What’s going on? Welcome to The Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m gonna talk about a, a couple different topics here. One, a little bit about, uh, decluttering, and then how Facebook Marketplace is coming into play, and I guess Craigslist. I talked about a couple of those, uh, ideas for side hustles a couple months ago probably.
I’ve been dabbling, so I’ll tell you about that a little bit. And some of the, I don’t know, just other stuff that I’m, I’m looking at on Facebook Marketplace, like guitars and stuff. That’s where I found this baby. Actually, it was on Craigslist is where I found the Kalamazoo. But I’ll be holding it and attempting not to play it the whole time.
instead of just having, like, random stuff that I wanna tell you about, I will mention a couple, I guess, business ideas and offers that I have seen come through via email, which I’m not even on that many email lists these days. But there’s one that I’ll mention where I’m like, “That actually looks like a pretty good deal.”
Depending on what you have going on already, you might be able to use it. Uh, y- and you know what? It’s, uh, with PageOptimizer Pro, Kyle Roof. I don’t even know if I have any affiliate, uh, relationship on the offer that I’m gonna mention. I know PageOptimizer Pro, the software, if you sign up for that, I know I have a commission that I’ll get if you do sign up.
I’ve been, uh, I guess one of their affiliates for a long time. But anyway, I don’t know if there’s anything going on with what I’m gonna tell you about. And then there is a little bit, an, an idea that I’m gonna talk about. I probably won’t cover it in this specific episode, ’cause I think it’s, it’s better potentially for a YouTube video, because it’s like a one-pager sheet that I could show, although I could describe some of the high-level ideas, uh, that are on there.
And essentially, it’s like a one-page, like, cash flow plan that I must have put together. There’s no date on it, unfortunately, but I think it must have been s- around 2017 to 2019, and I’m not sure. There’s a little note on here, just like a random scratch that says, “It’s snowing.” So I think it must have been in Bozeman or right when we moved down here to Colorado, but I’m not 100% sure.
Hard to tell.
Decluttering the Office
In the studio area, I often talk about the… Well, it’s my office down here. I’m like, “Ah, it’s a little bit messy,” and, uh, like I, I often say I keep a little bit of a messy desk, but it’s not too bad. There’s just, like, there’s some coasters, there’s chargers, there’s some studio, uh, microphone interface thing.
So it’s not too bad. There’s a notebook, some, you know, Post-it notes, pens, that sort of thing. Nothing too crazy. However, uh, I have a couple bookshelves back there, and I have a lot of books. So many books that they all don’t fit on there. And I had some friends over that I interviewed, and they live in an RV.
So they downsized dramatically whenever they moved to the RV, and they, they are a bit on the minimalism side. In fact, I think that was, like, one of the, you know, early inspirations, one of the first things one of them got into as far as, like, um, you know, the decluttering and before moving into the RV, just have what you need and not much more.
So I was like, “Yeah,” I mean, I’ve been trying to keep that in mind and not have things around that you don’t really need.
Too Many Books
And I had a bunch of books. Like, I, I do enjoy books, and I’ve talked about reading and stuff over the years on the podcast. And I accumulate books. I’m like, “This is a good one. I will get the print version.”
And, you know, one good example is, um Actually like a secondary example, maybe even better, I’m like, “Oh, I really enjoy Seth Godin books. I’ve read a few of them. I have a couple.” And then I bought I think eight of them, uh, from, uh, eBay. So used, so maybe they were like from a library and they, they don’t, uh, wanna carry it anymore, or maybe they got a new v- um, you know, revision or something like that.
So anyway, I have a bunch of these, and usually they’re not too expensive, and I’m like, “Cool, I’ll read these, and they’re great for inspiration,” and blah, blah, blah. Turns out I read like a couple of them. I didn’t read the other, uh, at all, the others at all. And then I just would accumulate books. Anyway, they were just like sitting on the floor ’cause there’s not enough room on the shelves.
And, um, I was telling a friend this later who has a ton of books, big reader, loves books in general, and he was like, “You should just get more bookshelves.” But anyway, in the spirit of decluttering, I was like, you know what? The books are literally sitting on the floor or in stacks, like on the, you know, table behind me here.
