Clara and Amanda join Kat The Nurse Flipper to delve deep into the world of reselling. Whether you’re a seasoned seller or just starting out, this is your ultimate guide to unlocking success in the reselling business!
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.
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Episode Links
Flippin’ it with Kat the Nurse Flipper
Doug: Very special guest this week. We’re very excited to have our friend Kat the Nurse Flipper on the show. I always refer to her by her full name, Kat the Nurse Flipper.
I never call her Kat. I never call her the Nurse Flipper. I insist on full name and age with her. Kat the Nurse Flipper. Great story. She’s been selling for years. She does a lot of cool stuff. So we’re excited to have her on to talk Flipping, Flipping with Kat the Nurse Flipper, which I think was her solo album in college that sold well in Europe, at least, and in Florida, but Kat’s here.
Friend of the show, Clara and Amanda are excited to be here. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I’m going to bring in the fabulous Clara and Amanda, and then I’m going to hand the showoff to them. And they will bring in the always epic Kat, the Nurseflipper.
Clara: Hello! Hello everybody!
All right. Thank you everybody for joining us. My name is Clara. I’m the co-founder and chief strategy officer of List Perfectly. I’m joined by Amanda Morse, our amazing CEO of List Perfectly, both Co-founded List Perfectly, we are introduced by our Doug, our amazing director of content, but we have a special guest today.
So not only do we have Amanda, our CEO, but we have incredible Kat, the nurse flipper. All right. So an incredible full-time reseller. She’s incredibly successful way over six digits on eBay, but her main source of income is also coming from live sales. Live selling on Whatnot, live selling on District.
Not only she’s a full-time seller, but she transitioned from being a full-time nurse and then started to become a reseller. And now it’s incredible how much she has grown in our community. YouTube channel. Facebook group. She also sells live on her Facebook group. I forgot that one. Also has the Deaf Pile Distraction, a group where you can go and talk about, about things that we resellers need, and Kat can give you, her perspective.
Her Instagram is also incredible. So with much further ado, let’s bring Kat the Nurse Flipper. Welcome Kat!
Kat: Hello. I appreciate being on with you ladies.
Clara: I did an introduction for you, Kat, okay, but Kat we have known each other for years now. You’ve been with List Perfectly for approximately, I would say, four years already, four years plus?
Kat: I think close to that, yeah.
Clara: When you started as a full-time reseller, you left behind The nursing job. Okay. But how has been your growth? Because we don’t know about YouTube and Instagram, you have grown everywhere else as well.
Kat: Yeah, I think the biggest thing with the growing is doing two things. So YouTube in itself is a full-time job. So is of course eBay. And then when you add in live selling, it’s almost like it’s three different full-time jobs. I guess you could do it by yourself, but it would be very difficult on the scale that we do it. So my mom has been working for me because she was talking about working at a gas station at 70 and I was just not going to have that. So she’s been cross-posting for me for years. When I didn’t have employees, what happened is I’m doing the live selling and then eBay got neglected.
My eBay numbers went down and when I first started, I was doing eBay and Amazon and the same thing happened because it’s really hard to focus on the giants, I feel like eBay, Amazon and whatnot are all pretty big And it’s easy to cross-post from, eBay, Mercari, Posh.
I feel like Posh and Mercari are You know a little lower down. They’re not as big of a beast as eBay and Amazon But to do those bigger ones and do them good it’s hard to focus on more than one. We dropped Amazon in the beginning because of that. I wasn’t doing well on either because I couldn’t focus on either one.
So they were both mediocre until I dropped Amazon and then eBay started going up and then after we got established on eBay, we started cross-posting.
Clara: How did you transition to do the lives? I’m very curious because you’re being very successful. You’re doing lives on District, on Whatnot. And then you have your Facebook group that is exclusive for your lives. Did I get this right?
Kat: We don’t do any live selling on Facebook. We just broadcast. So that’s just to pull those viewers on my Facebook page in. As far as Whatnot, I actually was on the fence about it for close to a year, I didn’t really get in at the beginning of Whatnot. And then they came to me and offered me a contract.
That’s what made me jump in. And we did very well with it. And it was a short, like one-month contract. But once we saw how well we were doing with it, we stayed there for over a year and we did about a quarter of a million in sales on whatnot, both last year and the year before.
But the profit margin is not there. I want to make sure everybody knows like 250, 000 on whatnot is probably like 70, 000 in sales on eBay, because you’re selling stuff so much lower because people want to deal. I’m making 30 percent or less of what I would on eBay when I’m selling on whatnot. The profit is not there on whatnot. We did a shop the shed actually a couple of hours ago. And so if I can move it in a day and double my money, I will. So if I pay five bucks, I’ll start it at $10.
