#122 - Not Getting These Jobs Cost Us Millions

Uh-huh. Yeah.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

Like, feeling like gold.

I don't wanna hide it.

All right, we're Gucci. What's up, Sam? How are you?

Hey, our friend Noville just hopped on the podcast. We were checking in with him. The summary, it seems like, is we Except for Shawn, many of the crew is going to be in Austin in the next 2 weeks, 3 weeks.

Yeah, that's exciting. I'm kind of rooted in here now. So my whole family lives here, so I'm like, okay, I'm not going to move for like tax reasons or whatever reasons. I want to be around my family. If your family's not here, there's no point in being in the Bay Area right now.

I think that what I've learned doing this whole Airbnb thing— I'm in Nashville now, I was in Utah, I was in all these places— having your family and friends around you is significantly better than being in a cool place by yourself.

For sure. Absolutely. People always ask me, 'cause I lived in all these different cities, right? I think I've lived in like 10 or 12 different cities around the world, whatever, Jakarta and Australia and stuff like that. And people are like, oh, which one was your favorite? It doesn't matter. It's just based on like who my 4 friends were when I was there. That dictated my whole experience. It's like, city's fine. You know, city was best, but who cares?

You lived in China. I would be interested in China. I would be really interested right now in moving to Japan for a little while, even if I didn't know anyone. I think the Japanese are so cool. You didn't live in Japan, did you?

No, but when I lived in Beijing, I played sports. And the weird thing when you go to international school, I didn't realize this, but you don't like play sports against other schools locally. You play against other international schools. So when we would, we'd have like an away game, we would go to Osaka and we would go play against the Osaka International School, or we'd go to the Philippines for an away game. And you would go and you actually live with the family of the player on the other team. So So you live with them and then you play against them in there 2 or 3 times and you fly back together. It's like an amazing thing.

So last episode you said something that shocked me. You said, you referred to corona as like the Chinese virus and you made a couple slights towards China. You've lived in China. Are you anti-China?

No, I was mocking, I'm anti-Trump. I was just mocking Trump.

How long did you live in China? 2 years. So like, we're not talking about the Chinese, obviously. We're not talking about the people in general. Because obviously, of course, you're not anti that, but are you—

I just come out as racist on this episode.

I'm like, yeah, I haven't told you guys yet, but are you, um, are you, uh, I mean, I'm relatively anti—

I had the same thing, same thing I was saying earlier. I had an amazing time when I lived in Beijing because I had amazing friends and we had a blast.

Were they Chinese or international?

They were other international students at that school, some of which were Chinese and some of which were from Sweden and other places. If I was gonna go live somewhere, I'd never go live in Beijing, right? It's like super crowded, super polluted. There's no like natural beauty really in the surroundings. There's no like kind of oceans or beaches or mountains that you can really see or speak of. And like the food is hard, the language is hard. Like it's just like not an easy place to go live. Whereas like Australia was like completely pleasant and easy and like it felt like a vacation. So I would be anti going and living in China again, unless I had a really strong reason to. But I had a blast when I was there just because of my kind of social situation.

When COVID started getting popular in December, I had this Chinese intern named Hung who worked for us. And in December he was like, "Man, my parents live outside of Wuhan and they're telling me about how bad this is. It's gonna come. It's gonna be here." I go, "Hung, okay, whatever." And then in January he goes, "It's so bad. It's gonna be here." I go, "Hung, this is America, okay? We don't have SARS and bird flu. We don't do this. We don't wear masks.

That's a Beijing thing." And then you were right about that. We don't wear masks.

And then in February he goes, it's here, watch, it's going to shut it down. And I go, whatever, you're so wrong. And then finally in March I was like, Hung, I'm sorry, you were, you were so right. And he was telling me, he goes, my mom and dad are texting me from Wuhan. They're telling me all about it. I go, whatever, dude. It's like the cold. It's a cold. And anyway, it was pretty funny. So we like, he totally like predicted this. You want to get into some ideas?

I am scared. Oh, love it. I can see you added a bunch. All right, give me one.

