Harmony of Hustle
Jump into the World of Justin Shoemaker aka "The Waterboy" . From Business, to music, this is the inside look of the world of the hyper-driven and their Harmony of Hustle.
Harmony of Hustle
The Business of VeeFriends Topps Chrome
We explore the true business model behind successful Whatnot streaming and why treating it as an entertainment platform rather than just a card-selling venture is critical for long-term success.
• Understanding you're in the entertainment and gambling business, not just selling cards
• The importance of $1 sudden death auctions to build audience even when taking initial losses
• Why the first stage of growth is market capture rather than profit maximization
• Strategies for finding inventory deals on eBay and through bulk buys in collector communities
• Building a personal brand identity that makes you recognizable in the collectibles space
• The surprising value of going slow when building a business
• How creating scarcity and urgency drives engagement and sales
• Managing inventory with both showcase pieces and affordable options
• Creating value for viewers through deals and giveaways
• Documenting your business journey to build connection with your audience
When I reach 1,000 followers and consistently get over 100 viewers, I'll auction my Dana White auto, Skelly Sketch, or Gary V auto card for $1. That's how serious I am about building this community.
Connect with me!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/js_shoez_/
X: https://twitter.com/Shoeinvestor2
TikTok: tiktok.com/@thewater_boy_official
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@justinshoemaker9582?si=DSsbCeNl1kgH3EKK
LinkedIn: Justin Shoemaker
If, for whatever reason, it's not working, just let me know, okay, and then I'll switch back to my wifi. But the wifi has been at my house has been acting up, so I went and went ahead and went ahead and started it using my hotspot, so hopefully it works out pretty well, all right. So my name is Justin Shoemaker. I own a water treatment company out in Virginia DC, maryland. I've been running it for about three years. Prior to this, I helped build a solar company. We took that from 600,000 to 25 million in about 11 months, and then before that I was in the military. So really, what I'm trying to do now is I'm falling in love with whatnot. Virtual shopping is taking over and I really want to make this one of my main things. So I've been putting a lot of my own company resources into this to really build it, and in this podcast I talk about business stuff. Hey, good morning, cloudy, and I'm going to be talking about kind of the first month on whatnot things that I have learned, and so, for those of you who are looking at potentially doing this as a full-time business, you can also, uh, learn and hopefully get some good value out of this and uh, yeah, make this something that you know. Maybe you can have a business on, or side hustle on, um. So that's really what today's going to be I'm going to be talking about. There's just some lessons learned, um, and some maybe things that can help you, and at the end of it, I will be giving away a meticulous you things that can help you and at the end of it, I will be giving away a meticulous so I have my other camera up right here for the YouTube channel uh, the meticulous magpie. So let's talk about the business of whatnot, um, and why it's super exciting and something that I've learned from this that I have I'm bringing from my past business is understanding what business you're actually in. Okay, now, a lot of times we'll start something and then we think that that's just the business we're in, and I'm going to give you an example of this. So, um, let's use like a hairstylist, right, and let's say you have a hairstylist agency and you want to grow that agency. Well, you might say, oh, I'm in the hairstyling business, but really what you're in is in the talent and recruitment business, or I should say the recruitment and training business. Why? Because you need people with a specific skill, whether that's the hairstyles or whatever to grow your business.
Speaker 1:So, when we look at like live shopping and we look at whatnot, what are we? What business are we actually in? If we are selling on whatnot, what is the actual business that we do? It is not selling cards, in my opinion, at least from what I've seen. Uh, watching some of the biggest streams out there right now, we are in the entertainment and gambling business, and to me, yeah, live selling, but what's the actual business, in my opinion, is gambling, gambling and entertainment. I truly think this is an entertainment business, and the reason why is look at some, at least in the V friends, we're looking at some of the biggest streams that don't have like the big brand behind them, like the V friend stream.
