How we met

Wowwieee where to begin?! It’s crazy to think Sebastian and I have only been together for three years. It feels like 10 considering when we met, we hit the ground running and never stopped. It’s been the greatest adventure of our lives and we don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon! But I need to catch you up. Here is what we’ve been up to since December of 2017…

I (Shyanne) had recently split from my soon to be ex husband. I was honestly just trying to figure out my shit when I got a message in my DM’s letting me know my new choice of hair color was working for me!

It was Sebastian.

He had no photos of himself on his profile, only models he had photographed during his time in NYC. He asked me out for coffee, I said no. This happened about 3 times until he gave up, but he never stopped talking to me. We talked on and off for 2 months and honestly, I was really enjoying this guy. I was feeling bold one day so I told him to come see me at my work, since his apartment was only two blocks away. I was in a safe, busy part of town so if he was a creep I would be able to bounce real quick. I chose not to bounce when I saw a 6’2″ beautiful specimen of a man standing outside my working looking for…ME! Wow, I honestly had no idea he was going to look like THAT.

Even better was when he walked inside and Wilson, my dog at the time, ran towards him like they had been friends forever. Wilson hated men, but I truly believe dogs sense peoples energy and I trusted it. I greeted Sebastian with a hug and felt so safe. He felt good to me. So good that we ended up talking for 4 hours straight! I had to have know this guy forever, right?

The next day I had a date that I promptly cancelled and asked Sebastian if he wanted to go Christmas shopping with me instead. We ventured downtown and had a date that to this day feels like a scene from a Hallmark movie. It was lighting snowing, we had hot coffee and were linking arms under the Christmas lights in downtown SLC. I honestly forgot about all my Christmas shopping.

When we got home, we stayed up talking till 3 in the morning. We both realized we LOVED hockey and had both played at one point in our lives.

Naturally we HAD to go ice skating, so we did a couple hours later.

We were inseparable

One night we were playing ping pong when I told Sebastian if we could make it back and forth 50 times, I would agree to be his girl friend. We made it to 50 on the second try! I’ve never seen such determination. So there you have it, within 6 days we were officially dating

Wilson and I moved in only a couple weeks later, I was basically living at his apartment anyways.

Things were beautiful. We would always joke about how we were sooo annoyed that we only had a few weeks under our belt when it honestly felt like years. To this day, that feeling remains. Sebastian feels like he was always apart of me. We felt like two misfits who found each other and found a home.

We were so stupid though. We’re still stupid, but we used to be way more stupid. We were both working jobs we hated and living lives we didn’t want. I was working as a wedding planner for two venues, and Sebastian was a corporate bitch. We would spend our money on silly things, eat out a TON and not much else. I honestly think we both had lost ourselves in this moment in time. Sebastian had just left NYC to move to Utah for a girl only to break up a couple months later. He went from a life of vibrance, creativity and life to one that was creatively oppressive. Utah is a dark place. Chalk it up to the religion or whatever else, but Utah is incredibly oppressive. He was depressed, he just didn’t know it yet.

I had left a cult not too long ago, was in an abusive marriage and recently divorced. Not only that, I was still religious and apart of a toxic church. So yeah, we had some shit to work through. Something that has always amazed me though was how kind we’ve always been to each other during that healing process.

Side note: I truly think this idea that you need to be whole before you meet someone is bull shit. You need to pursue self awareness, accountability and refuse to be a victim. Healing will come if you put in the work yourself. Toxicity will come if you expect your partner to do the healing for you.

Marriage – Something you need to know about us is we are the least sentimental people you’ll ever meet. We both think weddings were stupid (says the wedding planner) and decided on an elopement 3 months into dating.

We went to the court house on May 3rd and got hitched. No one was invited and it was amazing.

Oh you think that’s crazy? Just wait. You’ll notice a theme throughout our story that we go big EVERY TIME. 

Enter Gucci loafers

Like I mentioned before, we were not who we are today. Sebastian working corporate and I working as a wedding planner, and not much else happening. Sebastian had decided to do away with his NYC apparel and starting listing clothes on Poshmark.

