The short answer
What mindset principles help a reseller grow a business?
My six principles for growing a resale business: your thinking shapes your results, choose pain now over pain later, take action instead of over-researching, manage what you have, plan for change, and live by principles. The rule that matters most: whatever you mismanage, you lose.
- Whatever you mismanage, you lose: count your stock, your hours and your cash every week, and fix the biggest leak first.
- Pick the pain you can live with now. Tough seasons like a supplier backing out or profit dropping are where you grow.
- Action beats more research. If you've watched a pile of videos without listing anything, pick one next step and do it today.
- Don't spend more than you earn. When you get paid, set money aside for the business before you spend on anything else.
- Plan for change with a business plan, a financial plan and a family plan. A plan beats no plan, even when it doesn't go as written.
Chapters (6)
In April 2025 I put out a video about six principles I've learned over 35 years, and I think most of them apply to reselling as much as anything else. This post walks through each one, what it looks like in a thrift and resale business, and one thing you can do about it this week. There are no price lists here. This is the mindset side, the part that decides whether you keep going.
What are the six principles?
They are: your thinking shapes your results, choose pain now over pain later, take action instead of endlessly researching, manage what you already have, plan for change, and live by principles. Here's the short version of each.
| Principle | What I mean | Do this week |
|---|---|---|
| Your life follows your thoughts | How you think about yourself, money and other people shapes what happens to you | Write down one belief about your business you want to change |
| Pain now or pain later | The discomfort of building is smaller than the regret of not building | Name the hard task you keep avoiding and put it on the calendar |
| Nobody is coming to save you | Decisions and action move things forward, not waiting | Take one sourcing or listing action before lunch |
| Whatever you mismanage, you lose | Money, time and stock slip away when you don't manage them | Count your unsold inventory and your open hours |
| Change is inevitable | You either plan for change or it happens to you | Write a one-page plan for the next 90 days |
| Principles rule the world | Some rules work whether you like them or not | Write down three business rules you won't break |
How does my thinking change my results?
Your thinking sets the direction. For about 15 years I worked a minimum wage restaurant job, and my mindset back then was, “One day it'll be my day. One day something's going to come along and it's all going to work out for me.” That was the wrong thinking, and it kept me in the same place year after year. I was reading books and not applying any of them. Things started to move when I changed what I was thinking about, and I saw that my life was following how I viewed myself, other people, and my relationships.
Start with a daily check. Are you running negative self-talk, or are you building yourself up? Pay attention to what you focus on each day, because that focus shows up in what you do. Gratitude matters here too. If you always feel like you deserve more, you won't appreciate the wins when they finally come, and you'll chase the next thing without enjoying the last one.
What changed my thinking was new information: good books, personal development, and working on myself as hard as I ever had. It's an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. If you're stuck in a rut in your business, look at the story you're telling yourself about it before you look at your spreadsheet.
Is it worth taking pain now instead of later?
Yes, if the pain is building something you want. The question I ask is whether you'd rather live with the discomfort now or with the regret later. Tough seasons are where you're really tested. A supplier backs out, your net profit drops, your revenue falls, or a source you relied on goes away. Those moments put you in a situation you may never have faced before, and that's where you grow.
For resellers, that might look like a slow month when the sales you counted on don't come through, or a store that stops putting out the good stuff. You can panic and quit, or you can ask what this season is teaching you and what you'll do differently next time.
The biggest regret people talk about on their deathbed, as I see it, is not doing what they could do. They never shot the shot, never took the chance. Maybe a risk feels too big right now. I think not taking it is the riskier choice. Take the leap, and at least give it a try.
Why does action beat more research?
Action moves things forward. I don't care much about the morning routine, the meditation, or the fancy coffee. Those are fine, but they don't move the needle. What matters is how fast you can get to work on the business. When I wake up, my routine is simply how quickly I can get to work on my dream.
Watching too many videos can flood you with information until you do nothing at all. That's analysis paralysis. The fix is goals and a plan, which give you clarity on the next step. If you're sourcing, pick the next step: one bin, one listing, one message to a buyer. Then do it before you go find the next idea.
