How Old Do You Have To Be To Work At Bulk Barn: Fill & Download for Free

An internal locus of control… but also the opportunity to develop one.This may sound… well, let’s call it a little Ron Swanson-ish.Fig. 1: Me, as I write this answer.When I was teaching, I noticed something about my students that got worse as I taught, and as I continue to work with young people in activities such as coaching mock trial, or even the youngest students taking the bar, I continue to see it.When they encounter difficulty, they just… quit. They just shut down and wait for someone to fix it for them. They also have no sense of responsibility to avoid difficulty.I noticed more and more as I was teaching that my students almost always had the latest and greatest pieces of technology. They had the newest smartphone immediately after it came out.And within a week, the screen would invariably be broken.Technology provided by the district often met the same fate. By two months into school, their devices were just destroyed. Scratched to all hell, cracked screens, dented bodies… half the time, they were ruined to the point of non-functioning before spring break.And then the students would ask for extensions on homework because their computers didn’t work.I started to ask the students about this to understand what was going on. One student shrugged and said that her dad would just pay for it. If she broke her phone, he’d just get her a new one. If her school computer got trashed, someone else paid for it. If she didn’t have a piece of technology to do her work, I was expected to give her additional time.It wasn’t her problem. She had no stake in her actions.I thought she was an outlier at first. But more and more, I saw the same behavior and got the same response: well, someone else will fix it. Someone else paid for it. Someone else would pay for the damages. And if it didn’t work anymore, someone else would come along to make it better.There were no personal consequences to their actions. And as a result, they never learned responsibility or stewardship.And because they didn’t have those foundational life skills, they had no ability to cope with difficulty and work around it. They had no ability to persevere through adversity.This showed up in their schoolwork. If they hit even the slightest roadblock, they would just… quit. They’d just sit there and stare at the wall or beg my attention. There was no sense of self-help or personal agency or creativity to solve problems. If the answer was not provided or readily apparent, they were just… lost.I expected this, if somewhat disappointedly, from high school freshmen, who are lost little babes in the wilderness at the best of times.I did not expect this from first-year law students, or worse, from recently graduated law students studying for the bar exam.All of this stems from a lack of any internal locus of control.*Invokes old man voice*When I was a kid…Fig. 2: Actual photograph of me, on the left, explaining what life was like when I was a child.Seriously, when I was a kid, I didn’t have an allowance, and we didn’t get money to do chores or things. We didn’t have a “reward board.” We didn’t have a chore schedule.We did chores in our household solely because it was the duty to the family to do stuff. We helped when the deck needed to get built or the addition on the house was constructed. We took the organic garbage to the compost pile. We vacuumed and dusted. We mowed the lawn. We biked (or, if we were lucky, rode in the car with Mom) the ten miles to Grandma and Grandpa’s with the Coleman cooler jug to get whole, unpasteurized milk straight from the bulk tank, and we were expected to throw down lime on the barn alley or drop down some corn silage or bedding or whatever else needed to be done while we were there.We did it when either asked, or when it needed to be done (and we were expected to notice when it did).We also didn’t go to bed hungry or without a roof over our heads. We were clean and well-fed and reasonably well-dressed.That was just kind of the informal, unspoken bargain between my parents and the three of us kids.And when we wanted something, really really wanted something, our parents would talk to us about it. Why did we want it? What would we do with it? And most importantly: how would we take care of it?If something broke because we were careless with it, that was it. There was no free replacement. We were stuck with the broken thing. Or, we had to fix it.I got a go-kart at one point. It was a home-built contraption that a relative had made and his kids had outgrown it. It had an ancient Briggs and Stratton engine on it that used oil almost as fast as gasoline. I had to check the oil constantly or risk running it dry and cracking the block.And one day, that’s exactly what happened.Dad and I took the whole engine apart, and he showed me exactly what happened with it. (I ended up taking the whole thing