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  • Selling On eBay While On Vacation (Or Working Away) 1 Week Time Frame.

    October 10th, 2018

    Timeframe: 1 Week Away

    Number Of Items Listed At The Time: 255

    eBay Store Settings: 10 Business Days Handling Time

    This was the first time I have left the eBay Store “On” in vacation mode whilst working away.

    I had another 8 day stint working on a construction project up north and as per some insights from the Scavenger Life Podcast I have been listening to I changed my handling time (using the bulk listing tools) to 10 days and away I went!

    For the first few days nothing happened as I realistically expected but then one morning I got to site at 5am and to my surprise had a sale notification come through immediately followed by the payment. The sale was nothing to get excited about, a bundle of 4 books that I will make around $12 on after shipping and fees etc….

    It was however proof of concept and I took the additional step of contacting the buyer to notify them that I was away and when I would return. Anyway since that initial sale I have had one almost every day since.

    My sales total for the week whilst on eBay Vacation ended at 5 items sold for a total of $165 gross (before cost, shipping and eBay fees), $114 net (after COGS). Not bad for doing absolutely nothing to do with listings while I was away.

    Now to get home, package everything up and get it posted.

    This month is going to be a strange one with the eBay store on vacation mode again in another weeks time. This time it will be for 2 weeks meaning I will have had the store set as away on Vacation for 75% of the month!

    Yet, I have the sneaking suspicion that I will still be able to meet my monthly target for sales (and profit). This really goes to show this reselling could be a viable long term business. I can only imagine (currently) if I had 10x the listings at say 3000.

    Imagine going on holiday for a week and having $1500 in the PayPal account on the return, more than many peoples average wage here.

    That is the goal eventually I am slowly grinding towards.

     

  • The Old Age Prepper

    October 4th, 2018

    This blog post is a sample chapter from my book: The 20 Year Business: A Strategy to RETIRE EARLY (and STILL have it all) available on Amazon stores worldwide here.

    “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it you’ve got to start young.” Theodore Roosevelt.

    Death remains a certainty. No escaping this fact – yet.

    Now you might be curious as to why a 30 something Gen Y / Millennial would be writing a book about retirement and a ‘20 Year Business’ and well… fair point…

    I’ll start with a true story to give some context.

    Very recently I was able to get a glimpse firsthand of what the future for not only myself, but many people might hold, and let me tell you it is potentially quite grim.

    My dear old father was recently the victim of blatant discrimination in ageism. In simple terms, he lost his job for being too old. Admittedly he works in a field with high manual labour components – gardening and landscaping, however, even at 61 years old he still gets around well and is in great physical condition still able to keep up with people many years younger. In this instance he was simply being replaced by a much younger man still in his teens who would be able to do more grunt work for less money.

    A sound business decision perhaps with some future proofing included I suppose… the downside was that my father was on the wrong side of the equation.

    At least he was given a couple of weeks’ notice to try and organise something else. Wishful thinking to be honest as Christmas was very close and never a good time to be looking for work in many circumstances.

    Now within gardening and general landscape activities exist obviously a lot of opportunities for freelance work. In one of those strange happenstance / coincidences my father was at a petrol station on one of his last work days and ran into another contractor doing similar landscaping work. My father struck up a conversation, got talking shop and it turned out this business owner had just laid off another guy and said, “well this might just be your lucky day, ring me tomorrow and we will talk it over”.

    My father told me this later that afternoon and it seemed like perfect timing. The proverbial one door closes another one opens.

    2 days later I phoned him back to see what had happened and can you guess? The business owner told him he was too old, and that the role would be too physically demanding.

    Although he didn’t show it, I later heard from another source my father was crushed by this.

    It seemed his age was working alright… extremely hard against him…

    Not one to be discouraged in the face of adversity (his) I took it upon myself (after I let him know what I was planning) to try Facebook and make a post in the local buy / sell page to see if anyone could help him out with work in the local area.

    It went something like this:

    “My father has lost his job this week basically for being too old.

    Yep blatant rubbish but it is what it is. he’s a hardworking man – always has been.

    He had another job lined up also and that also fell through, same thing – too old. Tell you

    what I’ve really had my eyes opened to what might be coming down the line when I get to his age also.

