---
title: 'The Exact Formula for Flipping Liquidation Pallets for Profit'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=fwRUzBELBwQ'
video_id: 'fwRUzBELBwQ'
date: 2026-07-23
duration_sec: 3670
channel: 'Side Hustle Nation'
---

# The Exact Formula for Flipping Liquidation Pallets for Profit

> Source: [The Exact Formula for Flipping Liquidation Pallets for Profit](https://youtube.com/watch?v=fwRUzBELBwQ)

## Summary

This episode of the Side Hustle Show features Shannon Jean, a reselling expert who explains how to source and profit from liquidation pallets from major retailers like Costco, Target, and government agencies. He shares strategies for finding deals, avoiding common mistakes, and building a systematic reselling business.

### Key Points

- **Mindy's Success Story** [00:02] — A member named Mindy bought two pallets of books from a government auction for a dollar and flipped them into $5,000 within a month by selling medical books and curriculum.
- **Why Suppliers Sell Cheap** [02:26] — Suppliers like Costco and government agencies need to move product quickly due to warehouse space constraints and environmental concerns, not to maximize profit.
- **Key Auction Sites** [04:03] — GovDeals (govdeals.com) and B-Stock are major platforms. Local county and city auctions often have the best deals because they are smaller and less competitive.
- **System Over Product** [06:10] — The most important thing is developing a system to sell products, not the products themselves. A good system can be applied to any product.
- **Start by Selling Your Own Stuff** [06:37] — Before buying liquidation, sell items from around your house on Facebook Marketplace or eBay to learn the basics of listing, shipping, and customer service.
- **Avoid Electronics** [07:19] — Consumer electronics have low margins and high risk. Beginners should start with simple items like furniture, outdoor gear, or grills.
- **Proxy Bidding Strategy** [12:01] — Use proxy bidding with a max bid based on research. Bid odd numbers and walk away; you'll lose most auctions, which means you're bidding correctly.
- **Always Get a Manifest** [12:57] — Never buy mystery pallets without a manifest. Use AI tools like Perplexity or Claude to analyze the manifest and estimate values before bidding.
- **Barriers to Entry as Moats** [14:12] — Bulky items like furniture have lower competition because they require storage and logistics. This can be an unfair advantage if you have warehouse space.
- **Problem-Solving Mindset** [17:12] — Reselling is about solving problems for suppliers. The better you are at problem-solving, the more successful you'll be.
- **Seasonal Items** [29:31] — Buy seasonal items after the season (e.g., Christmas trees after Christmas) when they are returned and sold cheaply. Store them for next year.
- **Research Before Buying** [35:05] — Use eBay product research tools and AI to check sold prices and demand. Build a model before bidding to ensure profitability.
- **Pre-Sell to Buyers** [36:48] — Find buyers before you buy. Share the manifest with potential customers (e.g., contractors, property managers) and secure a sale before committing funds.
- **Scratch and Dent Appliances** [38:07] — Electrolux and Frigidaire offer 1-year warranties on scratch and dent appliances sold at auction. These can be repaired or sold at a discount.
- **Live Selling on Whatnot** [43:08] — Live selling platforms like Whatnot and TikTok auctions allow you to sell quickly without photographing items. Members report $1,000/hour sales.
- **Tesla Parts on B-Stock** [46:01] — Tesla sells parts like windshields and interior trim on B-Stock at 2% of MSRP. Requires industry knowledge to profit.
- **GovDeals for Unique Items** [47:07] — GovDeals offers everything from helicopters to office equipment. Use location search to find items near you for pickup.
- **GSA Auctions** [49:33] — Federal government auctions on GSA include real estate, planes, and even lighthouses. Great for unique, high-value opportunities.
- **Learning from Mistakes** [52:49] — Shannon bought gas leak detectors that were out of compliance and couldn't sell them. Always research what you can sell before buying.
- **Luxury Handbag Success** [55:12] — Shannon sold $3.7M worth of luxury handbags over 3.5 years, making $557K profit. The key was buying damaged bags that others avoided.

### Conclusion

Reselling liquidation pallets can be profitable if you focus on building a system, doing thorough research, and leveraging your unique advantages. Start small, sell items from home first, and always buy with a plan.

## Transcript

two pallets of books and quickly flipped that dollar into $5,000. Costco returns, auctions. Here's how resellers like Shannon are sourcing deals for pennies on the dollar and how you can do the same. They don't want this stuff [music]
to wind up in the landfill. You as a reseller can take advantage of that. I sold 3.7 million dollars worth of bags over 3 and 1/2 years and made about $557,000. We're walking through exactly where to
homework so you don't end up losing money, and then the best places to sell the product once you've got it. And we're watching our members selling a product this way. This one's a lot of fun. Let's do it. We have a member
named Mindy who just got just got started past summer and jumped in, bought two pallets of books from a government auction, spent a total buying these two pallets of books and found that it was loaded with books that
sold anywhere from two hundred to four hundred dollars each. These are like medical books and all kinds of curriculum and quickly flipped that dollar into $5,000 within just a matter of a month or so and
continues to sell that product and uh the opportunities are out there in so many different ways and the thing I love about auctions and buying liquidation product
accessible. You don't have to spend a lot of money to get started like you spend thousands of dollars, but you don't have to. You can you can scale yourself up so you can make mistakes that that are inevitable, right? When
you're starting something. But you your risk profile is so much lower and you can then step up and like, okay, learned how to interact with customers, I've learned about customer service and
you can just then ramp yourself into items that have you know, higher ROI, that kind of thing. So. Yeah, there's a lot of questions that Yeah, there's a lot of questions that come up with you know, why is anybody
letting $5,000 worth of books go for a dollar? Like that's marketplaces are you somewhat efficient even though I know that they're not, but letting it go for so much less than it's worth?
