How a College Student Made $50K Flipping Lawnmowers (and Graduated Debt-Free)

What if you could make $900 in a single day buying and reselling lawnmowers?

Dave Wilson, also known as @MoneyCoachDave, made over $50,000 flipping lawnmowers while in college. The side hustle helped him graduate debt-free and taught him valuable skills in buying, fixing, and reselling equipment.

It’s a buy low, sell high model that works whether you’re flipping lawnmowers, cars, or other equipment. And it’s a skill that can recession-proof your income.

Listen to Episode 713 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

how to source underpriced lawnmowers (including the best-kept secret)
what to look for when buying (and what to avoid)
how to fix common issues and flip them fast

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Round 1: How Dave Made $900 in One Day

At 21 years old, Dave found a zero-turn mower on Facebook Marketplace listed for $2,700. He messaged the seller immediately (he was sure he got 40 other messages too), picked it up, power washed it, took nice photos, and listed it the same day.

He sold it for $3,600 — making $900 profit with minimal work.

No mechanical repairs needed. Just cleaned it up, used good SEO in the title and description, and re-listed it.

The seller didn’t know the true value of what he had. As Dave explained, a lot of people don’t really know the value of the things they own. It’s all about finding value arbitrage — buying something underpriced and selling it for what it’s actually worth.

Why Lawnmowers?

Dave admits it wasn’t the coolest side hustle to tell friends about. But it worked.

He got into it by accident. When he was getting ready to leave for college, his family had a riding lawnmower they didn’t need anymore. His mom never used it, so Dave sold it. After that first sale, he thought: “There may be something here that I could turn into a business.”

He took that capital and started reinvesting it into more mowers.

While the $2,700 zero-turn was an outlier, most of Dave’s deals were in the $500 to $800 range. That’s where he found the sweet spot for flipping riding lawnmowers.

I’ve talked about car flipping on the show before, so it was interesting to hear how lawnmowers compare. While the fundamentals are the same — buy low, clean it up, sell high — mowers avoid a lot of the regulatory headaches that come with vehicles.

Lawnmowers vs. Cars: Why Mowers Are Easier

Dave pointed out two big advantages lawnmowers have over cars:

You don’t have to register a lawnmower: no title transfers, no DMV headaches.
People give away free lawnmowers all the time.

You’ll never see someone give away a free car (unless you’re David Dobrik or Mr Beast). But on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace? Free non-working lawnmowers show up regularly.

Most of these free mowers aren’t working. But if you find a good candidate and fix the issue, you could get your first flip for less than $200.

People often just want bulky items gone. They don’t care about getting top dollar — they just want it out of the garage.

Where to Source Lawnmowers for Flipping

Dave primarily sourced from Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. But his secret sauce is going directly to lawnmower dealerships.

Here’s how it works: Dealerships take in trade-ins all the time. But a John Deere dealer doesn’t want to display a Simplicity or Husqvarna mower on their lot — they want to sell new John Deere equipment.

Dave would walk into dealerships in person (as face-to-face builds more trust). He’d tell them what he was doing, offer to pay cash, promise not to call if something broke, and commit to picking up the mower same-day to get it out of their way.

This worked because dealers would rather move new inventory than deal with trade-ins from competitor brands. For them, it’s a value add. For Dave, it’s where the best deals were.

Dave also mentioned this same strategy works for side-by-sides and UTVs. For example, a Polaris dealership won’t want to sell a competitor’s equipment either.

What to Look For When Buying Lawnmowers

Dave focused on zero-turn mowers over the traditional tractor-style riding mowers. These are the ones with the sticks that make you feel like you’re driving heavy equipment.

Why zero-turns? They sell faster. Dave made most of his money flipping these because he could churn inventory quicker.

As for brands, John Deere is king — people love the green paint, Dave said. He’s also a fan of Husqvarna. Other high-end commercial brands to watch for include Kubota, Bad Boy, and Ferris.

When evaluating a mower, Dave looks at:

Motor size
Deck size (bigger is usually better)
Deck type (stamped vs. welded/commercial grade)
Hours (like miles on a car — under 500 hours is ideal)

To research pricing, Dave used TractorHouse (kind of like a Kelley Blue Book for equipment) and checked comps on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist.

For example, Dave would buy a Cub Cadet zero-turn for around $800 and sell it for $1,200 — depending on motor size and deck specs.

Target Profit: $300 Minimum

Dave’s bare minimum profit target was $300 per flip.

Why $300? Because he assumed about three hours of work per mower: an hour of drive time to pick it up, an hour to power wash and take photos, and an hour to drive back. That’s $100/hour — way better than the $10/hour he was making at his summer job.

This gave him enough cushion if something went wrong with a mower. Dave couldn’t think of any time he took a large loss — there were times he broke even, but he rarely lost money on a flip.

How to Get Started (Without Owning a Truck)

Dave started with a $500 Ford Escape and a $300 trailer.

But even if you don’t have a vehicle or trailer, you can rent a truck from U-Haul, Lowe’s, or Home Depot for the day. It’s usually a mileage-based rental, and you can build the cost into your profit margin.

