Laid Off 2 Days Before Christmas, Now He Makes $60k/Month Reselling⏐Ep. #276

Jim Rowe (0:00)

Two days before Christmas, they laid me off. And I was like, you've got to be kidding. I'm never going to work for someone else that can control my income like that. I did $60,000 in sales first month. My son looks at me and he never says anything like this. He goes, dad, you need to buy this thing.

Chris Koerner (0:15)

And how much was it?

Jim Rowe (0:17)

$700,000.

Chris Koerner (0:18)

Oh, okay.

Jim Rowe (0:19)

Yeah. And so that's what got me really fired up. And so literally, I'm selling everything. I'm trying to make $1,000 700 times to buy my family our dream yacht. I started with that $1,200 purchase and then took that profits, bought the next one and I just kept rolling.

Chris Koerner (0:38)

What did you sell them for each?

Jim Rowe (0:39)

$50.

Chris Koerner (0:40)

Wow. And you paid?

Jim Rowe (0:41)

I put $2.28 or something like that.

Chris Koerner (0:44)

So $25x on your money.

Jim Rowe (0:45)

Start with something you already own. Don't go into debt to learn how to sell because it's not the buying, it's the selling.

Chris Koerner (0:52)

Now, what types of items sold particularly well and what types of items just didn't sell?

So I run across this guy on Twitter and he claims to have made $60,000 his first month, half of that being profit, reselling random things in middle of nowhere, rural Washington. Restaurant equipment, clothes, furniture, appliances. He bought them for pennies on the dollar. He put them in front of this old towing shop that he rented for super cheap and he just sold, sold, sold. What's his goal? Save up enough money to buy a $700,000 boat. If you've liked any of my previous content about reselling, you are really gonna like this one. Please enjoy. How did you go from Jim Rowe being born as a baby to making $30,000 profit his first month in business?

Jim Rowe (1:39)

Yeah, so grew up in a single family at home with my mom working as a bartender. And I just posted on X today, my dad was an alcoholic and what it's like to be raised by an alcoholic. And one of my traits is I'm a problem solver. And so I like to problem solve and I also like to help people. And so that's become kind of my superpower in life without knowing what I was doing. It was just there. So anyway, I've done lots of different things. I owned a tool company. I got into the diamond business. Then I went into construction and owned a glass company. It rained 98 days in a row in Seattle. And I came home one day and I go, I don't want to put in another window and I don't want to drive on that freeway. Because it's crazy traffic in Seattle. And my wife goes, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to do something where I sell somebody something. They love it. And they pay me right there and they want to come back. And she goes, what is it? And I go, I want to open a restaurant. And so we literally moved to her hometown, which is on the sunny side of the state, opened up our first restaurant. I had never worked in one really. And she worked in one in high school that was a little fast food place. So I was the cook, she was the waitress.

And we opened up and the place took off. And so we grew the restaurant business from 2002 currently. We still own that original restaurant. But we opened up nine other restaurants and a brewery and a nightclub and a pizzeria, all sorts of things. And, and then COVID hit.

Chris Koerner (3:08)

Sorry, were these nine different restaurants under different brand names?

Jim Rowe (3:12)

That's my, that's the ADD problem right there. I don't, I like to do something different.

Chris Koerner (3:16)

Yeah.

Jim Rowe (3:17)

And so thank God I married the right person to deal with this craziness.

Chris Koerner (3:22)

Same.

Jim Rowe (3:23)

Yeah. So anyway, I COVID hit and it just so happened that that was going to be my daughter's first year at Boise State. And I always just planned on, you know, I didn't start saving when she was born for her college fund. I always had great cash flow and knew how to make money. And all of a sudden, all my restaurants were closed. Washington State shut everything down. I laid off 180 employees. And so at the same time, there was lots of news about college debt and people wanting free college and all of that. And I'm trying to teach my kids that there's no such word as free. And so I pulled her, I go, Brooke, I want you to go to college and have fun and have that whole college experience. And I'm going to start a different business each year to pay for it because I want to show you how this really works.