Your constraint is capital.

What that means

Capital-bound means your money is doing one thing at a time. Stock bought is money unavailable until it sells, so the size of your business is set by how fast that cycle turns rather than by how much you can find or handle. Two sellers with identical sourcing skill and identical hours will end the year very differently if one of them turns the same money over twice as often.

This is why the useful number is not margin but how long money stays committed. A thinner margin that returns in three weeks can build a business faster than a fat one that takes five months, and sellers who optimize for the headline margin alone often slow themselves down while feeling like they are doing well.

The trap specific to this constraint is that the obvious relief — sell something — is exactly what you do not want to do carelessly. Liquidating good stock below its value to free cash lowers next month's capacity as well as this month's, which is how a temporary squeeze becomes a structural one.

What to do about it

1. 01 Measure how long your money stays committed, from purchase to payout, as an average across the last few months. That single figure explains more about your capacity than your margin does.
2. 02 Split your stock by how long it has been sitting. The oldest tail is capital you have already decided to stop earning on, and it is the cheapest source of cash you have.
3. 03 Look at your payout timing rather than only your sales. Money that arrives two weeks later than you assumed is a real reduction in how often you can buy.
4. 04 Before adding hours or sources, test the cheap version: run one buying cycle deliberately faster — cheaper stock, quicker listing, quicker sale — and see whether the year looks different.

And what not to

• Do not add hours. You are not short of handling capacity, and the extra time will find nothing to do that pays.
• Do not dump good stock to raise cash unless the alternative is worse. Selling below value shrinks the float you are trying to grow.
• Do not borrow against a margin you have not measured across a full cycle. A good quarter is not evidence of a good year.

Read these four, in this order

The course is written to be read start to finish, but if you only have an evening these are the guides that address this constraint directly.

1. 01
   Cash flow for resellers

   The core guide for this constraint. Read it first, in full.

2. 02
   Dead stock and aged inventory

   Where trapped capital actually sits, and what it is costing to keep.

3. 03
   Reseller metrics and KPIs

   How to measure how long money stays committed, rather than guessing.

4. 04
   Inventory accounting and cost of goods sold

   What a sale actually returned, once everything is counted.

Or start the whole thing at part one: 38 guides in 8 parts, free, no signup.