If you are here for the first time reading this, I have a small investment property. The proceeds from my reselling endeavours are being used primarily to hasten the repayments on this property. Initially this property was interest only with the loan for the fist 2 years which have passed and has now switched over to principal and interest repayments.
The ultimate goal is to pay this off somewhere between 5-10 years realistically.
After this event occurs I will have the rent coming in from this property to offset my mortgage repayment on my house that I live in. This offset should be enough whereby I could transition into reselling as a full time lifestyle gig or wind back normal work to perhaps 2 days a week (enough to cover the mortgage and some) and have reselling provide the expenditure for the household.
1 Year In Post Interest Only
It’s been a while since I last wrote a post about the house specifically and to be honest its been mainly business as usual which is pretty boring and boring equals good. I had a few maintenance issues to contest with back in May and had to replace a small oven, a washing machine and cop all the fees associated from getting the property relisted.
This trend continued with a broken TV antenna repair (I know right) and a new Air Conditioner also to top things off… As this property generates only a small income compared to a four bedroom house expenses such as these impact much more on cashflow.
The good news is however that I have now replaced pretty much every appliance with new so moving forward there should be a return to normal.
The Stats
I am happy to report that the the current status is now: 9.75% of the loan paid off. When I logged into my account this morning this figure kind of caught me by surprise. I have been chipping away at this and diligently moving eBay profit across into the offset account.
So logically extrapolating this trend there should be no reason to go over 10 years on even this current trajectory which has been waylaid by those extraordinary expenses.
Combine this with the consistent push in eBay listings (and profit) I am still aiming to have this done in 5 Years.
If you are here for the first time reading this, I have a small investment property. The proceeds from my reselling endeavors are being used to hasten the repayments on this property. Initially this property was interest only with the loan for the fist 2 years which have passed and has now switched over to principal and interest repayments.
The ultimate goal is to pay this off somewhere between 5-10 years realistically.
After this event occurs I will have the rent coming in from this property to offset my mortgage repayment on my house that I live in. This offset should be enough whereby I could transition into reselling as a full time lifestyle gig or wind back normal work to perhaps 2 days a week (enough to cover the mortgage and some) and have reselling provide the expenditure for the household.
It’s been a while since I last wrote a post about the house specifically though. Mainly due to the ongoing issues I was having with a tenant who decided to break lease early and it has been messy. Currently I’m owed almost $1000 from the previous tenant which is frustrating. The matter has been to court and found in my favour so now it’s the difficult matter of retrieving that money. It might go the way of debt collectors, we shall see.
The Stats
I am happy to report that the the current status is now: 6.35% of the loan paid off.
This figure should be much higher but over the last couple of months I have had to replace a small oven, a washing machine and cop all the fees associated from getting the property relisted.
There are some positive outlines from this though, new appliances will give my depreciation schedule a boost and coupled with my reduced rent this financial year combined with unusual one off type fees I am hoping there might be a sizable tax refund which I might be able to use to speed up this process also.
As you can see below using an extra repayment calculator that by adding an extra $800 per month from reselling I can get the term of this loan down to 8 years and 6 months. This is hugely encouraging as in May the total figure generated from reselling was a touch over $1600 or more than twice this. Granted perhaps this was a spike but I hope not and if I can continue to grow the store this goal should be easily achievable and potentially even towards the 5 year end.
My comment response with regard to Ralliroots Stats (also below)
I am going to call this month “maintenance month”. Realistically I have listed basically nothing throughout the whole month nor made any real progress with advancing the eBay business in any form such as increased productivity. I had every intention of course but, life smashed me directly in the face and had other ideas for me. Sometimes things just happen and you must adjust. Add time sinks of management of repairs to two leaking showers and two 4 day weekends and well a lot of time was spent elsewhere on other projects and some quality family time.
And yet, as my comment above on the below Instagram post from Ralliroots I could have done more. #iamnotworkinghardenough. I know I could have done more but I found it so hard to focus at times, and I did have some large chunks of time, they just weren’t utilised well. I wasn’t motivated to list at all. I look at the results below from Ralliroots and know I could get close to this if I only just put in the work. I mean I can think of 4 items off the top of my head which would sell for around $500 total, cost me $20, but aren’t listed. I literally am hamstringing my own results.