to the county fair and got a merit award for not only explaining the workings of the internal combustion engine, but exactly how one failed from lack of oil, not that I knew from any personal experience, cough, cough.)After repeated attempts to patch the block (which Dad knew would fail, but made me go through it anyway,) Dad finally relented and gave me $20 to bike to a junkyard about 25 miles away and find what parts I needed to fix it, including a new crankcase and block. We talked it over: what parts off the old one were still good? What did I need to look for in replacement parts?I got on my bike at 6am to get to the junkyard when it opened, dug through mountains of scrapped machines for hours until I found a matching engine in decent shape, tore it apart with the tools in the toolbox I had strapped to the back of my bike, extracted the bits I needed, haggled with the yardmaster, carefully strapped all my hard-won parts to the bike along with the tool bag, biked home, and spent the next several days reconstructing the engine and attempting to make it run.I think I was ten? Maybe twelve?Dad didn’t go with me. He didn’t buy me the parts or a new engine or fix it for me. Hell, he didn’t even drive me to the junkyard. Good lord, what parent would let their child bike twenty-five miles on their own to a junkyard these days with nothing but a twenty dollar bill and a stern lecture that any borrowed tools from Dad’s workbench better be returned unbroken? If my dad tried that today, someone would probably have called Child Protective Services.If I needed help, I could always ask my parents for it. But I was expected to be resourceful and persistent in attempting to remedy my problems on my own. I was expected to determine and exhaust my self-help remedies before I received assistance. Dad would often make me think through the solution with minimal guidance. He would let me overlook a solution and make me realize it. I had to seriously work for everything.It wasn’t that our parents never gave us stuff. We always had things to play with. I had Lego sets and Erector sets and Capsela sets and all sorts of stuff. My sister had a horse. My toys may not always have been the latest and greatest, and often were secondhand, battered, homemade, and required constant repairs, but that’s what made it great, sometimes.That go-kart? I built a truck bed over the engine with scrap wood I got from a local construction project, and a trailer with some old wheelbarrow tires I convinced a neighbor to give me in exchange for mowing his lawn a few times. I used both to go back to the woods half a mile behind our house down the field lane and retrieve rocks from the field for the foundation that I dug by hand for a cabin I wanted to build, because that would be awesome, right?My parents instilled a sense of responsibility for my actions and my possessions. And if things were tough, I was expected to creatively work around the adversity. They’d always be there to help me if I needed it, but that help was expected to be a last resort after I had exhausted what was within my control.All of this instilled in me an internal locus of control.I was responsible for my situation. And I was responsible for getting myself out of it.The people around me, from my parents to my teachers, were always there to provide resources for me when I needed them. But they didn’t do anything for me. I had to struggle with it. I had to fail from time to time. I had to make mistakes and curse at things and try again and learn enough to succeed.This is what we are robbing young people of today.I increasingly see this in people 25 and younger. It’s starting to show up increasingly in the law students that I end up tutoring and mentoring.The idea that they have to actually work for something is almost a foreign concept to them. If the answer is not readily apparent, they just shut down. I’ll try to walk them through their resources and a process for using them, and they’ll get angry with me, because why am I not just giving them the answer?The old curmudgeon, the Ron Swanson in me, would just complain that kids today are soft and weak and their parents let them be that way.And that’s kind of half true.Because I also had the opportunity to develop that internal locus of control. I had resources at my disposal.I had access to a farm and a go-kart and a bike and scrap wood and nails and screws and tools and time and supportive parents.There’s no single factor to all this, but there’s a few I believe are contributing.ParentingParenting is part of it, I believe. And I get that. I have an infant son right now. It’s hard letting him cry sometimes. I think parents always want their kids to have all the stuff they never had. I really understand that impulse.There is some degree of “everyone gets a trophy” to it. Parents, and sometimes teachers, don’t want their kids to experience the sting of failure, and