RPF-0059-Interview_with_Ryan_Finlay_ReCraigslist
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00:00:30.480 | What would you do if you were 29 years old,
00:00:32.960 | were deeply in debt with over $25,000 of credit card debt, had $200 in your checking account,
00:00:41.360 | and had five children to support? Where would you start?
00:00:46.160 | Would you start with buying and selling stuff on Craigslist?
00:00:51.440 | [Music]
00:01:08.240 | Welcome, my friends. Welcome, radicals. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast for today,
00:01:13.280 | Thursday, September the 11th, 2014. This is episode 59. My guest today is a man named Ryan Finley.
00:01:21.760 | And yes, that is his story. He paid off $25,000 of credit card debt in four years
00:01:29.280 | with buying and selling stuff on Craigslist.
00:01:31.520 | [Music]
00:01:40.560 | I'm not sure that's where I would start if I were in that situation, but I certainly was inspired
00:01:44.960 | when I first started reading Ryan's story. And I think you'll be inspired after hearing it.
00:01:50.640 | And there are a number of amazing lessons that we can learn from his experiences. I first heard
00:01:55.440 | about Ryan several years ago and started reading his website, which is re-craigslist.com. And today,
00:02:00.960 | I have for you an in-depth interview with him. And we're going to talk in the beginning about
00:02:05.600 | his story, find out what he learned. Then towards the end, we're going to talk through some of his
00:02:09.680 | tips for buying and selling stuff on Craigslist, how to get top dollar and how to get deals.
00:02:14.240 | Remember, this is a man who has made his full-time living on Craigslist, supporting his family
00:02:20.880 | for the last four years. So if anybody knows anything about how to get good deals and how
00:02:27.520 | to get top dollar, I think he would be a good person to listen to. Enjoy the interview.
00:02:32.080 | So Ryan, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate you being with me today.
00:02:39.680 | Yeah, thanks for having me, Dr.
00:02:41.040 | I've been looking forward to this chat. I've been reading your site for, man, it's got to be at
00:02:45.760 | least a couple of years. I don't know where I first saw it. It might have been your life hacker
00:02:48.960 | mention. I don't know how long ago that was. But I have really enjoyed reading your articles. I've
00:02:56.560 | learned a lot. I learned about how to pick out a good washing machine. That was a helpful article
00:03:01.040 | to me. But let's start with, tell us a little bit about your story and how you got started in the
00:03:10.640 | Craigslist business. Yeah. So I think it was about four and a half years, something like that, ago.
00:03:18.320 | I had just gotten my general contractor's license and I really wanted to get into business. But I
00:03:26.560 | realized that general contracting in construction just wasn't something that I wanted to do for the
00:03:31.760 | long term. And I kind of realized that pretty quickly after getting my contractor's license.
00:03:36.720 | Anyways, I was just kind of at a rough spot in life at that point. We were deeply in debt. I'd
00:03:45.040 | just been trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And finally, I was able to meet, I met with a
00:03:49.440 | couple of friends of mine and they basically real pinned me down on it. They told me to pick an idea.
00:03:54.240 | We talked about a couple of them and then they were just going to kind of help keep me accountable
00:03:58.560 | to make sure I stuck with it. And the idea was Craigslist, buying and selling things on Craigslist.
00:04:04.880 | Yeah, that's kind of how it all started. Did you ever know anyone who was making a living on
00:04:13.040 | Craigslist? No, I'd never, nor had I ever read about anybody. It was just something that I'd
00:04:20.320 | always been fascinated with buying and selling used items, growing up, going to garage sales
00:04:24.640 | with my mom. And when you're a young kid, when you're thinking about business, that's all you
00:04:31.440 | can think about is like, well, how can I buy and sell a video game to make a little bit of money?
00:04:35.680 | And that always fascinated me. So when Craigslist came out, it didn't actually come out in our city,
00:04:42.000 | which is a huge bummer. When they first started out, it was just in a few cities,
00:04:46.960 | sprinkled around. But I eventually moved to Portland and that's when I started seeing the
00:04:52.720 | potential of the Craigslist marketplace. So you had the idea, I want to buy and sell.
00:05:00.400 | Craigslist was a useful medium. How did you start? So after that meeting, I met with a couple of
00:05:08.880 | Chris and Jason and one morning just met with them. And I had $200 to my name, basically. And
00:05:17.600 | basically the assignment was go home. We'd agreed on I needed to make 100 bucks a day profit.
00:05:23.520 | And I would email them every day, just tell them what I bought, what I sold,
00:05:29.680 | and how much money I'd made, and how much time I'd spent just to make sure that I was putting
00:05:34.720 | in my time. And so I went home that day with my 200 bucks and I had to make $100 profit.
00:05:42.160 | And so I just jumped on and anything that I knew that I was seeing that was underpriced,
00:05:49.200 | that I thought I could sell quickly, I would go out and pick it up and bring it back and clean it
00:05:54.400 | up and then put it back up for sale. And I was getting free items off the free section. I mean,
00:06:00.960 | it was a real back against the wall hustle at that point. So...
00:06:06.000 | Did you think about just going and getting a job?
00:06:10.480 | You know, I had to have, I mean, at that point, I'd probably had like 25 plus jobs over my,
00:06:19.280 | you know, through my life. And I just, I didn't want to work for anybody else anymore. I was just
00:06:27.040 | kind of tired of it. You know, and it wasn't just about like, I have entrepreneurial blood in me.
00:06:35.520 | And, you know, I'm constantly thinking of ideas, business ideas, and how to create value and add
00:06:41.760 | value and looking for opportunities. And, you know, and then I had long term goals, you know,
00:06:49.200 | that I was trying to reach to. So...
00:06:51.520 | How'd you get into so much debt?
00:06:56.480 | It was a combination. We'd moved out to Hawaii, and my family and I, and, you know, we had,
00:07:04.640 | I had a credit card, and we would just put a few expenses per month on it. And what would happen
00:07:11.920 | is, is it would just slowly, you know, the balance would slowly creep up or like, an unexpected
00:07:19.200 | expense would come up and it would, the balance would go up a little bit higher and
00:07:24.400 | I just wasn't super, you know, I wasn't super disciplined. I am, you know, I wasn't saving very
00:07:30.480 | much. And yeah, so at that point, I would call myself a pretty undisciplined, foolish,
00:07:43.360 | foolish person with money.
00:07:45.680 | So you're breathing. You're like all of us, right?
00:07:53.280 | So what made the switch? Why did you, what happened? What was the chain of events that
00:07:59.440 | led you to decide to pay off your debt?
00:08:01.200 | Okay, so that's actually a really, really cool story that I haven't really talked to too many
00:08:06.720 | people about. So incidentally, it was like five days before that meeting that started the whole
00:08:13.440 | Craigslist venture. I was approximately 25, actually, yeah, I was approximately $25,000
00:08:20.720 | in credit card debt at that point. And some of that, some of that, like I said, was from Hawaii,
00:08:26.800 | some was when we moved back. We had, after we'd moved back, not too long after that, we were able
00:08:36.080 | to borrow a little bit of money for a down payment and we purchased a house at, we had a great price
00:08:44.320 | on a house here. But I needed, I bought it with the plan to remodel the basement, to rent it out
00:08:53.440 | to a family and I needed to borrow a little bit of money to do that work. And so, some of it was
00:09:00.480 | that. So it was, some of it was decent debt, but I'd, unfortunately, I'd put it on like a Home
00:09:05.760 | Depot card. So anyways, back to the story, five days before I started the Craigslist venture,
00:09:16.160 | I was, I was basically, I was at my breaking point. It was the rock bottom. I couldn't make
00:09:22.080 | my minimum payments. I was signed on a mortgage. And I was just, I was at that point where I was
00:09:29.360 | just like, I kind of, I lost hope. I was like, nothing's working out. I don't have any business
00:09:34.720 | prospects right now. It would just be easier just to walk away from it all. And so, I went out to
00:09:42.800 | coffee with my friend Jeremy and he sat me down and I told him what I was thinking about doing.