Action also doesn't have to be big. A single listing photographed and posted is an action. A single sourcing trip is an action. The point is to stop collecting information and start producing results you can measure.
What does “whatever you mismanage, you lose” mean for resale?
This is the principle that hit me hardest, because I was a bad manager for most of my life. I mismanaged clothing, I mismanaged time, and I mismanaged small things like taking out the trash on time. It sounds silly, but the same thing happens with money and inventory. If you can't manage $100, what happens when you have $10,000? The more you manage, the more you'll have. I spent most of the last ten years working on this, and my time is the thing I'm most careful with now.
Put it in practical terms. Count the stock sitting on shelves, in bins and in storage. Check how many hours you're really spending on sourcing, photos, listings, and messages. Know what you're spending on shipping supplies, fees and tools. You can't manage what you don't measure.
Fast growth can wipe out a business that isn't managed well. Many people who win big money, athletes, actors, and YouTube channels that blow up overnight lose it just as fast when they don't manage the growth. So get the basics under control before you chase a bigger number.
I also have a personal belief behind this, drawn from Genesis 2:4 and the whole of Luke 16 on management. You don't need to share that belief for the principle to work. I think of it as a natural law, the way ground only grows things when someone is there to work it.
Why should I plan for change?
Two things never stop: time and change. The world changed in 2020, and it kept changing after that. I started reselling, and later did a little real estate on the side, because I didn't want to be pushed around by change. I wanted to be the one making it happen. There are seasons, and every season passes, so the tough one you're in right now won't last forever.
In resale, change shows up in platform fee updates, shipping rate changes, new buyer habits, and shifts in what's trending. You can't stop those changes, but you can plan for them. Keep a record of your fees and margins so a change doesn't catch you off guard.
Planning is how you take the proactive side of change. Have a business plan, a financial plan and a family plan. A plan doesn't guarantee it works out, but it's better than no plan. It gives you direction and tells you what to do when things shift. Ask yourself what you're initiating right now, whether you're a business owner, a family member or single.
What principles should a reseller live by?
Principles are the laws that work whether you like them or not. My examples are a seed that germinates when the conditions are right and an airplane that flies once it reaches the right speed. Two principles I hold to in business are that giving comes before receiving, and that sowing and reaping happen in seasons. A simple one for resellers: don't spend more than you earn. People get paid and can't wait to spend it, then wonder why there's no money left.
Pick a few rules you'll live by and write them down. You can ignore them, hate them, or get mad at them, but they're still true. Set them before the next big purchase, not after. A rule like “no buying stock I can't store” or “no new source until the last one is profitable” will save you more money than any single listing.
This is the thing I keep coming back to: I'm not optimizing for views. I'm optimizing for impact. If one person reading this changes how they run their business this month, that's the goal.
The bottom line: what to do this week
- Write down one belief about money or yourself that's holding you back.
- Pick one hard task you've been avoiding and put it on the calendar.
- Count your stock and your hours, and fix the biggest leak first.
- Write a short plan for the next 90 days that covers the business, the money and your family.
- Write down three rules you won't break, starting with not spending more than you earn.
Once you've found an item worth listing, EasyFlip writes the listing from a few photos. You can see how it works here.
If you want more notes like this, sign up for the newsletter.
Questions people ask
How do I stop feeling stuck in my reselling business?
Start with your thinking. Check your self-talk each day and notice when you're waiting for things to happen to you. Then take one action on the business that day, even a small one, because action is what moves things forward.
Should I grow my reselling business quickly?
Not before you manage what you already have. Whatever you mismanage, you lose, so track your stock, your time and your cash first, and grow once those are under control.
Is a business plan worth it for a small resale business?
Yes. A plan doesn't guarantee results, but it gives you direction and tells you what to do when things change. I keep a business plan, a financial plan and a family plan.
What's a good money rule for a reseller?
Don't spend more than you earn. When you get paid, it's tempting to spend right away, so set money aside for the business before you spend on anything else.
What do I do in a tough season of reselling?
Expect it. A supplier can back out, profit can drop, or a source can disappear. Those seasons test you, and they pass. Keep acting on the next step and check your plan.
