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Well that is like me using TeamViewer. Whenever Susan and I used to go to Florida to visit our daughter, I would turn on TeamViwer and leave it running. Then I would take the laptop with me and log in to TeamViewer and remotely navigate WonderLister. Guess you are doing the same only having then tie into your laptop from thier own rig, then the office laptop is tied into your local area wireless network which accesses SB.
Guess I could just do the same with our two helpers, only I like for them to have the object in hand to look at the object as a second set of eyes, look for crazing and flaws we may have missed. But guess I could just be more deligent on the front in and not be such a quick entry and then they could do the research and such. But still nothing like having the object in your hand. And it would be harder work to transport plastic bins of heavy 3-d objects around. Some of our bins can hit 30 lbs. ++.
Hey caught your last sentence. SixBit is still an SQL database and will reside on your main home office computer. Our assistant does connect to our WL SQL but that is because they are with a 30 foot range of the in office wireless network we set-up. SixBit works the same way, so how can an assistant tap into the SixBit SQL Dbase remotely from that far away. It would have to be “Cloud Based” and WL and SB are not UNLESS YOU CAN GIVE ME SOME WONDERFUL NEWS!!!
Please tell me that SB does have that capability now and at no extra cost. Please, please !! LOL 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries
Here is a simplified way to look at cash flow, the life blood of any business, unless you are an OPM [other peoples money] person whereby you borrow other peoles money to invest into your business based on the premise you can make enough to pay that loan back, with interest, and still have profit of any kind left over.
I will use a simple lemonade stand.
You want to set up and sell lemonade on the corner. You have your parents buy everything you need to build a stand, buy materials to make lemonade, serve it and put it on their credit card [i.e. a business loan=OPM] and very quickly you are in business.
Now comes the basic 3 steps to cash flow:
#1 – Every cup you sell you put the money in your left pocket and you do this for 30 days.
#2 – on day 29 you pay your expenses
* Pay your parents back: = You now owe them for lumber for the stand, nails to put it together, paint or magic marker for your sign, a vendors license to peddle on the corner, interest to your parents, repay for the lemons, sugar, cups, advertising fees [Ebay reference], Paypal, a glass pitcher to hold the lemondae, auto expenses for your parents to go to and from the grocery store, state sales tax [unless tax exempt on the state level], pay your parents for their time [sub-contractor costs] unless they volunteer for free [but a phptographer, helper lister [will not work for free],
* Report what was in your left pocket to IRS on one line of your return, [then subtract everything that was in #2, including things I just didn’t think of] and arrive at your taxable income, then pay the government their share.
#3 put what money you have left into your right pocket.
* Next look at your right pocket total and then split that in half because your “Company” your “Business” is a living, breathing entity that you have to feed for it to live and grow, so this is the “Plow Back” that is a requirement of every new start-up. This first half goes to your business first before you.
* Now after that final 50/50 split look at what is left in your right pocket, pull it out, that is now yours, take it home and see if you can pay all of your monthly living expenses, if not you will have to live off of another income stream.Don’t quit your full time day job until you can live off of half of your right pocket.
Simple Simon says, starting abusiness is easy and can be done in 30 minutes on line. Building a business that can sustain you is another story and you as the owner, are standing at the back of the line.
LOL, 🙂 🙂
I know, completely understated and over simplified, but in simplicity true.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
BINGO! That is why we have made “Zero” for the last few years. All plowed back into the business.
For those who want to quit their regular day job, start the Ebay business on the side, create a Savings account at your bank, and yes you should have a business account. It is not good to “co-mingle” your business ins and outs with your personal money. Then at the end of each month, move any money left over into that savings account and almost zero out the business account, or do the same with your PayPal account. Leave just enough to run the business only. Then if after a few months, do some quick math, look at how much is in the savings account, subtract the month’s beginning balance and look hard at the amount [difference]. That amount MAY be able to be your monthly pay. If you have $300 left and you worked 27 hours per week x 4 weeks = 108 hours then divide 108 hours into the $300 then you are making $2.77 per hour. We have made as little as $.10 per hour in our early years.
You will be surprised at how long it is going to really take to have enough in the real Net column that will be left for you to live on, even if you live extremely cheaply. Just another way to look at the “Cash Flow” concept T-Satt speaks about.
mike at MDC Galleries
AND a decision to accelerate the growth of the company inventory. Either buying more in a newer year either quanitity our increased unit costs.
Until one is at a level that is as large as you ever want to get, item wise, the reinvestment back into the business, called plow back, continues.
I cringe when people use some of the SL weekly numbers to calculate that they will make “X” number of dollars and then plan to quick their full time job. That thinking some times seems to be based on the logic that they have a full storage area already packed with a complete inventory.