I like this one as well. I also, I like how when you go to getaway.com, it's like escape from, like that's instead of like, where, you know, like, where are you traveling from? It's like escape from Atlanta, escape from Boston, escape from New York. Yeah, we've seen this trend. There's also Rent the Backyard. So I think it looks like Obodu and Rent the Backyard are doing the same thing, which is their pitch is not like outdoorsy or whatever. Theirs is put a little prefab unit in your backyard, you know, your own little in-law unit that you can use to live in or rent out. And, um, so you could turn your backyard into an Airbnb without having guests come into your house.

And we've actually written about this on Trends. We wrote about it. When did we write about this? We wrote about this September 2020. So somewhat recently, very recently. And we were looking at backlink data where we were looking at searches. So it was something like a quarter of a million people were searching for modular homes a month. There's Dwellito, which is an online marketplace for modular homes recently launched. There's just a bunch of interesting stuff about these modular homes. We call them— the cute name for millennials or young people, Gen Z, is tiny homes. But when I grew up, we called them trailer homes. I think this is so cool. Maybe I should do it, buy a plot of land in Austin and get one of these modular homes. I think you can get a mortgage on them too.

Yeah, they're not that expensive. How much are they? I think they're like $100 grand, $50 grand less.

$200,000 for this new startup one.

And if you look at Dwellito, it looks like these are like $80 grand, uh, roughly.

I was attracted to this is, you know Kid Rock? Of course you know Kid Rock. I remember reading this article about him when it was pretty funny. He bought this huge plot of land in rural Alabama on a lake, and it was like beautiful plot of land. He's like, I just wanted to get away because he lives in Nashville. He's like, I just want to get away and have my own plot of land. And he goes, I was going to build this big old house, and I was just driving on the road and I seen a trailer park, like a modular home salesperson, like a lot that sold them. And he goes, I'll just buy one of them to put on my land while I wait for my home to be built. And he put this 1,500-square-foot trailer home there and he was like living in it. And he's like, oh, this is great. This is perfect. I don't need anything else. I don't need any more space. This is exactly what I need. And I was like, damn, that actually is pretty cool. Maybe we should do that.

I'm with you. I like this trend. Personally, I wouldn't build in this, in this space because I don't know enough. And I just think that it's like, there's an authenticity that comes from people who really like this lifestyle or have a background in this lifestyle or want this lifestyle. So I personally wouldn't build in it. What do you think? Or do you think there's any opportunities here? So what, where would you get— let's say you're like, like you, you're into this trend, so you're like, okay, I might buy one of these and live in it slash rent it out. So that's like a simple opportunity. Would you start a startup in this space? What do you think are some of the open, open opportunities?

Yeah. I like it. Uh, I like backyard offices. I think that's pretty, pretty smart because that what you could do there is basically you could have one and then you could make it a co, you know, a mini distributed coworking space. You could sell the backyard office. Then you could basically make it where you have the outdoorsy type of landing page where somebody can come and search for a backyard office near them that they can go work out of. You can turn people into little mini WeWork landlords.

Robert Leonard: I also need to check my perspective. I don't know if it's because I'm doing it and therefore I think everyone's doing it. I don't know if it's because we're these yuppie city dweller startup nerds and a lot of people are doing it. But I do think that there's this idea of people our age or younger not wanting to permanently live somewhere and not wanting to buy a home and not wanting to own a lot of stuff. Yeah.

I agree. And then for the listeners and you, Sean, there's this town that I almost invested a small amount of money in, and I didn't do it. It's called Cerro Gordo, C-E-R-R-O space G-O-R-D-O, Cerro Gordo. And Nathan Barry, the guy who owns ConvertKit, a few of my friends that I've just met over the years, just internet entrepreneur type folks, Ryan Holiday. Do you remember a ghost? It went viral in 2013 or '14. It was a ghost town that went viral on all the blogs and it said you can now buy a ghost town in California for $1.2 million. Do you remember that?

No, but I've, I heard about it later. I didn't hear about it at the time.

So my friend Ryan and all these guys, my friend John was like the ringleader, him and Brent, and they were trying to get like $10,000 to $25,000 ahead and we were all going to pitch in and buy this town. And I backed out, but a lot of people did it and they bought this ghost town and it's like 400 acres. It's like 4 hours from LA and it's very hard to get to, but it's beautiful. It's so beautiful. And there's, it's an old ghost town from the 19— probably 1880s is when it was built. And, uh, it's so beautiful and pretty. Well, anyway, the guy named Brent, Brent runs this thing called the Daily Stoic with Ryan Holiday. It's a cool business. He has been living there, I think, for the whole bit of COVID So starting in March, he went out there and he's currently retrofitting it by himself in the middle of nowhere, turning it into like a getaway town that people can rent. And I think it's really interesting and fun. And he has a YouTube channel that you guys should all check out and you could watch it in real time of what he's doing. It's so fascinating.