Speaker 1:Um, and I'm going to I'm just going to plug am right, am stream is is crazy fun. Why? Cause it's a lot of action. Okay, yeah, breakthrough game. So that's perfect, thank you. So feel good, the breaks are a hundred percent gambling. Right Now.
Speaker 1:What I have found is, if you want to build something successful, people want to be entertained. Right, look at the biggest industry in the world. It's always entertainment. I'm sure a lot of people here follow Gary V. Why is Gary Vee's content which is business content so much better and why did he get so much bigger than maybe some of the other people out there? Because Gary Vee's entertaining, right, they're fun and they're entertaining. So if you're going to try to do this for real, that's how you want to see yourself, as you want to see yourself as, not just as like a breaker or someone that's doing auctions. You're actually someone here that is entertaining people, right, you're putting on a show. That's why they call them shows. So when we look at this as a business and I want to be very clear if you are trying to sell VFriends cards and you want to make money like you want to do like quote, unquote, flip life then this is very different than what I'm talking about here as far as building up the shows, because what you could do hypothetically is buy a shit ton of cards, right, buy them in breaks, buy them in auctions, have some patience, grade them and then flip them on eBay. All right, that is a longer term game, but you can make a ton of money doing that and that is a good business.
Speaker 1:But specifically talking about the live selling, live streaming thing, I look at it as the same way that I built my companies. All right, and there's really a few stages of growth. And the first stage of growth is market capture Okay, and it's learning, and I call it the what the fuck stage. Right, it's the first stage. Is what the fuck stage? Which where you're going to be trying to get as much eyeballs on what you're doing as possible and you're going to take a loss, and this timeframe could be one month, two months, a year, two years, all right, there really is no set time limit on it. And if you try to set time limits on it, that's where you make mistakes. And that's where I made mistakes in my water company. I tried to rush this like crazy. It never worked out.
Speaker 1:So, in the realm of whatnot and building that market share, the way that I've done it is by running these $1 sudden death auctions. Why? Because they're so much fun, all right, it doesn't. And if you're a small streamer, if you have a big inventory, you're you're going to take an L, especially on the first few streams. So I was watching. I think it was slow, go um. Or someone streamed the other day. He only had like 13 people watching, but you know he wanted to run the $1 auctions and he got crushed. And I, you know, was one of the guys that crushed him because he ran like a couple of refractors and he only had a couple of bucks to it. But that's how I started, too, right, a lot of you guys that are in here oh, is that you sneaker? Okay, great, so sneakers in here. Sorry, I couldn't remember who it was. I knew it was earlier than this. Right, that's how I started mine, right, I literally got crushed on every single auction I ran.
Speaker 1:But you kind of have to and you need to write it off as a marketing cost, because what you're doing is you're building the community, you're getting people to have fun and those first 10 people in the stream are the ones that are going to share the stream. And that's how you start building that cadence Like, hey, you'd run an auction, you get some killer to good deals and people are happy. This is why, personally, I am such a huge fan of the auction game, because, if you look at it in two different parallels, what will grow to the best natural extreme? The thing that gives the people the most value, and the, the, the place of that people feel like they, they, they actually have the most fun. I can tell you personally, as I've been in, I've spent thousands and thousands and thousands of breaks. Um, when I go into these big break spots and you don't hit it, you feel like shit. Or if you do a big break and then you get your mail day in and you have like four cards and you spent like $600, that doesn't feel good. And if you think about building the audience, you really can only do that so many times before they get burnt out and then their money runs dry, right.
Speaker 1:Whereas with the auctions, everyone gets deals, which is what's so great, right, when you get slaughtered on a, on on a card, or you know someone gets a really good deal like a, a Y2K for a couple hundred bucks, or someone got one of my my big mangas for like $5 one time right, like crazy good deals. Guess what that is value and people are going to want to come back. All right, you look at one of AM's biggest streams. He gets crushed on big cards all the time and people want to come back. All right, you look at one of AM's biggest streams. He gets crushed on big cards all the time and people want to come back. Right, he also wins on some, on some small stuff, right, and what you'll notice, especially on the auction game for you guys who want to start is it does balance out.
