The Clothes Dryer That Changed a Family Forever

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

[Music]

Hey, hey, what's up? Side hustle school listeners, friends, community. I've got a great story for you today. Let me just tell you, I love a good reselling story. These kind of stories are close to my heart because it's how I got my start many years ago, just learning to buy and sell things online, which led to so many different opportunities and projects and a whole different career and lifestyle and everything else that came along later, all because I learned some pretty basic skills, which you can learn too.

Reselling is one of the easiest ways to get started in the world of side hustling. It is low risk, it doesn't take much investment, and you can gain experience almost immediately. So hard to beat those things. At the end of this episode, I'm gonna issue a challenge to some of our listeners, maybe even you, but for now, we're calling this story the clothes dryer that changed a family forever. It's all about a government employee who has let go from his job.

He then stumbles upon a reselling opportunity that would end up helping his family ride the coming recession and eventually earn six figures in a single year. Pretty awesome story, I think you're gonna like it. Let me say a quick thank you to our sponsor. I really appreciate them. They allowed the show to be completely free to you.

Then I'll tell you all about this government employee and his clothes dryer. [Music]

LaJuan Stockstale Diggs is a family man. He married the love of his life when he was 20, had three kids soon after, and worked hard to provide for them. Finances were tight in those early years, and then before much longer, they became even more challenging. You see, on the cusp of the 2008 recession, LaJuan was let go from his government job.

Over the next two months, he submitted over two dozen job applications, but no one was hiring. Thankfully, his brother owned a moving company and was able to supply him with some contract work now and then. Even when times are tough, there's always someone willing to pay for manual labor. The moving company clients would frequently offer excess furniture to LaJuan's brother, which he gladly accepted. At one gig, a client offered a clothes dryer to him, and then LaJuan's brother offered it to LaJuan.

He almost said no. He had a perfectly good dryer at home. Why would he need another one? It was just gonna take up space. But then his brother said something that would change his life forever.

"Hey, just try to sell it. You can keep the money." Being three months out of work and not expecting a job to come along anytime soon, LaJuan accepted. He didn't know if anything would come of it, but he figured he might as well try. His first thought was to list the dryer for sale in the local newspaper. That ad would cost at least a few dollars, and it would take at least a couple days to be published.

But his wife had another idea, Craigslist. LaJuan hadn't used Craigslist for much of anything before. He'd poked around in the job section, but he never thought of it as a marketplace to sell things on. Again, he wasn't certain it would work, but it was free and instant. Why not?

Within a few hours of listing the dryer, someone arrived at LaJuan's house and gave him $75 for it. He was ecstatic and also frustrated. It sold so quickly, he realized he should have listed it for at least $50 more. His mind began turning over like a permanent press spend cycle. He spent the rest of the night reading all the listings for washers and dryers.

Within a couple days, he was able to confirm his suspicion. People were selling used appliances for far less than they were worth. And if he could be quick to buy them, he could flip them for a profit. To test the idea, LaJuan called his family members around town and asked if they had any used appliances they wanted to sell. The next morning, he picked up another dryer for $50, listed it on Craigslist, and sold it for a $70 profit.

It was the easiest money he'd ever made. But even more importantly, it gave LaJuan hope that he could provide for his family through the recession and perhaps beyond. He still helped his brother out with moving gigs, but he no longer felt the urgency of applying for every job under the sun. He'd found something he could earn real money with and he felt in control of his circumstances. Day after day, he scoured Craigslist pages for his local area.

He searched for appliances that were under $100 with two criteria in mind. They had to look like something he'd use in his own home, and he had to be confident that he could make at least $50 from each appliance. In under two weeks, LaJuan had made over $1,000. He couldn't believe it, but he wasn't about to stop and ask questions. It was hustle time.

Most days, he bought at least two appliances, loaded them up in his SUV, listed them at home, and resold them within 48 hours. It was working. It was working a lot faster than he had expected. It worked because he began to treat it like a full-time job. He refreshed listings every few minutes, careful not to miss anything.

His goal was to always be the first one to ask about an appliance. He learned that by being the fastest, he didn't have to worry about competition, and he always tried to beat everyone to the best deals. He refreshed the listings at 10 p.m. at night, did it again at five in the morning. His family was relying on him.

When it came to selling, the process was pretty simple. He always gave the appliances a good cleaning, and he took newer, better pictures and wrote up a clear information-packed description. Sometimes he would even repaint the tops if they looked faded. And when it came time to list the item, he'd price it just a hair below the average price for similar models to help move the item quickly. About a year into the hustle, LaJuan had his first $5,000 month.