00:09:49.200 | He got a look over him. He basically, he sat me down and he goes, "Ryan, you do whatever it,
00:09:57.120 | you know, stinking takes, you know, basically, to pay your next payment." And he's like,
00:10:03.040 | "Start with your mortgage because you don't want to lose your house. You got renters right now."
00:10:06.720 | And he basically just encouraged me to pay my next payment and hustle my tail off to,
00:10:14.080 | to basically to pay the next payment after that. And one, one payment or one debt at a time,
00:10:20.000 | just to try to stay current. And, and that's what I did. You know, I went home and spent the rest of
00:10:25.360 | my money on the, got the mortgage payment paid. And, and then I think, yeah, it was like four
00:10:30.400 | or five days later, I started the Craigslist thing and, and yeah, that's what started it all.
00:10:38.720 | And I basically just, it was kind of a blur of months of hustle and started seeing progress,
00:10:44.640 | like started paying them down, starting to paying the debts down, working really hard.
00:10:50.640 | And once I, once you start seeing progress and I started reading some financial books,
00:10:57.040 | yeah, I saw some hope and that was it. I made, I was determined to get out of that at that point.
00:11:02.160 | And so good for you. Yeah. Did you make the a hundred bucks the first day?
00:11:06.640 | I did. Yeah. I still don't remember. I haven't written down what I bought. Maybe it was just
00:11:12.960 | like a combination of, you know, I don't know, a couple of piddly little items and,
00:11:18.880 | but yeah, I made the, I made the a hundred dollars pretty much every day for
00:11:25.920 | the first couple of weeks. And, you know, there's one day or here and there
00:11:28.720 | after that, that I'd, I'd miss it, but then I'd start going way over.
00:11:33.040 | And yeah, and, and it started, it went really well. So.
00:11:38.400 | Let's see. So a hundred bucks a day, were you considering that seven days a week or six days a
00:11:43.840 | week? I was doing at the, when I first started, I was, the first couple of weeks, I think I was
00:11:50.560 | probably working every day. I was taking obviously some time off. Sure. Of course. You know, here and
00:11:58.160 | there, you know, cause I have a family, but I was with my back against the wall that much. I was,
00:12:03.760 | you know, I had to do whatever it took to, you know, to provide for my family and pay bills. So.
00:12:08.160 | Do you have any sense of, at the beginning, like, were you working 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day,
00:12:14.640 | any sense of how long a day in a day? It was, it was at least eight to 10 hours a day. Cause
00:12:19.840 | eight hours was like, that was my, you know, even though I was working from home buying and selling
00:12:24.480 | items, I needed to have a structured schedule, especially to start out with. And yeah, so it
00:12:30.720 | was at least eight hours, some more, you know some of the summer months. And I was in the,
00:12:37.920 | yeah, the summer months weren't totally, it was like five months later, but yeah.
00:12:43.040 | Well, it's interesting cause I mean, I'm sure you're probably doing better than a hundred dollars
00:12:48.720 | a day now from, from seeing how much debt you paid off and whatnot. I'm sure it's, I'm sure
00:12:54.560 | it's an excess of that, but I mean, basically if let's assume that you work 10 hours a day and
00:13:00.480 | you're able to make a hundred dollars, a hundred dollars a day getting started, you know, after a
00:13:05.440 | few months, then at the low end, that's 10 bucks an hour. And that's, that's again, more than
00:13:13.440 | minimum wage. Now you obviously need some intelligence and some skill to develop some
00:13:20.880 | skill of buying and selling and learning over time. But that was what so impressed me about
00:13:26.560 | reading your, about your story is that here's something that is sitting out there. It's a,
00:13:30.720 | it's just a medium that everybody has access to. There's no cost to buy or to sell something on
00:13:36.160 | Craigslist. And by going out and saying, let me see if I can connect buyers with what they want
00:13:41.520 | and sellers with what they want, you're able to create an income source that's in excess of a
00:13:46.320 | minimum wage, minimum wage starting position. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, um, and you know,
00:13:53.760 | that obviously, uh, you know, as every time you buy and sell something, you learn something. And,
00:13:59.440 | uh, as time goes on, you start, I began to start learning which items were more profitable,
00:14:05.840 | which items were in higher demand, which items had more room for me to add value to them. And,
00:14:12.640 | uh, that's eventually what led me to, to the appliance niche, because, you know, naturally
00:14:18.800 | you would like to make more money and work less hours. And, and, you know, I, I think I had one,
00:14:25.840 | one instance in particular, I had a friend who was helping his friend get rid of a refrigerator.
00:14:31.840 | And I, I went and picked it up for, uh, it was 150 bucks or something like that, or $175. And,
00:14:38.640 | uh, just came home, cleaned it up and reposted it. And it was a nice side-by-side refrigerator.
00:14:43.760 | And I ended up selling it for 500 very, very quickly within a day. And, you know, it doesn't
00:14:50.480 | take, you know, when you put that amount of profit in your pocket, after an experience like that,
00:14:56.880 | where you basically, I probably worked an hour, hour and a half total, um, you know, you, you
00:15:03.200 | start realizing the potential of, of that little, of the appliance niche and, and not just the
00:15:08.800 | appliances, but other, other products, more, you know, a little bit more expensive products as well.
00:15:13.280 | So.
00:15:14.080 | Cause that, you started with like, if I remember, and I'm going off of memory here,
00:15:19.040 | your first week or something, I mean, you sold a power tool for 20 bucks, that type of thing,
00:15:23.280 | where it was five or $10 at a time, right?
00:15:25.600 | Yeah.
00:15:26.240 | And that's where you moved to appliances and say, well, you know, 10 power tools at 10 bucks a pop
00:15:30.560 | of profit versus one washing machine at a couple hundred bucks of profit. It doesn't take,
00:15:36.880 | doesn't take a rocket science to say, let me go where the margins are better.
00:15:40.160 | Yeah. And a lot of that was, you know, just really quick. A lot of that was just
00:15:44.960 | part of the learning experience. At first I was terrified of losing any money,
00:15:49.040 | especially when I only had a couple hundred bucks. So I didn't want to buy something
00:15:53.120 | that wasn't going to, I wouldn't be able to quickly sell. Cause I, I afford to just sit
00:15:56.960 | on items for a couple of weeks waiting for them to sell and not make any money. And so I had to,
00:16:01.440 | I had to turn things quickly and I also couldn't tie up all my capital in just a couple items or
00:16:06.880 | one item for that matter. And yeah, but you know, it's, it's a learning experience, you know,
00:16:12.960 | it's kind of like, uh, yeah. Learning how to invest, learning how to, um, yeah.
00:16:20.240 | So how many years ago was that that you, that you first started now?