Whatnot and eBay are totally different ballgames because the profit margin just, it is not the same. So it sounds so big on Whatnot, but to make that 250 I probably spent 150, 000 in inventory. It was a lot of fast turnovers. So the profit margin isn’t there.
It will be for a few, but the overall average, it is not. And we did stop last year, probably in September, or October, because we were losing money in August and September on whatnot. This is one of my defects. And I think anybody that watches me knows when I do something, I go all in and then I get burnt out. So I think that’s like important because I do too much and then I had to stop. And then we started back in February of this year and it’s going really well, but we’re only, we’re doing two whatnot sales a week and two district sales a week is what we’re doing now.
Amanda: So now you mentioned something some people or some categories might actually do better. And I’m wondering what that is what do you think does good on what not? Or is it liking a category, is it an item or is it a person?
Kat: I was talking to Kaylee Elaine last night and this morning, and we were talking about delegating. I was telling you guys I’ve been really stressed lately, so I’m trying to delegate out as much as I can. And the thing is, on Whatnot, at least for me, and I feel like most social media presences, is that, If I go on and sell, it will sell for double what it does if somebody, whether they’re on my name or not.
So like my daughter knows how to run Whatnot shows. I think Prissy’s sitting right here. I think Prissy could probably run them by herself as well, but people want me. And we have done it. We have had my daughter run shows and if it is not me talking, the sales are half of what they are if it’s me.
I will also say though, a lot of it, like I know the information where they might not be able to give as much information on items as I could. So that probably plays a point as well. And for us, we do really well in jewelry, but jewelry is a category that’s oversaturated on whatnot right now.
You used to could go on there with anything, and everything would sell. But now I think people want nicer, more standout items. We, as far as jewelry, have only been doing sterling silver. So mid-level jewelry, not lower costume stuff, which we used to do.
And I know Rod, my co-host on my podcast, he does very well with Disney. And I think Josh Hairy Tornado has been doing very well with Disney as well. So it’s so big on whatnot. All we’ve really been doing is the jewelry and shop the shed. And I think the shop the shed, which some people do shop my shelves, different ways of saying it.
We, for us, it’s shop the shed, but people like to see different stuff. And then we just show them if they see something they like, they ask, and we tell them how much that has been going really well for us. We’ve been doing that for about two and a half weeks now. So that’s our newest thing. And we’re doing it both on Knickknacks on district and on whatnot. And we were happy with that.
Clara: Tell me a little about your Deathpile Destruction Facebook group.
Kat: So that one we created I think about a year and a half ago and I did a video on it because I realized for me, and this was when I didn’t have employees, had a whole shed of unlisted stuff and I think it is a really big problem in the reseller community because we all like to buy.
Yep. And if it’s hard to constrain yourself and say, I don’t need to buy anymore. Like I need to list what I have. We have stuff in here now. I just have done a couple of big auction lots, but at one point we were almost out of inventory. So we actually have worked through our entire death pile.
I don’t think there’s anything in here that’s older than what? Like a month, probably. Nothing older than a month in the shed anymore, because the thing is like people have all this money and it’s so expensive. It’s sitting there and it doesn’t even have a chance to make the money if it’s not listed. So that’s why I started it and it’s basically for support.
Clara: So we were just talking about what not, how different lives are very different when it comes to return of investment, what I heard, okay. It’s very different from selling. Do you think that? Success for you will come from finding a balance between those two, or are you still testing to see what works best for your team, and your customers?
Kat: I think this has always been for me and my business. It’s like we’re putting time into what’s giving us the return on investment and those switches. We stopped the live sales for four months and I would stop them again if I was losing money, I would stop them again.
So I like the balance because I like doing the live sales for sure. And you almost have to source differently a little bit because, there’s some stuff that shows really well live, but in static pictures, it doesn’t. So it’s almost two completely different business models as far as sourcing, as far as selling.
And I think we’re trying to find a balance. I’m up to the four sales a week again, and now eBay is going down because it’s getting neglected again, because we’re doing four live sales a week. I don’t know that there is a balance. It’s just watching what is returning that investment at that time and adjusting it as time goes.
Clara: Now, I know you have a full-time and a part-time employee, if I’m not mistaken, in addition to your mom. Do you think that maybe hiring or maybe turning that part-time into full-time and maybe would help you to stay consistent on eBay and also then be the superstar of live sales?
Kat: Our part-timer is a high schooler, so summer’s coming up, so I guess theoretically we could, but we actually are probably having to cut her down because we are, and I’m going to do a video about this is the first time I’ve even talked about this publicly, we’re changing our business model as far as eBay, and we’re only listing items that are 25 or more. We have 1600 items under 10, which I am not happy to say.
