Let's travel in time a little bit.........maybe 3+ years ago. Back than, I built a checklist of what I needed to start a business :
-Cash
-Support of your life partner
-Time
-An idea
-Peoples who believe in your plan
-Patience
-Organization
-Education
-Determination
-Strong self estime
-A network
After a deep analysis of this list (1 minute), I realized I was having none of the above except education. Nice start! Later on, I learned those things are not what you need to start a business, but what you need to aquire over the years to be successful in business.
My starting point was education. I completed a University degree in Finance to realize afterward I needed more accounting courses to understand the business. I went back to school (I never really quit, it was a continuation) and completed a degree in accounting to realize an accounting degree wasn't enough. A profesional title was needed to have a true chance to reach upper management jobs. That's what I did, I completed a CMA (Certified Managment Accountant). That's it for school, it's over for me ;)
When I started my CMA program, we did a very interesting personality test called MBTI, some of you might already know this test. The result was a surprise to me, I was a ENTJ personality type. I was the only one of this type in the whole program....What does that mean. You can consult wikipedia or other website if you are interested to know the detail of what ENTJ means, but for a sumarry, ENTJs are decisive people, designed to be part of the upper management of companies. That's the bright side, on the darker side, we are abbrasive people who can't tolerate lack of skills of the others. Anyway, that test learned me a lot about my strenght and weakness and I recommend to anyone who can take the "real test" : TAKE IT! (not an online simplified version...)
Ok, enough about that, completing all those courses gave me a little bit of self estime so I was on the good way, but of course there was a huge hole in my bank account. Unfortunately the job I had was taking time away from me even if it was bringing some cash. Those 2 goals were in conflict. I finaly lost my job since it was only a replacement for a maternity leave. TIME was back on my side, money starting to go away at the same moment...humm.
At that moment I was a poker player, playing no-limit hold'em variation of the game and I became pretty good at it, not without efforts tough. Reading books, watching DVDs, studying strategies...playing and playing. I was finaly making more money playing poker than when I was working. At first, it looks like a fun living, but it's not. I'm the biggest fan of poker in the world and I'm telling you it's not a fun living, so believe me. One day I'll write a quick blog on "why not become a profesional poker player". A guy I know already wrote something with this title I think and he was right. I'll try to summarize if someone is interested later.
Anyway, I was attracted by Ebay and any other online selling plateform. I was sure I could be able to develop something interesting on that. I sold event tickets at first. That was working well, but once again it's not really an honest living and not the type of living I wanted. So I decided to go back to work after a 6 months break enjoying the summer! Job was building the cash back and I was still working on "searching for an idea" point, building at the same time my patience.
One day, one of my friend moved and I visited the apartment he was leaving and I asked him : "Hey, don't you bring those old beer cans?" He said : "No you can take them if you want". One of those cans is pictured on the top of this blog. I threw this can on Ebay in a 7 days listing and I was really surprised to see 21 watchers on this item after only 3 days! What the hell was going on? This can appears to be the first Labbat 50 made and since it wasn't popular at the time, very few cans were available and mine was in very good condition! Collectors from all around the world were asking questions about my can, where did I found it?, is there more? and so on..Can has been bidded up to about 425$, a guy in MN won it and was really happy with it. I was shocked and so was my friend who gave the can to me! hahaha.
That day I realized there was a nice market for collectibles on ebay and I had a lot of hockey cards sleeping in the wardrobe for a while and I decide to start selling them. There it was, my idea! I collected sport cards since I was really young and I had a strong knowledge of all the 1901-1998 date range in hockey. I just had to catch up 1998-2008. Easy.
This is where I am today (still working) and selling trading cards and collectibles on Ebay on the side.
I just completed my first year doing this, still pretty small at about 19K$ of annual sales. Margin is interesting.
I'm currently working on my patience. Trying to relax and do like Warren Buffet once told : "learn to make small profits". I see what it means now and I do believe it's a key to success. A pretty hard thing to do for a lot of people (like me) that want everything to happen fast and have a lack of determination and patience. Piece by piece I have now accumulated a 20K$ inventory of sport cards and it still growing.
Organization! I had to use my determination a LOT to achieve this recently. Not later than last month, when I realized I haven't tracked anything from the past year and the taxes deadline were in 2 months. My accounting books were empty!!! That's typical...an accountant not doing his own accounting stuff...nice.
It's been hell of a good time trying to track all the transactions I have made in my paypal account....
I put all of this together (thanks to my education) in a weekend and build an easy and flexible system. Really basic, it's an excel spreadheet. I now have organization! Everything is recorded when it happens. Don't do this mistake and build your system when you start, it's pretty hard to catch up once the machine is started.
I gain a small support of my girlfriend recently, by demonstrating clearly that everything was honest. Showing my 100% feedbacks and how much I care about my customers. I'm saying small support, but I understand how she see all this. She thinks I'm trying to find a lazy way to earn money and she's affraid that I might think about leaving my job to concentrate on Internet sales. RISKY! Risk and myslef are like Gore-tex and water. For my girlfriend it's more like Spunge and water. I have no fear of risks, I have a nice shell against it, but my girlfriend do have difficulties to handle those kind of risk and I respect that. Because of this, I'm going slower and taking time to explain her what I am doing and building credibility as time goes by. She also see all the work I put in this so she don't think I'm lazy anymore ;) After all, all of this doesn't make sens to me if she's not with me when it will work well so it's important to take care of your personal life in the process.
I'm feeling I'm getting the pieces of the puzzle together now. I guess this is a good recap and already a too long post. I'll come back here and there on different aspect of the past if I need to, or if some people have questions.
Thanks for reading and once again don't hesitate to post questions/comments. I'll be back when I have a minute. I have so many thing I want to write, this blog will be a total mess, maybe it is already. Anyway, good night all.
T.
Here's some item you will find in my Ebay store :
