Shooting your shot: Lauren Villarreal on the entrepreneurial mindset

[griff@ebay.com]

Lauren Villarreal of Round Two Avenue flexed her entrepreneurial muscles from a young age by selling lemonade, cleaning services, and handmade dolls. Eventually, she found an outlet for her talents on eBay and became a full-time seller. Join us this week to hear about her training as an appraiser, setting up an LLC, and how the eBay Up and Running Grant helped her grow her business.
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Georgea: Every seller has a story. I'm Georgia Mpampanis and welcome to our newest episode of the eBay Seller Spotlight podcast where each month we spotlight sellers with a story to share with us. Our guest. This episode was an entrepreneur since she was eight years old. Since taking off with her eBay business, she has been able to move from a room in her apartment to a rented office space and now a large storage shed. Welcome Lauren Villarreal.

Lauren: Thank you for having me, Georgea. Happy to be here.

Georgea: Lauren, tell us about yourself.

Lauren: So my name's Lauren Villarreal. I'm a reseller stage manager and personal property appraiser. I own and operate Round Two Avenue and we specialize in tableware, jewelry, paper, ephemera, clothing and collectibles.

Georgea: When did you start selling?

Lauren: So I started selling around 2013, but I really started with two tubs of ice cream and a ukulele sometime around 2011. I was 14 and it was Facebook. Marketplace wasn't released yet. It was when the groups of buy sell trades were just starting to be released and I was home alone with a cell phone at my disposal. So I posted a toy ukulele on and was trying to see if anyone would trade me for a tub of ice cream. A woman took me up on the trade and she brought me two of them 'cause I was just so cute and when my mom came home she asked me where I got the ice cream and I was so elated that I made this trade and she was so annoyed that I totally went around stranger danger, but I found that I could make money or make trades on the internet. That's where my sort of bartering came to be. Anyways, I started developing, reselling on another platform in high school and then I leaned into eBay in 2018 and I went full-time in 2020.

Georgea: What else did you sell? Is there anything big that memorable to you?

Lauren: Yeah, so I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I always was doing lemonade stands or art shows. When I was eight, I developed my first business plan with business cards and everything. I got a vacuum for my birthday and I was gonna clean houses. But when I was 15 I developed It Dolls By Lauren. There's probably 200 or 300 of these guys in existence. They were these rag dolls that had yarn hair and all different clothing and they were all 100% unique. So I would show up to school with paper bags full of cloth cutouts and raggedy hair and button eyes and I would develop these sweatshops in the back of French class and I would have these like high school boys helping me sew button eyes together and flipping limbs in out. I hardly knew any French, but what I did develop about cost benefit analysis and overhead and all of these business skills that I learned was in sophomore year. I was learning so much about making and listing and marketing and shipping all these dolls. I wanted something that was easier to do. So I realized that with reselling there was already an item that had a market so I could just take these items and resell them and that's kind of how I developed my reselling bug.

Georgea: Tell me where this entrepreneur spirit came from.

Lauren: I am from a family of entrepreneurs. Several people owned businesses. Both of my parents were actually eBay sellers and enthusiastic buyers before I was around on the platform. So it was a household name. My mom would buy and sell Stamp and Up stamps and my dad sold eBay on a side hustle before we even called it a hustle. I've also never been afraid to sell or send an email. I've gotten really cool opportunities in theater and that's actually how I developed getting into the eBay grant. I was on eBay one day and I had this banner pop up that said something along the lines of how would you like $10,000? And I said $10,000 would be really nice. So I spent 45 minutes filling out the five or six questions. It really wasn't hard. It was really just sat down and did it and six months later I got a bizarre email from somebody at eBay and here we are.

Georgea: And here you are. So your parents both had their own eBay business. What did they sell? Are they still selling on eBay?

Lauren: I wouldn't call it a business necessarily. I think my dad leaned more towards it than my mom did. But my mom was definitely casually if she had like a double of something then she'd sell it or she was more of a buyer than a seller.

Georgea: Were you helping them at all as a kid?