often end up doing too much for the kids. (For teachers, sometimes this is professional preservation: the principal walked in and said that if the student fails, you’re getting fired, and that leads to teachers who do the work for the kid to save themselves.)I do believe that children today are often given a false sense of achievement and self-esteem.In our quest to raise every child’s self-esteem and make them feel intrinsically worthy — itself a noble goal and a positive one — we have gone too far the other direction and rewarded even the most mediocre of achievements, often when the child himself or herself has barely contributed to the success.This creates a narrative of external control over their lives: I don’t have to do the work to be rewarded for success; someone else will fix it for me and I can take the credit. They never develop a sense of an ownership stake in their own lives.Kids are also smarter than we often give them credit for. They know when a victory is hollow. They can spot a fake. If they feel like the success isn’t earned because they had no real stake in it, or no real risk of failure, they know it’s not real.And if the success is not real, because there was never any real potential for failure, it doesn’t raise their self-esteem and sense of personal capability and agency. This attempt at positive parenting, then, ends up counterintuitively lowering their self-esteem and conception of their own agency.Generational DisconnectionGenerational disconnects are probably a part of it. My great-grandparents were in their prime during the Great Depression and World War II, and I was fortunate enough to have most of them alive when I was little. They taught me a lot of things, but one of the most important, in retrospect, was the idea of an internal locus of control. That’s not the words they used, but that was the concept. They had to develop that. It was either work through adversity or die in most instances. I learned how to hold the world together with spit, bubble gum, baling wire, and moxie.In my experience as an educator, I don’t seen children connecting with older adults with a strong sense of an internal locus of control anymore. Most of the Greatest Generation is gone.And the remaining older adults don’t have much of an internal locus of control.Boomers are probably one of the worst role models in this respect. It’s endlessly amusing and disheartening to me to watch Boomers complain about how kids today are spoiled and entitled, while they’re bitching to the cashier and demanding to redeem an expired coupon.Fig. 3: The “Karen.” When any person in retail sees this hairstyle walking towards customer service, they just sigh and page the manager.Technology and Critical ThinkingTechnology surely plays a role in it. I couldn’t Google or YouTube how to fix the go-kart engine twenty-five years ago. Children today do not know a world without constant access literally at one’s fingertips to the repository of the world’s knowledge. My generation saw that change occur. There is absolutely no concept of figuring things out when the answer to literally everything is presumed to be a search away. Hell, I’m guilty of asking Alexa how to do basic tasks sometimes.But this is not, on its face, the problem. I had the Clymer manuals and other resources all the time when I was a kid. I bought how-to books for a nickle or dime at the public library when they were getting rid of old stuff and I still have some of them. (I have a really vintage 1970’s “how to make your own folding furniture out of scrap 2x4” book that is an awesome window into the clearly drug-induced fashion of that era.) The YouTube tutorials and craft blogs and even Quora are extensions of that.What has changed is the lack of critical evaluation of those resources and any ability to think past the first instructions that pop up on a Google search. When those fail, there is no reflective practice in many kids today to look for where it went wrong and fix it. They just… stop.Cultural Definition of SuccessThe definition of success as a culture has an impact, I believe. What is rewarded in culture right now is not healthy. Success is not defined by personal responsibility or intrinsic achievement outside of sports. What is rewarded is popularity.Now, this has always been true, to an extent. There has always been this tension between if nobody recognizes your success, is it real? That’s the question of internal vs. external loci of control.However, social media has fueled this in an extremely concerning manner toward external loci of control.Look at the very concept of the “social media influencer” as paying job. What the hell? The incentive structures on the internet promote this as “success.” It provides all the physical “reward sense” to the brain of actual achievement and human interaction and popularity in the most hollow way possible. Success becomes a purely external question