The biggest problem that these suppliers have, whether it's Costco or whether it's a government agency, is moving the product. It's it's usually not oh, I need to generate a bunch of extra
money, so I'm going to spend a lot of time promoting this and getting it out lot of money. It's hey, the warehouse is full of this stuff that stuff has to be out of here by Friday.
And so when I tour with these warehouses, you know, the is like, we have to get this stuff out. We have to get this stuff out. So &gt;&gt; Okay, they have a physical
inventory space constraint. Absolutely. And a lot of big suppliers, the they're concerned about the environmental impact as well. They don't want this stuff to wind up in the landfill. They want it to to go out,
which is great. It's commendable. And you as a reseller can take advantage of that and you know, get registered and buy that product and learn uh how to do it. And that's that's why I started you know, a reseller mastermind
I couldn't answer everybody's questions, you know, it was crazy going to crazy on X. And so now there's 3,000 people in there helping each other there helping each other that has grown over the last year, so.
So I like the idea of turning a dollar into 5,000. where do I start to find like to to source some of this stuff? Yeah. So um that deal came from GovDeals, which is a govdeals.com, which is a government
liquidation site and I can show you I can share my screen and show you some of that. There are uh auction sites all over the US for excuse me, I'm fighting a cold here. For municipalities, for cities, counties,
municipalities, for cities, counties, state, federal and uh like you said, finding them. So I spent a lot of time developing a list of these
and you know, digging cuz I threw them cuz I bought from these these places for decades as I was selling and flipping product. Um and you can find them. I think it's more useful to use AI now to find like local
useful to use AI now to find like local auctions if you want than it is to use a a regular search engine, but if I have a a list of every of auction sites in every single state and you can just
shannongene.com/auctions is just a free list you can grab it. But jumping in on sites you know, GovDeals is a big one, you know, GovDeals is a big one, Municibid is another one, but also local
like counties and cities, they all they contract with smaller auction companies all the time. And so those are some of the best deals because It's a smaller, it's local. You can go drive over there and say, hey, I want to
&gt;&gt; [snorts] &gt;&gt; pallet of books or I want to buy these I just bought a hydraulic lift cuz I need one for a piece of real estate that I have and you know, it was it's like a I think it was $1,200 and I paid like 57
this exists? &gt;&gt; Never never pay retail. Buy everything. I've done this with everything from iPhones to luxury handbags to real then wound up selling it back to the government and so
all of these auctions are out there. The key is The product is not the most important thing. It's a system that you develop to sell the product. And if you're successful at developing this system
you can plug any product into it. So product. I got to find the deals. Where do I find the deals? You you said it thinks that. I can show you the deals every single day. I can show you 500
screen here and show you auction after auction after auction that happens every &gt;&gt; [snorts] &gt;&gt; Where people fail is they don't have a system, so they don't the first thing we tell people to do when they join our
tell people to do when they join our mastermind is don't buy anything. good deal. &gt;&gt; is fun. It's sexy. It's exciting. It's Yeah, it's a treasure hunt and I love it too and you can look. But the first
thing to start doing is sell stuff around your house. Just walk around, you spouse cuz they're very good at pointing out stuff you should get rid of. And Marketplace and see if you even like it, you know, do you enjoy it? Or sell
things on eBay. Do I like it? How did I I got to register for an account. Oh, I this quick. How do I package? I got There's so much to learn. So as you start to learn those things then you start looking like, okay, what
the mistakes like, I want to buy like Apple products and computers and consumer electronics. It's a horrible category because it's very low margin. wrong with it. So we try to steer them to simple things to the beginning like
with no no moving parts, no electronics. them, you know, small piece of furniture, outdoor furniture, Blackstone grills, you know, that kind of thing. Those are great to experiment with and
then you can scale. Um not everybody wants to sell on Facebook Marketplace. You want to sell apparel, you can do live selling on Whatnot and on TikTok auctions. We we have a whole separate community in the mastermind that teaches
live selling. So there's lots of Yeah, Whatnot is blowing up, everything. Yeah. Yeah, it's huge. So learning the back end, the you know, the the system part of it will make you successful in the long run so you can
build an evergreen revenue stream at whatever level works for you. I just got couple of kids and he's like, hey, I just want to pay enough or earn enough to have you know, money to take my kids on trips. They
just got back from Disneyland, that kind of thing. So Yeah. You get to define your level of success. You can do a couple of grand a month and we have have sellers doing a million a year in their first year cuz they scaled. Right.
Yeah, and that's one of the reasons this appeals to me is I kind of you know, business with training wheels in a sort of way for the kids like cuz they understand buy low, sell high. And it's like you know, you can see you look at
the auctions, you can see what's for sale and you can you kind of do research might be able to get for that in terms of sales comps. And it's a way to kind of dip their toes in entrepreneurship with the summer
coming up. So that's kind of where I'm approaching it from. Yeah, and buy anything unless you already know what you can sell it for. So it it's just a very basic idea. You may get excited and the retail price says, oh,
it's $27,000 and it's selling for a thousand, which I can show you Yeah, anymore, is it? &gt;&gt; is it really? And even if it is, well, what's the market price where you live, right? And some people
live in areas that nobody buys rugs, so you have to do that research. So um the products and the deals are available every day and and they are very accessible and just learning the system. Yeah, let's take a look at GovDeals or
one of these other sites that you like and see what is out there. Let me share my screen. And let me find this window. was just talking about. Let's see if you can see it. Okay, great. So, this this
B-Stock. Um we do a lot of collaborations with them and they are a they're a just a platform. They don't own this inventory. They they just list Costco hosts their auction site there, so does Target, Walmart, on and on and
suppliers. So, this deal is, you know, it's a truckload of upholsters for upholstered furniture. And these are customer returns, which is where I believe the biggest profit delta is on this product.
good condition. There's 14 complete system there's um couches and that kind of thing. The Costco price, which is great cuz Costco you can trust that um retail price more,
They're already a discounter. So, when they say it's 27,330, that's typically their warehouse Okay. &gt;&gt; their and on their website. You can, you course. Other other vendors, not so much, right? They run big sales
and everything all time. This um excuse me, this auction's going to close in 3 hours and 1 minute. It's right now the high bid is 1,075. Now, will it go up a little bit? Yes.
