Ep 294 || The Road To Entrepreneurship Started with One Book

[podcast_team]

This month we start our Seller Spotlight monthly segment with eBay seller and 2023 Up & Running Grantee Daniel Trujillo. Daniel talks about getting his start in business with a high school teacher who mentored his first steps towards entrepreneurship. And This week’s answered questions include two about eBay International Shipping and the eBay Standard Envelope and selling to international buyers who use Freight Forwarders.

Episode Links:
Daniel’s eBay Store
eBay Shipping Preferences
eBay International Shipping Explained
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events

Kayomi: I'm Kayomi Kayoshi

Griff: I'm Griff and this is the eBay for Business Podcast. Your source for the information and inspiration to help you start, manage and grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 294. Welcome back from New York City Kayomi. Hey, how did it go?

Kayomi:New York City was amazing. I got to meet up with a bunch of sellers last Wednesday we had a seller social and so eBay has been doing these seller weeks and we've been prioritizing the locations where we have an eBay office. And so I think New York might have been the last of the ones with an eBay office. And I came in to go to the seller social and this was just a bunch of sellers in the region meeting up to talk with eBay staff and connect with one another. But I will say like someone came in, he had sneakers in his bag and we were like, oh those are nice. Were you making a sale? And he was like, Hey, like if I can, I mean we're with a bunch of sellers and I was like, this is so new. New York City. Of all the sellers socials I've been to, I have not seen that. No one has brought anything to sell besides New York City.

Griff: It has its own energy, that's for sure.

Kayomi: Yeah, it does. But enough of my travels and about me. Who's the guest this week?

Griff: Well our guest this week is eBay Seller in 2023 Up & Running grantee Daniel Trujillo will be speaking with our podcast correspondent Georgea Mpampanis from our monthly seller spotlight series, which if you're curious, I may have mentioned this before we moved the Seller Spotlight podcast from its separate podcast and we've Borged it into ours. So it's now part of the eBay for Business podcast.

Kayomi: We've absorbed it.

Griff:We absorbed it. Right, right. And we have two questions about international shipping to answer when we come back after the interview with Daniel. And I have a totally new feature I want to introduce and you're not gonna wanna miss it. So stay tuned after our Q and A section in our You Got Questions? But first let's take a look at the eBay news for this week.

Kayomi:Severe weather, the Up & Running Grant program. And our next seller check-in are all in the news this week. First, we have weather updates for sellers impacted by the storms last week across the southern coast. We are continuing to track the weather and are extending protections as needed. To learn more, go to community.ebay.com and look for the seller news posts for its seller protections are in place. Don't forget to get your Up & Running Grant application in while there's still time. Applications are open now through June 7th, 2024 at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. And one more thing, our next seller check-in will take place on June 6th between 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM Pacific time. Be sure to mark that date and time on your calendar.

Griff: There you go. So three little news items for this week. Mostly reminders, but reminders can be news, right?

Kayomi: They're good. Yeah. Good to know.

Griff: Well thanks Kayomi. We'll catch up again as I said, after we hear from Georgea and her guest.

DaGeorgea: Every seller has a story. I'm Georgea Mpampanis and you may recognize my voice from the eBay Seller Spotlight podcast. The podcast has now moved. You can catch these inspiring seller stories in a segment on the eBay for Business podcast once a month. All of the eBay content you love is now all in one place. Our guest this month learned about making money via internet startups during high school where he started his eBay business. He went on to study at USC film school and got a job in Hollywood as a freelance production sound mixer. But once Covid hit and filming halted, his eBay business was there for him. Welcome Daniel Trujillo.

Daniel: Thank you for having me on. Appreciate it.

DaGeorgea: So we want to know about your business. What do you sell?

