The Most Overlooked Side Hustle You Can Start With $0 Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 Within the first year, we had gone from the  smallest estate you can possibly imagine to a 32,000t warehouse selling $25,000 a weekend.  That's wild. The great thing about starting a state so company is there's very little initial  investment. Okay. Any fees that do pop up, you can just pass those along to the customer or  the client. You collect all the money, too.

00:18 So, you don't need to go chase down payments. You pass  on the 60%. Right. Right. Estate sale companies work in virtually any community 5,000 to 10,000  and up. There's money to be made in every single aspect. The sale of the house, the sale of the  contents, the move and or list the house for them. I mean, this is a time in a life when people spend  money.

00:38 Everyone knows death, divorce, moving, like when you move, when there's a change in your  in your life, that is when you spend money. An estate sale company is the perfect company to  start if you aren't techsavvy. It's very easy. You could literally start this with no money  and then be cash flow positive your first week. You could literally go there with tape and a  marker.

00:59 You can start it for virtually nothing. What if you could start a business for literally  0 and make $6,000 profit your very first week? Oh, and did I mention that this hops on the mega trend  of retiring and aging baby boomers? It's an estate sale business and there is way more demand than  supply for this business in any given market. So today I meet Braden who left a boring corporate  job and started an estate sale business that quickly made him six figures a year.

01:28 But I didn't  find out until the end of this episode that the estate sale business is just a front. It's just  a lead generation machine for a much much more profitable business that I can basically guarantee  you no one else is doing. Please enjoy. So by the end of this episode today, will our viewers have  enough information so they can go out and start their own estate sale business?

01:48 At the end of  today, your listeners will see how anyone who is motivated can start an estate sale company  in a week or less and start acquiring estates to liquidate within two weeks or less. How much  startup capital? Almost nothing. You need to have tape, a price gun, which you can get off  of Amazon, and a phone, a point of sale system ideally, but you can use your phone, and as many  tables as you can get your hands on, and some friends and family members to help you, and that's  it.

02:17 You and I could leave here right now, start an LLC, post an ad online, and have a sale lined  up. This is a typical result. Within two or three weeks, you and I could have an estate sale company  and our first estate sale in just a matter of days. Okay. So, you're a territory sales manager  for two years. You read the book 4-hour work week, changes your life.

02:39 How do you go from that point  to estate sales? I had an antique store booth and uh just leftover items, collectibles from my  childhood that I didn't want to give away. I'd prefer to sell. Was this at a farmers market?  This was at just a huge antique store in uh central Arkansas. Okay. So, you occupied a little  sliver of this store. It was like a 2x10.

02:57 Okay. It was like a family affair where they, you know,  my kids decorated it. I provided the collectibles and the items, the merchandise. Anyways, my buddy  had asked me for years to go yard selling with them and I or well, finally I relented and went  with him and his kids and I ended up picking up, you know, old Star Wars, old antiques, old um  or vintage tools, and every week was different.

03:28 and flipped those items for several hundred just  immediately just putting them in the antique store booth in profit. In profit from then on what?  Sorry, what city was this in? This is in Benton, Arkansas. How many people live in Benton, give  or take? I would guess about 50,000 in the entire county. Okay. Wow. So, I I just want people to get  a scale for you don't need to live in a huge city to do this, right?

03:48 So, Benton, Arkansas, 50,000  to the whole county. Let's say 25,000 in Benton, right? Your your buddy finally convinced you  to go garage selling. buy some Star Wars and other stuff. You make a few hundred profit at  your booth. Exactly. And then from then on, we went out every weekend, like super early.  I'm not a early person, but every Saturday we were getting up at like 5:00 in the morning,  mapping out where all the yard sales were posted, hitting those yard sales, you know, buying super  collectibles, clothing,

04:11 vintage clothing, vintage, you know, everything. anything we knew we or  thought we might be able to resell and we just put them in the antique store booth and you know make  several hundred dollars a month. What we ran into is when the fall and the winter rolls around, yard  sales stop because of the weather. So we started going to estate sales and what we realized pretty  quickly is not all estate sale companies are the same.

04:40 where we're at or at the time there were se  there were a couple of really good ones but for the most part the existing estate sale companies  weren't that great. Now explain what an estate sale company is. An estate sale company where  we're at basically contracts with the homeowner to liquidate the entire contents of the house.  Okay. Unless specified not to sell, literally everything in that house will get a price tag and  will be offered to sell, including and sometimes the the vehicles.

05:12 Mhm. Um sometimes the house  itself occasionally that that's a good good point. Nine times out of a 10 an estate sale comp  right after estate sale company is contracted, it's because they want to put the house on the  market as soon as the contents are out. Mhm. They're not necessarily selling the house, but  they the urgency is to sell the house. Therefore, they hire a company to manage the sale of all the  stuff, right?

05:34 And in some instances, the house had already sold. Oh, yeah. And they had like a short  window where, you know, to get the items out and um sell as much as possible. Now, you say estate  sale company. Is this like a formal company or like a small business that's local to the  area? That's correct. Okay. At that time, there were no franchise estate sale companies  in central Arkansas.

05:57 And what year was this? This was 2017. Okay. Okay. Eight years ago. You're  selling these, you know, buying at garage sales, selling at your booth. Winter hits. What do we do?  Let's get creative. You find estate sales. Where were you even learning that these estate sales  were happening? Nationwide, there's a service called estatesales.net. Okay. And if you want  to find out where estate sales are or if you want to contract out an estate sale, you you can  go to that website, okay?

06:25 And it'll tell you who the estate sale companies are and what sales are  upcoming for this that particular weekend. Okay? So, if you typed in your email address today,  today's Wednesday, you'd immediately get notified of the estate sales that are coming up in your  area for for the upcoming weekend. Okay? And for the for the near future, okay? Now, in a city like  Benton, give me a a sense of the scale.

06:47 How many estate sales are there every week or every month?  On average, I'd say there's between five to 10 estate sales every week. Wow. That that number  dips in the well around holidays, especially December and January because the weather's so bad.  But on average, I'd say about 10 for the whole county or just for Benton for the I'd say in a 40  mile radius around Little Rock.

07:09 Oh, around Little Rock. So that's Little Rock and surrounding areas.  Five to 10 a week. Yes. Okay. That's a good That's a good amount. Yes. And what we noticed is some  of the estate sale companies at that time were not that great and we didn't particularly care for  our jobs at that time. We just started throwing out the idea, you know, we could do this.

07:30 Yeah.  And uh and that's what we did. Now, what about them wasn't great. Some estate sale companies, the  ones that were not ideal, didn't price everything, maybe didn't focus on arrangement of items.  This one in particular is all cash and made it seem a little shady whereas, you know, most  of the other estate sale companies, you know, offered credit card sales as well as, you know,  checks cuz I'm presuming these estate sale companies take a percentage of everything sold.

07:58 Yes. So, if there's cash, then who knows, right, what, right? Right. some of the not uh prestigious  estate sale companies would bring items left over from the previous estate sale to the next house.  So, they would look trashy, wasn't organized. Um maybe some of their staff members weren't very  helpful or they didn't have any staff to like help carry out items and some weren't even pricing  all the items, right?

08:22 They're they're hoping that like you they could get a better price, but  everyone has to ask manually, what does this cost? What does this cost? Right? Okay. Now, are most of  these business owners local as just an individual, maybe a couple employees? Where I'm at and and  probably nationwide, too, they're locally owned. Yeah, there is a growing emphasis on starting and  owning your own franchise, and there's there's three big players when it comes to franchising  an estate sale company in the US.

08:48 Okay. Now, if I'm hosting an estate sale or if I have  a need for an estate sale, I'm going to go on Google or whatever Facebook Marketplace, find  someone to host it for me. What percentage fee do they charge and is there like an upfront fee that  they charge as well? That's a great question. The great thing about starting a state sale company  is there's very little initial investment.

09:08 Okay. And to host an estate sale, any fees that do  pop up like marketing, that's the big one. You just you can just pass those along to the customer  or the client. Okay. Typical industry average is 35%. Okay. If it's a multi multi-million dollar  home with cars and jewelry and so forth and you really want to and and you know there's going  to be competition, you probably an estate sale company is probably going to offer less than 35%.

09:37 Mhm. On the flip side, if it's a small home with chunky stuff. Yeah. Um which maybe just barely  meets your minimum threshold. Mh. You can char you can offer whatever you want. I mean it can be as  high as 45 to 50%. Okay. And it's a good business because there's not like there's not a payer like  the the people that are, you know, representing this are the heirs of the deceased.