Probably not that much. It will sell at about 10 to 15% of the uh of the Costco price. Plus, you have some freight here. Get a whole pallet or a whole truckload's, you know, 2,500 to 3 grand for the whole thing. So, your
landed cost compared to this 27,000 may be four or five thousand dollars, right? Which is great. Yeah, okay. Shipping I should I see shipping charges down at the bottom. &gt;&gt; the shipping charge. Yep, exactly. Okay.
And you this is proxy bidding. This is where buying with math comes in. So, once you do your research, if you say, "Hey, the most I could buy this thing for is uh $5,000." Okay, let's just say you
researched it and you can get 5 grand. So, you go up and you place your max bid. So, if you if [clears throat] shipping is $3,000 and you know you you could pay 5,000, your max bid can be $2,000. So, you know, you want to use
the odd numbers. Let's say this &gt;&gt; 2,015 or something like that. Place that max bid and the and the proxy bid will increase your bid for you. You won't pay But excuse me, if they bid you up, you don't
auction. That's where people make mistakes. They get emotional at the end more. I can pay a little more." And you they just run you up. So, you bid and walk away. You'll lose most of your auctions, but that's that indicates
you're bidding correctly. You know, you may have to bid on 20 auctions to win Okay. And then you want to always come down I always tell people, especially anything without a manifest because that's just that's gambling. That's
rolling the dice and we don't do that. We're taking calculated risk. And uh we this manifest, which is essentially a spreadsheet. We want to see, what am I going to download this manifest. I'm going to upload it to
Perplexity or Claude, some AI that you've taught. It's going to give you a value. You're also going to check Facebook Marketplace. You're going to scrape some data with the like the Comma browser from Perplexity, which I love.
And you're going to confirm that yes, Costco sells these for $3,300. Can you sell it for that? No. You know, but could you sell it for 1,500? Maybe. Facebook Marketplace if you're going to sell on Facebook, Craigslist or you
you have a warehouse you're going to run a a sale on the weekend. So, you confirm you confirm all this stuff before you place your bid, right? these these deals are like this is every single day. This is not
some anomaly. I just randomly grabbed some auctions this morning to share with you. And uh if furniture's a great market because there's a big barrier to entry. One of the reasons it's selling for $76 per unit when Costco average
price is $1,952 is because it's big and it's heavy. of storage and logistics. &gt;&gt; store it? That's right. The average truckload delivered to a residential area. So, you need a you need a
or you're going to need a warehouse. Well, that's a moat and that's great. That's a huge unfair advantage and I always try to tell people, "What is your with a warehouse or I have a I'll go rent a big, you know,
big uh self storage unit and I'll sell out of there. So, that's great. You want to find things that other people don't typically bid on, right? Uh this is Great for somebody starting out of their house. This is just one pallet. It's 36
house. This is just one pallet. It's 36 units. Uh Costco sold it for $5,500. Right now, the bid is at 567 bucks. And it's going to end in 45 minutes. It'll probably sell right around this price cuz it you know, most people don't
&gt;&gt; to ask cuz like it's not similar to eBay where somebody comes in and snipes at &gt;&gt; they use popcorn bidding. So, if anybody bids in the last 3 minutes, it extends the auction another 2 minutes. So, that kills sniping. Yeah, I can't believe
eBay doesn't do that yet, but uh and you get a chance to look at we didn't look at the photos last time, but this is what you want to look at. And when I look at a pallet like this, I'm I'm I'd say great. Most of the items here still
it to be protected. You know, there's one unit on top that's that's not in the box. So, this is a great sign. I'm always looking for things in the box. how's it strapped on the pallet. So, what's great about Costco and and most
give you actual photos of what you're buying. Really important to be able to take a look at it so you can gauge some you know, some level of condition. Now, it looks pretty solid. It's going to you know, Is that like these uh customer
returns or this just stuff that Costco couldn't sell or they needed cleared out product? &gt;&gt; these Yeah, so, that's right. So, you can get both. Now, here's a whole pallet of you know, cuz the other side of the
in the box. They're going to have scrapes and scuffs, but people are used price. The way you tell is we're going to see customer returns right here. Got it. The
different conditions. Really important to learn. There's used good, used fair, there's there's salvage, there's mixed, and there's new and like new. So, This is in Florida. I wouldn't buy this deal because I'm not going to pay 980
bucks to ship one pallet to California. But if I lived in Florida, the shipping would probably be about $300. Um and again, I'm going to go look at the at the uh the um manifest and I'm going to figure
out okay, what can I sell these Traveler's Choice? What's this Samsonite problem-solving business. You're solving a problem for the supplier by buying this product. You're solving problems when they show up and there's a problem
with like maybe a wheel on something or you'd have to get a strap or you know, there's all kinds of stuff. It's if the the better you are at problem-solving, the more successful you'll be in in this business.
This is uh let me close this picture here. We'll do a couple of Costco cuz I love it. They're so easy to get involved with. This is $5,300 worth of home improvement lighting, wall lights, ceiling stuff. Um
Okay. 5,300 bucks. Right now, the bid's at $550. So, it's got an about an hour left. It's in Michigan. And you know, you can look at the pictures. There's
some lighting. There's some wall decor kind of things. There's some other things I don't really know what that is. Uh bubble cubes. I don't know what those are, but I can research and find out. There's the pallets pictures of these
the ceiling fan lights, which were very popular. There's a few other things. So, know, this is great. Everything in the box. That's what I want to see. Okay. the manifest and go, "Okay, well, I'm looking at a few different things.
