Meet Johnny Larkin

 

We were lucky to catch up with Johnny Larkin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Johnny, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I was born without the use of my left eye and bright red hair. Being one of the only kids in my school with bright red hair I felt different. It wasn’t until half way through middle school I realized my hair wasn’t what everyone was talking about. Everyone was talking about the fact that I kept trying to participate in school sports or after school activities that I was simply horrible at. I don’t have any peripheral vision or depth perception to shoot a basket or even hit a ball, but I was always willing to try. It was just around the time I got into high school that one of my friends that was good at all the sports he participated in asked me “why I kept trying”? This was the first time I had to think about why I always looked at everything as a challenge. Something I needed to learn and get better at practice until I wasn’t looked at differently. This one question from a friend made me stop and really look at myself I realized I wasn’t different I was just a kid that liked to play. I learned the most valuable lesson I still hold on to today. Perfection is achieved not when there’s anything else to be added but when there’s nothing else to take away. Confidence is just trying even if you fail, learning is never failure as long as you try.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’ve always been a collector at heart. When the wife and I first met she used to always call me an organized hoarder. But like most people money doesn’t grow on trees. So I started looking at yard sales and thrift stores to find items to add to my collection. Some of my collections have been used to buy the things I wanted. I once saw a car that I absolutely had to have, because it brought back memories from when I had owned a similar one when I was younger. I sold my own comic book collection to buy that car. The car and the comic book collection maybe gone today, but I still have fond memories about how that car and experience made me feel. For 18 years I worked as a table games dealer here in Las Vegas, NV. For 18 years table games provided me with a great income, but as the years passed the passion I once had for the job seemed to go away and became very monotone for me. Just after Covid hit and turned the world upside down, the wife and I knew I needed to make a job change, So after much debate with family and friends I decided that I needed to do something I loved doing. I walked into an 18 year career put in my 2 week notice, and never looked back. The day I put my 2 week notice in was the day that Left Side Resale was born. I started going into thrift stores and Pawn shops. seeking out yard sales and estate sales. I wasn’t just looking to add to my collection any more I was looking to bring back nostalgia to others that had forgotten what they wanted. I searched for those items you didn’t know you needed, sometimes hard to find ones. Left Side Resale isn’t about the videos on tik tok, YouTube or the bills that need paid it’s the passion in the hunt of finding items for our online buyers, the thrill of driving all over town looking for the items that I hope bring a smile to someone’s face. With Left Side Resale we are always finding ways to improve, but we rely on the feed back we get from our buyers. When we do our online live video auctions with Whatnot we actively engage with everyone in the chat to see what items they are looking for or wanting. If it’s an item we have we put it into the auction and start bidding at $1 if we don’t have it we add it to the list of items to keep an eye out for. Sure I sell thing online and make videos about it but this is really about making new friends and talking about those nostalgic things that we can relate to and make us smile.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Number one never be afraid no make a mistake. I started by taking something I already had knowledge in like movies. I’ve always been a little bit of a movie buff so I started selling VHS, DVD’s and even laserdisc and the old UMD’s used with the Sony PSP. From there I paid for my education sometimes buying things and loosing money and other times buying a item to take the risk of loosing money and learning about a new category I could sell in. Second ask for help. We have all used a computer but when I first started relying on my computer to operate my store I had to learn how to research Items and edit videos. I’m still asking for help or looking things up still today. The most important number three. I would never be where I am today with out my friends And family they all have been the most important support and encouragement I could have asked for

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

After a couple of personal set backs that derailed the business from growing a year ago. These last 12 months have been filled with nothing but accomplishments and growth. Because of the amount of sales we were doing on Ebay we became a Top Rated Seller and was even invited to our first ever Ebay open for resellers. While there we got to see how our business was performing. After leaving the Ebay Open we were able to take our store from less than 100 listings to now over 500 listings on any given day. Along side of the growth of the Ebay store I also launched our tik tok and YouTube channels. while still small in comparison to some, we’ve slowly grown to over 500 followers between the two. The biggest improvement to these videos from a year ago was that I learned how to edit the videos to allow Left Side resale to be more transparent on what we buy and sell an item for. these have been some of my biggest motivator to keep going.

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