because success is only “real” if everyone else agrees with it.What social reward is there for a kid today to bike to a junkyard to replace parts in a home-built go-kart contraption unless he could put it on Instagram for the world to “like”?Would it matter if the engine ran afterwards? Would it matter the means by which parts were procured? Probably not.I have to slap myself back to reality at times. It is so easy to worry about upvote to view ratios and follower counts and whether a popular answer got collapsed. It is so easy to seek the approval of my peers or the recognition of highly regarded people and to define my success by those entirely external measures.And added to that is the “always-on” nature of the internet and social media.When I was a kid, you’d have to be physically present to be bullied by someone. The worst they could do is try to call you at home, and you could just hang up. The spread of gossip was so much slower.Today? Social media is always connected. Smartphones make it even worse; push notifications with messages are constant. All day. All night. Ding. Ding. Ding.And the lives of kids when I was a kid were far less documented.Social media forces kids to be always on stage. There can never be a bad day, because their entire lives are documented. Cameras are everywhere. Screw up just once, and someone gets a video of it, and then puts it online? That’s you. Forever. There is no longer the forgivable or forgettable mistake.And worse is the lack of mental maturity to make good judgment calls, and the sheer magnitude of consequences of making a bad one. A teenage girl can utterly destroy her future with one bad choice to send a racy or nude picture of herself to a boy who promised he loved her.Twenty years ago, that required getting a camera, hoping the picture turned out, getting the film developed, and then physically giving the picture to someone. Disseminating that was equally laborious.Today? It takes seconds.But if she doesn’t, it takes seconds as well for her to be shamed by her peers. She can receive a constant barrage of harassing messages, anywhere. Any time.It’s little wonder to me that our youth are experiencing unprecedented mental health issues that especially include social anxiety and depression. There is no ability to disconnect and recharge, one’s entire life is on display nearly every moment, and it is documented for posterity for all to see, forever.An Utter Lack of OpportunityLastly, there is an increasing sentiment, not unjustified, that the world around them is rigged against them and it just doesn’t matter what they do. Why take personal responsibility and develop an internal locus of control when some spoiled rich shit will always take your spot no matter how hard you work for it?I’m one of the older Millenials. We were taught that you need to go to college to get a good job by a generation that paid as little as a tenth of what we did to do it. And let me tell you, we’re more than a little jaded and cynical about it.When my parents went to college, the inflation-adjusted minimum wage was $11.25 an hour compared to $6.25 when I went to college, and their tuition for the same four-year state school I attended was $200 per semester. When I started college, my first tuition bill was just shy of $1,000 a semester, and when I graduated, my last tuition bill was $3,250 a semester.So, my generation has graduated with crushing debt to an economy where, because everyone went to college, the starting minimum entry-level job requirements for a minimum-wage barista position are an MBA, six years experience, expertise in krav maga, and the dedication of their firstborn child as a human sacrifice.Housing prices have gone up 5–7% a year and wages have gone up 1–2% a year if we’re lucky, so where my parents could afford a mortgage for a decent 3-bed home in the ‘burbs on one slightly-more-than-minimum wage salary, the idea of home ownership for my generation even with dual incomes is damned near so far out of reach as to be almost farcical.But again, if you were lucky enough to be born silver spoon in mouth, none of that is a concern. And those people seem to get everything. They get into college without any of the stuff that we had to work for. They get jobs because of who their parents are. They get into government and get nominated to the bench and into the White House not because of any actual hard work.So, when we’re told “just work hard and you’ll make it!” it feels like a sick joke at times.The generation behind me? What must they think?It’s difficult to maintain an internal locus of control when there is objectively little control a person can actually have.But that’s also why you see a great deal of activism from my generation, particularly around wealth inequality and job opportunity.You see, what makes an internal locus of control possible is opportunity and resources.That go-kart and what I learned