Video Transcription (unedited):

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Caleb Roth:  

What's up guys, Caleb Roth here with my pals, John and Matthew and we are excited to share with you the results of the 100 book challenge one year later.

Alright, so we are exactly one year after the end of the challenge, I think we're a week away. So the challenge ended at the end of close to the end of May 2018. It is currently may six. And we've got john and Matthew again, we're going to recap the models that they used, not supermodels, but the business models that they use. And we're going to go through some of their numbers and share with you what maybe you can expect in your own hundred book challenge. So many of you have kicked off your own hundred book challenge or 50 book challenge or 500 book challenge.

And many of you shared the results with us. And that's been exciting, it's been awesome to follow along. If you haven't yet started your own jump on in, it's still a great time to be selling on Amazon and selling books. And if you do, by all means drop us a line, comment below and share with us some of those results. So before we jump in, we want to kind of share the different business models that each of these guys were using. So Matthew, you want to give just a 30 second overview of kind of what you were doing when it came to finding books?

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Matthew Osborn:

Sue, so my goal for The 100 Book Challenge was to specifically source 100 books a week going to local libraries and thrift stores. So, I drive out, I had different libraries and thrift stores that I'd set up, I'd go to each week, I'd go scan the books there, and my goal was to take home 100 books each week. The first few weeks took a lot longer time wise, once I kind of dialed in what stores I wanted to go to, I was able to lower that a lot more. And throughout the challenge, I averaged about 100 books a week, just going to local libraries and thrift stores, no special relationships or anything like that. Just looking them up on Google finding the ones near me and going and sourcing from those locations.

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Caleb Roth:

So very, very traditional model. Did you source that garage sale?

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Matthew Osborn:

Nope, no garage sales. I think I went to two library sales throughout the challenge. But that was it other than libraries and thrift stores.

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Caleb Roth:  

So most of you, especially if you live in a decently sized city have the ability to do exactly what Matthew did, you can go to thrift stores, there's some standing library sales where they just have books available for sale around, you know, around the year, not just you know, once or twice a year at a library sale. So again, a very traditional model. If you live in any size city, this model should be appropriate and something that you can do as well.

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Matthew Osborn:

And then one quick important thing to note too is that even though we live in the Denver Metro area, and there's how many thrift stores I think around probably 100, I'll be 100 something around us I really had about 10 stores I'll go to consistently that I kind of made my rounds with every week, I wasn't going to 5060 stores, even though it's nice to have the options, I didn't need those to get the hundred bucks a week, I really found about eight to 10 stores that I'll go to in a cycle through each week. And I was able to get the books just with the was amount of locations. So it was nice to have 100 locations, you don't need that to source 100 books a week.

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Caleb Roth:  

So again, very traditional model, John's model was a little bit different, you want to explain kind of what you had going on?

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John Troutman:  

Sure thing. I did a modified bulk arrangement, I actually worked with the local thrift store who sold things through auctions. And I would go to those auctions and purchase Gaylord or two or a bin at a time and be able to pull out what I wanted from there and just leave the rest there. So it's still cherry picking and still working with thrift stores. Just doing it a little bit differently, where all the books were in one place. And I was able to go through a Gaylord, or I'd been while I was there. So it's nice because you get access to more books at once and you're purchasing all those books. So you can, you can keep some books that are going to make less profit than you would normally keep. So that's the benefit there really.

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Caleb Roth:  

So give us a rough idea. You would drive up auction bid on a bit of books, they were yours, you could just go through them on the spot, and what roughly what were you paying for a bin. So I was roughly paying about $50 per person.

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John Troutman:

They would fluctuate from week to week and it would depend on who else was there. If someone was bidding against me that I might have to pay a little more. But usually came out to about $50 per bin. And on an average bid, it was usually pulling out somewhere between 75 to 100 books.

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Caleb Roth:  

So my cost per book was a little lower. Yeah. So your average cost in general is a little bit closer to I think we had you had about 75 cents, right? So yeah, versus Matthew's average cost is going to be a little bit higher. So let's go through the numbers. Again Matthew hit his goal almost exactly. It was a 13 week challenge. His total units listed was 1300 and 16. So just over 100 books per week. And again, roughly how many hours per week do you estimate but I'll average it's about a dozen hours a week, 11 hours a week that Matthew was going at it. And that allowed it source that included Dr. Time and that only covers it? Yep. So by 11 hours a week, a lot of new source and less than hundred books a week, john, because he was buying in bulk. His he was able to buy a few more books. And so it looks like your total units listed was

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John Troutman:

around 2,349.