What's the highest dollar items? I'm trying to figure out what do I sell to want to get my investment back. It's a huge dopamine hit when you invest, you know, 550
bucks plus some shipping and I've sold five things and I got my investment back everything else is gravy. Yeah, everything else is gravy. The other thing I'm looking for is quantity. So, what you know, like okay, great. This is
11 pieces and I see you want more quantity cuz it allows you to build a system, right? So, you're not selling as many one-one-one where it's every time, &gt;&gt; of the same I have more SKUs of the same items. Yeah, it lets you say, "Okay, I'm
going to sell these panels and what is it?" And these sound absorbing panels these things. So, you Yeah, yeah. So, the fewer the fewer number of unique better. That's right. That's right. Uh we'll do a couple more Costco. I think
uh another big moat is appliances. Um this is $81,519 worth of appliances that's bid to $9,000. And these are average cost from Costco
$1,600 and the average cost of this bid is $184. Yeah. &gt;&gt; And you know, so tons of room for you to make uh make it work. Spring is this natural reset point. And if you've been
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Look, most of these things, I think, uh okay, great. You get to see some of these actual pictures, so you can scan it, use your AI, it'll help you look at are there scratches, dents, what are we looking at?" Some in the box, which is
I would look through all these kinds of things, and then I'd do the same thing. I'd go down to the manifest, I'm going to sort, I want to see what's the to sort, I want to see what's the highest dollar item. And here's a $3,900
uh refrigerator. There's a few of them, there's a bunch of stuff at three grand, awesome. Because these ones are like brand name, like with the you know, like ceiling fans. That one was a little more
challenging, like I know people would be looking for LG fridge or Samsung fridge. &gt;&gt; Absolutely. Great brands, you can quickly run this manifest through your found these for sale on Facebook
really build a model. You want to build a model before you bid, because there's no reason to be in a rush, because there's always another deal. Yeah. or I'm going to miss out, that's your emotion. It ends in an hour, I got to
That's your emotion, so it's going to be another deal tomorrow, and I'm going to could buy appliances from every single day. So, Tell me here real quick about the the registration process to to access some of these B-Stock listings.
they're not going to charge you sales tax. And that you get a resale permit that don't have it, that tax that you can just go sign up directly. But, like I'm in California, so you get a resale
permit, you buy this product, uh when you go to sell it, you're going to charge tax. Most If depends on how you do it. Many people that sell on Facebook Marketplace, they
just factor in the tax into the cost. So, if you sell something for $100 or, you know, you're going to take, okay, 6%, I'm going to give 6%, $6 to my state. Oh, okay. That's on you to do the accounting and okay. Yeah. If you sell
If you're selling on platforms like eBay, um on I don't know if what not, I'm sure they do. eBay, Whatnot, Poshmark, other Vestiaire, StockX, if you're selling that kind of product, which we can talk
they're going to collect the sales tax on your behalf and remit it to your state for you. They're required to do that. So, it's great. When you fill out sales tax form every quarter, you there's just a box you check. Oh, I sold
it sold on marketplaces? You just check that box and you're done. You don't have to you know, factor in anyway, so fairly easy to get registered up here. sites. Some of the government auction sites, like GovDeals and the GSA sites,
uh some of them will accept a resale permit and not charge you tax, others won't, and you'll have to pay sales tax, but if you resell it resell it, you can reclaim that sales tax when you file your sales tax uh forms.
You can get it back. Got it. Yeah. Um Different things. This is brand new product, this is overstock. I I have no Costco's, you know, was selling them
about 25 grand, right now they're at 2,300, less than 10%. They're all like new in the box. I don't I don't know what it is, but cosmetic bags and backpacks. Yeah. So, it's like you'd have to go through Here's the This is
easier, Adidas backpack, so I'd want to see, oh okay, at least it's a brand. Uh what do they sell for? You know, I would do a bunch a ton of research. Right now, $2.45. &gt;&gt; [snorts]
&gt;&gt; I have a hard time believing you couldn't make a profit at this, unless there is just no demand. So, velocity is just as important when you do your that sold for $30, [snorts] but if you're selling one
a month at $30, you can't go buy a thousand 30 units, Yeah, you got your cash tied up for a long time waiting for this to turn. Yeah, so like this product like this is great for eBay, and you can use the eBay product research tool, it's
free. They used to charge for it, but now it's part of your eBay account. And if these are selling, you can go search three years of data, and they'll tell you exactly what everything sold for. So, it's terrific. Um It's something
&gt;&gt; easy to ship. You know, you've got it's you got a thousand of the thing, you mean, I've sold I had I had a luxury handbag business where we sold, you know, about 7,000 bags over three and a half years.
