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.

Blocked pipes.

Plumbers.

Property management.

Unexpected costs.

Emails.

Admin.

More emails.

By Friday, I was exhausted.

Not necessarily because I’d physically worked harder than every other week.

I was just mentally cooked.

And I think that’s probably the biggest lesson from this week:

There is always a new hard!

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Snapshot

This week had a little bit of everything.

We continued running eBay Live.

We processed cameras.

The team continued photography.

We worked through more consignment stock.

We prepped future shows.

We continued trying to recruit another Live host.

We kept improving our internal web app.

We handled customer issues.

We dealt with a property problem.

We continued training other people into parts of the business that used to depend entirely on me.

And somehow, through all of that, we actually started to get a little bit ahead operationally.

By Friday afternoon, Monday’s show was ready.

Tuesday’s show was ready.

We effectively had stock prepared for Thursday as well.

For once, it didn’t feel like we were constantly running five minutes behind ourselves.

Which might be one of the most important wins of the week.

There’s Always a New Hard

Something I spoke about this week is the idea that things don't necessarily get easier.

You just become better equipped to deal with harder things.

Six years ago, a difficult day might have been:

A customer return.

A bad sourcing trip.

A slow sales day.

Or an item going missing.

Today the problems are different.

Managing staff.

Managing cash flow.

Handling multiple consignors.

Dealing with property managers.

Running different revenue streams.

Recruiting.

Building systems.

Planning for future growth.

Managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual turnover.

The problems got bigger because the business got bigger.

But something else changed too.

I'm better equipped to handle them.

When something breaks now, I usually know who to call.

When a process isn't working, I know how to start pulling it apart.

When sales are quiet, I've got historical data to compare against.

When someone leaves or a hire falls through, I know we start again.

The problem still sucks.

But you're no longer experiencing it for the first time.

And that makes a massive difference.

Looking at the Data Instead of the Emotion

Sales have felt quiet recently.

And it's very easy to immediately think:

"Something is wrong."

But I've been tracking the business for six years now.

And when I looked back at the data, something interesting appeared.

The current slowdown isn't necessarily unusual.

We've historically seen a dip around this period.

There tends to be strength through parts of June.

Another push around the beginning of August.

Then September can fall away before things begin moving again.

That doesn't mean I sit around and assume everything is fine.

We still need to list.

Improve.

Test.

Push.

But having six years of data allows me to separate:

"This feels scary."

from

"This appears consistent with a pattern we've seen before."

That's one of those quiet benefits of documenting everything.

Eventually you have enough information to stop guessing.

Live Has Been Quieter

eBay Live has also softened.

Our shows this week were roughly:

Monday: $937
​Tuesday: $650
​Wednesday: $657
​Thursday: $821
​Friday: $839

We're still generating revenue.

We're still selling a significant number of units.

But we haven't been consistently hitting the $1,200+ range that we were previously seeing.

Part of that is probably the market.

Part of it is timing.

But part of it is also inventory.

A lot of what we're currently moving is effectively the bottom end of some older consignor stock.

It's still good to liquidate.

The consignor gets some cash back.

We make our percentage.

The warehouse gets some space back.

But naturally, lower-quality inventory creates a lower ceiling.

So the challenge now becomes:

How do we increase the quality of stock flowing through Live?

That's what I'm putting pressure on our suppliers to solve.

Better brands.

Better pieces.

New-with-tags stock.

Better size runs.

More desirable products.

My job is to build the selling engine.

Their opportunity is to feed better stock into it.

If we both do our jobs well, everyone wins.

One Process That Is Really Starting to Work

One of the biggest wins from this week is postage.

Our newer team member has now taken over a lot of the eBay Live postage.

And the difference is significant.

There was one morning this week where I walked into the warehouse and all I had to do was print the labels for the orders they'd already packed.

Postage was finished by around 8:00am.

Normally, that could consume another two or three hours of my morning.

Instead, I got that time back.

Now, yes...

I'm paying someone to do it.

If they're working for three hours at around $30 per hour, that's roughly $90.

But for $90, I may get three hours of my time back.

If I can use those three hours to work through cameras...

Prepare shows...

Solve problems...

Build systems...

Talk to partners...

Or work on the next growth opportunity...

That $90 looks completely different.

This is what I've been trying to achieve for a long time.

Not simply hiring people because I don't want to work.

Hiring people so I can spend more time on the work only I currently can do.

We're Finally Getting Ahead

There was another moment Friday that made me realise we're making progress.

I had Monday's Live already prepared.

Tuesday's show was prepared.

We basically had inventory sitting there ready for another future show as well.

That's not normal for us.

We've spent so much time over the last few months operating in a very:

"Get today's problem solved today."

mode.

And that's exhausting.

Because when everything happens at the last second, every small problem becomes urgent.

The goal is to gradually change that.

Prepare earlier.

Process earlier.

Have stock staged.

Have someone else doing postage.

Have listings ready.

Have inventory organised.

Build enough buffer into the system that one unexpected problem doesn't completely destroy the day.

We're not there yet.

But this week felt like progress.

Then The Toilet Exploded

Well...

Not literally.

But close enough.

Wednesday afternoon our warehouse bathroom decided it wanted some attention.

We'd had plumbing issues when we first moved into the warehouse around a year and a half ago.

And this week they came back.

Blocked toilet.

Sewage.

Flooding.

Exactly what every business owner dreams of dealing with.

Fortunately, I have a plumber I trust.

He came out early Thursday morning.

We got everything cleared.

And after inspecting it properly, he discovered the actual sewer pipe is damaged and appears to have been compromised from the original works.

Which is good news and bad news.

Good news:

It's not something we've caused.

Bad news:

Someone is going to have to repair it.

Which then means dealing with property management.

Invoices.

Reports.