    Scary stuff to be honest.

    He’s a spritely 60 and in fairly good nic considering the active Life he’s led to this point.

    He doesn’t use Facebook so I’m trying to see if anyone in Mandurah or surrounds might be able to give him some work.

    His skills are as follows:

    • Landscaping – Mowing, Pruning, General Garden Maintenance.
    • Weed control – Removal, Spraying.
    • Retic Installation and maintenance.
    • Artificial and Turf Installation.
    • Paving Installation.
    • Plus he ran his own farm for 18 years so pretty handy with all sorts of random tasks.

    If anyone out there might be able to help please pm me and I can give you his number.

    Thank you in advance…

    Edit: I should add that he’s looking for any sort of hours. A Day here, couple of hours there, doesn’t matter atm…”

    The overall response from the community was wholly positive with words of encouragement and I even passed on his number to a couple of people who said they might have some work for him. A great start I thought. I loved that the community spirit (at least some of it) was still there to help people in times of need.

    What I didn’t expect however as the various conversations via comments progressed was there were several very similar stories from people in the community who were either in the same predicament or had recently been so.

    Some of the conversations included examples of:

    An experienced engineer who was working as a janitor.

    A woman who had worked for 25 years in the community services field had been trying for over a year to find work in her field of expertise! Can you imagine that? 25 years of experience and no one wants to hire you in your own field? At the same time, this woman had another complex problem in that she was also too young to retire but had too many assets (in the government’s lens) to qualify for any welfare assistance. She was forced to survive on her savings while desperately looking for work, slowly watching them drain down to nothing whereby ironically, she might finally then be able to access welfare… Never mind all the tax she had paid for the last 25 years… it didn’t matter.

    There were qualified people that were getting positive feedback from interviews but later being told that someone else was better on the day. (is this a polite way to say sorry, but no your too old?)

    I also received several suggestions of varying usefulness of how my father should go about finding a job.

    Quite a few people suggested starting his own business and this has merit as he already has the skills to do the day to day tasks. However, many people forget that setting up and running a business has a lot more going on behind the scenes. All the quoting and estimates, cold calls to find work, managing the finances. He will be out looking for work anyway, so it may naturally come to this in any case.

    There were however actually a few suggestions that I was not aware of which I was pleasantly surprised about. It turns out there are organisations that specifically are set up to help cater to the older generation and help give the ageing populous activities to do in both volunteer and work capacities. I suppose really after thinking on this for a while it makes perfect sense as there really is a need for it.

    There were also some community organisations that made it a priority to hire older people as they often had a ‘passion’ for the job (and perhaps a better work ethic?).

    Some companies paid for the initial formal training prior to starting work, for example, some traffic control companies.

    There appeared to be more solutions than might initially seem to find work. How relevant was this for my father… only time will tell.

    I even had one chap trying to say buying Bitcoin (BTC) was a brilliant idea, a sufferer of the mania surrounding Bitcoin at the time $20,000 per token. Even when I explained my father didn’t even currently have enough money to pay for rent he countered with “it only costs $80 and to get started” and supplied a link. I know enough about Bitcoin and blockchain technology that I didn’t even bother to follow the link, it’s not something my father would ever do anyway as the technology is too advanced for him to even set up a digital wallet. I replied to the helpful chap that “Speculation is not the answer when you have no income…” and left it at that. I’m sure he will be rewarded for his free advice but not in the way he expects. (*Less than a week later BTC had dropped by 44%… I hope that he’s doing ok…).

    Of course, there will be people that say, “oh just go and do something else – change industry”. Great point, but what if I told you my father doesn’t know how to use a computer?

    Seriously, he wouldn’t even know how to turn on the one I am typing this book on.

    In today’s job environment, there can’t be many jobs left that don’t use computers in some form or another and it’s a massive barrier to entry for many jobs.

    So, it became quite apparent from the responses I was receiving that there are two extremely common issues facing the current older generation. Finding work after 50ish (using arbitrary number) and filling in that gap between then and retirement (67 for most people here in Australia) whereby people can start accessing superannuation and government aged pensions.

