of items so it’s really giving me the opportunity to go through everything on all my platforms and make sure that everything is synced up and then I would find things that the description is one thing, and the photos were wrong. Who’s this that happened? How would I do this? Exactly. Because you just get in that mode. You’re like listing listings, and you just don’t realize oops, I uploaded the wrong photos. So I think going forward, that’d be something that I would like to take in chunks.
Okay, I’m gonna do an inventory of my jewelry stuff. Like once a month, pick a niche of okay, I’m going to do my because I have a lot of comics and magazines and things like that, do all of that. Okay, now I’m going to do all the hats and just do a quick inventory and double-check everything, cross-checking it, and having List Perfectly was really helpful for that. Or I’d find it was listed on Etsy somehow, but it wasn’t on eBay and or maybe I jumped into Etsy and listed it real quick and forgot to put it over so I could shoot it to List Perfectly. And then, okay, now I’ve got it in the system. So it really helped.
Trish: Yeah, it is. It’s helpful. So we talked about this a minute ago, but like, how has the reselling business changed since you started?
Margaret: I know a lot of people say there are more resellers now, which may be true, but I think it’s just more visible. I think we’re always resellers. It’s just, there are more ways to share a lot more on YouTube. That’s for sure. Yeah. There are definitely more opportunities. I don’t see it as a bad thing because when I first started, I actually started on Etsy and just had lots more opportunities to, I don’t know, I just think the opportunities are so amazing out there, and the information. I don’t see it as a bad thing that there are so many resellers on YouTube because you’re getting more and more information, which is great.
Trish: I personally think that the pandemic changed the way people do things. I think that. I used to be somebody, and I don’t know about you, I used to be somebody who would buy, get it all listed, and then go buy again. I don’t do that anymore.
I have backstock all of the time. I refuse to call it a death pile because if anything happens, I want to be able to continue. I don’t like that idea of having to scramble to find to be able to keep the momentum. I don’t know, just brought certain things to light. I think
Margaret: I was never really great at always having everything listed. I downsized a lot before I moved. I went through stuff and thought, okay, if it’s not going to bring this much profit, I can’t pack it all. However, jewelry, a friend of mine just came to visit and was like, you really got rid of a lot of jewelry. I was like, You didn’t look in that closet, did you?
So I have the whole classroom closet just like tubs and totes and like I always don’t describe myself as like a dragon. This is my horde. And I’ll get to it.
Trish: We don’t know when.
Margaret: It’s fun to go through. Sometimes I’ll just sit…
Trish: I know, sometimes it just makes me happy. I agree with you. Just love it.
Doug: So we’ve covered a lot of stuff. Before we go, anything else? Maybe something on UFOs or the History Channel, the Marfa lights, anything like that maybe?
Margaret: It was actually a couple of years ago that the History Channel reached out to me to be on a segment of their show called The Proof is Out There. And the segment is about the Marfa lights, which are out in West Texas.
A number of years ago, I had gone out there. On one of our homeschooling, we do road schooling, sometimes road schooling trips. We’d gone out there and I’d gotten really awful footage of the Marfa lights, which I uploaded to the homeschool channel. It’s called Homeschool Honey is my homeschool channel. So over on homeschool, honey, we uploaded it. Didn’t think much about it. Cause I just am the kind that likes to upload everything everywhere. And maybe a year or so after that. Dan Aykroyd and Joe Rogan. He was on Joe Rogan’s podcast and he was talking about supernatural stuff.
And he brought up the Marfa lights and they looked it up on YouTube and he told people, Oh yeah, go look on YouTube. And so the next morning I’m getting all of these messages on my phone. Dan Aykroyd sent me and thank you so much, Joe Rogan. And I was like, I think I’m getting punked here. What’s going on?
So I went and looked it up. And sure enough, they had talked about this. And so people came. And then a couple of years later, the History Channel reached out to do this segment. And basically what it is there are these lights out in Marfa, Texas. And they’ve been recorded.
It’s been well over a hundred years since these lights have been recorded. So a lot of people are like, Oh, it’s people with drones out there. Go out there and look for swamp gas, whatever. It’s a desert out there. And so there are these lights that along these flats will like flicker and change colors and there’ll be one ball of lightning and it shoots off into three balls of lights and they’re all different colors and it’s really cool to go experience. And so I won’t tell what they are, cause The Proof is Out There, the show is they go and they check out these supernatural things.