Ralliroots Stats From Ralliroots Instagram Account
The month overall (outside eBay) as a whole has been a massive life win and very successful.
I’ve finally managed to secure a new tenant for the rental which will immediately provide some much-needed cash flow to help pay this rentals mortgage.
Sourcing Strategy
This month was my third (I think) attempt at a “No Buy” month due to having no tenant in the rental. I needed to spend less as I was pretty sure I was going to have to pony up for the mortgage payment of April. I’ll be honest, I failed once again at not buying anything! It’s a resellers curse I tell you. If you are here reading this, you likely can relate. I did, however, make it through almost the entire month only spending $150 which is much lower than most of the previous months. I will add that in the last 2 days of the month I spent another $100 in celebration of finding a new tenant for the house. So the total spent on inventory for the month was $250.
I have really noticed a difference this month with my thought processes.
There is still a monster pile of things to list. I certainly do not need to go sourcing anytime soon. I can count 8x 50ltr tubs filled with items which need to be listed. Its an organised death pile, what can I say.
I missed the sourcing, its true, so when I ventured out to buy something, in particular, to actually use, (which I knew I could find in a thrift/op shop for cheap) I just couldn’t help myself by doing the rounds of the shop. I found blank VHS tapes for a great price. What was I to do? Just walk away and leave free money?? I don’t think so. This month I have been super extremely selective with what I have brought as I already felt guilty breaking my “no buy” rule. Making $10 profit from an item just was not worth going ahead with the number of items I still have to list ahead of me. Consequently, I feel like this month has actually forced me to improve item quality and only take those special deals or pick up only rare finds, which over time can only benefit the store and the income it generates. I passed on a lot of items this month and it actually felt really liberating.
I have definitely spent considerably less this month on items and have been much more selective with what I am picking up. I am leaving those items which could probably net $10 profit but could take months to sell. All though these are generally bread-and-butter items so to speak I already have probably 100 I need to list for a start.
An example of this from yesterday: I had to travel to the rental to move a fridge and inspect the overall condition. On the way, I made it my mission to stop off at a couple of thrift shops and see what I could find (have to frequently look!) I purchased only 3 items over 3 shops.
Guilty haha.
I ended up with a fitness DVD pack (which was free on store points), another WAFL ISC Jacket that was in great condition for $12 which I ended up getting for $10, should sell for $50+ and last but not least an old Holden workshop service manual that was sitting on a display holder on the counter of one of the shops. It caught my eye before I had even entered the shop, I knew what it was and that it was old. I walked straight up to it expecting it to be around $50 but the sticker showed $10. Other current listed ones of the same item were listed for $130 plus shipping in worse condition. Solds were much lower, but I think this will still get a decent return over some time. $20 into $150 – $200 with only 3 items.
The Holden Manual Spied Before I Even Entered The Shop
Another example, a Sydney Bears jumper from the early 90s official NSW RL. I paid approximately $2 for this due to an error on the clerks part. I didn’t feel bad at all about this however as earlier in the month I had been overcharged at the same chain for some items that should’ve been discounted so I considered the balance of the relationship restored. Anyway, this is the type of item that is really unique and will appeal to a collector somewhere. Comparable anything from this era is getting super rare. A match worn Jersey’s from this team (the only one listed) was sitting at $800 currently with several watchers. This is just a jumper, of course, however, should return $50++. I will obviously start this much higher due to its rarity.
Look For Anything NSWRL or Winfield Cup
This was the story of this month. I made it a point to try and spend as little as possible for maximum profit picking up very niche items with potentially much higher returns. More of these finds, please. Less time to list, pack and ship and fantastic ROI.
In summary, my “no buy” turned into spending $250, which, in turn, could transform into $1500 – $2000. I will be more than happy if I can roll like that each month and I can forgive myself for overspending now and then.
The House Update
So this month a tenant was finally found, hooray! Only took two weeks after the previous tenant signed a break lease form which was great.
Total confirmed damage/loss: Approx. $750. This amount remains owing as a combination of unpaid rent and costs incurred from the break lease and relisting process. These are payable by the previous tenant under contract.
So now the process is:
#1: Get back to normality! I can finally start applying the reselling profits back onto the rental mortgage once again.