Clara: Question, did you initially list them as $10, or have you been reducing the price down to $10?
Kat: But the thing is with me and lots like they were DVDs I paid 50 cents for so 50 cents into $10 When you’re working by yourself is fine But 50 cents into $10 when you’re paying somebody to list is not fine.
They’ve been here two years; the lot is in the profit. The high-dollar ones sold fast, right? The rare ones sold fast. The lots in the profit, and we’re actually probably going to go up to 20 and pull it out. If I think I might be able to sell it on whatnot, like the DVDs we might do for 50 cents on whatnot, like two for a dollar, see if we can sell some. And if not, Then I’m going to give them away. I have somebody that does a flea market. I just give her stuff for free. She comes and picks it up.
That’s my problem. I want to get every single penny out of a lot. And I don’t think that’s necessarily the best business practice. I was talking to Ken Hustlebee actually at camp when we were there and his stuff, he automatically gets rid of that lower stuff. He sells it for a loss. And only list the high dollar, which is really what I need to do, but it’s here, right? It’s me wanting to get every last dollar out of that lot. But if you think about the time that’s going into listing them, how long they take to sell, and the space they’re taking up, it really is not worth it.
If I’m not free to make the drafts active, nothing is going active. I don’t think I’ve made anything active in two or three days right now. So that’s the hard part because I don’t do a lot of like clothing and items that are clear cut with comps, you know It’s more rare pieces or vintage linens that you will not find another one like it So the price the prices are here and I can just price them where they wouldn’t really be able to At least not now Yes, time is money.
I agree. Trish and I have been talking about it cause it’s me. Like I’m the problem and I need to realize that if it’s lower, we can try and sell it on whatnot. If it doesn’t sell on whatnot, then I give it away. I don’t pay somebody to list it, pay somebody to put it away, pay somebody to ship it.
We sold a teacup on Poshmark yesterday or the day before. Five cents is what it paid us. Five cents. Five cents. So do not tip. That’s a do not tip. On Poshmark, if it’s under 10, they take a flat fee, and you end up making like nothing.
It’s horrible. So yeah, so a lot of it is me and I still want to buy the lots because the lots have a lot of higher dollar items, but I need to be more selective on what in the lots is not. Being listed, or maybe we lot it up. I bought some Nike shirts yesterday at the thrift that are worth about 15 to $20 each, but there are multiples, so we can lot up the same size, the same style, and put two for 40, and have a 40 sale.
Versus a 15 or 20 sale, most of it is changing me. It’s not even changing the business model, it’s changing me. I want to pull every single penny out of these lots when really, it’s not worth it for something.
Amanda: Tell me if I’m on the right track here. What I’ve been hearing is that you’ve found a specialty that you use for Whatnot, you’re trying to figure out you found that specialty, that 25 or $20 price point that you want to list on eBay now too.
And I think that’s really key. Let’s say you were to lot up all that stuff and sell it as a lot. Would you choose live selling for that? Or would you choose like a big lot on eBay or something like that?
Kat: So I don’t do a bunch of lots on eBay. That’s the nice thing with like social media influencer-wise, so what we’re going to start doing, at least with new inventory coming in, is I’m probably going to offer it to channel members. And, because, like I said, for me by myself, 50 cents into $10 dollars are fine. But where I’m at now, it’s not fine anymore. A lot of this stuff would be good for a smaller individual seller just starting out trying to get inventory.
Not the DVDs. I’m not The DVDs I’m hoping somebody will buy to watch. But when I go outside Sourcing here in my local area. I get a lot of dollar clothing that is worth 15, 20. I used to do this, and if people watch me a while, they know, I used to do thrift boxes because I’m like, I don’t need the inventory.
I, buy so much in auction lots, and I would say at the end of the video, and this is what I’m going to start doing again, is this is going into a thrift box, and I might, if I pay a dollar, I’ll charge them three dollars, which is still cheaper than most people’s thrift store clothing prices. And then I put it in a box for them because, again, for somebody selling by themselves, fifteen, twenty dollars is You know, an okay price depending on your business model.
Amanda: It really sounds like you don’t have a problem sourcing at all, Kat.
And we hear that all the time, everybody’s like, how do you source? Where do you get the stuff? And a lot of it is, just getting out there like I’m sure you found without divulging any of your secrets, I would love for you to share like any tips that you can with the audience about sourcing.
