Can Resellers Save The Planet? CEO Meg Geiger

https://www.tiktok.com/search?q=meg%20sells%20&t=1648421621792

itsmegsells@gmail.com 

Are you a reseller? 
Can resellers help save the planet? 
what could you sell around your house to make money and be more sustainable? 

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This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors . Today's guest is a fellow Tik Toker my good friend Meg Geiger, who is the CEO of Meg sells. Hi, how are you? Good. How are you? Good. Thank you so much for making time for us. I've always loved your, your videos on Tik TOK. And I thought we just had to do an can you tell us about your background a little bit? Who are you? How'd you start in this crazy world of recent.

Meg Geiger: 0:59

Sure. Absolutely. So before the pandemic, which ensure this is similar to a lot of people, I was in hotel sales. So I've always kind of had a sales background. But in terms of hotel sales, I was selling weddings, social events, corporate events, which obviously during the pandemic came to a halt. So that was a big change for that whole industry, because really with all the limits on events and the sizes and the capacity percentages, it really just kind of devastated the industry for it's just coming back now. So for two full years, so I found myself in a lot of other, my coworkers, we were all furloughed just like a lot of other hotel employees. So kind of just sitting there for those first two weeks when everyone thought COVID is done into. Just kind of like, well, what are we doing? What, what should we do? So I kind of got into like, just cleaning out my home, which I think a lot of people did. And they were like, okay, I have all this stuff I don't need. Right. And I'm looking at these things. And it's funny. I actually found back from when I was a kid, , me and my brother's Pokemon collection, which I knew nothing about. And I'm like, you know, this has to be worth some money. This is old. This is like early nineties cards. Like, you know, we got to check it out. So I looked into eBay realizing that I had a ton of rare cards that were worth a good amount of money. So I kind of went on YouTube and , you know, Tik TOK as well. And I educated myself on like, how do you set up? Things on eBay. How do you price things out? How do you ship? So I sold off that whole collection and we did pretty well in the collection. And then I'm like, I don't want to stop. I love it. So kind of continued to learn and teach myself how to continue to sell. So just kind of fell into.

Cory Connors: 2:44

That's an amazing idea and what's more sustainable than just selling what you have and especially you even will sell what, what really caught my attention was you will sell things like old packaging, like That blew me away. I saw that and I immediately followed you. I thought this is brilliant. So can you tell us, where did that come from? Most people wouldn't think to sell old bottles and old packaging.

Meg Geiger: 3:11

Yeah. So I actually have a whole series called weird things you can sell online. So that's probably my Tik TOK and YouTube and Instagram. It's just, it honestly blew me away when I was teaching myself how to do this. And I'm still very much learning. I've been in it about two years now, but every time. Look things up, or I pick something up in a thrift store or something from my own home. And I look it up, I'm blown away by how much people will pay for things or even things that you would never think to just throw out right. That they actually sell for money. So, and I love that idea that it's sustainable too. So I have so many episodes of weird things such as like you can sell wine corks because people like to use wine quirks to make crafts, right. And while maybe they don't go for a ton of money, it's better than just throwing them out. Kind of sitting and rotting away. So everything from that really, I, I'm pretty sure that almost everything sells. I mean, there's some things, but you know, that's kind of why I created that series. Cause I'm like, I, this just blew me away. So I think, you know, other people wouldn't know this either.

Cory Connors: 4:11

I think it's brilliant. And I think it's a missed opportunity for a lot of people. I often I often talk about recycling and the recycling is incredible, but if we can reuse more times, that's even more sustainable. So what you're doing is the pinnacle of sustainability and I'm thankful for what you're doing

Meg Geiger: 4:34

well.

Cory Connors: 4:38

So, how did sustainability become kind of one of your topics? Is it just part of who you are?

Meg Geiger: 4:44

Yeah. I mean, I've always tried to be as sustainable as I can as a person, just even in my day-to-day life. Right. Like, everything is simple. As, you know, my household, we don't purchase water bottles, you know, we only use reusable water bottles. You know, we utilize a company called blue land. I'm not sure if you've heard of them. Yeah. They have all the, yeah. All the sustainable cleaning products. Right. So you don't have to keep re repurchasing those plastic bottles. They come in little you know, almost like a little pill it looks like, and you drop it in your bottle. You kind of just reuse it that way. Instead of purchasing a whole new plastic bottle we use earth breeze, which is a company that, you know, they get rid of the plastic detergent jugs, and they mail us it's laundry sheets. So they look like dryer sheets, but they're actually detergent, but in a sheet form, so little things like that, I've always been really sustainable. And to be honest, It's a lot less expensive too, because you know, when you're looking at things like, especially for packaging, when you're shipping things out, right, why would I go purchase 50 boxes or something 50 different poly mailers, right. When I can just reuse, you know, if I order from Amazon or anywhere I can reuse all those, you know, and just kind of send that out and use it for shipping. So I've found it to be less expensive and more sustainable.