Speaker 1:And if you can keep the action high, keep people entertained, right, with small like and this is something I had to learn. Small right with small like, and this is something I had to learn. Small, 15 second short time frame, sudden death. Well, guess what? You might get crushed on some bigger cards and obviously for some of the bigger, bigger cards, let it run longer, don't do sudden death on those, but you keep running that and you get people into having a fun like swipe. Swipe, you know swipe mentality. I mean, I've done it like. I can't tell you how many times I see people just having a good time swiping, buying, buying some random card that comes up that I might not even be that interested in, but I kind of want it. Shit. I see it at $1 or $3, I start swiping and what can happen is you can start getting single base cards and single refractors. Coaches.
Speaker 1:On my last stream, I'm going to be fully transparent on everything that I do on these podcasts so you guys can learn. But on the last stream that I did on the 10th um. I think that stream cleared about 1600 bucks in total sales and I think of that I probably made about 1300 after fees. Um, not bad, considering that whole set was mainly refractors and singles. I had some black cats that ran and I had a Y2K that ran, so that was pretty good, but overall most of it was just small base singles. Okay. Yet I actually made more money on that stream than I did on some previous streams where I had bigger hits. What happened? I had more people, I ran, way more sudden death stuff and I got better at the showmanship.
Speaker 1:All right, you know one of the things that you know if you've ever been in a sales industry, and this is why, if you guys, um, if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend everyone tries to get into sales at some point. Um, I love the industry. It's what changed my life forever as far as income. Uh, but you learn so much about human behavior and one of the things that is so key in sales is the idea of scarcity right and emotional buying right. You want to create scarcity and urgency in an auction. How do you do that? Well, if you guys have big cards. Show all your big hits all right, show your big hits in the back and then start running the small stuff, right, small stuff gets people excited, gets people buying. And then show your big stuff, like, put it on the, put it on the table. Hey guys, are we ready to run this? Get feedback from the chat. Yeah, sudden death is great FOMO.
Speaker 1:And here's what's crazy about sudden death, guys, because it's so fast, like, people will set max bids in and then people will snipe at the end and a lot of times, if you get four or five people that snipe at the end, it's actually going to inflate the price. Now, what's the risk of this? You're also going to get murdered, okay, but that's what's great about this, right? Like at the beginning. And the way I look at this is your first year needs to be a wash. Like. You need to have the mentality at least like, listen, I'm not making any money for the year, I just want to build a huge community, okay, and I want people to love my streams. So when people get good deals, like, there's no point in being salty about that. And I want people to love my streams. So when people get good deals, like, there's no point in being salty about that. I'm sure we've seen the streams where people get really upset when they put a big card up and they they get a 38% hit on it. It's cool, right. That's what's going to bring people back and that's awesome, all right.
Speaker 1:Also, the giveaways right, stagger your giveaways. Um, you know, if you have low inventory, because obviously you have to build up to it Like I don't have the biggest inventory as some of these other single guys out here that's cool. Right, at the end of the stream, put up a big givey, or you know, tease a big givey, or I just have, you know, intermittently, put some bigger giveys up, but always have giveys running. It keeps people engaged. It, you know, lets people have something to look forward. Keep teasing, keep teasing those big cards and then what happens? The people that really want that card will stay and as you keep running your small ones, then you pop that big one on there. Run it Right. All right, guys, we ready. Everyone's been pent up, right, you build up this sense of urgency because people have been waiting like fuck. Finally he ran that card I've been looking at. Finally he ran that huge card and then, boom, it runs All right. Also and this is and again I'm gonna talk about what I'm I'm doing so you guys really know how this is working in real time. So, again, if this does blow up right, which I think would be super cool, if, like I can, if I can blow up this channel and, in the next three years, be one of the biggest V friend streamers on the platform, I think all this content can be super helpful because then we can disperse it and everyone can see it happen live.