Sources
Prices are eBay sold listings, and every fact below was checked on April 9, 2025.
Read the full video transcript
It took me 35 years to learn what I'm going to tell you in about 20 minutes. We're going to be going over six principles that help transform my life in hopes to help you get to the next level in yours. So, the first one being your life follows your thoughts. Your thinking is your personal philosophy. It wasn't until I changed my mind is when I started getting different results. My background comes from a minimum wage restaurant worker for 15 years. My thought process was always like, "One day it'll be my day. One day something's going to come along and just it's going to all work out for me." That was a wrong mindset. That was the wrong type of thinking. So until it was about six years ago, I started changing my thoughts, changing my mind, changing the way that I saw the world and realized, wow, my life is following exactly how I think
and how I view people, how I view myself, how I view my relationships. And you are in complete control on how you think in your life. People think, "Oh, it's going to just come along and happen for me. Something's just going to happen and it's all going to work out." Until you change your mindset on how you view the world and how you think about people, how you view relationships, it's going to be very difficult for you to make progress in life. I was always stuck with a closed mindset, a fixed mindset. Never wanted to read, never wanted to learn anything new. And this was killing me. This was literally killing me. Slowly, year after year, I was the same person. No progress being made. Same thing, same thing. Reading books even and not even applying what I was reading. And this was the death of me. But it wasn't until I started actually getting
new information is when my thoughts started to change. See, your life is like a computer a lot of the times. You um are programmed. You're either programming yourself or the world is programming you. And based on your programming, that is how you act. That is how you be. That is how you are. So it's very important that you program yourself to think in new ways. This is reading good books, reading personal development, starting to work on yourself as hard as you ever have. And it wasn't until I started to do that is when my life started to transform, motivated by my family. So, I wanted to be the best version of myself. It's a never- ending process. But your life follows your thoughts. Pay attention to what you're thinking every day. Are you a negative self-t talk person or are you trying to instill positivity in your life? Um, it's really important to focus on
what you're thinking about every day. You know, this is the game changer. If you're in business or, you know, you're starting to work on maybe being a better uh communicator or better in your relationships, you really need to focus on what you're thinking on on a day-to-day. You know, the attitude of gratitude is such an important saying that we must be thankful for what we have because if you're not, you're never going to appreciate the journey. If you always feel like I deserve this, I deserve that. And when you finally get that thing, you don't appreciate it. So focus on what you're thinking. That is a key principle number one. Your thinking is your philosophy. What is your personal belief about life, about yourself? This is key to figure out if you're going to take the next step in business. Principle number two I've learned along my journey in the last 35 years from going
to working for someone else to starting my own business. This is a key in business. Is pain now or pain later? Are you going to live with the pain that you're going through now to build the better life that you're looking for? Or are you going to live with the pain later, full of regret, not doing what you could do, not taking advantage of the opportunity that was in front of you? So, no pain, no gain. If you're going through a season of pain right now, this is great because you cannot grow in comfort, ladies and gentlemen. If you see your growth as a personal, you know, you're trying to get better at personal development, you're trying to get better at business and you're going through a season of difficulty right now, praise God because it's through that difficulty that's going to make you a better person. There's good times, there's bad times. Anyone can
have a good time when the things are going great, but when the tough when the tough times hit, that is when you're truly tested. If you're going through a season, maybe a supplier backed out, you're not making as much net profit as you were, your revenue is down, maybe a source poof, went away, that's great because it puts you in a circumstance maybe you've never faced before. So, no pain, no gain. Are you going to be living with the pain of what you're going through now or the pain of regret later in life? The top biggest regrets in life when people are on their deathbed is not doing what they could do. They never shot the shot. They never took the chance. Maybe you think it's too risky. I think it's even riskier not taking the risk by not doing what you could do, not taking the leap of faith and at least giving it
a try. So, principle number two is pain now or pain later. You decide. Now, principle number three is key here. This is something that I always struggled with is that nobody is coming to save you. Not your family, not your parents, not your brother, not your sister, not your best friend. Nobody is coming to save you. So push yourself taking action on your dream. And success in life is a result of decisions. Failure in life is a result of decisions. Wherever you are right now, you have decided to become. So, it's really all about the choices and the decisions you're making right now in this moment to build the future that you want to build. What is that look like? You got to have a plan. You got to have a vision for the future. If you don't, you have no idea if you're making progress towards that goal. If you're building a business right