Daniel:I'll sell anything I get my hands on, to be honest with you. I mean, whatever makes money is what I've always told myself. But primarily I focus on collectibles and apparel, clothing 'cause those things seem to be things that people continuously buy, even if they already have enough of them. Like shirts or something like Funkos I know people who have entire walls full of Funkos, but they're still buying them. They're still buying them. So I cater more towards those markets. But also that's because they align with what I like. I like to sell things that I am knowledgeable about, that I know about. But that doesn't mean that I don't stray into venues that I don't know about because you know, you never uh, you never know what might be that next golden ticket as they say. And you never know what you might discover. You might have passions for.

DaGeorgea: You obviously are knowledgeable in a lot of spaces and in a lot of categories. You must have been doing this for a while. Do you remember when you first started selling on eBay?

Daniel: Selling eBay on eBay? Not exactly, but I started selling in 2007 on Amazon. Honestly, eBay was a little bit intimidating for me in 2007 because you had to take pictures and you had to do all of these. Whereas Amazon, you just kind of typed it in and it did everything for you. But I started with books. My first item sold, everyone asked. So I'll just go ahead and tell you it was a weird one, which still to this day doesn't make any sense to me. But it was Jeffrey Dahmer's autobiography. Now what was weird about that besides the content was the fact that the book was completely destroyed. The cover was bent. It was a hard cover and I'm like, this is not gonna sell. And sure enough it did. And I'm glad that that was the first thing because it let me know just because it's not perfect or just because it's not fresh from the stores or something like that, that doesn't mean it doesn't have value. That was a good experience, especially just to get out of my house too.

DaGeorgea: You were born selling on eBay. What were you doing before you started selling?

Daniel: Playing video games or trying to maintain a relationship with my first girlfriend . I was only 14, 15 at the time I started in high school because of my digital graphics teacher of all people, I mean not related to selling at all, although he was an eBay, I forget what they call it, a certified eBay manager, something like this. I don't know if that program still exists, but he would always flaunt that he was a certified eBay teacher or something like this. During his digital graphics courses he would be teaching us how to do MySpace at the time style graphics with glitter font and all this stuff. But in the meantime, after the first 30 minutes or so, he would break into business discussions because at that point we all had computers. Most of us were just on the internet surfing things because there was no blocks at our school. So I mean people were playing video games, whatever they could. And, but he would always talk about, again, this was 2007, the incoming impending crisis. Because he would always say that there's gonna be a financial crisis coming soon. You need to learn how to make money on your own. You know, you can't be tied to the system as he would say. And he would talk about his grandma, his name's Damien Jordan by the way. Mr. Jordan, as I know him, he would talk about his grandma who survived the Great Depression by making little leather coin purses essentially. And so he would try to get us to have these online hustles. At first he was trying to talk about blogging where you could talk about, you know, if you like guitars, you can blog about a guitar and if you sell a guitar with these affiliate links you'll get a commission and et cetera, et cetera. I'll be honest, that didn't interest me. It just felt too random. Just felt too chance. I could be writing for years and never get a single sale. But then he told us about online resale and, but he's like, I'm not gonna tell you about it in class if you're interested, you need to come see me after school. That's the only way I'm gonna talk about it. And so me and myself were the only ones who showed up after class on that particular day. And he said, look, if you're really interested, I'm gonna go down to the Salvation Army on sixth Street, which is like down the street from the school. If you'd like to learn more, you can meet me there. And so I'm like cool, but I'm 15 and I call my parents can I go down to meet my teacher at the Salvation Army after school. You know, I'm glad it wasn't today 'cause in 2024 my dad or my mom probably had been like, hell no. But you know, back then they're like, sure, we'll pick you up. I'll be there with you if you're really passionate about this, why not? We went down to the thrift store, I met him and his wife and he had already had a cart full of books. That was his thing. He gave me a few books. He's like, these are your starter books. These are gonna sell, I promise you. One of them was that Jeffrey Dahmer book and sell them. Come back to me and then I'll start to teach you more and more as we go on throughout the semester. And I remember selling again that Jeffrey Dahmer book and like a fishing book, a few other little books that he gave me. And I told him and he's like, okay great, don't spend that money. Save $500. Once you save $500, I'll tell you the next step to unlocking your journey. Sold the $500 after the end of the semester and came back to him and he's like, you didn't spend it right? He's like, no, it's there. He's like, cool. I need you to go to this link and buy this device. And a part of the device was a subscription service. So the device was a PDA, I know we all have iPhones and smartphones now, but for those who are listening maybe don't know what a PDA is, it was essentially the precursor to a smartphone. It was a touchscreen and had a stylist and stuff like that. No internet access. But the purpose of this device was I could connect a Bluetooth scanner, like a barcode scanner to it. And every day before I would go out hunting a part of this service, it's called a a seller tool. They're still around, I don't know if they still do this service, but for 30 bucks a month I could download Amazon's database straight to the PDA as of the moment I downloaded it. So it was accurate until that moment. So I would download it in the morning and then spend the day thrifting going around different stores and scanning barcodes and it would literally tell you buy this, don't buy this. So I too was leaving with shopping carts full of books. And at my peak in high school, I was netting in about two grand a month just on books. And then I went to college and I kind of stopped because I thought in my mind,I need to take college 1000% serious. I can't be doing any of this Amazon stuff, this eBay stuff, foolish decision in my part, but it is what it is. You live and learn. But yeah, so that's what really started my journey and he was telling me along the way, the real key is liquidation. Like that's where you want to end up is, is ending in that liquidation market and buying wholesale. You don't really want to go to the thrift stores like this anymore 'cause you're just gonna be spending so much time. But it's like fishing. You throw your rod out there and maybe you'll catch something, maybe you won't. But yeah, that's what really started, started everything for me was him and, and then my drive to, to just do all that.