Trish: So they try to come up with a reason why it’s happening.
Margaret: Yeah. And it was like, finally, we’re going to get to the bottom of it. Is it real? Is it this? Is it that? I won’t ruin it for you.
Doug: That’s a fantastic commercial.
Trish: We’re going to have to go find it, Doug, so that we can talk about this.
Doug: Yeah, that is interesting.
Margaret: It’s super fun. Yeah. I’ll just say I was very pleased with their findings.
Doug: You did add that helped you…
Trish: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.
Doug: Go viral overnight and that helped you monetize your homeschool channel.
Margaret: Yeah. When Dan Aykroyd brought it up on the Joe Rogan podcast a couple of years ago…
Doug: That’s some good exposure, by the way.
Margaret: That’s why I’m like, upload everything. You never know what’s gonna happen.
Trish: Tell us how our listeners can find you.
Margaret: I have a Facebook page also Texas Gal Treasures Instagram. I’m on YouTube, Texas Gal Treasures. I’ve started, I’ve got my Homeschool Honey, and I have started another channel to talk more about things like metaphysical or I haven’t shared that story though, actually, no, I should, how do I get ideas? This is how yeah, so those are some fun ways to find me.
Trish: We are very happy that you were here. Was great to meet you. I gotta be honest, you were one of the first people I started watching when I started reselling. I bought a consignment store I don’t know, in the teens or 2016 or something. And it was miserable and it was a failure, and I needed to sell the stuff online and I had a whole lot of jewelry and I started watching you, so I thank you.
Margaret: Oh, good.
Trish: Without you and a couple of other people. I never would’ve done this. And now this is my whole life. There are a couple of you that really have inspired me and you’re always so sweet and I’ve enjoyed you immensely. So thank you very much. I appreciate what you do for the community.
Margaret: Thank you for that. I’m glad and I don’t know what to say. This is why I’m in Toastmasters.
Doug: How do you end it? Thank you so much. And it was so cool to meet you and talk to you and it was a lot of fun.
Margaret: Yeah, it was great to meet y’all too.
Trish: Please come back sometime. We’d love to see you.
Margaret: Of course. Of course.
Doug: We’ll talk all about metaphysical stuff and the Marfa lights.
Trish: We won’t even discuss reselling.
Margaret: I can show you the videos from my basement camera.
Doug: Thank you so much.
Margaret: Yeah, absolutely.
Seller Shoutouts
Doug: Let’s get into seller shoutouts, Trish shouting out those who are doing cool things and helping out the seller community. And Trish, we talked about content on the last, and chime in whenever you want. We talked about content on the last couple of Snoop Dougie Shows only on listingparty.com, 12 Pacific every Wednesday, with Maggie Webber, Refashioned Hippie, and Starr Bryson Flippin Hippos.
And I want to shout out our buddy Maggie Weber for, first of all, getting a mention in the New York Times in an article on AI as an influencer. And she told me they talked for a bit and she talked a lot about List Perfectly, but they just focused on her content. And over the weekend, she just broke 100, 000 followers on YouTube.
Trish: Again awesome feat by Maggie. We also want to shout out Rachel Homberger and Danna Crawford. They attended the Helpsy seller event in New Jersey over this past weekend where they had warehouse tours, seller panels, and more. So really, we just want to thank Danna and Rachel for bringing awareness to this. And Doug, what do you know about Helpsy? Do you know much about them?
Doug: We interviewed Rachel a couple of weeks ago, and I guess I was familiar with the name, but I didn’t know a ton about ’em. So they’re the largest textile collection company in the northeast United States, and their environmental mission is to keep clothes out of the trash.
Which is good. And in just the last year, Trish, they collected 25 million pounds of clothes. That’s more than my daughter has all over her floor.
Trish: I don’t think most people understand the impact of clothing that it has on the environment, not only Making it, making the raw materials but then making the clothes themselves.
So the impact of clothes includes 320 million pounds of CO2 emissions saved because of Helpsy.
Doug: Hang on, Trish. Let me do some computing in my head.
Trish: Okay, go ahead.
Doug: That’s probably about 20 billion gallons of water saved, Trish, which…
Trish: Which is crazy!
Doug: I know! And my figures also tell me that it equals the electricity usage of 10, 000 American homes.