now, what are your goals and those goals to make sure you're making progress? no for you. You can only watch so many YouTube videos before you start to go and feel overloaded with information and you have yet to take action. So, it wasn't until I started to take action on my dream and on my vision of building the better life for my family and for others around me is when things started to shift. Action. I don't care about your morning routine, your meditation, your um cold plunges in the morning, your triple shot espressos and all this. All those are great, but they don't move the needle. When I wake up, my routine is how fast can I get to work to make progress on my dream. And those are all great, you know, meditation, all that. That is great. But it's really what moves it down the field and makes progress is the action that
you take in your business. This is key because if you're not taking action, you're not going to see any results. And maybe it's analysis paralysis. Maybe you have so much information flooding in your brain that you just don't know what to do. That's why goals and having a plan is going to create clarity on what steps to take on what you're trying to accomplish. And principle number four ties into my belief system, my personal philosophy. You don't need to believe what I believe to make this principle work. What is a principle? First of all, it's a key. It's a law. And this one hit me hard because I was such a bad manager. Number four is whatever you mismanage, you lose. This ties in with my belief of in Genesis 2:4, if you read that scripture, God withholds growth where there is no management. So God did not allow anything to grow in the earth
because he was lacking someone to work the land. And in the original language translated work means management. There was no one to manage the land. So God literally withholds resources from bad management. This is why it is key to not grow too fast in business or as a person or in life. Also ties in with a New Testament scripture. The whole chapter of Luke 16 is a master class by Jesus on management. And I wrote a little summary that God fires bad managers. See Lukeapter 16. So that is my personal belief but it also goes in it's a natural law of earth. It's a natural principle. It is a first principle. Um so it's just how kind of the world works. Whatever you mismanage you lose. And that goes in with relationships not just with money with um you know you mismanage the time that you have you're going to lose it. So it's really
important to focus on what are the things that you're mismanaging right now that you could be better in. Maybe you have the resources right now currently that are going to take you to the next level. And management is the key principle that ties in with leadership. If you don't know how to manage, you know, whatever you're looking for, you know, if you can't manage $100, what happens when you get a,000, 10,000, 20,000? List goes on and on. And for my whole life, I was a bad manager. you know, I I mismanaged from things like my clothing, my time, from not taking the trash out on time, you know, all these things. You know, it's like really silly, but look at the things that you're mismanaging on a day-to-day basis. um and correct those as soon as possible because your mismanagement in life is losing you resources, time, money. And it's so key to be um
conscious of what you're doing in your life. Um what things you have available now so you can manage what you have because the more that you manage, the more that you will have. It goes in with another scripture is like if you're faithful with little, you'll be faithful with much. So if you're praying for a million dollars right now and you can't even manage a thousand dollars in your bank account, that million dollars is going to kill you. Which is why you see, you know, people who win the lottery, athletes, actors, all the people that, you know, get a quick rise to fame, even YouTube channels, um, you know, if you don't m if you mismanage the growth, um, you're going to just as fast as you got the money, you're going to lose it just as fast. So mismanagement and this was my huge thing for at least the last um 10 years of
just working on becoming a better manager. Um not just in business but in my relationships and with my time. I'm very conscious of my time. The most important thing that I like to manage is my time. I want to make sure I want to spend my time wisely. And why? Because I want to make sure I make an impact in the world. The this whole YouTube channel is changing guys. I'm not optimizing for views and clicks and oh my goodness, that's great. Um, I'm optimizing for impact. You're gonna see a lot more videos like this. I don't care if they get five views. I just want one person to resonate with this message and their life is transformed because I was that type of person sitting in my car on my lunch break knowing that there was a better life out there for me, living below my potential. And I was just not happy with