DaGeorgea: What did you take in college and where'd that lead you?

Daniel:So I'll be honest, in high school, my advisors, my instructors, they were all telling me, you gotta go to college, you gotta apply to college. And coming from a Catholic private school, I went to public high school. That was also in the mind at my private school is college, college, college. You can't be successful without a degree. And so throughout high school I was thinking, I don't really know what I want to do. I have no idea what I wanna do. I don't know what my career paths are. Not that I wasn't exploring. It just felt very final to go to college. And it was an English teacher who said, you could just go to community college and transfer and and really just kind of get an idea for everything. That's what I ended up doing. Because I had literally had no idea. I asked myself before I went to community college, what do I like doing? I like playing video games. And then I said, okay, well I can't make money playing video games. And then astronomy, I loved astronomy, I really do. I love space. Everything like that. And then movies, I loved watching movies so I knew nothing about making movies but those are my interests. Video games was out. My first semester. I took an astronomy course, realized there was way too much math involved and it wasn't as exciting as I thought it was to be honest. I realized that I love reading about astronomy, I love reading about the theories that other people have come up with, but it just wasn't for me. And then the movie class kind of changed everything for me to be honest because that's when I learned about the magic of cinema and I could literally talk about movies all day long. And that led me to figuring out that that was really a passion in life. And ultimately I decided at that point, now that I know what I want to do, where can I go to pursue this career. And so it was USC, LMU, NYU, UCLA. You know all the major colleges that do film. And fortunately I was accepted to USC and that's where I went. And so for the next two years after I transferred out with my degree, I studied production.

DaGeorgea: How many hours in a day do you put in on eBay?

Daniel: If I'm on set, zero, unless I sell something. If I sell something, I'll ensure that like when I get home I have the time to package it and send it off before I go to set the next morning or after, depending on the hours. A film set is a 12 hour minimum day minimum. Yeah. And usually for the projects I'm working on, they're trying to cram a lot more in than they have time for. So those days end up being 14, 15 hour days. But in the meantime, the benefit of being freelance is I really do get to set my own schedule in terms of when I'm not working and things like that. Or being able to say no to something if maybe something is coming up. Like a few years ago I was selling in person a lot and so there was jobs that might come up that I could say no to because I knew that I wasn't necessarily losing anything financially. It also works the other way around too, where I could say no to certain things selling wise because I knew I was gonna make up for it by networking or meeting new people or So in terms of time towards eBay, while I'm working, it's pretty low, I'll be honest. But I feel like that's the benefit of eBay is it's once you put in the work to list properly and do all that, it's kind of low maintenance. I don't mean that as a negative thing, it's just when I'm in the the zone I know I can put 15 to 20 minutes into eBay in the morning and that might be it for the day.