from it?It was made possible by parents who resourced me and deliberately withheld doing something for me to give me an opportunity to learn.There was every chance that I would have assembled that engine wrong and had it fail, potentially catastrophically. I almost got myself killed on that contraption a couple of times, from not paying attention to traffic on our rural road to the fact that it didn’t have a roll bar. I was given $20 and free rein to bike fifty miles round trip. If I’d have spent that $20 on something stupid along the way, I wouldn’t have had a working go-kart and I can guarantee you Dad wouldn’t have trusted me with more cash (that was also made quite clear in the aforementioned stern lecture).I was given an opportunity with consequences and a real stake in the outcome. My achievement was real. My failure would have been as well. Because of that, my success was real. And earned.In all my time teaching, I made it clear to my students that they would never receive from me unjustified praise. If they got it, they earned it. But I equally made it clear that I wasn’t going to withhold justified praise. If they earned it, they got it.I made sure they always had what they needed to succeed, and if it became apparent that I didn’t, I made sure to own that mistake and compensate them accordingly. There were no impossible tasks in my classroom, but there were always challenging ones.Young people today are too often given impossible tasks without the resources to take them on. Or, they are given tasks that are not challenging or they have no stake in the outcome, and rewarded in ways that are hollow and meaningless. They are not given true opportunity to overcome adversity through their own efforts and with appropriate resourcing.Some work through this to develop an internal locus of control, and when they find out just how little they can do with it, get pissed and take to the streets to fight for the opportunity and resources they should have.Fig. 4: The “entitled” generation’s dreams. But really, Karen, tell me again how a bit of avocado on toast from time to time is what’s holding me back.More often, however, they start to develop an external locus of control, rather than an internal one. They fall into depression and despair, and more and more of them just sit down and give up.And honestly?I believe that robs all of us of a future.Thanks for the A2A, Sean Kernan.

Michael Jordan was asked how he became the greatest athlete in history.Most expected an answer long & sour, but Jordan kept it short & sweet: “You heard my Nike slogan—JUST DO IT!”HOW TO KILL LAZINESS AND PROCRASTINATION FOREVERI. LEARN to TREAT YOUR BRAIN LIKE the SUPERCOMPUTER IT ISAs the clock struck 12 to birth the new year, while millions of drunken renditions of “Auld Lang Syne” were privately belted out, accompanying the sing-alongs were New Year’s resolutions.And what was the most frequently expressed idiom?“This year I’m starting on a new PROGRAM.”Given that the human mind is nothing but an information processing system, it’s apparent the computer was modeled on the mind.The Turing machine (the first glimpse of the modern computer), merely reflected the binary logic that underlies all thinking.What more is the mind than the “software” that runs various programs and the brain the “hardware” on which they’re run?What more is a PROGRAM than a set of rules which, if executed, will achieve a particular objective?From the very moment of waking up, we apply the set of rules to brush our teeth (objective) . . .We apply a set of rules to make breakfast just the way we like it (objective) and the 1000 & 1 things that occur within the course of a day.And so, given the state of affairs: What more are we doing than running programs on our Supercomputers?For the above reason, the key to killing off laziness and procrastination merely calls for: running another program!Bingo!After all, Sir Isaac Newton put it best:II. In CLOSING: REPROGRAM your BRAIN w/ the JUST DO IT PROGRAMActions make history. …After all, not until historic feats occur can the historian reflect over them. For this reason, throughout the day we’re always confronted by the same fork in the road:Just DELAY It or Just DO It . . .?Or as Shakespeare famously put it:There’s a reason Nike’s slogan “Just Do IT” has become a staple in pop culture.The “IT” in the slogan alludes to the ideal state pictured with third eye, and the “doing” is merely willing that picture (It) before your two eyes.For this reason, the key to killing off laziness and procrastination merely calls for habituating—Just Do It.In fact, I’ll go so far as to say make Just Do It your mantra!After all:Ever heard of the expression “second nature”?In other words, given that the human species evolved from apes, in us blind instinct has evolved into blind habits.Bingo!And here lies the true root of laziness and procrastination.After years of running