10:02 Right. Right.  So they're probably not as price sensitive as the deceased would have been. That's a good point.  There's four typically there's four groups of people that need an estate sale. Deceased.  They call the four Ds. Deceased, divorce, debt, and downsizers. Okay. The downsizers maybe  would be a little bit more price sensitive because typically that's grandma or grandpa going to  assisted living, but usually in my experience the homeowner just wants to get rid of the contents as  soon as possible so they can

10:36 liquidate the house. Would you say it's you listed those in order of  commonality? Like deceased is the most common, divorce is the next most. Yes. uh deceased,  well, excuse me, divorce and downsizing would be probably equal, but deceased is is the number one.  What's the fourth debt? Okay. Is where does that rank? Occasionally, we would find ourselves in  a situation where there was a foreclosure or the the homeowner had just like literally moved out of  the country and left it and their kids or the bank needed those

11:10 items. Yeah. Needed it gone. So now,  is there any upfront fee that the the estate sale company takes or is it all based on how much they  sell? It is all based off of how much they sell. However, if you if you suspect that a house might  not gross what you need to cover labor expenses, you can set a minimum a minimum threshold  guarantee where you say, "My my fee is 35%.

11:37 I think we're going to gross 10,000 bucks, but for  sure we're going to set a $2,000 minimum. Okay? So that if it's rained out, if the people don't  show up, because you know, you're posting pictures online of what you're going to sell through  estate sales.net. If it's just not a good turnout, whatever the reason, you still make that 2,000.  So in that instance, if you only grossed 5,000, you're still going to get 2,000.

12:01 Yeah. Okay. Hey,  believe it or not, about 62% of you don't actually subscribe to this channel, even though you see my  videos in your feed. So, just take a second, hit the subscribe button, maybe even the notification  bell, and it would mean the world to me. 2017, you start seeing how poorly these other guys are  doing it. Then you start thinking, you're like, man, this probably a lot more profitable than 300  a month of, you know, Star Wars memorabilia.

12:20 What do you do next? We started an LLC and started  brainstorming on we asked ourselves that same question like you know now what uh we went to  or I went to the premier estate sale company at the time they since retired. It was a husband and  wife team and they were fantastic. Everybody loved them. High quality. The clients loved them. They  had a huge following.

12:45 And I went to him and said, "Listen, I'm thinking about starting a state sale  company. You know, I I love the business. I think I do. would you consider letting me work for  you for a while? And or actually I volunteered to volunteer. And they said, "No, you cannot  volunteer, but yes, you can come work with us and just see how a sale goes." And and they paid me.

13:05 I picked their brain, asked them questions, asked them if they would send us small leads that they  didn't have time to fool with or didn't want to. And they did. So you have essentially approached  them and said, "I want to compete with you. Can I work for you? I'll do it for free and they're  like yes you can and I'll pay you. Exactly. Yeah. Why do you think they said yes to that?

13:28 Just law  of abundance just kind good good people or in my opinion at least where and where we're at. There's  a significant amount of business out there in estate liquidation and it's only growing. There's  a company called Cerulean Associates. I may not be pronouncing that correctly, but they anticipate  $124 trillion of wealth transfer in the US in the next 20 years.

13:51 Wow. And approximately 20% of  that is real estate. I couldn't tell you how much of that is personal property, but the numbers  are headed straight through the roof. And even, you know, 8 years ago, it was it was still  trending upward. So, there's there's more clients than there are estate sale companies, at  least where I'm at. So, they were more than happy.

14:12 And a state sale company never wants to tell a  client, I'm sorry, I can't I can't. Whether it's schedule or it's just too small, they they love  having an alternative. and they can say I can't do it but XYZ company can and we became their XYZ  company. Okay. But you didn't have like at the time you didn't have any reason for them to trust  you enough to start sending you business because you didn't have any experience yet, right?

14:34 The  only thing that I had is a previous relationship just going to their sales and saying hi and  buying it. Had a relationship with them which is a competitive advantage for sure. Right. Okay.  And this was a couple that owned the estate sale business locally or they had like a big business  that was in multi- city, multi-state. This was a a small business, small estate sale business and all  they did were inhome estate sales in the central Arkansas area.

14:58 Okay. What did they pay you? I I  can't remember whatever minimum wage was at the time. It was a 3-day sale, Friday, Saturday,  Sunday. If you're familiar with estate sales, you know that the first day is full price. Second  day is typically 20 to 25% off if if there's any items left. And then the remaining items are 50%  off on Sunday. And I worked all three days.

15:14 Those are like industry standard numbers. Very standard.  It just work. It must work, right? Like Yes. That's the typical structure. If you have a small  window because of an HOA or if it's a small house or the estate's not massive. Sometimes you you can  have a two-day sale where first day is full price, second day in the morning from 9 to noon is 25%  off and then from noon to 3 is 50% off.

15:37 Okay. How long did you work for them before you branched out  on your own? I worked for them on two sales and all the while they're just sending us typically  smaller leads. you know, an estate sale company, the existing state. We did that with multiple  estate sales companies and they were more than happy to find somebody trustworthy that they  could send smaller estates to.

16:02 So, we went from, you know, grossing a,000, $2,000 a weekend on  these smaller estate sales to 5,000, 6,000, 7,000. Started just we started building our own  network. We we set a good example of, you know, we knew what worked and or what we thought worked  and we definitely knew what didn't work and what you shouldn't do. So, we just focused on on doing  the the things that the really good estate sub companies were doing and just built up from there.

16:34 We wanted to, you know, dip our toes in. Yeah. We didn't at that time, you know, these smaller  estates, we were still doing that on the weekend on top of our our full-time job. And within six  to seven months, we landed our first million-doll property with like a $30,000 estate sale. They had  sold their home and they had to be out in like 30 days or less.

16:59 And all the other companies were  booked after that job. Uh my business partner at the time, he quit his full-time job and just dove,  you know, straight in. And a couple months later, I did too. Wow. Okay. You you got your first  jobs. Now, if they were 5 to 10 in a week, how are they getting so many leads? Are a bunch of  those leads just not closing?

17:16 How are estate sale companies getting this company you were working  for? They were getting a ton of leads even right off the bat when you started working for them.  But you said on this website, there's only 5 to 10 per week in all of Little Rock. How are there  so many leads if there only ends up being 5 to 10 a week? That particular company that I went  to work for was very well regarded.

17:33 the husband and wife born and raised in Little Rock, very  connected and just an amazing couple. It didn't take much for them to build a huge following.  And then all the real estate agents and you know, uh, attorneys that deal with Elder Law knew them  as well. So, they were very well connected. One thing we also did that I didn't mention earlier  is I went to real estate brokers and said, "Hey, can I bring you guys breakfast, coffee, donuts,  etc.

18:05 at your next broker meeting and just tell you tell your staff about, you know, for like for  10 minutes about what we do?" And nine times out of 10, those brokerages were like, "Sure." You  know, because otherwise they'd have to pay for it. They're going to have the meetings anyways.  Yeah. So, I heard that so many times like real estate offices are very receptive to stuff like  that, right?

18:24 Whereas it's really hard to get in at any other type of office typically. I agree. Okay.  So, you're making minimum wage. You only need to do a couple weekends worth of sales. You're  feeling good. You're feeling confident. What types of things are you learning working for these  people that you didn't know before? working for an existing sale company could just confirm some  suspicions that I had and just solidified what makes sense, which is be nice to the customer,  keep an eye on merchandise, don't overpric items,

18:56 don't underpric items. They enlighten me  on how much staff is required. For example, you want people obviously at the cash register.  You want wanderers or floor managers kind of just walking around making sure the customer doesn't  need anything and then also people aren't stealing stuff. Depending on the size of the house and and  depending on what the contents are, you want to have somebody to help load furniture.

19:17 And working  for an existing stay company, you just kind of really kind of opened my eyes and uh on what staff  Yeah. looks like. And maybe most importantly, it just gave you confidence, which like that's an  intangible thing that is so valuable. You're like, "Okay, yeah, like I feel like I've d-risked  myself." Not that there's a ton of risk going into it compared to other businesses, but is it  true?

19:39 It just gave you confidence to to do this on your own. For sure. And they were very supportive  and and told me, you know, if if you have any questions or, you know, concerns, you feel free to  call us. They gave me my they gave me their cell phone. So, anytime I had a question about staffing  or paperwork or percentage or a neighborhood or uh an item, I could call them.

20:04 To this day, I  still uh they one of the the husband of that team is a guitar expert and anytime I have a, you know,  question about a guitar or musical instrument, I'll just shoot him a text and say, "Hey, what can  you tell me about this cuz I don't want to mispric it." Yeah. Okay. So, not only are they paying you,  but then they're giving you leads while you're still working for them.

20:23 What does your first  estate sale look like? What was the situation? How big was it? What did you make, etc.? The  first estate sale that we we received was from a real estate flipper who and real estate investor  who was a good friend of mine. And he said, "Uh, Braden, I bought this house. It's a three-bedroom,  two bath. It's full of stuff. Do you want to sell it?"

