Over Expanding & More FB Marketplace Tales | DS623

Speaker A: Foreign. Hey, what's going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. It's Doug Cunnington here. And today I'm, um, going to talk a little bit about a thing that I've recently got obsessed with again, and that's pizza. If you listen to my other show, Mile hi Fi, you may hear the theme going through several episodes where I just. I end up talking about pizza and stuff. So I'll talk a little bit about pizza, but as it relates to business and a little bit of an observation that I had because of YouTube, I'll also give you a little bit of an update on my Facebook Marketplace, uh, experiences. So I literally just got back from selling, uh, one of my cameras. So you probably remember I was like, hey, I'm. I'm upgrading a, uh, camera here. So I have, uh, Canon 8. Uh, what is that? Canon R8. And then I sold my old camera, which was a Canon SL3. And I sold a little outfit. I have cash right here. Like I saw. I only sell stuff for cash. Um, so I sold it for 400 bucks, which I think is something that maybe it was a little bit lower than what I was thinking at first. But I'll kind of talk about my approach to selling on Facebook and why I'm doing it. A couple tips. In fact. I was chatting with my dad, who is decluttering himself. Decluttering also. He's not decluttering himself. He's decluttering his home and getting rid of some stuff. But he was like, hey, like, do you think I should try to list some stuff on Facebook Marketplace? He's never done it before, so I gave him a couple tips and I'm going to have a lot more tips for him. But, you know, I was chatting with him about it, and I've sold a handful of things now, and I kind of have a better handle, um, on a few things. And I'm testing. Right. I think probably each local market is a little bit different, and there's always, obviously, the supply and demand aspect that you have to consider. So, um, we'll talk about that a little bit. And then I think those are the main two topics. I'm sure I'll go on some digression. Quick update. Uh, a lot of the folks out there are longtime listeners, and, um, Georgie is doing better. She's actually sleeping behind me. You could potentially see her legs. Um, oh, that's. That's actually her head there, but the camera is so nice that it's blurred, but she's sticking her head out underneath the table there. So she's doing much better. She, she was fairly sick and I mean she's old, she's 13 and a half and she slowed down a lot. But she had like some pretty major liver, um, and pancreatic issues a few weeks ago. She's been on medication, doing much better and is um, continually bossing us around as normal, maybe even more so. And I mean she goes on normal long walks in the morning, like three miles or so and she wants to go swimming and get in the water and all this stuff. So she's acting pretty much normal, has a great diet. She eats better than me from a health standpoint. I mean she eats kibble, but she basically gets like chicken and broccoli and rice at every meal. Not all of her food because I think the kibble is important for her to have. But anyway, she's doing pretty good. All right, let's talk about pizza. Um, and I'll try to keep it brief because I think I could just talk about it all the time. But I'm uh, a big fan of pizza. I eat it pretty often and I went uh, with my brother in law a few weeks ago. I played the uh, episode here, but we walked around because there's some great pizza places, like some different styles and I like all kinds of pizza. Since then I've had, I've made a bunch of pizza myself, but I also had Domino's, which, you know, it's not the best pizza in the world but it's consistent and uh, it was pretty good, tasted like pizza. You know, I have no issues with a full range of pizza, even cheap frozen Red Baron or whatever. It's cool. Like I welcome all pizzas but I'm also um, interested in dough and bread making and I think probably a lot of you out there, you dabbled with, you know, sourdough and making bread during the pandemic. So that, that actually comes into play. I was um, interested in bread making and stuff probably in 2007 or eight or so, around the time that I got into home brewing beer. And I mean I actually made bread um, as a, like in high school. Like I, I was like, I, you know what, I want to bake some stuff. So I like baked bread and stuff. And um, yeah, so I've made bread in some capacity for a long time and then I started doing sourdough and the five minute bread recipe, which is a no knead recipe that you put the flour and water, yeast and salt, you mix it up roughly, you throw it in the fridge for a day or Two and then you don't have to have a, a, um, mixer, you don't have to have a kneading machine or anything like that because it goes through like a slow fermentation in the fridge. So anyway, I've been into bread making and pizza making for a long time and got a pizza stone around the same time and like consistently made pizza and bread and stuff for several years until maybe like, I don't know, I probably took a little break here and there. But um, I would say around 20, 19 or so I wasn't making it as often. But for, you know, probably over 10 years I was making bread and pizza dough fairly often. Well, for whatever reason I, I've been