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 probably the biggest takeaway from this week for me.

Sometimes you don't have the entire path figured out before you start.

Sometimes you see an opportunity, decide it's worth pursuing, say yes...

...and then figure out how to make it work.

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Snapshot

This was a big week.

We launched our new Tuesday women's handbags and shoes show.

We ran eBay Live every day.

We tested two shows in one day on Thursday.

We continued working through cameras.

We processed more consignment inventory.

We did some stocktake and started identifying older stock that could potentially move into Live.

We handled a Pokémon deal on behalf of someone else.

We prepared more wholesale and e-waste stock for buyers.

The team continued smashing through photography.

And on Friday we somehow managed to get almost 200 orders picked, packed and out the door.

There was a lot happening.

The funny thing?

Our normal eBay store was still pretty quiet.

Which created an interesting contrast throughout the entire week.

Operationally, we were probably busier than we've been in a long time.

But one of the most established parts of the business was still struggling.

Welcome to business.

Behind The Scenes

Thursday was probably the best test of everything we've been building.

We had our normal women's show from 1:00–2:30.

Then we rotated everything out.

Reset the room.

Brought in the men's stock.

And went again from roughly 4:00 until after 7:00.

The first show did around $659 across 64 items.

The second show turned into a three-hour-and-forty-minute marathon and did around $2,214.

By the end of it, we'd generated almost $3,000 through Live in one day.

But the revenue wasn't actually the thing I was most interested in.

I wanted to know:

Can the system handle this?

Could we prepare multiple shows?

Could we rotate inventory quickly enough?

Could customers buy across both shows and have shipping combined?

Could we process the volume afterwards?

Would our new workflows actually work when we pushed them?

And largely...

They did.

That's exciting.

Because once you prove something can work once, the next question becomes:

How do we make it repeatable?

The Lesson

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between opportunity and discomfort.

There are opportunities I've taken over the last six years where, if I had waited until I knew exactly how everything would work, I probably never would have done them.

Moving into storage units.

Buying wholesale.

Getting a warehouse.

Hiring people.

Taking on consignors.

Buying larger quantities of stock.

Cameras.

eBay Live.

Every one of those things created a new problem.

And that's important.

Because sometimes we think growth is supposed to remove problems.

Usually it just gives you different problems.

If we want to run more Live shows, we need more stock.

Then we need more preparation.

Then we need more hosts.

Then we need someone doing postage.

Then we need better ways of moving stock between shows.

Then we need better systems.

One decision creates the next problem.

But solving each problem increases what the business is capable of doing.

That's the part I enjoy.

What I'm Thinking About

There's a phrase I've been thinking about:

Say yes, then build the capacity.

Not recklessly.

I'm not suggesting you say yes to every opportunity that appears.

You still need to understand the risk.

You still need to understand the numbers.

You still need to ask whether it actually moves you toward where you're trying to go.

But once you've decided something is a worthwhile opportunity, there comes a point where thinking about it won't take you any further.

You have to test it.

Thursday was that.

Could we realistically run multiple Live shows in the same day?

We could have spent weeks discussing it.

Instead, circumstances lined up and I thought:

Let's just do it.

Worst case?

We learn.

Best case?

We've just unlocked another piece of the business.

And now we know.

Numbers Corner

The core eBay store has continued to be frustratingly quiet.

At one point this week our 90-day sales number had dropped from around $180,000 to roughly $175,000.

That obviously gets my attention.

Cash flow has also been something I've been watching closely.

But instead of sitting around hoping sales suddenly returned, we pushed elsewhere.

Across Live this week we did roughly:

Monday: $1,393
​Tuesday: $1,343
​Wednesday: $919
​Thursday afternoon: $659
​Thursday evening: $2,214
​Friday: $1,463

That's almost $8,000 in Live sales alone across the week.

By Friday afternoon, before our final show, we were sitting at around $13,000 for the week.

After the final Live and some additional sales, we were around $14,800, with Saturday and Sunday still to come.

So we should land somewhere around $15,000–$16,000 for the week.