Selling Book Bundles
So I was like, “Yeah, you know what? I am gonna get rid of some of these books ’cause clearly I’m not gonna read some of these.” So I planned on potentially donating them to the library where my wife volunteers and actually like sorts books that are donated. But, uh, I was also thinking, I– there’s some, some of these are in like perfect condition.
I don’t tend to beat up the books too much. So I listed them in bundles basically. So I had some Tim Ferriss books. I had the Seth Godin books. I had kind of like productivity and then another set that was more like the online business and that sort of area. So I bundled them up, and there were also some other books, um, that I was thinking, “Uh, I don’t think someone would, would pay for these,” or they’re just, you know, kind of random, and I couldn’t group them very well.
So anyway, I’ll donate those. That’ll be cool. And then later the library sells those at book sale, sales for like relatively inexpensive.
AI Marketplace Listings
So I listed the bundles, and one of the cool things, and I may have mentioned this before, I was like, okay AI is great at writing these types of listings. So I literally would just take a picture on my phone, upload it and say, “Hey, I need a Facebook listing for this set of books.”
Give a little description. I think the– a fair price is X. Let me know what you think on the pricing, and it would spit it out. So one of the things that I mentioned was when I look at listings, many times as a potential buyer, I see there’s no information. It’s just like one or two lines or one or two words sometimes.
Some things are self-explanatory, other things you could look up, but a lot of times, honestly, like if I’m l- browsing on my phone on Facebook Marketplace, it’s a little bit harder to like copy and paste the name of the product, then search for it on the web browser, and then it’s kind of all over the place.
So I do put a little bit more information in there, and I do find it helpful on listings as well. So I kinda have my standard format, which I put together and then put it into Gemini, is what I use typically. So basically, I would put that in, put the picture in and say, “Hey, I want a listing for these Tim Ferriss books.”
And maybe it comes with a little description. This is why I’m listing it. It has the, you know, where I’m– I wanna meet in public, and I give a couple specific locations where I can easily get to, pay cash, and if the listing’s up, then it’s available, that sort of thing. So instead of writing some of these from scratch, which I did initially, it takes whatever, 10 seconds to get the output, and then you can copy and paste and put it in.
So I listed three sets of books and not a ton of bites initially, but then someone was like, “Hey, I’ll give you, um, 25 bucks instead of what I was asking for, which was 30,” which is perfectly fine. I was like, “Great, 25 bucks.” Sold it to him the next day. And then there’s one pending situation. Someone pinged me and said they were interested in the remaining three sets of books or two.
I can’t re– I’m getting things mixed up at this point. Maybe I listed four initially. I sold one. Someone was interested in the remaining three. So I got back to him and I was like, “Yep, they’re available. And I actually have another set of, of books that I haven’t listed yet, and I’ll sell you all of them for 80.”
Resellers and Pricing
So hopefully this person, maybe they’re a book reseller themselves because one thing that I saw at the library book sale, people with giant carts with like 60 books in there, and they were going around with their phones. And I guess there’s an app they could scan the, the book, see what it’s going for on the used market, and then determine if they wanna buy it or not.
And they were finding a lot of them. So I suspect many of them, I mean, it’s random, right? They’re, they’re checking everything, but a lot of times it would be like business books, um, in, in r- at least what I saw. So it was like business books. Again, the Tim Ferriss books I’m hoping I can get a few bucks for.
But generally, I was listing each stack of books. I think there were like seven to eight books for $30 or so. I think the Tim Ferriss books, there were four of them. Those are really big hardback books, so I was– I think I listed that one for 30 as well. So if someone does buy them or if they make me a reasonable offer, right, 20, 25 bucks, just, you know, a little bit of a discount, I’m good with that.
I’m fine to negotiate. So that has worked out pretty well overall. Hopefully, the person that asked about the remaining three sets will buy the four sets that I have and then get a discount, which, you know, at that point, it’s just a few dollars per book. So even if they donate half of them, they’re probably gonna be able to get their money’s worth if they’re selling the books somewhere else, which I, I think most people probably…
Actually, I’m not sure. The dude that bought the books, he actually seemed like he was interested in the specific books. But who the fuck’s… I have no idea what they’re gonna do with the books, so, um, but I assume there’s a lot of resellers out there, people that go to the library book sales where they can get books for like, whatever, two to four dollars or something like that.