um, more interested in making pizza dough and I think partially it's what I'm paying attention to. So there are plenty of YouTube channels and videos that are about, you know, food and restaurants. And then you hear about um, it's like Triple D, Diners Drive Ins and Dives, Guy Fieri and you know, I love those shows. I could watch them endlessly. And literally, I think there are so many episodes and so many different videos out there. Like you literally can just watch it indefinitely, uh, until the end of time. There's just so many of them out there. So I've been watching Those and then YouTube served up more um, just like recipe kind of videos. So I was like, ah, you know what? I'm interested in making, you know, New York style pizza a little bit better. Like what's it all about? What are the different styles? So started watching more videos around that and then I made a couple purchases. Uh, number one, I did buy a baking steel. So the baking stones were quite popular and they're fairly inexpensive. But as I watched a few videos I was convinced that I need a baking steel which is denser, it's very heavy. So the one I have is like, I think it's a 3, 8 inch, 3 quarter inch, I don't remember sort of the thicker one. It's 16 by 16, it's very dense and you get a better heat transfer. I think it weighs like 40 pounds, 38 pounds, something like that. So it's a big one. And when you put the pizza on there, there's more thermal mass. Uh, and you're able to just transfer that heat to the pizza crust, which is obviously super important. So it gets a little, a little crisp, a little leoparded on the bottom. Is that a word? Um, you have leoparding on the bottom which is like the little black spots right with the stone. It is a fine job and it's probably better than other things that people were using in the past. But the stone doesn't have as much mass, so there's not as much heat stored in there. So you don't get as good of a crust, uh, on there. And I actually didn't weigh the pizza stone, but it probably weighs like two or three pounds. So you can imagine just, like, how much more dense the steel is. So I got one of those. And then, um, funny enough, obviously summer came along and it's hot outside. It's great to be downstairs today because it's going to be like 95 degrees. But one thing that you should do when you're making pizza is like, turn the oven on for like an hour to let the whole oven preheat. And for the steel or the stone to get very hot, well, you can imagine when it's 95 degrees outside, it's not the most pleasant thing to turn on the oven for an hour and let it preheat and then cook for an hour, um, like, you know, a bunch of pizzas or something like that. So I have been, uh, dabbling back out on the grill, and I do use a pizza stone out there. Number one, I think you can get the charcoal way hotter. So, um, if you can get the grill and everything that hot, then you don't actually need the steel as much. However, it's super handy inside with an oven that you can only get up to like, 500 degrees. That's what our oven tops off at. Uh, and anyway, so I'm watching all these YouTube videos, and then I started seeing, I guess it's a podcast, but they also have, like, pretty high production value from a video standpoint. The channel is called Slice, and they just cover pizza. So this is my observation. I was seeing, um, you know, just pizza shops popping up and then there's like a fervor, ah, about this, you know, the pizza. And it's shared via social media. And I've only watched maybe five of them or so. I love them that, uh, it does get a little repetitive and it's longer. It's usually like whatever, 12 to 25 minutes or something like that versus, like the Triple D. They edit it down for like one restaurant. It's like 10 minutes or something like that, sometimes shorter. So anyway, they're going in depth, and 80% of the people that I've watched that have a pizza shop on Slice, they're like, yeah, you know what? I got into pizza during the pandemic, and it was awesome. I, you know, we were stuck at home and I started making pizza. My friends loved it and I was like, uh, you know what? I'm going to open up a pizza shop. Super similar story over and over again. Again. I've only watched a handful and it completely reminded me of the craft beer industry from 20 years ago, maybe a little bit more. 20, 25 years ago. And I got into craft beer in around 2007. My friend got a home brewing um, kit from his family. I think he had it for a couple years before he actually like brewed the beer. And then we brewed it at my house and we had a blast. I think we did. We did maybe two batches on the first day. I think like a couple of my friends came over and actually Sam, Sam had brewed beer. That's my brother in law who was on an episode recently. Sam had brewed a batch or two before so we brought him along or I invited him over as an expert. It's funny, we live like across the country now, but at the time, um, they lived, Sam and my sister, they lived 10 minutes away, something like that. So super close. And um, anyway, we made the beer and we liked it so much. I think we made three batches before we tried the first batch. And I've heard other people say that so like they, they made the beer and enjoyed doing it so much they didn't even try the first