    It is honestly not something I ever thought much about before, as I never had the need until recently. I have changed jobs twice within the last year and for the first time in both interviews, I have been asked how old I am. Never mind that technically employers cannot ask you this on grounds of discrimination, I had more concern that at 34 years old I was already being asked this question!

    Off the record, I was told at the first interview that the company (a multinational I’ll add) has an unofficial hiring policy of not hiring anyone older than 35. I was at the top end of the range… wow. The reason? A combination of new graduate programs coupled with lower wages designed to retain employees for longer while keeping wages lower. Again, sound business practices as greater experience equal higher wages costs.

    All the above was a massive eye-opener and a catalyst for me to find a way to ensure I don’t end up in the same situation in 27 years as my father. I may have a slight edge in that I grew up with technology so adapting is perhaps somewhat less of an issue (in a general sense).

    However, following the latest trends in artificial intelligence, there may be fewer jobs for similar tasks that I would have done previously thereby making some of my previous experience also irrelevant!

    This could mean I too may then be forced to either retrain into new roles and compete with people 30 years younger and much more agile physically and even mentally (due to the brains natural degradation as we age) or alternatively look after myself creating my own path and giving myself options.

    Looking after myself (and my family) both now and in my later years is exactly what this whole book is about.

    This blog post is a sample chapter from my book: The 20 Year Business: A Strategy to RETIRE EARLY (and STILL have it all) available on Amazon stores worldwide here.

  • Platform Diversification Contingencies

    October 4th, 2018

    Transitioning out of a full-time job into my side hustle full time is my end game.

    For the moment my reselling journey consists primarily on eBay with 95% + of side hustle income coming from this platform at the moment. It is after all where my focus currently goes so this makes perfect sense. What happens though if my access to eBay goes down for an extended period of time or something even more serious like an account suspension perhaps for too many VeRO infringements.

    I would be in big trouble should that occur, so it is obvious I need some other platform to provide income should a worst-case scenario come to fruition. I should note here that this idea applies to all platforms. Another example would be listing 1000 items on FB marketplace and then having your account hacked one day. Separation of platforms provides a level of protection and I see many are doing this already with eBay, Poshmark, and Amazon the primary three.

    As for my own diversification, I have begun experimenting with other platforms and have successfully sold items on Gumtree (a local version of Craigslist) Facebook Marketplace and even Instagram. The Instagram sale surprised me a lot with a payment on faith alone for an epic t-shirt I had found which I had actually planned to list on eBay. Didn’t even get that far.

    I have experimented with Etsy somewhat with my own created products but so far that has been a flop.

    A 2nd eBay account as a contingency for a catastrophe:

    I have resurrected my wife’s eBay account and this account currently has 40 odd items ticking over on it. The primary purpose is to grow its feedback score and listing potential on the chance that one day should the main store get shut down for whatever reason I could port the main store over to this one and effectively carry on. There are tools available to be able to do this. I have not explored it any further than that as obviously I want to avoid that at all costs! This eBay account is just the account with free listings so does not cost anything additional (except for higher fees). Who knows maybe as a side benefit one day my wife will also catch the reselling bug and she will have a great eBay foundation to start from.

    Free to list or reduced fees:

    Platforms like Gumtree and Facebook marketplace are free to list items and you don’t have to pay those completion fees which eat into your profit returns. The downside is there is no real protection or dispute resolution should you run into a problem.

    The right product for the right platform:

    Consider this real example from a couple of weeks ago. I found while out thrifting an 80s Kentucky Fried Chicken Coleman Drink Cannister. It is in good condition and I paid $8. The going rate on eBay when I checked it was around $30 including shipping. If I list it on eBay it looks like $30 – $8 (cost) – $3 (eBay Fees est) – $13.80 (Shipping) = $5.20 profit. Not very good to be honest.

    However, this same item listed on Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace for a local pickup at $25 ($5 less than eBay) gives me a flat $17 profit.

    Its 3x more valuable for me to list this item on Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace vs eBay. This is certainly the case for larger items which are cost prohibitive to ship.

    I have started thinking in these terms now when looking for items to source with regard to what platform they will work on.

    Amazon 126 (A-Z) FBA:

    Amazon would be a great marketplace to get into and in particular, if using Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon where Amazon handle all the logistics after you send your initial items to their warehouse).