Trish: It’s crazy. Helpsy really wants to spread the word that clothes aren’t trash. And where I live, I don’t know about where you live, Doug, but where I live, we have places where you can drop off clothes, those bins, which everybody is familiar with, but we also have recycled textiles.
Do you have any of those?
Doug: I have no idea.
Trish: So they’re just like what we would call rags. So you put them in and then they’re shredded up to be reused. They’re clothes that are too stained or ripped or anything So they put them in these and a lot of the schools around here have them.
Doug: Oh, that’s nice Yeah, I like that slogan and that’s also a hashtag they use clothes aren’t trash so that’s cool.
Trish: It is cool. And Danna also has her first meetup this week in Punta Gorda, Florida. So that’s awesome.
Doug: Yeah. She has helped other sellers in Florida start meetups and now she’s got her own in a beautiful Punta Gorda.
Trish: Punta Gorda, Florida, which is where I wish I was right now. In our listing party host challenge, the winner this week was Chris Dunrud. Congratulations and thank you for stepping in. I’ve been sick. And she did a party for me during Mastermind. I really appreciate it. But if you would like to take part in the LISTING PARTY challenge, you can pick a topic or just schedule a time to get everyone together and list, chat, just you could list while you’re doing it. You could talk about a topic, you could talk about something that’s not reseller-related, but you’re put into a drawing and we have a drawing every week for a free month of List Perfectly. So we’ll spin for the winner on Sunday and sign up now. We’ve extended the challenge, through January 26, 2024.
Doug: Obviously we love LISTING PARTY, you know about LISTING PARTY. You’re gonna see a lot more over this year. And that’s Theresa Cox’s baby.
One of the things she’s working on is for those that don’t know of a topic or they’re like, what am I going to talk about?
She’s working on a list of suggested topics we’d like to see listing parties on and we’re going to put it out there and you can sign up. And then again, if you want some help, if you want some LP people in there to help you out, Trish and I are happy to hop in or other LP teammates will be happy to hop in.
And then there’s a lot of regulars in there that’ll help you and support you, but it’s a really cool community and it’s going to keep growing and we’re going to keep adding new stuff. There’s some super cool stuff coming.
Trish: There is, it’s really it’s turning out to be really great. Even more than I had envisioned. It’s really awesome.
And just as a reminder, even though The Seller Community Podcast is your favorite podcast, as we all know there are other podcasts out there, including eBay for Business, the Seller Club Podcast, ARC Community Thrift, Get Thrifty podcast, Consignment Chats, Let’s Do Lunch, Kat the Nurseflipper, Flippin’ Hippos on YouTube and much more.
Stay tuned for more Seller Shoutouts next week. Listen for your name, because we’d love to shout you out.
Trish Tips
Doug: All right, ladies and gentlemen. Next, we have the very first Trish Tips Seller Trip. Trish Tips with Se Trish Sell Seller Tips with Trish.
Trish: Which is it? We need a theme song. What do you prefer? Seller tips? Tips with Trish?
Whatever you can say without making me or yourself laugh is good.
Doug: So welcome to Trish’s very first tip.
Trish: That’s right. Here’s my first tip. Are you ready, Doug?
Doug: Yes.
Trish: Buy low, sell high.
Doug: That’s it?
Trish: That’s the whole tip. No, the tip is you make the money on your buy. You don’t make the money when you sell. The most important thing, the only thing that you can control is how much you buy something for. In reality, it’s only worth what it’s worth, right? People are only going to pay what they want to pay. So you make your money on the buy. So my tip of the week is to really make sure that you’re doing your research.
Make sure you’re looking at your sell-through rates. Make sure you’re looking at what this specific item has sold for in the past. Make sure you’re buying this at a price That you feel comfortable selling it at, if that makes sense because you make your money when you buy it. You don’t make your money when you sell it.
And I think when people first get into this business, if they think you can buy it low enough, it’s worth it, but sometimes it’s worth it if something is a really fast sell-through rate, maybe it’s worth spending a hundred bucks to make 150 if it has a two-day turnaround or something. So you just need to remember that you’re making your money when you buy it.
And make sure you’re really deciding how much money is going into it. How long do you think you’re going to have to sit on it and how much precaution, just make sure you do your due diligence, especially when you first start. So buy low, sell high, even though it’s very elemental.