Before long he had accumulated $1k just off POSHMARK! We totally blew it all and went to Vegas.
I told you we were stupid.

The extra cash was nice and, before long we were at the thrift stores looking for other stuff we could sell. That’s when we came across a pair of Gucci loafers. Sebastian pondered them for a while, questioning their authenticity and whether or not we should buy them. I talked him into it. It wasn’t hard and even if they were fake, we had some knock off Gucci’s baby!

Turns out they were totally real and we sold them for $80

We were hooked! Having that extra cash flow was nice so we kept thrifting. To be honest, it was mostly Sebastian. I didn’t know what sold so I took a back seat and focused on my job, thinking it was just going to be a hobby. I was so wrong lol. The clothes kept coming! So much so that we bought a few storage bins and put them in the bedroom of our 1 bedroom apartment. It wasn’t long before our apartment was flooded with clothes, vintage electronics and other random goods.

We were making real money! We veered away from clothing and focused on large scale flips, like vintage electronics. With all this inventory piling up, our apartment was flooded and Poshmark wasn’t cutting it anymore.

We switched over to eBay and started to treat what we were doing a little more legit. We rented a storage space down the hall where we would work out of for the next two months.

We were a little family now, us and the dogs. We had a growing side hustle and not enough room! It was time to look for a house. We settled on a little bungalow in downtown Ogden.

The coolest part of that buy was the fact that we were selling VCR’s at the time. We paid for our down payment by flipping used stuff online.

The calm before the storm

Honestly, life was great. We just bought our first home together, we both had full time jobs, Sebastian was invested into eBay as a side hustle and we were making good money. We were selling anything from clothing to electronics, bike parts, computers…you name it, we were selling it.

It was a headache and a half though. Sometimes it would take us 30 minutes just to pack one item, but the money was good so we kept on.

Thank god this extra cash too because one of us was going to be in the ICU for a couple days. By one of us, I mean Wilson.

Sebastian and I used to model on occasion.

We were invited to collaborate with a photographer in SLC on the Harmon’s rooftop in the middle of downtown. We packed up the dogs and headed to the rooftop. Now, this is a fairly safe place. It was a Sunday so it was dead. There were no cars on the roof plus there was a 6ft high barrier wall surrounding the top.

Wilson didn’t give a fuck because within two minutes of being out of the car he completely cleared the 6ft barrier wall and fell three stories to his death.

Expect he didn’t die! After a couple days in the ICU he came home with some lung contusions and a broken paw. But now we had 3k in hospital bills. Wilson was never the same after his accident. His body healed just fine but his mind was never the same. Thank god him and Chauncey had each other. They were the best of buddies and having Chauncey around made Wilson’s recovery not so bad.

During this time we were making enough money to pay for the accident plus surgeries with cash. It was also the first time in both of our lives where we had as much money as we did. We weren’t responsible what so ever. We blew that money on food, fashion and other silly things that didn’t matter. I told you, we were stupid.

But wait, it gets worse…

Paypal

Sebastian found a loan offered by Paypal.

Approved for 13k of which they would take 30% of each sale to pay back the loan over time. We were making good money so we decided, what the heck!

Long story short, we made some poor choices with that money and it cost us greatly..

I want to say real quick that I’m aware of how stupid this decision was. We were stupid. ALWAYS use money to build and grow. Be wise.

Sebastian had JUST quit his job and I shortly behind him. This wasn’t my decision by any means. I genuinely liked my job, but my boss had run into some financial troubles herself and didn’t have the means to pay me. Too caught up in her ego to tell me, she had her son take over my responsibilities instead. Her son was fired, by his mother, prior to my employment for basically running both venues into the ground. I came in, fixed it all only to be replaced by him since he was the cheaper help.

Being apart of a family business was no longer any business of mine.

I quit.

Jobless. We did have eBay though! But Paypal owned eBay so we really didn’t have much at all. We slowly watched our bank account diminish and with it out ability to buy high priced inventory. We had no money. I was looking for a job everyday, Sebastian was spending the little money we had on inventory, we couldn’t pay our bills. I was incredibly irresponsible so I would still shop when I could, as where Sebastian’s weakness was food. We were both spending money we didn’t have on top of everything else.