#2: Chase up the outstanding money. This will be a slow process and have to go through the court and then likely followed by a debt collector. Could take a while but done by the property manager so only a minor inconvenience. On the positive side of this, the house is in good condition with no damage, the loss can also be incurred in this financial year and provide some tax relief whilst I wait for this money owing to be returned. My insurance provider also may help with this process.
After I had confirmation the new tenant was all signed up and had paid his money I celebrated as any reseller would do! By going out and doing some sourcing!
The Stats
Sales were par for the course this month. I didn’t actually list much at all (24 Items, most in the first 2 days of April) and this probably contributed a lot to flat growth here.
This month has a profit of $573.17 after all fees, shipping charges and Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS).
One anomaly noted was the total value of all items listed managed to rise even in the face of a reduction in listings. This is due to listing higher $ value items on the items I did end up actually listing.
The cash flow for the month is $323.17 which was sent to the rental mortgage account to assist for Aprils payment. Not quite the full amount I was hoping for but still better than nothing!
Returns
No returns this month. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
May Madness
This coming month of May, the plan is simple.
List.
List.
List.
Get to 600 listings and then bust through that. I checked today (1st May) that I have 509 active listings so I have 91 to go to get to 600, excluding the 30 odd I should sell for the month based on prior month, meaning I really need to list 120+ to hit this target.
It really should be as easy as saying I will do 5 a day, which equals 155 over may.
The other thing I need to work on doing is a whole store audit to check I don’t have any stupid listings up from last year which really have no chance of selling. Perhaps this might be a good month to unload a bunch of stale items at cost (or even a slight loss) to make way for my ever-growing cache of higher value items. Makes sense to me.
This month was, I think, a turning point in this side hustle business. It feels like I have taken some large steps forward and that all the groundwork put in over the last few months is finally starting to show good results culminating in the highest monthly profit (after all fees, shipping and COGS) of $812.05.
Sourcing Strategy
This month I took advantage whenever I could to get to Op Shops / Thrift Shops, most of the time on the way home. For the majority of the month, I managed to fit in a stop each day. This turned out to be both a blessing and a curse as I had a few days where I found some bargains but this contrasted heavily against others where I struggled to find items at a reasonable price and so wasted a lot of time just trying to find something. That said however over the course of the month I still managed to spend an additional $637.20 on inventory which conservatively should expand once sold out to over $3000.
I went on a sourcing mission one Saturday morning and travelled a bit further afield than usual with great results. It was comparable to probably being the most effective sourcing day ever so far with a combination of being in the right place at the right time occurring several times that particular day. At the first stop 2 mins from my house, I picked up specialist Monopoly sets of Dragonball Z and Adventure time along with mint condition Playstation 3 games. On the way home I drove past a Garage Sale sign and picked up an entire box of Manga books for $5.50 followed by a Harry Potter First Edition Deathy Hollows in fantastic condition for 50c. I then headed way south and made my target Op Shop with 15 minutes to spare before close. I picked up 3 Pairs Of Levi’s For $9, and an entire Tony Robins Personal Power CD Collection with the box For $6. This shop had no change or eftpos and the lowest denomination I had was a $20. So I was forced to find a brand new with tags Ben Sherman Vest (RRP $79.95), a pair of Jet Pilot board shorts and a couple of nice shirts to round out the difference. I was definitely on a high that day, it seemed everywhere I went there were bargains to be had. That $20 by itself from that one shop could turn into $300 – $400 By itself. For the day I spent just over $100 total.
Another day I hit a small jackpot in the last half an hour by again being at the right place at the right time and picking up a vintage Hero Quest game. That crazy story can be found here.
The House Update
I’ve been lapse with the house updates over the last couple of months. Other than a new oven being required there hasn’t been much to report. At a point during this month, however, I noticed that I hadn’t been paid rent from the rental property management company. I checked three or four times just to be sure as there had been no notification and sure enough, when I pressed them they made me aware that there was a problem. I had a mental list of major disaster problems that ran through in my head however it turns out it was a relatively simple one (be it also critical) that the tenant was no longer paying rent, was two weeks in arrears (behind) and had every intention of vacating prior to the end of the tenancy (lucky for me the remaining tenancy only had 2 months left till expiry).
