Half-Day Henry

This article by James Altucher has been on my reading list for a long time, and I've finally gotten round to reading it.

Superb stuff. I don't want to ramble too much; just go read it if you're interested in entrepreneurship.

Personal favourites include:

"It’s OK to fail. Start over. Hopefully before you run out of money. Hopefully before you take in investor money. Or, don’t worry about it. Come up with new ideas. Start over."

I'm struggling for inspiration on an FBA product.

I want to do private labeling; it seems to be the best way to generate real income through FBA. That said, there's a LOT of learning around FBA, and I'm starting to grow frustrated about not actually getting started yet and having products online. I analyse detail, and like to be careful and pragmatic in business, but at the same time, I am wary of being caught in "analysis paralysis". This has led me to look at 'retail arbitrage' (RA) as a way in; an opportunity to get to know the basic FBA systems, the labeling requirements etc, before diving in at the deep end.

Retail arbitrage is essentially finding a product on sale at one retailer which is selling for more on Amazon, buying the products, and quickly getting it on to Amazon. The Arbing Blog has a great worked example of this in action so I won't go into detail; he explains it very well.

I thought I'd found a product this week. A kids game. It was for sale for £25 with a retailer, and on Amazon (the only other listed retailer on the comparison app I was using) for £57. At first glance: ideal. However, upon further investigation, it revealed itself to be a no-go. Only 6 reviews on Amazon, and of them, only 2 were in the past 12 months. It also had a BSR of 105k. A bit disappointing, but I'm glad I've completed the first few steps on a potential product. Every failure is one closer to the success etc etc.

Coincidentally, I listened to podcast 165 of The Amazing Seller. It was a 'back to basics' on finding a product, and it's changed the way I've been thinking about FBA product sourcing. The main thing I took from it was the aim of building a MARKET, with a few products around a central theme, interest etc. I've got some ideas on this related to my physical shop and will be developing this with good old pad and paper in the coming weeks. Incidentally, I'd thoroughly recommend the Amazing Seller podcast, and this one in particular.

I (we: my wife & I) have some shares in Barclays (LSE:BARC), and have had since 2010. It's a relatively small holding, but nonetheless it's there. I've watched as the value of those shares has toppled from around the 350p mark when I got them, to the 161p they closed at yesterday. I remember having conversations with my wife about waiting until they got back up to 330p before we sold them off. 'LOL' is the expression. They never got near it.

As the bad news around the banking sector (PPI, LIBOR, increased regulatory requirements with regards to reserves) continued to rain down, we became increasingly despondent. I've been determined to get rid, adamant that they will never get back and are just a bad asset to have.

Analysts are actually fairly bullish about Barclays. For all the perceived nervousness, many are positing that 2016 isn't going to be as bad as 2008. QE is an option in 2016 in the Eurozone, and while China's growth is slowing, it's still expanding at a good rate. The FTSE seems to represent good value, and, as Motley Fool point out, Barclays have a new CEO and management team, and are making great strides in becoming more efficient as a profitable, investment banking focused organisation. MF sees a return to 300p as "very achievable" in the medium term. On top of that, Hargreaves Lansdown are advising BUY.

Part of me thinks these shares are never going to recover and get rid. The other part (I only have 2 parts, it appears; read into that what you will) reckons things can't get MUCH worse, so why not ride it out. I'm leaning to the latter, with a view to reassessing at the end of the year. I'm bracing myself for 150p and hoping for a rally up through the rest of the year. Regardless of what happens though, I'm glad I've done a bit of reading.

We got a good deal with these shares, and I'm keen to use them as a foothold in stocks and shares with a view to continuing to increase my knowledge and build a portfolio I'm interested in and which provides a residual income. I've found some great articles on the Retirement Investing Today blog around building a passive income around your portfolio, and will continue to explore this site.

Let me tell you a bit about myself.

Like on Blind Date. (Bliiiiiiinda-daaaaaaate, for those of you who get the reference).

I'm a thirty-something business owner and entrepreneur. My income comes from my shop, where I am hands-off, and my property portfolio. I built 2 shops from nothing, sold one, and retain one. I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit; as a child I was fascinated in the idea of using money to make more money. My jobs as a teenager were largely commission based, unlike my peers, who got cushy jobs in shops. I had paper rounds that I did Mon-Sat before school (yes more than one at a time to maximise income), I sold goods from home-shopping catalogue businesses, worked as a programme vendor at a sports ground, sold confectionery door-to-door, then in my later teenage years and early 20s responded to demand among friends for popular computer games and accessories that were in short supply by ordering a few and selling them on at profit.