20:47 Cuz he knew I was going to do estate sales.  And I said, "Sure." Because otherwise he was going to have to run the sale himself or just  throw everything away. And uh really quickly we priced everything in the house. We held an estate  sale. Uh it was a smoker's house, which we knew, but we thought the walls were orange, and when we  started taking items off the walls, like the gun rack, there was a you could tell exactly where the  guns were cuz it was white underneath there.

21:10 Oh man. And uh anyways, that was our first sale stay.  And we we sold basically everything in there. Wow. Uh any items that were left we got rid of. And uh  soon thereafter is when we got that million-dollar house. Okay. What did you what did you make from  that? And what percentage did you give him? That first estate sale, he let us keep everything.

21:32 He just wanted us to get rid of get rid of I mean that's a val that's a value to him, right?  Right. He would have to pay somebody to get rid of those items. Yeah. And uh he he actually sent  us more leads after that. Um, one in particular that was a hoarder house, which I can talk about  later, but that first estate sale, I want to say we grossed five or six thousand bucks.

21:50 Wow. And,  uh, holy cow. I mean, you grossed really netted like your costs were very little, right? Right.  Right. Did you have people help you on that one? One positive thing about estate sale companies is  it can be a family business. So that particular sale and almost all future sales, my wife was  there, his wife was there, our kids were there, and it was basically a familyrun deal where there  was virtually no no expenses other than buying a few tables and the uh pricing guns.

22:20 So, in other  words, correct and correct me if I'm wrong, you started this business and your first week,  your first week that you were really in business, your first job, you made about $1,000 profit,  right? That's incredible. How much was left on the second day and the third day? Did it take  you a while to get rid of everything? Are we talking about the smoker's house?

22:41 Yeah, the first  one. Okay, let's say that one grows 6,000 bucks. industry average on a on a good estate sale or  with a good estate sale company, you're going to have you're going to sell about 70 to 80% I'd  say 75 to 85% of the content. So, what was left, we took to an auction and resold it there. And  when you take it to an auction, at least in our area, nothing's coming back.

23:02 They're going to sell  everything. It may be for pennies on the dollar. Yeah. And instead of selling all the pots and  pans individually, they're just going to bundle it into one one, you know, one cost or one price.  But uh that's what we did with those particular items. And how much does the auction take? That  particular auction keeps 35% as well.

23:16 So, but you your cost on it was zero. Exactly. You just had to  get it there. Some labor, right? Okay. So, of that $6,000, what are some examples of some higher  ticket and lower ticket things that you sold there? that particular item or that particular  house. There were vint v vintage clothing, vintage cookware, Dutch ovens, there were a  handful of guns.

23:39 More expensive items would be uh mid-century modern furniture. Those are the  big items that come to mind. Okay. So, there's not like one or two things that are carrying most  of the weight on this. Maybe on some, but not on this estate sale, right? Because I was thinking  like, you know, this sectional or this piece of, you know, electronics or whatever car gives  500,000 2,000 bucks.

24:00 It's kind of like the 8020 rule, right? Like 10 items bring you 80% of your  revenues and 100 items bring you 20%. It doesn't really work out like that. Not on that particular  sale. One aspect of that sale I forgot to mention is the garage, which can be a huge center of of  revenue. Mhm. Um and it can be very timeconuming to price a thousand different tools tools and but  also that's where a lot of people typically guys you know store their their uh beer memorabilia  and uh $3,000 lawn mower.

24:35 The lawn mower. There was a lawn mower. Yeah. Uh and that can actually  be the number one um income generator for a house is the is the man cave/g. Okay. Was that the case  on this one or no? Yes. Yeah. As I sit here and thinking about it, I can remember spending hours  in the garage, which was not air conditioning, pricing out every single tool. Yeah.

25:02 Uh the beer  memorabilia, the lawnmowers, the the equipment, the old equipment that doesn't work anymore,  but some some people are still interested in old boat motors uh in particular can be uh very  collectible. Even old grills. H really? Yeah. I wouldn't think so. There's a there's a brand of  grill called PK Grill, which is an aluminum type grill, which is actually making made in Arkansas.

25:25 And there's and there's others similar that retain their value like crazy, like $200, $300 uh  grills that are 20, 30 years old. Wow. Now, that's probably an overlooked aspect of this is  the tediousness of pricing. You're not really listing. You're taking pictures to promote the  estate sale, but unlike Facebook Marketplace, you don't have to photograph each individual  item.

25:46 Right. Right. You want to photograph and post the most valuable stuff. Yeah. The good  stuff. Lawnmowers, vehicles, mid-century modern furniture, clothing, collectibles, you know, if  you've got Star Wars or coins or jewelry, those are those would be the items you want to focus  on, not necessarily a hammer and a, you know, set of screwdrivers. Yeah.

26:08 Heads up, this segment  is sponsored by BlueVine. And the reason I get behind BlueVine is because almost half of small  business owners that are using AI are getting back at least four hours every single week. That is a  real number from a new study that BlueVine just put out. And honestly, it's kind of low. I see  even more than 4 hours of savings every week.

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27:42 So go check out the full Blue Vine study this week. The link is in the description. Read  it. Find the one thing that applies to you and transform your business. All right, let's get back  to the episode. on this first one. How many hours in total you plus your help spend pricing and  like cataloging all this? Starting an estate sale company, there's definitely a learning curve.

28:02 And  when you first start off trying to figure out how to price and how quickly to price, pricing quickly  and pricing accurately accurately don't typically go hand in hand. Uh so on that particular that  first estate sale, it took us days and days and days of of pricing and researching. But, you know,  fast forward to today, I can walk into a room and have everything priced in an hour cuz you've seen  it all.

28:26 You're like chat GPT when it comes to this type of stuff, right? So, you've got a price  gun with a little sticker and you just type in a price and you stick it on there. Exactly. If it's  a higherend home or item, we'll put like a special tag on there. Okay. If it's a tool in a, you know,  garage, we'll put a piece of blue masking tape on there or painters tape, okay?

28:51 And just write it  on there. And then that's customary for, you know, for those items because a lot of tags won't stick  to tools and um the items you typically find in a in a garage. So, on this first estate sale, 6,000  bucks, how many man hours in total did you and your help spend on it versus today a $6,000 estate  sale, how many hours would it take in total?

29:09 I know these are guesstimates. So, that that first  estate sale probably took us 40 hours, okay, 20 hours each cuz there were two of us pricing.  Mhm. To get it ready. Nowadays, we could walk walk into that same house and potentially and this is  like a,200 foot house potentially be done in one day. Wow. Like an an eight hour workday pretty  much. Okay.

29:34 So, the first one 40 hours, I'll do my math. All right. For $1,500. So, that's still  $150 an hour. 150 time 40 $6,000. Uh, but today it would be more like $800 an hour. Well, today  you might not. It's I guess it's not common to make full profit like the flipper gave you. Right.  Right. That was kind of unique. So if it were that divided by three, 200 plus an hour.

29:59 It can be  very lucrative. Is that how you look at it? Are you optimizing for like dollars per hour? What is  your metric? That's a great question. I I probably should, but the metric we use is what we typically  do is we'll walk the house with the client, take pictures, and then I'll walk the house again  by myself. And I'm just have a cash register going in my head like this room is 2,000 bucks,  this room's 3,000, so forth.

30:25 Once I'm done, uh, and I'm I'm writing notes in my notebook, too. It  adds up. And nowadays, and this probably applies to most estate sale companies, it reaches that  $10,000 or more gross mark. Mh. And the house is, you know, relatively clean. We'll make an offer  to the client. Typically, they say yes. And uh I'll go back through my notes and say like this  is going to make 4,000 bucks.

30:51 Yeah. 40%. Well, this is going to gross 10. Yeah. We'll probably  make about four. We'll offer them, you know, 39% to make it sound a little sexier than 40%.  You know, use the nine numbers. And then we'll try to knock out the pricing in as little time as  possible. Yeah. So, I don't typically account for my time pricing. Sure. even though I should, but I  am accounting for, okay, I'm going to need a staff member on here Friday, Saturday, and Sunday or  two staff members at least.

31:19 Yeah. Uh or more for, you know, six hours each day, plus uh there's, you  know, social media marketing fee. If you post the sale on estates.net, that's going to be a fee of  100red to 200 bucks. It it it's changing and it depends on how much you want them to promote  it. Yeah, I work myself back from there. So, if it's a $10,000 gross budget in, you know, my  time, the labor in particular for employees or family members, any social media marketing costs  that the customer that we're going to absorb if if we absorb it,

32:00 which we usually don't. And then, uh  I've done it so many times now, I just know, okay, this is going to be for sure three to $4,000 net.  Yeah. This particular weekend. Okay. So, if it's $10,000 in sales, you take home4,000, but you pay  your help, everyone else. Is it reasonable to net 3,000 of that four, or is it going to be less than  that? Anywhere from 2500 to 3,000 per weekend.