Lauren: There was one conversation in particular. I remember being, I had to have been in third grade because of the house that we were living in that dad had all of these inner tubes like weird, literally fill 'em up with inner tubes and he is like, if you wanna help me sell these, I'll split the money with you. That never went anywhere, but I think that was my first exposure to eBay that I was like, oh you can sell things on this thing. So I had to have been like eight or nine. And I would like to think they did help you.

Lauren: Yeah, but it was like it was dad was gonna do everything on his site and I was gonna like pack and tape boxes, you know what I mean?

Georgea: Fair enough. And here you are today, you're owning your own eBay business and you're killing it.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Georgea: You were able to upgrade your storage. So tell me a little bit more about that and anything else you were able to do with your eBay funds.

Lauren: When I was a sole proprietor, I developed a sole proprietor in 2018 and I developed my LLC in 2020. There was no covid relief because I developed that LLC in COVID 2020, but I was able to get a regular SBA loan in 2020. So a portion of that eBay funds went to paying off the SBA loan. We also made some inventory organization and some listing improvements and inventory improvements with the eBay funds. One of the main things that you can see when you look at my store is we went from having this one headless mannequin to two male and female dress forms. And previous to that I had no male mannequin so I would just turn the female mannequin backwards and pretend like that was my male mannequin and just shoot really creatively. I won't say it's a best practice, but it does kind of work if you're in a pinch. I've tried to think about going back and fixing some of those, but one of the growth advisors that I worked with at eBay suggested that I just move forward and list new items rather than going back and making old listings look better because I'm really working on listing a store rather than creating a museum.

Georgea: And that's where the entrepreneur spirit comes in. You have to get crafty.

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. It worked. It was better than a flat light. Like everything else that I had in my store was mannequin. So It would be weird if I had mannequins and flat lays.

Georgea: Okay. And you have a lot of listings. Tell me where you source your listings from.

Lauren: I do auctions, I do um, thrift stores, I do yard sales, I do sort of anywhere that I can get stuff from and now it's kind of a point of word of mouth that I'll have people contact me and go, Hey, I have X, Y, and Z. And I'll be like, okay, let me take a look. Or I'll refer them to other people in the community that I think can do better with the stuff that they have.

Georgea: So you have your eBay business. Is this your full-time job? You have anything else happening on the side?

Lauren: So on top of eBay, I'm also a stage manager. I'm a proud member of the Actors Equity Association, which is the union for actors and stage managers in live theater. I'm also a personal property appraiser and I operate Sunburst Appraisals.

Georgea: Sorry, I'm totally gonna cut you off and ask you more about the theater thing.

Lauren: First with theater, I have a BFA in theater stage management and I started working in theater and then the 2020 pandemic hit and I had a pivot and that's actually how I decided to go to eBay full-time was because the theater was shut down. At one point the unions were reporting in 99% unemployment rate and so I had to do something else so that's what really made me lean into theater. Additionally, last year I decided to get my member designation from the International Society of Appraisers. So I now operate Sunburst Appraisals. I'm just starting out as a personnel property appraiser. It's a second career for most people, but I am in my mid twenties and I'm just doing it. I like to call myself a serial career woman and I serve central Illinois with insurance, donation, fair market value, market value and similar appraisal services. For the last year I've been studying methodology, regulation, compliance and literal stuff because there's so much stuff in the world to just study and learn about.

Georgea: I am like, you're putting me to shame. Like in my mid twenties I don't even remember what I was doing, but it wasn't all that . I was working part-time somewhere. So kudos to you.

Lauren: Yeah. I like to keep busy and I don't sleep a lot so it's a lot of, it's a lot of 12 hour days all the time.

Georgea: But you love it and you're your own boss so that's great.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Georgea: Tell me more how you're able to like obviously use your appraisal portion to eBay.

Lauren: It's all connected. It's actually started because I was researching something on eBay and I found someone's kind of not legitimate appraisal report online and I was looking and it was like I could do that better. How do I do this better? I found the ISA and called them and was like, how do I become an appraiser? And they're like, well you need a college degree and you need this, that and that and you need to take all our courses and then you can do it. I was like, great, I'm gonna do this now. I just did it. Similarly to what I said earlier, I've never been afraid to send an email, I've never been afraid to commit to the bit and somehow I just keep trodding along and it's always worked out for me, me somehow.