00:16:23.040 | Uh, it's been, let's see, it's been four and a half years ago, I think. I'm really bad with dates,
00:16:34.640 | but it's, yeah. Four and a half years ago. How, how have you developed your business over,
00:16:40.960 | over time? Yeah. So I, I eventually, I eventually, uh, I think it was, it took about a year,
00:16:48.960 | I think, or a little less than a year, but I eventually saw the potential in appliances and
00:16:55.520 | I just went all in on appliances. I still buy and sell other things, you know, like I go to garage
00:17:01.920 | sales and, and just for like, it's kind of a, it's a hobby of mine just for fun. And I'm always just
00:17:07.840 | randomly buying things on Craigslist too. So, um, but yeah, I, and one of the reasons is, is because
00:17:13.920 | if you, if you, especially if you find a high profit niche, uh, if you focus on that and become
00:17:20.800 | an expert in that niche, you don't have to work as hard, like just because you have to, you don't
00:17:26.240 | have to think as much on every single transaction or potential purchase. And, and that's been really
00:17:31.600 | nice, you know, um, cause basically once you become an expert, you just, you can, um, you know,
00:17:37.440 | I can look at a page of a hundred ads and probably 20 seconds, 25 seconds. Wow. Just, I can scan all
00:17:43.680 | a hundred of them and tell you which ones are worth buying and which ones aren't and how much
00:17:48.320 | money you could make on them. So, um, it takes much less of my time to do what I used to spend
00:17:54.960 | all day doing. So just over time, you've, it's become intuitive for you just to understand,
00:18:00.320 | okay, that, that, you know, this brand of washing machine has this certain value, as long as it's
00:18:04.560 | in this certain condition, or have you specifically studied it, charted it out in some way? Yeah,
00:18:09.840 | it's, it's basically, it's recognizing the makes and the models, like which brands they are,
00:18:14.880 | the age, the type, you know, um, you can, you can tell a lot about the condition of it. The color
00:18:23.360 | is important. Um, you know, and it almost seems they, they'll affect, you know, how much,
00:18:29.120 | how much is that? I mean, how can I, how much can I pay for that and still, uh, turn a profit on it,
00:18:36.000 | you know, so it's worth my time. Uh, and then, you know, and then even once I do find the items
00:18:41.600 | that I, or appliances that I want to purchase, I'm very quickly, or I'm, I can quickly scan through
00:18:47.200 | the, the actual description of the ad and, of the item and, and decide if it's a good buy or not.
00:18:52.800 | And so I know all that, you just kind of, you learn what red flags to look for and what,
00:18:56.640 | uh, what to stay away from. So. Hmm. So it's worked, you've succeeded,
00:19:04.240 | are you still getting out of debt or were you able to pay off your debt?
00:19:06.480 | Yeah. Yeah. We paid off the debt. Congrats, man. That's so exciting.
00:19:11.440 | Yeah. It was a, that was a really, um, that was one of the, that was a really big accomplishment
00:19:17.040 | for us. So, yeah, that's exciting. And you've expanded your operation, right? You have at least
00:19:22.240 | one person working for you at this point. Yeah. Well, it's, it's expanded and contracted a little
00:19:26.560 | bit. Like, um, I brought on a partner and, and we, we went, we worked at it for quite a while.
00:19:34.560 | And then it was just more of a difference in philosophy and like how we're, you know,
00:19:37.760 | like partnerships that ended up happening. Um, and so we went our separate ways. And so then it
00:19:43.760 | was back to myself and my brother and, uh, and, and just recently, like even within the last month,
00:19:50.800 | I've been encouraging him to start up an operation back in, in our hometown,
00:19:55.280 | uh, where he's got a couple of girls there. So, um, yeah, it's actually right now it's back to me.
00:20:00.800 | And, um, yeah. So I was excited when I saw you put up a course, cause you're selling a course now
00:20:08.080 | on how to do this business, right? Yeah. I thought about this as, and I know you have kids and I've
00:20:15.280 | got, I've got one son so far, uh, and he's almost a year old. So he's a little early,
00:20:20.960 | little early to get out in the pickup truck and start loading up appliances. But I've been
00:20:26.640 | thinking a lot about how I want to teach my son the skills of business. And one of the things that
00:20:32.160 | I've, I've seen recommended in the past by many people is, you know, take your son to, uh, or
00:20:37.520 | a daughter to a flea market, teach them how to bargain, how to ha how to haggle things like that.
00:20:41.680 | But where I live like, Hey, we don't have a lot of flea markets and the ones we do don't have
00:20:45.520 | anything that I want. So it has seemed like, ah, that's not something I want to do. But I feel like
00:20:50.960 | for maybe like for a high school student or for a home educated student, a business like this on
00:20:56.720 | the side is way better than, than getting some, you know, job somewhere, just some entry level job
00:21:04.720 | because a, you're learning the fundamental skill of business and B it's entirely self-directed
00:21:11.920 | and you can do it on your own time. You can do it more when you have more time and you can do it
00:21:15.840 | less when you have less time. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, I guess just a couple of little tidbits about
00:21:23.840 | what I'm, what I've been doing with my son. So my son's eight years old. He's almost nine.
00:21:28.640 | Um, he knows how to diagnose most of the, you know, most of the, uh, um, repair is needed on,
00:21:37.440 | on the top of the washers and dryers. Uh, he can already, I've already taught him how to scan
00:21:43.520 | the Craigslist ads cause he, cause he just wants to, like, he's very driven. Um, you know, even at
00:21:49.920 | seven, eight years old, he was already able to find the good deals on Craigslist. Basically.
00:21:53.600 | It's not a scientist. It's, it's teaching them how to recognize what is a recognize certain
00:22:00.640 | brands makes models and how much a good prices, you know, and then that's takes a little bit of
00:22:05.680 | work, but you know, if they want to learn it, they can do that. And, um, yeah, you know,
00:22:11.440 | we homeschool our kids. And so like when I have a delivery or I'm going to take in a bunch of
00:22:16.720 | machines to the scrapyard, you know, my boys love going along and, um, I fully expect with,
00:22:23.760 | with a reasonable amount of work, uh, my son should be doing, he should be able to do most
00:22:30.640 | of the work by the time he's 10 to maybe 11 years old. And obviously the things like answering the
00:22:36.320 | phone for a sales call, that's, I'm not going to have him do that. You know, imagine someone
00:22:41.760 | calling about an appliance and a 10 year old answering the phone. Um, but, but everything
00:22:46.640 | else, I mean, he can, he already, he can take pictures. He can write up the descriptions,
00:22:50.080 | post the ads and Craigslist. Um, there's really not too much other than moving really heavy
00:22:56.000 | appliances that they can't do. They just need a little bit of help on that. So, um, and then
00:23:01.280 | just the last thing is, it's an incredible opportunity to spend time with your kids.
00:23:04.800 | You know, they're, my boys will never forget all the time that I've spent with them. You know,
00:23:09.840 | going around doing pickups and stopping for ice cream and just doing fun things, you know,
00:23:14.560 | when we're driving around. And so, yeah. And I mean, it's a perfect business that it's a perfect
00:23:22.560 | business to be able to integrate family. I think about that a lot cause I used to run a financial
00:23:27.520 | planning firm and one of the things that I didn't like about that business is I couldn't, it's not
00:23:31.440 | the kind of thing where I could easily bring, uh, you know, my children with me, but your type of
00:23:36.000 | business is one where you can be fully integrated with your children. And what an amazing way to,
00:23:40.240 | uh, what amazing, what an amazing way to teach them social skills. What an amazing way to teach
00:23:45.040 | them business skills. What an amazing way just to build time with them. Yeah. And go ahead.