32:23 Okay. So, great margins, right? And if you're your  friends or family member, then especially if it's your family, then right your margins go up even  higher. Well, and you collect all the money, too. So, you don't need to go chase down payments. You  pass on the 60%. Right. Right. uh industry average usually takes about two weeks for most estate sale  companies to reconcile credit card statements, the cash and there may be a handful of items  like maybe a vehicle didn't sell that particular day but you know you can

32:51 sell it someplace else.  Yeah. You know the customer will give you and you may work this into your contract like two weeks  or sometimes more before you'll receive a check from us. Yeah. So that's a positive cash flow  conversion cycle and it it enables this business to be one of the few ones that technically don't  require any money. Like you could if you had to borrow tables, borrow packing tape, you know, you  could literally start this with no money and then be cash flow positive your first week.

33:18 If you  got hired to do an estate sale for a friend, family member, or whoever, you could literally go  there with tape and a marker, borrow tables from a church or friends and family. I'm talking about  like the six foot lifetime folding tables from Costco, right? 50 bucks or 50 or you can rent them  for two bucks, right? If you really need them. And in in many instances, the customer already has  tables at their house that they want you to sell or there's just so much counter space.

33:45 Exactly.  Yeah. Okay. You can start it for virtually nothing. Okay. So, how much marketing is required  to get enough people at this estate sale? Cuz more eyeballs equals more money, right? more demand for  the supply. The nationwide number one resource and the one that most if not all estate sale companies  use is estates salesales.net. Most estate sale companies are listed on there as a resource  to be, you know, um the client's resource.

34:10 So there'll be, you know, in my area 10 to 15 estate  sale companies listed on there, I'm guessing. So there's that resource, but also uh once you're  on estate sales.net net as a partner or vendor or affiliate, then you for a discount you you can  post your I believe there's a discount to to post your sale for that upcoming weekend. So, if I know  I'm going to have an estate sale 3 weeks from now, I can go ahead and post the sale, post the date,  you can post the address, but typically that's hidden until about 72

34:44 hours or the day of the  sale. That way, you don't have a million people showing up to the house, which happens. To answer  your question, the main resource that most estate sale companies use is estates salesales.net. Okay.  So, that that website is a marketplace. There's people like you, vendors posting on there and then  there's people, consumers, homeowners, whoever in Little Rock looking to buy stuff at estate sales,  right?

35:06 And to to get access, they have to give their email. And once estates sales.net gets  their email, every Wednesday typically or more, depending on your settings, you'll get an email  for sure weekly about the upcoming estate sales. Okay. All right. And then Facebook Marketplace.  Facebook Marketplace is a good resource and that's what we did initially and do occasionally still  uh post upcoming estate sales and that that's been very effective.

35:33 What are some like how do you how  do you post something that people will search for? What keywords do you use or tricks or whatever?  That's a great question. The Facebook ads were set up a long time ago. If I recall, we would use  estate sales, estate liquidation, yard sales, garage sales as the keywords. Okay. And then  do you ever list individual items on Facebook Marketplace as like a ethical bait and switch  to get people there?

35:56 So like here's this dresser for 50 bucks at the estate sale, right? On our  Facebook page, we would we would post all of those high dollar items uh as well as on estatesales.net  that on the Facebook ads. We haven't talked about a warehouse sale yet, which we may get to, but  that's really where we focused our Facebook or social media spend is just a flyer about the  warehouse sale with no particular items mentioned, unless there was a vehicle, but just promoting  the address and the date and time and what kind of sale

36:33 it was, which was warehouse sale. I  love the principle of surface area. A lot of surface area. Like if I'm promoting one of these  podcast episodes and we talk about seven different business ideas, that's seven different angles I  can take when promoting the full episode. So if you have seven different things at this estate  sale that are unique or like inherently viral, like an old collectible or something, that's  there's seven different personas out there of people that would want to they would not want  to come

36:57 for the six things. They don't care. But for that one thing, they would. But when they  get there, they might end up buying two or three other things as well, you know. Exactly. And then  on estates sales.net or any of your marketing, you're writing descriptions of everything that's  there because a lot of the a lot of the items offered are your typical kitchen wear, you know,  garage items, tools, but occasionally there's a super collectible item.

37:22 I know I keep going back  to Star Wars, but if you have vintage Star Wars or any vintage toys, uh, you know, from the 80s in  particular, that's going to draw a huge crowd. So, in the description, you want to list any potential  niche that's that someone might be interested in because they're going to your customers are going  to read that description and if they don't see it when they get there, they're going to ask you  about it.

37:45 And a few years ago, you would have to just take time to learn and to get a trained  eye and to just know the industry well enough to be able to spot those cool things. And I'm sure  that's still, you know, helpful today. But today, you just take pictures of everything, upload it to  Claude or Chad GPT and say, I'm totally ignorant to this. I know that's a dresser.

38:05 I know that's  a Star Wars thing. That's a Lego set. Like, what of this is interesting or valuable to people? What  of this would get clicks? You ever You ever use AI in creative ways like that? We don't. And I'm glad  you brought that up because I am I'm learning more about AI. I definitely don't know anywhere near  as much as you do and and others.

38:22 And there's a lot of people in the estate sale bit industry  who don't. Uh I would guess that a majority of estate sale company owners are in their 60s  and 70s and have not considered AI whatsoever, which is okay in my opinion. An estate sale  company is the perfect analog company to start if you if you aren't tech-savvy. Yeah. Uh it  it does take a little you know background in um working with websites to post your information  to stay sales.net but not a lot.

38:53 I mean it's it's very easy and we all know what it's like to post  on Facebook. It's not that difficult. Yeah. You could literally as far as your techsavviness go  just know how to post or have a friend help you post on estates.net and that's all you would  need to know as far as being techsavvy. Yeah. Now on the flip side, so so there there are those  companies that have no are not using technology at all or very little.

39:21 Uh on the flip side, that is  changing. Many companies, especially franchises, are using online auctions to sell their items.  They may not even have an estate. So they may just put everything online and sell everything  on the on the auction. or if they have high value items like precious metals, guns, well uh maybe I  shouldn't say guns, but definitely precious metals or extremely valuable collectibles artwork.

39:48 They  may sell that only online because of the risk of those items walking off. Yeah. At the estate  sale, are people using whatnot or Tik Tok live for stuff like this? I know that our customers  are on whatnot because they'll come and buy, you know, FisherPrice items from the 80s and so  forth and or or collectibles in some instances, uh, coins and sell those on whatnot, but I  think that's a small percentage right now.

40:18 Okay. How often do you come across things and  you're like, "Oh, this is too good. I'm going to take this for myself." That's a great question.  the company that I, you know, volunteered to work for initially and worked a couple sales with,  they under no circumstances would buy anything from their particular, you know, estate or their  clients. Conflict of interest, right?

40:33 However, if if that item was still left over, yeah, at  the end of the sale, they would ask the customer, can I can I buy this? Every estate sale company  has their own policy procedure. In many instances, estates and the heirs don't care for the contents  at all. They they want them gone as soon as humanly possible. They don't care who buys it,  whether it's the estate sale company or not.

40:59 Yeah. Uh so that's in a case- by case basis. But yes,  that is one perk of owning an estate sale company, especially if you dibs. Exactly. cool clothing,  cool furniture, cool collectibles, and you know, if you have a certain niche that you're into and  you come across it, you know, it's it's common courtesy to ask the customer, the client, hey, I  collect these.

41:24 Do you mind if I, you know, pay you full price and have first dibs on this and uh but  not all the state sale companies do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I come across like a holographic  Charizard or something like I'm I'm going to want to pay them full price, but I don't want it to go  to the general public, you know? Right. But I can also see the logic and the ethics in just saying  we don't touch that.

41:45 That's we want to serve their best interest, which is putting it in front of  as many eyeballs as possible. Exactly. What are some cool things that you personally have found or  walked away with? That's a good question. At one point or the other, every piece of furniture in  my house came from estates. Really? Yeah. Wow. Uh, I own some Airbnbs. We have purchased an entire  estate and not even gone to not even held the estates out.

42:11 We just bought the whole house. Wow.  And put every single item in the in the short-term rental. Yeah. I collect certain aviation items,  certain pieces of clothing. Um, that's a good question. I'm going to as soon as I leave here,  I'm gonna think of different items I collect, but I can't think of any in particular right now.  I just know it when I see it.

42:28 Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times my kids will see items and they'll ask  if they can buy it. Okay, so your first one is $6,000. What do your next few look like? What are  some like hard-earned lessons that you you learned early on? Well, we noticed just immediately it  was just kept growing and we kept getting calls. We kept getting the small estates. It started  at 2,000, then 3,000, then 4,000 gross a month, and then eight, then 10.

