eBay

podcast_team · ‎12-12-2023

This week, the force behind the eBay Store The Estate Kings on eBay, Brian, joins us to talk about his life-long passion for selling and negotiating and how he uses several promotional tactics to keep his inventory on eBay fresh and moving. Griff and Brian answer a question about the new background removal tool update.

Episode Links:
Attract Last Minute Shoppers This Holiday Season
The Estate Kings on eBay
The Estate Kings on TikTok
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events

Brian: I'm Brian Burke.

Griff: And I'm Griff. Just Griff. And this is the eBay For Business Podcast. Your source for the information and inspiration to help you start, manage and grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. This is episode 272 Brian.

Brian: We are getting up there. Yeah.

Griff: In more ways than one.

Brian: I was just thinking 272. You know, that's a, that's an accomplishment, but I have to ask you a question based on our intro.

Griff: What?

Brian: When did you start going by Griff?

Brian: For a period of time in high school.

Brian: Oh, so that far back?

Griff: Yeah. And then I stopped when I, uh, moved to Boston and I wanted to be urbane and considered a gentleman and a scholar. And I told everyone my name was James.

Brian: Oh, not Mr. Griffith.

Griff: No, I was not old enough for that. That wouldn't work. So when I started at eBay as a a buyer seller, I had taken a user id Uncle Griff, then Griff kind of stuck.

Brian: I think it fits you well.

Griff: It's like Madonna, Cher, Griff.

Brian: One name. There aren't a whole lot of people who get away with just one name.

Griff: No there isn't.

Brian: Well, do we have a guest this week?

Griff: We do. Somebody you recommended and we finally got in touch. and boy, am I glad we did, because this guy is fantastic. His name is Brian. He likes to just use his first name. He runs a business on eBay called the Estate Kings, and he's really well known in the social sphere as Kings of eBay. And this was one of my favorite interviews that I've ever done, and I'm hoping you'll listen to it.

Brian: I will definitely listen to it. I've had some great conversations with Brian and he's got a great name too.

Griff: The Kings of eBay.

Brian: No, Brian

Griff: Oh Brian! Yeah. Okay. Sorry.

Brian: Why do you think I recommended him? Get an any kind of Brian on the show we can. No, Brian, he's a super smart guy. I'm sure our listeners will enjoy the interview with him.

Griff: Any big news to report this week?

Brian: No big news.

Griff: Oh, so no big news, but is there any little news?

Brian: Yes. We don't like breaking news this time of year because the last thing sellers need at the moment is anything that might increase stress.

Griff: Yeah, that's true. So what is this little news?

Brian: Well, actually there is, and it's helpful news or helpful information for sellers. Our Vice President Adam Ireland, posted part two of his holiday selling series. It's on the Announcement Board in Community. And although anyone can go and read it for themselves and we encourage you to do so, of course, I wanted to point out two things.

Griff: Okay, What are those two things?

Brian: The first is that the eBay Ads team has added a page to their site. It's called Attract Last Minute Shoppers This Holiday Season. And it's worth checking out even though we're coming up to the last minute shipping deadlines.

Griff: Yeah. Okay, that's great.

Brian: Those are about to come into play, but still, it's never too late to grab buyers by the eyeballs and get them to purchase even up to the last days before December 25th

Griff: Or beyond because lots of shoppers, myself included, started buying for themselves during and after the holiday season is officially over.

Brian: Really good point. Even after December 25th. And the other topic in the post that should be of interest to sellers is the new, What's Hot 2023 slides. These show a few of the hot items that buyers are looking to purchase. The list was completed from actual eBay searching and purchasing data from the last month.

Griff: Yeah, I did see those slides by the way. And I, you know, and it, it sparked me to do something. 'cause I have a new condition, new in the box, never used Blue Yeti microphone that I bought like two years ago for myself and I've never ended up using it. And I saw on this what's Hot 2023 list. It's one of the items that's really hot right now. So when we're off the air, we've done recording, I'm gonna go list it.

Brian: Excellent. And you can find that and more in Adams post, in community.ebay.com under the seller news tab.

Griff: So go check it out. Oh, and Brian, I have an announcement or more to the point a request.

Brian: Really, what is it?

Griff: Well, do you have business goals for 2024? Are you considering different tactics to help you better achieve those goals? Well, we'd love to hear them send your thoughts and plans on the topic to us here at podcast@ebay.com or phone them in at (888)723-4630. And we'll include them in an upcoming episode in early 2024 about setting your goals.

Brian: Griff, do you set goals?

Griff: No.

Brian: So maybe we should challenge ourselves and we'll each have to bring a goal.

Griff: All right, I'll do that. I'll set a goal. Okay, you too. Alright, so that'll be in early January. We're gonna get it in the cam. Oh, and one more thing. Our friend and former colleague Doug Smith, he's the host of the Seller Community podcast that's hosted by List Perfectly. They just released an interview with yours truly! Cool. Yes. Anyway, you can find it on your podcast app of choice by searching on the title The Seller Community podcast. And you should check it out because in the coming months we're going to be promoting lots of other podcasts because as I've said in the past, this is just one hour out of your day at the most. You're weak, you have so much more time to listen and while you're listening and selling and packing and shipping to other podcasts so we want to turn you on to them.

Brian: That's a good idea, Griff. Now finally, Doug can probably reach out to me because he is finally had you on 'cause I'm sure he is been waiting to ask me to be on this podcast until after he got the big kahuna.