Now originally this side hustle began as a way to augment paying this house off as quickly as possible and then this house would provide free cash flow. To date, this side hustle has been very helpful and I’m currently eight months ahead with mortgage repayments. I’m definitely less concerned about this unpaid rent than I otherwise might be were the situation different. That said it’s interesting to see the process unfold, whether it ends up going to court, whether or not I get my money owed back, and ultimately just how long that takes as well. Realistically, this is the whole point of having a property management company to help you manage situations just like this. To be able to remain somewhat disconnected makes it far easier to deal with and make decisions with most emotional influences removed.
Anyway sidetracked a little bit, in previous months I have talked about making months “No Buy” or “No Sourcing” months as I still have literally hundreds of items of stock I need to list. In previous months, (that is every month in which I’ve previously said just this), I have failed miserably in my restraint, often heading out on extensive thrifting/sourcing missions. This coming month of April is different because I actually need to make $600 in profit to help pay the mortgage on this property, something I should be able to achieve so long as I don’t procure more stock!
So the primary goal of April will be a “No Buy” sourcing month, well at least until I find another tenant anyway.
The Stats
Sales have been definitely trending up and I’ve been keeping an eye on the seller hub watching the arrows against the previous periods of 60 days pretty much always in the green.
This month has a record profit of $812.05 and would have been even higher had I not had two returns which I have removed from the figures above.
The total value of all items listed has now crept over $20,000 which I am pretty happy with considering I only added an extra 61 listings. this equates to an average listing price of $38.87 per listing. It is quite possible that this figure will be even better next month as I have some bigger ticket items to get up and sold.
The cash flow for the month is a paltry $4.85 with the difference between profit – inventory being one off purchases of storage tubs and a Dymo 4XL Label Printer.
This month I have crashed through 500 listings with the relative ease. I’m not sure why that number held any power of any kind but I did prove a psychological resistance for a little bit. Aprils secondary goal is to get up to 600 listings which are the maximum amount I can have on my current store subscription (without incurring additional charges). The plan then is to reassess at the end of April and then if I decide to go ahead and push through 600 and power on towards 1000. I probably will.
Returns
A couple of small problems this month. I had two returns, one where a buyer was trying to say I sold a fake book, which was total rubbish of course. Currently this return is still ongoing. Is there really such a thing as fake books? I find this hard to believe. This will be covered in greater depth in a future post. At this point it feels like I am currently being scammed.
Another I accepted a return where a camera wasn’t working, I did state on the listing it was not tested. I was happy to accept the return anyway but I will see where that ends up with eBay and their view on an item not as described (INAD) because it is described as not been tested. I still might have to request any defect allocation to be removed on this one. Sigh. I suppose I learned my lesson, things I’m not 100% sure on, need to be labelled as for parts / not working and described as such. Still once I get this back I will still be able to resell again for profit.
Productivity ++
Being that I was on a roll early on with some decent sales I decided to finally take the plunge and buy a Dymo 4XL Label Printer that I have been thinking about for a while. A suitable one flashed up one day on an eBay saved search I had set up for specifically this. As luck would have it I also managed to snag this whilst eBay was running its 10% off discount sale so I ended up getting the Label Maker plus five additional rolls of labels from another seller combined for $170ish dollars. I had a small problem of this label maker going missing in the post. The seller used Sendle a courier carrier which to be honest was super painful with no tracking on the listing initially. The Label Printer was late, the labels had already arrived. When tracking was provided after I requested it from the seller the item appeared to have arrived in the city but was stuck in a loop being checked into the depot each day it said for over a week. I had actually experienced the same problem before at my day job where I wasted a substantial amount of time getting in touch (on hold or being run around) with the courier company to find out where the delivery was (I am talking over a hour at least cumulative). I had absolutely no intention of wasting my time following this up myself, particularly as the buyer had made the choice to use a cheaper option to save literally a couple of dollars. Eventually, after opening a case for item not received the seller chased it up with the courier company and it finally appeared 3 days later, yay. I was pleasantly surprised when I finally opened it. The unit was in much better condition than what the eBay pictures had shown, maybe it’s the surface of it as I had trouble getting a half decent picture myself. And then as an added bonus inside the Label Printer was still a half full roll of genuine Dymo labels, which was odd because the listing specifically said no labels were included. $10 bonus right there.
