Still unsatisfied with the slow-lane - an introduction

[BanhMi]

Howdy!

My name is Derrick, I am in my late 20's, and I live in the US. I am into lifting weights and playing music for fun. I listened to The Millionaire Fastlane a few weeks back and am most of the way through Unscripted as I write this.

Since I was a kid I have been interested in the idea of starting a business. When I was in the 7th grade I started an online business with a friend where I listed a whole lot of my personal items for sale using stock images and a Freewebs (now Webs.com) domain. We handed out home-made business cards to everyone at school with the URL printed on them. Of course we didn't realize the fatal flaw in this business plan: 11-12 year old students don't have disposable income! We made zero sales, but this sticks out to me as my first attempt at business. The memory still makes me chuckle.

Through high school and after I learned how to sell on eBay and made a few hundred bucks here and there buying limited edition vinyl, CD's, and T-shirts from obscure metal bands and reselling them for a profit. I then floated around through a few jobs that I hated, day-dreaming about the day I'd come up with a great business idea or come into a windfall. But I never took action. I numbed my hatred for work with weed and alcohol for YEARS and took ZERO action on my dreams. I also dropped out of community college TWICE over the course of 5 years.

One day I got lucky and broke my foot in a workplace accident (thank God I wasn't smoking weed at this juncture in time!). This rendered me unable to do my ever-so-fulfilling job of smoothing out cabinet doors with a Brillo pad for 10 hours a day. I was now essentially an administrative assistant to the accounting and purchasing teams while my foot healed. I caught on very quickly to the tasks assigned to me and when my foot was healed I was asked to join the purchasing team instead of going back to production. (As a side note, I was also experimenting with writing copy on Upwork and blogging during this time). I was thrilled to finally be doing what I considered a "real" job. That feeling wore off quicker than the change of seasons.

I wouldn't call this a FTE, but maybe something close. I woke up on a snowy Colorado day in the middle of the week and looked out my window. I realized I would have to trudge through snow to drive my car 45 minutes to a windowless office to do work that I was largely indifferent to. And I knew if I kept going I would have to do this until I either retired or died, with the latter being the more likely outcome. It was at this point that I got interested in the reselling community. First through Gary V. videos before I found folks who were actual full-time resellers. I already knew how eBay worked so I figured I would give it a shot to see how far I could get.

Going forward about a year and a half and I had a home office set up where I would photograph and list inventory sourced from garage sales, estate sales, thrift stores, flea markets, and private sales. From there I would take the inventory to a climate controlled storage unit. Here I stored it in a very organized and methodical inventory system. I had electricity ran to my unit and had a computer and label printer set up. When items sold I would package them and slap a label on em' right there in the storage unit.

In May of 2020 I decided to pull the trigger and quit my job to do this reselling thing full time! I look back fondly on the first few weeks because it felt AWESOME to wake up without an alarm to go do my own thing every day. This also wore off quickly for reasons I am sure some of you realized from the start. I did not have CONTROL of the platform my business was run on. Hell, I did not have CONTROL over my sourcing! Some days I would find plenty of money-making inventory, and others nothing at all. It was easy for anyone to ENTER and become a reseller on eBay. TIME was not on my side. If I didn't source product, if I didn't pack and ship product, if I didn't list product I WAS NOT MAKING MONEY. I could not SCALE because there were only so many hours in a day! If only I had read the Millionaire Fastlane before making this jump into fulltime reselling.

A mere three months later I was burned out working 12 hour days 7-days a week to make barely more than I was making at my 9-5 office job. Instead of a windowless office I spent my days in thrift stores. I did not have near enough capital to even think about hiring someone else to scale my business. My old manager and good friend was in a pickle at this time as they had been unable to find a replacement for me at my old job. He knew I was miserable and offered me a few bucks more an hour to come back to my old position and I took it. I wish I had stuck it out a little longer and tried to pivot my business in another direction, but I didn't. I was tired and I took the easy way out. I sold all of my inventory to another reseller for a loss.

Resigned to try again another day, I was back to being a 9-5er. Fast forward to today, I am still working an office job. Now at a different company making more money than I ever have before I am still unsatisfied. Everyone around me acts like this is normal and that I should just be happy to have a "good job". I recently had the itch to listen to a business book on Audible and stumbled across The Millionaire Fastlane and that is why I am here! It has been great remembering that I don't have to conform to the slow-lane, and just because I "failed" once doesn't mean I shouldn't try again.

I realize now this is a novel, but it was very cathartic to write this all down!

I don't know anyone in person (right now) who believes it's possible to live any other way than working a 9-5. I am excited to spend some time on this forum sharing ideas with like-minded people.

Thanks for reading.

 

Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member: Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)

[MJ DeMarco]

Ximduni Fissodl! Hsiev vu jewi ze.