As for storage, Dave kept mowers in his mom’s backyard. At peak, he had around six at a time on a half-acre lot. He had to test them all, so he was mowing grass every day — best-looking lawn in the neighborhood, he said.

If you don’t have a backyard, a storage unit works too.

Expanding to iPhones: $6,000 in One Year

When Dave went to college, he couldn’t keep flipping lawnmowers (no backyard to store them). So he applied the same buy-low-sell-high mindset to a different product: iPhones.

He worked an internship at a cell phone authorized dealer that took trade-ins. The store sent the phones to a company and didn’t get great margins. Dave asked what they were making and said, “I can pay you $50 plus whatever they’re offering you.”

The store made more money, and Dave got a steady stream of inventory.

He listed the phones on Swappa (a clean marketplace with low fees) and shipped them out of his dorm room. That year, he made an extra $6,000, though the college mail office wasn’t thrilled with him.

The Power of Marketplace Reputation

Dave treated his flipping like a real business, and that meant building a strong marketplace reputation.

On Facebook Marketplace, he focused on:

Good SEO in the title — not just “Husqvarna lawnmower,” but “Husqvarna riding lawnmower 24 HP Briggs & Stratton engine 54-inch deck”
Clean, well-lit photos
Requesting reviews from every customer

He also avoided the back-and-forth texting trap. When someone messaged asking if a mower was available, he’d reply: “Yes, it is. If you’re interested, please call me.” (You can’t put your number in the listing, but you can send it via message.)

Getting on the phone quickly helped him build trust faster and close deals that others lost to slow messaging.

This same approach worked on the buy side too — when Dave messaged sellers, he’d say, “Call me at this number. I have cash, I’m ready to buy.” That’s how he snagged deals before other buyers.

The Most Important Tool: A Power Washer

Dave said the best investment he made wasn’t a fancy tool or diagnostic equipment — it was a power washer.

Cleaning a mower made a huge difference in how fast it sold. Even if you don’t own a power washer, spending $5 in quarters at a car wash bay to clean the engine is worth it.

He could replace a battery, change the oil, or fix a fuel filter, but if the mower looked dirty, it wouldn’t sell.

Another cosmetic issue that mattered? Ripped seats. People got turned off by torn seats. Dave would either throw a seat cover on or buy a replacement seat — and then sell the mower for $200 more.

Round 2: Donate a Business Idea

Dave shared a business idea he wishes he had time to start: a LinkedIn video marketing agency for personal brands.

Many CEOs and high-earning professionals hire ghostwriters for their LinkedIn text posts. But video is exploding on LinkedIn right now, and those ghostwriters aren’t equipped to handle video production.

Dave personally had 75 million impressions on LinkedIn videos in the last year because the platform is pushing video so hard.

The easiest path in? Partner with a ghostwriter who already has clients. Offer to add four videos a month (one per week) to their service package. You handle the video production, they handle the client relationship.

You could charge around $1,000/month (about $250 per video). That’s not an outrageous budget for high earners — Dave knows ghostwriters earning $5,000/month just for text content.

The workflow: Pre-script four videos, send them to the client, have them record in 15 minutes using a teleprompter, then you edit with captions and good audio. You could also outsource editing to Fiverr for around $50/video and keep the margin.

Round 3: The Triple Threat

Marketing Tactic: Volume

Dave posts one original video per day and cross-posts it across LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook—about 30 originals or 120+ total posts per month. This strategy has driven 100+ million views in six months outside of LinkedIn.

High volume lets him test ideas quickly. Even if most videos flop, one strong performer can carry the week. He pulls inspiration from what’s already working, uses AI to reshape ideas in his own voice, and refilms proven topics with new hooks.

@moneycoachdave
How does your salary compare? 👀 I use Bureau of Labor Statistics median salary by age data to show the median income from age 20 to 65+. How does your salary compare to the median salary for your age group? #salarytransparency #salary #income

♬ Storytelling – Adriel

One standout format: sitting down, holding a book, and reading stats—fast to make and consistently effective.

New Tool: TikTok Creator Search Insights

Dave’s favorite new tool is TikTok’s Creator Search Insights.

It shows trending searches and topics in your niche, and TikTok’s AI can even generate hooks and script outlines for you.

If you create a video based on one of these topics and follow their outline, you can rank in TikTok search. And as of December, TikTok now pays creators for search traffic (not just For You Page views).

Dave uses this to rank for finance search terms like “top high yield savings accounts December 2025,” which ties into affiliate offerings.

As a bonus, Instagram also lists to Google, so some search-optimized Instagram videos can pull in traffic from Google as well.

Favorite Book

Dave’s favorite book from the past year is The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday (who also writes The Daily Stoic).

As someone who’s always been anxious, the book helped him shift his mindset on how to view and tackle problems. It gave him the confidence to step into full-time entrepreneurship.

What’s Next for Dave?

Dave recently went full-time as a content creator. He’s about two months in and working to fully replace his W2 income.

He’s built out email funnels, a ManyChat automation, and a full guide. Now he’s focused on finding his next viral content formula — whether that’s street interviews, kitchen-style videos, or something he hasn’t thought of yet.

His main goal for the year is building additional systems and finding more brand-friendly content formats.

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