The Money Mondays
Why Your HOBBY Could Be the Secret to Making a Fortune w/ Josh Luber & Noah Neiman 💵 E97
Mon, 25 Nov 2024
What do Josh Luber and Noah Neiman have in common? They turned their hobbies into million-dollar businesses. Watch until the end if you want to learn how to build a business around your hobby... --- Josh Luber is the co-founder and former CEO of StockX, a popular online marketplace for buying and selling sneakers, streetwear, electronics, and collectibles. The company revolutionized the sneaker resale market by creating a transparent, authentic, and efficient platform for buyers and sellers. --- Noah Neiman is the co-founder of Rumble, a fast-growing fitness company that focuses on group fitness classes based on boxing. Rumble combines high-intensity boxing-inspired workouts with strength training, aiming to provide a full-body exercise experience. --- Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇 Michael Sartain & Michael Mojo: What Stops MOST Entrepreneurs from Succeeding: https://youtu.be/t3xxrCNBTRg Peter Voogd & Dan Zrihen: Sales Strategies That Made Them Millions: https://youtu.be/HlT3MVS1jig Greg Kimble & Kevin Peake: Making Waves in Education and Healthcare: https://youtu.be/eTAtkEJ5nvI Christian DelGrosso & Marshall Sylver's Social Media SUCCESS & Building WEALTH: https://youtu.be/h6ToLKH7Y5Q Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k --- The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money. If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1 Dan Fleyshman, The Money Mondays Learn more here: https://themoneymondays.com Watch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k Let’s Connect... Website: https://themoneymondays.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091 Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondays LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/ TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondays FB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/
Chapter 1: How did Josh Luber build StockX into a billion-dollar company?
At the end of 21, after we got our licenses, we did a round that valued the company at $10 billion, and I was the only employee of the company. When I left StockX, we had 1,400 employees. What? Yeah. I've been in this industry now for 10 years. I mean, all these things are the same, right? Sneakers, trading cards, watches, handbags, toys.
And so now, after having run a marketplace, after having run a brand and licensing, I get to create a brand myself and then take all the learnings from sneakers and from trading cards and apply it to collectible toys.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the money Mondays. We have our RV motor harm parked here in Beverly Hills, California, but our guests flew from across the country. So I'm really excited to have him here. He has an illustrious career and a lot of the same exact categories that I've invested in. I've spent a lot of time in.
And so with these podcasts, as you know, we keep them under 40 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes. The average workout is 45 minutes. So this podcast will be between 34 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. We're going to cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.
Now, along the way, this guy's worked on some of the most household name companies in history, and he's building a brand new one right this second, which you might be able to see if you're watching on YouTube right next to us, his next company. So without further ado, Mr. Josh Luber, please give us a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.
Thanks for having me. I didn't know I was doing a 200 bio. We do the 30-second bio. I am an entrepreneur. I've started and run many companies. The two that are most well-known are StockX, which we started in 2016, and I left at the end of 2020. Fanatics Collectibles, which is a trading card business with Fanatics, which we started in 2021, and I left at the end of 2022.
And currently running the newest and what I hope will be the longest 10-year business, which is Go Straight.
Bam!
That was quick. We got right into it. Amazing.
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Chapter 2: What lessons did Josh learn from his entrepreneurial journey?
And look, people love sneakers, but most people there, to your point, are some form of a small business. Right. They are there because they can either buy or sell on one side or the other. Because you can buy sneakers at StockX. You can buy them on eBay. You can buy them in a million other places, right?
It's about being a part of that live marketplace that's happening at that moment in that place. That's why they're there. It's almost like the old trading pits, you know, the New York Stock Exchange.
Right. eBay is who bought SneakerCon.
Yeah.
That's who came in. Yeah. All right. So along the path, when did sports cards, comic books, when did that become part of your life?
Yeah, I mean, like all of us, right? I mean, I collected cards as a kid. I am 46, so 1991 was my bar mitzvah, and as my bar mitzvah present from my parents was 1952 Topps, Willie Mays. So that was kind of like the peak of my childhood.
But I was like everyone, collected cards during the junk wax era, et cetera, put them all away when I went away to college, and kind of always sat in the back of my parents' closet. At StockX, we launched in 2016, blew up at the end of 2017. 2018 was about growth. 2018 was about, okay, what other products can we put on this site to grow the business?
And so I was just always looking for what other products. We added collectibles that year, we added bare bricks, we added... Supreme, Streetware, and I started looking at trading cards. I started looking at cards myself, personally, and for the business.
Being in Detroit, I had been talking to all the people in the industry, and Steve Sloan, who at the time I think was the president of PSA, says, oh, you're in Detroit? You gotta meet this guy, Jason Koontz. He lives in your backyard. And you obviously know him well. And he became my Sherpa back into the industry. You know, he'd obviously been collecting cards this entire time.
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Chapter 3: Why is it important to balance a job while starting a business?
nationally knew about rumble and that garnished the attention of exponential fitness so we at the time again we didn't have as big of a runway in a war chest but we had this incredible brand so we needed to add gasoline to the fire so i would say that it worked out because but that was never our goal.
So sometimes you just got to roll with the punches and we rolled with the pandemic punches, so to speak. And that led us to negotiations with Exponential. And now they've kept our signature stores, but we've rolled out this boutique model, which is the big signature stores in New York, LA, San Francisco, DC, Philly, Chicago, Those are 6,600 square foot flagship stores.
That's where the soul of the brand is really built in these big cities. And then we scaled out the franchise model, which is a 2,200 square foot, smaller footprint, a little bit more financially digestible for these franchisee owners. And my job now is to keep that soul alive as much as possible as we scale. So it was a way where we could, again, for me, I wanna bring this to every household.
I wanna bring it to every neighborhood because I know the emotional and physical and the benefits that it brought to me. So I want this everywhere.
So then you go from 14 to 80-ish. Yes. And then, Al, you've got potentially 200, 250 locations on the horizon. What changes in a corporation when you start to get from the crew, right? The crew that's building 14 locations that you can name them all to becoming a large-scale corporation? Yeah.
You use a lot of corny office jargon, I'll tell you that. Thank you. Yeah. No, but it's necessary. I get it. Listen, we got SOPs now. Before when it's 13 and then your boy's just doing some cool things like- You can't spell SOP. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
So like, you know, now you just have to have much more structure or, you know, you're going to end up like McDonald's selling hot dogs, you know, at the McDonald's. And obviously there's going to just inherently be some dilution, but it's- To me, my main mission is to keep it as authentic as possible so that we honor the original promise of what Rumble was built off of.
Because trust is a huge thing for me, especially in business. I want people to come into this space feeling what I felt when I first entered my group fitness experience that got me out of my own head.
So I think the only thing that changes is now instead of being able to make instantaneous decisions, you gotta have a meeting about the meeting and then you gotta have a meeting about that meeting and then you have a four hour meeting to talk about the recap of the meeting that you just had before nothing gets, no, I'm kidding. Things get done. So there's a much bigger timeline.
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