Speaker 1:But I have two massive cards right. Um, well, I have three. I have a lot of big ones, but let's talk about, let's talk about these three and this is the shit I'm talking about. So I got one that's not super rare. Most people can buy it. They want to spend it Gary V auto. Dana white auto. Dana Dana White, otto and the Skelly Sketch All right, by far probably some of the three biggest cards in my collection. I mean, obviously I have like another five manga coming and some other stuff, but anyway, dana White card super hard to pull, everyone wants it.
Speaker 1:So there's a couple of ways that you can look at this, and the way I'm looking at it is what's, what am I optimizing for in this business? Is it to have the biggest collection this year or is it to build the biggest audiences? Here it's to build the biggest audience. So what do I need to do? I need to incentivize the people that come onto the shows to help me promote my show, build word of mouth. So what does that mean? I set these term goals. If you guys have been in my stream, what do I say? If I get to a thousand followers and I get to over a hundred views on a stream, I'll run a Dana at a $1 auction. Or I'll run my Skelly sketch at a $1 auction or the Gary Otto, right?
Speaker 1:So you find these really, really big things that you want and then you do a celebration for it. But always you have to. You actually have to optimize for the goal. I think that's where people get messed up, right? Everyone tries to have too many things they're trying to do and they don't optimize for the goal. If the goal was right now to optimize for more money, I wouldn't do it this way. I would grade these cards, I'd put it on eBay. But that's not the goal. The goal is to build the audience. So if your goal is to build an audience, you have to give a shit ton of stuff away and you have to also just understand, like, this isn't the season of earning, this is a season of learning. So create these big opportunities right, like I know.
Speaker 1:For me, I got lucky. I got this data card. I bought privately first weekend to VFriends. I got a huge steal on it. Right Now I would love to keep it, but what would I rather? Have more the thousand followers, and then guess what that's going to scale up to what? 2000, 3000. That goalpost continues to move.
Speaker 1:And then what happens is year two, year three. That's when you can actually start looking at making some money. Because what happens in year two? Guys, what's coming up in year two? V friends top Chrome to followups yeah, but in our community, right, we got what V friends tops Chrome two is coming up in in 2016 or 2026, right, everyone starts from somewhere.
Speaker 1:The reason why am and I want to use am because I think he's the best example of this, because he gets the most streams besides v friends. He's been running this type of stuff in the sports card world for years, so he's able to come in and just slap a shit ton of money in and create and literally create the biggest collection and show, right. Right, I just started early. I think I was the first one after AM to do singles, so that helped position me in a good spot. But, guys, there's so much more opportunity, right, there's only really two of us doing the single stuff right now at a big scale, and there's a ton of people in the community that have a huge collection, so now's really the perfect time, right, if you want to do it, now is the perfect time, because if you, you know, take this to the national extreme, like put this on a long enough time horizon over the next eight years, if you started today, you'd be one of the top, biggest streamers on the platform. Because if you look at and just so you guys can see this go, look at the sports card streams, on whatnot, just go tap in there, go to the Pokemon one, go to the the, go to the Yu-Gi-Oh ones. There's a ton of people all making money. So this the great thing about this, guys there's no competition with each other, right, we literally all can just help build this up together. And I need you guys to understand something so important this V friends thing is going to be huge, like I'm making a huge bet on Gary and the VFriends thing.
Speaker 1:Personally, I do think in the next 10 years, this will be like a Pokemon, like a Yu-Gi-Oh. I think it'll be way bigger than Yu-Gi-Oh Pokemon. It might be tough, but I do, just because of how good our community is. I do think it could absolutely happen. So in the next 10 years, why would we not want to be at the front of that? Right? Because you look at, like TikTok and Instagram and all that stuff, if you start now or let's say, you started a podcast now, like I did, I started a podcast what? Three years ago? Way harder to grow this podcast than it was. Maybe if I did this 10 years ago Now, I didn't have a business three years ago, so it wouldn't be very prevalent, so whatever. But this is just like that golden opportunity.