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Caleb Roth:  

Okay, yep. So Matthew did about 1300, john did a little over 2300. So not quite 200 books a week, but I'm getting a little bit closer. Let's look at a few more metrics. Again Matthew because he was cherry picking his average cost was a little bit higher, his average cost came in at $1 98 per book. And again, he's scanning a book and deciding if he wants to spend the money on it, john, because he spent the money up front could actually source books that would make him a little bit less because it was a fixed cost. He got $50 investment for however many books he could pull out. So even if you could make what 50 cents of book and dollar book,

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John Troutman:  

I was around 90 cents was my starting profit.

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Caleb Roth:  

Okay, so if it was, if you could make at least nine 90 cents, he was willing to take the risk and snag he already bought it but essentially lyst the book. So John's average cost was 74 cents a book. So let's look at where we did we want to share a couple numbers. We don't want to get too dug up into it. But let's share the numbers at the end of the year. And then we'll kind of we'll jump in and kind of break those down. So john, his total sales at the end of the year ready for it $26,798. So almost 27,000 of sales, but because his average sale price was pretty low, a little bit under $13. Because again, he was doing a bulk sort of set up his total cash flow, we're not going to look at profit cash flow, which is dollar spent on the book dollar spent inbound shipping, minus all of Amazon's fees, right.

So let's let's break that down slightly differently. total sales minus by costs minus inbound shipping to Amazon minus Amazon's fees equals cash flow. Okay, that's that's really what matters. You can talk profit and loss. And basically that that's about let's check that's tracking down the cost of goods sold. So we're not going to look at that we're just going to look at cash flow. So John's cash flow is total outlay was do we have that 8081.

So total cash flow, profit back in John's bank account at the end of the challenge was just under 80, $100, not bad Matthew sales ready for it. Were right at $15,000 a year out. His total cash flow was a little over 30 $800. So profit back into his bank account when all the dust settled was about 30 $800. What's interesting is when we break this down, a couple things stand out, let's look at the turn rates as well. So Matthew sold exactly 75% of his inventory. And I think when the challenge started, we told people to expect to sell between 80% and she's over.

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Matthew Osborn:  

Yeah, 70 to 80%.

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Caleb Roth:

So a good number to shoot for is if you list 100 books, you're not going to sell them all. Sometimes the price drops. Sometimes the score wasn't that great, maybe nobody's buying the book, maybe a bunch of lowball people come in on the listing, and you can't sell it at the profit. So you just let it sit. But we typically expect to sell been around 80%. So Matthew sold 75%, john sold a little bit better, maybe his pricing was better, maybe he bought better books, but his selfie rate was 86%. So again, somewhere in that in that range, you should expect to sell about 80%. Let's look at some of the numbers at the end of the challenge.

Because it's one thing to say that Matthew made 30 $800 A year later. That doesn't sound that glamorous, but let's break it down into an hourly wage, as well as what the cash flow look like at the end of the challenge three months down the road, six months and then 12 months. So at the end of the challenge, he's still listing items, right, so he's still spending money, but his total cash flow. By the time the 13 weeks ended, he had sold 33% of his books already.

So a third of his inventory was sold. Again, the more you lyst early on, the faster the items. So if you if you sales or ever struggling, make sure you list items, because new inventory equals more sales. So his he sold a third of his inventory by the end of the 13 weeks, and his cash flow was already a positive $918, which is awesome. Three months later, he'd sold 59% of all of his inventory.

So remember, his total that he sold was 75. And within three months at the end of the challenge, or six months from day one, he'd already sold nearly 60% of the inventory. His cash flow was 20 $900. And then after six months, his cash flow is 30 $500, at the end of 12 months, it was 3826 It looks like so again, it will will show those numbers up on the screen so you can see them as well as your visual.

But the idea is you put the work in at first. So we like to talk about Amazon is a funnel. And the beautiful thing is you put books into the top of the funnel. And then over time the sales just trickle out the profits trickle out assuming that you managed it. So how much work did you do managing your account after the challenging?