42:54 uh where we really  10xed and I don't know if this is the answer to your question is we we got access to a warehouse  through a family member and for just a phenomenal fee he would let us borrow this 8,000 ft²  warehouse and to hold estate sales in. Wow. And what what we started offering is because we' gone  to these other estate sale companies and asked them to send us our small their small leads or  the leads they didn't you know weren't profitable enough all those leads started coming to us and  what we started

43:26 doing is instead of having two instead of merging you know instead of having an  estate sale for one estate that has like $2,000 worth of stuff we would start accumulating 10 15  20 estates states. Wow. That had a,000 to $2,000 worth of items. And every estate was different.  You know, some might have might might be heavy on Christmas decorations. Some might be heavy on  toys, clothing, furniture.

43:52 And what that evolved into is a 2025,000 $30,000 weekend sale with 30  different estates. Wow. and uh which brought in tons of people because crosspollination, they're  all coming for something else. Every single person was there for something for something else. Were  you able to sell the same item in the warehouse for more than you'd be able to sell it at the  individual estate sale?

44:19 That's a great question. In my opinion, an estate sale in someone's house,  you can offer and ask for more as opposed to having that same item in the warehouse because  you're in the house and it feel it doesn't feel like you're in a homegoods, right? The customer  can picture that bed and that bed frame and that mattress in their room because it's set up in the  house.

44:40 Yeah. It's like staging a home for sale, right? And a lot of people, I don't know the  science behind this, but I know that it's true. And that is when a when a customer comes to an  estate sale and and the house is a million bucks and they buy that bed, I there's some subconscious  portion of that sale that makes them think that they're right. Yeah.

45:04 As opposed to selling that  exact same bed for the exact same price or trying to get the exact same price in a warehouse that  has astroturf uh and no air conditioning. But yes, I'm almost certain that that items that are  offered in a house sell better and for higher pricing than than what you would sell it for in  the warehouse. It's like two things competing against each other.

45:27 I can see the logic of why  it sells for more in the house for the reasons you just said. But theoretically, if you're  able to cross-pollinate and get more people, more eyeballs in a warehouse, more eyeballs equal  more money, right? That's true, too. But what's working against you in the warehouse is you're  more diluted. There's more people, but are there a proportionally are there a proportional amount  of more people as there are more items?

45:45 Because in a home, you might have a 100 items and 100 people.  In a warehouse, you might have a thousand items, but 800 people. Right. Does that make sense?  Right. Right. The item to person ratio could be skewed not in your favor in a warehouse. It can  go both ways. Parking also plays an issue because if if a customer pulls up to an estate sale  in a neighborhood and there's nowhere to park for a mile in one direction, a mile the other,  yeah, they'll leak.

46:09 But at the warehouse, we had unlimited parking. So that that was not an issue.  But no air conditioning. But no air conditioning. Yeah. Is the springtime the big season for you?  It's springtime in the fall. Yeah. But is it this a year- round thing? Year round. What are you  doing Monday through Thursday? So initially the warehouse turned out to be a huge blessing.

46:32 And  I I'm not aware of many estate sale companies who use that hybrid model. Uh what we did initially  was the warehouse fell in our lap. We we had the small estates bring us their items which is  fantastic or in some instances if they didn't have that option we would go get them. And and then  also any leftover items from the estate sale at a house, we just bring them to the the warehouse,  lower the price again if they if they hadn't sold and uh and sell them there as well.

47:06 The catchall,  right? So we we became a hybrid of we can do the estate sale in your house, you know, which was in  my opinion the ideal, you know, location. That way you'd have to move it twice. Yeah. Or if that  wasn't a possibility because of an HOA or time frame, we would have the customer bring the items  to us or we would go get the items. So that was that was a hybrid model that that we used.

47:29 My  next question was just that was just managing the logistics of taking 15 estate sales and  putting it in one place. It sounds like a pain. But if you get them to do it, it's a win-win. And  they might actually be happier because their house is empty faster. They they might take longer to  get paid because you need time to aggregate enough estate sales to make it worth it in the warehouse,  but that's offset by them just clearing out the crap faster.

47:55 Right. That is exactly right. you  quickly accumulate the the warehouse uh showcase area um so to speak or or floor area was 8,000 but  there was 24,000 square ft also and occasionally that entire 24,000 would fill up. No way. That's  so much space. That's a half an acre. Yeah, it's huge. Jeez. But but you're selling 8,000  square feet. You you can do one every month for sure.

48:24 But if you hustle, you can do one one  every 3 weeks. What you're doing Monday through Thursday is pricing like a crazy person. Yeah.  And and what you're doing is you're rolling out a segregated lot. You know, the Smith family is  lot number one and you're pricing all their items, you know, with a one on the the tag so that when  the customer comes to check out during the day of the sale, you know, let's say it's a $5.

48:50 Let's  say it's a $10 Dutch oven. You're gonna ring it up $10 under lot one. And let's say they also bought  a fishing pole from the Jones family, which is lot number 14. Then you're type in $14 lot 14. The  customer still pays the same price, but your your cash register separates everything out. So, at  the end of the day, when you reconcile, you know, you list which family or which estate grossed what  and just, you know, use a spreadsheet from there.

49:20 It's not a it's not as complicated as you might  think. It's just a lot number and a price, right? It sounds complicated initially, especially as we  started adding like when we started getting over like 10 estates, like we had to get a different  cash register that could go up to 50 different lot numbers, but at the end of the day, it's  it's it's very easy.

49:35 So, I was going to ask you what software you use for that, but that's just a  cash register, right? What about if they pay uh in card? Do you just enter the card amount into the  cash register? Yes, we we would reconcile through the cash register the lot number of the estate and  then whether it was cash or card. Okay? Please, I need you I need you to send me your stories.

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50:17 That's tko yes.com. All right. So, what I know you kind of  got the hookup with this warehouse. What does he charge you? Well, I was I don't do the warehouse  sales anymore, but you personally don't or you me personally, I retired, but my business partner  kept going and he ended up buying that warehouse from his relative at the time. He would rent it  to us for I think like $400 a weekend.

50:39 It was just it was nothing. Yeah. Or is the average state sale  company going to be able to land a large warehouse for that price? Probably not. But they could find  a warehouse. They could find a warehouse. They could find enough find an old Dollar General.  There there are buildings out there that can be leased. And there are other companies that do  this.

51:00 Yeah. Uh especially once you're established and have clients coming out of the wazoo and  you can't you can't manage them all, but you but you want to. Warehouse sales. I think it's the  best kept secret in estate sales for estate sale companies because I know one other company that  does this in the Virginia Beach area where they like us, they'll buy the contents, they'll do the  estate sale, take the items to their warehouse and sell it there or auction them off.

51:30 They'll move  the the customer to their new home. They they do all of that. And if if you because there's money  to be made in every single aspect, the sale of the house, the sale of the contents, the move,  uh, and they'll even andor list the house for them. I mean, this is a time in a life when people  spend money. That's why like USPS has a program where you can put an ad in, you know, an envelope  that'll go to someone's house right when they move in.

51:58 Everyone knows death, divorce, moving, like  when you move, when there's a change in your in your life, that is when you spend money. So to to  this company in Virginia Beach, it's like, shoot, we already have their trust. They already like  us. Let's get them a moving truck. Let's get them movers. Let's sell their stuff at an estate sale.  Let's list their house for 6% commission.

52:14 You know what I'm saying, right? And and let's sell them  a coffin. Well, I don't know about that, but they you can what's the expression? You basically get a  piece of every single action vertical integration and you can negotiate. You say, "Well, if you  let me list the house, I can do the estate sale for instead of 35%, I can do it for 25%." Or I  can do it for free.

52:35 You make a lot of money on listing the house, right? How did your next few  go? Like your second, third, fourth, fifth, like roughly what were the numbers on those? We started  averaging 10,000 to $15,000 per estate sale per weekend. Per weekend. So, what we would do is  have one regular estate sale per month and then that same month, we'd have a warehouse sale.

52:56 Okay?  We would handle all the small estates. We we take the items that didn't sell at the regular estate  sale at the house, sell them there. We would do buyouts from an estate that was just too small  to to have an estate sale or they needed to sell like maybe their house had sold and they needed to  be out immediately. We just offer them, you know, one price for everything, right?

53:17 Then you resell  it. We just take it to the warehouse. Okay. So, what did your So, this was 2017. We started  in 2017. This is we're getting into 2018 now. So within the first year, we had gone from, you  know, just the smallest estate you can possibly imagine to a 32,000 foot warehouse selling $25,000  a week in. That's wild. What were your sales and profits like?

53:44 First few months, first year, second  year, third year, what did that trajectory look like? First full year, we averaged, I would say,  $5,000 a month. Second year 10,000. Third year, this is gross, you know, 20 to 30,000 a month.  Wow. And then where did it peak? When I retired, we were grossing about 30 to $40,000 a month.  Wow. Is one of the reasons that you've been successful or a large re reason the fact that  you're in a low competition market?