DaGeorgea: While you're working, I'm wondering, does you know your eye wander? Are you able to potentially get any of your inventory from the film sets you are on?

Daniel:Not like that, no. If there's anything that I take from set given to me, I should say I never take anything from set. But if anything was given to me, it's usually something personal. There's usually a story behind it or something like that that has more value to me than financial value. Being a part of film sets has expanded my business mindset because you learn about clothing. 'cause as a sound person I have to mic the actors or actresses and because of that I have to work right alongside costume and on production design and things like that. I'm being exposed to brand names that I might not have heard of before. But they have value because you know, the character might wear a, I'm gonna make this up, I know what Tom Ford is, but they're wearing a Tom Ford suit. Maybe I've never heard of Tom Ford before, but I'm seeing it right. Or certain shoes or certain hats, et cetera, et cetera. And being in LA you kind of run around enough to know where Warner Brothers or Sony or all these major studios kind of are tired of their props where they put that stuff. An so I do acquire, purchase film related props or things like that from these places. I do actually sell things from other sets, I guess is a better way to put it.

DaGeorgea: So I'm gonna switch gears again. We are in the process right now of taking applications for up and running grants and I know you received a grant in 2023. Congrats again for that.

Daniel: Thank you.

DaGeorgea: How did the grant proceeds benefit your business?

Daniel:Well, I still have money because that was one of the things that I submitted was that I wasn't going to spend all of it. I think it's very easy to spend that amount of money, especially when you're running a business. I mean, I'm not commenting on anyone else, but I could see myself 10 years ago, for example, buying it all on inventory or something like that. I made it so where I have some money for stocks because I believe in my company. So I believe in the long-term value of my company. I believe that my company will exist in five, 10 years, 15 years when these stocks mature, that my overall value of the company will be there. So there's things like that where immediate, there's no returns on it, but again, I'm investing in my business that I believe in wholeheartedly. So there's things like that. Some stuff did go to inventory, I can't, can't lie. But not again, not all of it. And then a lot of other things I like to say, the money allowed me to breathe best I can describe it where there's been certain things that have been on my docket and I'm like, I don't feel comfortable pulling the trigger on this subscription service or X, Y, Z, whatever it might be that I said, okay, I now have that breathing room to do it. To explore these options to see if there are benefits to a MailChimp email subscriber list, et cetera. You know, all these different business tools that are out there. So I've been slowly pulling the trigger on those like an eBay store, buying the whole year in advance so I don't have to worry about that monthly payment at all. It's just paid for, it's just done.

DaGeorgea: Do you believe grants like these are important for businesses to apply for?

Daniel: Yes, yes to just give you a short answer. But the long answer is I think anytime someone is willing to give you money, someone or some organization or something like that, you better be ready. Film taught me that where if you're in the game long enough, the opportunity for you to succeed will come. Whether it's five years, 10 years, 15 years, five minutes from now, it will come as long as you continue to grind at it. But you need to be ready. If you're not ready, it might not ever come again. And so yes, money like this is extremely important, but only if you're ready for it. That's how I look at it. Only if you're ready for it. Clearly there's a submission process, application process which you do have to prove to a certain extent you are worthy for lack of a better word of this grant. But I think you should be ready for it because it could really jumpstart your life essentially. That's enough seeding money to elevate you to that next level.

DaGeorgea: And to add onto that applications close June seventh. Daniel, where can we find you in your store online?