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John Troutman:  

Very little I repriced probably once a month? And that was about it.

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Caleb Roth:

Say? So no customer emails to answer. You aren't shipping out orders at this point,

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John Troutman:

right? I mean, a few customer emails, but I probably averaged one customer email, maybe a month, maybe every six weeks, so hardly anything there.

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Caleb Roth:

So the beautiful thing with Amazon is, again, we're using the prime program or fulfilled by Amazon. So these guys both ship shipped all their books into Amazon at the end of the challenge or throughout the challenge. After that they never had to fulfill an order. So Matthew Nivea in our office working, he'd be selling a couple books a day, a couple books a week, whatever it turned out to be. And he wasn't having to go home and fulfill those orders or message the customers, Amazon took care of all of that.

So again, the funnels beautiful, all we have to do is focus on finding books, put them into the funnel, Amazon is going to take care of the rest, and then money eventually trickles down back into our bank accounts. And you can choose to reinvest it, pull it back out spending on beef jerky, and whatever else you want to buy.

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Matthew Osborn:  

So that was the goal, beef jerky,

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Caleb Roth:  

beef jerky, living large. So those are Matthews numbers again, at the end of the challenge three months into it, his cash flow is just a little under 1003 months after the challenge is cash flows close to three grand. And now 12 months out, it's just under four grand. So John's numbers are a little bit higher, because he listed a lot more books, he listed almost twice as many books at the end of the challenge. So three months after he started, he had already sold 27%. So about 30% of the inventory. His cash flow, Matthews was 918. John's was 1174. So cash flow was similar. Again, he's spending more money overall, between inbound shipping and the cost of goods. At three months, john had already sold 69% of his inventory. So he'd already sold the vast majority.

And his cash flow at the end of three months was 60 $700. So that's that's the beauty of the system again from month at the end of the challenge. month, three, two months, six, john did virtually no work. And his cash flow went from 1100 to 60 $700. So he was able to profit five grands, pretty much residual income, the work was already done up front. And the sales just kept trickling in at six months john and sold 78%, 70 $560 of cash flow.

And by the end of the challenge at the end of 12 months, he's at 86% inventory turn, total cash flow of looks like a little over $8,000. So again, that's the beauty of the challenge, you put the work in, you list everything and then eventually everything continues to sell. So let's talk through dollars per hour. Because this is this will actually give you a relatively good idea of what this looks like. So Matthew, you said you worked how many hours a week

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Matthew Osborn:

that average out to be about 11 hours a week during the challenge spending time to source and list those books and send them off.

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Caleb Roth:

So we'll, we'll put some numbers right above our heads somewhere up in here. But you can check our math. So Matthew is total cash Hello, was 30 $826. So 38. Let's do it exactly 3825 55divided by 11 hours a week times 13 weeks. And I will put that math just above us, I think it came to a little under $27 an hour. Now he's only working 11 hours a week.

So if you could extrapolate instead of hitting your 10 sources, if you actually expanded that and went hit about 40 sources a week or hit some bigger library sales, if you tried to maximize your time and work a normal nine to five job so 40 hours a week, then at $27 an hour that would actually extrapolate there's 2000 hours that you work in a year.

So $27 an hour roughly extrapolates out to 54 grand a year. Not bad for flipping books on Amazon. Let's look at John's numbers looks like his total cash flow. I bet two different numbers. I don't know which one's accurate. This one, probably this one. So total cash flow at the end of the challenge. So right now, through May six A year later, is 8000 $235. His total hours per week,

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Caleb Roth:  

What's up guys, Caleb Roth here with my pals, john and Matthew and we are excited to share with you the results of the 100 book challenge one year later.

Alright, so we are exactly one year after the end of the challenge, I think we're a week away. So the challenge ended at the end of close to the end of May 2018. It is currently may six. And we've got john and Matthew again, we're going to recap the models that they used not supermodels but the business models that they use. And we're going to go through some of their numbers and share with you what maybe you can expect in your own hundred book challenge.

So many of you have kicked off your own hundred book challenge or 50 book challenge or 500 Day Challenge. And many of you shared the results with us. And that's been exciting, it's been awesome to follow along. If you haven't yet started your own jump on in, it's still a great time to be selling on Amazon and selling books. And if you do, by all means drop us a line, comment below and share with us some of those results. So before we jump in, we want to kind of share the different business models that each of these guys were using. So Matthew, you want to give just a 32nd overview of kind of what you were doing when it came to finding books.