batch. And lucky for them because the first batch often doesn't turn out that great. If it's a good kit, it has a forgiving recipe. Um, I think our first one was a stout, which, that fits the bill. Stout has an intense, you know, dark malt flavor. So if there's some issues, you're not going to notice it as much because the flavor is so intense versus like a very light beer or something like that. So anyway, craft beer like blew up for, I mean about a decade, A little bit more, probably a little bit more before things started contracting. And you know, before that I basically drank like Coors Light. I was a Coors Light person and didn't really care about beer. I drink more liquor basically. I would drink like harder alcohol, vodka, whiskey, um, stuff like that, A lot of vodka, I guess. Um, but in, in a lot of, you know, Coors Light or other light beers generally. So the brewing industry like expanded and grew and the home brewing industry grew also. I mean, you know, I think back especially like with uh, the fact that I found this, you know, channel called Slice and it's all about pizza and the pizza industry. And it's kind of like behind the scenes. And it's a channel and podcast for the pizza industry, which is super interesting. And that's what I ended up listening to. Back in the day. The first podcast that I listened to, it was all about brewing, home brewing and the brewing industry. So they would have, you know, potentially like the, the founders and the owners and the brewers of these micro breweries all over the country, they would interview them and talk, like, industry stuff, and it was really cool, really fun, and you got a peek behind the scenes. And immediately after we started brewing, we all loved it. The three, four friends of mine, we all loved it. We got our, our systems, we bought equipment. And the home brewing industry, like, blew up also. So, like, homebrew shops and, um, mail order, you know, big, you know, sort of warehouse, um, the overall industry just blew up. And, and there was a whole ecosystem around it, including, like, software. So there would be, like, recipe software and like, brewing software to help people brew more consistently. And they're still out there. I mean, I remember buying, um, whatever premium app back in 2008 or something like that. I think I probably bought a couple of them. But, you know, I had put all my recipes in there and all my batches were in there, and I don't think it's supported anymore. I think the one I got was called Beer Alchemy, which is, again, that was kind of on the early side. I think there's more sophisticated software out there these days, which I never ended up using. Like, by the time I, I slowed down brewing maybe in 2012 or so, um, I used to be a competition brewer, so I would brew, like, a lot. I would brew all the time, like every week or 10 days or something like that. And I would enter competitions and win medals and, and try to, you know, brew the best kind of whatever beer it was as possible and, like, tweak the recipes and all that kind of thing. So anyway, the brewing industry expanded. Me and my friends started going to gabf. So I went to the Great American Beer Festival here in Denver, um, starting in 2007. And then I believe I went every single year until 2014. And that's when my wife and I started doing, like, slow travel. And we ended up coming out west and moving out here. So by then I was like, okay, kind of relaxing on the, the, you know, GABF front. And it ends up being, uh, you know, bigger and bigger each year. So something like, starting in 2007. I haven't looked at the stats, but I Think it got bigger and bigger until maybe like 2019. And it was huge. And they kept expanding. In the early years, the tickets would sell out, which is amazing. And I think in the last few years it's actually been getting smaller. People are drinking less. Of course, like Covid in 2020 when they canceled the whole, um, festival. It never quite recovered. And then again, people are drinking less. There's other alcohols that people are drinking and weed is illegal and a ton of different places in different states now. So there are other recreational, um, drugs for people to use aside from alcohol. Um, all that to say the brewing industry expanded. And I, you know, I think it went from several hundred breweries across the country to like over 2,000. I, I don't have the stats or anything like that, but that was the scope where it was like people were home brewing. People were like, oh, Doug, you make great beer. You should open a brewery. You know, it's a lot of work. I never even had the idea. I'm like, I want this to be fun. And that sounds really odd. That's difficult. I'm doing other stuff instead. But all that to say the brewing industry grew. There were breweries all over the place. It ended up being like a great pastime. Even though I slowed down on brewing, I didn't stop, um, drinking. So it was a great way. Like traveling across the country. Even very small towns would have like a small, ah, micro brew, um, or, you know, even smaller, where they're, you know, brewing on batches or brewing on systems that only do like a barrel or two and you could pop in there and people were passionate about the beer and they're doing the best they can. There was a lot of