Daniel: Currently I'm on eBay. The hoarderstore.com will have all of my links as well. I also sell on other platforms. Not just eBay because diversification is great . But I do love eBay. I really do love eBay. That's why I'm an eBay ambassador now. No matter what eBay's like my ride or die, uh, as long as I continue to be in good graces with eBay, I know they've been there for me. And so as a result I will always be there for them. It doesn't matter if I make 10 times as much money on another platform, it doesn't matter to me. eBay was there for me and that loyalty is like super important. That's something that I just can't just shush to the side.

DaGeorgea: I love that story and you're gonna continue to be on it and we can't wait to follow up with you, see what movies you have in the works. Thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate it. This was awesome.

Daniel: Thank you. I'm really grateful for the opportunities eBay's given me and I look forward to the new opportunities that I'm sure eBay will continue to give me as time goes on.

DaGeorgea: Daniel Trujillo sells on eBay under the store named The Hoarder store. Check out his store. If you're a pop culture fan from collectibles to fashion and so much more, we hope you'll join us on our next segment, we will shine the spotlight and another seller with an amazing story to share. Now back to Griff.

Kayomi: You've got questions.

Griff: We've got answers. And our first question this week Kayomi is about international shipping. And in fact both questions this week are about international shipping.

Kayomi: Oh, lovely.

Griff: So We're right on topic and would you mind reading the first question?

Kayomi:I would be happy to. So Diane sent this in to podcast@ebay.com and she says hello. Recently a sale that was going to a US address was charged an international fee. It appears that this is the address of a freight forwarding company in Oregon. I am opted into eBay International Shipping because I love the no international selling fees and the excellent seller protections. Confused as to why there was an international fee charged for a US address and concerned that I'm not protected for these freight forwarding sales. Also want to make sure my setting correctly reflects that I don't sell internationally on my own, but only to countries in the eBay International Shipping program. Can you give some insight? Thank you. Diana Tate. RedRabbitSale1 is her seller id. Alright, well yes Diana, we can provide some insight. The international fee is charged if the buyer's registration address is outside of the United States. What happened in this instance as you suspected the international buyer had the item shipped to a US destination, but since the buyer's registration address is outside of the US, you were charged an international transaction fee. There is no way for a seller to blog purchases or bids from a buyer who uses a freight forwarding service.

Griff:Yeah, and it's a question that's come up in the past and there's simply no way to do that. And it's for ensuring that you're using the eBay International Shipping for all international sales. Diana, you can determine that by going to my eBay, which is on the right hand top of any eBay page and then clicking it and then selecting the account tab and then scrolling down to shipping preferences. And then on that page make sure the selector for opt-in opt out for international shipping is set to opt in. And that's all you need to do. Now all of your listings will be opted in for international shipping except as we'll see in a moment those listings that are in categories which are ineligible. And in that case the buyer will never see them on their international site. They won't show up. And you know, it's interesting because there's been a lot of talk over the years about these freight forwarders and I'm not quite sure why people use them. It may be a cheaper way to get some international shipping. They ship kind of in bulk when they collect enough stuff and it's mostly Pacific rim countries where this is popular. But yeah, there's no way to block them. And your responsibility, by the way, is only to the address on the invoice. So if you are shipping an item to an address in Oregon and it shows it's delivered, you are clear after that. It's kind of like a eBay International Shipping. The onus is entirely on the buyer. You don't have to worry about customs or extra fees. You've done what you're supposed to do, which is get that item to that domestic address that was on the invoice.

Kayomi: Exactly. Just ship it to the place it needs to go and you'll be good.

Griff: Don't worry about it at all. Our next question was sent to podcast@ebay.com by seller Catherine and she writes, most of my stamp and paper money shipments are in the domestic United States. Does the eBay Standard Envelope work for international shipping? My user ID is member6354A Sincerely Catherine. Hmm. Interesting. I know she only asked one question but it actually it needs two answers.

Kayomi: I know we had split it up. Catherine you asked a great question and so we've got some good news and possibly some bad news. We'll see how you take it. First the good news, yes, the eBay Standard Envelope service can be used for shipments through eBay International Shipping. Remember, you only need to worry about domestic shipping when shipping an item through eBay. International shipping, eBay handles the rest from there. However, Griff, I'm gonna let you cover the bad news.