‍

Matthew Osborn:  

Yep, so my goal for her book challenge was to specifically source 100 books a week going to local libraries and thrift stores. So I drive out I had different libraries and thrift stores that I'd set up, I'd go to each week, I'd go scan the books there. And my goal is to take home 100 books each week. first few weeks took a lot longer of time, once I kind of dialed in what stores I wanted to go to, I was able to lower that a lot more. And rather than have the challenge, I averaged writing about 100 books a week, just going to local libraries and thrift stores, no special relationships or anything like that. Just looking them up on Google finding the ones near me and going and sourcing from those locations.

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Caleb Roth:

So very, very traditional model. Did you source that garage sale?

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Matthew Osborn:

Don't know garage sale, no friends and family. No, I think I went to two library sales throughout the challenge. But that was it other than libraries and thrift stores.

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Caleb Roth:

So most of you, especially if you live in a decently sized city have the ability to do exactly what Matthew did, you can go to thrift stores, there's some standing library sales where they just have books available for sale around, you know, around the year, not just you know, once or twice a year at a library sale. So again, a very traditional model. If you live in any size city, this model should be appropriate and something that you can do as well.

‍

Matthew Osborn:

And then one quick important thing to note too is that even though we live in the Denver Metro area, and there's how many thrift stores I think around probably 100, I'll be 100 something around us I really had about 10 stores I'll go to consistently that I kind of made my rounds with every week, I wasn't going to 5060 stores, even though it's nice to have the options, I didn't need those to get the hundred bucks a week, I really found about eight to 10 stores that I'll go to in a cycle through each week. And I was able to get the books just with the was amount of locations. So it was nice to have 100 locations, you don't need that to source 100 books a week. Perfect.

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Caleb Roth:

So again, very traditional model, John's model was a little bit different, you want to explain kind of what you had going on.

‍

John Troutman:

Sure thing. I did a modified bulk arrangement, I actually worked with the local thrift store who sold things through auctions. And I would go to those auctions and purchase Gaylord or two or a bin at a time and be able to pull out what I wanted from there and just leave the rest there. So it's still cherry picking and still working with thrift stores. Just doing it a little bit differently, where all the books were in one place. And I was able to go through a Gaylord, or I'd been while I was there. So it's nice because you get access to more books at once and you're purchasing all those books. So you can, you can keep some books that are going to make less profit than you would normally keep. So that's the benefit there really.

‍

Caleb Roth:  

So give us a rough idea. You would drive up auction bid on a bit of books, they were yours, you could just go through them on the spot, and what roughly what were you paying for a bin. So I was roughly paying about $50 per person.

‍

John Troutman:  

They would fluctuate from week to week and it would depend on who else was there. If someone was bidding against me that I might have to pay a little more. But usually came out to about $50 per bin. And on an average bid, it was usually pulling out somewhere between 75 to 100 books.

‍

Caleb Roth:  

So my cost per book was a little lower. Yeah. So your average cost in general is a little bit closer to I think we had you had about 75 cents, right? So yeah, Forbes versus Matthews, average cost is going to be a little bit higher. So let's go through the numbers. Again Matthew hit his goal almost exactly. It was a 13 week challenge. His total units listed was 1300 and 16. So just over 100 books per week. And again, roughly how many hours per week do you estimate but I'll average it's about a dozen hours a week, 11 hours a week that Matthew was going at it. And that allowed it source that included Dr. Time and that only covers it?

Yep. So by 11 hours a week, a lot of new source and less than hundred books a week, john, because he was buying in bulk. His he was able to buy a few more books. And so it looks like your total units listed was

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John Troutman:

around 2349.

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Caleb Roth:

Okay, yep. So Matthew did about 1300, john did a little over 2300. So not quite 200 books a week, but I'm getting a little bit closer. Let's look at a few more metrics. Again Matthew because he was cherry picking his average cost was a little bit higher, his average cost came in at $1 98 per book. And again, he's scanning a book and deciding if he wants to spend the money on it, john, because he spent the money up front could actually source books that would make him a little bit less because it was a fixed cost. He got $50 investment for however many books he could pull out. So even if you could make what 50 cents of book and dollar book,

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John Troutman:

I was around 90 cents was my starting profit.