Speaker 1:So the name of the game, depending on what your goals are, is build that market share. So that's what I'm doing, right, that's why you'll see me in these streams. Hey, at 1K followers, at 100 views, I'm auction to continue to grow that. And then what's going to happen? What I'm going to, what I'm going to do is just and this is some inside baseball guys.
Speaker 1:Once we get to like November, december I love my Skelly collection, don't get me wrong. I'm hoping to have it graded Then it's all probably going to be gone. It's all probably going to be gone Just putting it out there, the whole thing, probably, because at that point hopefully I'll have at least a couple thousand followers, hopefully a good, solid team of guys who are always coming to my streams right, like the diehards. That's what we want to build. I want to build that community of people that love me personally, love the stream, want to support it. I want to have that consistent flow in. I want to sell the collection because that way I want to go ahead and be able to one buy some NFTs so I can get some early access to things and then get a shit ton of cases of V2 Chrome and then that way I can be one of the top breakers and auctioneers of V2 Chrome and then, from that, grow that probably continue to sell, sell, sell, sell. Then year three comes tops, chrome three comes out, do the same thing, Right, and then at that point I could probably hold some stuff and my hope is selfishly, I would love to be able to do this more full time and then not have to worry about my other water treatment business as much Um, cause I can tell you, as a business owner in the home services, this is way more fun Um being able to turn on the camera, hang out with a bunch of people uh, that are generally cool people collecting sweet cards.
Speaker 1:Like I am a collector at heart, right. So this makes it really hard for me. That's why you have to have really clear goals, because if I didn't want to build the whatnot thing, I would be hoarding every single V friend I have. You guys, if you guys watch my streams, you can see I have like a huge bourbon collection over here. I'm a collector, right, I love to collect Um.
Speaker 1:So obviously trying to optimize for building the business is a little bit more tough for me, but I absolutely, absolutely fucking love um growing businesses Um, and I gotta tell you I would love to do this um full time. So that is you know where I'm going, but what I've learned from the water treatment company and the mistakes I made there, the slower that you can actually build the thing, the oh, odd, the dang audio went out again. They were back. We're back Um, yep, I know, sorry, my, my internet is a little wonky over here, um, but the slower you can actually build the thing that you want to build, the better it's going to be. Um, and I got to tell you. That's a lesson that I learned the hard way my water treatment company, and so now, with the whatnot thing, I have literally no rush to build this. Like, I'm so cool with this going as slow as possible. Uh, because it's it's been, it's been great.
Speaker 1:So now let's put, let's put, some tactical game on for you guys. Um, cause, like, for you guys who want to do that singles and do what I'm doing, I want to give you some game. Number one please, guys, get on eBay and I need you to filter by auctions. All right, I just won today. Let me pull this up, by the way, because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in this shit. Guys, I'm a practitioner, I'm going crazy. You guys are going to see all the stuff that's working and not working. You're going to get it all for free. I'm putting it out to the community. Those that want to fucking come crush it. Let's go crush it. Check this out, guys.
Speaker 1:This is actually in the chat. I just want to see Mindful Minikawa Manga Put the number in the chat what you think that should go for. Just without looking it up, if you were to buy it as a buy now, $25, $30. Cool, on an auction, $30. Yeah, what it should go for Generally $28. Y2k, mindful, minikawa, alright. So $15 to $30. Yeah, I got it for 750, 750, 750 guys now on an auction. If you again, when you have a bit of an audience and you build that connection dude, if I ran that right now on one of my streams at $1 sudden death, that thing at a minimum is going for $15, right. If you got a Minikawa Maxi in there, it's going for $30 to $40. If he's going to punch a bunch of people bidding because people are having a good time, it might go for higher, right, savage. So go on eBay. You're going to sort by auction, sort bay. You're going to sort by auction, sort by ending soon, all right, sort by ending soon and literally go hit the heart on there so you can save every single auction.
Speaker 1:Now, the, the, the. The trick is you got to look for deals, right? Because what I'm trying to do is I want to make sure that it's like it's like a business buying inventory. I want to buy inventory that I can then resell for higher or at least, if I get crushed, I'm not losing that much money because, like, like we talked about, the idea is not to make money, it's just to stay in business and build the community. So let's say that Minikawa on a stream now goes for $9. I'm cool with it.
Speaker 1:I made two bucks on it. The person that bought it is super, super happy, right, like it's a, it's a, it's a circle that works out well. Also, you'll find some banger deals and you can get a ton of base cards. Um, actually I'll say eBay is a little overpriced for the base cards, but uh, you can absolutely uh find these steals on there. So it does take a lot of work.
Speaker 1:Like I, I spent all night, so when I'm in bed, that's all I. All I do is scroll eBay and I just start saving stuff and then you know if things are too expensive or it's not a good deal. You pass on it. You got to be very particular with that. Also, I will buy my really expensive cards from there and make these like crazy offers to try to get them. That's how I got my my of five skeleton.
Speaker 1:I got an of 25 things like an OG ox for like 40 bucks, right, because some people just don't you know, no, they might just be casual collectors and then you want to offload it and you know, as a singles guy, what do I need and what do you guys need? One you need big hits. You want to have big hits on the wall so you can show it to them. But what you guys also need is stuff that you like single, small, single, small cards. So I me, as I'm, again, I'm trying to show you in my game what I'm doing. I'm trying to build both up because I need to make sure when I do a stream, I have big cards to throw off, because that's that's the dichotomy of, and, I guess, the difficulty. There's always difficulty in different industries, right, and different whatnot platforms. So you have your break.
Speaker 1:You're going to have, uh, constraints as a breaker, constraints as an auctioneer or a singles guy. Our constraint as a singles guys is how do I keep good inventory that people want to buy and then how do I have the small stuff to kind of pad that out, okay, so one thing I did get really good on eBay was like a complete base set, completely organized. So for you guys who want to save my next stream. I'm going to be auctioned off a complete V friends base set for $1. How cool is that? Right Banger shit. That's stuff you want to find, um. But for you guys who need to start building that collection if you don't have it already, um, if you're not in the V friends discord, there is a marketplace there and I have been basically just promoting that. I'm buying in bulk. So if any of you guys are in the discord, you probably see me doing that.
Speaker 1:Um, when, when you're doing these bulk buys, you're going to need to negotiate for low cost per card. Um, keep in mind you are going to be. For this to make sense, you do have to buy under market value. So you're going to get a lot of people telling you know, because obviously they're going to want to get full price for their cards. Maybe, right, me and Marshall. I'll be honest with you not to be not to be mean, but I want to buy at least at a 60% discount, right, and I'll buy in bulk to get even more. So I ideally if you, if you have the money to do it I try to get my base card price at around 30 to 40 cents a card. Now, to do that, I gotta be buying upwards of 800 cards plus. Otherwise it's really not fair to the seller. But the benefit is you get a huge deal on the card.
Speaker 1:The seller gets a way to liquidate their collection quickly, because that's what you're offering You're offering speed. Could they sell those cards for more? Yeah, I think the fair market rate for a base card is between 90 cents to maybe a bit above, a bit above a dollar. However, that takes a lot of work. Uh, you got to post individuals on eBay or on whatnot. And people let's be real, a lot of people are not. Unless you're doing $1 auctions, there's not a lot of market people who are just like, okay, I'm going to go through and I'm going to buy these individual cards, right, it's just doesn't happen that often. So it's really really, really slow. If you have a big base collection, it's really hard to liquidate. So that's the service that you, that you offer. Okay, and there's a lot of people that I've gotten to agree to those terms.
Speaker 1:Um, and that's where I need to be, because here's the thing too, as a $1 auctioneer running sudden death streams, I also want to make sure the community can get a good deal. So if I know that I have, I'm getting these cards between 40 to 60 cents. That's kind of where my sweet spot is, and then obviously I'll go higher for like numbered cards and mangas and things like that. But if I can keep my overall cost low, then I can just give away stuff to the community. I can run bulk auctions, right. Like if you guys have seen my streams, you'll see it. All the time I'll run 20, 30 cards for a dollar.