    The problem for me, however, is that I am in Perth and to ship items to Amazon (which is in Melbourne) is daaaaayum expensive. So much so that I ran some numbers on books which I thought I could easily find and resell. If I sold ALL of them I would make $600 which seems ok but doesn’t include initial shipping or storage costs at the Amazon warehouse… This $600 could easily whittle down to $300 for around 40 items. Again, not terrific.

    So, it’s no use, right? Well not exactly, it just means to have any hope of making it profitable I must find lighter items to send. Recently I brought a few items of Jewellery off eBay to flip, specifically men’s vintage jewelry a very niche category. I could send hundreds of jewelry items to Amazon for a low cost so this is the direction I am leaning towards with this.

    Amazon has a signup bonus for new sellers on its marketplace in the Australian jurisdiction, so I have until December to amass enough light product, sign up under the offer and then ship to Amazon. After that, it will be a refinement to see if I can make it viable on a long-term basis.

  • A Sample Of What Could Be Possible

    September 26th, 2018

    September was extremely interesting for me, offering a brief glimpse at what life might be like running an eBay store combined with short-term contractual work on decent money (effectively a situation I would be looking to work towards over the next couple of years).

    This month I spent 8 days away up north and during this time I decided to put the store on vacation mode with the listings hidden from view and no sales.

    Thus I had some time for reflection on the past 2 months. I decided I needed some new lighting to increase the professional look and feel of the store particularly before bulk listing the horde of clothing items I was amassing. I have the lighting now and have started to use but also need Photoshop to create that brilliant white background. Thankfully now at least Photoshop is subscription based and costs a lot less than it once did. I also ran some rough numbers and realised I could live quite comfortably working approximately 3 months on a contractual basis with spending the remaining 9 months working on eBay, the only caveat to this being that I needed to 10x my active listings still. Its a 2-year game plan for now but man it would be nice #1 taking some high paying $ jobs again and #2 working for myself with a flexible schedule.

    After I returned home I fired back up the store and had my first sale within 5 hours which I was pretty happy with. I had listened to several eBay related podcasts while away and learned that instead of totally closing the store entirely another option could have been to change the handling time on all listings to 10 days easily done through the bulk editing tool apparently. This way all listings still would have been visible and people could still have brought items and would just have to wait for me to ship after I returned. With this in mind I will be trialing this idea next time I have to work away for a week and hopefully have a stack of $ on my return (along with many items to ship lol).

    The new eBay phone app which was my primary listing device I am finding super annoying for listing now after the latest update (as advanced options are not there anymore) so I have switched back to batch processing. That is, taking photos of several items at a time (still with the phone) before uploading them to a computer and then using the computer to list again. It seems a bit like double handling but in many ways I actually prefer this now and I am finding that getting the photos taken is most of the battle as I can also finish of listings at work (during lunch breaks of course) and combined with my use of AutoHotKey I can smash out new listings fairly quickly.

    Anyway, to the numbers for the month:

    Thirter.Me Summary September 18

    IMG_0660

    You may be wondering why the active listings above do not match the number in my own figures in the first picture. This is because there is a second account being used owned by another family member. This is a form of contingency planning for future years. More on this another time.

    Total combined active listings have only increased slightly for the month mainly due to 8 days of not being home and a wasted day over a long weekend where I had every intention of listing 40 things but just didn’t get there thanks to a Casino hangover (I did win $200 at the Casino though!). I guess its good the numbers are up but its still a bit disappointing it is not higher already.

    What I did find interesting was while the number of items active increased only slightly the total $ value of the listings was up by $2000 to $9500 worth of items listed. This means my $ value amount increased by 23.5% for the month which is great.

    Sales were good considering the store was open only 73% of the month. This month I did spend $344.47 on inventory again but made sure to keep a closer eye on cash flow to ensure I would at least be positive cash flow this month! In the end, the last two days of the month had slow sales and I also found $27 worth of epic items that will turn into well over $200 which I could not pass up.

    Thus the total profit left for the month was only $43.67 falling short of the profit goal of the $200 goal.

    A $156.33 extra payment was applied to the investment property mortgage.

  • The House That Books Paid For

    September 26th, 2018

    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.