54:14 Honestly, this is just a question. I don't necessarily  think you are in one. I think it's all about supply and demand. A tiny market could have way  too many competitors and a huge market could have few. So just take it at face value. It's Yeah,  in my opinion, most mid to large cities have a shortage of estate sale companies. Estates sale  companies work in really virtually any community, 5,000 to 10,000 and up.

54:44 Uh I would say 10,000 for  sure. There you can start an estale company and make a living. And the larger your community, the  larger your county, the better. Do you have any data that says in central Arkansas we have more  supply than demand or more demand than supply? Or do you not even know because it's not relevant to  you to know that? You just know what you know.

55:02 If you hustle as an estate sale company and build  up your brand and take care of the customers, both the clients and the shoppers, you're going  to build up a a huge following. And the leads are going to come. I think the leads will come anyways  because I believe there's a shortage of estate sale companies and the baby boomer generation  is downsizing and passing away.

55:22 Yeah. So, in my opinion, the sky's is the limit as far  as starting a company and being successful almost immediately. And most of your leads  are just coming from being listed listed on estatesales.net. And then you supplement them with  donuts to real estate offices, phone calls to real estate investors and flippers. Is that accurate?  Exactly. Okay.

55:44 What is the most valuable thing you've ever found in a dead person's house? Uh, we  sold a Rolls-Royce. Oh, wow. We had a Rolls-Royce. Uh, a very vintage collectible car called a  Roadrunner. It's excuse me, it's it's a I forget what it is. It's like a orange Dodge that's like  $100,000 or more. We found I I've bought houses just bought the contents and everything where the  client didn't want the house or the contents and was digging through the closet and found a chest  full of jewelry, chest full of coins.

56:15 My mentor, a real estate investor, gave us a house.  He's like, "You can have anything in there, but let me warn you, it's a it's a hoarder house,  and it's bad." We went in with hazmat suits, and my business partner went into this one  room. He had to crawl crawl over a massive pile of clothes to get into the closet and uh he  called my name. I came around the corner.

56:37 He just started handing me guns. There like 20 different  different guns in there. Are there any regulations to that? Every state is different uh when it comes  to that. Arkansas's like we don't give a crap. Right. What we tried to do is when a collection  presents itself, whether it's coins, jewelry, guns, we typically go to a collector on the side  and and we'll go to two collectors.

57:00 We'll get get them appraised, but then also we'll sell it to  a specific person that we know buys guns because that's not typically something that estate sales  want to promote. Yeah. At an estate liquidation or can in some some instances. Yeah. Okay. We've done  estate sales at murder scenes where there were was a double murder at the house. Uh, wow.

57:27 We've  done estate sales in homes where you could see the downstairs from the upstairs through the floor in  the through a hole in the floor. We've done estate sales where there was no parking whatsoever and we  had to shuttle people in. We've done estate sales in the snow, in the rain on every single holiday  except for Christmas. pretty much the sky's is the limit when it comes to uh when and where an estate  sale can be held.

57:51 Do you ever have customers push back when you say, "All right, we did your estate  sale. Here's the $4,000 we owe you." Occasionally, customers will be disappointed in the gross  sales. Uh, a lot of customers want a line by line list of what all was sold and and we  tell them from the get-go, no, you know, there's literally 10,000 items in this house and  there's no way that we'll be able to get No one will do that.

58:19 Pretty much there's no one that  I'm aware of that will do a listing like that. However, if there's a very expensive item like a  vehicle or, you know, a special piece of furniture or artwork, in those instances, I will commit to  providing them with a a detail on what that item sold for. Yeah. And I'll make sure that the person  at the cash register writes that down.

58:38 Okay. Do some of the customers that come into these estate  sales just walk away with a steal of a deal? Every estate liquidator's worst nightmare is  putting the wrong price on an item and then as that customer is leaving saying, you know, this is  worth $500, right? Uh that that has happened once on a piece of Native American artwork. I don't  know if he was overexaggerating the value or not, but that has happened once.

59:06 And for sure, that's  every estate liquidator's worst nightmare. If an estate sale company owner is not sure, the great  thing about being in the estate sale community is you can call another estate sale company or  an appraiser and and you should and say, "Hey, I'm not sure about this guitar or this piece of  art or whatever it is. Can you point me in the right direction?"

59:30 There are a lot of resources  online nowadays through Google and AI and so forth, but and those are good resources, but  it's it's also good to consult with an expert. What percentage of people are coming and actually  get a deal on stuff versus the people that are coming because they think they're going to get a  steal of a deal on something? Like how much of it is selling the dream, right?

59:49 Every estate sale  company owner wants to price the item just high enough so that it serves the the client, but just  low enough so that it attracts customers and you don't get your customers saying, "Well, they, you  know, they priced items so high, I'm not coming back." So, it's a delicate balance of pricing  those items, you know, in the sweet spot.

01:00:08 And then also, and you have to keep in mind, what do I want  this item to sell for on day three at 50%. because I don't want to sell. You have to keep that in  in mind because you don't want to walk out the door for for nothing. So, it's kind of like in in  real estate, if you own an apartment complex or a mobile home park, you never want your occupancy to  be at 100%.

01:00:30 Because it means you're undercharging. If it's 90 or 80%, it means you're overcharging.  So, I always look for like 95%. Because that's like, you know, market value. I would think that  in an estate sale if after day one you've sold 95% of your stuff you're like crap like this is kind  of too low. Is that the case? That's it. And once you do this for a while you know you you get a  really good feel on virtually every single item in in a house because you've seen it 10 20 30 times  before.

01:01:01 Yeah. We've done hundreds of estate sales and uh yes there some of new estate sale companies  I imagine would be if they're not careful they could price they could overpric or underpric real  real quick. Yeah. How much haggling do you do or do you allow for? On one hand I am a haggler.  I love to go to estate sales. Right. Right. And in yard sales and like oh I don't know do that I  I hone my craft at yard sales haggling.

01:01:25 However, I as an estate sale company, that's one aspect I  hate it because many people, sometimes dozens and dozens will come up to you and say, "Hey, I know  you've got $50 on this, but can I get it for 25?" Setting they expect that that's the cultural norm  there, right? The problem with that is once you do that once, if you've got a thousand people coming  to your estate sale every weekend, you're going to have to do that a thousand times more because  they're going to overhear that.

01:01:55 Yeah. The remedy to that, which I love, is a bid sheet. Okay, you  give the customer a bid sheet and say, "Hey, Mr. Customer, thank you for the offer. Why don't you  put your bid, what you're comfortable, you know, buying that that item for, put your number on  there, and at the end of the day, we'll call you." It's essentially instead of having to their price,  just say, you know, this is going to be 25% off on Sunday if it's still here.

01:02:22 Why don't you put a  bid in over that? And if you have the winning bid, we'll we'll call you. And that typically nips it  in the bud right there. They don't even need to do they just buy it or walk away. They'll either  buy it or they'll submit a bid. And if it's still there, you know, it's it's still a sale. Well,  that could be a great way to acquire leads and email addresses and phone numbers.

01:02:41 Have you ever  thought of that? Just like building a a customer list. Acquiring email addresses is an effective  marketing tool for most if not all estate sale companies. Yeah. And then because if you don't  capture their email, you're totally you start fresh every week, right, through estates.net  or or Facebook where you can't capture their emails.

01:03:03 If if you capture their email addresses  and phone numbers, then not only can you send out a an email about upcoming sales, but you can also  offer them the opportunity to come to a VIP sale, maybe the day before, like a huge estate sale,  where you've got to get some stuff out before the actual estate sale. because there's just not  enough room or upcharge them or upsell them to hey why don't for 50 bucks you can you can come  to the night before estate sale and have first dibs at XYZ items yeah what is like worst

01:03:33 case  average and best case with regards to attendance at an average estate sale not a warehouse sale but  an estate sale that's a good question uh average I know you're not like counting but roughly you  know I'm very familiar with central Arkansas you Your listeners are going to come from all over  the US and all over the world. So, I can't speak to their area, but on a typical 2,000 square foot  house, if marketed correctly, and if you post the right pictures, I would guess that you would have  300 to 400 people per

01:04:03 day and maybe even more on the last day because it's 50% off. So, a thousand  people. That's wild. I wouldn't have thought that. You you can and depending on the neighborhood,  you can have even more because it's you're just limited by the parking. Yeah. What's the worst  you've seen? The worst I've seen is 30 40 people show up per day. Why? Well, weather it could be  can be one.

01:04:27 Uh although people who go to estate sales are extremely dedicated and will go just  like yard salers every weekend no matter what and hit multiple estate sales. Yeah. Uh and buy  tons of things that they resell and or don't need. Yeah. So, we've seen estate sales with as few as  like 40, 50 people per day. And that that comes down to either bad pictures or just lowquality  items, bad weather.