Griff: No, that doesn't make any sense. He should have you on at any time. He grabbed me at the Seller Remix.

Brian: Ah, that makes sense.

Griff: And we sat down for a few minutes, so go check it out. And enough about me. What do you think about me? No, it's time now to meet this week's guest.

Griff: My guest this week has been an eBay seller since the age of 14, back in 1997. You do the math today he sells on eBay under the store name The Estate Kings. And he's developed quite an enormous following on TikTok as The Kings of eBay. Welcome Brian. Griff, thank you for having me. I'm so glad that you finally joined us. We've been tracking you down for a while.

Guest - Brian: Well, I'm glad I was able to find the time. Between as many businesses as I own and all the eBay stuff that I do, it's tough to find time. But for eBay, I'll always find time.

Griff: Okay. Wait a minute. How many businesses do you own?

Guest - Brian: Uh, well, uh, , I own an estate sale company. I'm a licensed real estate agent. I'm a licensed auctioneer. I'm a certified personal property appraiser. I do clean outs and business liquidations and I of course have this massive eBay business.

Griff: You're a licensed auctioneer. Do you actually do live auctions?

Guest - Brian: I do, yes.

Griff: So estates, like people come and they get bidding paddles and they sit in the audience and bid?

Guest - Brian: Yep. Uh, between that and even doing, uh, online auctions too. Every every aspect of selling people's property is basically my day-to-Day, every part of my life.

Griff: And you've grown this into a big conglomerate of businesses.

Guest - Brian: All under the head title of The Estate Kings.

Griff: When we talk about The Estate Kings on eBay, how large is that business for you right now?

Guest - Brian: So I don't get into two technical terms, but I do say that it's a six figure a year business, which you can pretty easily confirm. And anyone at any point can go and look through my store. But it's been a six figure business for a very long time. And I've got a good team of people that help me with running it. And it's something that I've taken from when I was 14 and turned it into what it is today as a 40-year-old.

Griff: You were 14 when you started on eBay. What were you doing at 14 that got you interested in selling?

Guest - Brian: So I saw a TV program about this brand new website called eBay. It was one of those I think like channel four exclusives at five o'clock. And it was talking about how everyone's selling all their old stuff and making all their money. And I was like, well, I could use some money. I'm the son of two teachers, so I don't come from any crazy wealth. I didn't grow up in a mansion or anything like that. I'm a suburban kid. I decided at 14 to sell every single thing I owned. And I mean, I have no personal attachment to items. Like, I can't be like, oh, this means so much. Nope, it's an item. It has a value. I've just always felt that way so I sold everything, all everything I had in my room from my Cam Neely signed puck to everything. I ended up finding out that one item in particular. And keep in mind this was back in 97, so I aged myself a little bit, was worth way more money than I could have imagined. And that was CDs. So what I didn't know at the time was there was a huge tariff on CDs going to Europe, but eBay was the workaround. So the dollar bin CDs that we would find at any single store would sell for $18 to $25 a piece over in Europe. Once I sold all my stuff and now I had this big brick of money, I decided to start buying all the dollar bin CDs. And then next thing you know, I started buying out CD stores, radio businesses that were closing all their CDs. I was buying music stores, video game stores, everyone local to me. And as a 15-year-old, you have to understand how weird this is, I couldn't drive. So I'd show, show up with my parents to a store. And for some reason in the late nineties, everyone thought it was a good idea to open up a music store and it would be like grand opening, grand closing. And they would have that going out of business sale. And when I saw those signs, I just did the eBay cha-ching. And I'd go in and I'd walk around and I had what is called "the eye". Now I have the eye for things like that. Other people have the eye for clothing or where you can go around and look at what would be an innumerable amount of items and you can calculate in your head what it's worth. I can do that with estates, which is why I own an estate sale company. And I was, as a kid, able to do that with music stores and video game stores and things like that. So I'd go around and I'd say, okay, I think there's 15, $20,000 worth of stuff here. And I would go up to the front and I would, you know, say to the guy how much, and they'd say, how much for, you know, what are you interested in? I'd go, everything. Hand me the keys, get outta here. I'd take the whole business. And they'd laugh at me. 'cause you know, 14, 15 years old, who the hell are you? But they didn't laugh when I'd pull out the wad of hundred dollar bills outta my pocket, and I put it right down on the table and I would say, how much? And they'd look at my parents and my parents were, Hey, this is his negotiation. Don't look at us. We just drove him here. We're just his driver. So then I would end up buying out those businesses. And, uh, back in the day there was a newspaper called The One Advertiser. And I would call every single video game ad in the One Advertiser. And this was back in the day when you could trust people. And I would send a money order and they would mail me all the video game systems. And I realized that this was a real business. I dedicated myself to eBay as a 14-year-old and all throughout high school, I had very few friends. I didn't do any sports, any extracurricular activities. I literally just did eBay. And by 15 I was making more money than my principal.

Griff: Amazing. Did your principal know you were making more money than him?

Guest - Brian: When I wasn't getting constantly suspended, I did find out that there was one little trick that was, if I was suspended from school, I could just stay home all day and do eBay and watch The Price is Right. So I was constantly suspended from school. Luckily I had great parents who still supported me. But, you know, I was a little bit of a troublemaker back in the day. I've now figured myself out at this point. But, you know, that's really what my whole life was. And weirdly enough, at 14 I started doing eBay and I'm still doing it to this day. I had an over a decade long career in sales, sales leadership, but I still did eBay on the side. My brother Adam, he started DJ-ing when he was 14. And now he as you someone who's two years older than me has a very large DJ entertainment company. So weirdly enough, my parents were able to say that their two kids at 14, what they were doing at 14, they're still doing to this dayYou know, you're a rare breed. You do know this, right?