Speaker 1:And there was one time I think I did what was it? I got crushed. I did, I think, like 30 cards at a dollar I don't think anyone's paying attention and it sold for like four bucks or something. So, literally I think it went for like less than I don't know what. It was, probably like five cents a card if you broke it down. But cool, right, that person that got that's gonna be back for life. Um, yeah, exactly, it'll be back for more and that's. And the thing is that would hurt a lot more if I spent a dollar on all those cards, cause that'd be like a $40 loss, right. So, and you want to make sure that you can at least stay healthy.
Speaker 1:Um, I think to date, on whatnot and eBay. I think I've sold probably seven to eight K's worth of cards and I'm probably 13 in 12 in, so I'm probably around I'm probably like in the red, three, four K, I reckon, um, especially cause I did buy like the iconics and stuff like that. Oh, not the iconics, the, uh, the sketch and whatnot, but you know those things hold value, right. So you know, the nice thing is you know what these really big, always, if I really had to, it was in a grind I could grade them and sell them. But, um, yeah, it's exactly, it's a long-term game, but that's kind of the, that's kind of the game, right.
Speaker 1:So you know, for guys who are starting, if you don't have a bunch of inventory, definitely, definitely do that. Uh, definitely use discord, stay on eBay to get some steals, um, because, and then just understand, you're bringing that back to to flip to the community and just have a good time. It's all about the fun. Remember, we're in the entertainment business. I think that's the biggest takeaway is, you're not in the card selling business, you're not in the collectibles business, you're in the entertainment business. You're in the show sales business. So the best shows are the ones where you have the most fun Consignmentsments.
Speaker 1:Are you trying to buy, sell your own inventory? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't mind doing consignments. Um, yeah, that'd be fine. Um, I'm down for whatever. Uh, I mean, right now I just want to. I'm trying to build, build the channel. So I'm trying to just collect as many, because if you guys see, uh, back here, my, my inventory is now completely empty. I mean, that last stream that we did, I think we had what? Probably 600 cards that we that we let go. Maybe not that many, but yeah, could be a good way to have a ton of inventory and help others all since. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm down.
Speaker 1:What's my opinion on signatures? I pulled an up 10 beetle yesterday on V friends and if they are trying to get Gary to sign it in Chicago, obviously not signing the actual card. Um, yeah, aaron, I do buy extras. Um, I try to buy extras of my rare stuff too, like my skelly stuff Also. Sorry, let me.
Speaker 1:Let me answer MJM's question. I'm going to talk about something else that's worked out really well that I think you guys should all try to do. Of the of 10 beetle, I don't think I'd have him sign the actual card. I mean it could be good because it is a Gary Otto right and that technically turns that into a one of one. But you know, I've seen where some people kind of run into some issues with that where, like, because it's such a low print number, once you get the Gary on there it can like skew the value of that card. It could do it positively or negatively because it's such a rare card I personally just great. I don't think I'd have, I don't think I'd have Gary sign that one. I normally try to have them just sign like bases, so like, for example, joel who's I don't think he's in here, but Joel won that blue cat, that blue eyes base cat, and then Gary signed it with a blue pen Stuff, like that's great, Mainly because there's so many of these cards.
Speaker 1:You know you're not devaluing the rarity of it in a way, like I would never have him sign my, like my, like my really rare of five stuff, I wouldn't have him sign it, just just in case. I want to, you know, maintain like the rarity of that card, of that value. So but now again, it could, it could increase it. Um, I just know having the actual card themselves being being that rare, had had a lot of value. So I kind of want to keep to that. Yeah, again, personal opinion, but that's just from what I've seen and talking to some other people in the industry.
