Thinking about the next direction in my life

[Average Investor]

I've been into reselling online for a couple years now and it has started to do fairly well. I'm pretty getting fairly close to being able to sustain myself independently. It's a bit of a bottle neck living in a small town versus near a large city for what I do. So I think if I did get closer to a better area, then there could be a lot of potential to be financially independent from that. This business is pretty fun and I don't mind it too much. It's really repetitive though in some sense and a grind. I feel kind of a sense to move on from this, but I really have nothing else in motion that would replace it. It makes more sense to me to continue doing this versus working a job. 

I've been working with the life purpose course of the last couple years. I didn't fully complete it, but I have fully restarted it and I am closing in on completion pretty soon. I have read almost all of the life purpose books as well. It's been on my mind a lot and I have a pretty good amount of clarity on my top values and strengths. I've had life purpose in mind for probably close to 4 years now.  I realize I need to hone on this more and really get to it, but it's been a bit tough being on the grind with my business. My zone of genius is solving problems. Problems for other people at least that is what I have got out of it.  My top values are health, wisdom, and personal growth. 

I've been taking little bets with stuff. I've done some business coaching free for a couple years with pretty good success. I tried some life coaching, but not enough really to get a full taste of it. I'm a bit too young to really teach someone or guide someone through that many facets of life. More so health or business if I were to specialize in something. 

I have been into toast masters for a couple years. Started from doing youtube videos about personal devlopment. However, I lost steam on that after burning out and just needing money really. That seemed pretty fun and intriguing. It's been on my mind about doing a business there, but it seems kind of impractical cash wise. I would probably hone in on health as a niche this time around. That path in general seems pretty intriguing. However, I have lacked deep commitment to any field. I've got a bit of ideas floating around, but I have not really come up with a business idea that I needed to seize. Nothing really outside of the scope of doing youtube or something similar has come to mind. I could probably start just about any copy and paste business if I wanted, but I am not looking to piss away more years of my life. 

It feels kind of like I have been in this same loop of trying to figure this out for years. I've made some serious tangible results in my life in the mean time, but it feels like I have just hit a celling because of this. Finances and really a solid direction of what I want to do with my life. I feel like I am just pissing most of time away with reselling. Sure, if I keep working at it there results will be getting better and better though. 

What would you do to get past this?

You guys guys give some pretty solid advice here, so any ideas, suggestions, etc are welcome.

Edited September 29, 2021 by Average Investor

[Average Investor]

I have updated the thread with the post now. 

[Yarco]

Moving to a bigger and better area, it's important to keep in mind that your cost of living will likely go up too. So you'll want to crunch some numbers with rent and other expenses (or gas if you're going to commute -- and don't forget to factor in your extra driving time too) to see if it makes sense. There's no point working harder or longer but ending up with the same bottom line.

Have you attempted automating any parts of your business? My guess is that your biggest strength in the business (and probably the most fun part) is going out and identifying items that are profitable to resell. I'm guessing the more repetitive and grindy part is creating listings, which you could probably outsource to a virtual assistant fairly inexpensively, and free up a lot of your time to explore other things.

I used to watch a bunch of flipping/reselling videos on Youtube and watched a few guys progress from doing it all themselves, to getting a small warehouse and some staff. If you're able to completely remove yourself from the process and create a system that works without you, that's where I think big growth can happen.

Most people never get to that step because hiring good staff, training them, and developing all the systems to have your business run without you can be a huge headache. I've debated doing the same thing in my freelance writing business and hiring a bunch of other writers below myself and working more as just an editor. But it's definitely a daunting task. Personally I'm planning to shift to other things within the next few years, so I don't know if it makes sense for me to set all that up. But if you're planning to be reselling for the next 10 years, it might be worth the upfront time and investment to try and automate a bit. Then in the long run you'll hopefully have a lot more free time to explore Youtube or other options.

[Average Investor]

@Yarco Sadly the costs are almost identical in my small town to a big city right now. Although, it should go back down a little I imagine. There is hardly any places to rent here right now. 

46 minutes ago, Yarco said:

Have you attempted automating any parts of your business? My guess is that your biggest strength in the business (and probably the most fun part) is going out and identifying items that are profitable to resell. I'm guessing the more repetitive and grindy part is creating listings, which you could probably outsource to a virtual assistant fairly inexpensively, and free up a lot of your time to explore other things.

I am starting to do wholesale DVDs again, which requires little time and effort. Buying about 4,000 units at a time and selling by the 100. I have a store that will split the profit and another I can place them in for $135 a month. So that is a good start. I pay about $10 a box and can easily get $35 each. I was getting $50 a box pretty quick if I took pictures of the inside and meet them. However, I am not interested in that. I don't check the contents of them either, but sell as is. About 90%+ of the box has the disc in usable shape. 

I did have someone help me with listings the last year. It ate up a fair amount of capital and I am not sure how worth it is. I am about 2X more efficient than them. Most of the time is more, cleaning, sorting, and taking photos. A big part of the issue is that the area I live in does not have consistently the same kind of items or high availability. I would be much more efficient if I just found one category of stuff all the time. I basically know about all sorts of electronics from kitchen goods, home audio, video games, printers, etc. That and a good mix of other one off items. I do a lot of stuff like parting out canister vacuums and such. I had actually found a guy on youtube that does about the same thing as me. He sells 30k in a month some months. The last month I sold 10k, which is the most I have done. I get about 50% profit margins on that too. The places he can go to are way better than mine though. I simply just don't have that kind of access to those places here. I have 3 stores close by. Anything else is over an hour and would require me getting up at 4am, which is not really that practical. I have done that though. One store by me though I have a good connection at, he sells me quality items for $1-$5 each everyday. 

46 minutes ago, Yarco said:

But if you're planning to be reselling for the next 10 years, it might be worth the upfront time and investment to try and automate a bit

I don't think that is the route I want to go, but that might be the most viable way that I know to make a living right now. I've been debating on trying to sell most of my store, which is 1250 items plus about 300-400 unlisted  this quarter 4. I would have at least a decent chunk of change around to maybe take time to learn new skills or start a different business. If all fails once summer starts to roll around I would be right back into it with ease. 

Edit: That and with anything that I have learned about making money this just doesn't seem that good. It requires too much labor and money to scale anywhere. I need to find something I can make or do with zero cost of replication to really scale well. That's not to say I can maybe do some of this in the mean time. I want to build a business that I am passionate about that scales much better than this. 

Edited September 29, 2021 by Average Investor