Guest - Brian: I've tried to tell my story so many times and I have on, on social media, and I didn't realize just how kind of weird it was that I just knew always kind of innately knew what I was supposed to do because no one in my family did this. I hear stories all the time of people that go, my father was an auctioneer and my uncle would take me to yard sales. And I don't have anyone in my family that did this whatsoever. I didn't have mentors. I just figured it out. And I found things along the way of people that kind like became mentors to me. Weird enough, I like antique medical and I've always collected antique medical. I would go to auctions where they'd have a doctor's bag, old medical tools, and everyone would be like, oh this is so gross. And I'd buy it for $20 and I'd end up piecing it out into getting a thousand. So I started to really like it. I like the aesthetic, all of that. And a TV show came out called Oddities. And there's a guy, Mike Zohn who is the host of the show, Obscure Antiques. And it was a TV show of a guy selling oddity stuff that I've been buying. He remotely kind of became like a mentor to me from watching the show. Weirdly enough now I can say that he is a close friend. He's somebody that I've met many times up at Brimfield, Massachusetts for The Brimfield Show. And he, he's somebody that we've spoken on the phone many times and someone that I thought of as a mentor for on TV as a friend. Weirdly enough, I grew up with Pawn Stars and I grew up with American Pickers and both shows, this is the first time I've ever said this on anything, but I'm gonna break this to you. Both shows over the course of the last year have interviewed me and about coming to my home to have the stars of the show, see my collection, and to have me on both shows. Now, it didn't end up coming through, but they did all the due diligence and all the work where there was at least a chance that Mike from American Pickers and the entire Pawn Stars crew was gonna be able to come to my house for Pawn Stars Do America.

Griff: It could still happen.

Guest - Brian: Could still happen in the future. It didn't happen this go round. But the fact that I was in talks with their producers and that I was even under consideration thinking I'd like to go back to myself as a 14-year-old and be able to say like that actually something that happened. And like, I'm talking to Griff. I don't know how many people truly view you as a celebrity. I am one of those people that do. And I'll tell you why, because very few people that I've ever met in my life have more years of experience with eBay or have the knowledge base with eBay that you do. So I just wanna say on behalf of all of those other people that don't have the opportunity to speak to you, thank you for everything that you have done for eBay throughout all the years and all the dedication that you've put into the site and to all of us sellers, because we really do look up to you.

Griff: Well. Thank you Brian. Thanks for joining us for this segment. We'll be back next year with . No, I'm kidding. Well that's very kind of you. As I always say though, rely on an enormous body of experts within the company who know the products better than I do. I thank the universe that we have that connection because I think it's helpful. The vast majority of people at the age of 14 are not sure what it is they want to do. And they'll slog through school, get their education, maybe go off to college. A lot of those people do find something that kind of fulfills their bliss and they say yes, this is what I'm supposed to do. But you know, I, the real successful people that I've met in my life, if you ask them about their early years, they'll say, yeah, I knew somehow innately when I was a teenager or even younger that this is what I'm meant to do and nothing is gonna stop me from doing it. And it's not that I was strong-headed or strong-willed. It just, this was the existence I lived. I couldn't, there was no other existence. I have a sense that's what happened to you at 14, do you think?

Guest - Brian: Yeah, and so my favorite thing in the world to do is sales, I'm a bum. I don't like to use this term for most things. I'm a born salesman. I can sell anything to anyone. At every company I've ever worked for I had the largest sale in the history of that company for whatever division I worked for. I have led sales teams. I just, I've always loved it. But my favorite part of sales is the negotiation. The reason why that I'm not still in sales is because I hated all of the kind of corporate nonsense for working for some of those companies and some of the politics of it, but also the paperwork. I always dreamt of a company that would just say, Hey Brian, you love sales and negotiation, you're really good at it. How would you like to just sell all day and someone else would take care of all the paperwork nonsense? It ended up being 95% paperwork, 5% negotiation. And I realized within an estate sale, every 30 seconds is a new negotiation. You gotta be really good at it or your company is gonna fail. So like, if I lost my voice, I'd be screwed, but that's what it is. Negotiations every 30 seconds in an estate sale. And I just love it! And to me it's like, I know I'm never gonna win a Super Bowl. I'm not an athletic person. But if anyone had the ability where they needed someone to negotiate on their behalf for whatever, I have always have felt that I would be that guy that you would want to choose. And that's how I've lived my life, is I love negotiating. And I do it on live streams. I do it all the time with going to flea markets and things. And I'm a brutal negotiator. I under no way, shape or form do I hide that. I am absolutely relentless and brutal, but it's my style, it's my negotiation, tactic. That is how I do it. I don't recommend it for everybody, but I love it. And I think that's the part that has kind of been the glue for everything that I do.

Griff: Now. You mentioned estate sales and your voice, how important it is. I spent years in the antique business going to auctions. I was always so amazed by the auctioneer pattern. Every auctioneer has their own rhythm. Do you have your own rhythm when you're in an doing an auction?