Responsibility.

Potentially arguments about who pays what.

It's frustrating because none of it moves the business forward.

But it still requires mental energy.

And that's sometimes the stuff that drains you most in business.

Not the exciting work.

The random problems you didn't schedule.

The Lesson From That

Unexpected problems are expensive in more ways than one.

There's obviously the actual financial cost.

But there's also:

Time.

Focus.

Stress.

Lost productivity.

Interrupted schedules.

The possibility of not being able to have staff onsite.

And the mental bandwidth you lose thinking about something that has nothing to do with what you actually want to be working on.

This is why I'm increasingly obsessed with creating margin inside the business.

Not just financial margin.

Operational margin.

Cash buffer.

Time buffer.

People who can take over tasks.

Prepared inventory.

Good relationships.

Reliable contractors.

Processes that don't require me every minute.

The more buffer you have, the less damaging unexpected events become.

Numbers Corner

Despite how the week felt, the numbers aren't terrible.

We're currently sitting around $193,000 over the previous 90 days.

For September, we're sitting at roughly $24,000 so far.

That puts us around the $2,000-per-day mark.

At the moment, we're probably tracking somewhere around $62,000–$63,000 for the month.

I'd prefer to land closer to $64,000–$67,000.

So we're not massively off.

But we're not comfortably ahead either.

And that's the part I'm trying to change.

FY27 So Far

I also hadn't shared the bigger numbers for a little while.

So here's roughly where FY27 currently sits.

We've done approximately:

$154,600 in total revenue

Our annualised forecast is around:

$748,000

My goal is:

$750,000 for FY27

So we're basically right there.

But I'd rather be comfortably ahead than constantly sitting on the line.

The revenue mix is becoming particularly interesting.

Traditional stock that we've purchased ourselves represents only around 9–10% of the business.

Consignment is around 40%, with approximately $60,000 in revenue so far.

Cameras are sitting just under $42,000, representing roughly 26% of total revenue.

eBay Live is around $31,000 already for FY27.

Then there are smaller streams through e-waste, services and other experiments.

That's a completely different business from the one I was running only a couple of years ago.

Profit Matters More Than The Headline Number

Revenue is obviously exciting.

But ultimately I care about what the business actually keeps.

Right now, FY27 is sitting at roughly:

$154,000 revenue

and approximately:

$30,000 profit

That's around a 20% margin currently.

Now...

That number will change.

September expenses haven't fully landed yet.

We've got wages.

Postage.

Rent.

Other bills.

Unexpected costs.

Possibly plumbing arguments.

So I'm not pretending we're permanently sitting at 20%.

If I strip September out and just look at July and August, the business generated around:

$130,000 revenue

and around:

$20,000 profit

Which is roughly a 15% margin after paying myself, paying the team and paying the business expenses.

That's the number I'm trying to improve.

Because my longer-term north star remains:

$1 million annual revenue with a 20% net margin.

That's the business I want to build.

Cost Saving Has Become a Growth Strategy

Something else I'm increasingly focusing on is reducing costs without reducing capability.

That might sound obvious.

But when you're growing, it's very easy to become obsessed with:

More revenue.

Instead of asking:

Can we produce the same outcome more efficiently?

We've already pulled back on some washing this month because more of our consignment inventory arrives ready to go.

That could save roughly $2,500.

Our postage process is improving.

Even small reductions per parcel add up when you're shipping thousands of items.

Our internal web app is starting to reduce listing costs and speed up processing.

We're training people into tasks that free up more valuable time elsewhere.

None of these things individually transform the business.

But combined?

They improve the economics.

And sometimes improving margin by a few percentage points is just as powerful as finding another $100,000 in revenue.

Still Looking For The Right Person

The Live host search continues.

We've had interviews.

We've had someone accept the idea and then change their mind.

We've had candidates disappear.

We've had other conversations that haven't quite aligned.

Originally, I was primarily searching for someone to help with the women's shows.

But I'm opening up the thinking a little.

Maybe we bring somebody in who starts with men's shows.

Maybe we eventually have two hosts.

Maybe the role evolves again.

I'm learning as we go.

What I'm not going to do is panic and hire the wrong person simply because I'm impatient.

The right person will come.

Until then...

We keep looking.

The Bigger Picture

This week felt hard.

But when I zoom out...

We're actually moving forward.

The team is taking more responsibility.

Postage is becoming more efficient.

We're preparing shows earlier.

Inventory is moving through the warehouse.

The internal software is working.

Camera revenue continues to grow.

Consignment continues to grow.

We're cutting some costs.

We're building relationships.

We're creating more capacity.

And the business is still profitable.

That's the weird thing about growth.

Sometimes it doesn't feel like progress while you're inside it.

Sometimes progress looks like:

Cleaning up sewage on Wednesday...

And having Tuesday's Live show already prepared by Friday.

Both things can be true.

Question of the Week

Something I've been thinking about this week:

What if the hard thing you're dealing with right now isn't evidence that you're going backwards?

What if it's simply the next problem you're now capable of experiencing?

Six years ago, I didn't have employee problems.

I didn't have warehouse problems.

I didn't have property-management problems.

I didn't have consignment reporting problems.

I didn't have Live-streaming capacity problems.

Because I didn't have employees.

I didn't have a warehouse.

I didn't have consignors.

I didn't have Live.

Some of the problems I complain about today only exist because things I once dreamed about actually happened.

That's worth remembering.

The goal isn't to reach some mythical level where nothing goes wrong.

I don't think that exists.

The goal is to become increasingly capable of dealing with whatever happens next.

Solve the problem.

Learn from it.

Build a little more resilience.

And keep moving.

One thing every day that gets us closer.

One week at a time.

Building a business to suit my lifestyle.

Until next week,

Chris

Building a Business to Suit My Lifestyle