It was a freaking mess. 

I wasn’t mentally sound at the time either. I had started my deconstruction from religion, which is a complete mind fuck in and of itself. I wasn’t in a place to problem solve since my mind already felt so chaotic. Sebastian was stressed trying to make this work and well, an explosion was inevitable.

The fight that changed everything

While we are excellent communicators now, that wasn’t always the case. Sebastian had a growing resentment for the fact that I wasn’t a partner. I was resentful over the fact that he would dismiss me anytime I wanted to talk about what I was going through. I wasn’t at a place to be a partner, nor did I even realize how my lack of teamwork was effecting my new husband. He didn’t know how to communicate his needs to me, so he yelled them instead. I’m pretty feisty myself so this didn’t go well.

We got in what we call ‘that one time’ fight. It was the first and only time we’ve ever yelled at each other. Stress was high, we had money problems, we felt disconnected. We didn’t talk for three days after that. It was horrible. During that time I had to really look at myself and realize, I had a part to play in why he got so angry. We weren’t a team, we weren’t responsible, we weren’t communicating and we had very different views on how to spend money.

I grew up with the ‘SAVE SAVE SAVE’ mentality towards money. Sebastian had the mindset that you needed to spend money to make money. Naturally, you can see why this would be an issue. I’ll spoil the ending for you now and tell you that I was wrong here. I just didn’t know it yet.

I had just come from a shitty marriage and I refused to be in another one. This was different though, we were just lost. We were scared and we had so much growing to do. What we DID know is that we loved each other. Even after ‘that one time.’

I would say that this was the moment we switched into a team mentality. We wren’t perfect, but it was a step. We needed to work together if we wanted anything to work.

Warehouse for a day

We needed a way to pay this Paypal loan off, and quick!

We came into contact with a guy named Gus. Gus was awesome and operated a warehouse selling pallets of Amazon returns & shelf pulls We ended up buying around 10 of these, which as you can imagine was a lot of inventory.

It was large inventory too. Our little 1,300 square foot bungalow wasn’t gong to but it. We needed a real space.

After scouting out some warehouse spaces we settled on one fairly close to our house. When we first took a tour of the space, we were told that the place was set up for internet (even multiple providers)..

This was great since we needed it to operate our online business.

Got all our inventory moved in, our work station set up and we were ready to go! That was until we asked about the wiring for our internet. Turns out, our unit was originally larger & was split down the middle, guess what side got the internet hookup? Not ours.

After asking the landlord to figure this for us, we were met with a “it’s not my problem”.
He gave two solutions.
1. we pay to have the internet hookup installed ($200 ish)
2. full refund & lease is broken

Option 2 it was. Fuck that. Our family doesn’t do business with incompetent people. The money we make is precious & it wont go to some dipshit who cant admit when they are wrong. What if one day we had a real problem?

We moved our inventory into a small storage unit until it was mostly sold.

We made a killing on those pallets, but once again we were stupid. All that money went to pay off the Paypal loan. Now we were still broke, our Paypal loan was significantly smaller but, we owed the same amount in credit card debt from buying the pallets.

Yep.

Lighten the load

It was back to square one. We moved our remaining inventory back home into our tiny crawl space until we sold the last bit of it. We didn’t have contact with Gus anymore which means no more large scale inventory. That was honestly fine with us because we realized that having large inventory really sucked.

We needed to scale back significantly. Not only for convenience but we also couldn’t afford that type of inventory anymore. We went back to our roots, clothing. It almost felt like we had been defeated. Going from selling $80-$200 large scale items to $20 t-shirts felt like a step in the wrong direction, but it’s what we had so we went with it.

We didn’t get into clothing by choice. In fact, we don’t think we would have got into clothing at all if we weren’t forced into it. We had our eyes set on those big numbers, not a consistent stream of average dollar sales.

More on that later though….

OH BABY!

If you haven’t noticed already, we like to make big moves. Some of those big moves have landed us in really shitty situations, but we’ve never made the same mistake twice! However, this was no mistake at all!