We operated in the red, meaning no money for us, for years while we kept plowing back money we made from sales, into more inventory. $.10 an hour is not uncommon for someone in growth mode, for several years. The SCORE network says that 5 years is about average before a business owner can make any money.
I have posted several times before, if you don’t have $10,000 cash righ now to invest in your inventory, then you will have to “earn”- make $10,000 to have that amount invested in your “stash” of sellable items. Now take all the expenses that have been mentioned and subtract those from your GROSS SALES, and forget paying yourself, how long will it take a new seller to build up an inventory asset of $10,000.
We have about 1,200 items in our inventory. We buy higher cost items along with box lots of cheaper item. Our Profit & Loss statement shows we have approx. $8,000 tied up in inventory. or about $6,66 per item. It took us years to grow that inventory.
Jay and Ryanne have approx. 8,000 items in their inventory, that represents a large amount of cash tied up, just sitting in their storage area. Multiply that 8,000 items by whatever dollar value you want to use as a COG and you get $16k, $24k, $32k dollars they have sitting in that storage unit. All of that had to come out of their NET SALES. They sold a certain dollar amount, they paid all their fees, then they lived off a portion [and lived very close to the vest as they always remind us] and then and only THEN did they have cash [NET CASH] left over to put into their OCRA account and used that to plow back into their business to grow.
BUT NOW they have leveled off. I see it in their weekly numbers. I remember when they had 2,000 items, then 3,000 then 4,000. That represented GROWTH and came only out of bottom line NET profits yet they still were living, frugualy be it, but living. Old car-truck, used clothes, selling honey, scavengeing everything that was not nailed down, burning wood, etc., etc.
BUT GUES WHAT, they have leveled off now. Go back and see how long they have hung around the 8,000 item mark? Came close to 9,00 for a short while, but dropped back down. So where is there 9,000 items, 10,000, 11k, 13k inventory? You won’t see that for a while if ever. Now that they know their cash flow, what the 8,000 item $25,000 investment is returning to them, now instead of growing, they just replace what they sell and float at the 8,000 ++ range. BUT that is not the whole picture. They now “PULL” that net profit, OWNER’S DRAW, and re-direct that bottom line net cash, into a diversification plan. That is real estate investment. Viola’.
They still have Ebay store expenses, fees, a living salary and then use that operating capital reserve account amount of money to continue to build their business, but it’s not Ebay hard goods inventory that is the sole focus any longer, but real estate “inventory”
I can see Jay’s long range plans, next will come a coucncil member, then Mayor of Lauray, the Virginia Governer, then on to Washington. LOL :-), The man who built an empire by selling old, used, shoes, yeah right. Smart like a Fox. LOL, LOL, 🙂 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Spot on about everything you have posted. BUT Don’t forget, understanding all of these principles before going full time helps one to build a proper COA and that in turn is where a business owner drives his ship! A full, complete COA is where all expenses of any type is properly classified and expensed against the proper journals and General Ledger.
Left over money for the business is called OCRA [Operating Capital Reserve Account]. After gross profit is determined from those hard costs associated with the GP number, then comes, Owners Draw [owner salary], executive salaries, bonuses, taxes to Uncle same, etc., etc. You will be lucky if you have 5%-7% left over for your OCRA account.
We are a Sub-S corporation, so any company profit is passed through to us as the principle owners, taken and shown as owners draws on the books. Once passed through, then for tax purposes we would pay taxes on that amount at our own, personal tax rate instead of at the “C” Corp rate. Which many people don’t realize that corporate profits tax can be as high as 50% of what’s left. That is why large corp. make huge donations at the end of the year, contribuit to symphonies, art museums, etc. That is how Mobile Oil and Exxon got away with paying zero tax on millions and millions of profit, put into their OCRA account, bonus all the execs, then DONATE Huge amounts to non-profit entities.
I know you and I run our businesses on a tight line and reflects a bottom line that shows our mehtodologies.
Put another way, as something to think about, a business can make a lot of money, have a nice gross profit, pay a good salary to all employees, give bonuses, pay high executive salaries and then end up running in the red and paying no taxes.
Borrowing an Arsenio Hall Phrase .. “Hhmmmm”
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Troy: Sorry I missed this post, been busy with the details of the 4 start up homes were are building. So glad to hear everything went well for Veronica. Hope the healing process goes well and quickly. Tell her Susan is thinking of her also. Keep us updated.
Your brother from another mother,
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Pickle Castor must be in the stars. We got one at an auction early last summer. Had to clean it up somewhat and it sold in a few months. If memory serves me right we got for around $50, which is pretty high bid for us at an auction, but discovered the selling price. For nice ornate Victorian ones over $300. We listed at $325 and sold for around $275 [if I remember]. I didn’t even know what it was, but Susan did and she had looked it up during the earlier preview. Me, never heard of it until that night.
