The Frugal Shrink Has a Business!!

In early December, I was perusing Craigslist as I sometimes do searching for office or warehouse space for a hazy future in which my reselling business would require such a thing. Typically I'm put off by prices and/or can't find anything that I'm interested in. However, on that day, I found a listing for 2000+ square feet of combined office and warehouse space for a relatively small sum. While I live in a low cost of living area where things are cheaper, the price was still absolutely unheard of for this amount of space and it is hard to find the combination of both warehouse and office. I looked up the property on Google Maps only to find that it was LESS THAN A MILE FROM MY HOUSE. I went to view the property later that week and loved it, so I signed a year lease.

I was off from my psychology job for the last two weeks of December for my usual vacation time which came in very handy. Other than time spent with family for the holidays, I was at the office 24/7 painting and organizing set up during those two weeks. Did I mention that I'd never painted any walls before? Yeah. And the office is about 700 square feet on its own (I did not paint the warehouse!!). My friend K (who is now also a part time employee of the business) did help me paint one day which was great. In those two weeks I also took delivery of lots of office furniture which my mom assembled with my "assistance" ha ha. 

My friend K had been taking photos for me sporadically out of my home to this point and then she signed on to work a steady 15-20 hours each week photographing merchandise. I also wanted to hire a lister (someone to complete drafts for sales websites) so I went down my Facebook friends list (lol) and thought I should ask my friend N if she would be interested. She was, and now works 15 hours per week for me drafting listings. Both also do other random tasks as needed, but these are the primary duties. 

We were up and running on January 5th, and have developed fairly smooth working processes all around. Both women are fabulous to work with and make the start up of a business so much easier.

My duties include sourcing merchandise (aka finding what we sell), making listings live from draft form, editing and inserting photos into listings, payroll and all bookkeeping duties, and actual housekeeping such as vacuuming and taking out the trash. So glamorous!! 

I'm currently in a reselling mentorship group and the first assignment was to track what we do for the business and how long we spend on each task. Turns out that I'm not nearly as productive as I had thought, so I'm taking steps to remedy this which has resulted in a large uptick in sales this week. List list list!!

I'm still working three days a week as a psychologist, but have plans to go full time in the business as soon as the numbers are there for me to do so. I plan to use the eBay business as a way to have funds to start several other businesses. This is all several years into the future, but that's the plan/ goals at this time. I'm excited to see where this leads.

I will say that the one thing I was completely unprepared for was the emotional highs and lows of starting a business. While I'm a rather sensitive person, I do have highly developed coping skills (as all psychologists should!!!) and handle actual life and death situations on a regular basis in my day job. I didn't think that reselling would be a big deal to handle. And it's not, but starting up a business, any business IS a big deal. Evidently there is a concept in business start ups called the trough of sorrow which occurs after the initial highs wear off and you begin to face set backs (see above). I'm committed to starting multiple businesses over the next five years so I guess I'd better get used to this chart!!