Yo yo yo! Reader, Two weeks ago, our 90-day sales total was sitting around $192,000. At the beginning of this week? We were down around $171,000. That's roughly $20,000 of revenue disappearing from the rolling total in two weeks. Clothing had fallen off. Cash flow had tightened. September was looking like it might finish without a profit. And naturally, there were moments where I was thinking: What do we do now? This week gave me my answer. Build. Build the team. Build the systems. Build the...
12 days ago • 9 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, This week I had a decision to make. Sales were down. Cash flow was down. Expenses were still coming. We'd brought another person into the team. I knew we were going to finish well below our weekly revenue target. And Friday was my birthday. The obvious business-owner response? Come into the warehouse. Run another Live. Try to squeeze another $1,000 or $2,000 out of the week. Push harder. Instead... I took the day off. And strangely enough, I think that decision probably says...
19 days ago • 8 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, Something happened this week that I think perfectly captures what building a business actually feels like. Sales are down. Cash flow is tighter than I want. Expenses keep appearing. My van decided it needed around $2,000 worth of work. We've had property issues. Live sales have softened. And we're probably going to finish another week below my revenue target. So naturally... I hired another person. Makes sense, right? On paper, probably not immediately. Emotionally?...
26 days ago • 10 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, I started this week feeling pretty good. I’d actually rested over the weekend. Spent time with Karla. Went running. Switched off. And walked into Monday feeling motivated and ready to go again. Then the week started throwing punches. Sales were quiet. Live was softer. Hiring still wasn’t moving as quickly as I wanted. A camera return popped up after almost 30 days. Then our warehouse bathroom decided it wanted to remind me of a plumbing problem from over a year ago. Sewage....
about 1 month ago • 10 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, One thing I've learned from building a business is that you can get surprisingly close to something happening... And then it doesn't. That happened this week. I'd been looking for someone to join the team and help co-host our eBay Live shows. We finally had a candidate come through who looked really promising. The interview went incredibly well. I was impressed. They seemed excited. I made the offer. I started preparing the warehouse. Started thinking about training. Started...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, Sometimes the best way to find out whether a system works is to put pressure on it. That was basically this entire week. More Live shows. More orders. More stock. More consignors. More cameras. More categories. More people doing different parts of the process. And more revenue flowing through the business. It was one of our strongest weeks ever. But strangely, the number I'm probably most interested in isn't the revenue. It's everything that started to become obvious because...
about 2 months ago • 8 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, When we first started doing eBay Live back in February, I genuinely didn't know what it was going to become. I didn't know how many shows we could realistically run. I didn't know how we would manage the postage. I didn't know how much stock we would need. I didn't know what processes would need to change. I definitely didn't know whether we could eventually run multiple shows in the same day. This week we ran a Live show every single day. And on Thursday, we ran two. That's...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, There was a time when a quiet week on eBay meant the business was quiet. This week reminded me that those are now two very different things. Traditional eBay sales were slow. Really slow at times. There were mornings where I walked into the warehouse, checked the numbers and thought… where is everyone? And yet, somehow, this was one of those weeks where it felt like there was more happening inside the business than ever. New staff. New opportunities. More eBay Live shows....
2 months ago • 6 min read
Yo yo yo! Reader, This week felt like one of those weeks where a lot of things we’ve been working towards finally started colliding at once. New stock arrived. New consignment opportunities came in. eBay Live continued to perform. We started processing new inventory almost immediately. I put the call out for another team member. We’re adding another service into the warehouse. And somehow, amongst all of that, we still had to run the normal business. It was chaotic. But it was productive...
2 months ago • 5 min read