Cory Connors: 6:00

Absolutely. Oftentimes over the last two years, I many people like you started a business and they came to me on Tik TOK and said, how do I, how do I get 50 bucks? How do I get twenty-five bucks is how do I get 10 bucks? And I would say go to a local store. That has a corrugated recycle bin in the back and say, Hey, can I go through your bin? And I guarantee 99% of the time, they'll say, sure, man, get rid of it. I don't care. I don't like we don't want that stuff and it'll get reused again. And again, you can reuse corrugated dozens of times and it will keep it strength as long as they're not wet. Absolutely. So that's a great tip. Any other great tips for or tricks for resellers? Like.

Meg Geiger: 6:51

Yeah, definitely. So for me, I, I'm happy to say that within two years I have never purchased boxes or paddling mailers. I what I do is I actually asked my friends and family, so I go all through my family, all through my friends to just please save any. Bubble wrap. Any boxes, any literally the thin poly mailers, any bubble mailers, just save them for me and I'll come pick them up. And I also source, like, if I can't get enough, that way I source on Facebook marketplace, a lot of people will post, like if they've just moved, they have tons of packing supplies. They just want to get rid of it. Right. Like they don't want to wait for that. Large garbage pickup in a month. They want it gone now. So I go and source that way. As well as the stores, you know, like I usually have, I don't get to that point where I need to go to a store, but if I do, you know, you just pop in and ask. So I would say the tip that I would give for other people is ask other people to save their supplies for you. Right. It cuts down on your operating. You can just kind of go and take that and reuse those items. And then if you ever do run out of supplies U S P S offers free shipping supplies as well. So you can take advantage of that. Yeah. So it's super easy just to order on the website and it's literally costs you nothing and they deliver it to your front door. So that's a great option as well. That's

Cory Connors: 8:06

another great tip. Yeah. Do you know that Amazon ships 4,000 packages every minute?

Meg Geiger: 8:12

Is that right? That

Cory Connors: 8:15

is pretty. I mean, this is the greatest tip I think we can provide is just like exactly what you said, call your five best friends and say, Hey, don't throw those away often or grab the next time I'm there. You should never have to buy things. I've worked with dozens and dozens of resellers like yourself and they all say the same thing. Don't buy that stuff. You don't need to.

Meg Geiger: 8:40

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of people that are concerned about the presentation of it. Right. Which makes sense. But I think for reselling, it's not so much about branding yourself, but what I do in my my boxes, I have a small, like thank you card. And I include on thank you card that, you know, this, this order was packaged with mostly recycled materials. So thank you for participating in that. So just so you know, if it's, if people are concerned, You know, the logo, Amazon is on their box. People can understand that it's been recycled and maybe appreciate that, you know, as much as we do. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 9:13

That's brilliant. Yeah. My friend, Amy owns a company called big B little B and they do the same thing. They put a little sticker. This box has been used three times or slash four times or five times, you know, just like a tally mark of how many times it's been shipped.

Meg Geiger: 9:30

Yeah. That's awesome.

Cory Connors: 9:32

So tell us about something really interesting that you saw that it's just like in your memory, like, oh, this was so cool. I couldn't believe it.

Meg Geiger: 9:40

Yeah, absolutely. So I've had quite a few of those. And I think that goes back to my, my weird things. You can sell series the weirdest one for me that I never would have thought is egg cartons. Believe it or not. So you can actually sell 'em both the plastic and the cardboard Sal. I usually purchase the cardboard. But the cardboard sell because like even farmers, like they use those for seed starters. So they kind of have different. Yeah. It's filling in with soil and kind of put, plant their seeds in there just to start it for the season. So weirdly enough, like if you package those, I think I sold them in like a lot of twenties. So you save up 20 egg cartons. Right. And if you have two per week, you're doing good. And then you sell them for like eight bucks. And it's not much, but again, you're recycling it and it's something so weird that I, I formerly used to just throw out right now. I'm like no ways, things like that. I think that was probably the craziest thing. And when I told my family that savior, I had cartons for me, they're like, why, what is she doing? But it's definitely really interesting. You know, you wouldn't think that,

Cory Connors: 10:47

have you ever considered writing.