I suspect they are buying those and reselling them elsewhere.
Guitar Browsing Habits
So I often hop on Marketplace looking for like, uh, instruments and guitars and amps and stuff like that. Although I’m kind of– I’m, I’m just pausing and observing. Uh, I have a lot of guitars, and I’m not pl- like, you know, you can only play one at w- one at a time.
And, um, the, the ones I have, they’re great. They feel great, and I don’t feel like a big need to upgrade. There are, you know, there’s some nicer higher-end guitars where I’m like, “That would be pretty cool.” But at the same time, they are, you know, nicer and more expensive, so I would feel a little bit more, uh, like nervous to play them, you know, outside the house, which is, you know, the most fun time to play it.
So I’ll have to kind of figure that out in, in a few years maybe when I’ve had fun with the certain guitars. I’ll sell them, and then maybe it’ll be time to upgrade to something new. Maybe not. Maybe like the one behind me here, it’ll just feel so good because I’ve played it, uh, so many hours that I won’t wanna play something else.
So anyway, I’ll… I, I browse on there pretty often.
Needing a New Computer
I have a current need to buy a new computer Which is kind of a bummer. I, I mean, the thing is I have a computer that works fine. It’s a Mac Mini. It is– I think it was, like, the last year before they came out with their own processor, so it’s an Intel processor.
It does have quite a lot of memory, 32 gigs of RAM, which is good for a lot of the stuff that I do. However, recently, I recorded a podcast episode for my other show, and the video was jittery, and I was like, “What? What is going on?” I don’t know what happened, ’cause I usually close most of the apps. I’m not sure what the issue was.
But the thing is, um, uh, seems like all the software, like, just as time goes on, it becomes either more processor or memory intensive and, you know, I’ve seen it, you know, time and time again, where I’m doing something the same way for years, and then the machine is just, like, bogged down. So I should probably do, you know, some regular, uh, whatever, hard drive maintenance stuff and make sure I defrag it and all that kinda shit.
Um, so I’ll, I’ll take a look at that for sure. But I have had the computer for, like… Uh, it’s about six years at this point, and I do think that having the newer M series processor, I think they’re on, like, M4 or M5 or something like that. Having the newer Apple processor probably should help out. But at the same time, it’s like everything’s working.
I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna buy a new thing. And then on the other side, which is not as big of a deal, but on the other side, I’m like, “Okay, if I buy a new one, I should sell the one that I have.” Just, you know, I don’t wanna have a bunch of stuff sitting around that I don’t use, which I actually have the laptop that I, like, built the business on.
It’s, like, a 2014 MacBook Pro. Still works fine for, like, web browsing and, like, normal stuff. Like, 90% of the things that I do, I could do on that laptop. Battery life is still kind of fine. I should… You know, that’s one where I should list it. I, I will say that I had a bit of an issue, um, when I wiped it last time.
I, you know, did a factory reset, put on, you know, the operating system, got it going. But it’s an old operating system, so it was, like, hard to upgrade to, like, the, you know, most recent OS that it would handle, which is not the current OS. Like, it’s old enough where I run into issues. Anyway, I should probably just, like, wipe it and take it to, uh, whatever, a little shop that wants to refurbish it.
I mean, someone could use it, but, um, again, it’s easy to keep stuff, and I’m like: well, it’s Kind of still works even though I don’t actually need it. So I have that old laptop, and then I have another laptop, which is like an M1 MacBook Air, which is great. Works well. I– You know what? I don’t even know how much memory that one has.
Anyway, the point is, I will probably need to get a new computer, probably a Mac Mini ’cause that works well in this configuration that I have here. And then I have like a laptop sitting behind me, so, you know, I could take that on the road or when I, you know, obviously just need a laptop and not a desktop computer.
So I’ll have to get one of those. And then funny thing, my producer for my other show, he has a pretty old whatever. He uses a Windows machine, so he has a pretty old computer, and he, he was like, “Yeah, you know what? It’s been hard for me to use my computer. Everything is taking longer.” So I was like, “All right, man.
I’ll… Like we’ll buy you a new computer. Um, so we’ll figure it out.” But he’ll have to, you know, shop around and see, you know, what he wants to get, which, I mean, I was like, I could try to order, but I haven’t used a Windows machine in a super long time, so I have no fucking idea, um, what you might want to have on there.
