SecondMoonshot

It has been over a year since I interviewed myself and thought it was time for a follow-up. John was such a compelling host, I felt so comfortable with him that I was excited to see what kind of curve balls he would throw at me. If you missed the first interview, you can find it here . John: Welcome back, John! I can honestly say our first interview was fascinating and the best one on my hosting career to date. JOHN: Ditto! I just feel so comfortable with you, it makes me just want to dig deep and share. John: OK, let’s jump right in. How is the progress on the beard? JOHN: I knew you would start off with the elephant in the room. Anyone would tell you your kinda cute…in a homeless boxcar-jumping vagrant kind of way. John: Focus please. JOHN: Right…sorry. Growth rate has slowed down quite a bit, but would say we are at perhaps 65% of goal. John: Last we spoke, you were an eBay seller doing some Custom Framing, now your a Custom Framer doing eBay selling, what happened? JOHN: So a coupl

Exceed customer expectations in Quality, Design and Value. Treat every object being framed as if it were priceless and irreplaceable. Always do the right thing. Carrie asked me “What do you mean by ‘Always do the right thing’?”. I think I mean to make good decisions which always have the customers and employees (when I get one) best interest in mind. Don’t try to defend one’s self if a customer isn’t satisfied, but focus on making it right. Be accountable to your actions and words.

We were lucky enough to get COVID this week and lets just say it was not asymptomatic. Mostly all ok now, but just to be on the safe side, Sydney and I took a well needed cat nap after hitting a few estate sales. John

Since most of us will never really be interviewed (or even be asked), I decided that I would just interview myself…who better to ask the compelling questions that no one else is going to ask or care about. It was a joke conversation Zabrina and I were having in the car and thought it would be fun to do and a non-traditional way to share some information about us and SecondMoonshot. Part II, A Year Later is here . John: Welcome John, thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Let’s start with the basics, tell us in a nutshell the fundamentals of yourself. JOHN: Thanks John, it is truly [emphasized excessively] a pleasure to meet you in person! Well, I was born in Indiana in 1965, as a child I rode bikes and skateboards with no helmet, probably didn’t wear a seatbelt until I was 25 too. Average middle class raising in a military (Marines) family with 2 sisters and 1 brother - all older. Divorced 13 or so years ago, hope the ex is happy, she’s a good person, we had 2 wonderful childr

In 2021, it took me all year to get about 100 followers, I have hit 200 at middle of August 2022, so making progress. Its probably one of my more cherished metrics as it is probably one of the best indicators your doing something right (or wrong). I am a single person operation for the most part, so my growth is only going to go so far, but I am very comfortable with the feedback I have received and think I am promoting a better atmosphere for eBay selling (or anything else I am involved in). Honesty, fairness, empathy…even today are still great behaviors.  Boy, I printed the web page out, circled in marker, scanned it, cropped it, just for this blog post. There must be a better way! Update: I ended the year 2022 with 288 eBay followers and hit 4000 totally item sales. Good year. John

Back in mid-2021 I had heard about an auction in Spring Hope, NC called One Man’s Treasure Auction Company (aka OMT) from someone I met at one of the JMS Estate Sales. Cute young lady that sold vintage cloths; can’t remember her name but her young son I do recall was Roland, 3 or 4 years old, good looking kid. She inquired on some old T-Shirt I had on and wondered if I had any more to sell her. I sent her some pics of 5 or so, of which she only ended up taking the Rick Springfield concert T-Shirt. I ended up giving it to her for free via a porch-pickup and my only ask was to give me some ideas on some different ways to source some good inventory. She mentioned Stan and OMT and said they were good folks and I should check them out. For whatever reason, I never did follow up on that lead, at least not for 6 or so months later. Zabrina and I were driving back from a visit to Rummage Warehouse in Wilson, NC (a great place in its own right and Bill and team are awesome) on a Saturday night,

 I think I keep getting better looking every day! Thanks COVID. Well, wife wouldn’t agree.

13 years ago, I was going through a divorce. Any divorce is messy, especially for the kids and this one was no exception. Through the years we had jointly built up a significant amount of credit card debt and 95% of that ended up my responsibility as part of the settlement, meaning on top of a generous alimony, child support for the 2 children (normally a state calculation), along with the debt payments…lets just say, I was living well below the poverty line.  As I was moving into a new apartment, I needed to see if I could dig up a very cheap washer and dryer. I ended up finding one for $50 but it was in Charlotte, NC….that’s about 2 hours away. I had an aging Jeep Grand Cherokee at the time and fortunately had a trailer, so off I went to take possession. During the trip, somewhere around Winston-Salem, my car basically died. I ended up having to get it towed to a local dealership to receive the news that I would need a new engine (which I could hardly afford). I called Zabrina to com

I took the last 4 or 5 months of buyer feedback and plugged into a Word Cloud: Active listings: Sold listings (last 90 days ending 8/27/2021): Generated from:  https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create

I thought I would discuss a little about my brand philosophy and some product examples and rationale that support the brand. When I started this, and I mean really started it vs. just selling my comic collection and McD Happy Meal toys in the attic, I put some thought into what was important to me to make it worthwhile. It really wasn’t about the money, but not lying that it wasn’t a component, but the money without some other form of ‘do the right thing’ mentality puts me back into the same state which pushed me into this to begin with. So I felt there should be no (or little) compromises on a few key core value statements: * If I am not happy, I will stop this. Non-negotiable. * I don’t want someone to pay for something they don’t want.  Non-negotiable. If someone doesn’t want what I sold them, then either I missed the boat or they did, but either way the right thing will always be to take it back and refund their money (all of it, including shipping and return postage if I want it