I already have a smaller Dymo 450 so will spend some time getting these set up side-by-side. I use the smaller labels for other purposes such as labelling tubs and some items of clothing. Getting the Dymo 4XL set up was a breeze already having the Dymo 450, it was basically ‘plug and play’. However, getting the right print set up on eBay proved to be more of a challenge with Google leading me in the wrong direction initially with trying to find printer preferences through eBay itself. It turns out that simply modifying the scale and selecting the correct setting label type setting was perfect.
It’s hard to describe just how much of a difference this makes as far as productivity goes. The old printer was in a totally different room on the Wi-Fi network and often did not print initially resulting in me going to the other room and see no paper had actually printed. Then I would have to return to the computer in the other room and run the printer troubleshooter to spool the printer queue to get the printer to work. This also had the annoying side effect of reprinting the previous label as well meaning I had to be careful not to mix up the labels accidentally resulting in an item sent to the wrong person. Frustrating? You betcha.
Simply fixing this printer issue by using using the label printer has resulted in much smoother packing experience.
The labels stick on nicely on the satchels and I can now use them for parcel packages as well.
Auto Hot Key
The eBay script got a work out this month. eBay had modified its listing template again resulting in me having to retweak the script (again). Overall though the script is working better than ever now with very minimal errors.
I added on to the front end, to open a new tab and search for the item title (input from the GUI) on existing listings and then filter by Sold Listings (automatically of course) before running the rest of the script. This does help a little to some extent but results can vary a lot depending on how many keywords I use in the title. The more keywords the narrower the results. However, because the string has already been searched for in its own new window I can simply take a couple of words out of the title and search again for broader results. It’s definitely a quicker way to price research than how I was previously doing it, and I no longer have to copy and paste at all so I will take that as a win for now.
I still have been toying with the idea of automating the process of the item measurements through Sizely as well. I tend to use only a few types of templates (at this time anyway) so wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Its not such an issue currently anyway as I can usually create the measurement image (through sizely) just before the last photo has uploaded to eBay.
Since the investment property mortgage changed over from interest only to principal and interest in late September I am happy to report that so far the house is being paid off at a rate of 1% per month! Up to 4% paid off already which is a satisfying feeling.
This month I have made an additional $400 of payments which have been generated from reselling activities. Next month should be the same or better with my strategy of lowering higher priced items to get more items sold (and therefore more income). I covered this strategy in a previous post here. The first of eBay’s automated price cuts should be kicking in any day now and I am looking forward to that!
This repayment pace would see this investment paid completely off in approximately 10 years 9 months (the first 2 years have passed already as interest only) and also saving a massive $64,720.91 in interest payable.
Although I am pleased with the progress my goal is to get that time-frame down to 4 years. Ambitious? Hell yes. Impossible? No, but I am also not 100% sure how I will achieve this just yet other than working my butt off, which, funnily enough, will not be the answer to get this done as I will need to 10x my extra repayments. There is some excellent motivation however with an additional $45,000 able to be saved. By pulling this off I would save the total equivalent to another small house!
For the most part, I don’t have issues with massive margins on products. The majority of my so-called bread and butter items aim to make a minimum of $10 profit each sale. These will sell consistently over the longer term and don’t really require much adjustment.
However, I recently have been finding items where I have spent $20 to $30 when purchasing and have them listed on the store for over $100, with the highest item currently listed for $800. This leaves me wondering I am being too greedy with the amount I’m trying to get out of these items? That listed $800 item cost me $35.
My thought process recently was wouldn’t it be better to get some of these items sold for a lesser amount and get this money back into the investment property, thereby reducing the mortgage and saving additional interest payable by myself? After all, the value of an item is kind of arbitrary until someone actually buys the item. Perhaps my own bias and egos desire to be correct with what I think something should sell for is actually stopping me getting more items sold? Perhaps it’s me also pricing some of these items like this because I know I will not find another in all my days as some are truly unique…
Of course, I also want to extract the maximum value from these higher priced items as they really are where the big profits lie but I realise that it is financially in my best interests to get these items moving.
The sum of these higher priced items totals into the $3000-$4000 range.
What’s The Plan?
Well, the obvious start would be to reduce the price, but at what time point should this happen? A couple of my higher priced items have been up for 5 months now with a lot of views, a couple of watchers here and there (possibly other resellers) but no offers or messages enquiring. The offers I understand as I have Auto decline turned on to deter low ball offers (and stop my time getting wasted) but I thought I may well get some questions on a couple of items which has not eventuated.