01:04:51 The most we've seen was that million-dollar house I was referencing earlier.  It was in a amazing community. There were local celebrities who lived nearby. I think they were  promoting it as well. Is it Mina? Mina. Mina's a good community, isn't it? This was a this is a  very upscale community in in Little Rock. Okay. They had amazing items. The the husband was  a doctor.

01:05:14 The wife was a interior designer, party planner. So, she had like I'm talking tens  of thousands of dollars of in each category that I'm about to describe. Halloween, Christmas, St.  Patty's Day, girls night out. She she planned those parties. Anyway, she she got out of the  business. So, there was literally something there for everyone. And I would guess that there were  3 4 thousand people come through the house.

01:05:42 It It was a 4,000t house. So it's like something in  every room. And how many how many sales did that one do? That one grossed about 30,000. We had  we committed to getting rid of or liquidating the the contents for her because it was it was  under contract to be sold. So we had to load a 26ft box truck. We had to take the rest of their  items to an auction.

01:06:04 That estate continued to pay dividends for a while. We also put some of their  items on consignment in the um antique store that we we had booths in as well. So, it's just a  ton of items. Ton of people getting divorced or uh they were just downsizing. Okay. They were  empty nesters. Okay. What is the weirdest thing a family has ever asked you to sell?

01:06:28 When  we see a customer, we tell them, "Listen, I'm going to touch every single item in this  house. In the drawers, in the garage, in the car, etc., etc." And occasionally we'll come across  illegal drugs. They didn't necessarily ask us to sell that. In fact, they did not. But uh we've  come across those items. One particular state, the husband was a hoarder and he hoarded vintage  toys and he had a massive collection of unopened 1980s Star Wars.

01:07:02 Oh wow. And we knew as soon as we  saw them that it was going to be a huge marketing opportunity and we posted those pictures for sale  and we literally had people fly in from out of state to to put in bids on those items. We've  we've had a tremendous interest in in jewelry. We've had a lot of really cool mid-century  modern pieces. We've had pieces from from, you know, historical buildings that somehow ended  up in that person's house.

01:07:28 I'm gonna think of a million different things on the way home and go,  "Damn, those that's really good." How much can one person with no employees make in this business  working only on the weekends? If a person applies themselves, makes connections with real estate  agents, elder law attorneys, other estate sale companies for leads that they don't want to that  existing estate sale companies don't want to fool with.

01:07:53 A person just getting into the business can  easily make an extra,000 to $4,000 a month. Wow. On the weekends. on the weekends. Did you ever  have family members fight about stuff during a sale? We agreed to do an estate liquidation for a  lady who ended up having some severe mental issues and she came to the warehouse sale in the middle  of the sale and just started loading up her items into her hand and taking them out to the car  and screaming at the top of her lungs.

01:08:17 We've done estate sales where the in HOA neighborhood  like very expensive neighborhood where the next door neighbors we almost came into blows with the  neighbors because shoppers were walking on their their grass. Have you ever found cash hidden in  the walls or in the furniture? we on a house that I bought and bought the contents of. I opened up  the stove, opened up the the oven and there was a Dutch oven in there and I opened that up that  Dutch oven and there was a bank bag in there and I open up that bank bag

01:08:51 and there was a wallet in  there. In that wallet there was 1,200 bucks. So that was nice. I've bought a house before with a  chest load of jewelry, you know, 14K, 24K rings, uh coins. If it's a client and we're doing an  estate liquidation and we find any cash, checks, social security cards, pictures, we'll put that  to a side and and or text the picture, a picture of those items to the customer or the client and  say, "What do you want us to do with these?

01:09:18 Do you want us to shred these?" Or we'll just say, "Hey,  we we found these momentos or cash or ID cards. We're going to put them in a box and we'll we'll  give them to you later." Okay. What would you say the ideal estate sale business owner looks like?  The ideal estate sale company business owner can be a lot of different people. If you love going  yard selling and flipping items, if you love going to estate sales and visiting with other customers  and the owners, if you have an antique store booth and want to scale

01:09:53 up, if you love the show Pickers  and those other shows, Storage Wars, starting an estate sale company is the perfect avenue to start  a new business, a new source of income, a new side hustle, or a full-time income and completely  supplement your existing income. Well, and also if if I have illusions of grandeur about starting a  restaurant, got to put in a bunch of money.

01:10:12 I got to sign a 5 10 year lease and if I don't like it,  sorry. But with this, it's like, listen, you host an estate sale or two and it is a massive pain.  You're going to make some money and you can just quit. You just walk away. Take your folding table  back to Costco. You're exactly right, man. Instead of dealing with 10,000 items, I could deal with  just one item.

01:10:34 That's the house. He went out of town on vacation. He was not interested in getting  into real estate. He was just strictly interested in estate sales, which was fine. And he went out  of he went on vacation. Uh he was gone for a week. And while he was gone, I got a call from a client.  And I went over there, knew immediately that they did not have enough to sell.

01:10:55 They might have maybe  $2,000 worth of items, probably closer to one. And I just told him, I said, you know, they were  moving to Idaho. They were moving to uh Nampa, Idaho. Mhm. And I said, "How about you just  sell me the house and the contents? You guys take whatever you want, leave everything else.  There's a bunch of trash. You don't have to worry about listing it.

01:11:15 I'll buy it from you,  you know, two weeks or less." And they said, "Deal." Closed in two weeks, sold the handful  of items that were there. Pulled out the carpet, relisted this $70,000 house for $150,000, and it  was under contract in a week. Wow. Just with new carpet. You kind of cleaned it up a little bit. I  just pulled out the old carpet. I didn't even put in new carpet.

01:11:36 Wow. Uh I got bids from contractors  and it was $40 $50,000 to renovate it, but my mentor told me, he was like, "Why don't you just  list it for a month and just see what happens?" Yeah. And that's what I did and it sold. So from  then on, you were converted from then on. Yes. Real estate was top of mind anytime I went into  a house. By the way, I have a new private YouTube community where I post exclusive interviews  and videos that no one else in the world will see.

01:12:03 All you got to do is pay five bucks a month.  And you know what? YouTube takes 30% of that. So, I'm hardly getting anything from that. In  addition, you're going to get every single 25 plus page business plan that we make from every  episode we publish. And we sell these for 19 bucks and we do 15 episodes a month. So, this about $300  a month worth of value, plus extra interviews and videos that you'll never see anywhere else for  five bucks a month, and you can cancel anytime.

01:12:28 You'll also get my previous backlog of every  business plan I've ever published. So, you can get the link right down below. It's all done right  here on YouTube and you'll even get little custom emojis or stars next to your name when you comment  on videos so you can get priority replies from yours truly. Thanks a lot. I think just the the  whole business model of maybe this is what exactly what you're doing, but using estate sales simply  as a front or as a way to get your foot in the door to buy really affordable

01:12:55 real estate. That is  the best kept secret in real estate. I have never met anybody else that uses estate sale companies  as a funnel for offmarket deals. Yeah. It's just a different angle, right? You're the first one  through the front door. Yeah. And they're paying you. They're paying you to come visit them  basically and to to tour the house. Yeah.

01:13:14 So, how does that work with your business today? You  just do not own any of the estate estate sale business. He keeps doing what he's doing and he's  like, "Hey, man. I got this house. Uh, they might want to sell." Exactly. And I contacted all the  other states sale companies too and say, "Listen, if there's if you if there's a house that you know  needs work or it won't sell for whatever reason or they need to sell quickly, please give me a call."

01:13:39 How do you fund these deals? Hard money lenders, local lenders. Okay. Have you ever just gotten  completely upside down in one? No. Occasionally, if I'm not sure of a house, I'll wholesale it.  I'll get the get the property under contract. I'll empty the house if that's what the client  wants or buy their items, sell their items if the items didn't come with the house.

01:13:59 Yeah. And  I'll just wholesale it to the end buyer. How many homes have you done so far? 60. 60. In how many  years? Since 2018. That's wild. And what is your average now? How many of them have you held as  long-term, short-term, flipped? What does that rough breakdown look like of the 60? When you get  into a wholesaling real estate, at least for me, you realize real quick, I have got to keep this  funnel up forever if I'm gonna, you know, maintain income.

01:14:28 Wholesaling is tough. Yeah. Otherwise, I  really need to keep a hold of some of these deals. When you say wholesaling, do you mean flipping or  wholesaling? Flipping or wholesaling? Yeah. Okay. And for those watching, wholesaling is simply  finding a property under market value, getting it under contract, and then selling the contract  to someone else who ultimately buys it, right?

01:14:47 Hopefully, you make tens of thousands or more on  that. Right. Uh I've wholesaliled properties for as little as 5,000 and I've wholesaliled like  through a double close essentially 30,000. It just depends on the property, but uh wholesaling  is just like estate sales. You don't need a lot of capital to get started. Yeah. You need to be  able to to get, you know, legally you need to be able to actually come up with the funding if uh  if you make an offer, but essentially you don't need to have much if any cash.

