Episode Details

Reseller Hangout Podcast - Jason Thrifts

Rob: [00:00:00] All right guys, today, we are super excited to have Jason T. Smith with Jason Thrifts, to talk to, give us some great pointers about his reselling business.

Melissa: Thanks for being on here with us.

Jason T: Thanks for having me. What's going on, guys?

Rob: Not too much. We're super excited to talk to you. Love to get a little bit of your background, kind of how you got into reselling, and start with that first.

Melissa: This is fun too, because we actually were on your show, it's probably been two or three years now. It's been awhile. And now we're doing a podcast, we get to have you come on here, so it's a lot of fun. Thanks for doing this with us.

Jason T: It's always fun to be on the other side of the desk. You know, I love hosting and interviewing, but yeah, I love being a guest every once in a while too. I got started when I was six. My mom, well, my mom and my grandmother drugged me to flea markets and garage sales. And my mom lost me at the big flea market in our town. I just wandered away and she found me talking to the vendors, asking them what they were selling and why were they selling it?

I was a very [00:01:00] inquisitive little kid, and I didn't really fully grasp it till I was about 10. And so this is back in the late seventies, early eighties. And I realized we, when we went to a community garage sale where the entire front yard of the school was, everyone had their table, there was a lot of toys, and I realized at that moment I can buy twice as many used toys as I could new toys, and I'd rather have more stuff than new stuff. So at that point I understood the value of used items, but I turned it into a career.

I lost my job in March of 2000 and I was kind of despondent. My wife and I were newly married, and how are we going to pay our mortgage with one of us out of work? And you know, like a lot of people do when you're feeling depressed, you do a little retail therapy. So I went down to the local record store and I saw they had a table of dollar CDs. And this is April of 2000, so online selling was brand new and I'm like, these CDs have to be worth more than a dollar.

So I picked 20 of what I [00:02:00] thought were the best CDs, and I went home and I sat down, and I taught myself how to sell and I just kept on selling from that point on. It wasn't a full-time gig cause I didn't think it could be. So I, I finally went and got a job and I would sell in the evenings. And then about 10 years ago, I got an infection in my arm, spent five days in the hospital. We fought my life and the unhappiness at the real job I had and I haven't looked back since. I've been a reseller since that full-time and also full-time teaching others how to do it.

Rob: I love it. I love it. And the cool thing is, I think that's a misconception for a lot of resellers. It's like, you can't do this full time. I had to tackle the same thing for me. It's like, you can't do this full time and you can. You can absolutely do it full time. So that's very, very exciting that, that was your realization. I thought I was the only one who had that realization, but now talking to you, I'm like, yeah, that's how it is. That's how it comes to be. So that's really cool.

Jason T: But sometimes tragedy makes you have that rethink your life realization. I had this infection in my arm, stuck in the hospital for five days, had two life-saving surgeries to clean this infection out of my arm, [00:03:00] and in those five days I just sat there and thought, man, I hate my job. I hate going to work, and what am I going to do? Let me hustle hard at reselling and make it a full-time career. And here we are hanging out today.

Rob: That's awesome, I love it.

Melissa: