Diverging Roads

It was a great week, I really had a lot of fun working on the project and spending a lot of good family time enjoying the summer. As far as progress goes, I think this week is going to be representative of a lot of upcoming weeks, especially here at the beginning of the project: I feel I made some good “behind-the scenes” progress, but didn’t really get the numbers to back it up quite yet. It’s bound to happen, especially as I’m exploring and trying new ideas and business ventures, many of my actions (maybe most of them) aren’t going to directly result in more money… but I think that’s ok. Investing my time and efforts vetting new and more profitable/scaleable ideas is how I’m going to get bigger and better than the buy/sell strategy.

So, what did I do this week? Well, to be honest I probably neglected the buy/sell effort too much, we had non-project things to do all weekend meaning I couldn’t get to an auction, and I wasn’t able to find time to push the remaining items I need to sell. Not a great week for that, but I think I should have more time in the upcoming week to keep this revenue stream going and try to make a couple bigger scores.

During the week, one of the future ideas I was working on involves importing a product that I feel is under –represented in the market. I spent some time in the evenings discussing the product idea with some suppliers through Alibaba.com. I was doing research on how the importation works, trying to establish a plan for shipping, getting quotes, and estimating costs/pricing, etc. I think that it’s a decent idea (probably a limited market, but an easy one to get into and a pretty niche item), and I think I need about $2000 to initiate the first buy of inventory/etc. I’m pretty excited about this idea, buy I obviously need some more cash to execute. I will elaborate a lot on this in the future, once I can get the wheels rolling!

The other venture I put some work into was to create some value out of the reclaimed wood I purchased last week. I like making things, and with the rustic/weathered wood, I figured I could make some simple furniture or home décor and hopefully make a nice profit. This weekend, I did a solid “practice run” to feel out my capability in designing/building things in my garage. My sister-in-aw Natasha wanted a rustic side-table for her office, and she agreed to fund the practice run.

I received the dimensions from her and drew up a quick design. I had to adjust a few things based on the limited material, and exposed a few issues with my tools (I need some new/sharp saw blades, my miter saw is about 3 degrees off and needs tuned, etc), but all-in-all I think it was a promising success. The table ended up being a little rough, but certainly functional and it looks decent. Natasha liked it, so it worked out great for both of us, and $40 went toward the project. I think with some design tweaks and tuning up my tools, I could build quite a few items and make some good profit on the wood I bought. Efficiency will be the key, we’ll see if I can make my shop/designs easier to work around, the small table took 4-5 hours so I need to improve at least 2-4 times. I actually think it’s possible, especially since I’ve exposed a few issues I know I can improve on. I will give it another try this week, and maybe we can turn this effort into a few hundred dollars!

It’s starting to get a little tough staying focused on the small things I need to do to increase my budget to a few thousand, my imagination is trying to leap to the next big thing. But, rules are rules, and I know that forcing myself to bootstrap and grow this effort organically will make my decisions to be well-thought out and purposeful, and hopefully that will result in greater successes. I’m really excited to get going, so I just need to work that much harder on the quick-win type items to boost this budget!

Thanks for following along, the support really keeps me motivated!