This Part-Time Pastor Sold $2M on Whatnot Last Year

Live selling is having a moment and you don’t need to be an influencer or have any e-commerce experience to get in on it.

Clinton Benninghoff is a part-time pastor and full-time golf enthusiast who took over Golf HQ, a brick-and-mortar golf shop in Midland, Texas.

He spent years building it into a community staple and developing relationships with the top golf brands. Then in October 2024, he joined Whatnot — and everything changed.

In just over a year, Clinton’s live-selling channel hit $2 million in sales. He was the first seller in the golf category to crack $100,000 in a single live show.

And he did it all while still running the physical store, which did a little over $3 million last year on its own.

(Join Whatnot today and enjoy a $15 discount on your first purchase!)

Listen to Episode 740 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

how live selling on Whatnot works and why the platform puts new sellers in front of buyers from day one
where to find inventory even if you don’t have a storefront
how to build the kind of loyal community that shows up to every single show

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How Whatnot Works for Sellers

Whatnot is a live shopping app where sellers go on camera, present items, and buyers bid in real time. It’s part auction, part entertainment, and it moves fast. Auctions can last as little as 5 to 10 seconds, with buyers swiping the screen to place a bid.

When Clinton first downloaded the app, he had no plan. He just hit “go live” from his golf shop office one afternoon.

65 people showed up — with zero followers — because Whatnot’s algorithm pushes shows to buyers who have already said they’re interested in that product category.

That first show, he sold a putter for $300. He went live the next day. And the day after that. The rest, as he puts it, is history. (Fun fact: the buyer of that first putter later mailed it back to Clinton as a keepsake.)

Auction Style vs. Buy It Now

You have two main options for selling on Whatnot.

“Sudden death” auction – starting at any price (even $1) with a 5-to-10-second countdown.
“Buy it Now” – fixed price for buyers who’d rather skip the drama.

Clinton has found that the short, low-starting auctions work best. The fear of missing out kicks in, the energy spikes, and viewers stick around.

That said, he can also set a floor price on any item to protect his margins.

Getting Started Without a Brick-and-Mortar Store

Clinton started with an existing golf shop full of inventory, but you don’t need that. If you’re starting from scratch, here are the sourcing strategies he recommends for the golf niche (and many apply to other categories too):

Visit local pro shops and offer to buy last year’s product that’s been sitting unsold
Post on your Instagram or Facebook story asking if anyone has clubs gathering dust in their garage
Search online platforms that specialize in used golf equipment
Hit up local garage sales and estate sales
Partner with local retailers to take their end-of-season clearance off their hands

Clinton also noted that niching down helps — it makes it easier to build a community around a specific category. But it’s not required.

His own shop sells hats from a brand called Waggle, which aren’t golf-specific at all. Buyers found them anyway.

Shipping and Logistics

Whatnot handles label generation automatically. After a show, the platform produces a full printout of buyer names, items, and shipping addresses. All Clinton’s team has to do is pack the boxes and drop them off.

The 48-hour shipping window (not counting weekends) keeps buyers happy in an era of next-day delivery expectations. Buyers pay their own shipping costs based on item weight and size.

Clinton ships clubs and bags via UPS and lighter items like apparel and accessories via USPS.

He also enables bundle shipping, so if a buyer wins multiple items in one show, they only pay shipping once. This incentivizes buying more per session.

That Super Bowl show ($100,000 in six hours, 600 golf clubs sold) was an eye-opener on the logistics side. “We were on cloud nine that night,” Clinton said.

That experience led him to hire dedicated shipping staff and adopt Hot Label, a software that auto-prints a tag for each item as it sells, with the buyer’s name, the item details, and the sale price.

Building a Community, Not Just an Audience

Clinton thinks about Whatnot less like e-commerce and more like hosting a community. His background as a pastor — learning to engage crowds rather than just talk at them — carries right into his live shows.

“People aren’t going to stay because you offer the best price. They’re going to stay because they feel like they belong to a community every time they show up.”

When viewers join a show, the platform announces their username.

Clinton calls them out by name and responds to comments in real time. At peak, he’s had 1,600 people in a single show — comments flying faster than he can read them. But the goal is always to make people feel seen.

Cross-Promotion and Growth Tactics

A few things have helped grow the channel beyond just showing up consistently:

Simulcasting to YouTube at the click of a button — viewers on YouTube can follow a link directly into the live Whatnot auction
Promoting upcoming shows on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
Visiting other sellers’ shows, buying items, and giving things away — especially to support newer sellers
A glass studio window in the shop with a QR code, so in-store customers can watch the live show and bid from the sales floor

Clinton’s Whatnot channel has grown to over 50,000 followers, which matters because followers get notified when he goes live.

Big Event Shows

Consistency matters — Clinton now goes live 3 to 4 times a week, 2 to 3 hours per session. But the big moments come from themed event shows tied to real-world occasions.

In golf, there are 4 majors a year, and Clinton does a big show for each one.

The Super Bowl show is what set the single-show $100,000 record. During Masters week, he gave away a flag signed by Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Annika Sörenstam, and Fred Couples while selling limited-edition Masters gear.

Margins and What to Expect

Live selling moves inventory fast, but the margins are tighter than retail. In Clinton’s brick-and-mortar store, he runs around 38% gross margin before expenses. On Whatnot, it’s closer to 20–25%.

The trade-off is speed. In the store, 15 drivers might take 30 to 45 days to sell. On Whatnot, the same 15 drivers sell in about 30 minutes. Capital turns over much faster, which can more than make up for the thinner margins.

His overhead for the Whatnot operation is also lean: three people on the backend, versus eight to ten in the physical shop.

To protect margins, Clinton mixes in higher-margin accessories — golf balls, gloves, towels — alongside hard goods like clubs and bags, which tend to have razor-thin margins industry-wide.

Tools/Tech

Whatnot — the live shopping platform
Hot Label — auto-prints item tags with buyer info during shows, streamlining packing and shipping
Label printer and tag printer — essential for high-volume shipping
USPS — offers free boxes when starting small; ship light items here
UPS — for larger items like golf clubs and bags

Mistakes and Surprises

The most expensive lesson: don’t start a valuable item without talking it up first. Clinton was on a roll one day, running item after item on five-second sudden death auctions.

He grabbed a Scotty Cameron putter — worth $500 — didn’t say a word about what it was, hit start, and watched it sell for $9. “I mean, it was worth every bit of $500. It went for $9.”

The bigger surprise has been how fast the whole thing scales. Coming from brick-and-mortar, Clinton was used to waiting 30 to 45 days to move through a batch of drivers.

On Whatnot, the same batch moves in 30 minutes. “We’re literally getting inventory in one day, selling it the very next day.”

What’s Next for Clinton?

The goal for this year is to scale the Whatnot channel to $3 million or more. That comes with new logistics challenges — receiving pallets of inventory instead of boxes and figuring out warehousing.

Clinton is also working to bring established golf brands onto the Whatnot platform. He’s invited major manufacturers like TaylorMade, Callaway, PING, and Titleist to watch shows and see that MAP pricing is being respected.

The pitch: Whatnot is a safe, brand-friendly channel for new product.

Clinton’s #1 Tip for Side Hustle Nation

“Whatever you have in your heart and mind to do, just start now.”

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