00:23:53.360 | Oh yeah, no, it's, it's, it's amazing. I've had, um, yeah, both, both in the good and I've seen the
00:24:01.440 | good, uh, learning about, uh, yeah. Learning, learning how to, uh, um, basically learning how
00:24:09.920 | to deal with people. Um, my, my son, my oldest son especially goes with me on a lot of deliveries.
00:24:14.320 | And so he's helping, he like holds my tool pouch as I'm bringing the washers and dryers inside of
00:24:18.560 | houses. And, um, yeah, it's been great because it's basically, it's not sheltering them from
00:24:24.160 | the world. Like I had a, I had a delivery, uh, about a month ago and this lady refused to pay
00:24:30.240 | for the washer. Um, because she was convinced that she was hearing a noise, you know, that
00:24:34.720 | there was something wrong with the washing. And, and I had to be firm with her and tell her that
00:24:40.000 | she was going to pay for the washer or we were going to have to pack it back up and leave. And
00:24:43.920 | she was trying to get, leave it with her and she would send a check and all this stuff. And, um,
00:24:49.280 | it kind of got a little heady cause I was like, this is not going to happen. Like, you know,
00:24:53.120 | this is how it's going to be. You're going to pay or we're going to leave with the washer machine.
00:24:57.280 | And, and he's standing right there next to me the whole time. And it, it got really awkward. And I
00:25:01.760 | said, all right, we're, we're going to take the washer. And so we packed it back up and hauled
00:25:06.000 | it back out of the basement. And, and basically, you know, the whole time we're driving back home,
00:25:12.160 | uh, I'm just teaching him. It was like, you know, I was teaching my son Moses, you know, that,
00:25:16.000 | uh, you know, not every, not every, uh, person is worth doing business with. And sometimes you
00:25:21.200 | just need to walk away and not, it's better to not do business with something that's going to,
00:25:25.520 | uh, that really is going to come back to bite you the next day or a week later. And, uh, it's just
00:25:30.720 | not worth the stress. And so, yeah, there's been a lot of really good learning and teaching,
00:25:36.640 | teachable moments, um, just observing, uh, you know, how to do, how to do business with the
00:25:43.200 | public. Right. I wouldn't be surprised if by 10 or 11, he is, uh, he's capable of taking a sales
00:25:49.920 | call. Uh, remember Thomas Jefferson was running a plantation at the age of 12. You know, Ben
00:25:56.320 | Franklin at the age of 11 was, I think I could be mixed up on my date, but by about the age of 11,
00:26:01.520 | Ben Franklin and his buddies were starting their, um, uh, the, the almanac thing that they had done.
00:26:08.000 | I mean, we've, it's throughout history, there have been many people that have served, you know,
00:26:13.040 | 12 or 13 has been a very traditional age for, you know, the transition from childhood to manhood,
00:26:18.240 | in, you know, throughout history in many cultures. Yeah, that's very interesting. I read, I was just
00:26:24.800 | trying to find it real quick. I couldn't find it, but I was recently reading a story about a, uh,
00:26:30.720 | I think it was an Admiral and I can't find the name again, I can't find the story, but
00:26:34.880 | it was talking about an Admiral. It was a young man who was given charge of, uh, was given charge
00:26:41.360 | of a ship. I think it was during the Revolutionary War, uh, and he wasn't, he was in, you know, he
00:26:47.200 | was in his early teens and he was commanding a ship full of men. I can't confirm that if I can
00:26:51.360 | find it, I'll, I'll put it in the, after, after the interview, uh, for the audience, but it's just,
00:26:56.240 | it's interesting. I think it's a, it's a theme. It seems like young people are far more capable
00:27:01.680 | oftentimes than we give them credit. Yeah. You wrote, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt. Go
00:27:07.920 | ahead. Oh, no, no. Yeah. I was just going to say that's, that's kind of my wife and I's philosophy
00:27:12.400 | as we've been raising our kids is, um, and it's kind of my philosophy in life period is why,
00:27:19.360 | why can't this happen? Or why can't I do this? Why can't our kids do this? And, um, you know,
00:27:25.920 | so we have, you know, especially reading some, um, you know, reading some of the financial books,
00:27:31.200 | it was really getting me to think out into the future is like, why can't my kids pay cash for
00:27:36.400 | their first house by the time they're 18? Right. They absolutely can, you know, and, and why can't
00:27:41.040 | my kids run their own business or, or learn how to run their own business before they're 10? And
00:27:46.160 | the kids pick up on that and, and kids tend to rise to the, to the level of expectations that
00:27:52.560 | their parents set for them. And unfortunately in our culture, people and parents, many parents set
00:27:58.000 | the expectations pretty low. And, um, we've just been finding that, you know, we're not putting
00:28:04.640 | pressure on them because I'm not pressuring them into any one way, one business or another, but,
00:28:08.480 | um, I kind of, I do encourage them if they want to, you know, spend time in the different
00:28:15.360 | businesses that we've got going. Um, yeah. And it's, it's been amazing.
00:28:20.560 | I've seen enough examples of it to know it's possible. Uh, there's a book, uh, that I haven't
00:28:26.160 | read it yet, but it's on my list of people that I'd like to talk to about it. Uh, there's a man
00:28:29.840 | named Steven Maxwell. Uh, he and his wife wrote a book called Buying a House Debt-Free, and with
00:28:35.600 | their children, uh, their three oldest children, their three oldest sons so far, uh, all of them
00:28:41.200 | purchased a home debt-free, uh, by the time they, uh, see, before they were 30. And so like kind of
00:28:47.120 | when they were starting their, when they were starting their lives, uh, all three of their
00:28:52.000 | oldest sons at least have started off on that foundation. And if you compare that, I mean,
00:28:56.720 | I can, I can point to you and your wife, uh, you, you teach your children at home, is that right?
00:29:00.800 | Yeah. Okay. Right. So, I mean, when you look at that and you start looking around in the,
00:29:06.480 | uh, the home education community, I mean, you can find example after example after example of normal
00:29:12.960 | everyday, I wouldn't say average, but people of not extra special intelligence completing their
00:29:19.760 | college degrees by 16, 17, 18 years old, and being positioned, uh, with business skill,
00:29:26.720 | with the academic credentials to get started, uh, at an earlier age. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean,
00:29:35.280 | it's pretty mind-boggling when you think about how far ahead your, your kids could be, you know,
00:29:41.600 | compared to their peers at, you know, by the time that their peers are coming out of high school.
00:29:46.240 | Like, yeah, not only teaching them not to be into debt and to save, but like to, to potentially
00:29:53.600 | already own their own home. And I mean, it just, the position it puts them in going forward,
00:29:58.400 | um, it's, it's pretty incredible. So. Yeah. It's amazing. And there are so many people who have
00:30:04.880 | done it, uh, even just, you know, one of the things I'm a little bit bitter about is the fact
00:30:11.280 | that I was always taught by all the financial books I read as a young man that, you know,
00:30:16.560 | I need to save 10 or 20% of my income and that I was doing really good by the, if I saved 10 or 20%
00:30:22.080 | of my income. And then later I stumbled across the, you know, all of the financial independence,
00:30:26.720 | early retirement community online. And I found out that people were saving 50% of their income
00:30:31.680 | and 70% of their income and 80% of their income. And I think, you know, I could have done that.