We actually landed on $17,746.62

Considering our minimum target is roughly $12,000 per week, I'm grateful for that.

Especially after how the week started.

The Cost of Building Capacity

I also shared something this week that I think gives useful perspective.

Payroll.

This week roughly $4,183 actually went into team members' bank accounts.

Once tax and super are included, the total employment cost was somewhere around $5,000.

That's real money leaving the business.

And sometimes people say:

"You'd make more money if you just did everything yourself."

Technically?

Sure.

If I didn't employ anyone, I wouldn't have to pay wages.

But I also couldn't photograph hundreds of items.

Run Live shows.

Pack hundreds of orders.

Process cameras.

Handle consignors.

Prepare stock.

Do customer service.

Create content.

Work on new opportunities.

And somehow grow the business at the same time.

There's a ceiling on what one person can do.

The point of hiring isn't simply to reduce today's expenses.

It's to increase tomorrow's capacity.

That doesn't mean every hire automatically makes sense.

The numbers still need to work.

But looking only at the wage expense completely misses what you're actually buying.

Time. Capacity. Throughput. Leverage.

Something Else I've Been Thinking About: AI

I had another thought this week that feels increasingly important.

We are living through an incredible period of opportunity.

AI has massively lowered the barrier to doing things.

Writing listings.

Researching products.

Creating systems.

Producing content.

Analysing information.

Learning new skills.

You can get started faster than ever.

But there's also a trap.

If you use AI to do something without understanding why it's doing it, you eventually become dependent on the tool.

Imagine listing an item entirely using AI.

The title looks good.

The description looks good.

The price looks reasonable.

But you don't actually understand the product.

If it doesn't sell, what do you change?

Was it the title?

Price?

Brand?

Condition?

Category?

Demand?

Or did you simply buy the wrong item?

AI can dramatically increase your speed.

But speed without understanding can just mean making the wrong decision faster.

So I'm trying to approach AI the same way I approach hiring.

Use it to create leverage.

Not to outsource my understanding.

The Bigger Picture

This week gave me a glimpse of what the next version of this business could look like.

More Live shows.

More consignors.

More categories.

More inventory moving through the system.

More people specialising in different parts of the process.

And me gradually spending less time personally doing every individual task.

We're nowhere near finished.

There are still plenty of bottlenecks.

I'm still looking for another Live host.

The core store needs attention.

Cash flow needs to be managed carefully.

Expenses keep increasing.

There are still processes that rely too heavily on me.

But we're testing.

And every time we test something successfully, we increase what becomes possible next.

That's progress.

One Thing I'm Watching

I'm trying not to confuse revenue growth with business quality.

They're not necessarily the same thing.

We can generate more revenue.

But if expenses rise just as quickly...

Or I need to work every waking hour...

Or every new opportunity creates chaos...

Then that's not really the business I'm trying to build.

At the moment we're tracking somewhere around $700,000 annualised against our $750,000 target.

That's ahead of where we were last year.

But I'm still expecting this month may only generate around $5,000–$6,000 in profit after paying myself and the team.

So the next stage isn't simply:

How do we sell more?

It's also:

How do we make everything we're building increasingly efficient?

That's the game.

Question of the Week

Here's something I've been asking myself:

What opportunity would you pursue if you stopped waiting until you knew exactly how to do it?

Maybe you've already done the thinking.

You've looked at the downside.

You've considered the risk.

You know it's something you want.

But there's still one thing stopping you:

"I don't know exactly how I'm going to make it work."

You might not need to.

You might just need enough information to make the first move.

Then solve the next problem.

Then the next.

Then the next.

Six years ago, I didn't know how to build the business I'm running today.

And right now...

I don't know exactly how to build the business I want to be running three years from now either.

But I know what direction I'm heading.

So we'll keep experimenting.

Keep learning.

Keep backing ourselves.

And keep figuring it out.

One week at a time.

Building a business to suit my lifestyle.

Until next week,

Chris

Building a Business to Suit My Lifestyle