Uh it was a great business, but like here, this is doesn't interest me, that said, "Wow, man, those things really are worth 25 bucks, and I can pay $2, and maybe I can sell them on Whatnot and or something like that." But,
&gt;&gt; Yeah. it's a lot of volume. I mean, are you shying away from things at a $25 that's a lot of I am. licking and stamping and shipping and you know, it's like I'd rather It's it's just as easy to sell items to make $100 than it is to
make $10. Yeah. And I will tell you, the $100 customer is better than the $10 customer, and the $1,000 customer is typically better than a $100 customer. make the rules, you know, it's just the way the game works, but it's you do want
to level up. But, in the beginning, it's items. &gt;&gt; Yeah, lower uh lower risk, lower So, to ship on time, you're going to make you're going to sell the 50 items, and
that misships 20 items, and you're going to have to Oh, man, I got How do I do [snorts] inexpensive items. So, it's great great place to start. Does it make sense on
this B-Stock site to filter by, you know, what's what's near me? Like, $3,000. Yeah, so what you can do, like if we go Yeah, so what you can do, like if we go to the Costco and here, you could sort
by warehouses, okay? So, we've got warehouses in Colorado, Texas, Ohio, California. So, if I'm like, "Hey, I'm in California, all I want to see is auctions up there today. So, yeah, there's there's a gazillion ways to
auction sites. You want to find things near you. However, that being said, sometimes it doesn't matter, because if the freight if if the numbers work, it does not
matter where it's at. If you said, of course you want to try to save money and buy near you if you can, but if these Hunter boots that are here, if you can get these for three grand plus shipping, you know, of $1,000 or
your numbers work, you're building this engine, and you we have a guy in our mastermind, Joe Earl, who just primarily focuses on pressure
washers. And one of his biggest problems is, I need more inventory. You know, he's sold he's he's coming up on $200 $100,000 in sales. He constantly has to find new inventory,
on the East Coast, even if I'm in California." So. Okay. Yeah. Well, I don't want to sell this other stuff, I only want pressure washers." It's a great niche, and uh he's been able to Again, it's all about
problem-solving, so he's been able to focus on, "How do I solve these problems, and I can buy these products that other people shy away from." So, he's got a great, you know, mechanic
he's developed a really good system, and now he's experimenting and pushing out into into other items. Okay. Uh let's talk about season This one's near me. Yeah, the you know, it's seasonal items are fantastic. The best time of the year
to buy Christmas trees is after Christmas, because they're getting returned. They get returned like to places like Costco. So, this is $8,300 worth of stuff. There's some pool items and things in there and different things
uh seasonal, but it's going to sell for 500 inexpensive. And when you look at the manifest, &gt;&gt; there's a $2,700 cold plunge pool in there. There's a a
$12,150 Christmas tree. Well, you know, I know it's March, but 9 months from now or 8 months Yeah, if you're comfortable &gt;&gt; Exactly. Exactly. There's a bunch of trees, $700, $600, all kinds of stuff.
travel cases, all kinds of different things. Now, it is quantities, you know, 1 1 1, which kind of I don't get too excited about, but when I I look at the retail and say, "Okay, if I can flip this cold plunge thing and get my cash
out of it, I'm going to do it for 12 1,500 bucks, everything else is free." That's what I'm looking for. And here, you know, these are the factory pictures. They don't Okay, so now I look
&gt;&gt; Here we go. This is some of this stuff in boxes. What are we looking at? I'm really going to analyze these Christmas trees in the boxes. That's great, much protected. You know, here's some Halloween stuff hanging up here. You
it. Um so, you want to just see as many things in boxes as you can. You want to analyze these pictures, get in there close, zoom in as much as you can. And uh yeah, here's the cold plunge
thing here. You want to take a look at all this stuff and figure it out. But &gt;&gt; to have quite a bit more intel available to you than, you know, rolling up to the liquidation warehouse where they're just
kind of having the pallet bid day. And you can only see kind of what you can see on the outside. You're like, I don't It's more like a a roll of the dice. And they're buying this product at sources like this because you know,
just a platform. They're like eBay. Most of the people came from eBay that when they started this company. So, you know, I I don't want to badmouth pallet sellers cuz there's some really good ones out there. And um however,
you might as well buy direct when you can buy and you know exactly what you're people, don't buy without a manifest. Don't buy mystery pallets. You know, there's You don't have to do that. Um you don't have to do it. There's so much
opportunities, you know, this is this is Ace Hardware also sells up on B-Stock. uh this is in West Jefferson, Ohio. And they're going to Here's a $7,000 Generac at two grand. Okay, now they you know, they're going to go up a little bit.
They've got a few days. They have this whole spring home 106 offer. It's not even an auction. So, you can negotiate directly with Ace Hardware. Take it up [snorts] and go up and see. And sometimes what they'll do
is they'll have a minimum like, "Hey, we want 5% of whatever." But now it's just Let's take a look and see what it comes up with. 3,500 bucks or more. Okay, so you look at the manifest, and you're going to
say, "Okay, what's here? How do I you know, where Here's the UPCs. I can easily look up this product that way." There's six pallets. I'm near Pennsyl- Let's say I'm near Pennsylvania. It's equipment, tools, home and garden. Maybe
uh there looks like there's some there's [snorts] some Generac generator stuff here. I don't know what that thing is, but you know, again, there's some DeWalt tools, uh more generators, there's some, you
you're into home and garden, if that sells good, here's a Craftsman, maybe it's a lawnmower, I don't know what it is. Yeah, but stuff in boxes, too, where least uh a hope that it's in good condition
you're going to problem-solve because some will and some won't, but that's, "Okay, what can I sell to get my 3,500 bucks Yeah. &gt;&gt; And and then then you're in the profit
zone, and you can, you know, figure that out. So, lots of different suppliers, you know, that's Ace, this is uh let me go This is Ferguson, which is a massive supplier of like plumbing supplies, bathrooms, kitchens, all kinds
Everything you see in a bath in a bathroom and a kitchen, they sell. But they also sell this like obscure stuff, which is this Look, this is one pallet Victaulic pipe fittings. I have no idea what those are, but if you know
what the those are, they could be your unfair advantage. Or you have a network of $170,000. Correct. And it's going to sell for 400 It's 430 bucks. It closes in 2 days. It'll probably sell for under a thousand
bucks cuz nobody knows what this stuff is. And that's that could be a good thing or a bad thing, right? Because you could be like, "Wow, it's so expensive." But if nobody buys this product or it's so obscure, it could be a terrible deal.
But if you know somebody in this like, "Hey, here's a UPC, you know, that I can go look up, and I can call somebody that says, 'Hey, tell me about this product. This 9 grand, is it really 9 grand?" Maybe it's not, but maybe it's two
grand. Okay, so there's 18 of them. So, that's $36,000. So, or maybe it maybe you can only sell them for a thousand. That's 18 grand. So, &gt;&gt; working the deal backwards. You're trying to make calculated decisions
based on math and based on research, not like, "Let's go to Vegas." It's not like that. And and so, we spend a lot of time in our mastermind &gt;&gt; you know, dispelling those myths of, you know, this is it's always a good deal.
