I saw a comment recently that resonated with me. The person said, “I know my inadequacies. I have to source better and be more disciplined with my purchases. I stray away from the proper criteria when I can’t reach my spend goal and then my items sell too slowly.”
I completely understand where this person is coming from. You’re trying to hit those goals like the gurus told you to, but here’s the harsh reality: you’ve been lied to. Spend goals aren’t your problem. In fact, this very idea is what’s holding you back. This commenter pretty much said that if they can’t hit their spend goals, they start buying mediocre inventory. If you’re still focusing on hitting some arbitrary spend target after six months or more in the game, you’re completely missing the point of the game —and it’s keeping you trapped in a cycle that’s beneath you.
I don’t blame you. The clowns online talk too much, and it’s easy to start to become convinced that their ideas have any basis in reality. They’ve deceived you into thinking they have ideas that actually work.
Let’s get real. Spend goals are a concept invented by the kind of online arbitrage OA gurus who don’t bring anything of real value to the market. These dipshits are out there chasing low-margin, high-risk products, hoping they can flip them for a quick buck. They’re praying they can get filthy fucking rich before their account gets suspended or their brands gets regated. Pathetic. These clowns love acting like big shots on Twitter, flexing their high sales numbers, but here’s the thing: it’s easy to look like a big shot when you’re scraping by with 5-25% ROI. The real profit numbers? Don’t make me laugh. You won’t ever see those, because they know the truth. The numbers don’t add up, and they don’t want you to see that. Why do you think most “successful” OA sellers become gurus, sell software or get into crypto if what they teach works so well? It’s obvious they don’t practice what they preach. It’s obvious their methods are garbage.
The truth is, if you’re still focusing on some spend goal, you’re missing the bigger picture. You’re not building a real business—you’re just chasing numbers. That’s really where the separation between grifters and real hustlers who focus heavily retail arbitrage comes into play. In the game of RA, you’re not gambling on low-margin, high-risk flips. You’re out there fixing inefficiencies in the market. Products go on clearance, they need to be moved, and that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re not just trying to make a quick buck; you’re solving a real problem, providing real value. You provide the necessary liquidity into the marketplace at the right time and place to maximize efficiency. When you provide value in the marketplace, you are rewarded with profits. Don’t get me wrong, these opportunities exist online as well, and best believe I seize them when I see them. But this is not the model 99% of OA clowns follow.
Their model is this: Buy something at a certain price, try using Rakuten or discounted gift cards to get it a little cheaper and sell it at 2-3x price. Pray it doesn’t tank. Send it to a prep center so you don’t have to do any work or get a warehouse and build systems. Outsource all sourcing to VAs so you can circlejerk with other OA sellers on Twitter. Buy expensive cars and watches using Amazon Lending funds and screenshot high sales numbers to flex so people buy into your methods and sign up for your course. Become an influencer. Pathetic.
The real opportunities in retail arbitrage lie right in front of you. You’re probably just too distracted to even notice them. True hustlers stay sharp and seize every opportunity they can. The retail apocalypse is in full effect, and there’s an endless supply of products that need to be resold. I can go sourcing endlessly, and there are more products to purchase than I can physically store or process. Let alone tackle on my own. My issue isn’t hitting a spend goal. No. My issue is ensuring I have the infrastructure that can efficiently handle this volume of products without bottlenecks sabotaging my productivity. The more I can eliminate these bottlenecks, the more value I can provide to the market, and the more I will scale and get absolutely rich.
Do you really think you need a spend goal? You can’t find any products? Or you’re not looking in the right places? If you’re scrolling Kohls.com, Adidas.com or Nike.com daily thinking you’re building a business, you’re full of shit. You’re once again finding yourself with the majority of people who are doing the same thing. Doing the bare minimum, following trends, doing what you are told. What a joke. The difference between RA hustlers and OA jokers is that we’re out here grinding in silence to solve real world problems, while they’re sitting around looking for shortcuts, playing the “spend goal” game and talking too much online.
Now, let’s talk about the idea that only OA is scalable. Don’t make me laugh. That’s the kind of nonsense the OA crowd loves to push, because they can’t wrap their heads around something that takes real effort. They don’t want to think about solving complexity to scale, they just want to scale by using more debt, more money, more inventory. Useless. They think they can outsource their entire business to some faraway place and it’ll magically run itself. But guess what? It never works. It crashes and burns. And since we all know OA clowns never diversify their risk, this usually ends up with them going completely bust. Retail arbitrage is just as scalable—if not more—when you’re actually building proper systems. That is what the gurus don’t want you to think about, because it’s not easy and it’s not instant. It takes time. It takes ambition. It takes a vision. You don’t need a million middlemen. You need a plan, and you need to execute it.
When you scale retail arbitrage, you gain power, control and become unbreakable.
These are concepts that OA clowns know little about.
They give away their control. They give away their power. They are completely breakable.
It only takes a single thing out of their control to goes wrong for their illusion of an empire to crumble.
Their virtual assistant fucks them over, their prep center messes up, Amazon regates their brands, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, their accounts get suspended, American Express caps their limits, they get sued by a brand.
Game over. Have fun flipping burgers at McDonalds.
So here’s the bottom line: forget about those spend goals. They’re a distraction. They’re a crutch for those who can’t see the bigger picture. Those only in it for quick money, and first to the exits when things change. Going from OA to TikTok Shop to private label to something else. What a joke.
Instead, focus on what really matters—building systems that work, whether it’s Q4 or a slower season. When demand is through the roof, you don’t just stop because you hit some random number. You push harder, scale faster, and optimize your processes. If it’s a slower season and you don’t hit that imaginary spend target, who the fuck cares? That’s just part of the game. It’s about building something sustainable, not just chasing a number.
Don’t spend goals hold you back. You’re not in this to be like those OA clowns after an immediate payday. You’re in it to build something real, something that lasts for decades. Focus on providing value, building systems, and scaling. That’s where your true potential lies. Everything else is meaningless.