00:30:36.960 | I could have done it without a problem, but I, no one had ever told me I could. And so
00:30:41.440 | for some reason I didn't, I didn't realize that I could do that. Uh, let's switch gears and I'm
00:30:47.920 | interested in your talking through a scenario that is probably my favorite blog post that you wrote.
00:30:56.320 | And the reason is that, that, or at least of your posts that I've read, it's my favorite one that
00:31:02.000 | I've sent various people to. Uh, the thing I see about a business like yours is it doesn't depend
00:31:07.920 | on anyone else. And what an amazing boost to the con to your confidence. If you always know you
00:31:13.600 | can fall back on this, uh, on this as a skill, as a skill to learn that you can exert. So you,
00:31:21.360 | I'm sure you'll probably move on to other businesses in the future, but just the knowledge
00:31:25.600 | of the fact that you could sell out your whole inventory and if you could start again with a
00:31:29.760 | few hundred bucks or, and you could build your business back up cause you've done it already.
00:31:34.000 | Yeah. You wrote a blog post, uh, piggybacking on a blog post that Mr. Money Mustache wrote called,
00:31:40.560 | if I were starting over again from zero, how would I do it? What would you do if I took away all your
00:31:45.840 | money, took away everything that you've got, took away all your inventory and said, Ryan,
00:31:50.160 | you got to start over again. What would you do? Yeah. I mean, uh, I haven't even looked at that
00:31:57.040 | post a long time, but yeah, I remember a lot of what I wrote and, um, I'm off of, it would be a
00:32:03.520 | really fun, it has to be a fun little adventure, um, to be able to like almost be dropped in a
00:32:08.320 | city with nothing and you have to start over again. Um, but yeah, I, you know, the, the first
00:32:15.200 | thing, the first thing I would do is, uh, you have to, as long as you have a place to stay,
00:32:20.560 | I mean, I guess how, how from nothing are we starting from? You can start from wherever you
00:32:26.000 | want. If you want, you want me to put you on the street sleeping in a cardboard box, I can do that.
00:32:30.560 | If you want to be sleeping in your car, that's fine. Or if you want to be crashing with friends,
00:32:34.880 | I think it's unrealistic for most people that a friend wouldn't take them in on their couch.
00:32:39.840 | So let's start from there. Yeah, we'll start from there. And usually that friend would probably have
00:32:44.960 | internet, but if they didn't, uh, there's public internet, the libraries and many other places,
00:32:50.160 | uh, and computers, if you didn't have a computer either or a phone. And, uh, but basically,
00:32:56.400 | you know, to start off, you just have to figure out how to get just enough resources, um, to get
00:33:02.000 | your first item or, um, and, and right off the bat, like going to the public library,
00:33:08.240 | even without a phone, you can, you can just start looking at the free section. And there's like,
00:33:14.240 | I never added up the value from one day of Portland. That's where I live. The free section,
00:33:19.520 | the amount of stuff that's given away in the free section every day, it's, it's in the tens of
00:33:23.360 | thousands of dollars. Like, and it doesn't take, but just picking up one or two of those items
00:33:28.880 | that are just kind of decent to make, you know, you're not going to get, sometimes you can make
00:33:33.120 | a ton of money on the free items, but, um, anyways, just picking up a couple of those and
00:33:38.000 | then, and then reselling them. Um, and it is possible to sell items without taking pictures
00:33:44.000 | of them. So you can just go back to your public library computer and repost it without a picture
00:33:48.160 | and with a good description. So, I mean, it really, that, that's where it starts. I mean,
00:33:53.600 | or you can start with as much, you know, um, you know, one of the things that I talked about in
00:34:00.080 | the post was getting a mode of transportation, like a bike. So going on the free section until
00:34:04.800 | you get a bike, get the bike and then go from there. Yeah, there's a lot of valuable free items
00:34:12.080 | that you can pick up with your bike and, and resell. And then you all, then you just need to
00:34:16.800 | save some of that money and, and then reinvest some of it, live off some of it. And, uh, yeah.
00:34:23.200 | Yeah. The, the, the, the thing about the free section is that just because something's on there
00:34:28.400 | doesn't necessarily mean that it's not worth anything. And this is the, to me, this is the
00:34:33.680 | key with Craigslist or, or garage sales, anything like that. Value is worth what an item is available
00:34:42.640 | for. It doesn't necessarily start, you know, that that's not necessarily what it sells for.
00:34:47.600 | There've been lots of times where something is, is valuable to me and I want to get a good price,
00:34:52.080 | but then there's times when I just want to get rid of something. And I've put lots of good things on
00:34:56.000 | Craigslist because I want it gone in two hours. And I know if I put it on the free section,
00:35:00.000 | somebody will be done. It'll be gone in two hours and it saves me the guilt of sending it away,
00:35:06.080 | a perfectly good item away for free, excuse me, to the, to the garbage. I'm not, I don't want to
00:35:10.080 | throw something away if someone else can use it or repurpose it or something like that. So, I mean,
00:35:16.160 | you can start with that. I mean, on your post, how to start from zero, you said, starting off,
00:35:21.440 | you know, get a bike with a trailer. So that way, you know, you got to figure out how to get that
00:35:25.040 | and get one for free or fix one up or, or offer somebody to, you know, some extra yard work or
00:35:30.080 | something like that. Get a mobile computer, AKA a smartphone, get some tools, you know,
00:35:35.520 | get some tools for fixing dryers and then go right into the appliance business was, was,
00:35:39.600 | was what it is. But to me, that's a formula. What I like about that is that's a simple formula that
00:35:45.520 | can be applied to really any business or any job. And as a metaphor, you need a transportation to
00:35:53.600 | get where your work is, work is valuable. If you don't have that, you've got to get that.
00:35:57.760 | Then you need to build some tools. And so whether that's in your case, you're talking about
00:36:01.680 | a pair of pliers and a wrench, or whether that's a basic skill set of some kind, you need a mobile
00:36:07.920 | computer, AKA a smartphone, which is a method of marketing that. And then, you know, you just get
00:36:13.440 | started. And that's what the fundamental basis of business is. Every single business is exactly the
00:36:18.080 | same. Yeah. So any tips? Let's close with this unless you have anything else. Last thought I
00:36:27.440 | have is any you are probably the you're the most experienced buyer and seller of things that I have
00:36:32.560 | I have ever talked to any tips for getting a really good deal and any tips for for getting
00:36:40.240 | top dollar for your stuff on Craigslist? Let's see, let's go get in a really good deal.