We weren’t trying for a baby, but we definitely weren’t not trying. I wasn’t on any birth control so you can guess what happened next.

I went to North Carolina to visit my best friend, Brittany. She owns a floral business and had me fly down for a couple of days to day of coordinate a wedding. During my trip, I had mentioned that I was a day late. Brittany insisted that we get a pregnancy test, so we did.

It was positive.

It took everything in me to not call Sebastian right then and there. I was off the wall excited but, finding out with your best friend is pretty great too. Sebastian picked me up from the airport two days later where I gifted him with those two small lines. We were going to have a baby and, ohhh baby we were excited!

Loans, bills and serendipity

If we ever had a reason to get it together, it was for our little one on the way. We had no money, no safety net, no insurance…no nothing! I ended up getting a job as a sales manager for a start-up company to at least give us a steady paycheck. Sebastian continued to work on the business and we slowly made our way back to a more stable baseline.

Almost.

You see, we had taken out a separate loan to pay off the Paypal loan and we now had set monthly payments of $800. We also couldn’t afford to pay our quarterly taxes so we also had a payment of $900 for that. We were making money, but we were paying around 5k a month in bills. All because we were stupid and impulsive and, we were absolutely paying the price for it.

Life has a funny way of taking care of you though. I was hit by another car and was at zero fault. I walked away with some minor whip lash, baby was okay and, honestly I was thrilled. My car at the time was a piece of shit and, it was totally paid off. I rejoiced when my neck snapped back and forth because that meant…insurance money, baby! We ended up getting $9,000 in insurance money where we were able to put a downpayment on a new car, buy more inventory for the business and pay off debt.

Whatever or whoever is out there, thanks. 

The warehouse hoarder

One of our weekend sourcing locations was the local swap meet. It was another great little hustle to make some extra cash.

The swap meet was awesome for a couple of reasons..

Inventory & the people there were both so varied that it taught us to be flexible. Learn how to spot value in all markets, learn how to talk to ALL people.

Turns out, rough and tumble people love a good banter which made the swap meet pretty dang fun.
We made great connections which allowed us to sell more stuff!
Some people knew what they had, some didn’t. We loved the people who didn’t and saw them often.

Since we were broke, we were scrappy. We would hit up the recycle bin behind Pier one and get boxes for the week to save money.

One of the people we met was an interesting fellow indeed…

He found out we were online resellers and would always ask about business when we saw him. Over time he became comfortable enough with us to invite us to his warehouse. He said he had some high-end inventory, wanted to sell it and, was willing to give us a 30% cut. We learned from Paypal that 30% was a big number so we took it!

We didn’t realize that warehouse actually meant hoarders den.

This guy’s place was a mess. Don’t get me wrong, he has some amazing treasures in there, but it was a hunt to find them. Being at this guy’s place only confirmed that we wanted a lighter business.

He had so many loyalties simply because he couldn’t quit buying shit.

We needed something better. We needed a product.

The Pot Magnet

As much as we had come to love clothing, we wanted to get away from selling dirty clothing to having a brand. Sebastian had grown up smoking weed and always had an interest in growing it.

When Sebastian has an interest, it quickly becomes an obsession. We had recently discussed moving to Colorado so he started researching all there is to know about growing weed from home.

There was a problem we found in the growing industry. The devices used for plant training on the market totally sucked. There wasn’t a simple solution for a simple problem and we wanted to fix that. We made multiple prototypes with the intent of getting a product on the market that was easy and, would produce a passive income.

We were staring to realize that more than anything we wanted to be free. We didn’t want to work for anybody, but we also didn’t want any kind of loyalties that would hinder us from true freedom.

The Pot Magnet was a great next step into the world of online marketing. We were amazed at how legit you can make a business by simply utilizing FREE online tools.

This was just the start of our online marketing ventures, but for now we decided we really wanted to cut all loyalties and sell our house.

Being a home owner sucks

Feel free to disagree, but we HATED being home owners. America sells you this idea that once you’re a home owner you’ve some how ‘made it’. This couldn’t be further from the truth for us. Owning a home was a HUGE liability. Our home had the same effect on us that having large scale inventory did…it was too heavy.