This is amazing. I love this story and I want to go watch that and see what's going on. And you haven't been there yet?

No, but John Byer, who has asked me to come on this podcast, we'll have to get him on. He's been asking me constantly. But did you see the photos of what this place looks like?

Well, I see the photos where it was like a ghost. Like, I see these black and white photos. I don't know what it looks like now.

So one of the places burned down, unfortunately. But this guy, it's such a, like, romantic story.

Brent Underwood. Is that him?

This is amazing. Uh, also quick update. Remember we talked about, um, Nathan Resnick from Sourcify doing the bubble hotels, which I bailed on.

So this guy Nathan, he has his business. He pitched a hotel business where it was like a bubble that you could rent, and it's pretty cool, but I didn't think he was going to focus on it full-time, so I bailed. But go ahead.

Yeah. I think that's a very simple way to understand the importance. Of what that is.

I think that you love these ideas and I struggle to grasp them because they're very innovative and they're very not straightforward. To me, that's hard to understand. Can you explain to me more?

So let's say The Hustle. Let's say The Hustle was a publicly listed company Instead of people betting on The Hustle based off of— instead of buying your stock because I think your stock price is going to go up, and I think it's going to go up because other people are going to buy it, and you're going to announce some new products and all this good stuff— if it was literally just a prediction market that says, will The Hustle have over or under $15 million in revenue? And then you just say, like this year, for example, it is a verifiable, measurable metric. And if I am bullish that, man, I think The Hustle's got a great team, I think this product they launched is going to do really well, I think they're going to go over over. I can bet on the over and somebody else can bet on the under, and then I can make money on the hustle, you know, as a prediction market rather than as a stock market.

How is this any different than just— I mean, this is just gambling.

It's gambling, but it's gambling on the outcomes of companies rather than on horses or sports, right? Right. You can't do this today, you know, so it's an old solution to sort of an old problem in a way. But then why wouldn't I just buy stock in Tesla if I'm betting So this is the big gripe a lot of people have about Tesla because they're like, okay, Tesla can literally report a bigger loss this quarter and the stock goes up. And they're like, what the fuck? What is going on? Like, did you not read the numbers? Like, just because Elon went and did a cool presentation about some, you know, self-driving and he says it's going to be here by Christmas and everyone goes and buys it, like, it would have been better if you could actually—

smokes weed on Joe Rogan, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Why is the price fluctuating based on these things rather than how many cars got bought? And, um, you know, and so you don't want to value the whole company money on that, right? Because some companies have such high prospects that you'll say, okay, I will bet that in the future, they'll be worth more than they're producing today. So it's not like you don't want their valuation to be based on it, but it would be nice to be able to just bet on this, which I think crypto is trying to do in a way. There's these different prediction market things that are really complicated.

I like that. I think it's cool. I'm into it. I think that's pretty innovative and pretty interesting. That's cool. I think that's a hard-ass business to make happen, Because you have to— man, I don't even want to talk about it because I'm so ignorant, but I guess you just have to be really good oddsmakers, or do you—

Well, yeah. So you could be oddsmakers, or the market will also settle, right? So if a whole bunch of— it's just like normal odds. So a bookie tries to place the bets, place the odds at a marker that will draw action, and then it corrects. So if everybody's betting the over, then the number goes up automatically. So then less people start betting the over because the number went up.. And so you would just need to do that just like a normal betting service.

That's interesting. Who's this Tommy guy?

I have no idea. There's no bio. And, uh, but got a 4-letter handle with the verified check and 50,000 followers.

So probably, yeah, this idea, probably somebody I should know. This idea could go viral and I would do it immediately if I was ever going to do it because the Robinhood nerds who are into this shit are like rabid right now.

Right. Uh, which is hilarious. There's a great little blog post, by the way. That I recommend you check out. There's this guy, he actually works at Amazon, and he writes this thing called The Flywheel. It's a Substack. He did this great article about breaking down the Robinhood business model. Just check it out. Do you know how— I think you know this, but I would say most people don't. Do you know how Robinhood makes money?