Guest - Brian: I do. I have found that for me, I've always been able to talk quickly. And I think I always liked being in front of the class and always liked giving speeches that there's the old saying that half the people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. To me, it was never a consideration. I'd give any speech, anything. I'm, I'm more comfortable in front of 25,000 people than in front of two. I like being on stage. I like that attention. I like giving speeches. So I feel that being an auctioneer and getting in front of everybody, I just enjoy it. I like it. There's certain people that shy away from that. It's just never been my personality. I don't hide it. I mean, there's a lot of people that just, they wanna hide that that's a part of their personality. It's never been a part of mine. I've never been, like I have no fear of public speaking. Neither did my father, neither does my brother who owns a DJ and entertainment company, And even my son, my son is six years old. Maximilian. And he will, will get up and dance in front of everybody and talk and do all these things and tell these amazing stories. So it, maybe it's just, I do believe that there's certain people in their blood that they just have a certain something. So maybe that's what it is.

Griff: I'm always interested in how an auctioneer's pattern goes. Would you give us an example of your auction style?

Guest - Brian: Sure. I, so it's, I normally don't do it unless I'm getting paid. But for you, Griff, no problem. So there's, there's a few, I'll give you even a couple tricks. Okay. One thing a lot of people like to do is Woody. So it's the word woody, W-O-O-D-Y. Woody give 5, 5, 5. Would you give 10? Okay, I got 20, 20, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60. What do you give Woody? You give 70, woody give 70, 75,77?. And then you just, you know, kind of keep going. So there's a couple kind of key words that will help you as you do, like the auctioneer pattern. Now keep in mind, I actually, this is true. Went to auctioneer school. I'm a graduate of Continental Auctioneer School. So, I have my certificate and in Massachusetts you have to go through the ringer in order to be a licensed auctioneer. Some states you can just be an auctioneer, you don't have to do anything. Massachusetts shouldn't be a huge shock. There's a lot of stuff that you have to go through to be bonded and all these things. So, uh, I had to go to auctioneer school and I, and I did and, and proud graduate of Continental Auction School. I don't know what their mascot is, but Go auctioneers! . But yes, they taught me a lot and I've, um, I've enjoyed doing it. I mean it's just, it's another thing to add to my repertoire where I've built a company where it's different than all other estate sale companies because you can literally, you get an estate, you can hand me the keys and I'll sell everything in the house, organize, photo, all of it. Then I have the clean out company to then clean out everything in the estate. I have a cleaning company that I work exclusively with that will literally clean the house. I'll photo, and then I will actually, because I am a real estate agent, I will also then sell the house. We do, I guess the old term is soup to nuts. We do literally everything. We tell people, if you got an estate, we call it the white glove service, you hand us the keys, sign the contracts, and you're all set. The end of the day you just get a very large check.

Griff: Where were you last year when I sold my house in San Jose? In the Venn diagram or the pie graph of your businesses, how big a piece of eBay is that?

Guest - Brian: It's a big piece that by itself is its six figure business. It's now branched off into other things as part of it because there's things that I can't sell on eBay, so I have to liquidate that other places that I won't discuss. But the eBay business is the driver that is behind everything else because that's what started. And as my estate sale business gets bigger, what ends up happening is you get hired and then you have to do a clean out. So when I do a clean out for a place, everything gets put to the landfill. It's my eyes and my vision, not just for me, but I get a text from all these other clean out companies and junk removal companies of photos and I mean daily where they go, is this worth anything? Is this worth anything? And that's where being a personal property appraiser and a very well-known buyer of antiques in New England, where people will then send to me, go, okay, you want it? I'm like, yeah. I, as of this moment of this taping, have over 3000 items that need to be sold on eBay that have yet to be listed. Keep in mind, I just went to an estate a couple days ago that it was a guy whose family was a distributor for movies. The house was full of signed autographs and movie memorabilia and all that stuff. And some of it my company is consigning to put to auction. But there was a ton of stuff that I said to him, it was perfect for eBay. And I took home a literal carload of about three to 400 items that filled my car up that now is sitting about five feet from me right now where I need to list all of these things on top of the other 3000 things that have been picked up over the last few months. So it never ends.

Griff: Do you list these yourself or do you have a crew that helps?

Guest - Brian: I have a team in place, but I do a lot of the listings myself. I pack three to 4,000 items a year and I do all the packing. I don't know what it is about not being able to delegate that aspect, but I'm just so good at, at packing boxes and doing this that I just am not ready to delegate that. But I had to delegate listings because there's no way, I could have five lifetimes to be able to do this. So I have a good team in place of people.

Griff: We're both from Massachusetts. Before we went on the air, we were talking a little bit about the idea of discounting and I was taking a look at how you operate and said, Hey, you're using the Filene's Basement method of discounting. Can you talk a little bit about how that works?