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Caleb Roth:

Okay, so if it was, if you could make at least nine 90 cents, he was willing to take the risk and snag he already bought it but essentially lyst the book. So John's average cost was 74 cents a book. So let's look at where we did we want to share a couple numbers. We don't want to get too dug up into it. But let's share the numbers at the end of the year. And then we'll kind of we'll jump in and kind of break those down. So john, his total sales at the end of the year ready for it $26,798. So almost 27,000 of sales, but because his average sale price was pretty low, a little bit under $13.

Because again, he was doing a bulk sort of set up his total cash flow, we're not going to look at profit cash flow, which is dollar spent on the book dollar spent inbound shipping, minus all of Amazon's fees, right. So let's let's break that down slightly differently. total sales minus by costs minus inbound shipping to Amazon minus Amazon's fees equals cash flow. Okay, that's that's really what matters. You can talk profit and loss. And basically that that's about let's check that's tracking down the cost of goods sold.

So we're not going to look at that we're just going to look at cash flow. So John's cash flow is total outlay was do we have that 8081. So total cash flow, profit back in John's bank account at the end of the challenge was just under 80, $100, not bad Matthew sales ready for it. Were right at $15,000 a year out. His total cash flow was a little over 30 $800. So profit back into his bank account when all the dust settled was about 30 $800. What's interesting is when we break this down, a couple things stand out, let's look at the turn rates as well. So Matthew sold exactly 75% of his inventory. And I think when the challenge started, we told people to expect to sell between 80% and she's over.

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Matthew Osborn:  

Yeah, 70 to 80%.

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Caleb Roth:  

So a good number to shoot for is if you list 100 books, you're not going to sell them all. Sometimes the price drops. Sometimes the score wasn't that great, maybe nobody's buying the book, maybe a bunch of lowball people come in on the listing, and you can't sell it at the profit. So you just let it sit. But we typically expect to sell been around 80%. So Matthew sold 75%, john sold a little bit better, maybe his pricing was better, maybe he bought better books, but his selfie rate was 86%. So again, somewhere in that in that range, you should expect to sell about 80%. Let's look at some of the numbers at the end of the challenge.

Because it's one thing to say that Matthew made 30 $800 A year later. That doesn't sound that glamorous, but let's break it down into an hourly wage, as well as what the cash flow look like at the end of the challenge three months down the road, six months and then 12 months. So at the end of the challenge, he's still listing items, right, so he's still spending money, but his total cash flow. By the time the 13 weeks ended, he had sold 33% of his books already. So a third of his inventory was sold. Again, the more you lyst early on, the faster the items. So if you if you sales or ever struggling, make sure you list items, because new inventory equals more sales.

So his he sold a third of his inventory by the end of the 13 weeks, and his cash flow was already a positive $918, which is awesome. Three months later, he'd sold 59% of all of his inventory. So remember, his total that he sold was 75. And within three months at the end of the challenge, or six months from day one, he'd already sold nearly 60% of the inventory. His cash flow was 20 $900. And then after six months, his cash flow is 30 $500, at the end of 12 months, it was 3826 It looks like so again, it will will show those numbers up on the screen so you can see them as well as your visual.

But the idea is you put the work in at first. So we like to talk about Amazon is a funnel. And the beautiful thing is you put books into the top of the funnel. And then over time the sales just trickle out the profits trickle out assuming that you managed it. So how much work did you do managing your account after the challenging?

‍

John Troutman:  

Very little I repriced probably once a month? And that was about it.

‍

Caleb Roth:

Say? So no customer emails to answer. You aren't shipping out orders at this point,

‍

John Troutman:

right? I mean, a few customer emails, but I probably averaged one customer email, maybe a month, maybe every six weeks, so hardly anything there.

‍

Caleb Roth:  

So the beautiful thing with Amazon is, again, we're using the prime program or fulfilled by Amazon. So these guys both ship shipped all their books into Amazon at the end of the challenge or throughout the challenge. After that they never had to fulfill an order. So Matthew Nivea in our office working, he'd be selling a couple books a day, a couple books a week, whatever it turned out to be. And he wasn't having to go home and fulfill those orders or message the customers, Amazon took care of all of that.