it. I didn't want a normal life. I didn't want normal reser results. I was tired of being ordinary and I'm sure you are too. So that's why we're going through these principles. Number four, mismanagement. What are the things that you're mismanaging right now in your life that you can correct? Principle number five is that change is inevitable. There is two constants in life. That is time and change. They're always going to happen. You're always going to have time. The world is always going to change. So it's very important that we know and realize that change is going to happen. You can either be two sides of change. You could be a victim of change or you can be an agent of change. And it wasn't until 6 years ago when I realized that things weren't changing in my favor. The world was imposing its change on my life. And I did not like that. I'm
not going to fit into the square the circle that they have pegged for me. I'm a square peg for a round hole is what I realize and that I needed to initiate the change that I wanted to see in my life. Otherwise, I will become a victim of the world changing. See 2020 when the world changed. What was I going to do? Was I going to make it happen or see things happen to me? So that is when we really got into our journey of being an entrepreneur, you know, starting reselling, doing a little bit of real estate on the side. You need to realize that the world is constantly changing and that there is seasons in life. That should make things a little bit easier for you because maybe you're going through a tough season right now. Well, praise God that it's only a season. Things do not last forever on this life. But
it's very important that you make the changes that you want to see. Whether as a person you want to make a change in your marriage, as a husband, as a wife, make the change that you want to see because otherwise you will be complaining and you will become a victim of the change that's going to happen no matter what. Regardless of your permission, so you could be a victim of change or an agent of change. You need to decide what type of change you want to see in your life. You're in control of that. So planning is mankind's proactive approach to change. Which is why you hear me talk about planning and goal setting all the time. If you have no plan, it's going to be very difficult for you to make progress. And I'm talking about a business plan, financial plan, family plan. Have a plan. And it doesn't mean it's always going to
work out, but having a plan is better than having no plan. So planning is mankind's proactive approach to change happening. You feel a little bit more settled. You have a little bit more direction. on where to go, what to do when you have a plan. So I say to you, what are you initiating right now? What are the things that you're doing right now as a business owner, as a family person, as a single person? What are the things that you're doing right now to initiate change, to make it happen? Now the sixth and most important principle of all of this is that principles of life rule the world. Principles are keys and laws. And you've heard me say it time and time again again. Thank God for principles. So what are natural laws? What are first principles? They're things that you can use and have in your personal philosophy or as a code of
conduct. Your ethics, your morals, your principles are what's going to help you take the next step in life. So I can compare it to like the principle of germination is like if you are met under the right if a seed is met under the current or correct conditions it is going to germinate right regardless of the circumstance. If it is meeting the correct laws natural laws for germination that seed will produce. If the law of um aerodynamics, if an airplane hits a certain miles per hour, regardless of its circumstances, it will engage the principle of flight. So these are the two examples that I can think of off the top of my head that are natural laws that just work. Another couple principles that are my personal philosophy that is giving is the prerequisite to receiving and that seowing and reaping is necessary in seasons of growth. So those two things have helped me take
the next step not only just as our business but as a husband, as a father, um as a best friend is that the principles that I apply in my life have only been beneficial not just for me but for the people around me. It's very important to have a set of principles to help you whether in your business uh you know in your family whatever it may be. So start discovering a set of principles, maybe some business principles. You know, don't spend more than you earned. That's a good principle that's not talked about enough, but that is a key one that you'd be surprised when people get paid, they can't wait to spend it, and then they wonder why they have no money. So, you got to figure out what are some principles that you can have as like a code of conduct or maybe some some morals that you live by, some principles. Those
are the things that are going to help you take the next step. It's not until I discovered principles is when my life really started to take off. And here's the thing with with these principles is that you can get mad at them, you can ignore them, you can hate them, but they're always going to be right. They're always going to be true when you're dealing with first principles, natural laws that just work in the world. So, it's one of my favorite book of all time, the Bible, is really just a book full of principles and the basic instructions before leaving Earth, right? So, I wanted to make this video to help you take the next step in your life. You're going to see a lot more videos just like this. We're not optimizing for views, we're optimizing for impact. And maybe this is a message you needed today. I know it's really helped me in
my life in the last 35 years. I hope it can help you out as