Doug: Yeah. But we made that joke, but that’s what it is. Buy low, sell high, reminds me of the time I went to the dollar store with $20. And I’m going to buy, I guess 20 things. So I bought some little toys and things like that. And some of them I researched, and, but there’s just, I just wanted to see, and I made some money on it, but not, and I don’t think it was enough to be like a lasting source of inventory for me. I’m lucky I didn’t get caught by Vero if they’re listening because I did list the dollar store blocks as compatible with Lego, which is a Vero violation. I’m very sorry.
Trish: Do not put someone else’s name in the title, Douglas.
Doug: I’m sorry, Lego, and I’m sorry eBay, but they do work together.
Trish: So what did the dollar store teach you?
Doug: That their stuff’s cheap and a knockoff?
Trish: Okay. That isn’t what I expected, but good answer.
Doug: That it wasn’t a great sell-through rate, likely.
Trish: And I do think, there are people who sit on dollar store stuff. There are people who will buy, especially the things that come in that they don’t have all the time, things that are like overstock or whatever. There are people who have a whole business model based just on the dollar store. Things that like it’s special toothpaste that didn’t last or whatever.
Things like that, that they’ll sell off to the dollar store. Cause they’ve decided they’re not going to keep this product and those types of things you can make some money on, but you just have to be so careful. It’s a tricky thing.
Doug: Let me ask you a couple more practical examples, Trish.
Trish: Okay.
Doug: What about I’m at a garage sale and they’ve got a bunch of Black Diamond Disney VHS tapes? Or maybe some Beanie Babies?
Trish: Okay, I’m gonna say both of those really depend on the specific one. Both of them I would probably pass on. But then I have friends, Diane Lassonde being one of them. And, Theresa T. Cox T Money, sells Beanie Babies. I don’t think she buys them anymore, but she sells them, the ones that she had. And they do sell periodically. Again, if storage isn’t an issue, if you have unlimited storage if you don’t mind sitting on something for a while. And when I say a year or more, I don’t mean months. When you can buy a beanie baby for 10 cents and sell it for 25, maybe it is worth it. But you just still have to look at the research and make sure you’re looking at your sell-through rate.
Doug: There you go. And for more information from Trish’s fabulous wealth of selling experience, you can go back to our sell-through rate episode and you will be seeing and hearing more of this content in Trish’s tips each week. Thanks, Trish. No, that was good. That’s good advice.
Seller News
Doug: Oh, wait, Trish. Stop the show.
Trish: Okay. Doug stopped.
Doug: I’ve been handed urgent news announcements, ladies and gentlemen.
Trish: You need like the tick…
Doug: We should just do it with our mouths.
Trish: Okay.
Doug: Time for the seller news over to you, Trish.
Trish: So this week I didn’t feel well. And I was on the couch for a week and I was watching YouTube and I couldn’t watch any more reseller YouTube. I was just up to my eyeballs in resellers. And so I started watching this girl Hope Scope. She’s a huge YouTuber. And I watched her because she was buying overstock returns and I was just watching her open them to see what she did. And so she bought a thing of evening gowns and at the end, she haphazardly mentioned that she was going to put them on this site called Queenly. And I was like, wait what is that?
So I watched the rest of it. I stop it. And then I spent three hours looking at Queenly. So Queenly is a really interesting site. It’s like a Poshmark or a, one of these app-based sites, but it is just for formal dresses. So they cater to proms. They cater to military balls. They cater to pageants.
Things like that. And these dresses are very difficult to sell. So anybody who’s been in the clothing game for a while knows that these dresses are harder to sell than normal dresses for lots of reasons. But this site is pretty interesting and it has a pretty good rating. And I just think maybe we should keep it out.
If you have these dresses, if you’re somebody who gets these dresses on an occasion, if you’re somebody who can get your hands on these, it might be worth looking at this site. So it’s queenly.com.
Doug: Yeah, that is interesting. I hadn’t heard of it, buy and sell formal dresses. And like you say as we all know, Trish, once you use one of those dresses, you’re likely done with it. But maybe somebody else has a need for that little black dress.
Trish: It says to have dresses sitting, sell them quickly, and earn some cash. And then they have different ways that you can do it. You can do new used, they do it up into different segments, like a little black cocktail dress pageants plus sizes bridal. So they also have a bridal section again, a thing that is very hard to sell in general. And then they also do it sometimes by designer. So like Sherry Hill. or Giovanni’s, these designers that maybe are like prom designers. And then it’s like under a hundred, under 300, under 500. It was a very easy app to maneuver. I found it very easy to look at dresses. I went in and I went into the listing process. That seemed very easy. So if you’re somebody who already uses Posh, you’re going to find this simple as anything. So just an idea, I’m working to see if they’ll take a CSV upload. So I’m working on that right now. I’ll let you know if I find that out.