Guest - Brian: Very rarely when it comes to eBay can say that there's something that I am probably the only person that does it and I created a system. But this is one of those times that I can, I believe that this system of what I created for store discounts is single-handedly the way I'm able to do six figures every year on eBay and I've done YouTube videos on it and stuff. I've put the secret out there and it's just a lot of people who are so stuck in their ways not willing to change that. I'm willing to share this to maybe get people to change. If you have an eBay store, and by the way, if you don't have an eBay store, they're like eight bucks. Get one. Brand it, come up with a cool name, like share it with your friends and family. Like don't just do one-off listings, like invest in this. I know there are people who have like 2000 listings and don't have an eBay store. I'm like what are you doing? First and foremost, get an eBay store, okay, for your store categories in your eBay store, a lot of people do things like pants or you know, CDs or just like random nonsense. Now the problem when you do that is if you bought a pair of pants 18 months ago and you bought a pair of pants today and you list them both, once you put 'em in that store category, you can't really discount correctly. It's a nightmare. I mean can you do it? Sure you can go back and look at when things were listed. It's not a fun journey. Whereas if everything is in the same store category, you can discount super fast. This is a long-term play, but the sooner you start it, the better everything that you have, get rid of all your categories, have everything put in one category called New. That means you just listed it. Okay, all my categories are new, 5% off, 10% off, 20% off, 30% off, 40% off, 50% off, 60% off, 70% off, 80% off. Those are all my categories. I do 45 day discounts. So let's say my discount started today. Take everything in your store, get rid of the categories called pants and electronics and get rid all that. Put everything in one category, 5% off discount, all of that. Now today when you start listing stuff, put it in the category New. 45 days from now. Everything in 5% off goes to 10% off. Everything in new goes into 5% off. Then 45 days from that, everything in 10% off goes to 20% off and so on until, and here's the best part, you are going to have items that are going to end up in 80% off and still available. Okay? I had a leather jacket that I bought for $20 at a flea market that I knew for a fact was a hundred dollars jacket all day on eBay. Well it went to my 80% off . It was now $20 for me to try to get and it didn't sell. I realized very quickly I pulled it off of eBay and liquidate stuff. That's the other thing that a lot of people don't do is I go through after this 45 day discount, I call it eBay discount day, right before eBay discount day hits. I go through my store and I cancel between 60 and a hundred items because I mean I have a pretty big store for you of other people. It may be 20 items, maybe 10 items, but go through and every single item that you believe that you are gonna make less than like $5 on or it isn't gonna sell, it's not worth the risk. The risk of a return, the risk of it breaking, it's just your time is also valuable. So you could be spending time on items that are worth 50 to a hundred dollars as opposed to things that you're only gonna make five to $10 on. I'd rather pull those items off eBay, liquidate it and then worry about new stuff and have a less of a footprint. 'cause I have a limited amount of space for where I can list everything. You know, I list everything from my home. I have a very large office where I have, I don't know, a hundred thousand items currently sitting in here. Like some crazy number with doubles and things like that. I have a crazy amount of inventory but it's not unlimited. And if someone calls me tomorrow and says, Hey Brian, I have an entire house of collectibles, do you want it? I have to have the ability to say yes. Like I just bought out a laboratory that closed and my living room is currently just boxes of brand new lab equipment. My whole living room. It's taken over my whole house at this point. But I have to have the room to do that and I can't do it. If I have a shirt that's that I have on eBay for $13 with free shipping, that's not gonna sell. Like I don't have time for that. Pull it, liquidate it. That's my method. And I can teach people exactly how to do it. If you want me to, it's very quick if you want me to do that.

Griff: Sure, I mean I'd love to hear it.

Guest - Brian: You go to my eBay, then you go to marketing and then hover over that, go to promotions, then do create a promotion sale event and markdown you can choose 5%. And of course before you do all this, put a chain go to categories. You have to put everything into the right category, create your categories. So that's a different conversation. But then you can select your items and you can choose up to 1500 items for the promotion. And then I do 45 days 'cause that's the maximum amount that they'll let you do. I have it start immediately and end at 11:30 at night. And then when I wake up the next morning, I start it all over again. So if it's December 1st and that's when eBay day, the discount day ends December 2nd is eBay discount day. I re discount everything for another 45 days. And I've been doing that for 10 years.

Griff: In your eBay store where you have these categories that are basically the discount percentage that's off, you use the bulk editor to move those items from one category to the other?

Guest - Brian: I do that in the store category section of eBay where I can check mark all of them and then go in and it just bulk edits to changing the store category from 10% off to 20% off.

Griff: You don't know this, but I've been taking notes. Thanks very much for this information, Brian. I'm a big believer in discounting, but admittedly eBay could make it easier to do this. One question though, it sounds like your house is kind of overrun with your business.

Guest - Brian: One of the smartest decisions I ever made was right before Covid, I got divorced. In that divorce, I made sure to make sure I got this home because I built my whole business. I built and finished my basement to be an eBay place. Like I built my home for this business. Once her and all of her stuff left and I had the ability to do literally whatever I wanted with my home. I didn't want to have my home get overrun, just my office. So my office quickly got overrun, then you wouldn't know if you didn't go into my, into my basement, you had no idea like, people come downstairs because I don't even wanna say collect, I've kind of gathered a ton of just cool stuff, which is why like American Pickers and like Pawn Stars were interested in coming into my home because it's literally packed for just 20 plus years of just cool stuff that I found. You'd see little pieces of that throughout the rest of my house on my best pieces. But then when you come downstairs, it's just autographed city of everybody and like cool little placards of stuff from like the 18 hundreds and just craziness. So now unfortunately I was given two options, fill up my living room with brand new lab equipment or get a storage unit. Well, I'm also quite thrifty in the sense that I didn't want to spend the money for that. It all got listed quickly on eBay and I'm hoping within the next three months it's all sold. But we'll see.

Griff: I had no idea that you were divorced. Sorry to hear that. I'm sure it's working out.

Guest - Brian: Don't be. I'm very happy. It was the, it was the best six figures I ever spent in my entire life.