crappy beer out there, by the way. You know, some places would not have any good beer. It's rare. But every now and then it was just like they actually couldn't brew good beer. But they were like, all their friends said they were brewing good beer. Most of them are pretty good now. Fast forward. So now it's, uh, obviously 20 years later, the industry grew a ton, perhaps overexpanded, which, you know, there, there was huge demand for, you know, beer and local beer in a place where people could, you know, walk down the street, get beer in their local neighborhood and have it, you know, brewed right there. That's cool. I think that's still cool. And there are, you know, still breweries that can open up and do it. It just depends on the specific market, the supply and demand, the quality, you know, the places that are Making just fucking awesome beer. They're probably, probably not going to go out of business. They're still going to be fine. Maybe they'll be growing. It'll be, you know, the beer that's not as good or, you know, like I said, there's local markets or supply and demand. So if you are in a place where, you know, people are just not into beer as much, they're more into wine or cocktails or something like that, I mean, that is going to make a difference. So in the last few years, GABF has gotten smaller, which is like a secondary thing. But like, breweries are closing. There's consolidation happening even around here. There's a great, um, brewery called Left, um Hand, which is actually just, I mean, it's a little over a mile away. It's so close. It's like right on the greenway from here, so I could bike to it. And they've, I guess maybe bought the, the rights of, you know, some breweries that went out of business around here. So one of them called Bootstrap, which is, um, you know, really was a nice one. Right down the street we would actually have their. I would buy their cases of beer pretty often. And, um, Left Hand also is brewing some from dry dock, which I think they were. They're from a little farther away. But, um, over overall, the point is that there's consolidation happening. The brewing industry is contracting. So my observation was, wow, this slice, uh, podcast and channel, they're covering the exploding pizza industry because a bunch of people got into pizza, uh, making dough and bread and sourdough over the pandemic. And then there's pizza places opening up all over the place, which I didn't even realize, but I guess when I look in my, my local area here. Yeah, there, there are a couple, a few new pizza places that literally opened up in my town. And luckily people love pizza, so hopefully they'll stay in business. But it will be a situation where maybe there's like, over expansion. Maybe people are trying to grow too fast. Like if they have a successful pizzeria, maybe they're gonna accidentally grow too fast. And, um, there's always growing pains. And I mean, opening a restaurant, just really fucking art. Um, and just because you could make a really good product, it doesn't mean you have the, the business side. So I think it'll be interesting. And this is my overall business observation. Love pizza, though. So I've been trying to go and try the new stuff. You know, whenever I see, uh, a place pop up and make sure if I like a place to go there often. Um, I'll skip a lot of the pizza experimentation that I have been doing, but I, I can plan ahead. And I've been doing long, cold ferments in the refrigerator. So I'll make dough, you know, four days ahead of time and just let it sit in the fridge and it'll be ready to go. I just have to, like, get it out a couple hours ahead of time. And I've been playing with the, the temperature and my grill set up and all that kind of stuff to make sure it's done how I want it to be, which I still need to dial in. I, um, don't a proper, like, pizza oven, like the ooni setup or anything like that. So I'm. I'm using a charcoal grill. And I did. I got a pizza set up. So it has, like, an open mouth, um, to accept the pizzas there. And it just, you know, I don't have the right heat. Convection going on the top of the pizzas aren't getting done well enough, even though I can get the stone, you know, super hot. So I'm playing with that. And yesterday my test was to just put the stone on the regular grill, um, with the lid on it. So it actually, like, traps the heat because I think there's just too much air moving through the pizza setup for it to actually work properly. I have cooked non the Indian, uh, bread on there, and that was great because, you know, it's just super hot. I could flip the nine and then, you know, charred. It's done perfectly. But for a pizza, you obviously need the top done. And what I've been doing is just taking the pizza off and then broiling it inside briefly. So it's a good, good thing to work on. All right, little update on the old Facebook front. This is, uh, selling on Marketplace. So I listed my cameras. So I had a Canon SL3 and a Canon T7. I. I put two lenses with each one of them has a battery for, you know, 80% of this stuff. I actually have the original boxes, which I was like, why the did I keep these boxes? You know, if I sell it, then it'll be even better. And it turned out it is nice to have the boxes. Um, I sold the SL3 today, and the lady was