We don't know yet if this is a good deal, but the spread seems so high, the deal, but the spread seems so high, the delta seems so high, it would I would money on this deal, but I wouldn't buy it unless you did this research because
it's a lot of work. And if you have the if you've tied up a couple grand, and your your wife is tripping over the stuff in your garage, it's frustrating, decisions, and you're like, "Why did I buy this?" And I've made the same
a number of times. &gt;&gt; Is your next step then like looking at those [snorts] UPCs like in the eBay research to see what they're actually selling for? Absolutely. And And how many people buy them? And what are they
used for? And educating yourself. You got 2 days. That's That's a lifetime to research this. Put it in in Claude and say, "Tell me what Tell me what these are, and what what do people do with them, and who would be a customer for
them?" And then you reach out to those people. Say, "Hey, I have this opportunity. I really don't like to sell, so I just share the opportunity." And I say, "Can I share a manifest? Is this a product that you buy? These are
interested in? Um and, you know, tell me Use their expertise. Use their knowledge. And and, you know, maybe eight times out of 10 somebody's going
interested." But if you get one customer, dollars on this deal. If you do it right, but you have that customer before you buy this deal. True. Okay, going direct to a plumbing
"Who is the end user? Who's going to buy this thing eventually?" Like, "Look, anyways. Look, let's let's make a deal." &gt;&gt; Instead of you buying it, maybe the wholesale price We know the retail price is a lie. It's not $9,000. There is
nobody's going to be selling them for 9 grand, but maybe it's half off. So, maybe they're $4,500. And you say, "Look, I could sell them to you, you know, for 2,500." And then you're golden. Then you've got,
you know, you you've got a deal, and you you start to build the system that way. Building [snorts] a network of buyers is a huge part of the system that we teach. Who, you know, if you want I love stuff like this, but I don't buy it until I
have a network of home flippers, property managers, contractors, maybe some sort of special contact, you know, so um I want them to educate me
before I risk you know, my time and my money. Yeah, that's a page right out of real estate wholesaling where it's like, "I'm not going to put my name on the contract until I already have, you know, the the
buyer I'm going to flip it to almost on the on the other side." Yeah. And so, everybody who, you know, is very successful at this uses this, you know, you have to build a system. And that's what we teach. Here's more
appliances. One of the things I love about Electrolux and Frigidaire is that you buy this product up at auction, and they give you a 1-year warranty on it, which is you can pass that on to your customer. So, you you have to deliver it
to your customer in in working order. And so, here's These are scratch and dent. So, these are brand new, but they didn't get to the customer. Maybe they got scratched or dented inside the truck when it was
The customer says, "I I I don't want it. It's got this gash in the panel." Or whatever. But they're brand new. So, you can buy replacement panels, or you can discount. You know, this is These are selling at 16% of the retail price. This
auction's closing right now, 0 seconds. Okay, if we click in here, this auction &gt;&gt; [snorts] &gt;&gt; This is Electrolux dishwashers. Yeah. Refrigerators, dishwashers, ranges, and more. 66,000 was their retail price.
Let's just whack it in half and say it's worth $33,000. It just sold for 10,800 bucks, okay? And it's scratch and dent. 47 units. It's in Georgia, so you want to be around that area. And I come down,
I look at these I'm going to sort by the retail prices. I just I'm curious to see Again, here is a uh Refrigerator or something like that. 3,800 bucks, right? $3,500. 35 35. The
first three, you know, the first five line items are more are more than the the cost of the whole deal, right? So, that I like that. But, you have to have the the resources to buy this kind of product,
house. You got to have a storage unit, you have to have a warehouse, and you deliver this stuff. And delivery is another big unfair advantage. You can charging me? You know, 50 bucks to deliver or whatever it is. There's
people that are selling appliances, you know, that are killing it buying this product because the average price is $229 per unit and the average retail was $1,400 a unit. So, it's just a big
"Okay, I'm going to pay $229. Let's say with shipping, I'm into them for less I'm going to sell them [snorts] for 800 bucks a piece. Well, that's a $3,200 $3,200 refrigerator for that, but maybe you sell it for 15."
&gt;&gt; Yeah, yeah, on average. On average, yeah. It doesn't take much to get your the same thing. &gt;&gt; are you thinking about it in terms of, you know, a percentage ROI or you thinking about it in like this deal's
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right? And so, &gt;&gt; Okay. if you can buy dollar pallets and that's awesome. &gt;&gt; Yeah, all day long. And it's, you know, media mail and shipping books is great. Apparel is typically low dollar, and now
I didn't used to like apparel as much cuz it was so much work and so much volume, but now with live selling like on Whatnot and TikTok auctions, pallet behind you and just grab this stuff and say, "Hey, I'm selling Bid on
this. This is what I'm selling. The bid This is what it is. The bid starts, you got 10 seconds." And we're watching our members, you know, selling $1,000 an hour worth of product this way. Wow. And you don't have to do pictures, you're
not photographing and uploading them to eBay or Poshmark or Vestiaire, these other marketplaces. It's a game changer, and live selling is is amazing. And we have a whole sec a whole section [snorts] of
selling. You can just If you go to shannongene.com/live, it'll take you into and show you everything that we offer in there. We have some like We have a live seller who's sold like $300,000 worth of
product so far this year. It's amazing. Yeah. You're doing You're doing great. I this episode, so you're doing You're doing great. That's great. Oh, there Yeah, they're they're awesome. Terrific company, really good people.
It's just, you know, really, really good business model, too. They remind me of eBay a lot, which I love. But again, Lowe's often has more appliances. Uh I love pet This is Petco. I love pet supplies cuz we spend about $5 billion a
year on pet supplies. The Petco typically sells their &gt;&gt; still on B-Stock if you're if you're on audio. I'm see B-Stock. We're going to sites in a second. Um how we doing on time? Okay?
