Another point to make is that with arbitrage, you're always trading for pennies. Unless you can scale it ridiculously, you'll always be capped by your time. Its trading dollars for hours.
Now if you were the guy trading 200 washers and dryers in one phone call and not physically picking it up and selling each one to customers... that's scale. So for example if you could wholesale 200 washers from one guy to another guy, or wholesale 50 at a time without physically getting involved, that's an ok arbitrage business, but at any time your supply could run out, or they could raise prices... you still don't have complete control over your business. Could you keep it up for 10 years? Is it something you could remove yourself from, scale up, and sell in a liquidity event? No... it's just quick cash, a quick fix...
Look at Sal with the Paint Brush Cover. He owns his own product. He controls supply. He controls price (to a point). He probably makes great margins compared to cost. That's a real scalable business. Would his business still be around in 10 years? Would he be able to sell his company for millions if he chose to? The answer's yes and yes.
Arbitrage is not real entrepreneurship (except for few large scale outliers, like 7 figure accounts). It'll pay the bills but it's just trading dollars for hours and there's a limit to how much one person can arbitrage in a day. Read both of MJ's books and learn what creates value. As he says... we don't live in a perfect world... therefore there's opportunity for improvement in every defect or imperfection.
Now if you were the guy trading 200 washers and dryers in one phone call and not physically picking it up and selling each one to customers... that's scale. So for example if you could wholesale 200 washers from one guy to another guy, or wholesale 50 at a time without physically getting involved, that's an ok arbitrage business, but at any time your supply could run out, or they could raise prices... you still don't have complete control over your business. Could you keep it up for 10 years? Is it something you could remove yourself from, scale up, and sell in a liquidity event? No... it's just quick cash, a quick fix...
Look at Sal with the Paint Brush Cover. He owns his own product. He controls supply. He controls price (to a point). He probably makes great margins compared to cost. That's a real scalable business. Would his business still be around in 10 years? Would he be able to sell his company for millions if he chose to? The answer's yes and yes.
Arbitrage is not real entrepreneurship (except for few large scale outliers, like 7 figure accounts). It'll pay the bills but it's just trading dollars for hours and there's a limit to how much one person can arbitrage in a day. Read both of MJ's books and learn what creates value. As he says... we don't live in a perfect world... therefore there's opportunity for improvement in every defect or imperfection.
I agree and this is why I am between a rock and a hard spot. I'd rather cruise through the next 20-40 years years but I have the opportunity of flipping 200 (insert brand name here) washers and dryers per day if I choose to. 1 phone call gets me as many as I want as often as I want. But I agree, most often you are at the mercy of what you can accidentally find on Craigslist. And then once you find it on Craigslist you have to set up a time to go look at it and maybe buy it or maybe you will pass on it which would mean now you are running in double time to find something else to flip. But this is why most people don't continue to do it for very long.
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