super happy that everything was like, you know, in kind of pristine shape and you have the box and I, you know, I'm showing her how to use it and all that. She was really grateful, really happy that I did have the boxes. So, um, the pricing is interesting. And it comes down to timing. Like, I only need one person to see the product and think, I think I need that. That's a pretty good deal. And the timing has to be right. So that's the thing. Like this lady was trying to get a camera in the next, like several days or something. Like she. I think she may have needed to, you know, take some photos like tomorrow or the next day. Um, but she definitely has, like, some things lined up. Like she wants to get into photography. So she's taking some photos for, um, some family members and friends, something like that. There's some event. Right. So the timing was kind of perfect and she was kind of, you know, running into a deadline, so she needed to make a decision. Um, the pricing thing is interesting because I can see what listings are out there. I can look at vendors that sell used gear. So there's a few of them in the photography world, but probably ebay is the universal. But a lot of times there's specific places where you could buy and sell used stuff. And then there's retail companies like, you know, B and H Photo. Huge, but they sell used stuff. I mean, Amazon has used stuff as well. So there's places you could see what the going rate is for a specific product and bundle and all that. And it gives you an idea, but that doesn't actually tell you the real market price. And again, that market price is probably going to be dependent on your local economics and just on a really a micro level. So when I'm looking on Facebook Marketplace at these kind of cameras, I could see, oh, there's several, uh, T7 eyes listed. There's several SL3s or whatever, or there's not that many. And then I can see the prices that are listed. I could see when people have lowered the price and all that. So I listed the Canon SL3 with a 10 to 18 millimeter zoom lens and a 24 millimeter prime lens. 2.8, kind of the small, um, relatively inexpensive one. You can get them used for whatever, 80 bucks, something like that. So I think I bundled all of that together for 650. I think that's what it was. 600 or 650, I can't remember exactly. Call it 650. So I listed it. I don't think I got any real interest in it. So I was like, maybe I listed too high. That was competitive, by the way. You know, if you add up the individual pieces, um, I had the original box for, um, all of the equipment, right? So I had the original box for the lens and the camera. I had, uh, the cables, the original battery and extra battery, blah, blah, blah. So it's very complete. And basically I deleted that and I lowered the price. So I listed it for 480 the second time around. So fairly considerable drop. But the thing is, I don't want to fuck around with it. I just want to sell it. So if I'm getting, you know, $50 more or, you know, $100 more, is that really going to make a huge difference? I'd rather not have to talk to a bunch of different people going back and forth on messenger. So there's. There's a hassle factor in how much value I want to get from the camera or whatever the good is, of course. So I lowered the price. I also took a, uh, video. So the first time around, I just had still images. You can put 10 of them on there, I believe. And one video of one minute or less. So I just did a quick video, which I believe gets more views on there. Maybe it's more visually appealing, maybe algorithmically. Um, Facebook shows that to more people. I'm not sure, but I was like, I'll just do a little video of me panning around and videoing the, you know, setup. So I did that, and there were a couple people that, um, pinged me. You never know, right? So, number one, someone lowballed me, and they were like, I think when it was listed for 600, someone lowballed me and like, I'll give you a 300. And I'm like, ah, that's pretty low. But you never know. Like, maybe they're just. Maybe that's just how they negotiate. Some people don't negotiate at all, by the way. But other people, they'll come in and they try to take your fucking hat off. So they tried to take my head off. And I was like, I could come down to 500. Because I'm like, all right, they're taking a big swing. I'll budge a little bit. But I'm not gonna, uh. I'm not gonna go too crazy here, because I. I looked at the reviews and it looked like maybe they're not that great to deal with. So they had a couple five star reviews, and they had like, whatever. One third of them are like one or two star reviews. So I'm like, uh, it seems like maybe they're not cool. So I wasn't too disappointed. So anyway, time goes by. Handful of people say, hey, is this available? Which could be a scam, but that is like the default text that Pops up when Facebook shows you you want to message someone about a product. So I don't take it personally. I don't say like, don't ask if it's available. Some people get like, so fucking offended. It's like, yeah, that's the default text. You're going to get 90% of the things, 90% of the messages are going to be like, is this available? So you know, you know, you just have to deal with that. People are going to be like, is this available? I