As soon as we get a great idea and begin to pursue it, the first unforeseen hurdle quickly appears.

How, and if, we overcome these hurdles can determine our success or failure of the strategy.

Many movies are based on this life principle, including Star Wars. Remember how Luke was asked to do a relatively simple task, however quickly the first unforeseen obstacle appeared then the next and next. The Star Wars story is a classic ‘underdog’ overcoming many hurdles to reap the rewards at the end then, retire back to their farm.

In fact this is what man has done for thousands of years, that is, gone out on a big quest then return back to the farm after the quest is completed until, the next big quest appears and the story repeats.

Building any business is the same. Obstacles quickly appear and they need to be learnt or solved to move forward. Building an ebay business is no different.

At first glance the obstacles are a pain in the proverbial, however the hurdles are a good thing. As every obstacle cuts down the competition, as many quickly give up and begin looking for something easier. However, when the next great idea appears they quickly find the next great idea has obstacles too. Again they drop that great idea and move to the next great idea and so it keeps going.

Great ideas require execution. Success = Great idea + Execution
The problem with all great ideas is there are “always” obstacles which need to overcome.

Yes, it takes time and effort to learn how to overcome each obstacle. However, every time you overcome an obstacle, you not only leave many other sellers behind you who gave up or found it all too hard, but most importantly you reap the rewards of learning how to solve each obstacle.

We call these obstacles “barriers to entry”.

Every barrier culls more sellers which is great news, as if it was super easy, there would thousands more sellers.

I have known people who gave up just trying to open their first ebay account, sure it is simple for many of us, however not simple for everyone.

Last week I was in Brisbane for an ebay event and someone asked if the event was still on because of the weather. I looked out the hotel window and there was a bit of rain and hardly any wind?

My immediate thought was, ‘If this bit of rain is too much for you to get to an ebay event, then you do not have much chance of overcoming the hurdles of building an ebay business.’

The great thing with ebay is there is an answer for nearly every question you can have. We just have to be resourceful in finding the answers. Sometimes it might take a trip in the rain to a 90 minute event, other times it might mean watching a 10 minute YouTube video or reading a book.

Most obstacles are really not that hard to overcome. The hardest part is normally getting started on thinking how to solve it.

Some of the obstacles which need to be learnt for an ebay business include, how to find products?, how to automate? How to photograph?, cheapest ways to ship items etc. All these questions have answers as many people have hit the same barriers and solved the issues.

When building any business including an ebay business, our job as business owners is to “build” the business and not get bogged down with “working” in the business. It is too easy to get bogged down in $3, $5, $20 hour work of “running” the business when we should be delegating this work and only doing the $100 + ph hour work of building our business.

As business owners we need to be continually evaluating if we can automate a task with a piece of software or can we delegate the task to somebody else so we are freed up to build our businesses. Today it is very easy to outsource overseas staff at $3 + per hour for many tasks.

Again, learning to outsource and delegate are 2 more obstacles which require learning. None of us were born with these skills however we can all learn.

So the next time an obstacle gets in your way, think of it as a good thing as when you learn how to solve it, you have left even more of the competition behind.

To your success

Neil Waterhouse is an ebay Multi-million dollar seller and the author of best seller “Million Dollar eBay Business From – A Step By Step Guide”. As well Neil is the founder and host of the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane eBay Sellers Meetup Groups. For more information, see http://www.neilwaterhouse.com