00:36:46.240 | Starting, I'll start with the free section, you have to be really quick. So obviously,
00:36:54.320 | everything on the free section is free. And like you'd said, there are some incredibly
00:36:57.600 | valuable things that are given away in the free section. You know, a lot of it,
00:37:03.600 | people are like people will be like, for example, on appliances, they'll use their appliances up
00:37:09.680 | until the day they move in there, right? Just because they need to, you know, and then they'll
00:37:13.920 | dump them for free, you know, a couple hours before they move. And that happens all the time,
00:37:18.960 | as well as lots and lots of other items. So you just have to be really quick, like you have to
00:37:23.840 | be sitting there refreshing and wait in this the moment the new post didn't get listed, you have to
00:37:28.240 | respond quickly. And if you don't, you're not going to get them. Because in Portland here, there's
00:37:33.440 | hundreds and hundreds of people sitting on the free section trying to snag those items. So
00:37:39.120 | quick tip, how to get free items, when there's 300 other people trying to get them as well,
00:37:43.760 | respond to the item you want as quickly as you can. And then in this subject line, instead of
00:37:49.360 | just letting it auto fill itself, offer a little bit of money, like, say, I will give you $10 for
00:37:55.680 | this dryer. And so there'll be 50 or 100 other people that will respond to that free dryer, but
00:38:01.920 | yours is going to stick out. And most of the time, they will end up giving you the item because
00:38:06.000 | you're willing to give them a little bit more value than anyone else. You pick it up quickly,
00:38:09.920 | and you'll give them $10. That worked for me, I had some tile on, I had, I was cleaning out a
00:38:14.720 | shed that I had to take down. And I had a bunch of miscellaneous tile that was left over. And there
00:38:18.640 | were a few pieces of mismatched ones. But there were several boxes of some pretty good tile. And
00:38:24.000 | I tried to sell it, I'd had some good success selling of some other things. And I'd listed it
00:38:28.880 | and nobody bid on it. And finally, I want this stuff gone. So I put it on the free section,
00:38:33.920 | a guy and I said, first come first serve. Well, then some guy called me and said, I'll come pick
00:38:38.080 | it up tomorrow morning. And I run a charity, you know, out of a church, we collect this kind of
00:38:42.720 | stuff. And I said, Okay, you can come tomorrow morning. And then some and then somebody else
00:38:47.200 | texted me and said, Hey, you know, is it still available? I said, No, sorry. There was somebody
00:38:51.920 | else. And they responded back, listen, we really want it, we really need it 20 bucks, and we'll be
00:38:56.400 | there in an hour. And I said, Okay, you know, and I called the guy, the pastor guy back. And I said,
00:39:01.520 | Hey, listen, I'm sorry, man. I said in the ad, first come first serve, but this guy gave me
00:39:05.440 | money. And you know, frankly, that I'll take the money. But he got a really great deal on quite a
00:39:10.080 | value of of tile just because he offered a little bit of money. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great.
00:39:15.920 | Yeah, you know, it's just a great way to position yourself to really get some of those free items.
00:39:23.120 | As far as buying items, it really comes down to research, like no,
00:39:30.000 | know what you're buying, know what it costs new, know what the average price costs use.
00:39:34.480 | And in really, an item that has a flaw that you can't detect isn't a good deal. Like you need to
00:39:43.040 | be able to know enough to about the items to detect flaws, cracks, problems with it. So I mean,
00:39:51.200 | I get a lot of emails from people that are bought things and they ended up being lemons or they've
00:39:55.360 | broken. So you need to know enough about the item to be able to to inspect it properly to
00:40:03.440 | make sure everything works great. And yeah, and as far as
00:40:10.640 | getting good deals, it helps if something's someone's overpriced something a little bit
00:40:17.040 | and you want to get a good deal on it. Just don't hesitate to shoot out an offer. Just email them
00:40:21.920 | and say, hey, I'm interested in the item. Would you be willing to take such and such amount?
00:40:27.440 | No worries either way. Have a great day. Be pleasant about it. Some people need the money.
00:40:32.400 | They need the higher price and let them have that. If they don't want to go down,
00:40:36.080 | it's not worth being ruthless over it. But yeah, eventually, just be patient. Because eventually,
00:40:43.360 | if something's not listed one day, usually that's when people get tempted. Oh, I got to go out and
00:40:47.520 | buy it new. But just patient. Check later in the day. Check the next day. Patience is the number
00:40:55.040 | one reason or the number one contributor of you saving money when you buy things. And if you're
00:41:02.800 | just willing to wait for it, you're going to be able to eventually find it cheaper.
00:41:05.760 | The next iPhone whatever is going to come out and there's going to be a huge number of people going
00:41:15.040 | for it, paying hundreds of dollars. And at about a year and a half, they'll give it to you for 99
00:41:19.440 | bucks brand new. Or you can buy a bunch of them on Craigslist for not much money, right?
00:41:24.560 | Stay away from the bleeding edge of especially technology. Right.
00:41:29.360 | Be willing to live just a little bit behind everyone else, which is totally fine.
00:41:34.000 | Right. And then one more tip on the selling side. And this is huge. A lot of times,
00:41:41.280 | most people aren't experts at, you know, in the market for their items market. They don't know
00:41:47.760 | what the average used price sells for. They don't know what the supply and demand is. And one of the
00:41:53.040 | things I encourage people, if you really don't know how much something's worth, price it on the
00:41:57.920 | higher side. Just by default. And I also encourage people not to put their phone number on it. If
00:42:06.480 | you really don't know how much your item's worth, just put the ad up. Let people email you if
00:42:10.240 | they're interested. If you put an item up and you get like 10 emails in the first hour,
00:42:15.200 | probably greatly underpriced the item and just take it down or change the ad. Right. And raise
00:42:22.400 | the price. And that's why I encourage people not to put their phone number on it, just because
00:42:26.160 | otherwise you're going to get 10 calls. Everyone's going to keep calling you and tell you answer.
00:42:29.600 | So but if you just leave that out, you just you can it enables you to change the price. And
00:42:36.160 | then the other thing is, is once you settle on a price like, nope, this is what we think the item's
00:42:40.720 | worth. Be patient. Like don't, you know, cars are the worst. You can put a car up, you'll get 10
00:42:46.880 | dealers calling you in the first 20 minutes, offering you half of what you just listed your
00:42:52.960 | car for. What I encourage, I encourage people to wait, like set a designated amount of time,
00:42:57.600 | especially on bigger ticket items like cars or motorcycles or things like that. Wait like a week.
00:43:03.840 | Let the item sit up there at your listed price for a week before you drop the price. And when
00:43:07.680 | people ask if you'll take half or, you know, knock it down by 25 percent, say I'm going to
00:43:12.960 | stick with our listed price for the first week. And that tip alone can save hundreds and even
00:43:19.040 | thousands of dollars for someone willing to follow that advice. So do you go back through ads when
00:43:24.640 | you're looking to buy things from old dates and try to make offers since you know that maybe you
00:43:30.800 | can get better deals? Is that worth the time? I don't do it as much anymore. I used to do a lot,
00:43:38.480 | especially, it all depends on where you're at. I mean, if you really, and it kind of comes down
00:43:42.640 | to the hustle. If you really need inventory, like say it's really slow. Yeah, absolutely. Go look
00:43:49.600 | through all the old ads, the ones that have been up there for a number of days and say, hey, if you
00:43:54.160 | still have this, would you be willing to take such and such amount? And a side tip, when you're
00:44:02.640 | making low ball or when you're making real offers on stuff, when someone's overpriced their item,
00:44:09.360 | be really courteous because it's a real sensitive thing with people. And if you're really courteous
00:44:16.160 | and kind in your emails and you say, hey, no worries either way, it really communicates to
00:44:21.680 | the person. It kind of puts them in a good mood basically. If you're real harsh about it, like
00:44:29.120 | I'll give you half price with a grant, they're never going to respond to you or they're going
00:44:34.560 | to respond, they're going to be absolutely not. Be friendly and you're more likely to get a
00:44:40.960 | friendly response from people. You've settled on appliances, but do you think there are other
00:44:46.560 | niches that could also be good? I mean, you mentioned cars, that may be good, maybe not,
00:44:50.560 | but whether it's things like lawn equipment or I don't even know, but there are probably other
00:44:55.600 | niches, right? There's a ton of other niches. And one of the things that's difficult, it's hard for
00:45:02.960 | me to write about each one of them extensively just because I'm not pouring that much time into
00:45:07.360 | each one. I mean, I know a lot of people that are doing bicycles, at least part-time, some of them
00:45:15.680 | full-time, just bicycles. And pretty much anything that can be expensive, new, you could usually make
00:45:24.560 | a living off of buying and selling it used. So bicycles, furniture, lawn equipment, small engine
00:45:31.920 | repair, any of the niches where you can actually repair the items, that can be a good one. Electronic
00:45:40.800 | repair, computers, and some of the smaller electronics, you really have to be good at it
00:45:47.120 | because it's a ruthless market. But it's just, yeah, there's a lot of different items. I don't
00:46:01.120 | have an exhaustive list, but if it's somewhat expensive new, then there's probably... Yeah,
00:46:09.520 | the more expensive it is new, the more room there is for a used market.