     

     

  • Hustle Hard Theory

    September 25th, 2018

    Work hard. Turn up and start on time. Timely breaks (you are a minute past your allocated break time, get back to work!). Get the job done without complaining whilst working in any number of tough environmental conditions, mostly cold, rain and mud. Repeat over and over.

    I picked a lot of my work ethic by situational osmosis working with my farther.

    Cutting mountains of firewood by axe, dagging sheep and pressing wool bales of fleeces, building fences on the side of ridiculously steep hills. There was always something else that needed to be done around the farm he would tell me. Cleaning of equipment, servicing of machines, housekeeping in general. No time for rest. Plenty of time in the box later.

    Not surprisingly in the years that followed these early impressions manifested in my own adventures into the workforce. In various jobs I would push hard to get the job done and then finding myself with nothing to do pick up a broom or start cleaning things up. I like to keep busy, it is ingrained in my genetics it seems. Being bored is dangerous for me, mentally corrosive.

    At times I noticed that some of my other work colleagues did not necessarily reflect my own values and frequently I found myself being told to ‘slow down’ or ‘you’re making us look bad’.

    That was my early introduction to workplace social intelligence.

    Some lengthy research into various business related books ensued (stemming from my inherent general lack of money at the time – age 16). I began with Rich Dad Poor Dad by Kiyosaki and driven by my insatiable appetite for collecting money it became clear that there was a real difference between working harder (efficiently) vs. working smarter (effectively). I decided quickly I preferred the later as I had seen firsthand the slow damage building from years of backbreaking labour gradually impacting my father. The aches and pains and a distinct limp at night caused by plantar fasciitis (not diagnosed of course as that would require actually going to a doctor).

    I also observed during my teenage years that my father had a real issue in actually stopping work, I’m talking having a sequential number of days off. There were a couple of Christmas days where he was actually out in the paddock cutting firewood post Christmas lunch.

    The commitment and dedication my father showed to any work task was truly epic but I knew I needed a smarter way to survive working into old age.

    Eventually I moved on to university post high school to learn how to get more done with less effort.

    So I did what seemed logical at the time, I barely went to lectures much to the confusion of some of my fellow classmates. I am sure many thought I was destined to go absolutely nowhere and drop out. Little did they knew that my love of money (at this time of my life) and the fact I was paying for my education myself made for compelling motivation to ensure I did not fail.

    From Math (my best subject during high school) I switched to an Information Systems degree and went about dissecting how the university system functioned and what was critical content in order to pass. I discovered my own unique version of the Perato Principle (commonly known as the 80/20 rule) before I came to know the name.

    I would download lecture notes from the university system and gloss over an entire 2 or 3 hour lecture in about 10 minutes in the comfort of my room with a beer in hand. I made it a point to write down any key points or concepts from the presentation slides I didn’t fully understand. After that I would locate these points in the companion text book (if I had bothered to buy it) to attempt to understand further.

    After this, the critical action was to go to every tutorial for all subjects I was taking that semester. This was a far more effective use of my time in my view, a concentrated one hour block of time in a small group setting vs three hours in a crowded lecture hall where often I struggled to hear. By asking relevant questions of the tutor and actively participating in these sessions (key point there) I actually got way more out of those tutorials than any of the lectures.

    It was apparent to me I learned far more effectively this way.

    Combining the above strategy with relevant revision of previous semesters / years exam papers and scans of the subject message boards for hidden exam, project or essay clues I was able to have an accurate estimate of what I needed to do in order to pass with above average marks while greatly reducing time input.

    The result was in less than 3 years, I achieved a business degree with a double major and a good overall average.

    Interestingly I haven’t actually worked in any capacity as a systems or business analyst (one of my majors) or in fact utilised probably 70% of what I studied during that time. What I have noticed over time however is that the concepts taught on the methods to find and analyse information and seek ways to improve processes has stuck with me. I have used these over and over again in successive roles to both make my job at the time easier and generate results for the business also.

    There is a marked difference between being efficient, that is quick at performing a particular task vs being effective, that is achieving the same task outcome in a smarter way pocketing the difference in time, money or other intangible value for application elsewhere.