No, I don't. I don't know anything about it.

I'm not criticizing them, but on first instinct, my bullshit detector alarm just goes off so hard where I'm like, Why not just— like, why overcomplicate things? Why— like, can that actually work? Why not just charge the retail investor money?

Because their hook to get users was, hey, it's free to trade here, right? That's how they grow.

Yeah, but my whole thing, what I thought they were going to do was just do that for a while and then be like, all right, now we're charging you money.

It was like, look, you know, I don't know what an option is.

I have a very loose understanding. I've made and lost a few thousand dollars doing it, but just for fun. But like, I don't try to do this. But what they do is they're like, hey, you can already borrow this much margin, right? Because for an option trade, you put down a dollar, but you're buying or selling $4 worth of the stock or $10 worth of the stock. And so that loan essentially that you're taking, Robinhood is like pretty happy to give those out because they want more people doing options trading.

Do you think that Robinhood is a net positive or a net negative to the world? And do you care?

I don't care at all. I think it's like everything. It's got positives and negatives. I don't know where it nets out. It's hard to say. If I was going to bet, I would say it nets out positive because I think that I'm of the mindset that, look, it's on the person, not the platform, to make decisions for themselves. If people go and they make bad decisions, I don't blame the casino for people losing money gambling.

I blame the person. I agree with you, but that doesn't mean I want to support it.

Yeah, sure. That's a personal decision. I don't know. I would invest in Robinhood, for example. I would have no problem investing in Robinhood, just like I'd have no problem investing in a casino.

Speaking about investing and making money, let's play a game. And it's gonna call up, how much money would I have made if I weren't an idiot?

Okay.

So you, do you remember your job offer? Because they would have said like, here's how much stock you got. Do you have like an email that's like, here's the stock you got, here's the strike price.

No, I've deleted it. I, I deleted it. Yeah, I know. It was because I was using, I was using GoDaddy as like my email service provider and like they have like a 1 gigabyte limit. I can maybe find it. I was 21 or 22, so I, I think I was using my Belmont University student ID or whatever. Anyway, I think I was getting paid an hourly rate of $25 an hour and I don't think I would have gotten stock, but I think I would have eventually. When I got that job, my mom and dad were like, what is Airbnb? This sounds like a scam. And does it have health insurance? You know, I didn't know anything about anything, but if I got in there, I probably would have figured it out. You think I would have made money off this?

Probably. For sure. Um, if you had stayed. Now you might've gotten itchy and left. So I think that's always a piece of it. I had a very similar situation. I think I've told the story where I just pulled up the email. So September 2012, I did the first job interview I've ever done in my life. I've only done, I think, like probably 3 total in my life, and this one was with Stripe. So Stripe in 2012. So basically I interviewed because I thought, hey, Stripe, this seems like an awesome company. I think this company is going to do well. I interview and I reach out, and the guy who gets my email to reach out, it turns out, like, on my resume that I had sent in, I had like a few references. I was like, this guy's my mentor. And he was like, that guy's my mentor too. I called him. And he speaks extremely highly of you. And this guy, this mentor guy, loved me. Like, he put a blog post out that said, this guy has the highest bias to action of any entrepreneur I've ever met, or something like that, or any entrepreneur I've met in the last 5-10 years. So I had like the shoo-in of shoo-ins, and then I like totally blew the interview. Like, they had this, you know, test of like, kind of like, sell me this pen, and I fucked it up. I think I've told the story before, so I'll skip it now. But I think at that time, I don't know what Stripe would have been worth.

I have it, I have it. Yeah, okay, so what, what month was your, um September. Okay. In February 9, 2012, they raised $18 million at a $100 million valuation. I don't know if they raised immediately after that, but let's just assume that it was $100 million. What are they worth now?

Okay, so I don't feel as bad as mine. I just Googled mine. In October 2012, Airbnb had a valuation of $2.5 billion. So they were already big, but if they go public at $50 billion, that would be 20x. So low 7 figures. I think if you worked there that whole entire time, I think you personally wouldn't have made 10 to 20.

Yeah. Which is crazy because that job wasn't like some sick job. It was like, I was going to be like a biz dev person on the like sales, outbound sales team or some shit like that.

Like, yeah, but what would happen is you would have gotten in there, you probably would have excelled and then you would have climbed your way up.