You see, Sebastian and I have always had this in common. We get restless.

We need adventure, we need change and we don’t like feeling stuck. Not only that, Ogden was a horrible place to raise a baby.

Ogden is a old railroad town where junkies come to either join a gang or die. The quality of people roaming the streets was enough to make anyone feel uneasy. We literally had a house across the street from us who had to, by law, put up a sign that he was a pedophile on Halloween.

This wasn’t what we had in mind.

We didn’t want to own a home, we hated Utah and, we just knew there was more for us our there. We wanted to moved. We started looking at different states and settled on Colorado.

To spare you all the time consuming details, we ended up picking Fort Collins as a mini vacation to see if it was a good vibe for us.

We loaded up the dogs and headed to Fort Collins for the weekend. I was 8 months pregnant so having the dogs with us was probably the worst idea ever. The drive there was horrible.

Sebastian had got in a car accident earlier that year and still gets white knuckled whenever conditions aren’t favorable and, they most definitely weren’t. While the drive was terrible, Fort Collins was not.

You see, Sebastian and I have never felt at home anywhere.

Just passerby’s with no real place to call home. We had found that in each other, but we found that physical space in Colorado that made it all feel complete. We wanted to move. We were so serious on moving that we signed a lease the day after we got into town.

Our house hadn’t even been listed yet, but I was ready to do some hard core manifesting to get us the hell out of Ogden.

Before we knew it, our house was on the market (shout to to Amy St. Pierre for being the most bomb agent) and, it didn’t take long for the offers to start flooding in.

Things were starting to look up and, while they weren’t great yet we could at least the reality of a new beginning. We were still broke, we didn’t even know if our house would pass inspection but, I knew we would figure it out.

Remember when I said earlier that life has a way of taking care of you?

Well, turns out the settlement from my car accident earlier that year wasn’t completely over. I got a call from the other parties insurance agency letting me know that they were offering me an $8,000 settlement. That money paid for all our moving expenses, our first months rent plus all other fees.

We could breathe.

January 31st

It was one month till Oliver came, two months before the big move and our house was still on the market.

We had multiple showings a day where we would pack up the dogs in the car and kill time for hours on end. Our last month as the two of us felt like those awkward days between Christmas and New Years. The days dragged on, we worked, held showings for our house every day of the week and just waited.

We waited for offers and we waited for Oliver, we just were waiting. Just when we thought life couldn’t get anymore drab, we got an offer on the house! It was one we were happy with, we were under contract before Oliver came and, our buyer was fantastic to work with. I don’t have much to say about selling our home, we’re just grateful it was an easy experience. Shout out to you, Abe.

In the waiting we were also preparing to be parents. I was adamant on having a natural birth which, just like anything, is all mental.

If you want to have a natural birth but don’t mentally prepare for it, well good luck lol.

I spent hours on end researching everything I could about natural child birth from breathing techniques, the stages of labor, how to move with my body, how to advocate for myself, what hormones will be released during each phase of labor and delivery, how to push with my breathe…you name it, I researched it.

I wanted to move with the natural rhythm of my body while being connected to something so beyond me but most of all, I wanted to do something hard.

On January 30th we went to the hospital where I was induced. My labor and delivery was everything I wanted it to be.

I went unmedicated, it was peaceful, harmonious and beautiful. Oliver was born on January 31st and came out looking just like his daddy. To date, being parents is the best things we’ve ever done.

Shortly after we decided that the dogs were no longer receiving the time and attention they deserved.

It was a lot trying to keep our business afloat, with a baby and all while planning a move with two dogs. Not to mention Wilson had suffered major PTSD from his accident and needed more intentional care. We ended up finding an amazing family who took them both.

They’re both together, happy and truly living their best life.

Closing, an earthquake AND Corona

The next few weeks consisted of lots of baby snuggles and a rising pandemic.

The idea that the country was going to shut down was becoming more real everyday. The shelves were empty and people didn’t feel safe anymore and this overall anxiety just hung in the air. We had always felt trapped in Ogden, but this felt like we were being suffocated, which I know sounds dramatic but it truly felt like Ogden was trying to keep us there.