Yeah, we're doing great. Okay, good. Um so, this is pet supplies, and it's, you the Petco price was about 21 grand. Uh right now the bid is at you know, 12 1,275 bucks. You come down
you know, got some decent quantities. This is uh you know, I look at the this is all pretty low dollar. I wouldn't buy this stuff unless I already had some sort of like maybe I own a pet store, or maybe I know people that own a
pet store, or maybe I flip pet stuff on Whatnot or on eBay or whatever. So, Yeah. This one is I'm a little nervous cuz it's like pet It's like dog food. It's like, "Well, what if it's expired?" Or Yeah. You have to look That's right.
You have to ask those questions, and you can ask those questions up here. You they'll give you Typically, they don't sell expired stuff, but they they will sell stuff that is maybe
&gt;&gt; close to its pull date, sure. &gt;&gt; close to it. Yeah. Yeah, so it's just stuff. Target is up here in B-Stock, too. Awesome. You can sort, you know, lots of new product. You can buy hoses,
crazy things that you can go here. Outdoor stuff, games. is great. There's typically less little less profit in it, but it's a great way to start. Um Tesla is now selling stuff
up here at their auction site. Everything from tires and wheels to windshield assemblies, all kinds of parts. I know nothing about auto parts, but I do know this product This stuff sells for nothing. This is
&gt;&gt; 2% of their MSRP right now that just closed. So, these are windshields and roof glass. Now, these are uninspected. Nobody's looked at it. This high risk, that's why it sold for $525. Um but lots of different opportunities
with this kind of product. Steering components, lots of repair parts, brakes. Just Just Again, I don't know anything about Tesla, but this one just anything about Tesla, but this one just closed. $9,300 worth of new interior
trim, brakes, drive units sold for 650 bucks. If I was in that industry, this would really interest me. I'm not, so I'm not buying this. This is not you take a flyer and let's go buy, you know,
a bunch of Tesla stuff and see if it sells. Don't do that. You do all the research all the research beforehand. Um so, that was B-Stock, great site. I love GovDeals, too. You can buy everything here from a Black Hawk
everything here from a Black Hawk helicopter to a G Wagon, you know, and everything in between. The The way I use this site the most is I go in and I do location search. So, I do [snorts] I come up and I say, "Okay, here I want to
stuff what do you have People want you to pick it up. This is a zip code near me. Okay, there's 65 locations. I click view all listings. And I start looking at deals. You can
sort by closing uh soon. So, if you know, versus latest, current bids. Here's everything from, you know, here's weight bars. I mean, these are school districts, counties, cities, and, you know, document cameras
equipment. Like just You just never know. It's what watch auctions." Cuz you can go down the rabbit hole here, man. Tons of of crazy
random stuff up here. Tons of money. You know, there's like the these high-end friction stir welders, these freezer slots. Lots of restaurant equipment that comes up here. Stainless steel commercial stuff. We,
interesting DLP projectors. &gt;&gt; Yeah. friends of ours, Rob and Melissa. I don't know if you know the Flea Market Flippers, but they they're, you know, you
unfair advantage is they're willing to do freight shipping. And so, they can do freight shipping. And so, they can take what is now pretty localized, especially big bulky and shipping it out industry-specific stuff, and they can
through through eBay uh and do freight shipping. Yeah. It's a big deal. So, I love GovDeals. I think it's great. I spend a lot of time up that I found, you know, when I was looking this morning. It's like 2,500
bucks. These are 10 to 15 grand. It's in Pensacola. There's no It's brand new, never used. Uh you know, I think it's a great opportunity. I I would like to have a laser engraver cuz you can do all kinds of cool stuff with
Up here, you know, and it's This is the nit being sold by the Navy. So again, you can add ask questions and get out &gt;&gt; what the retail is. perplexity this morning, "Is this a good deal?" I have so much data loaded in my
"Yeah, that's a great deal. They typically sell for 10 to 15 grand." Okay, great. I'm, you know, and then I can I can highlight it. Uh another site that I really like as we get close, I love the GSA auctions.
These are federal government auctions. You can buy everything from real estate uh planes. This is you know a Beechcraft. I forget the name of there's a specific name for these navy planes that they
flip they sell up here. All kinds of crazy stuff that you can buy here that I love it. Everything from scrap this is a scrap jet from Canada Air a tugboat lab equipment. I mean tons and tons of stuff. You can also buy real estate
up here and like recently they had they sell lots of light houses. I'm not sure was a lighthouse on a private island that just sold for like $300,000. You know and it was like exactly. It was like and it was like a
too. This one's coming soon. It has it's in Rhode Island. You can go up here and get registered the lighthouse summer 2026. inspect it. They give you you can look at the photos. It's
just tons of opportunities. I mean what a great Airbnb this thing would make. Comes with the house, the lighthouse, the whole thing. It would be awesome. opportunities that you can find up here.
on the dollar. So that's my tour. The the key takeaways here I think is is to systematize it not to get excited and wrapped up in oh this is such this is a great deal. I'm going to buy it because
I can't miss it. You want to just focus back up and do lots of great research beforehand and you can turn it into any kind of you know side hustle evergreen revenue stream you know large company business. We have
a a member in our mastermind that started selling out of a self storage moved to a closed down gas station and then then had been closed and now he basically runs like a mini Costco because if
you're an hour or two away from a Costco that's a huge unfair advantage and you could sell everything they sell in that store because people are not going to Costco. Yeah what's what's your it could be
location it could be your you know storage abilities can be your shipping abilities what's your unfair advantage? That's key to to identify what that is and then what you're curious about. I like selling you know outdoor stuff. We
own vacation rentals. My wife runs that business and she's always telling okay houses. Okay so I can go look what can I buy? We need new outdoor furniture at these places. We need to this or that you know outdoor games.