Kat: I thrift mainly for content. That is not where the majority of our inventory comes from. It’s fun to go find things. But the majority of ours comes from online auctions. I’m very rural. I’m in the middle of nowhere and I can go on Highbid and have pretty much anything shipped to my door. All of our sterling jewelry is from online auctions. I’m not finding any jewelry at the thrift store. So all of that is coming from online auctions.
That’s the thing with online sourcing and why I like it. So for a while, like we also, just got, I bought a lot of 25 teacups, which I think everybody knows my lovely teacup video.
You can search for anything. I use t-shirts as an example. I sometimes will just search for the lot, the word lot, and I will scroll and see what I find. We bought 600 Harley pins. I found so much stuff, and I get, I have Kachinas. I love Kachinas. Same thing, they’re not in Florida.
You can search nationwide, and it comes to you. You just have to be smart about it because, like the one auction I buy from every week, I paid up to $600 for shipping. But then look, if you have a thousand dollars teacup and you pay a hundred dollars for shipping, who cares?
It doesn’t matter. Some of those are so crazy. We don’t have one, hand me that green one. I’m gonna show you. I have a $300 one I just got in. Yeah. Yeah, this one we just got in yesterday. This one’s worth about 300.
While we’re doing the live selling, we look them up with Google Lens to see the value, so I know where to start. Cause with these lots, like I might, I paid over $300 for the teacups. Like I wouldn’t want to sell that one $300 teacup for a $20 start on whatnot, because that’s the majority of the money in that lot.
Clara: That’s awesome. Kat, do you think that district buyers pay more than whatnot? What is your input on that?
Kat: My experience is the opposite. My Whatnot buyers will pay more than districts. So I really think it depends on the seller. It depends on what you’re selling, and you need to know. So like our sterling average price on district has been lower than it is on whatnot because I’ve been on what I’ve also been doing jewelry on whatnot for over a year and a half. Whereas the district buyers don’t know me that well. So our district average is less.
I want to say too really quick, and I’ve talked about this a lot, with live selling, I feel there’s no truth figuring it out, right?
Cause I can do excellent with one thing and then I can come back the next week with the same thing and it does not do well. With live selling, there are so many, you never know who’s gonna be in that audience. And for prices to go up, you only need two people to want the same thing, right? That’s all it takes, but you might only have one.
So if you start at low, that’s all you’re getting. So the same thing as eBay, make sure you start your auctions at the lowest you’re willing to take. I might think it’s wonderful. I’ve had stuff I’m sitting here saying this pen is worth a hundred dollars. I started at 10 and it goes for 10 and I’m like, if I was a reseller out there listening to this, I would be bidding.
So it’s hard. But as far as posh lives, I think we did two or three. We did not do well. We did not do well at all. So with all of these things, I think it depends on what you have, your personality if it does well.
And then I’m used to making quite a bit on whatnot with my Sterling. So for me, if I’m making under $500 in sales an hour, I’m not happy on Whatnot. Again, that goes back to labor because Prissy might’ve cataloged it. So I’m paying her by the hour to catalog it. And then I’m also going to pay her to ship it. Whereas Marsha’s doing everything by herself. So she doesn’t have that overhead cost that I have. And I go into almost all live shows, probably close to negative $250. So when I do 250, I’m breakeven. Between the cost of inventory and labor.
And again, when you throw in labor and when you throw in overhead costs, It’s a whole different ballgame. So when people come to me wanting to hire people, I am very like straight to the point about it because I don’t think a lot of people really realize what that entails. It’s not just their hourly. You also have to match their social security taxes. You have to match their FICA taxes. So somebody making 15 an hour, you’re really paying 25 an hour. And I think if you haven’t run a business, you don’t know that.
Amanda: You really should know what you want to hire people for. And zero in on that, like there, there’s a lot of stuff that technology could help with. So if you can use technology like List Perfectly to help with some of those elements of your business, like listing and cross posting and all that, then, at least for us, what Clara and I would come to is we really need people to help with shipping because we can’t be here all the time to take care of the shipping part.
That was in our business, but we definitely wanted to use technology. to help us with some of the other heavy lifting that would free up more of our time.
Clara: And I always say, if you’re going to hire someone, I always say this, you have to hire at least, you have to have at least six months of contingency funds of already saved money of their salaries, because whatever happens, you got to keep on paying them because you made an investment. The last thing you want is to lose them.
Amanda: Thank you, Kat, for your time and for sharing your knowledge. We all know and respect everything that you do and thank you so much for making this time in your busy schedule.
Clara: Absolutely. You gave us incredible, valuable feedback and tips. And I think that this is to see your growth. We, both of us, Amanda and myself and team List Perfectly, we adore you, but we’re inspired by your energy and your giving spirit with our community. You never hold back on your knowledge.
Kat: Thank you for having me on.
Outro
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