Posts Tagged ‘experiment’

October 23rd, 2009

On Business: My Brother is Kicking My Ass at Ecommerce

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It has been well over 2 months since I have started my business experiment. Each day that passes by I get a clearer view of the next step with it. The post isn’t about me and the struggles I’m having to sell vintage wear (4), but about my bro, so here it is.

I didn’t think I would be saying this, but my youngest brother is kicking my ass at the ecommerce business of etsy.com. I don’t know how to explain it, but it is actually bitter-sweet at the same time. When I started, he was at 40 or so sells. I told him that I would catch him in no time—now he is well over 100 and making over a sell a day.

I didn’t know if he truly had it in him, I have been the one talking about business and expressing what I’ve done in the past, but just sitting back and watching him operate is quite amazing.

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April 3rd, 2009

Outliers, Taking my Passion to a New Destination With a Little Twist

book creation

I push the snooze button, yet for another time. It is now 6 a.m. and know it takes 40 or so minutes to get to work and still smell like shit. But, all I’m going to do is sit in my cubicle and look at my computer screen. So, I  skip the shower, wash my face, brush my teeth, put on my wrinkle as can be collar shirt I wore last week and to the club (which still smells like smoke), and run out of the door to my car. I hop on the beltway and quickly realize that I have gotten on a paying road, where I am setting in traffic. I finally make it to work, as I get out my car I think to myself, “Should I take the stairs? They wouldn’t know exactly what time I got in? I should talk to a couple of friends so it looks like I have been here for quite sometime”.

I finally arrive inside my office and my boss gets on me for being late and said he will need this and that for a presentation later in the morning. I get started and complete the work, not caring one bit. I make it to lunch and decide to sit in my car. I sat there in the car (no a/c, started transforming the car into a race car) and thought. I thought about what I have been up to in my life. I thought I was a failure, and thought ‘is this it?’ Damn, I was having a quarter life crisis 2 years before the actual time and didn’t even realize it.

When I started to examine my life, I knew something was missing, I knew I had to do more for myself. I was an expert in the automobile field, but didn’t want to be that guy that could only talk about cars and didn’t care or relate to other topics that were important to people. I knew I sorta liked reading and eventually would read whatever I could, but knew this was a slow process. I didn’t want to continue to watch television and relate to people for 5 minutes on a show that wasted 30 minutes-1 hour of my life. So, I started to listen to podcast and to stretched my net as far as I could: while at work I listened to politics, audio-books, everyday life, current events, pop culture, social media, technology, business, and whatever else.

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