&gt;&gt; Yeah. So I'm interested in that because I have another ancillary business that you know runs side by side. So follow your curiosity that'll help push because they do. It's it's not an it's a simple business
but it's not easy. It is work. There's no passive income here. If you don't like getting your hands dirty don't do this deal. You know don't do this business. Yeah I'm looking at as a way to multiply
money hopefully quickly. Like can I invest in something that doubles or triples and I'm willing to put in the work for that and I kind of if I do my homework I do it right and I that's kind of how I would look at it and hopefully
build some repeatable systems around that. I wanted to ask about a deal that went south. Like despite my best efforts despite my best research I took a I took a big lump on that one. Yeah when I was younger before I
I used to travel around to a lot of auctions and I would get you know you'd walk into this big warehouse or whatever and you have to make decisions based on limited knowledge and that's why I talk about
research so much. It's never been easier to do it now but that deal you know I bought two big loads that deal. The first load I made a phone call to and
products because I love boring products. The first product was inside every water I don't know what they call it an anode or some sort of bar of something that
attracts the rust to keep your water heater from rusting. And at this particular auction there was pallets of these things that nobody knew who they were and I went and got on the phone and quickly found somebody that would like
They're like $12. I'll pay you $4 a piece. Well I bought those for like 25 thousand dollars. It was awesome. It was great. Perfect example. The other example is there was a bunch of gas leak detectors that I was like man these got
thing all this kind of stuff and I went figured I'll get them cheap enough. I know they got to be worth a bunch of money and I bought these a couple of pallets of these gas leak detectors and
I quickly learned the reason they were at this auction was because they're a high sensitive piece of equipment that has to be certified and after a while they fall out of compliance and so that's why they're flipping them at
auctions and I bought those things. I think I spent two or three thousand dollars and the whole thing tanked. I couldn't sell one of them. So luckily I offset that with these weird diode things that went or anode anode that
went inside these water heaters but you you don't buy things that you don't know what you can sell it for. It's really simple and I certainly have made mistakes where I've always had a death pile. So I I
tried an experiment a few years ago where I wanted to get I I wanted to sell sold technology and everything's been a plug and I wanted to get away from that. I'm like what's the most opposite thing I can sell? And it was handbags luxury
handbags because my wife my daughter they all go crazy over these bags. I was got to there's got to be something in it. And as I I started in the beginning and I was like I want to sell 10 bags a day
make 50 bucks profit per unit so I can make 500 bucks a day but I only want to work an hour. And I was totally wrong. What I learned was that when I had to work more than an hour but I could sell one bag a day and
make $500. And so I built this system and I ramped it up over time and we I wound up it was just me it was and I had four racks here next to my desk and I sold 3.7 million dollars worth of bags over three and a half years and made
about $557,000. But it was all based on I made lots of mistakes in the beginning. I bought the wrong brand but they were like $50 bags. I didn't know I didn't know that
didn't know that it turned out that buying damaged bags it turned out that buying damaged bags was the big unlock because I could buy buy them because it didn't matter because they still got to carry this
high-end bag even though it had some damage they still felt good. They still felt good carrying it. So we're always trying to figure out what is the you know the unfair advantage? What is the unlock that makes
you different? And so I started buying damaged bags and I was like sell me your Japanese auction houses that sell lots of luxury brands and I could outbid everybody on these damaged bags and nobody else wanted them. Yeah not as
always trying to differentiate and find doing this. &gt;&gt; what the learn what the market is interesting. Oh yeah I would have thought like oh nobody wants to touch it
&gt;&gt; That's right. That's right. &gt;&gt; And I can still carry around the the Nobody knows. They have people everybody thinks I did the damage because I've interesting when you think about that and I love selling emotional emotional
Well I really appreciate you kind of taking us on a on a tour of this you know a little slice of the internet that I didn't really know existed or didn't really have a great glimpse into but excited to dive a little bit deeper. If
shannonjeen.com/mastermind is the best place to get started. This is Shannon's $5 mastermind with over 3000 other resellers in there. So go
What's next for you? Where do you want to take this thing? Yeah it's a great question. We're starting like cohorts for higher another level. So we're doing you know private groups out of that. I think the
now. I'm doing a lot of work on YouTube because I you know I grew my account mainly on X first and and grew like 51,000 followers up there. Learning lots about Instagram and you know I'm I'm
really focused on growing the mastermind. I definitely think we'll have 10,000 users in there and continuing to add value. The you know just flooding people with so much so much value that they can get
something for five bucks. It's super rewarding and you know they can certainly do other things in there that if they if they want to level up to yeah I'm just really focused on value and focused on growing the mastermind.
It's terrific. It's exciting. You're helping other people make extra money and that's the same space that I play in and I can tell you it is is very rewarding work. So I appreciate what you're doing. Yeah
Yeah shannonjeen.com check him out over that's where I first came across you. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation. It doesn't have to be reselling related
but whatever you got for us. My number one tip is to take action. My number one tip is to take action. Don't think too much. Start. Don't plan so much. The work reveals itself to you as you do it. Jumping in and starting
and and you know do whatever small things every single day that gets you out of the daily grind or the matrix of where you're stuck
that action solves so many problems and you know, it's your mindset is you is a lot of this is what's in your head. So taking action and don't don't read another book. Don't you know, You don't need a course. You just need
I'm going to walk in the if you're wanting to resell, today I'm going to sell something from my garage. I'm just going to start cuz it will propel you forward as you get these small rewards in your head and just take action.
Very good. Yeah, you learn you learn as you go and you learn so much more by doing the thing than uh watching another video about it. So if you are tuning in you're wondering what to listen to next, I want to invite
what to listen to next, I want to invite you to take the free 2-minute quiz at hustle.show. How it works is you answer a few short multiple choice questions. You do it right from your phone and it's going to spit back out eight to 10 of
our greatest hits into a little playlist for you that you can add to your device. works and you can go make some more money this year. This is hustle.show for your personalized side hustle show playlist. Big thanks to Shannon for
sharing his insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content sidehustlenation.com/deals is where to go to get all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That is it for me. Thank you so much for
tuning in. If you find any value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. Fire off that text message to that deal hunter lover person in your life who needs to hear this. Until next time, let's go out
there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.