the Just Delay It Program, that habitual way of being results in a permanent stamp on our character!Once something becomes second nature, we no longer have to think about it. The program simply runs by itself. …Sound familiar?For the above reason, we routinely multi-task.Anybody that can walk, talk and chew gum at the same time is in effect juggling both the first and second natures, aka consciousness & instinct.Here lies the true answer to the riddle of the Sphinx:Aha! Just Delay It vs. Just Do It takes place in the boxing ring of the subconscious, not the conscious.And as the legendary champion Jack Dempsey once suggested:If you’ve been running the Laziness Program . . . no problemo!Simply reprogram the Computer-Brain by running Just Do It.How?By ceasing to treat life as though it were some math problem . . . JUST DO IT—don’t think!Or as Mark Twain put it:On your way out the door you spot a dish in the sink. Immediately that second nature will seductively whisper—“Just Delay It.”But not today! Instead, you respond with, “Nope—I’m running the Just Do It Program!”If while relaxing on the couch a bright idea pops in your mind to head to the gym, spring to your feet as though the house were on fire. …Fling on some clothes and bolt out the door. … The sooner you get going, the better.Why?For awhile you’ll have to contend with that old thief Procrastination hounding you to run the Just Delay It Program. But counter by running Just Do It!”In less than an hour, you’ll have effectively exercised.Experts say it takes roughly a month of daily commitment to cement a new habit (program). …And as months turn into years, Gandhi put it best:I’ve been running the Just Do It Program for years. … In fact, my bestie Goddess occasionally gets annoyed with me for running it at odd times.The other day we were seated in Barnes & Noble. I randomly said, “Be right back, about to go for a quick jog in Central Park!”“Do you really have to run the Just Do It Program right now?” she said with smirk.Before my lips could move, my legs were already churning down the escalator!Why?Once mastered: the Just Do It Program all but runs itself!Here, to help ya get going with running the Just Do It Program, use The Genius Formula:Pop a Modafinil (aka, the Limitless Pill). This “genius pill,” when popped on an empty stomach, will literally make you feel like Superman , or woman. But there’s a few more supplements you’ll need to really make the nootropic stack work.Each day before carrying out any intellectual activity, pop 1 of these (3 in a pack).Also, take some N-Acetyl L Tyrosine (increases dopamine and excites neurotransmitters).If you really need to ramp up brain function to the monomania level, take some Noopept + Alpha GPC (the best choline source).Vinpocetine sublingually (increases blood flow in the brain).Acetyl-L-CarnitinePhosphatidylserineOn a side note, to save money: buy supplements in bulk, powder form via Amazon, not from GNC or Vitamin Shoppe. These places mark up the prices anywhere from 3–400 percent!Last but note least: use The Master Key System to retrain your subconscious mind.In short, remember there’s a trick to every trade. Follow this hack, and you’ll kill off laziness and procrastination in no time!Always remember: starting to do something is always the hardest part of doing something. …Therefore: JUST DO IT!DOG fo DNIM ehT

Hmm... So you browsed around Quora looking for examples of how to start a business, possibly read some success stories (like the video posted here), and decided you are ready to reap the benefits of running your own company? I am generalizing here of course, but I do want to pitch in here since many people ask questions similar to yours.Having $2500 to start selling on Amazon is pretty impressive! I had FAR less... Well, I had nothing when I started on eBay 4 years ago approximately, and I do have more now, than I did before. So let me point out a couple things here.First, it's great that you are doing research on how to get started, instead of just jumping in! When I started my first venture I simply jumped in with no idea on how to do ANYTHING business related, and I failed back 5 years ago. Although, no amount of research will ever prepare you for the amount of work that goes into starting a company, whether it be an e-commerce business, brick and mortar, app, web, software, or any type of business really. They almost all need the same things to succeed; an idea, focus research, funding, networks, sweat equity, a team/support, and of course; CUSTOMERS. The MOST important is EXECUTION. How those seeds are planted depends on the business you are running. So let's stick with e-commerce.You need a product to sell. You can search on eBay/Amazon/the web to see what the hottest things are, or find something that interests you. For me, it was technology. So I researched into selling electronics. A lot of people are into the health craze in