Georgea: You are an inspiration. Okay, so you're in your mid twenties, you're in theater, you have your own eBay business, your appraisal, what does the future hold and like? I feel like it's way too early to tell because you have like another 10 lives to live.

Lauren: I appreciate it. I think the main thing whenever somebody asks me is like, what do you wanna do is I just wanna be happy. I like opening up the morning and not having my alarm set. I like just waking up and hanging out with my cat and just living the life that I like and not being hung down to having to be somewhere at 9:00 AM. I like living this life that I can choose whatever I wanna do wherever. When I'm looking for theater gigs, I like saying that I'm not here for healthcare hours, I'm looking for something that the community is being served by the theater and that I can do one or two gigs a year that's really serving something awesome. It's a great opportunity in my life that I've been able to cultivate this sort of life through eBay that I can do whatever I want and really just be inspired each day by just the joys in the world.

Georgea: You did mention LLC in 2020, so what's the process like for anyone else interested in becoming an LLC and how has it helped your business?

Lauren: So I think the biggest misconception about becoming an LC is that it's hard and it's expensive. I'm not an expert but I've done it a couple times now in Illinois to file straight for the state or straight through the state, it's probably somewhere around $150 for a regular LLC. And I think I spent more time working on my names that I was gonna call it than the actual paperwork. It's like three or so pages to file for the state and your city might require a couple extra things but it's really simple and you don't really need something else or somebody else to kind of help you through it. All it takes is some research and to have the right guidance to go through the steps. One of the things that I found with the benefits was that on top of being protected in the case of like a lawsuit was that things like the SBA loan and banking really open up to you once you're an LLC. I wouldn't have been able to have an S an SBA loan because I needed the EIN through the IRS, which you can only have if you're an LLC if I had not had the LLC stuff. So a lot of those things like having the EIN and having the banking specific bank accounts for the business and those sorts of things open up to you once you have the LLC paperwork, it all kind of falls together that those things just don't open up to you if you're a sole proprietor.

Georgea: Okay, gotcha. So anyone listening who wants to be an LLC and thinks it's a difficult process, it really isn't.

Lauren: It's not. You take one afternoon to study about it and one afternoon to do it and there might be a couple extra steps with your city like putting in ads in the paper or, and with the IRS you have to get an EIN and there's like a couple other weird things but it's buy yourself a coffee and you can do it yourself, it's fine.

Georgea: And so how has it evolved your business? Does it make it a little bit more reputable in a sense?

Lauren: Yeah, I think as a business it makes it a little bit more repeatable. I think the one thing to kind of note is that if you do develop an LLC, I would get a different phone number to kind of track and have as like your business phone number, whether you do that through some fake phone number. However, because once I applied for the SBA loan I started getting all of these calls from these funding companies and I mean I got the loan in 2021, I still get calls probably five or six times a day to my personal cell phone. So that's just my little tidbit. But yeah, definitely having that going, but once you have the LLC it makes it more real and I think it makes it more accountable for you. It really makes the LLC like you are doing a thing that has value and it makes you also accountable to the state that you're gonna keep going.

Georgea: That is very great words of advice. Thank you for that. And Lauren, where can sellers find you and your store online?

Lauren: You can shop my store anytime on eBay at Round Two Avenue. I'm also on social media at Round two Avenue and you can hear more about my personal property appraisal services at sunburstsappraisals.com.

Georgea: Awesome. And when I'm in your area, I'm gonna come watch you in theater or watching your shows or anything you're involved with and see what else you have under your sleeve.

Lauren: Absolutely. Anytime we'll have to chitchat and thank you so much Georgea.

Georgea: Lauren Villarreal sells on eBay under the store name Round Two Avenue. Interested in vintage and unique items then shop at her store today. We hope you'll join us on our next episode where we'll shine the spotlight on another seller with an amazing story to share. I'm your host, Georgia Mpampanis. Jim Griffith is our Editor in Chief. The eBay Seller Spotlight podcast is produced by Libsyn and podCast411.