So again, the funnels beautiful, all we have to do is focus on finding books, put them into the funnel, Amazon is going to take care of the rest, and then money eventually trickles down back into our bank accounts. And you can choose to reinvest it, pull it back out spending on beef jerky, and whatever else you want to buy.

‍

Matthew Osborn:  

So that was the goal, beef jerky,

‍

Caleb Roth:

beef jerky, living large. So those are Matthews numbers again, at the end of the challenge three months into it, his cash flow is just a little under 1003 months after the challenge is cash flows close to three grand. And now 12 months out, it's just under four grand. So John's numbers are a little bit higher, because he listed a lot more books, he listed almost twice as many books at the end of the challenge.

So three months after he started, he had already sold 27%. So about 30% of the inventory. His cash flow, Matthews was 918. John's was 1174. So cash flow was similar. Again, he's spending more money overall, between inbound shipping and the cost of goods. At three months, john had already sold 69% of his inventory. So he'd already sold the vast majority. And his cash flow at the end of three months was 60 $700.

So that's that's the beauty of the system again from month at the end of the challenge. month, three, two months, six, john did virtually no work. And his cash flow went from 1100 to 60 $700. So he was able to profit five grands, pretty much residual income, the work was already done up front. And the sales just kept trickling in at six months john and sold 78%, 70 $560 of cash flow. And by the end of the challenge at the end of 12 months, he's at 86% inventory turn, total cash flow of looks like a little over $8,000.

So again, that's the beauty of the challenge, you put the work in, you list everything and then eventually everything continues to sell. So let's talk through dollars per hour. Because this is this will actually give you a relatively good idea of what this looks like. So Matthew, you said you worked how many hours a week

‍

Matthew Osborn:

that average out to be about 11 hours a week during the challenge spending time to source and list those books and send them off.

‍

Caleb Roth:

So we'll, we'll put some numbers right above our heads somewhere up in here. But you can check our math. So Matthew is total cash Hello, was 30 $826. So 38. Let's do it exactly 3825 55 divided by 11 hours a week times 13 weeks. And I will put that math just above us, I think it came to a little under $27 an hour. Now he's only working 11 hours a week. So if you could extrapolate instead of hitting your 10 sources, if you actually expanded that and went hit about 40 sources a week or hit some bigger library sales, if you tried to maximize your time and work a normal nine to five job so 40 hours a week, then at $27 an hour that would actually extrapolate there's 2000 hours that you work in a year.

So $27 an hour roughly extrapolates out to 54 grand a year. Not bad for flipping books on Amazon. Let's look at John's numbers looks like his total cash flow. I bet two different numbers. I don't know which one's accurate. This one, probably this one. So total cash flow at the end of the challenge. So right now, through May six A year later, is 8000 $235. His total hours per week,

‍

John Troutman:  

what we estimate it was around 20 hours per week. And towards the end, it was actually closer to 25.

‍

Caleb Roth:  

So at the beginning, you're working about 15 hours a week, right toward the end, you were ramping up, then you were also trying to lyst palette, so it was a little different workflow.

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John Troutman:  

It was a little different workflow and

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Caleb Roth:

a little bit of a learning curve for sure. So but he was willing to try some new stuff and drove down his inbound shipping costs a little bit. So let's use a rough number of 20 hours a week, that's a good balance between the 15 hours a week for most of the weeks early on. And then the last couple weeks were probably around 25. So 20 hours a week, times 13 weeks is 260 hours, cash flow is at 235 divided by 260. Check the math on the screen above I believe that's right around $31 an hour. Yep, somewhere.

And again, if you extrapolate that out, he's only working half a week to generate the revenue. If you extrapolate that out and assume he's working full time. $31 an hour is roughly equivalent to $62,000 year. So if you're able to keep that model going and work 40 hours a week, again, assuming similar efficiency, you should be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000. So not a bad, not bad overall. Again, the median salary well to look that up will show that put a source on the screen as well, I think the median income in the us right now is somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 grants. So you're looking at somewhere about 54 grand to 62 grants, again, different models, similar results per hour, which is really interesting. So any any final thoughts that you want to share?