Doug: Yeah. I’m looking at them and they say the go-to marketplace for all formal dresses for your next prom, wedding, quinceanera, or other special occasion, over 100, 000 dresses available today. Turn your old dresses into cash.
Trish: Yeah, and it’s one of those things that there are some niche products, prom dresses, wedding dresses being one of them, that are just harder to sell. And so I really do think a niche market like this might be great.
Doug: Yeah, that is cool. Do you have any old prom dresses, cocktail dresses, or quinceañera dresses you’re looking to unload?
Trish: Personally?
Doug: All right, then
Trish: But I will say that I do Get the chance to buy them and I don’t and I don’t buy them because they’re difficult to sell. So this may actually change my mind. This might be something that I will look into. So what I’d like to do is, if anyone’s ever used this service, I’d love to hear from you, please drop us an email. Maybe we’ll have a little experiment and we’ll try selling some stuff there. We’ll see how it goes.
Doug: And you can email us at podcast@listperfectly.com or go to thesellercommunitypodcast.com and click the contact form and you can contact us there.
Trish: We’d love to hear from you.
Doug: Love to hear from you about anything, but Queenly and your dresses.
Trish: Yeah.
Doug: Trish, did you hear that a bit back, the former Goodwill CEO was arrested for stealing over 1 million dollars?
Trish: No.
Doug: Yes.
Trish: I didn’t hear that.
Doug: Not many people know that he found it all in the pockets of donated clothes.
Actually, it is true.
Trish: How long have you been waiting to say that? It is not true.
Doug: No, that is true. Not that he found it all in donated clothes, but he was stealing money from the company.
Trish: Oh, I didn’t know.
Doug: Yeah.
Trish: I did not know that.
Doug: It’s just not, it’s not like he was sending like dead insects and things like that to people…
Trish: Behave Doug behave so on the eBay community at community.ebay.com they have a monthly chat. This week is on Wednesday, January 17th at 1 p. m. for EST. They will have an eBay growth advisor available to answer questions. We’ll include a link to the show notes, but it’s at community.ebay.com at the community info board. We just want to throw these things out there when these things become available. We just want to make sure that, so that you can go and you can participate.
Doug: Yeah. This is your opportunity to find out about eBay growth advisors, and how that works, they’re available for you. So good chance just to get some more information too.
Trish: And I know I’ve mentioned her before, but Diane Lassonde, my friend who had done nothing with their store for a year because she had gotten cancer, really started using a growth advisor. About four or five months ago. And it has made an enormous difference in her business. And she thinks the guy is wonderful. And she went from selling very little to now having sales every day. So if you are around to absolutely attend one of these, I think you’ll get a lot out of it.
Doug: That’s a good team. They can look you up, look you up in the system and then give you some advice and take a look at where you’re doing and help you potentially improve.
Trish: Do you have any AI news? I know you know a lot more about this than I do. I’m wondering if you have anything new that’s going on.
Doug: Trish, I’m super excited. I’ve been into AI a bit, so last week and this was big. This was on the radar for a bit. Open AI launched its chat GPT store. So basically what this does, it’s chat GPT is an interface, and this kind of a lot, it’s almost like apps for chat GPTs, but they’re all called chat GPTs.
And it gives access to custom apps and tools. All are built on open AI’s AI model. They say that the chat GPT store features a diverse range of GPTs developed by our partners in the community where you can browse popular and trending GPTs with categories like DALL-E, which is images, image generation, writing, research, programming, education, and lifestyle.
I’ve messed around with some of the image generation stuff and it’s pretty cool. It’s almost getting to the point where you look at an image and you’re like, is that AI or is it real? I don’t want to get into the AI argument, good or bad. And then, logo generation, things like that.
I was messing around with some video generation tools that were basically like, put a script in and we’ll generate a video for you. And then they generate this video with stock images and you can go in and add your own images and edit it all. One I was really messing with last week called Write For Me.