He'd been so busy raising his kids and flipping appliances that he hadn't even realized he had surpassed his government job salary. As more years went by, LaJuan expanded into flipping refrigerators, espresso machines, studio equipment, computers, and a variety of other items that he learned he could profit from. There were even a few years he surpassed six figures in profit. It was more money than he'd ever made. Then he expanded even further.

He started making YouTube tutorial videos and wrote a handbook explaining his process for newcomers. It's now been 11 years since LaJuan sold his first dryer and a lot has changed. He now has part-time jobs as a real estate agent and an airline employee. Both gigs have provided different kinds of value to his family, including cheap airfare and free standby tickets. Thanks to that 20 hour per month job at the airport, he's often able to fly to see his son play football at Cornell University.

And that benefit or that experience really characterizes LaJuan's approach this whole time. He wasn't about creating an empire or always hitting six figures. It was about providing for his family and helping others do the same. There's more than one way to accomplish almost any goal. He just didn't expect to find his answer in a common household appliance.

[Music]

Okay, as I said, I love a good reselling story. Big congrats to LaJuan, it's so great to hear how somebody's been able to go all the way to making six figures by flipping appliances, buying them on Craigslist, and then just optimizing the process. So listen up. If you're trying to learn about the world of side hustling, like, well, first of all, let me say, if you already know what you're doing, if you have a plan to do something else, that's great. Do that, don't be distracted.

But if you're just kind of getting into this and you're like, I want to make some extra money or I want to learn how this process works. Like I said, at the top of the episode, no easier way to do it than this kind of thing. And you can do it in your own way, but I want you to pay attention to something I mentioned in the story. I'm just going to read this part again because it's really key. This is what's going to help you succeed.

When it came to selling, the process wasn't that complicated. He always gave the appliance as a good cleaning, then took newer, better pictures and wrote up a clear information pack description. I think I also mentioned he would even sometimes repaint the tops if they looked faded. So basically what he's doing, he's just buying something in which there aren't good photos or maybe it's a little bit dirty or maybe the copy of the information isn't written very well. And then he's improving that process and then selling it for more.

So this is what I did 20 years ago. This is what he started doing 10 years ago and is still doing in different ways now. Variations of this process, of this business model are still possible in this day and age. And you probably won't get rich doing it, but if you need money soon, this works. As I was working on this episode, I was thinking about another one we had recently about a college student.

He was actually an immigrant college student from Ghana who was studying in the US and needed to make some money. He had a family and had to provide for them. And so he started reselling textbooks and he would find a way to buy textbooks at one price and then sell them for a higher price. And again, it's not that complicated. It's just a matter of buying low and selling high and figuring out over time which items are going to generate the most profit, which items are gonna be the easiest to turn around, which ones have the least complicated logistics.

Like for me, I think selling textbooks is probably easier than selling clothes dryers because clothes dryers are big, bulky items. You could only get one or two of them a day. Whereas with textbooks, if you could find enough supply, you could get boxes and boxes of them coming every day, not take up that much space. So anyway, the point is this is very much still possible. And my challenge to you, or at least to some of our listeners out there, if you're trying to figure out what to do, if you wanna make some money, go and do this in some way.

Go and buy a clothes dryer or maybe pick something else. It might be easier. But the point is go and pick something and then choose a channel. Could be Craigslist, it could be eBay, it could be if you're in different countries, it could be Gumtree or there might be in your country, a different directory. But there's all kinds of these online directories where people buy and sell things.

What you wanna do is find the most common one for your area. Don't try to find a specialized one. Just look for the biggest, most mainstream, most common one. And see if you can't with a little bit of work, buy something and then resell it for a $50 profit. Or maybe even more, or maybe even more than one item.

But I just wanna make the challenge something relatable, something that really anyone who wants to do it can do it. So if you do that, please let me know. We'd love to come back to our listeners and say, hey, look, I just heard from so-and-so in whatever city who did this in their own way. Really, I am cheering you on here. That's the whole point of the show is to say, look at this person who did this, what are you doing?

How can we help you? How can you get an income generating project so that you have more options to do whatever is most important in your life? That is what I'm working on every day. That is my focus, as well as our whole team, like we are single-mindedly behind this goal of helping you create that kind of freedom. So I'm gonna leave you with that today.

Thank you for listening. I don't take your time or your attention for granted. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Our show notes, including a link to Luan's project, his handbook, anything else I mentioned are at sidehustleschool.com/633. That is episode 633.

You've also got 632 other episodes in the archives, all completely free, available for you to listen to whenever the time is right for you. You can download them by month. You can download them by week, whatever is best for you. And of course, much more is on the way. Do keep coming back.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Sidus of School." [Music]