say, yes, it's available. And then I'll ask a follow up question. Typically, because I just want to make sure they're like a real person. I'll often look at their profile so you can navigate, kind of get an idea if they're a real person or not. And I went back and forth with the low ball person and eventually like when I lowered the price, they were like, hey, I'm still interested, let me know. And I was like, what's the max that you would Pay? They said 400, which is actually what I ended up selling it for. But I sold it to a different person. Now the crazy thing is the person that I sold it to had the worst profile that I've seen. So no image, no friends, no other information. But they seemed like a real person when I chatted with them. So they're like, is this available? I was like, yep, still available. I'm like, are you in Longmont? They said, no, not, not in Longmont, but I can get there. They said, I'll give you 380 and I could pick it up today. That's great. You know, if you're buying something, you're like, hey, I could do this. I'm going to pay cash. I'll come to you, whatever. That's how I've gotten good deals. I'm like, I can, I'll show up and I'm going to pay cash. Like, that is a huge thing. So they were like, can you do 380 now? Now I had it listed for 480. At this point, I just want to move the thing, right? So I, I was like, can you do 400? They said yes. We set up a time and it all worked out. Now the interesting thing, you may maybe thinking like, hey, did, um, did you make a mistake? Like someone offered you 400 before? I feel very good about this just because the way it turned out. So, um, it's, it's weird. Like I said, this person had no information on their profile. It looked like a fake profile. Um, because there was Nothing on there. I believe it said, uh, the. The Facebook profile was originated, um, in 2017, which is not that long. I've had mine for 20 years or whatever. But the thing is, when I was talking to my wife, she and I have been doing some Facebook marketplace stuff. And I'm like, you know what? It could just be a generational thing. It could be a younger person. And I think that's correct. The lady, she probably was, like, 20. She was somewhere in her 20s. I'm not sure. She could have been 22 or 28 somewhere in there, but, fuck, I don't know. But clearly younger than me and, you know, a young person. And maybe some people, some generations are not into Facebook as much. They don't have a profile open, right? So worked out fine. She fucking showed up on time and was super nice. She was extremely grateful that I had, like, the box. And I was like, do you have questions? Let me show you how to use it. Like, uh, test it out. Um, and, you know, I got some small talk in as far as, like, hey, what are you using this for? So I could potentially give tips or whatever. So, anyway, it worked out great. And it was somewhat shocking because the profile did not lend any credibility at all. And I always meet up in a public place and that sort of thing. Although I sold one amp, and I was like, hey, you know, come test it out. Bring your guitar. You play in the garage. So the person was just in the garage, and that was. That was cool. That person was grateful, too. So one of the big takeaways here is I found it fulfilling and somewhat intentionally, like, I want the stuff that I'm selling to go to someone who's going to use it, and they want it. So, like, that amp, the Blues Junior that used to sit behind me, I think it was, like, a college student. Yeah. He even said he was in college, and he's like, yeah, yeah, I've been trying to get one of these, and I ordered one from Reverb, and it was supposed to be shipped, but it never showed up. Um, so he was, like, thrilled to have it, and I was like, hey, let me show you some settings. And he was. I was like, you could turn it up loud here. Like, it's totally fine. So I gave him some ear protection, and he was able to jam for a few minutes, and he was stoked when he left. Same thing with a girl today. She was super pumped, like, really happy to have the new gear. And she was looking and trying to decide, but total shock because, like I said, it Was the, the least filled out profile that I've ever seen. And I was just like, I have. The person may not show up. I have no idea. Um, the good thing is like where I have folks meet, it's like a municipal building. So there's like cameras all over the place. So if there was any kind of, any kind of issue, like if someone just like grabbed the camera and left, I'd just be like, good, take the camera or whatever. But there's definitely a, a trail, a paper trail that folks could find. Um, or not a paper trail, but there's video camera all over. So, um, all that to say I am testing with like lowering the prices. So I have not yet sold the T7. I, I did pull that down, um, but I did the same thing. I shot a little video. I might try to get some better photos but I think they're probably good enough. And I moved the price down to I think 475 or something like that. Which if you look at all the stuff that I'm selling you, you know, it's in a bundle and has a couple of little extra things. Like basically it's a really good deal. And I think there's some, you know, threshold for uh, probably regardless of the product, there's a