Griff: If the podcast was a different type of podcast, we could delve into that. But, you may have heard this in your experience of talking with hundreds of sellers or thousands of sellers that this is always a bone of contention for sellers that are growing and they don't want to expand into an actual workspace dedicated to their business and their family. Their spouse gets overwhelmed with, Hey, you know, I'm trying to live in a house and there's inventory everywhere including the bathroom. And that can be a real bone of contention.

Guest - Brian: Best advice I can give those people is find somebody that truly likes your business. My ex hated what I did for a living , she did not like this. For me as a now single man, I'm looking for, you know, to find the right girl. One of the big things on there is someone who actually enjoys eBay and likes what I do for a living. Like as I'm, you know, trying to navigate and date in life, I've tried to explain what I do for a living and sometimes I get blank stares of I don't understand. And other times, you know, it's, it's people that are like, oh, that makes sense. Oh do you get vintage clothes? And I'm like, yeah, I've got racks and boxes full of all this, Dior and Ferragamo and Chanel like, oh, you do! So depending on if you just connect with someone on the right wavelength it, opens up. But my dream, my absolute, my number one dream in life is to find a partner for my business, like lifelong partner that wants to do this with me and run all my businesses with me. And there's no expense that I wouldn't pay to try to find that person. The most important thing in my life would be to finding that person and all those people listening to us that do reselling for the ones I see them on social media that are husband and wife duos, I have never been more envious of anyone in my life than somebody who's got a partner with them that is doing this full-time. I am so jealous. Like I don't usually have a jealousy of people. Like that is something I have no problem admitting is my like, number one thing that I am super jealous of. Any of those people that have that.

Griff: Well, welcome to Dr. Griff's Love line. Let's see what we can do to get Brian the mate that he's been dreaming for all his life. If you think you'd make a good candidate? Why not call us at...No, no, I'm kidding. We can't do that. But how has TikTok changed your business?

Guest - Brian: I started with YouTube and I started doing some long forms and it just didn't go anywhere. And I spent a fortune, I had an animated intro done. Like I, the amount of money I spent was nuts. And then I went to Instagram and I saw this, guy who was, I'm not gonna say names or anything, he was, he had been doing eBay for like two years and made a bunch of money quickly and he was selling courses. And I'm like, like, you've been doing this for two years and like, and you're selling courses. And he was selling them and they weren't cheap and it really like angered me. So I started doing some videos on Instagram, like of teaching people for free how to do this. I'm so against like the course stuff. The next thing I know, there was a guy, uh, locally who was big on TikTok. He had like 70,000 followers at that point, I think now he's said like, two or 300,000. He said to me, he's like, Hey, you know, you're in such a like a niche thing. Like, do you know there's a lot of people who do what you're doing on TikTok? It was like three plus years ago. I'm like, no. I'm like, I never used TikTok. And then I got on there and I just started talking. I did videos where I just, I cut through all the BS and I just was very honest about how to do this business and tricks and all that stuff. And the next thing I know, the first week I was on there, I gained 3,500 followers. And I'm like, what is this? This is crazy. I didn't know that was anything cool. And like within a month I had over 5,000 and it was just nuts. And I started talking to all these people, people locally. The first person that I ever like really reached out to me was a guy named Mike Lorenzo, who's Lorenzo Family Deals. And he reached out to me, said, Hey, I live in Massachusetts too, and my wife and I, this is what we do. We work, do eBay and all these things and we're resellers. Really close to me. There's people near me that do this. Come to find out globally. And then I had built that account up to, uh, 26,000 something followers. It's now been one year. And now I'm at I think almost 34,000 followers. I don't think of these people as like friends or other resellers like you. You really do think of these people like family. And a lot of people when they think reselling in the reselling community, at least in the eyes so far of eBay, it's YouTube and it's Instagram and maybe Facebook comes in a little bit and TikTok is like the little stepchild that people don't think about, but the community on TikTok, and I'm with all those communities. I'm a part of all of 'em. I'm Kings Of eBay on all of them. The TikTok community is the strongest. It's the best. The people on there are so kind and considerate and friendly and knowledgeable. Listen, I know a lot about a lot. There's a lot of stuff I don't know. And I learned stuff constantly from people. Their knowledge base and like I'll go on lives. I'll do lives from the flea markets and I mean, I get to the flea market five o'clock in the morning and I'm there till nine o'clock in the morning. I mean, listen, I, I live this life. I'm a hustler in every sense of the word. I don't just talk about this stuff. I do it. Like I am in hoarder houses live. I do all this stuff. Like I, I get my hands dirty. Like this is my life. There's some people who talk about, you know, a show like extravagance and all these things and this course, it's like a rented Airbnb or whatever. I've proven that this is what I do and this is who I am. And I think that's why I have such a loyal following of people because they have seen that I'm not all talk like, so I'll have 2000 plus people watching me at the flea market. That's 2000 sets of eyes that notice things that I don't. Like there's a painting. I don't buy paintings, I don't know artwork. You know you can't know everything. I'm showing as I'm walking by this guy's vehicle that has paint paintings all aside it, people are freaking out about a painting, okay? And they're like, go back! Go Back, go back! I show the painting and it was a painting I ended up buying for $50 that apparently was worth well over a thousand dollars. I have it on eBay currently for like 1400 bucks. I would have never in a million years bought this painting except for the fact that 90 people in that live were just virtually, like writing all bold capitals. Go back to the painting, the little girl with the pigtail painting. Go back, show the back, show this... And I'm telling you I bought it 'cause of them I'm gonna end up making a thousand dollars on that painting because of those people.