I have a young family (wife, 3yo, <1yo), and love to see new parts of the world. I've done desk jobs. I've enjoyed them, but ultimately, they weren't for me. I want a business I can run from anywhere in the world. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and know that I've earned money while I've been asleep. I want my kids to see me and us to spend quality time together, rather than sending them off to nursery/school all day while I go work to give me enough money to be able to pay the bills to have weekends with them before getting back to the grindstone.

I love to work. But I want the rewards to go to me. Not a manager. Not a CEO. Not shareholders. Me. My family.

I want to increase mine and my partner's net worth, expand my property portfolio, and establish a business interest in FBA. You can follow my progress here.

This is the Half-Day Henry blog.

Not yet. Allow me to explain...

'Half-Day Henry' is someone you see living in a nice house, with a nice car. They seem to spend a lot of time with their kids, taking them out on their bikes in the MIDDLE OF THE WORKING DAY, taking them to swimming and dance lessons. This person MUST have a job, but they seem to knock off at lunchtime! Bloody half-day Henry!

The cheek. They should be slogging their guts out in an office/shop somewhere, doing the commute to work like the rest of us.

Slacker.

A half-day Henry is someone who has their business organised in such a way that they don't need to adhere to the 9-5, the commute, the uniform. They can be flexible, and they use their time efficiently and smartly to prioritise what they want to, whether that is working on their business, taking their family out for coffee, or going travelling to far-flung locations.

That's where I want to be.

This blog will document my journey towards Half-Day Henrydom. I'll use it as a journal, a sounding board, and a point of reference for anyone else interested in achieving what I want to.

My interests will be reflected in this blog. Those interests are:

I hope you enjoy. If you have feedback, please feel free to contact me on halfdayhenry (at) gmail.com. I'm also on Twitter, @halfdayhenry

Ok the more I learn the more questions arise. This is fairly typical with me on new projects; I like to get into the detail, to 'deep-dive' (awful phrase but captures the idea well). I plan to execute FBA as a business venture and want to document my 'adventure' as I go along. After all, when you've acquired knowledge, it's very hard to remember exactly what it felt like BEFORE you acquired it. Hopefully this documentation will help others embarking on similar paths or with similar interests, as well as assisting me in the process of journaling and achieving more in my business. Win-win!

Ok so here's where I'm at.

I'm a podcast guy. I listen to podcasts while walking & driving, and some days I can do quite a bit of that, so it's a great way of soaking up information. If you're not a podcast person so far, give it a go!

I've started listening to The Amazing Seller, and FBA Allstars and have enjoyed both, particularly The Amazing Seller, where I'm working my way through the back catalogue. I'm getting so much great information on different aspects of FBA so intend to plough through the back catalogues. I've got more podcasts to try over the weekend (I've a few hours on a train to come): FBA Journey, Amazing FBA, and AM/PM. I'll jot some thoughts down on them when they're listened to!

Scott Voelker (@scottvoelker) on The Amazing Seller interviewed Nancy Ramirez (@awcblog), an agent who has been working with Chinese businesses exporting for many years. Her insights were illuminating. My first impression was that to do the FBA 'thing', you get on Alibaba, and there you have a load of factories telling you what they have for you. It seems that actually a lot of the work in hooking up manufacturers with suppliers is done by agents, who are absolutely crucial in getting you to where you want to be as a successful FBA seller, particularly as a lot factories are very small and not necessarily staying up to date on sites like Alibaba. I intend to delve much more into this aspect and can thoroughly recommend Nancy's blog at approvedwithcorrections.com.

Another preconception I had around FBA was that you pick a product, order 1000, and send them straight to Amazon, who do everything for you. While this IS an option, initially, with newbies still learning the processes and building relationships with manufacturers, a sensible approach is to order smaller quantities, have the manufacturer provide the basic labeling service, and have the items shipped to you to check quality before forwarding on to Amazon. This lowers risk and maximises the opportunity for good reviews based on quality products so a bit of a no-brainer for me really.

Incidentally, I am aware that another approach that people take is taking on liquidated stock from shops, getting products from 'flea markets' and 'thrift stores', but this just isn't really my thing so it's not an avenue I'm looking at. I put the ' on those previous terms because as a UK-based seller they are not really appropriate to me.

I've got two product ideas, both in the same category, both fairly high on the BSR ranking. With one of them I've found some products on Alibaba with which look great. That's as far as I've got. I've a concern that I should be looking at a product that's smaller; while neither product is 'oversized', they're not 'small' either. I plan to do more work in the next couple of weeks into product ideas, and produce a shortlist of three by the end of the month, having reviewed who the competition would be, BSRs and prospective sales levels.

Some reading around BSRs on the web has given me ballpark figures on what a 'good' BSR would be in terms of sales of products in major categories. This was for Amazon US sellers, but nonetheless it made me feel more relaxed about the need to pick something in the top ten BSR for a category.

More research to be done, but a fruitful week in terms of moving the project along.