threshold where someone will buy it because it's underpriced and they think or know that they could resell it later for more. So I don't have an issue hitting that point at this stage. I'm just like, I don't want to have too much stuff laying around. And if I get, you know, for the T7, I don't use this to negotiate against me if you happen to be in the area. But for the T7, I like, you know, I've used it for years and if I get, you know, $75 more or a hundred dollars more, and I said it before, is that going to make a huge difference? It's just like, it'll be nice to get a little bit more money for it. But at the point where you know, ask the person for 20 more bucks, um, for the SL3 because they offered 380, $100 less than what I was asking for, which is roughly 20, yeah, 20 some odd percent, um, of a discount and I was like, can you just give like 20 more bucks? I mean if they were like no, then I probably would have taken 380 because the $20 is not going to make, is not going to make or break me. So it's a slippery slope. Like if you keep Going down and down and down. So there's probably. There's obviously like some. There's a. There's a bottom that I won't go below that floor. But all that to say if it's a reasonable negotiation with good faith, then it's going to be okay if I don't get the best deal. And like I said, the person, you know, with the amp, with a camera, like, I gave them a good deal and they're happy about it and they're like, this is great. Like, this is really good. Thank you so much. And like that, that is a piece of the puzzle for me. The other piece, which is, uh, far more selfish, is a meeting where I could walk, basically. So I'm like, I'm not driving around. And when I've purchased stuff, by the way, I go to the person's, uh, place or wherever they want to meet. So I just. I did buy a new guitar, like in the last two weeks. Upgraded. You can't see it that well, but I think I showed it in the last week here. And that dude, I think he, he and I probably live like 30 minutes away. But I was like, hey man, my wife and I share a car. Like, can we meet in a public place? And he was like, yeah, no problem. I have purchased like, um, a couple amps and stuff where I like go to the person's house because I actually want to plug that in and test it with a guitar. They actually can meet you on the road and I can bring a battery powered amp and then I'm able to test it and make sure, you know, electronics work and all that kind of stuff. Um, but that's one thing. With the stuff that I'm selling currently, I am going to 99% of the time and I haven't budged on this. They're going to come and meet me where I'm asking them, which will be a public place. Again, 99% of the time. I haven't had much luck with selling books. So I did set aside maybe about 30 books. I put them in bundles of about seven to nine books or so, and there were four of those. Basically, I sold one set and then the rest did not have much interest. So I think I got pinged a couple times. I was trying to sell them for 25 to 30 bucks and I could try to lower the price again where someone's like, oh, well, if I buy these books for $10, then I should be able to sell them for more. I don't want to waste my time on $10 or $30 or whatever, if I sell all of them for 10 bucks. So those I'm just donating. My wife volunteers at the library in that book, uh, donation initiative. I don't know what you call it with book donations and book sorting. So she'll just bring those in and Turns out there's so many people donate a ton of books. In fact, uh, when I was chatting with my dad, he was like, yeah, I have a lot more books than I thought I did and I'm actually donating a bunch of those. So books don't tend to go that well because there's so many of them. The musical equipment, electronics, they seem to go pretty well. One thing that I'm going to, I'm going to sell coming up is a espresso maker, espresso machine. So it's a, you know, just a regular consumer grade. I think it's the brand croups. Is that how you say it? K R U P S. And we've had it for 15 years or something like that. It's fine. It still works. It takes, uh, up space and we don't use it too often. And I was just like, I'm going to use up the pods and then I'm going to sell it. So I think I have one pod left and I'm going to make something and then I'll, I'll list it probably for fairly inexpensive. Like I said, it's fairly old. I have a couple of accessories, like a little, um, you know, the stainless steel milk steamer, um, little pitchers so that you can do some latte art, you know, if you're into that thing. So probably it'll make someone happy. Like I said, I have a few, um, accessories or whatever. So I'll be able to hopefully sell it to someone who wants to get into latte art or whatever. They like coffee a lot. So it's been good from a decluttering standpoint. Definitely, um, better than just like straight up donating it. I was thinking back, like, you know, back in the day, if you were trying to sell a used camera, like ebay was maybe the only like big choice. Or, you know, Craigslist was, um, has been around for a very long time and you know, it's, it's a way to get rid of stuff. But it's certainly there's some overhead and I think the last tip that I'll give is around having a good listing. So I have