Griff: Okay, I'm looking at it now. . I found it it pretty quickly. Oh yeah, I see this. Yeah, I wouldn't have known this offhand too, but I guess it is valuable.

Guest - Brian: Crazy right? But it's not just that it's so many other things that I just don't know enough about that. Now are they always correct? No, there's many times where it ends up being that I buy something for $10 that people go crazy about that I can't even get my money back on. But more times than not I'm willing to take that dart throw because people are right.

Griff: So you mentioned that you consider your TikTok community family. I think that's fantastic. Are there specific family members that you just really focus on?

Guest - Brian: Okay, I'm gonna try to do this off the top of my head. I have a feeling I'm probably gonna forget some names, but if you're listening to this, these are people on TikTok that are resellers that I like. Okay, I'm try to do my auctioneer voice. You ready? Dang Varmet, Thrifter Sifter, Thrifting Treasure, American Arbitrage, Lady Arbitrage, Lorenzo Family Deals. Julia Finds, Dumpster Diving Mama, Kiwi Shop, Sunrise Listings, Broker Bid, Line Creek Boutique, Surfs Up Finds, Reseller Madness. Lola Misbehaving ,Trisha's Trove Treasures, Fusion Mall, Bold North Flips, Downtown Antiques, Obscure Antiques, Wagon Trailer Adventures, Buried Treasure, Tropical Flipper, JT Entertained, Shop SBH. Brandon Young, Kitschy Mushroom, Grab It Fast, Beaded Thrifter, The Money Badger, Celeste Palate, Retro Toy Envy, Scott Way. The National Flippers, Mexican Picker, Chrissa Peak, Drake and Profit, Delmar Picker ,Flip Tips and Big Apple Pick.

Griff: Alright, I'm out of breath. . It was amazing. Well you heard it here first and hopefully are there any of those family members that could be a future partner?

Guest - Brian: No. Maybe Kway. Maybe Kway. Yeah.

Brian: I don't think you could do better. You could do worse. . Brian, thank you so much. I've enjoyed talking to you. We should keep in touch.

Guest - Brian: Absolutely. I truly honestly, uh, appreciate just being able to speak with you. It's been truly an honor as someone who lives breathes and and eats eBay. This is my whole life and it's been my whole life for 26 years. That's truly an honor. Thank you sir.

Griff: And my guest this week has been Brian who runs The Estate Kings. We're gonna put his link to his eBay store up on the show notes for this episode 272. We'll also put a link to his TikTok so that you can follow him. Thanks again Brian.

Guest - Brian: Thank you.

Brian: You got questions?

Griff: We got answers. And Brian, we just have one question this week, but it's a good one and it gives us an opportunity to talk about the options the seller has for improving their item photos.

Brian: A perennially popular topic.

Griff: Indeed it is and it's one of my favorites and I think you know that. So would you do the honors of reading the email?

Brian: Of course. This is from Seller Shannon. She mailed it to podcast@ebay.com. Hello Brian and Griff, I know you are desperate for something to add to your, we got question segments of the show.

Griff: Well I wouldn't say desperate, eager perhaps but anyway.

Brian: Well sometimes we're desperate.

Griff: Does it show?

Brian: So thanks Shannon. Anyway, this one has been bothering me for a while. Sometime ago there was a change made to the background removal tool on the mobile app. You used to be able to crop a photo and select background removal and instead of giving you basically a yes or no, does this photo look okay option like it does now. It used to let you Zoom in and out and erase or un erase sections that the automatic tool may have messed up on. Now you have just the one option to make the background white and if it omits something in the photo, you're out of luck. Any chance the old version is making a comeback or the option to erase or RA will be added to the current version. Thank you. A quick addition as well, any chance you'll be making an upcoming episode on new mobile features? I know last week's episode was mostly about web-based features and additions, but I wonder am I the only one who primarily does 90% of their eBay business on my mobile device only? I do a hundred percent of my listings through my device and I leave the sales I run shipping for on my computer. Thanks again Shannon. And that's Shaza Collectibles. That's a good question and good point. Let's tackle Shannon's second question slash request about new mobile features. First, it's an excellent idea for an episode topic. Can you make that happen Griff?

Griff: Well you know I can Brian. Shannon, thank you for that suggestion. You can look for an episode in early 2024 once we've lined up a mobile team guest. Now I'm chomping it a bit to get to your first question. I took a look at your listing Shannon and I immediately saw the issue. A little background about the background removal tool. Most of you know it was recently upgraded to remove the need for sellers to do cleanup and editing. And the new tool works really well. It's all based on machine learning that the tool has undergone since its implementation. And I can attest to that 'cause I've been trying it out on my photos and it works. But there is a caveat. Your photos need to be taken on a background that is not busy, no patterns, no other objects in the image, nothing busy to interfere with the algorithms assessment and cleanup of the photo background. So the, the best practices that we've been talking about for years now about a plain preferably white but not necessarily white background with nothing else is gonna be important. Your current background, Shannon, you're using in all your photos this, it looks to me like it's a thickly woven rug and it has a distinct pattern in it and that's what is making it difficult for the background removal algorithm to get it right. So if you change this out for a plain white background, it could be a white sheet, white paper is best. But if you just change that out, you'll see a definite improvement. And you want to also make sure you don't include any background of the room in the photos and some of your photos I can see the rest of the room. Now a large light box would help. These are the self-contained light cubes that thousands of sellers use to take really clear photos of their inventory. There are various sizes and types and after lots of trial and error and testing on my part, my favorites are those that have self-contained lighting on the top. And if possible on the sides, don't get one of those that they have those little light fixtures on tripods that you point at the side of the box. Those are, look, I'm just gonna be kind. They're really less than ideal. Now I have two, I have a three foot square one that I use for larger items and I have a smaller 16 inch cube version that I use for smaller things like bottles of fragrance and small objects. The smaller one fits right on the end of my work desk and my office space here in my home. Now I will recommend this brand 'cause it's easy to find. It's a brand called PuLuz. It's P-U-L-U-Z and the size is 16 by 16 by 16 inches. And what I love about this one, what what works really well is it has self-contained full diffused lighting sources that are on the sides of the top of the box. It's great. I love this device. Now search eBay on P-U-L-U-Z 16 inches and you'll find several examples from different sellers. Unfortunately the largest size they make is 16 inch and that isn't large enough for some of the items and I have this big one that's like, I think it's 32. Yeah, three feet maybe.

