10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Reselling [Risk Taking]

Self reflection of your past is the best primer for success because not only does it help you learn from your own mistakes, but it also serves as a good proxy as to what works and what doesn’t in the future.  Over the years there were many things I wish I knew that would have propelled me 10x better of where I am today, but I also understand you won’t learn until you are hit with many obstacles and failures in life over and over again.  So I guess I will do this in a 10 part series to talk about things I wish I knew and could have done better before re-selling started at all.

I’ve always been a very risk adverse type of guy.  I never believed in taking too much risk in life because I just wanted to be normal and more importantly,  I was worried to fail.  I hate the feeling of failing…who doesn’t?  But it’s only later in life we realize that failing is good for you.  Let me put it this way….I wish I understood the concept of high risk, high return a little earlier in life rather than later.  I was far too conservative before even when I first started Netmag.  I was pessimistic about the future of sneakers, I didn’t want to continue to hoard shoes even though opportunities for under priced shoes were vastly available.  Basically I operated in a state of being too comfortable within my means for too long (in hind sight of course).  I would only buy sneakers only after I could successful sell a pair.  So what did I miss from this?  I missed the perfect opportunity to cash in on undervalued sneakers where there was guaranteed profit to be made while there was pretty much no competition.  I was too scared to leverage too much.  I was worried if I put that much money into sneakers I could get burned and lose everything.  I was so worried that when I first reselling shoes, I was only buying sneakers my size because my plan B was that if I couldn’t sell them, I’ll just fucking wear them myself 🙂

Back in 2013 when I first realized there was an opportunity to re-sell sneakers after copping all the pairs I wanted to buy back when I sold them back in university was the best time ever as a Canadian.  The Loonie was pretty much at par with the US dollar.  This was the second time this happened after the 2008 financial crisis, but of course I miss the boat the first time because I had no money while being a student.  I look back everyday on why I didn’t leverage and borrow more cash at the time because the US dollar is now trading at $1.30 to the loonie.  What this means is for the same $10,000 I spent on sneakers, I would have made $3,000 just from foreign exchange and that doesn’t even include all the money I could have made from just re-selling sneakers.  Times were so good that I did forget to mention my biggest flip at the time was buying Supreme Dunks Black cements for $250 and flipping it for $650.  Even till today I can’t believe I can sell for multiples and not fractions of margin.  I still can’t imagine had I took the risk to leverage more money into sneakers, where I would be today.  Had I spend $1 million dollars back then, which is almost what I spend on sneakers today…I would have had an easy $300,000 risk less unrealized profit.  Yeah…that’s pretty much enough for a big portion of a house down payment.  Crazy, huh?

Anyways, I’m glad I get to look back at this and reflect on a continual basis because this reminds me that when I see an opportunity, you gotta fking seize it at full force.  You can’t expect to make money without actually putting skin in the game.  Ie. money sitting in your bank account will only earn you less than 1% in interest – no more, no less…ok maybe compound interest, but that’s still peanuts.  $10,000 in the bank would yield me $100 in one year in interest and my bank account would be $10,100 by the end of the year.  On the flip side, if I used $10,000 and bought 10 pairs of Travis 1s at $1,000 earlier in the year and sold them all today, my bank account will be $25,000.  How long will you need for your $10,000 to sit in the bank to yield $25,000?  92 FUCKING YEARS! (PV=10,000, FV=25,000, I/Y=1%, PMT=0, n=?).  I wouldn’t even live to see that day.  You make the right choice with Travis, that’s less than 1 year.  That’s just the math, but a lot of things can change over time, but like I said…had I known…I would have went deep into my resources to get as much cash as I could to invest in sneakers.  At the time it would seem like a high risk…but like they say…you also reap the high returns!