That's what I would like to think. I think probably I would have just stayed on that path because I would have been like, wow, this, this is easy. Yeah, let me keep doing this. But it doesn't matter because I blew the interview. And honestly, like, you know, they didn't even offer you a job. No, no, that's what I'm saying. I had the biggest shoe-in going into the interview. It was like, to me, it was like a formality. And then I fucked up the, uh, interview so badly that like he was like, it's not a fit.

Uh, how many people worked there?

I don't know. I think it was like 50 people, but it might have been 100 or 150 people.

Did you interview with the, with the Collision brothers?

Collison and, uh, what's her name? Collison. Yeah.

Patrick, I thought it was collision.

Fuck me. That would have been cooler. Uh, no, I interviewed with this guy Benjamin.

Um, but ask him, ask Ben how much money he made.

I actually DM'd him the other day and I was like, hey man. Uh, and he didn't reply. I think I, I DM'd him. Let's see what I said. I said, hey, you're still at Stripe. That's amazing. You probably don't remember this, but I interviewed there 6 or 7 years ago. You know, I'd been referred by our shared mentor. And I said, "It didn't end up working out, but it was all for the best. I went on a totally different journey. Just wanted to say hi." And then this fucker didn't even say hi. What's going on here?

So the guy who fired me at Airbnb—

And by the way, his thing says he's on sabbatical. That's like you've been at some company that did really well for 5, 6 years and you're like, "I'm going on sabbatical for a year." The guy who fired me applied to work at The Hustle as an executive.

And, uh, I'm, I was cool with them. It's my fault. I, I got, I lied and he caught it and he was like, I have to do this. But, uh, I'm still buddies with the guy who fired me.

What were you saying, Ibrahim? Uh, September 2012, Stripe had 32 employees. I thought I was missing out on like a $5 million prize until this conversation. And now I realize it's probably more like a $20 million prize.

So in 2011, I had heard about this company that was making like a cab business. It was called UberCab and they had this job position called a city launcher. And I was like, Dude, I'm so competent. I could— you could— they could send me to Germany and I not know a single person and I will get people to use this thing. I was so confident. They didn't interview me, but in my head I'm like, what would have happened if I got that? And then by the way, we'll play this game one more time. I actually interviewed at Vungle. I interviewed with Jack Smith of Vungle and Zane, who are— Jack Smith's now my best friend, and I interviewed at his company and he sold it for $800 million. We became friends 3 years later. He didn't even remember interviewing me. And they turned me down. He said no. He said no. I got to the final interview and he said no, and I didn't get the job. And now we're best friends. And that's— so I always joke with people. I'm like, if you want to know a good company, good startup to invest in, just figure out where I apply, then I get turned down, and just invest there.

I think we're probably both on this. Maybe, I don't know if me more than you or you more than me, but we're both on this idea of like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get it done. And I think that you can brute force your way to some sort of financial success and happiness. Like, I think that if you spent 10 years and took a risk and worked hard, you will make $1 million, right? But I will be the first to acknowledge that some number beyond that, which I don't know what it is, It is very, very— it's luck.

There's a lot of variance, right? Like, even just if I think about when we sold the company, the number could have been zero. It was like, it could have very easily crapped out at zero, or it could have been double what we got. And I think we ended up on the high range of like where we— like, I think we maximized what could have been or should have been out of that. But I'm like, man, that was just one scenario of many, you know, many rolls of the dice that I've done in the last 10 years. These situations, they have such a huge amount of variance. The good thing that I take out of that is like, well, I want to develop myself and my skills so that I'll have some level of success if I stay at it for 10 years. Then I don't want to stress and compare myself to others because, look, there is a huge amount of variance and luck that's outside of your control. So don't get fixated on the exact numbers, just keep playing the game for as long as you can. Eventually, the luck, it'll break your way. If you play for long enough.

Yeah, and I completely agree with that. Do we want to go over anything else?

I have one more question that's sort of like that. The only scenarios I could see myself not being as successful is if I had stayed on a more traditional path of just a job path, um, because I think it's very hard to get wealthy from a normal job. We're talking about, oh, if I took this job at Stripe— well, Stripe was like probably the top 4 or 5 investments, uh, of the last decade. So like, yeah, being an, you know, average employee, being a biz dev rep over there, I still would have somehow ended up with a lot of money there.. But most jobs that I could have taken would not have done anything like that. Do you think it was inevitable that you were going to be an entrepreneur? Like, did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? I kind of feel like I fell into it. I didn't, I didn't really consciously decide until I was already doing it.