Meg Geiger: 10:50

You know. Yeah. But I don't think I'm there yet. I do enjoy writing, but I think that's a huge project to take on, but I would love to do that one day when I have some time and sit down and read everything out.

Cory Connors: 11:03

Yeah. I think that's a book I'd buy MIG sells weird things. That's interesting. So any, any cautionary advice for people that are thinking, oh, I can quit my job and do what makes.

Meg Geiger: 11:20

Definitely. So I would say if you want to start this, right, like if it's something that you're interested in trying try, instead of just invest all your money in purchasing things to flip, like whether it be from thrift stores or sourcing online, I would try to sell things in your own home first and make sure you like it and make sure, like, you know, it's something that could work for you. Because it's hard to just go into it and put all this money into it. If you don't know what brands sell. Or you know, what you can kind of spend in order to make enough profit to make it worth your time. So I would say, start with selling things from your own home, right? And if you are trying to look to do this full time, you need a lot of space. You need space to store your inventory, which I don't think people realize like I have for example about I think it's like 200 items listed right now on one of my stores. And that takes up a huge. It's almost like a whole room and I don't think people would, they they're like all 200. It's not that much, but that's a lot of space, right. Depending on what you're selling. So that's definitely one thing. Another thing I would tell people to be aware of is you really have to educate yourself on if you're flipping brands, especially if it's designers, you have to be careful of duplicates or, you know, faiths. So there's a lot out there, especially at thrift stores and bins. If you're looking through Goodwill bins that aren't fakes, right. So you need to understand, okay, like what is a fake and what isn't, because if you're, if you sell fakes, like you just didn't genuinely know and go to listed on your store, especially on eBay, you can get dinged for that and they can, you know, deactivate your account. So that's something to be very, very cautious of. And if you're not sure then send it into, you know, an expert or someone who knows. So that's one thing I be super careful of.

Cory Connors: 13:05

Yeah. That's a brilliant point. Very important, because you can get legally in trouble, you know, or even, you know I think raining for a sales for a person that resells a rating, like an eBay rating is a very important thing. Right? So. Yeah, somebody could give you a zero or one. I don't know how the system, but a really low rating and that could bring you down, right? Absolutely.

Meg Geiger: 13:30

Yeah. You want to avoid that if you can and it's, it's something so innocent, right? You could just genuinely not know that it's a fake cause some of these fakes look so good and it can really kind of deteriorate your business. So if you're not sure it's better to just send it in to someone who's an expert or just give it up, you know?

Cory Connors: 13:49

Do you offer any coaching services for what you do?

Meg Geiger: 13:54

I do. Yeah. So I offer a couple of different options. I do mentorship, which I can do by like a half hour an hour. And then I also offer store reviews. So if people you know, input their eBay store, if they're just starting, I can go through it for them. Kind of give them some feedback on things you need to change. It's simple as pictures, right? Sometimes people have a picture and you know, there's a dog toy in the background and you're like, oh, that's not so attractive. I do offer mentorship and store reviews.

Cory Connors: 14:27

That's excellent. And how do people get in touch with you for. So

Meg Geiger: 14:31

you can either go on my Tik Tok . If you go. I have a bolt on Tik talking Instagram on my link tree. I have a link right to the coaching services, or you can email me. My email is it's Meg sells@gmail.com so they can easily just kind of contact me there and we can set something up.

Cory Connors: 14:47

Thank you so much, Meg, what are some future goals do you think? Is this going to be an empire? Are you going to continue? Continue this? Are you going to focus on coaching or, or start a new company? What are your.

Meg Geiger: 15:00

So I have to say, this is definitely something I'm very passionate about. So I do hope at one point you kind of grow it. But I think the main focus that I'd like to do is to kind of turn people's minds. Whereas, you know, and as a kid, I think this was a big thing because a lot of people kind of saw like hand me downs or secondhand items is kind of like not, you know, so. Right. So I think I'd like to get people away from that and understand that, you know, secondhand items are so much more sustainable and better on your wallet, you know? So that's kind of where I'd like to head and I'd like to grow the business in terms of doing that. And I'd love to continue coaching and maybe write a book.

Cory Connors: 15:41

You heard it here. First folks Meg sells weird things coming in 2025, but I can't wait. It's writing a book. It's not easy, but there are lots of ghost writers these days that can help you put it together. But I think it would, I think it would sell, you know, I'd be a customer for sure. Well, thank you so much, Meg. Thank you. Landsberg Orora for sponsoring this podcast and we really appreciate it. If you're listening, please take a minute to review and make sure you subscribe. So you don't miss any episodes. Thank you so much, Meg. We appreciate you.