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Hello gang!
Just started listening to the podcast a few months ago. Have a lot of catching up to do!!
Heres a little about me!
I live about 25 minutes south of Milwaukee! As much as I am dreading this cold, I like it!! And I come from a family of 9. I have 6 older brothers, an older sister and a younger sister. I am the youngest boy!
My financial situation at the moment isn’t the best, as I have about $1500 of medical debt and $1500 of tuition debt I am working to pay off. And I had some dental work done, without any dental insurance, and that is costing me a little over $1k. And I need my wisdom teeth out, and some more work done. But I recently started working at Chilis as a line cook and enrolled in their dental, after taking a year off of cooking. It’s an odd adjustment as I cooked in downtown Milwaukee at a higher end (to my standards) restaurant, that focused primarily on farm to table.
Crazy to think, a little over a year ago, after my mom gave me a two day notice to leave and after changing the locks, I slept on my dads shops office floor. It was the first snowfall of the year, too. I ended up moving in with my dad with -$500 to my name. After about 10 months of his financial bootcamp, I am now living comfortably in my own apartment, after I saved over $5k! Its been a journey, but I need to take what he has taught me about money, and get disciplined again, as I invested about $800 into books and 2 rental trucks and a storage unit.
I used to sell books on Amazon and FBA about 5 years ago, until I got deactivated, for me handling some customer complaints very naive. Tried reinstating a few times, but no luck. Last I tried was maybe 2 months ago, and they stated something about responding to some message, but I have to look into that more as I believe it might still be open. Although, I did form an LLC and need to create a business savings account, and apply for a business credit card, as I would like to try that route.
I mainly sell books! Currently have a majority of my books listed on eBay, although with a new business account, I can only list up to 100 items. Currently have 89 books listed! After cold emailing some libraries who cancelled their bookstalls due to COVID, one that is 2 hours away from me gave me a deal ($4 a box, about 30 books a box) on all their non fiction books that have been placed in boxes that are categorized. Just sold a book for $150! About 2 weeks ago I bought about 90 boxes, on top of the 25 I previously bought. I plan on making a final stop this following week for the last of the 70 boxes. My current storage unit is packed to the brim, tho.
But I have to sit down soon, and write out my goals and run some numbers on the money I invested, etc., as I would like to scale this up by a lot! I would like to do a little more Merchant fulfilled –once I get this Amazon thing figured out — as opposed to being reliant on FBA. And I would like to get into purchasing Gaylords from thrift stores, etc., and having an employee (s) work for me as I focus more on big picture stuff. Eventually, I would like to make enough money through selling books and other categories, to be able to start my own proprietary line of natural health and beauty products. The last company I worked for did that, but was more feminine geared, and they grossed about $21 million just this year. That’d be at least 5 years down the road tho.I thought it’d be cool to document my journey. I have to mess around with this self hosted website I have through dreamhost, but that’s all a learning curve! This wouldn’t be a bad place to start documenting tho! Maybe I should start a series on Medium!
Thanks for coming to my Tedtalk!
P.S
The true scavenger in me likes visiting a few used book stores dumpsters to fill my Mazda 6 up. Found the occasional gem since I’ve been doing it! Anyone else sell anything they’ve found on the side of the road for trash pickup?
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Welcome! Thanks for sharing your story. Glad to hear that things have improved a lot for you compared to last year – you put the work in and got results.
I live in a rural area mostly without trash pickup (you have to bring it to the dump yourself), but I have sold stuff I’ve found in free piles at the sides of the road. Last summer I found a bottle of vintage Ralph Lauren Chaps cologne (barely used) in one of these free piles and it sold for around $60. FREE is the best price!
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@sonia that time was defiantly a low point for myself. But I can say I am officially proud of myself for achieving what I did, and could not ask for better parents. Defiantly could’ve turned too other ways to cope. Decided to get a gym membership, that I need to get again soon..
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@jay I’d like to think I’ve got a big plan, ha. Not sure if it’s the right one but we’ll see!
A close friend of mine is helping with the amazon side of it as I offered him a cut, as he has some credit card debt he’s like to pay off.
But it’s podcasts and communities/ podcasts like yours that will defiantly help me stay motivated.
It’s funny, as I think more and more, you can’t put me in a straight job. I’m nuts like that… and the nice thing about this selling online stuff, is that you can totally scale it into full time if you put in the grind. It won’t be easy, but hopefully I’ll be able to do this full time.
After we figure out what system works best for us, I would like to learn more about product design, and 3D modeling so I can put my 3D printer to good use. I would like to have a few higher end printers and then get into CNCing and injection molding at home. Figured it’d be cool to design/manufacture products for private label sellers, but I have to start small!
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