So anyway, I don’t know if he’s gonna get a, a new one or a used one or whatever. I’ll probably just give him some budget and then, uh, cover that, you know. And if he wants to get something a little extra, then he can.
More Declutter Sales
So anyway, the other thing that I’ve had success with on Marketplace, I can’t remember if I mentioned, but, you know, there’s a decluttering, um, effort going on through the house, so there’s a lot of kitchen stuff.
And we ended up with like a coffee grinder, and it was never used. It was literally never used. So I listed that, I think probably for like, I don’t know, it was like twenty percent off what a new one would be. But a new one, you would have to pay like either a little bit of shipping or taxes, depending on where you ordered it from.
So anyway, it probably was like a thirty percent discount, so I was able to sell that like very quickly, like within a few days. And I think the person haggled just a little bit, but it was within the range that was acceptable. I did list a, um, bed topper, like massage thing, which I think if you buy one, they…
the list price might be like five or six hundred dollars, but they always have… It’s one of those mattress companies online. So I think You can get a 50% off like coupon almost all the time or 20%, I don’t know, a fairly big discount. That one, I mean, literally it was sent to me for free. I did an unboxing and then never used it.
I mean, I, I don’t need whatever it w- you know, whatever it does, I don’t need it. So I was like, this thing is huge. Let’s see. So no bites on that one, by the way. No one really wants it. So we’ll see. I will probably lower the price more and more. So initially I think I listed it for like 250 or maybe I listed it for 300 thinking maybe someone will offer 200 and I would take that.
I think I’ve lowered it down to 100 now and it’s one of those situations where I’m like, you know what? If someone would give me $20 for it, I would probably take it.
Cash Only Rules
And one of the key things is I’m not gonna drive all ar- all around town. I’m not gonna take… I, I only take cash. Like, I don’t even wanna do Venmo or anything where they could claim, like reclaim the money or do some sort of, uh, you know, the, the equivalent of a chargeback where they contact Venmo and say, “Oh, this is, um, was a mistake and this person never gave me anything.”
I don’t even know the issues that you may or may not run into. But basically I, I’m like, “Only cash or there’s no deal.” So… And someone– If you know otherwise, let me know, because, um, when I did a little research before, they’re like, “Y- you may have issues if you don’t know the person personally. You may have issues with Venmo or PayPal or anything like that, where there’s, you know, some buyer protection and maybe not as much that you could do from a, you know, seller’s perspective after you’ve been paid.”
So I was like, “Okay, I don’t wanna mess with that at all. I just want it to be straightforward.” And then as we’re decluttering some of the kitchen, kitchen, I just listed a, um, like a little cast iron teapot, like a Japanese style teapot. And I, I was like, “Is this worth anything?” So as I browsed the internet and checked around, like if it’s actually worth selling for more than 25 bucks, which is kind of the cutoff, I think.
Like, if it’s just takes me a few minutes and we’ll meet the people at a public place, which is only, you know, two minutes away, that is kind of the criteria. So cash only, come to meet me, and I want it to be a quick transaction. If there’s any kind of weird stuff, like someone pinged me and they were like, “I just want one of the books.
Can you sell me one of the books?” I’m like, “No, it’s just a bundle, so get the whole thing.” I, I actually told him, I was like, “Uh, I’d sell it for 10 bucks,” which is like… I mean, at that point, you may as well just buy all the fucking books, right? So anyway, we’ll see how it goes and the decluttering situation.
When to Donate Instead
And I was talking to a friend where, you know, they were attempting to declutter as well, and there’s some, you know, some amount of time where it’s like, this is not worth it for you to go try to get a few bucks. Just donate it. Just donate it or give it away for free. So I am keeping that in mind. I’m not gonna waste a whole lot of time.
I was, uh, chatting with someone else on the other show that I do, and, um, they were kind of like, “Uh, is, is it worth it for Doug to be spending time selling stuff on Facebook Marketplace?” Some stuff, not so much, and you know, when you’re talking about tens of dollars like I am Definitely borderline. Most of the stuff that I was selling and have been selling, it’s like multi-hundred dollars, so it’s certainly worth a few minutes of my time, which is kind of like all it was.