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Matthew Osborn:  

No, I think the biggest thing about this is just the consistency for that, like I showed in the first few videos, I listed 100 books every single week consistently. But the first month of the challenge my sales, total sales were somewhere around $800, maybe got close to $900. second month was like 2400, the third month was in sales got to 4000 something. So even though it's less than the same amount of books, it builds as you do as they can consistency is the key with this, you can do it for six weeks and expect to see everything, it's not going to come that fast. But if you put in the time, it'll keep trickling in up to a year later, like we're talking about now I stopped the 12 weeks for the challenge. And we're still getting sales, even this past week from that challenge was still trickles in, if you put in that consistency at the beginning. So

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Caleb Roth:

perfect. So it's a it's a long race be like the tortoise, not like the hare. Again, that final concept, you're putting a bunch of books into the hopper, and they don't always just sell right away. If they did, that'd be awesome. But it's a numbers game, the more you put into there, the more your inventory grows, the more you're eventually going to sell. And again, it's it's not true residual income because you had to work to put them in there to begin with. But they do keep selling even after you stop putting the effort in. Final thoughts from you, john?

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John Troutman:

Well, I would reiterate what what Matthew said, It is all about consistency. And I would even say, you know, the lower costs that you can get that was the real benefit for me and why my cash flow was higher, and more books. But having that lower cost really does help. So the more you can build relationships, that's where you're going to find lower cost. So I wasn't really doing anything special. But because I was going to an auction, I was able to interact with people.

And so every time I showed up, they were like, oh, you're the book guy, we know exactly what to pull out for you, we can help you out. And so people were willing to help. So it's all about being nice to people, interacting with people and building those relationships, and eventually something will come. So that will help you get the cost down a little bit.

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Caleb Roth:  

So just keep up with it. There's a phrase that you make money when you buy not when you sell. So your average by cost 74 cents versus $1 $98 per hour still roughly the same. If you had been able to negotiate, maybe get some backroom access, maybe work out a consignment deal maybe could have driven your costs down, driven your profit up. But bottom line, guys, if you're sitting at home going, man, I want to get started, I want to get my side hustle going. Again, don't necessarily you don't have to quit your day job Matthew still had a day job doing marketing. JOHN is still a full time seminary student.

These guys both had full time jobs, so to speak. And they were able to fit in what they're doing with books on the side Matthew about 11 hours a week, which that's pretty easy to do. Even if you have a full time job, john, because he's a student has a little bit more time available. But he was able to work in about 20 hours a week. And again, both these guys have infants at home. John's got a one year old now Matthews got just three year old. So both of them had their hands full. They both got a wife at home as well. So it's not like they're just sitting there and they have all kinds of hours to play with. They made sacrifices. I had the baby during the challenge, but I remember right, wasn't it? Yeah, right. he had all kinds of excuses. But again, the point is you can get started. Is it better to get consignment deal?

Does it best to work out backroom deals? Absolutely. But the key is to get started. So don't overcomplicate it, don't overthink it. If you if you love to tinker, go ahead and do that john, learn how to do pallets right in the middle of it was a big learning curve. But you don't have to do that when you're just starting out. Follow the steps that other people have taken before. Utilize Amazon utilize FBA fulfilled by Amazon. Just make sure you get the books listed. You know, is there a most efficient way to list it? Could you go from listing 40 bucks an hour to 80 probably. But again, don't don't focus so much on the on the little nitty gritty details, focus instead on finding more inventory and just make sure your system works. Once the systems working. Once you've got inventory in your funnel, and everything starts to sell, then you're able to go back in and then find soon.

So both of these guys knowing what they know now, you could probably hit stores quicker, you can get get in and out of the store quicker, you could probably make deals with some of the stores to get back room access. I'm sure you could list more books in our and then you could back then you know all of those small tweaks can take his average hourly wage from $27 an hour and push that closer to 3035, maybe even 40. So as you get into this and you get smarter, you can actually start making more money. Same with john. He could leverage relationships, he could hire staff team. He's starting to buy books by the truckload now, so a little bit different model.

But again, don't overly complicated when you start out. Just make sure you can get started, stick to a goal and then be consistent with it. And if you do that, we'd love to hear your success story as well. So that's it on behalf of myself Matthew and john, thanks for watching. Thanks for coming along and enjoyed their journey and we hope that you can go and start your very own