It was around 4:00am and Sebastian had already left to work his morning shift at Lowe’s. I was walking back to our bedroom when I heard a loud rumble and the crash of my sliding barn door slamming shut. The dogs were going crazy and little Ollie wasn’t too happy at how he had just been woken up.

Meanwhile, Sebastian saw things sliding off shelves and the ground rumble underneath his feet. We had just had an earthquake, on the day we were supposed to close on our home. We aren’t religious folk, but I’ll have to admit, we couldn’t believe there was absolutely no damage done for our 100 year old home that sat right on the fault line.

For as hectic as our time in Ogden was, I can’t count how many blessings we encountered there too. For so many reasons, we shouldn’t have been okay…but we were.

Ogden was necessary for so many reasons. It’s where we met, fell in love, started a business, failed together, learned together, grew together, started a family and so much more. It’s where we were born too.

Something in you comes alive when you meet a true partner in crime, and we were that for each other. For every mile we drove away from Utah, the more free we felt.

We drove for 7 hours and finally arrived in Fort Collins at midnight.

We felt this beautiful city wrap us up in our arms, we knew we were home, we knew we were safe, we knew we were home and, we cried. 

A new beginning

The lockdown days were actually some of the most beautiful.

We got to spend time together as a new family, in a new place & with plenty of cushion from selling our house.

For the first time in a while we were just able to just breathe instead of living in this constant state of survival mode.The thrift stores were closed, but luckily our inventory was large. It was like we could start deconstructing what had happened the past two years and, it felt nice to just not worry about anything if only for a moment.

We took walks everyday and talked about how grateful we felt to feel safe and how it truly felt like a new beginning. Since there wasn’t much to do, we cooked the most extravagant meals, sometimes twice a day! It was fun to work together in a creative way.

Cooking is very intimate and it taught us how to creative together and also how to work as a team, which will be important later.

Life has a funny way of taking something so unassuming and making it a growing point.

It didn’t take long for us to snap back into reality and realize, we still needed a way to make money. For sometime we looked into buying pallets and just when we were about to commit to a $8,000 purchase, the thrift stores opened back up again.

We were SO excited! It was much easier to do what we already knew how instead of trying to navigate something new in the middle of a pandemic.

We were spending hundreds of dollars at the thrift store everyday because the inventory was SO good. At first we thought it was a total fluke but, it stayed consistent. That was a huge difference between here and Ogden.

Fort Collins was so different, people here would throw away designer items on the reg simply because they were bored of them. It was truly a name brand gold mine and we realized, we were going to be just fine after all.

Resell Junkie

Life really does have a funny way of bringing things full circle and, for us, that circle began and ended with clothing. You see, back in Ogden when we had NO money, clothing was the only thing we could afford. We were forced to get well aquatinted with what sells on the day to day instead of focusing our efforts into cool vintage pieces.

Clothing became second nature to the point where we can walk in a thrift store and feel quality simply by touch alone.

Something born out of survival mode gave us our greatest niche. We knew just about everything there was to know about clothing and we were so confident in it that our business began to coast.

Setting up our garage for max efficiency was the only goal! Getting the flow right so things went out as fast as they came in was key.

The next step was hiring someone to take over all of the awful tasks that come along with selling online.

His name is Loreto and now he works for us about 30 hours a week.
(read about how we pay his $5 an hour HERE)

Now it felt like a legitimate business and we had a great working system which gave us a lot of free time to focus on other things.

On one of our morning walks, we had a conversation that changed our lives completely.

The only business we wanted was one that could fit into a backpack

Selling clothing was wonderful and we will forever remember our roots but, we wanted to be free. We wanted the freedom to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted and, we couldn’t do that with a garage full of clothing.

We didn’t want to sell clothing anymore, but we wanted to teach other people how to resell. It was time for us to move on.

Well, now you’re brought up to speed. This is our story and the one that shaped us into who we are today. Our heart behind Resell Junkie isn’t just to teach people how to resell. We were able to be together as a family and, we wanted the same opportunity for other families because we know how much it meant to ours. More than a side hustle, we want freedom for our family and yours.