So yeah, when it gets to be like under 20 or 50 bucks or something, it’s like, “Ah, is it really worth, you know, fucking around and trying to get it going?” So a little bit of a test, and I think I went through the good books that I have, the ones where I’m like, “I think someone would pay a few dollars,” but there’s certainly, there’s certainly a handful of other books, uh, that I’m like, I- I’m just gonna, you know, donate these.
And I’m sure as I’m looking through other things to declutter, like behind me in the studio, there’s a, you know, some cloth that I’ve divided up, so in, in the back it just looks dark. But behind there, there’s like a couple storage shelves, and they have, you know, the big plastic bins with random stuff.
Some things I’m like, I should basically… I mean, I don’t use any of that stuff. I should just get rid of all of that. So that’ll be one of those things where, all right, maybe I go through two pin- bins a day. It would only take a d- you know, couple, few days. There’s not that many of them. But that’s the kind of thing where it’s like, “Okay, just get rid of this stuff.”
One, one of the things I’m a bit of a pack rat on is, um, keeping the boxes of electronics and like camera lenses where, you know, I’m like, “Oh, if I sell it, it sure would be nice to have the box.” Of course, I have several lenses. Some of them I’m not gonna sell and, uh, or it’s like who gives a shit if you have the box?
So I definitely need to kinda go through those. So that, couple projects to like declutter and just have, uh, you know, less stuff.
More Stuff to List
One other thing I’ll probably list soon is, um, the The first amp that I got when I was starting to play a little bit louder and playing with a drummer, it’s a Fender Blues Junior, and it’s great.
It’s super portable. It’s fine. But basically, it’s, um, a bit of a duplication. I don’t necessarily need it. Since I’ve got that one, I’ve purchased two additional tube amps, so it’s just more than I need. And it, it has come in handy. Like, I played with, um, a friend a couple times who didn’t have a tube amp, so I was like, “All right, I’ll bring this amp and this other amp so we can play together.”
But, you know, that’s just a rare occasion, so just keeping an extra amp around so someone else could use it, not really good. I, you know, I sh- I should just sell that one, so. And it still looks, like, brand new. Like many things that are, um, you know, hobby-based, fairly expensive, people are not, like, trashing them or beating them up too much.
So it’s in great condition still. Anyway, it’s been good overall selling some stuff and hoping that someone will be able to take that object and, like, use it in the future and it won’t end up in a landfill. People actually value it, and it’s been good overall. And it’s a few bucks here and there. Nothing crazy, of course.
POP White Label Offer
So The business idea is Page Optimizer Pro, and they have, I, I think it’s like a white glove offering, and essentially it’s a white label service where they do a content audit. You just provide the URL, the services, 28 days of Google Search Console data, maybe competitors, couple other pieces of information, fairly straightforward, something that, you know, you can provide in just a few minutes, and then you get 10 content solos, months of content direction.
You get keyword data, a video re-review. It’s delivered in seven days. And the general idea here is, like, if you have an agency already and you wanna offer this kind of service or maybe you already offer a similar content audit situation, then it would be really great to offload this. And I wanna say it was, it was like 100…
No, sorry, it was $275 or something like that. Let me take a quick look. Yeah, 275, and it’s delivered in seven days. So if you have an agency, it’s a great service to add to your, you know, menu of services that you offer. Or chances are you probably offer something pretty similar. But the cool part, it’s delivered pretty quick, white label situation.
You get more stuff than what I mentioned, by the way. So I’ll put a link so you can check it out. But it’s one of those where even if you don’t have an agency, it’s something where you could maybe test out offering a service where you’re essentially, like, just selling this package and then you outsource it to Page Optimizer Pro, POP, and then they do the work.
You get the deliverables, and then you’re able to share that with your client. So pretty cool offering and i-it’s economic, so it’s cheap enough where, like, you can upsell it. And the thing is, I mean, this is kind of a standard business model that has been around, whatever, for decades and decades. But when I was getting started, I remember a company called The HOTH, which I think they’re probably still around, but they would white label the…
all their work. So people were literally, like, just working on sales and marketing and putting together, like, a brand o-of an agency, and they were not doing any of the work. They were just buying the packages and services from The HOTH, whether it was, like, link building or other… Usually it was link building or something related on the marketing side and just, you know, general SEO work like that that’s easily outsourced.