00:46:13.760 | - Right. And that's the fundamental of really, again, like every item. You're not gonna go and
00:46:22.880 | buy a recycled Dixie cup necessarily. But if an item has some value, whether that's what a jeweler
00:46:30.160 | does, they buy cheap, they sell deer. That's what a pawn shop does, they buy cheap, they sell deer.
00:46:37.200 | That's the fundamental nature of business. And the key, as I see, is simply that the service
00:46:44.560 | that you're providing is inventory and convenience. So as I look at car dealers, I think to myself,
00:46:51.040 | "How does the car dealer make money?" Well, the way they make money is that they have an inventory
00:46:55.200 | there. So when somebody is ready to go shopping, they've trot right down to the lot, and there are
00:47:00.400 | 48 cars there that you can choose from and you can buy it. Now, the person could get it on Craigslist,
00:47:05.680 | but the problem...themselves, and save probably whatever the dealer markup is, anywhere from a
00:47:10.560 | few hundred bucks to many thousands of dollars. But the problem is that there's an asynchronous
00:47:15.680 | need and transaction. So unless they were thinking ahead, which is what most people don't do,
00:47:20.160 | and recognizing, "My car is...I need to be starting to shop for another car and spending the next six
00:47:25.280 | months finding a deal." Well, then the car goes out on a Thursday afternoon, they have to skip
00:47:29.280 | work on Friday, and they need a car over the weekend. So you overpay by 3,000 bucks versus
00:47:34.560 | what you could do if you had the time to shop for it. And the same thing with appliances. I mean,
00:47:40.000 | you're providing a good deal for the people buying it, but you're providing the convenience
00:47:44.560 | of having it now, not having to sit around and look at the ads and then figure out how to fix
00:47:49.360 | the thing. You're giving people a good deal, cheaper than trotting down to Sears and getting
00:47:53.440 | a new one, and you're providing a service for the ones that you're taking away and keeping them out
00:47:58.800 | of the trash, which is great. Yeah. And that's where there's a lot of money. If you can repair
00:48:05.520 | the items that you get back for free, that's where a lot of money is made.
00:48:11.920 | That's great. Tell us about your appliance school. I haven't been through it. I have just seen it,
00:48:16.480 | and I've sent a couple people to go look at it because it seems like a really cool
00:48:19.680 | info product offering that you have with your appliance school, if anyone's interested. Tell
00:48:24.160 | us what's in it and how that works. Yeah. It came out of consulting. I was
00:48:30.080 | consulting for people all over the country through the blog that found out about me doing the
00:48:33.600 | appliance thing and eventually realized that I needed to automate it to some degree and also
00:48:40.160 | make the teaching more thorough. There's only so much you can cover in consultations that are
00:48:47.520 | one hour at a time. So yeah, basically, we put everything that a person would need to know,
00:48:54.080 | starting from scratch with no mechanical ability or understanding about appliances at all for the
00:49:00.240 | business, and just walk them through what to expect, what tools they need to get started,
00:49:06.400 | which machines to buy and sell, how much to pay, how to inspect them before they buy,
00:49:12.480 | how to repair, how to clean, how to paint, how to list them for sale, how to deal with the sales
00:49:18.320 | calls. And then we added training videos, and we have a forum with everyone else in the community
00:49:27.040 | all over the country and Canada that's a part of the appliance school community.
00:49:31.760 | Yeah, it's an awesome little community. The response has been very encouraging and very
00:49:41.920 | good. There's many, many people all over the country that have gone through the course and
00:49:47.120 | that are doing it full-time and earning a living. And there's a lot more people that are doing it
00:49:52.080 | part-time, just getting it going. My son, we're 12 years, 13, 14 years old, he would be taking it
00:49:59.760 | right now. And I'd say $147 for education, that can start a business that can probably be done
00:50:05.680 | anywhere. It'd probably save... I mean, you succeeded in making $100 a day most days when
00:50:11.440 | you were getting started. But I guarantee after a couple of years, you had learned some of the
00:50:16.400 | tricks that you share in that course. And to me, that's called education that pays off.
00:50:20.400 | Yeah. Yeah. So when you sell an appliance, the average profit is somewhere between $120 and $140.
00:50:28.960 | One deal.
00:50:30.560 | Yeah. The course gets paid off pretty quickly after you sell the first couple of appliances.
00:50:36.800 | That's great. Minivan and a small trailer and a web connection and you're in business.
00:50:42.320 | Yeah.
00:50:42.560 | Ryan, thank you for coming on. re-craigslist.com, links in the show notes. Anywhere else,
00:50:47.920 | anything else you want to plug while we're on?
00:50:49.840 | Yeah, I was just in the appliance courses over at applianceschool.com.
00:50:53.280 | Cool. Perfect. Applianceschool.com. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.
00:50:58.400 | Yeah, it was great talking to you, Joshua. Thanks for having me.
00:51:03.600 | Told you it'd be fun. Of course, I've told you all the interviews I've ever done on this show.
00:51:08.320 | I've told you they would be fun. But Ryan, thank you for coming on. I enjoyed it. I learned a lot.
00:51:13.120 | I want to share with you a couple of things here as we wrap up today's episode.
00:51:17.120 | After the interview, I couldn't remember who the person was that I referenced as far as
00:51:22.800 | the admiral that I had said was an admiral at a young age. And I couldn't remember all
00:51:30.080 | the details from it. So after the interview, I went back and researched it. And there'll be a
00:51:36.000 | link to the Wikipedia article in the show notes if you would like to read. But the person that I
00:51:40.080 | was thinking of was a man named David Farragut. F-A-R-R-A-G-U-T. David Farragut. And David was
00:51:49.440 | born in 1801. And at the age of nine, he enlisted in the Navy, in the American Navy, when he was nine
00:52:00.080 | years old. And then he continued to serve in the Navy for the next 60 years until his death at the
00:52:07.840 | age of 69. And I'll read two quick paragraphs here from the Wikipedia article. So remember,
00:52:14.480 | he was born in 1801. So listen to this right here. "Through the influence of his adopted father,
00:52:21.120 | Farragut was commissioned as a midshipman in the United States Navy on December 17, 1810,
00:52:27.920 | at the age of nine. A prize master by the age of 12, Farragut fought in the War of 1812,
00:52:35.280 | serving under Captain David Porter. While serving aboard the USS Essex, Farragut participated in
00:52:41.920 | the capture of HMS Alert on August 13, 1812, then helped to establish America's first naval base and
00:52:50.240 | colony in the Pacific, named Madisonville, during the ill-fated Nuku Hiva campaign. At the same
00:52:57.760 | time, the Americans battled the hostile tribes on the islands with the help of their T'le allies.
00:53:03.760 | Farragut was 12 years old when, during the War of 1812, he was given the assignment to bring a ship
00:53:10.640 | captured by the Essex safely to port. He was wounded and captured while serving on the Essex
00:53:17.520 | during the engagement at Valparaiso Bay, Chile, against the British on March 28, 1814." So he'd
00:53:24.080 | be 13 years old at that time. "Farragut was promoted to lieutenant in 1822 during the
00:53:30.960 | operations against West Indian pirates." So that would be at the age of 21. "In 1824," age of 23,
00:53:38.640 | "he was placed in command of the USS Ferret, which was his first command of a U.S. naval vessel."
00:53:44.160 | And then it goes on with more details. Isn't that amazing? So clearly he wasn't given the
00:53:50.480 | full command of a U.S. Navy vessel, which is what I was remembering, until the age of 23.
00:53:55.920 | But at 12 years old, he was assigned to be the captain, a prize master. So a prize would be when
00:54:02.160 | they defeated another ship, and the prize master would be the captain that they put on board that
00:54:05.520 | ship to bring it into port. A prize master given the assignment to captain a ship and bring it into
00:54:11.760 | port at the age of 12. Amazing, huh? We'll talk more about that stuff later. A couple of quick
00:54:19.600 | things that I learned from the interview with Ryan. And then one mentioned about his course,
00:54:24.640 | because after the call, we were talking about his course as far as his appliance school course. And
00:54:33.680 | he offered me an affiliate link, and I'll give you that information real quick in just a moment.
00:54:37.680 | That was cool. It was unexpected, but I'll mention that to you in case you're interested
00:54:40.880 | in checking out his appliance school. So first of all, a couple of things. Number one,
00:54:44.400 | notice some of the themes. Ryan had a system of accountability with his friends that he had to
00:54:50.800 | email, and he had to be accountable for his actions. I've noticed this theme among a lot
00:54:54.960 | of entrepreneurs. And so consider, is there a way that you can put some accountability into your
00:54:59.840 | life? Because without that system of accountability, I'm not sure that he would have been
00:55:04.400 | as effective at building his business. Maybe so, but I think that probably helped a lot.
00:55:11.520 | He was also in that do or die situation, that place of desperation, having to make something
00:55:16.960 | happen. And that's a serious place that can really result in major changes. He learned a lot
00:55:26.160 | through the process. He started off not exactly knowing what he was doing, but then he continued
00:55:30.160 | to do an 80/20 analysis and focus on where his highest profit was coming from. And then he was
00:55:35.680 | able to cut out some of the lower profit activities and focus on the higher profit activities.
00:55:40.320 | That's what's nice about entrepreneurship. One thing that's nice about entrepreneurship
00:55:43.440 | is you can get rid of the activities that are not very productive. You don't just have to keep
00:55:47.360 | doing them. And then notice that his business has led to new businesses that he probably didn't ever
00:55:52.800 | anticipate. I don't know how successful his appliance school sales have been for him.
00:55:59.440 | I really don't. But I bet you they're making him some money. If I had the bandwidth,
00:56:06.160 | if I were going to be interested in this kind of business, I would take it. I would buy the school
00:56:09.680 | just because I would imagine it would save you at least six months or a year worth of experience
00:56:13.680 | from learning how to do it. Well, that's a new income source. He's got a school that he set up
00:56:17.760 | called Shirt School, how to learn the t-shirt business, and then a scrap metal school. I don't
00:56:22.560 | know how much money he's making on that stuff. I didn't ask, and it's none of my business. But
00:56:27.200 | he probably didn't anticipate those things when he was sitting there at the coffee shop with his
00:56:31.840 | friends. So get started and see what happens as time goes on. See where things take you.
00:56:37.840 | And the last thing is I was just struck by how strong his position is as far as having a fallback
00:56:44.560 | position. Once you've made a living with Craigslist and a smartphone, do you have any fear of failing?
00:56:51.920 | I'm sure you still have the fear, but at least you know, "Hey, I can still go back and do that."
00:56:55.520 | So wherever his business opportunities and business pursuits take him in the future,
00:57:00.400 | I am sure that that will set him up. And especially for his kids as well, what an awesome learning
00:57:06.560 | experience. Check out the article that I will link in the show notes that he wrote about some
00:57:10.560 | other high school kids that got in touch with him a couple years ago, just two kids, and they were
00:57:15.200 | working after school and during the summer on their own business. And they started up their
00:57:18.480 | own business doing this and earned far more than whatever they would have made in a retail job.
00:57:23.200 | So hopefully you check that out. If you're interested in the Appliance School,
00:57:26.320 | like I said, after we closed up the interview, Ryan told me that he offers affiliate links.
00:57:32.240 | So if you're interested in the Appliance School, he went ahead and set one up for me.
00:57:35.360 | Wrong button. There we go. He set one up for me and it's linked in the show notes. It's at
00:57:42.160 | applianceschool.com/?a=rfp. Looks like he put that in wrong. Oh, well. Just follow the link
00:57:51.440 | in the show notes. That'll take you directly to where it needs to be. And I'll get a credit. I
00:57:56.400 | don't know. I don't remember what he said as far as how much it was, but I'll get some sort of
00:58:00.480 | referral commission for that if you're interested in checking out his Appliance School.
00:58:03.280 | Haven't been through it myself. I have checked out his sales page. I haven't been through it myself,
00:58:09.360 | but I definitely think I would. I'm pretty sold on that. If I were starting an appliance business,
00:58:14.640 | I would. So maybe this would be an opportunity for some of you who are looking for some
00:58:18.320 | part-time income or looking for some full-time income even. Who knows? And if you do go through
00:58:23.840 | it, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear from you. And then also the other thing,
00:58:29.360 | if any of you know, if any of you are involved in home education and teaching your children and
00:58:34.080 | implementing and integrating your children into your business, I would love to hear from you.
00:58:37.840 | I'd love to interview you on the show. That's a special interest of mine is how to integrate
00:58:42.240 | your children into your business from an early age to give them useful skills that they can
00:58:48.000 | generate money beyond just simply going and taking a retail job at the age of 16. Nothing wrong with
00:58:53.520 | that. It's a good place to start, but maybe there might be a way that we could set our kids up for
00:58:57.680 | higher earning potential, a little bit more financial success and business skills on the
00:59:04.160 | way through. So if any of you are involved with that, or if any of you are familiar with people
00:59:09.040 | who have done a really great job, maybe you read their blog or you've read their books,
00:59:12.080 | I would love to get that information. I'd love to have them on the show.
00:59:15.520 | That's it for today's show. I hope that you all have a lovely Thursday.
00:59:32.000 | [Music]
00:59:51.840 | Thank you for listening to today's show. This show is intended to provide
00:59:56.080 | entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. Your situation is unique
01:00:03.760 | and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. This show is not,
01:00:11.360 | and is not intended to be any form of financial advice. Please, develop a team of professional
01:00:21.040 | advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they
01:00:29.440 | are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific
01:00:36.480 | answers to your questions. Hold them accountable for your results. I've done my absolute best to
01:00:43.120 | be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes. If you spot a mistake
01:00:49.280 | in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment so we can all learn together.
01:00:54.320 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.
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