01:15:14 Yeah. Okay. So  60 deals in how many years? Eight years. Okay. And then what was the breakdown between long-term  rentals, short-term rentals, flips, wholesales, give or take? The I would say well almost all  those are single family residences. Uh I'd say half of those are were wholesale deals. You know,  another 20 or so were properties I actually closed on, renovated, and flipped.

01:15:40 And nowadays, I just  have a handful that I that I own and uh maintain as short-term rentals. Some short-term, some  long-term or all short-term. All short-term. All in the Little Rock area. Yes. Okay. And I know  Airbnbs have kind of taken a beating in certain markets over the last 5 years. How has the Little  Rock market been? Well, Little Rock market's been great.

01:16:04 Uh they're building a BIES right where  we're at. So we've housed BIES workers who are from Florida and Texas and all over for the  last year. So, if it's not BIES workers, we have we typically we're moving more and more towards  Furnish Finder because a lot of those uh clients or customers or tenants are there for 6 months or  more uh at least three months in in the case of travel nurses, but I've hosted the same workers  for at one location for over a year and a half.

01:16:40 Wow. That's like do they call that midterm or like  housing? Yeah, midterm rentals. Okay. So, that's kind of been your sweet spot or Airbnb is still  the bread and butter. Actually, midterm rentals through Furnish Finder is definitely the bread and  butter. You don't have to worry about housekeeping going over there constantly. Typically, they  leave early and come back late.

01:16:53 They're not they don't have time or the capability to to party  because they're too tired from work and they're, you know, just super relatively easy compared to  what you might find on Airbnb or VBO. Yeah. So, how much would you say profit these 60 homes have  brought you in the last eight years? It's enough to supplement the living I was making working in  food sales.

01:17:19 Uh, and it's helped me build wealth as opposed to net worth. Yeah. Build up my net worth.  Uh, as opposed to relying on income from estate sales and or wholesaling real estate. Yeah. Safe  to say six figure income, seven figures additional net worth. About that. Yeah. That's amazing. And  the estate sale business is still going. You're still getting leads from it.

01:17:45 How many leads, not  exactly, but roughly, what's the split between leads you get from your business partner, your  old business partner, and then leads you get from everyone else? That's a great question. Because  I have eased out of estate sales, I don't get as many estate sale leads as I used to. I kind of  went full throttle into real estate investment, which in hindsight was a mistake.

01:18:06 I am getting  back into the estate sale business more on the consulting side, but also to potentially do a sale  for every every now and then, but primarily as a lead funnel for the real estate aspect. Yeah. Have  you ever lost money on a deal? I've not lost money on a deal. There's just been deals you probably  didn't make as much as you had hoped to play, right?

01:18:30 We we made the the least amount I made on a  wholesaling deal was about a thousand bucks. Yeah. And that was a weird situation pretty much. Yeah.  Yeah. When you look at just the re real estate side, what are some landmines that people should  watch out for regarding wholesaling and real estate in general? Yeah, that's a good question.  Well, one thing that blindsided me was on the on the buy and holds is the interest rates.

01:18:54 you know,  I went from in 2020 and 2021 to having, you know, 3% 4% to 6, seven, 8% on commercial loans. So,  that like a lot of real estate investors has been a huge problem. As far as looking, you know, like  specific real estate uh properties, you know, you just have to do your due diligence. You can walk  through a house and no matter how big of an expert you think you are, a real estate home inspector is  going to catch things that you don't.

01:19:22 Uh you want to build a relationship with a licensed contractor  who can see things that you don't. Whether it's foundation issues, issues with the pool, issues  with the roof, HVAC, most real estate investors are going to come into a property with a notebook  that you know reminds you I I need to check this, this, this, and this and not necessarily rely on  what the seller is saying.

01:19:44 Yeah. Do you ever do any flips, any real estate flips that don't  come from estate sales like you find them in other methods? Yes. When when we're holding estate  sales, I'm always looking around the neighborhood for homes that look like they might need uh or  might be abandoned or vacant or have issues. And I'll get on Deal Machine and I'll I'll mail  them a postcard that says, "Hey, my name's XYZ.

01:20:11 I I'm interested in buying your property." And so  I'll get leads that way. And then also, you know, I work with a lot of real estate agents and  they'll send me homes that they know they can't sell and we'll buy them that way, too. So, is  the estate sale business basically a loss leader for the real estate business? You could say that.  It's definitely a portal.

01:20:26 Not that it loses money, but right. When you own an estate sale company,  uh you don't have to get into real estate, but it is an easy transition. And and most  estate sale, I would say many estate sale company owners transition or add um at least, you  know, the realtor to their name so that they can list the property as well because anything you  can do to sweeten the deal over another estate sale company makes it all that much easier.

01:20:53 Why  isn't every other real estate flipper in America copying this strategy? I have never talked to  another real estate investor that sources their deals through estate sales. I' I've gone to Bigger  Pockets conference conferences. I'm in RIA's real estate investment associations in Texas, Arkansas,  and Florida and it's in my opinion the best kept secret because you're the first one through the  front door.

01:21:19 Yeah. You know what I'm going to I'm going to tell this is that's going to get clipped.  A bunch of people are going to see it and nothing is going to change. I'm gonna tell you that right  now. There's going to be a two or three people that are like, they take it seriously. They watch  this whole thing. They go out and they do exactly what you're doing.

01:21:35 Two or three people out of two  or 30 hundred thousand or million depending on how well it does because it's ugly and it's hard and  it's sweaty and it's difficult and it's unscalable and it's not AI and everyone's chasing AI. So like  as as much of a like bestkept secret that this is, it's still hard and I think people are still going  to be deterred by that.

01:21:51 they'll get somewhat down the line and then like ah too hard just because  I own this podcast and I' I see what people do and how they act and we're always taking the  path of least resistance. Um but I I think it's an incredible opportunity. Braden, this  has been amazing. Where can we find you and what can we what can we buy from you before I  get to that?

01:22:10 Yeah, please. If you don't mind, if you want to start a estate sale company from  scratch, you can do it with very little resources. There's there's books for sale on Amazon that can  walk you through it. There's there's a few videos on YouTube about how to do it. Uh it takes more  effort and there's a lot more questions you have to figure out for yourself.

01:22:31 You can also buy  a franchise. If you have the capital and you you're positive that this is something that you  want to do, you can invest $50 to $75,000 to buy a franchise from Blue Moon or Caring Transitions  or Grayson's. Those are the big three that I know of. I'm not affiliated with either three. They  will instantaneously provide you with leads in your market and the training and the resources  and the t-shirts and the business cards and all that.

01:23:00 It's it's a hefty fee, but you get instant  authority in your particular area and consistent leads. You don't have to start from ground one  or from the ground floor. You also get a website. They'll do ba basically everything for you in  exchange for the initial investment franchise fee plus a percentage of your your revenue moving  forward. There's a middle model too where it's called a state cell it's states salebiz.com  where and there's others where you can get a website completed for you designed and posted  for

01:23:34 you. There's some training there, but there's no recurring uh residual or commissions owed to  them. It's just a one-time fee. I am an affiliate of Estate Cell Biz. And if you use the if you  decide to use Estate Cell Biz uh as a resource, if you use the term or word Braden that you do  get 10% off and there's a variety of packages, but uh so there's there's three different models.

01:24:01 If  you're if you're thinking about starting a state sale, you can do it all yourself. you can do,  which would require you doing all the marketing, all the hustling, all the lead sourcing. If  you're going to do that, it's best to start as, in my opinion, as a side hustle or, you know, just  occasionally not not jump in full-time. You can go in full-time by purchasing a franchise.

01:24:21 There's a  huge initial, you know, outlay for the franchise fee plus recurring commissions, but they do  everything for you, including lead sourcing, which is huge. Or you can do like a middle hybrid  for 500 bucks to a thousand partnering with a company like estatesbiz.com where they do the  website for you. They do they provide training online. There's no franchise fee and there's not  as much however uh you know continuing assistance as far as marketing goes and um actual you know  training and a headquarters.

01:24:51 Gotcha. Where can we find you if we have questions? You can find  me at flippingcouches.com. Oh, that's a good domain. It's it's a I wrote a book about how to  start your own estate sale company and how to transition into real estate. Also, you can also  find me at Californiacape.com. Is that your book? That's my book. Okay. Which is a resource  for anyone considering leaving California, which is not as easy as you think.

01:25:18 I wouldn't  know. I hopefully I never have to find out. I hope not. And also, you were the resource. episode  20. No, 204 from uh November of last year. Jason, I've got his name written down. Sam. He did the  lawyer funnel. Yeah. And then that's what that is. Really? Yeah. Awesome. So, you started a business  from this podcast. Yeah. Very cool. Thank you, Brad. This has been great. Thank you. If you  like this content, please share with a friend, hit a like or a comment below, and  we'll see you next time on the Kerner