So that was Pretty standard business model. I mean, I think there were people offering courses on how to do this, like set it up, not actually knowing the technical execution, the technical SEO that you would need to know to do it. But anyway, this seems like a pretty good deal, and the overall marketing that I’ve seen coming from Pop on this, I’m like, “This is actually pretty good.”
If you are able to, you know, close the deal and then you have some clients, maybe you build websites and you’re like, “Hey, I wanna, you know, give it a shot to offer some marketing services,” definitely something to check out. All right.
Found Cash Flow Plan
As we are wrapping it up here, I found this sheet, this one-pager in, um, one of the journals that I have.
As I was decluttering, I was like, “Oh, I actually do have a lot of journals on the shelf,” and sometimes there’s big gaps in the, you know, the dates. So, I would like use a specific journal for a while and then like move to another one or not use any journal at all. But anyway, this was like folded up in one of them, and essentially, it’s cash flow.
So it says, “Assume $10,000 per month on average,” and then it’s kind of just outlining the specifics of like expenses, what to reinvest, where the money should go from like a personal and business standpoint. And then there’s also some assumptions on taxes and what to invest, and then backing into like where all this money goes.
So it was kinda cool to look back, and it– that must have been, like I said, it must have been the earlier days now that I’m looking at the amount where it says assume 10K per month. So this could’ve been 20, you know, late 2015, early 2016, something like that, um, as the starting point. So Like I said, I think this could be a very interesting one to go through from a, you know, YouTube standpoint.
And I mean, even still, like if I was starting off, like this is a great assumption where it’s like, all right, we’re gonna get 10K per month on average. Pretty good salary for most people in most locations. If you’re in one of the most expensive cities, you know, that’s gonna be pretty tight, but some other cities you’re gonna– I mean, that’s gonna go a really long way.
Taxes and Cash Flow
So one thing that I will note, uh, is, um, overall I was like, okay, I wanna have 10K per month on average. There’s always volatility, but the other thing is that was what I wanted to have, um, after taxes. So just as a general rule, I think I was like, you know what? Let’s just assume like 33%, um, of everything will go to ta- or yeah, of everything will go to taxes, so like you need to be bringing in more.
So I wanted the top line revenue to be at least 13K, $333 per month, so that I would have about 10K per month to go in the cash flow area here. out.
But if you have questions or thoughts about cash flow, managing it within the business and, you know, making sure you don’t run out of money or if, you know, making sure you don’t goof up and don’t save enough to pay taxes, ’cause that’s, that’s one thing that gets people, especially like when the money is flowing and you’re making a lot, you’re like, “Okay, I should reinvest everything.
I should, you know, really try to grow the business. It’s awesome. I’m selling a bunch of stuff, and the cash is just coming in the door.” You have to pay taxes on that. So if you’re not saving, if you’re not saving it, you’re gonna have a bad, very horrible surprise whenever, you know, taxes come due, which could be like, obviously, you have the annual taxes.
But if you’re earning enough, then you have quarterly taxes, and the thing is, like very quickly, I was like paying quarterly taxes. So, um, sometimes that doesn’t come into play until, you know, the first year that you file. Uh, consult your tax professional, by the way. This is not advice. But you file, and then you hit some threshold, and then you have to pay taxes on a quarterly basis.
And then, um, moving forward, but sometimes like, and I can’t remember, but you have to pay penalties. Like if you, if, if you were making a certain amount and you weren’t paying quarterly retroactively, you may have to pay those, I, I guess, penalties is what they would be. So penalties for not paying taxes on a quarterly basis if you’re making over a certain amount, and I don’t remember what it was then, and I don’t know what it is now.
But, you know, kind of one of those things where you’re like, “Oh, that’d be crazy if I earned that much.” Um, but the cool thing with like running your own business is, you know, there’s really no ceiling, uh, depending on what you’re doing. But especially working online, there’s often no ceiling. There’s a way you could scale that is, uh, very surprising.
Wrap Up and Links
So that’s it for today. I’ll try to play you out and, uh, yeah, check the link in the description for some of the stuff that I mentioned, uh, mainly the Page Optimizer Pro thing.