The more I think about this the more it makes sense to me. Everything you need to know about sourcing you can learn by attending a garage sale!! Call it what you will; maybe it is the thrill of the hunt, the thrill of finding hidden treasure, or maybe even the thrill of beating the system. (You know, getting good stuff for a fraction of its value!) If you ever attended one you’ll appreciate some of these great nuggets of wisdom I learned from them.

When you go to a garage sale you never know what you'll stumble upon, but you've got to maintain patience if you expect to land a deal. When you are sourcing the first lesson you learn is patience. You are going to be going through a lot of fluff resumes and talk to a quite a few wannabees. So get ready to do a large investment of time. If you are not patient, you shouldn’t be sourcing.

You probably won't find a new real treasure on your first trip. Chances are the first candidate you find will not be the “One”. Soucing is like going on a wild goose chase or as the old cliché goes there may be a lot of toads kissed before the prince charming is found.

It might even take you several trips before you make a purchase. You will see some likely candidates but on further inspection you’ll find they are not a real bargain. Be ready to go to your next source.

You can't be discouraged. Searching thru junk hoping to find a bargain is exhilarating for precisely that reason: Just when you think you're out of luck, you discover a treasure. Isn’t this great, just when you’ve just about given up on finding that ace candidate!! Wham!! You can’t wait to dig thru the car seat for those fifty cents!!!!

But the main reason why sourcing reminds me of garage sales is that if you just pick up “bargains” simply because they're bargains you’ll soon find out that sometimes there's a good reason why an item is a bargain: It's junk. Beware of the low hanging fruit!!!