Basically what happens, with chat GPT, in the basic version, you’ve got this prompt and you ask a question or tell it what you want, and the more direction you give it, the better your results are going to be. I’ve messed around with it for a while and I test a lot of stuff with music stuff because I know it so well.
But I was really impressed with this Write For Me because it helps you write stuff. But it also prompts you along the way with what it needs. So it’s to write an autobiography of Trish Glenn and it’ll be like, all right, who’s your audience, what’s the tone, what do you want and you want to add, and then it works it all in.
And then again, I know that there’s a lot of controversy around AI. I’m a fan, it’s a tool and a tool is something that, good or bad, it’s based on the use of the person who uses it. And I definitely would always recommend anything generated by AI or chatGPT. You want to review, you want to check it, you want to reread it. Go through and edit it. And I think it’s a good tool if you want to have it help you write something, and then you go back through and edit it, make it in your own voice. Trish, back like when we were in high school we would get the CliffsNotes, to do our book reports.
Trish: Yeah.
Doug: I think the theme of…
Trish: Catcher in the Rye… No, it’s true. We did. We used to go and get those little yellow and black books, right? And we would all…
Doug: The afternoon before the report was due on Monday and you go down to the bookstore and you’re like, where’s the CliffsNotes?
Trish: Nothing’s open really past six on Sundays. Everything closes at six. I can remember saying to my mother, You gotta take me to the mall!
Doug: As a guide.
Trish: But even if you read the book, man, sometimes you need that. Like, how am I supposed to know what the inner struggle of Ernest Hemingway was at this point when he was doing Old Man and the Sea? But anyway, yeah.
Doug: I got in big trouble in high school once where it was like we’re reading the opus that’s Moby Dick. It’s like everything represents something blah, blah, blah. This is this. This is that. And I raised my hand and the teacher’s yes, I went what if it’s just a book about a guy chasing a whale? And she goes it’s not. I guess I should have got my CliffsNotes to help.
Trish: And I just think it’s interesting because it’s a brand new tool, it is going to continually get better and it’s going to continually invade our everyday lives. And so I think some of us would probably be better off getting used to it now than trying to catch up later.
Doug: Yeah, I think so. And it’s going to get better and better. It’s improving and there’s all kinds of stuff you can use. If you don’t want it to write stuff for you, there’s organization stuff, there’s planning stuff. And more and more is coming at a rapid pace.
Trish: Yeah, it’s interesting.
In further eBay news, I just wanted to say that eBay has some kind of deal with TaxAct. I don’t know if you saw this. They did it last year too. eBay partnered with TaxAct and they offer 25% off for sellers, which if you’re going to be filing your taxes online, anyway, look into it.
Last year I used it. I saved the 25%. I was happy I did it. And it just helps you with your filing of the federal. I don’t know about the state. States are all different.
Doug: And they’ve also got a tax information center just for eBay sellers. You can get articles and tips, and different eBay sellers have different situations.
Like obviously my eBay tax situation is much different than Trish’s because Trish, you’re a six-figure seller and I’m a two to three-figure seller.
Trish: You’re a two-figure seller.
Doug: And then they also, Trish apparently have a handy dandy five-point tax preparation checklist that will help ensure you’re compliant.
Trish, you do not want to mess with the I.R.S.
Trish: That’s very true. And as sellers, In the community, we don’t talk about taxes a lot. It’s a taboo subject. We don’t want to give people the wrong information. So here, at least, you’re getting information directly from eBay and from the Tax Act.
This is a good place to look, but it’s just a good place to know. That you know where you’re going and you’re getting good information.
So that’s about all the reseller news that fits this week. Doug, tune in for more reseller news next week. And if you’ve got something you want us to drop in, we’d love to hear from you. Hit us up. Let us know what your news is. We want to give everybody a shout-out, talk about your news, and see what you have to say. We want to know all the things.
Doug: Again, you can always email us at podcast@listperfectly.com. Or go to thesellarcommunitypodcast.com hit that contact link, or you can go to the group List Perfectly Facebook group and you can tag Trish. You can tag me and we will maybe add you to the show.
Trish: Yeah, we’d love that.
Doug: All right. Thank you, Trish.
Trish: Doug, a pleasure as always. I’m sorry I was raspy.
Doug: Let’s get that straightened out before next week.
Trish: I’ll do my best.
Doug: All right. Geez.
Outro
Trish: Thank you for joining us on The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. You can find us at thesellercommunitypodcast.com.
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