Griff:Yes, Catherine. Now the bad news, the stamps coin and paper money category is ineligible for eBay International Shipping. So anything listed in that category is not gonna be displayed to eBay buyers outside of the US if a seller has opted into eBay International Shipping. Now, if you can get around that a little bit, you could of course provide your own international shipping for those items listed in the stamps, coins, paper money category. And you do that by selecting the option that says other international shipping in the shipping section or in a new or existing shipping policy if you're using those. And then this will prompt you to provide shipping details like what carrier and what service. Now if a seller adds their own international shipping option and the listing doesn't qualify for eBay International Shipping, the buyer will see your shipping option only. And this is the international buyer. If you add your own international shipping service and you're opted into the eBay International Shipping and the item qualifies for eBay International Shipping, then the buyer's gonna be presented with a choice of both. So you gotta keep that in mind. Of course, you are responsible if you ship through your own service for international that you've selected, you're gonna be responsible for getting that item to the international destination, unlike eBay International Shipping. And the buyer's going to probably be on the hook for any customs or duties tax, VAT. And if the buyer wants to return it, you have to take the return. So it gets really complicated. The reason why a majority of our sellers who offer their items internationally now do so exclusively through eBay International Shipping, is because of the ease of use and that entire elimination of any responsibility for returns or having to worry about the extra charges. But this puts you in a kind of a quandary because from your email, it sounds like you want to be able to offer items in the stamps, coins, paper money category through eBay International Shipping and that won't happen. International shipping, always a hot topic.

Kayomi: A good topic nonetheless.

Griff: Very good topic. So thank you for sending those questions in.

Kayomi: Do you have a question about selling on eBay? Don't delay. Call in at (888) 723-4630 or email it to us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: That's (888) 723-4630 or podcast@ebay.com. I repeat them every week, you know what I'm talking about. But don't drop off now because we have a brand new feature for the end of our episodes now instead of the old three point podcast checklist, which we've been doing for several years and which quite frankly was getting Okay. Pretty, pretty stale. This week we have a fresh new end of the episode feature. It's called drum roll, please... ( drumroll sound) That was pathetic Kayomi. Thanks.

Kayomi: I am trying my best here.

Griff: Okay. Tip of the week!

Kayomi: How exciting. I love that. Okay, Griff, well what is the first tip of the week for this episode?

Griff:Okay, this one comes from me and the future. They'll come from sellers from Kayomi and myself. This one is about packing and it's about a particular pet peeve of mine. If you're shipping an item in a mailer or Polly bag, make sure to use one that allows for extra room for just space. And I'll tell you why. I buy a lot of say shirts on eBay and very well-meaning sellers will stuff something like a shirt into a small mailer bag and it comes like a little pillow. Well that's great, you know it's a shirt, it's not gonna get broken. But that kind of packing provides no room at one of the edges of the bag for me, the buyer to open it safely with scissors or a knife. And it risks the buyer, me damaging the item in the bag while trying to open it. And it's happened more than once. So if you package the item carefully so that it fits inside of the bag and the bag is bigger than the item, if the buyer then picks it up and gives it a shake to get the item to move to the bottom of the bag, that's gonna give that buyer ample space for cutting it open without damaging the item inside. There you go. Tip of the week.

Kayomi: That's a good tip of the week. I like it.

Griff: Thanks.

Kayomi:But still, we want to remind you to always check the announcement board at ebay.com/announcements for up to date seller news and to check the episode transcript for follow up and for any links we reference during the episode.

Griff: Speaking of our next episode 295, we'll talk with eBay's Chief Sustainability Officer Renee Morin about this year's just release eBay Commerce Report.

Kayomi: Alright, well we'd like to again thank our guest this week, eBay seller in 2023 Up & Running Grantee Daniel Trujillo.

Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed in part by Libsyn and podCast411.