Brian: Yeah, that's what I have. I I don't know if mine's three. Oh maybe it is.

Griff: They come in various sizes,

Brian: Mine might be 24 by 24 by 24.

Griff: That's big enough for a lot of purposes.

Brian: Except for clothing items. Like any other thing that I've ever listed, I've been able to put it in. But mine only, it's interesting you talked about lighting on the sides. Mine only has like the lighting on top and there are some times, and I bet this is what the lighting on the side does. There are some times when I take a picture there becomes like a little bit of a shadow and I always try and get rid of the shadow and then you know, it's tough. I bet that lighting on the side eliminates that.

Griff: It helps a lot. I wish somebody would make a, at minimum two foot cube light box that had lighting on the side. Full lighting, this isn't just a few LED bars, this is full lighting on the side and then one on the top. And additionally there should be a little bit on the front focusing in that would be the perfect light cube. So somebody has yet to actually design it.

Brian: Ah, maybe, maybe you should.

Griff: Now there's an idea post-retirement. And otherwise if you don't want to go the light cube, I'd recommend just get a large sheet of white photo paper or packing paper or anything and just use that in good diffused light. You actually may find that with the right background and lighting Shannon, you won't need to use the removal tool at all. But by providing a plain background with good lighting, the current removal tool will do its job as well. And one more point, the reason that it was enhanced this way is, like I said, the learnings now allow for it. It's not really an effective tool if the seller has to then start using the editor to erase parts and redo it over and over. It's actually a really big time sink. So though you may have gotten used to using it, there are more effective ways of getting that clean background than relying on the old tool and then having to go through and erase this piece. I hated that. I never used the tool because I found that to be really annoying and it didn't always come out right.

Brian: Right. Because you did have to like, as Shannon mentioned in in her note to us, like you had to zoom in to really be able to hit the edge.

Griff: It was a pain in the neck.

Brian: You brought up one other point that I think should be reinforced. When you take a photo, make sure that you get in as close as you can to the item and get rid of as much background stuff as you possibly can because you're gonna edit that stuff out anyway. So why even include it in your original photo?

Griff: I saw a listing this week where somebody's using a light box, excellent, but they stood way back and the photo of the item includes the entire light box. And I'm thinking, no, no, no, no. And you know what it is, people don't trust their eyes. So for whatever reason, maybe they've been told they don't have a good eye or they're not good at composing and they just don't know that simple trick that you can use your phone or your camera, preferably your phone now to actually move in or out to crop as much of the item so it fills in the picture, otherwise cropping afterwards. You do this correctly and you're gonna get really clear photos. You're gonna eliminate a lot of the post image taking editing that you should be doing to make it ideal. This would be a seller who just took the picture and said, you know what? I'm not a photographer. This is will have to do. I'm gonna have to settle for this. You got to Zoom into the item. It'll be a lot better.

Brian: Well, do you have an item photo question or any question about selling on eBay or growing your business on eBay? Why not call us on (888) 723-4630.

Griff: That's (888) 723-4630. You can call that number at your convenience and leave a question or comment and who knows, we might just put you on the air.

Brian: And if you're not a call on the phone person, you can email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: And now it's time for your three point podcast checklist.

Brian: Check out the Holiday Announcement from Adam at ebay.com/announcements and check it out for UpToDate Seller News every day.

Griff: Number two, do you have selling goals for 2024 and maybe a few tactics you're going to test to help you reach those goals? Why not share them with your fellow sellers via podcast@ebay.com or (888) 723-4630.

Brian: And finally, do you need to review anything in this episode? It's easy. Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we reference during the episode.

Griff: And on our next episode, Brian, we'll visit with the seller advocates from the selling team, Jonathan Chard and Chuck VanPelt. They're gonna be here with us with a look back on all the seller tool improvements and releases for 2023.

Brian: That sounds like an interesting show. We'd like to again, thank our guest this week, Brian, with The Estate Kings.

Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

lola_finds · ‎12-12-2023

Eeek thanks for the shoutout! Can’t believe we got to hear the auctioneer voice!!! Great podcast!

dascontent.media · ‎12-12-2023

Thank you Griff and Brian for the shoutout!

If you'd like to hear my interview with Griff on The Seller Community podcast, and a fun chat here's the link: https://thesellercommunitypodcast.com/season-3-episode-48-a-chat-with-griff-from-ebay/

Thanks!