Episode #35 - Reezy Resells

#15MinuteFounder

Reezy Resells has been selling online since he was 16, starting with Yahoo Auctions and eBay before he found Amazon.

Over ten years, he sold $5 million in used books sourced from thrift stores and the Goodwill outlet, and in all that time he bought something on Amazon as a customer exactly once.

Today he has close to half a million YouTube subscribers, coaches Amazon sellers through his own program, and runs the whole operation with one video editor.

The episode opens with Reezy reading the first chapter of his upcoming memoir, which covers growing up on food stamps, foster homes, and group homes.

From there, he gets into what skateboarding taught him about failure, the $10K mistake he made in his first year on Amazon, why “saturated” really means “mediocre,” and how he uses AI to write, coach, and plan.

Reezy lost ten grand in his first year because nobody told him there was a better way. If you’re selling on Amazon at volume, doola handles your business filings with experts who know e-commerce, so you’re not finding out the expensive way.

Highlights From the Chat

Q: You’ve said kids like you weren’t supposed to make it. What was the difference for you?

Some people will say they have it hard, but it’s not hard enough for them to make the change. You’re not happy, but you’re not unhappy enough, because change comes with pain too. Until the current unhappiness is more than the pain it would take to change it, you’re not going to change.

I was literally at the very bottom. When you start from nothing, it’s so easy to take risks, because your back’s against the wall.

What’s the worst scenario? I go back against the wall. I love the wall. I’ll put two straps on it and carry it like a backpack.

I organically developed the skill to get attention and recognize opportunity. It was a survival mechanism.

Q: How did that mindset carry into entrepreneurship?

I’m a skateboarder. I’m 40, and I’ve been skating since I was 12. Skateboarding is one of the hardest physical things you can do.

Imagine if it took a year to learn how to throw and catch a baseball. Nobody would play baseball. So it’s only these really diligent weirdos willing to try so many times. I have tricks I’ve been trying for 20 years.

Skateboarding instills this idea that you need to fail before you get there. It’s the prerequisite. There are only three things that can happen: the sun sets and I come back tomorrow, I land it, or I break myself trying and come back when I heal.

That’s helped me a lot in business, because I know it’s not supposed to work out right away.

If you win on your first try, you’re not good at business. You’re lucky. Until you’ve survived the hard times, you don’t really know if you have skill.

Q: What was your first big mistake on Amazon?

I started selling on Amazon the year FBA came out, selling used books. I had 100,000 in the bank in year one.

And I sold over 10,000 units that year as an individual seller, not a pro merchant. I didn’t even know there was a pro merchant plan. So I lost ten grand that year in fees.

The way I found out was talking to another bookseller I had written off. He was old, gray hair, could barely work his phone. Very naive of me. Everybody can teach you something.

He said, “You’re a pro merchant, right?” I looked it up and I was like, holy crap, that’s ten grand.

Q: How did you figure out book flipping in the first place?

I’d go to thrift stores and see people with cart loads of books, thrown in there all ugly. I’d ask what they were doing with them, and they’d go tight-lipped.

Imagine a grown man giving another grown man the silent treatment. These guys were making a lot of money. One of them had a wireless barcode scanner that cost at least 100 bucks.

I Googled “how to scan books” and the only thing that came up was how to digitize books.

Then one day I saw an older woman scanning books, and she told me right away: “I’m selling them on Amazon.” She told me the software she used, and that company had education on its website. That was it.

Then I started going to the Goodwill outlet, the last stop before the landfill. I was getting bags and bags of books for $5 a bag, going every single day with four or five people, and just dominating as hard as I could.

Q: What would you do differently with the book business?

I was so early to Amazon that anything I touched was profitable. I could have killed private label or wholesale, or 20x’d the book business if I knew what I know now.

But I sold on Amazon for ten years before I ever bought anything on Amazon. I looked at it as a customer once, just to figure out why my stuff wasn’t selling.

For ten years, I sold only used books. Once I started YouTube and went to meetups, people would ask, “How come you don’t sell Nike?”

I spent ten years not knowing I could sell the products people actually buy a lot of. Most people don’t read. I sold $5 million of used books in ten years, and that volume pales in comparison to something like ChapStick or toothpaste.

Q: Is YouTube or Amazon too saturated today?

The only thing that’s saturated is mediocrity. That’s it. When people say something’s saturated, they’re talking about low effort.

Low effort stuff is not going to work. But if you really try and put your soul into it, whatever it is, it works.

Q: How should someone start a YouTube channel now?

Figure out the specific value you can bring that not everybody has. If you’re a purely entertainment vlogger, it’s so hard, because people have to watch you for no reason at all before they like you.

When you’re really good at something, you have a trophy. You can say, “Look at this trophy I have,” and it’s verifiable. When I started YouTube, I had ten years of experience already. That was huge value.

Documenting your journey is cool, but only if you make it to the end.

Q: Why do people pay for your coaching if the content is free?

There’s no secret. Nothing I teach isn’t already on YouTube. It’s just not organized. What you’re actually paying for is my guidance. We meet twice a week for an hour, you can text me, you can call me.

I tried to downsell just the course videos for 600 bucks instead of 3,000 and haven’t sold one, ever. So clearly the videos aren’t the value. It’s the connection. People who pay, pay attention.

I spend more time online every week with my students than I do with anybody except my family.

Q: What does your team look like behind the scenes?

The whole team is me plus my video editor, Jed, who lives in the Philippines. I’ve had people helping at different times, but I scaled too fast, got comfortable, and stuff started falling through the cracks.

So I drew a line and did it myself. It put my back against the wall again.

Now I can’t believe I was paying over 100 grand a year for help with things I now do myself in five hours a week. I was hiring people to do stuff I didn’t know how to do, and when you do that, you’re very close to getting ripped off. I have 50,000 emails on my list. I need to know how to manage it.

Q: How are you actually using AI?

The first chapter I read today is a product of me collaborating with AI.

I put every transcript from every interview I’ve ever done and every life story I’ve written into NotebookLM, then started asking: I want to write a book about my life. What books like this have been successful? How many pages? What would an outline look like? It didn’t write the book. It generated an outline and a rough version, and we went back and forth.

I also put transcripts from my coaching calls in and ask how I can become a better coach. You’re not allowed to have writer’s block ever again. I don’t understand how anybody could not use AI.

Q: What’s your best advice for building relationships in business?

Be authentic, and meet the people you want to network with in real life. Online can get your foot in the door, but real life is infinitely faster, because you can’t fake it.

And if you’re the chaser, always come bearing gifts. Two years before I interviewed Gary Vee, I found a sealed New York Jets Monopoly at a yard sale for two bucks. To me it was worth 20. To Gary it was worth 500. I held onto it, wrapped it in Jets wrapping paper, and gave it to him on the podcast.

If you bring a gift that proves you did your homework, people will never forget you.

Q: What’s your earthquake book?

Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. I found it at the Goodwill outlet. It wasn’t worth any money, and I almost tossed it back in the bin. I read the whole thing in about four hours, and it’s the blueprint for everything I’m still doing on social media.

If you want to make a living off your passion on social media, read Crush It.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold Intro & the Resilience Mindset

03:23 – Amazon: What Was Your First Mistake?

03:52 – The $10K Mistake (Individual Seller vs. Pro Merchant)

05:21 – How Reezy Got Into Reselling Used Books

08:35 – The Goodwill Outlet Secret

09:37 – Foster Care, Group Homes & Where the Hustle Came From

12:06 – The Bigger Mistake: 10 Years in One Category

14:14 – The Billboard Message for Entrepreneurs

15:07 – The Obituary Question