6 months seems like a good number to start with. I will gradually start reducing the price on some of these items to get some decent money from sales going.
I have previously used the markdown manager with limited success. A 10% storewide markdown yielded no discernable difference in sales.
eBay actually has a new feature that is perfect for this type of scenario. After 10 days of the listing, eBay will automatically reduce the listing price by %5 and then do the same every 5 days all the way down to a set value.
For example, I have an item listed for $120 + shipping at the moment. It has 9 watchers sitting on it.
I am confident if I apply the above strategy I will get a sale. I paid initially $20 even if I dropped this to $80 for the sale I am still making $50 (after fees).
The Longtail Benefit Of This Approach
In the future is where the value of this approach lives.
Suppose I applied this approach for all of these higher value items and they all sold today for $2000 combined (an across the board 33.33% haircut on original listing prices). If I took the sale amount of $2000 and made a one-time lump sum payment on the investment property and then did absolutely nothing else I would save approximately: $9453 and 1 year 8 months off the loan term!
That is huge, more than 4x the original amount in interest savings.
Obviously, the results vary greatly depending on current rates, loan amounts and time frames. Just google an extra lump sum repayment calculator to see what a difference even a small extra repayment will make over time.
Finally, the needle has changed from 1% to 2% paid off the rental property!
Whilst this does not seem like a huge milestone, psychologically it is a milestone to me, which is what matters.
Our little shack (as I often like to think of it) switched from an interest-only loan over to principal and interest at the end of September, which in turn means an increase in the payments required each month.
We have a house, a rental, that was purchased 3 years back during my time working away during the mining boom here in Australia. When I refer to purchased I really mean scraped together a deposit and when I say house well its more of a caravan with an annex but the land itself is included. The bank owns most of this property and it has been stuck on a variable 3-year interest only loan with a rate 2% higher than it really should be (due to property type) which has just rolled over this month actually to principal an interest.
For all it’s apparent strangeness in the eyes of lenders, it is positively geared, meaning the rent covers the mortgage and related expenses.
Originally I thought that the heading of this post would make a great book title later on down the track. An entire house paid for by the combined might of a steady rental tenant supplemented by a cascading stream of side hustle cash from selling books on eBay.
Initially, in the early days of ownership, this seemed like a perfect plan. I had a great tenant and I was finding (and still do) books for 50c and flipping them for $50 and more in some cases.
Unfortunately those profits at the time went elsewhere and the time lapse between windfall sales and the low(er) margin on more frequent book sales made me realise that to have any hope of actually achieving paying this house off with the assistance of eBay (anytime soon) I really needed to sell other item types and expand my knowledge and areas of expertise to facilitate this. I needed larger $ value margins and returns and so this is what I have started working towards from July. Getting more items listed across more categories.
When I decided to really have a crack at growing this eBay business in July we had paid $0 off the actual mortgage itself (everything prior being interest only).
Why is all of this relevant?
Well, you have to start somewhere. As of right now after 2 months of eBay contributing additional income into this properties mortgage, we currently have paid off 1% off this house already. Paying off this house seems like a logical place to apply the proceeds of the eBay business with every dollar applied to be worth more than its face value (due to interest being saved over the long term). Some of the more advanced investors may argue that I am actually reducing my returns by doing this (with available deductions of interest quickly falling away) but I feel like this is the place best suited to track progress.
After this house is paid off the free cash flow generated can then be used for any number of things, investment, subsidise a mortgage repayment, etc… Perhaps I could buy another unit and pay that one off twice as quick.
What’s the goal?
For now whilst still working in a full-time role the monthly goal is to create $200 of free cash flow which can be applied to this property. I have set this goal fairly low on purpose due to this being a growing business and certainly, for the first few months, I will be looking to pour the majority of the profits back into business growth and thereby increase future revenue.
At $200 extra per month, I would save $53,757.59 in interest over the course of the loan and 12 years and 2 months in time.
Later I will look to ramp this goal up towards $200 per week instead of per month.
At $200 extra per week, I would save $84,497.81 over the course of the loan and 20 years and 3 months in time.
It is amazing how every little bit adds up and compounds very quickly. There is still a long way to go but I see this as a useful way to track progress and create motivation to keep going. After all staying consistent is the key.