But if I ever see one again, I will know and jump on it.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
I hear what you are saying, but SL members have said many times before, it is still good to have an almost duplicate store cross listed on other platforms. We are working on our goal to cross list everything on Etsy that qualifies as vintage [20 years old or more] according to Etsy.
That is one of the benfits of using SixBit listing software. One dashboard, one listing location, customize everything to your liking and then the software automatically [almost] cross posts on Ebay and Etsy for you, synchs, the sales on each, and also removes any sold items from the other platform. In other words tracks all activity on both platforms and keeps them in synch.
This is a safety measure that is well worth the price to make sure a seller always has a store up, running and functional.
Mike at MDCGFA
Yes Libby.. and I was just re-reading the VERO document and Ebay says a seller needs to contact the Mfg. and not Ebay. It is the mfg. that a seller is offending first of all, then Ebay is just doing what they promised all the companies who signed up with Ebay’s VERO program, and that is to take down the item and or seller. It is the Mfg. who is offended or harmed [so they claim].
One of the big arguments, even if the item is genuine, is that their brand is getting “diluted”. The other is the status of the brand. Tiffany does not like their products being sold on Ebay, which is seen as a big discount marketplace. Tiffany wants customers in suits and ties and coming into their stores to buy items for thousands of dollars and not on Ebay at a 20% off sale, then taking offers 20% less than that. Also those prestige brands want their prices to be supported by high prices, prestige sales and ownership and not undermined by sellers who don’t know how to grade the quality of their diamonds, glass, crystal and workmanship.
I can see their point.
But doing some homework on Ebay will bring up their VERO agreements and policies. Calling over and over agagin has less value than calling the Mfg or company, tell them your situation and getting them to tell Ebay that the item you are selling or you as a seller is OK to allow to be re-instated.
I called and talked to John Deere directly. They told me what we could and could not do. It wasvery informative.
But we still buy and sell items all the time that could get a violation at any time. It is Jay’s point of many people speed but only a small fraction get caught and get a ticket. All you can do is bear the punishment, pay the fine, and keep driving but with care.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
melmn:
The VERO program has been discussed in the past here on SL. If interested you may want to do a search here on SL for the term VERO and read over those threads.
At that time I posted the link that has all of the companies that participate in the VERO program. Each company participates on different levels of activitiy and some are very sticky, i.e. Velcro, John Deere [the one we got dinged on] and others. Some are tenacious. We even got a letter from the John Deere Company directly stating we were not an “authorized reseller” and we were to cease selling any John Deere product, period. In my opinion, these tenacious companies probably are very active in pinging Ebay and bending their ears on who they find that are in violation and Ebay responds to those big corporate entities.
Here is the link again and it is a much longer list than one may think.
The VERO stands for Verified rights owner program and the key words are rights owner. All trademarks, copy rights, circle R and circle C symbols that are on items indicate the rights owner. When you buy a song, a book, a drawing, print, painting, photograph, you the buyer does not “own” the copyright and as such do not have the right to reproduce that item in any form any where as a photograph, include the company name for resell unless you have specific written permission from the Mfg. Thus as John Deere told us, we are not part of the “authorized reseller program”. A authorized reseller has to sign an agreement with the mfg. and agree to and follow a bunch of protocols with regards to how you present their products.
As resellers on Ebay we are all just taking a gamble that the items we sell do not bird dog their products on line and that Ebay also doesn’t find them through some sort of search.
Hope this helps
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Good point Jay. Never hurts to fly under the radar at all. That also points to the value of having other platforms to be selling on. A sort of self directed diversification program.
BTW Melmn, if you do cross post on other sites, get that item ended ASAP so you don’t get dinged on another platform. Some companies, as reported here on SL several times before, have staff members – employees constantly searching for their stuff being sold by people who are “not authorized sellers” of their products.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Great Sale and weekly Sales RTWV. Way to go. 🙂
Mike at MDCGFA
I am right there with you and hear you loud and clear.
I mentioned something to this effect earlier this week. We have the exact same story here. It may be just a changing climate in the online world of buying and with so many other platforms, who knows.
I wonder if there is a way for us all to get Ebay statistics to know if Ebay as a whole is also suffering a large decrease in traffic, visits and hits. Again, who knows, but maybe Ebay is off by millions of visitors and it is losing to other platforms or venues.
Sort of baffling to a lot of us.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
That is a question I have out to Troy and Veronica right now and they are probably the better ones to answer. I asked Troy just exactly what fields is SixBit filling in automatically vs. what will we be filling in manually. Knowing this will help us to determine about how much time is going to be required to fill in the missing fields.
But remember SixBit does automatic many other things and will track the Etsy Sales. Another question for Troy will be if SixBit will be interfacing with Ebay and marking those as deleted or no longer available or will we have to do that manually, which I don’t mind as long as I can get some sort of list that will show me the Etsy solds so I can end the Ebay listing quickly.
mike at MDCGFA
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