Yes, I would have done it no matter what, but I would not have done the internet. I would have, I think that I'm, I would have owned a small store, like a corner store or a gas station or, um, uh, yeah.

What switched your path to digital businesses?

Internet? I met a guy named Casey Smith. So when YouTube came out, Did I tell you about this? I used to make $50 a month because I would— I feel horrible saying this, but I'll be honest. I remember these videos because if you typed in the word, you would type in words and it would autofill. So one of the words, I don't know how I typed in the word black, autofill to like black guy beats up white guy. And then if you autofill, if you type in the word white, it was white guy beats up black guy. And so I would make these YouTube videos that just had a plain picture and then I would make ad money on it. And some of the videos got millions of views. And so once I made $50 a month doing that, I was like, oh, the internet's cool. And then I met a guy named Casey Smith and he taught me how to buy my own domain name. And then I created an online store and was making money. And that's when it changed. But prior to that, I was, I would use eBay and Craigslist to sell stuff. And I would imagine that I would have opened up a restaurant or some type of small town thing.

Yes.

I would have done that no matter what, because that's what my mom and dad did. You know, my mom and dad, Their business that they still own to this day, it started as a fruit stand and eventually grew to be something beyond that. But— and they were always encouraging me to do this stuff.

So that's interesting. So you knew, okay, owning a business or starting a business is the way. Your parents did it. That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. But by the way, they didn't call it like starting a business. It was just, this is just what you do to make a living, right?

Every single person in my family, every aunt, uncle, uh, except for I think one has a job. And almost all of them were like engineers who got an engineering job at some company. And it was like, The question wasn't, what are you gonna do? Like, are you gonna start a business? Are you gonna do this? It was like, what job are you gonna get? And is it a good job or a bad job? And so I didn't even think about starting a business until it was like, I had accidentally started one. And then I was like, oh shit, okay, this is cool. And I started to meet people who did that as their life. And that like, you know, my version of Casey Smith, but like, isn't it funny how like Casey Smith, who the hell is Casey Smith? And like, what if you hadn't met Casey Smith on that day? You know, like a lot of this stuff feels inevitable, but it really wasn't.

Yeah. And I was just listening to this Chamath. What's that guy's name? Is that his name?

Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya.

He was talking about the thing that changed with him was he was an intern at a multi-billion-dollar company and he was walking to work and one of the VPs saw him walking to work and picked him up in the car. And it just so happened that the VP was carpooling with the CEO and they're like, "Hey, we'll just drive you to work every day." And Chamath says like, then like the word billionaire came up and he was like, Chamath was like, what's a billionaire? You can have $1 billion. And that is when he was like, that changed my life. And I think about that all the time. And I'm like, having a community is so important and you have to be purposeful about it. Or, I mean, you could get lucky like I did and what he did, but having a community like these Gen Z mafia people, that's so important that they have that community.

Yes. We should probably move this to the beginning because it can be, this is going to be interesting. I should have started with this. Something very interesting happened to me that I wanted to tell you about. I got to be careful about how much I say because I can't say too much and maybe I'll have to bleep out some later. So a very interesting opportunity came my way in the last few days. Okay, so what's the situation? So close family friend has a very, very large collectible card collection of a type of card that I had never even heard of before called— do you know what that is?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so they have a card collection of a lot of that, plus like, you know, Star Wars and Simpsons, like a whole bunch of like kind of collector stuff, collectible items, mostly cards. And, um, we're talking like a multi-million dollar collection of millions of cards. And due to the person's personal reasons, so, you know, health and other, they have to offload this. And so, you know, because this is a close family friend Long story short, I have the opportunity to sell this very large collection of items.

Are you going to buy them or you're going to help him? Is it like the person on the internet person and you're just going to help them sell them and they'll give you a cut?

