We quit our NHS jobs to sell clothes on social media – we now earn £60,000

When Mike Winter took a risk by buying a “lost and found” pallet of items online, he could not believe his eyes when he uncovered a Balenciaga jacket which he ended up selling for £600 – £200 more than he paid for the entire pallet. Having dabbled with reselling his own clothing and unwanted items for years, his luck with the designer jacket gave him the push to leave his NHS job to buy and sell clothes full time. It turned into such a success that he and his wife Annabelle, who also quit the NHS, have now surpassed their combined income working in healthcare. Shorts Live selling is essentially livestream shopping — an online sales method where someone shows and promotes items during a live video broadcast. Mike said: “For us, it was more of a lifestyle choice rather than a financial one initially – but now we are earning a little more than when we were in the NHS.” “The cost of childcare was the thing that pushed us to try something different. One of our entire salaries was being wiped out. We looked at the bank at the end of the month and there was nothing in there. I don’t think it was manageable.” The couple, who live in Bedford with their two children, a 10-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy, are both aged 34 and spent several years working in healthcare. Mike managed a team which organised the schedule for district nurses while Annabelle worked for a private company dealing with NHS wait times for surgeries. Annabelle went back to work full-time after having their daughter and while childcare was expensive, it was only when their son arrived and they had to pay two sets of nursery fees that she realised her wages were barely covering the childcare costs. She said: “To both be working full-time, not see our children and then not having any money at the end of it, it made us realise we didn’t have any other choice but to try something new. “Having young children probably wasn’t the best time to take a risk like that – but luckily, it paid off.” Mike began buying and reselling stock initially as a side hustle. But after it took off in 2020, both he and Annabelle quit their NHS jobs. Annabelle said: “Giving up work short term was necessary and I thought I could go back to it. But it wasn’t until we got into [live selling] that we fully realised the potential of it.” The couple are now founders of @weardeadstock and are among the pioneers of live shopping – an industry that is projected to globally surpass $230bn (£168bn) in 2026. Mike and Annabelle initially began reselling on different platforms and built up a following over the next few years. They were then approached by Whatnot, a live selling marketplace. “My initial thought was ‘no thank you’ as I’d never done anything like that before and didn’t really want to go in front of a camera,” said Mike. “But we thought we’d try it. When we did our first stream to the community, it was fantastic and we haven’t looked back.” Mike says they have built up a strong community by live selling on Whatnot Over the years, Mike has built up a list of contacts with wholesalers and businesses to buy from. The couple buy end-of-line clothing or returns that they either do not want to sell or could potentially go to landfill. They have now built up a successful full-time business on Whatnot to an audience of more than 70,000 followers and regularly sell to hundreds of shoppers with auctions two or three times a week. Mike describes live selling as like sites such as Vinted and eBay “but better”. They hold up and talk people through each item they are selling so viewers can see what they are buying and ask questions. “We start everything at £1 and then people bid on the auction,” explained Mike. They have come across numerous hidden gems. “We got lucky and stumbled across a business that had a lot of dead-stock Nike which was from the 1990s and had been sitting in a warehouse for 20 years,” said Mike. “At that time, vintage Nike was very popular. This stuff was brand new and still in its packaging. “In one of the pallets, we found a Nike skirt that had been made famous as it had been worn by supermodel Bella Hadid. There were loads of these skirts in that pallet and they sold for £100 each.” When working for the NHS, Mike says their combined household income was around £55,000. However, now they are earning around £55,000 to £60,000 a year together. “We think there is huge potential for live selling over the next five to 10 years and the potential to earn a lot more is significant,” said Mike. “Being self-employed is very different as, if we have time off, we are not paid, and the very nature of the job means there are lots of ups and downs. “But the quality of our family life is a lot better. Annabelle drops off and picks up our children from school every day.” Although the couple will no longer have the benefit of a “gold-plated” NHS pension, they set up a private pension a couple of years ago and aim to carry on putting more into it as the business grows. Mike said: “I had no choice but to make it work. But it has worked out brilliantly and we both love what we do. We have now sold more than 120,000 items on Whatnot and built up a positive and fun space to sell clothing.”