    Efficient vs. effective, an example of changing one to the other:

    During one job I had a non negotiable task to complete every day involving sending advanced information notices to the local port terminal to notify that a particular container was going to be delivered for a particular vessel. Exciting stuff right? Not really, a bunch of data to be entered in the same format over and over again. During busy times we could send 100 containers down to the port in a day. Every container needed one of these notices. Bulk data entry, the scourge of many to be sure.

    Anyway, there was however a design limit for the system which was the ceiling of only being able to send only one of these messages per minute. It would bundle the data up as comma delineated .csv (text) file and send it off via the email client and then store the .csv file on the computer hard drive. I got so efficient with the database user interface that I could enter and check order details were correct for 3 containers in a minute. This meant a lot of time over hundreds of containers waiting just to click a button (or repeatedly clicking the button) in order to send the details. At throughput of 300 containers per week would mean 300 minutes or 5 whole hours just to send the details to the container terminal, a major system design flaw in my opinion, particularly when I wanted to go home after 5pm and was stuck waiting on a button.

    Eventually I got sick of this and having completed some database programming at university (and after doing the necessary research to ensure safety of data – backup) I modified the source code and the logical test involving the time so if there was an existing .csv file it would write another one to a new hard drive location and allow me to send as many as I liked in a minute. Very simple fix really. Now sending 3 every minute 300 containers would only take 100 minutes per week saving 3.33 hours per week or 173 hours per year.

    Productivity +1.

    This solution freed me up to get on with other tasks with my newly found saved time. That is effective.

    I repeated this process for other tasks with nifty little macros and any other form of automation or semi-automation I could think of. Much of this aspect of things was self-taught. Sometimes I only knew what I wanted a program to do and I would spend time searching on Google finding out how to do it. I spent a fair amount of time learning some of this, at work of course, but the benefits always outweighed the time invested.

    Accolades? Nope.

    In fact management did not truly understand the value of my process improvements even after explaining them. They subsequently locked all access to the database (which by all rights should have been locked off from the start). A free lesson in IT security right there…

    These learned skills, techniques, concepts I have carried forward with me to subsequent jobs. One of my early role models was Einstein who became so good at his job in the patent office he freed up hours each day to work on his own creative pursuits. According to Robert Greene in his book “Mastery” Einstein created a significant amount of his famous ‘Theory of Relativity while supposedly at work!’

    What is it that you can do to get more work done in less time? Warning: Deep thinking might be required so see where real effective gains in your work processes might be possible.

    Find it. Do it. Repeat.

    Then:

    Save time.

    Smash your work deadlines.

    Get out of the office on time, all the time,

    and create the life you really want…

    All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy or Homer something something – take your pick.

  • Productivity Hacks Microsoft Office Autocomplete

    September 21st, 2018

    What if I told you there’s a way using the Autocomplete feature in Microsoft Office for you to create your own unique digital version of shorthand (a concise, fast way to write massive amounts of information) that will revolutionise your productivity.

    Better still it is extremely easy to setup and will save you minutes, then hours and eventually entire days over a longer period of use.

    That’s time saved that can be used elsewhere, your choice what to do with this extra time of course. Perhaps if you are still working full time it can allow you to get a few extra listings up during your lunch break or just actually finish work on time so you can hit a couple of thrift shops on the way home.

    If applied correctly and refined over time you can be writing huge chunks of documents, essays, reports or even entire emails with only a few key strokes.

    Sounds ambitious I know but let me give you an example of a quick basic email.

    Before: Typing like normal.

    Good afternoon, (Enter Key,  Enter Key)

    Please find the attached documents as requested. (Enter Key,  Enter Key)

    If there is anything else I can do for you please don’t hesitate to contact me. (Enter Key,  Enter Key)

    Kind regards,

    This is 27 words or 155 Characters typed out including the spaces (it’s easy to forget about spaces!). It took me roughly 44 seconds to type the above at a steady pace.

    After: Using configured AutoComplete.

    ga, (Enter Key,  Enter Key)
    pfta (Enter Key,  Enter Key)
    itia (Enter Key,  Enter Key)
    krg, (Ctrl + Enter Key which sends the email in Outlook) 

    So now:

    ga = good afternoon

    pfta = please find the attached documents

    You get the point.