Yeah, something like that. So basically the idea is how the hell do I sell this collection that if you, if you, if you went in and you took the best cards and you sold them individually on the internet, if you just look at the eBay mark value right now, this is like a fucking dollar collection.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

What? Yes. And so you can't sell all these cards, like it's just too much. So you can't sell them all at the eBay mark value, right? Like, you know, that's, you know, if it's like, if you took one card that sells for $10,000, he has like that card. And so, you know, you can't sell them all at the $10,000 card price. So almost certainly it'll sell for a fraction of that. But the question is, what's that fraction? And also, how the hell do I sell this? And so What comes to mind? I don't know, help me brainstorm. I can only say some limited details there, so help me brainstorm. How would you go about this? So you have 3 choices. One, you totally ignore this opportunity, it's a distraction, you move on with your life. Number 2, you look into it and you try to see how might you actually get some value out of this, uh, how would you actually like sell this collection. And the third is like you go balls to the wall and you're like, I'm gonna find a way to make a few million dollars in the next few months off this lucky bounce.

Let's go with the easiest option, which is an auction. So you— I would use Heritage Auctions or Christie's or Sotheby's. Is it called Sotheby's?

Sotheby's.

Sotheby's. Um, I would use one of those three auction houses, but you would probably not get a premium because it's a bulk thing, but it would probably be the easiest, right?

And also because we're talking cards. They're not like graded, as they say, or, you know, they're not all verified and graded yet because it would cost you an absolute fortune to grade a million plus cards, right? And this is like more than that, and it would take a long time to do it. So these are like, you know, they're good because this person's been a collector for 20 years, they're like a staple in the community. But you know, when you sell these items, you typically need to go get them graded first. So even just grading, like, how many items Does he have in the collection? So even just holding the collection is an expensive endeavor. Uh, they've been doing this for a long time. They put in a lot of money.

Oh my God, what an interesting problem. Could you go to— so, like, you kind of alluded it to being maybe more than just you sell it back to the Topps company.

Why can't you be? Like, this is such an interesting concept that why wouldn't this get popular on YouTube?

I don't know.

I think it would have to be a production.

It would take a lot of time and energy to like make a big ruckus about this, right? So I'm looking— I don't want to spend months of my life doing this. I'm looking to see, is there a simple path? Like, I don't want to pay for a bunch of ads to try to get people to buy this, because that's gonna be expensive in and of itself. But I think you would need, like, let's say you're doing $100, $100 mystery box, you might end up with one of these items that has— that's worth $10 grand or $20 grand inside. That's the game. If you did that, uh, you know, you'd need to sell like 50,000 or 100,000 of these mystery boxes at $100 a pop.

Yeah, I could do that.

Like it's a 48-hour bonanza. Come in person and on the phone. Kind of like there's this car company that I love called Barrett-Jackson, and they probably do this for all the auctions, but I watch Barrett-Jackson. They do it live on TV and I always watch the, the car auctions and you could call in and bid.

Yeah, like maybe there's just a livestream that I do from the venue and it's just selling it right there live for 24 hours.

I would love to do the simplest thing though of calling Christie's or one of the auction houses and be like, "Guys, here's what I have. Get your ass out here and give me some opinions." Do you actually think— be conservative, what is this person's collection worth?

But it's hard to say until you go through the inventory in more detail than anybody's ever done because it was bought 10 years ago and it's just been in a case. You have to go, you have to look at the condition of it, and you have to get it graded so that the buyer feels good about it. And then you have to, you know, figure out how you're going to sell these things. And I know nothing about cards, I should say. So, so I am a total rookie.

Is there anything more you could tell about the story of the person before you— without revealing?

No, it is very interesting, but I cannot say.

And this person is a fan?

A fan? What do you mean a fan?

Like they've just been doing this for love of love?

Yeah, they're a collector. Oh my God, this person or persons is a collector.

Do you want to answer this question? Do I know them?

You don't know them.

Do you want to, uh, dedicate an entire episode to this on Monday?

I don't know how much I could share. It's kind of the thing. I'm measuring my words right now.

Can we give the person like a voice cover-up and talk to them about it? No. Is— would this be taxed at capital gains or in income for the person?

Yeah, yeah, it would be like a long-term, uh, capital gains.

Wow. What a weird situation.

Uh, so, okay. I'm going to have to run.

I got to go now, but if you think of anything and let's have people tell us in the podcast reviews what they would do.

Right. And before we publish this to Jonathan, our editor, let me think about, let me just make sure I didn't say anything I'm not allowed to say.

Okay. Wow.

Yeah. All right.

All right. We'll see you. Okay.

See you later.