ESL Teacher Resells Furniture for Big Profits

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Question for you today here at the top of the show. What would it look like to reinvent yourself? Do you ever feel like you're on the outside looking in? You know, everything up to this point in your life is, it's already done, it's in the past, it's a sunk cost. Or if you prefer, if you think sunk cost sounds negative, it's a dot that remains to be connected based on what happens next.

So here we are, you have a chance today, every day to reinvent yourself. If you feel like you're on the outside looking in, if you feel like there's something more, well, I encourage you to think about reinvention. As you hear these stories and our ongoing dialogue through a new episode every day, through all the different questions, the updates from people, think about, how might this apply to me? And very often, it's not going to be the specific story or the specific example. But hopefully there is some message or example or just kind of an idea that comes to you as you listen, as you hear someone's story and think, you know, what could I do to make a change for myself?

And ultimately, my goal is to help people make positive changes for themselves, especially in the area of micro entrepreneurship, you know, starting a small business, you know, creating a new source of income without quitting your job, et cetera. But really, you know, all sorts of positive changes, that's the focus of my work. So with that in mind, thank you for joining me today. In today's story, when an ESL teacher sells a couple of bar stools on a whim, she ends up beginning a furniture flipping journey that leads to a full-time income. Reinvention, as I said, it's possible.

The story is called "ESL Teacher Resells Furniture for Big Profits." I'm going to bring it to you in just 30 seconds. [Music]

When Danielle Winton brought her first home in November of 2020, she wanted it to look like it could be in a magazine. The problem was she was starting with limited furniture, only owning a bedroom set, a desk, and two bar stools. And she didn't even have a place for those bar stools, so those didn't really count. To make a little extra money, she decided to sell them.

Danielle originally bought the bar stools for $15 on Facebook Marketplace. She thought might as well try to make a profit, so she listed them for $45. They sold without delay, and Danielle was surprised how fast she had made 30 bucks. She figured that she could probably do it again and decided to buy more pieces. One of her favorite early finds was an old outdated orange table.

Danielle bought it for 25 cents. Apparently the person just wanted to get rid of it, painted it white and gray, staged it, and sold it on Facebook Marketplace for $50. In case you're wondering, that is a profit margin of 99.50%. 99%, almost 100% profit. From there, she was hooked.

It was like she had found Aladdin's lamp, except that wasn't for sale. She loved the process of finding good deals, transforming pieces, and making sales, especially as she made more and more money from them. A few months later, of course, the pandemic hit, and Danielle began to take a hard look at her career path as an ESL teacher. She realized she didn't want to spend the next five to 10 years doing the same thing. Besides, she had always had an entrepreneurial drive, and now that her furniture sales were going so well, she was ready to unleash it.

For the next few months, she slowly ramped up. Her goal was to find as much furniture as she could for $10 or less, and then resell it for $50 or more. She found affordable pieces from Goodwill, garage sales, and estate sales. She also began to look at the Craigslist free section, also known as the free section on Craigslist, to find the ultimate affordable furniture. Finally, Danielle downloaded a cool app called Freebie Alerts.

This app sends you a notification when someone around you wants to give something away for free. It uses location services so you can see approximately how far away they are. After three months of committing to her new craft, Danielle built up a strong inventory, and had begun to learn a few tricks of the trade. For example, she learned that there are certain types of furniture that will always sell, like couches, desks, shelves, chairs, dressers, and beds. On the other hand, there were some pieces that she knew were more risky, like art, lighting, entry tables.

Those things might sell, but not for a while, and rarely for as much of a profit. She also learned that most people like black and white furniture, as well as furniture sets. Through all the trial and error, it's been a low-risk side hustle. In fact, since Danielle already owned the first piece of furniture she flipped, those barstools that started it all, she's been cash positive through the entire experience. As she went along, she reinvested in the business to buy more furniture, restoration tools, and even make her own website, wintonfurnishing.com.

She made the site about six months after starting, mostly as a source of credibility for her brand. The site links to her Facebook Marketplace listings, which is where she still spends the majority of her energy. However, she's also experimented with selling on other platforms, including Craigslist, eBay, and Nextdoor. After starting in November, Danielle has already worked up to earning more than $5,000 a month from her business. She says that one of the main factors in building the income was investing in storage units for the furniture.

That way, she was better able to acquire a larger pool of inventory rather than be limited by the space she had in her home to store the pieces. She focuses mainly on selling around her area in mid-Missouri. Over time, she hopes to build a larger network of shoppers, drivers, and virtual assistants all over the state. Danielle still teaches a few ESL classes, but her focus is on furniture. [Music]

Going back to that theme of reinvention, I remember a time of reinvention in my life.

I was finishing my journey to every country in the world, and that was a project I focused on for 11 years. And, you know, that was wonderful, but then it was coming to an end. And so, like, as that final year approached, like, you'd think it would be a time of celebration, and, you know, I was ready for it to be over in some ways, but I was also kind of feeling bad. I was actually feeling bad and a little bit anxious and depressed over this, you know, whole thing coming to an end. And what I kind of learned is, first of all, this is very common, you know, not necessarily for people going to every country in the world, but whenever you're focused on something for a long period of time, and then it comes to an end, you know, in a way it's a, you know, joyous, jubilant time, but it's also a little bit unsettling because it's been your focus for so long.

So what you have to do in these situations, you know, you have to reinvent, basically, like, you have to find some other focus. Because your desire for focus, that anchor point, whatever it was before, it's not going to go away. You need to substitute something else. You need to find whatever is next. So in my case, I began focusing a lot more on community, on telling other people's stories, and here we are approaching episode 1700 of this project, side hustle school, so in some ways I'm still doing that.

I'll leave you with that today as you ponder your own reinvention. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, including links to everything mentioned in the episode, will be at sidehustleschool.com/16881688. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for joining me.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.