Up until about two weeks ago, my goals for 2021 largely involved writing and replacing my delivery driver income. Then Nathan threw out a suggestion which was to make $1 million in gross revenue during 2021. As you can tell by his qualification in his post where he said, “In this day and age it isn’t as difficult as you might think,” he knows that many people would scoff at him if he spoke this goal out loud to them. I did not scoff. I actually believe it to be possible. I’m 100% entrepreneurial tendencies friendly. I’m not gluten free though.
On Thursday night, I’m taking Nathan the latest batch of stuff I bought at the “Goodwill Bins of ‘I’m Lost! I’m a Lost Toy!’” We’ll have a chance to discuss things then. At this point, I’m not sure if I really have a role in his grand plan, unless I’m helping him with the video production in some way, because he also said in his post, “Video Monetization is my real endgame.” This was after explaining why eBay wasn’t going to work. About that he said, “…getting a million dollars by making $3 and $4 at a time is going to be too painfully slow.” Actually, it would be impossible.
At $4 an item, we would have to list 250,000 separate items throughout 2021. In order to do this, we would have to post 685 items a day. If we listed on eBay 16 hours a day, we would have to list 43 items an hour, which would mean that we would probably need at least 4 people working 16 hour days doing nothing but listing. This means that additional people would have to be sourcing inventory and shipping out sales. Oh, and absolutely everything we listed would have to sell (no pressure, Paw Patrol figures). The only reason I bring this up is because it’s not what I suggested, so it’s a little weird that he stated it as such.
Consider this for a moment. In order to reach a million you would have to do some combination of the following:
1 million items @ $1 ea.
100,000 items @ $10 ea.
10,000 items @ $100 ea.
1,000 items @ $1,000 ea.
100 items @ $10,000 ea.
10 items @ $100,000 ea.
1 item @ $1 million
My plan involved getting to “10,000 items @ $100 ea.” as quickly as possible, because even that is 28 listings a day that all have to sell. The furthering of my plan involved getting to the level where we were closer to “1,000 items @ $1,000 ea.” by the end of June.
The irony is that when he suggested $1 million in gross revenue, I didn’t flinch; but somehow, when I made suggestions of how we could get there he seems to not believe it’s possible. I’m not trying to bust his balls as much as I’m trying to make a point about our belief systems. They hold us back. I think sometimes we don’t even see how they hold us back. They be all sneaky and/or Freudian when they hold us back.
As Nathan said, he has other thoughts about how to bring in money over the next year. First of all, without getting into actual numbers because I’m not sure if he’s ever said publicly, Nathan’s household has a yearly income that exceeds the average income of US households. It’s not by a lot, but it does exceed.
He also said something else that I’m going to talk with him about tomorrow. I don’t know how excited his wife would be about selling the house they’re in now, and I don’t know how much equity he has in it, but there are things that could be done with that kind of money. It’s just a discussion in my mind though, because I do fully believe in Seth Godin’s statement that you never take a risk that will take you out of the game. One of my thoughts doesn’t do that, but a few of my thoughts do. I’ll talk with him about it.
While my eBay plan was built around getting to $1 million in gross revenue on its own, we don’t necessarily have to get there with just eBay. He has his full time job. He has the potential to sell his house. He will have other streams of income by the end of 2021, because I know that on some level he sees that this is all possible. He does not understand what I’m suggesting, I guess. The point with eBay was to build up a revenue stream by May so that we can get into bigger average sales by the end of June. I don’t think I’m communicating it well though.
I was actually talking to Miguel while I was out at the bins yesterday, and I explained to him Nathan’s goal. He was one of those who heard it and flinched. To Miguel, it simply cannot be done. Yes, people do it, but we’re not those people. He gave an interesting reason this was true though. In his mind, it’s simply because our only hope of doing something grand is by doing something we enjoy so much we would do it for free anyway. It’s up to luck after that. Nathan can’t do it with eBay, because it’s not something Nathan loves doing.
Miguel might have a valid point, but I think there’s another issue. I think there is a real aspect of belief at play. I spoke with Nathan about The Law of Attraction and why it’s mostly nonsense. I don’t think you just manifest what you want magically (unless you really want to find a dime among the bins, then it’s totes legit).
The DVD isn’t in the case, but if I believe enough the DVD will be in the case.
On the other hand, I feel that belief is important. I could spend the entirety of 2021 writing novels, and write the five greatest novels of all time. It won’t happen, but I’m just saying that it’s not scientifically impossible (you know, like the Earth being round). Though, if I believed that no one would like them, and set them aside, it would do me no good to have written the five greatest novels of all time. I would simply go back to delivering pizza. After all, I have objective proof that I can feed myself and pay my bills delivering pizza. I can’t keep up with my car repairs, but I can do that other stuff.
It’s not enough to have the talent. It’s not enough to enjoy what you do. Even if Nathan loved reselling on eBay more than he loved his wife and kids, he would never make $1 million in gross revenue in 2021 if he believes that the majority of his sales will be $3 or $4, so why even ask for more.
The one thing I want everyone to understand is that it’s real easy to talk yourself out of something. Nathan doesn’t need to convince anyone who reads his blog post that he can make $1 million in gross revenue. Nathan needs to convince himself. He doesn’t even need to convince me. I believe he has the ability to do so. I’ve known him for 22 years now. He’s one of the few people I know who I believe can do it. There’s no lack of business sense, or a lack of skill. There is an inner voice though, and that inner voice is telling him not to expect too much from eBay reselling. “These are not the droid toys anyone is looking for. Move along.”
Anyway, I’ll get some clarification from Nathan as to how he wants to proceed. I think he might be happier if I bring stuff out and he takes what he wants to sell and writes blog posts and makes videos about the stuff. Then I can take the stuff he doesn’t want to mess with and sell it on my eBay account. He could pursue monetization of his YouTube videos, and I could pursue replacing my delivery income. Either way, I’ll do whatever will help him out toward his goal. As I stated in a private message to him, he might be able to get to the higher cost sales using money he makes from video monetization, which would be a little closer to passive income.
Chris McGinty is a blogger who recently learned that running all over town to buy up a bunch of crap to sell on eBay is called “sourcing.” Look at them being all eloquent and shit.