    The exact same words result but now the key strokes to send the same email is reduced to only 22… That is 14.2% of the original amount. Not bad right?

    It took me roughly 13 seconds to type the above after configuring autocomplete using the same steady pace.

    That’s 30 seconds saved just on one email alone and no possible spelling errors because you carefully checked when setting up your text strings initially.

    You will become the master creator, so you can make strings as simple or complicated as you like.

    So how to make this magic happen in Windows 10:

    In Outlook go to – File / Options / Mail / Spelling and Autocorrect / AutoCorrect Options

    In Word go to – File / Options / Proofing / Autocorrect

    Enter your shortcut text string in the “Replace” field.

    Example: itia

    In the “With” field type your full text string.

    Using the example above: If there is anything else I can do for you please don’t hesitate to contact me.

    Hit the “Add” button and you have made your first auto correct shortcut!

    Now “itia” = “If there is anything else I can do for you please don’t hesitate to contact me.”

    Click OK once finished adding.

    Once you set this up in one app you will be able to use across all apps. For example, I setup in Microsoft Word using the “itia” example and this worked in Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook straight away. ** This may depend on what version you are using.

    Repeat as required to massively speed up your writing, productivity and listing.

    Formatting entire chunk of text or entire emails

    It is also possible to copy an entire section of formatted text such as the email example used above and assign this to a few key strokes. I have set this up previously for frequent use emails such as a confirmation email or a booking request where the structure is always the same.

    The process is just the same as above except you need to highlight and copy the entire text first prior to going into the autocomplete menu and now your copied text will be pre-selected as formatted text.

    This is very similar to the concept of using an email template (which I might post about another time – I also use these) but I find these more flexible at times. Perfect examples would include policies and requirements that applied to specific goods. For example say I had some bookings to issue that required disclaimers about hazardous goods. I could simply copy the whole disclaimer paragraph and assign to to an autocomplete hotkey such being “hz”.

    Now if I need to use this disclaimer on one email, I don’t need to stop, change windows to find it, then copy and paste it. Now I just type hz and there its, all done.

    What Else Could I Use This For???!!

    Obviously the above applies only to Microsoft Office environments and I use these on a daily basis to save massive amounts of time. After you have tried this you won’t go back.

    With direct regard to reselling the same concepts can be applied using a specific tool on platforms such eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, Etc…. or even writing a blog post such as this on WordPress.

    I will cover this very soon in a future post.

    In the mean time have some fun with the possibilities and enjoy the time savings.

  • The First Of Many Months

    September 20th, 2018

    This month I will remember as the month I decided to turn what has essentially been a part time hobby into a fledgling business.

    Of course, this required a colossal shift in mind set on my part. Previously my record keeping had been atrocious, all my purchasing numbers were in my head (approximate figures anyway, I have an extremely good memory for this) and I had kept no receipts for anything I had brought nor for costs incurred with shipping items. I didn’t even have any previous records of sales kept on a spreadsheet. There just simply hadn’t been a need up until that point.

    My item storage location (also known as my study) had no inventory management system in place other than a basic concept of: Books go on the book shelf, clothes can go over there, and I will put these collectables in this box. I guess you could say items were loosely sorted either by type or into groups. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach and I never had an issue finding anything once it had sold.

    However, I realised that to scale my income (and by extension required inventory) I needed some actual investment in both physical infrastructure (such as shelves and tubs) and a better organisational system. Bubble sort was not going to cut it over a long timeline.

    Anyway, to the numbers for the month:

    T.ME August 2018

    I got busy this month adding an extra 154 items to my store (excluding the 36 sold), this equates to an average of 6.13 items listed per day which really is achievable. I will note here that I did spend an entire day just solely listing and smashed out 30+.

    Sales tripled which is great though I spent all of the profits on inventory (and then some). At an early stage of business growth, I see this as necessary to build inventory to a critical mass. That and I was finding heaps of cool items so had trouble reigning in spending! Some of these items were truly high dollar value as well so the eventual payoff will be very nice. Example $35 item resold for $500? Hasn’t happened yet but I’m confident it will with the item I found, I did manage $25 into $200 on a jacket though. That’s an extreme example (the $500 item) but those are the types of items I have been trying harder to find with returns into the hundreds.

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