been using AI to help out and I've, I've guided it. So I'm like Oh, uh, I want to have this section, like, always have a section on, like, why you're selling it. And I try to be, like, very transparent about any issues or, uh, wear and tear or whatever, so there's no surprises. I'm not trying to trick anyone. And I think it actually brings more, um, trust, like, right up front. So, like, when I sold my truck, I was like, here are the issues. Like, there's scratches here. I'm having trouble with this thing or whatever. Like the, uh, there weren't any major things, but I'm like, hey, the middle console is kind uh, of falling apart because it's 25 years old. So it's, um, it's one of those things. The plastic doesn't age well, so this is messed up. And by putting all that, you know, transparency in there, then people tend to trust you. And I think it's a better approach than not, you know, not disclosing something. And then someone goes and they look at the guitar and they're like, oh, there's. There's actually a lot of scratches on here, or whatever. So, um, the more authentic and just honest you could be in the listing, the better. I think maybe some of my listings are getting to be on the long side. However, I think if someone's not familiar with the product, then it is helpful. It saves them time from going to look up the specs on something like that. So I found it to be effective to have the information on there. And I've also, like, taken pictures and like, uploaded to the AI, which I'm using Gemini typically. And I could upload the image and then, I mean, it does a pretty good job. If it's a normal product that's sold out there, then even if it's obscure, if there's information on the Internet anywhere about it, then it, you know, the AI tool should be able to come up with a pretty good listing overall. Even if it's a product from whatever, 15, 20 years ago, there's probably still information out there. So. So I think the super short listings that are like, for sale looks good, mostly good condition, not that great. Like, you should at least put a little bit more effort into it. And I think it makes a big difference with me, you know, selling the camera, where I'm like, carefully taking good images, try to, you know, show all the, um, all the, all of the different pieces and the, the product overall, any information imperfection. So, you know, from a musical instrument standpoint, I have seen people like, try to point out specific scratches. Like, hey, there is a scratch on the back of the headstock. And I tried to point it out here, but it's not very noticeable or there's like, normal wear and tear. Here's an image of some of those scratches or whatever. So with that said, you know, you end up with a better listing and someone who's like, oh, this is like a real product. It's not a scam. And it doesn't seem like they're trying to trick me or anything like that. So I probably still have a handful of things to, you know, go through and sell. I think it's been interesting from the supply and demand standpoint, where if you, if you do lower the price, someone will buy it, even if it's not that great of a, you know, product. And the thing is, or not that I shouldn't have said it that way, but like, even if the person doesn't need it, if it's not a great product for them, if the price is low enough, people will buy. And I've been guilty of that, where I'm like, I saw something that was a good deal. I think I'm going to buy that even though I don't need it. I wasn't looking for it. I'm just like, actually, that's a great value. I should probably get that, which is a bad reason to buy things. And that's how you end up with, like, a bunch of stuff you don't need, by the way. So it's been a good, A good journey overall. And, um, I haven't been listing on Craigslist, um, just because, like, Marketplace seems to be working okay. But, um, maybe I will. For the T7I. Obviously you end up with, um, like a different set of people and you end up with messages coming in in two different directions, which isn't the worst thing in the world. Um, that said, I think it's completely different markets. Um, of course there's overlap. I mean, I look in both places, but I think from an algorithmic standpoint, um, Facebook can hurt you a little bit more. And on Craigslist, I think people are more likely to, um, you know, search, and I think they're probably more likely to, like, look at the, the recent listings. So, you know what? I just convinced myself I will list the T7I because I, you know, have the listing right here. So I'm going to put it over on Craigslist as well and see if maybe, you know, I'll get better traction there. So thanks a lot. Next week I have an interview and a, uh, pretty fun one. Uh, one of my friends, he has a podcast, uh, production agency, and they do editing and different stuff like that. So we talk about, you know, just running a business and starting it from scratch and all that kind of stuff. Pretty fun one. And hopefully we'll get some more interviews lined up. I have a couple messages out to, um, some guitarist YouTuber folks, which should be fun. And those are, you know, something I want to geek out on anyway. The other one, of course, would be pizza and food YouTubers. So that's something I am looking at in the future too.