I’m incredibly thankful for having this personal learning blog set up. It’s an incredible way to revisit what has been happening in my life and see how things are progressing. Here’s my quick update of the things I’m currently focusing on right now.
Water/Keys/Iphone Repair Store
The water store is still in progress but it’s coming along nicely on a relatively small budget. I recently found new suppliers for both keys and water. Now instead of picking up inventory myself, I have everything delivered to the store. I also got a POS system up, floors completed, new key machine for modern car keys, and getting the key peg wall organized.
I’m now working on getting a new tool for programming keys and setting up the iPhone screen repairs. Hopefully, I’ll be in the flow up things before the end of this year with decent cash flow coming in.
Thoughts on this business: I know it’s a weird combination of products/services but these are the things I’m learning from it:
- Water creates reoccurring revenue – Customers drink all their water and need to come back for more. This makes revenue more predictable and it’s a bit easier to grow revenues. Learning lesson is finding solid products/services that generate repeat income (think Netflix).
- Car keys are high ticket items with good margins but are usually one time purchases. A combination of reoccurring and high tickets items would be beneficial for a business.
- Cell phone repairs are medium-sized ticket items but tend to have more of a repeat customer base.
- Complementary products are important in raising Average Spend per Customer.
Unwage
Unwage took a bit of a back burner the last couple of months since my last update. I’ve been spending a larger portion of my time (80/20) on the store than on Unwage to get everything up and running smoothly. My goal is to get the store generating sufficient cash flow with minimal work so that I can funnel that money into Unwage and Bitcoin.
The reason I’m prioritizing the store is for cashflow purposes. it’s the fastest path to cash knowing that Unwage will take some time to generate profitability. I believe it’s smart to have some sort of cash flow while working on a larger business project. Cash flow allows you some peace of mind, a longer runway for your business to take off, and money to have some sanity while grinding out on your larger business that may never become profitable. It gives you the ability to fail and iterate until you find a solid business or product/market fit.
Even though I’ve been spending less time on Unwage, my goal has been getting at least a small amount of progress every day — no matter how small. Sometimes this hasn’t panned out so well but even with incremental progress each day or every other day, I’m inching much closer to launch. I’m happy with the progress and where it’s going.
Bitcoin
Since my last update, Bitcoin was hovering around the 9K range. Now, Bitcoin is ranging around 11.3K. I’ve been reading up much more about Bitcoin and I’m more convinced than ever that it’s the best investment in the next 3-5 years that could arguably change how money is currently handled by world governments.
Predicting the success of Bitcoin in the next 10 years is much harder. I think the biggest threat to Bitcoin will be some Black Swan event. My assumption, if it were predictable, is that the biggest threat will be governments rather than the technology/psychology that powers Bitcoin.
Network effects, higher security with more miners and nodes, branding, anonymous creator, evolving Bitcoin protocol make Bitcoin more resilient and robust, making it stronger each day. However, with governments that want more control, once Bitcoin hits a tipping point, I think more government intervention could be the biggest factor in slowing down Bitcoin’s adoption by merchants/users and growth trajectory. The more I see the turmoil in the world, the more I see the need for Bitcoin, which separates State from money. But, it doesn’t mean that an altruistic fintech product like Bitcoin can’t be regulated out of existence.
My hope is that isn’t the case. I hope to see Bitcoin become a reserve asset that all countries use because it can’t be manipulated (so long as the network becomes more secure and expensive to target a 51% attack). I hope that Bitcoin becomes a “savings” account for citizens and eventually becomes a worldwide currency used for small and large purchases. It’s possible, and the financial implications for those who hold Bitcoin early could be large.
That being said, I’m very bullish on Bitcoin in the next 1-5 years. We’ll see how things progress in the next 5 years. Hopefully, I’ll still be updating this blog and be able to look back on where Bitcoin is then. Regardless, it’s going to be a fun journey! Hodl on!
Until Next Update
I hope to be more consistent with updates after the store is running smoothly. I’d like to get back to working remote, but I don’t see that happening until the middle of 2020. Until then, keep stacking sats (Satoshis – the smallest unit of a bitcoin).