America right? Spring is upon us so gear like rain coats, umbrellas, etc will be hot too. Many people source from venues like Alibaba and use a technique called white labeling (you buy unbranded products and slap a label on it), or they just buy and sell.You have the venue to sell, so that is good. If you narrow your focus to just Amazon to get started then I would say that is fine. You do not want to spread yourself out before you even hit the ground to run (personal experience). If you are focusing on Amazon keep these things in mind: you are leveraging Amazons reputation and investments into marketing to reach out to millions of people a day WILLING to buy your product, so depending on how "hot" your item is, you don't need to do anything but sell it. At the same time, Amazon EXPECTS you to act as if you ARE Amazon, so they can, and will be very strict.Here is one thing I suggest that NO ONE ever says: if you want to see how selling on Amazon works, sell something. Does not matter what it is (except clothing). If you are a gamer, sell a game. If you have some old jewelry or watches, sell that. Find a yard sale and pick something up from there, or better yet, buy something off of eBay for a couple bucks. Do not expect to make profit, but realize that Amazon has a policy in place that may hurt you more than it helps; the 3 weeks of no pay policy. This was around when I started and what this means is when you sell something, Amazon will begin regular weekly deposits to your account after the review is over (in 3 weeks, eBay has a similar policy), to make sure you abide by Amazon's strict policies.Anyways, decide what type of business model you are aiming for. The main ones are: I buy, I sell, and drop shipping. These are general and have sub categories such as: I buy products and sell, then buy some more; I source inventory from a manufacturer or distributor and sell them either by myself, or use FBA (ship to amazon and they sell it to prime customers); I drop ship by placing my listing on Amazon from a drop shipper and when it sells, I have the drop shipper ship it, or I find a manufacturer who drop ships and place bulk orders through them (I'm going to skip the details). If you want to learn more about these methods, keep looking further to figure it out :)Your question is very general, and to people who answer it, they probably think: how can you say you are ready to begin, when you don't even know how to start?Saying "I am ready" is like saying "I set everything up". When you turn around and ask "how should I go about this", it's kind of ironic right?When I started out on eBay, I attempted to do early drop shipping and failed miserably. A friend of mine saw how stressed out I was and offered to help financially (he gave me his paycheck, and made sure I worked my butt off to make up for it). I bought a book on eBay selling after going to Barnes and Nobles and reading every book I could find, as well as browsing eBay forums. I figured out how to buy wii consoles from a liquidation source and started selling from there. I made about $20 per sale after fees and shipping and sold 10 consoles a week. I decided to branch out to iPads and another friend gave me his credit card to buy a lot of 5 for $1500 or so. Eventually I moved over to Amazon and started preselling them, then placing orders for them after (dropshiping right?). I sold about 20-40 a week at 4-500$ each. I got flagged a few times by eBay/Amazon for growing too fast haha (watch out for that too). I took my friends on an all expenses paid trip to NYC and they started working with me for commisions. So, the investments were certainly worth it :)Now, I source iPhones from a major retailer, but I have to cough up a minimum of $20k+ or they won't even look at me haha! I have a contract so unfortunately there is no way I can bring you in on it :( I am looking to build a firm that supplies new sellers with Apple and Samsung inventory at great prices to jumpstart their selling careers, and eventually recruit people to market and push inventory for me. It is taking a bit of time to set up though, so the only thing I can do is offer you my story and advice for now :)To summarize, build an ACTUAL business plan/decided what you want to sell, and how you want to sell it, and source the inventory. When you do, just sell it and go from there. Learn from your mistakes and keep asking for advice. Even I post questions on here and I started making $10k+ a week some time ago hahaFocus and execution are the most important things when starting ANY business venture. Even if you are just starting out on Amazon, treat it like a business! Selling is a lot of hard work. Research and experiment to learn what that really means.By the way, invest no more than $20 to make your first sale. No matter what it is you are selling. Save your money for the larger investment in inventory/costs to sell (shipping mostly).