Speaker 1:Now, autos in general, like any auto that you get, um, like the, the actual entrepreneur autos and things like that autos in any card industry tend to hold the most value. Um, so if you have an auto and you grade it and you can hold it, those things will tend to appreciate like crazy, especially cause it's like the first, you know, the rookie card version of all these Um, so long-term holds. There's a lot of a lot of value there, um, oh. But one thing I was going to say uh, for any of you guys out here uh, start branding yourself. Like everyone here needs to have some sort of a personal brand. It doesn't matter what right AMs is, that he buys a shit ton of spots and he has some of the craziest uh auctions ever right, that's his brand. Mine is I'm the skelly guy. Uh, hold on, how can we help, besides supporting the streams and sharing what you do from us? Not just that's it, just keep sharing, let everybody know word of mouth, that's it. That's it. If you can share the streams, I'll love you forever, um, and keep showing up. So the branding is huge. So I want to talk about how this worked out for me in real time so you guys can use it.
Speaker 1:I also actually generally love the Skelly card. If you guys, I have a skeleton tattoo here. I love the. I love the Halloween theme stuff and you know, being a skilled skeleton, skills have changed my life, so I have a lot of. I have a lot of love with the skilled skeleton. I also have a lot of, uh, I have a lot of love with the skilled skeleton. I also have a lot of love with the entrepreneur spots as well, uh, which is why I'm all sad the entrepreneur shop, the entrepreneur spots, don't go for as much, um, cause I have a lot of, obviously, alignment with that.
Speaker 1:But I realized early on that the V friends community was actually a lot smaller and tighter than I, than I first thought it was. Um, it's actually still, you know, it's a bigger way, bigger than ever, has been for sure, but it's still. It's still a pretty tight knit community, right? So everyone kind of knows everybody, which is perfect, um. So I made a, I made a decision very early on to buy every skelly spot I could for basically the first month of of V friends and I wanted to because I wanted to have some sort of brand identity inside the community and that was being the Skelly Maxi, right, and I think I've accomplished that. What that then transitioned to is me having a massive skeleton collection, which I love. So I love the skellies, especially having rare skellies. But what that actually did now is artificially inflate the price of any skeletons that I auction. So this is something big for you guys.
Speaker 1:Now, people who like skeletons have some brand identity and alignment with me. People know who I am. If I go into I also get the first dibs on any skeletons right. I get tagged all the time on on good deals, on breaks or stuff on eBay. So now I actually have, uh, people helping me get that collection up. But what's really cool is now in auctions. If you guys have ever been into my shows where I'm running, running these deals, I have, um, you know I'll run skeletons and they go probably above 20% over market because they're coming from my personal collection.
Speaker 1:And what was really humbling which the fact this happened so early on, which made me feel amazing uh was people now have been asking me to sign my, my skellies for their personal collections. Like, how fucking cool is that? Right, it's. Uh, it makes me feel really, really good, obviously, um, but you know, I think that's something that everyone here should also do. Um, everyone here has different characters super passionate about. I would a thousand percent promote that, especially if you're again, this is assuming you guys are trying to get into the live selling stuff. Start promoting that. Start branding yourself. Everyone should have a brand.
Speaker 1:And does everybody here know, like, how a brand orientated and why brand is important? Like at like the core level, not just like, hey, we need to have a brand, but what is it, what a brand actually is For the brand? But you're thinking your is for the brand, but do you ever think in your life people would be asking for your autograph? No, absolutely not. No, no, that was that, was that was lucky identity, familiar identity, yeah, it is. Yeah, all those things. So the brands obviously originated. Um, so I think that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 1:But I think what brand does is it influences behavior. That's what brand at its core does. It influences behavior of a person, because brand started back in the old cattle days. So if you had a bunch of cattle and you own them, you would brand them right. Why is that important? Because if a random cow went on to the neighbor's farm, if it had a brand, he'd say, oh, this is Justin's cow. Let me take it back to Justin. I influenced that behavior. If that cow went there with no brand, he's probably going to steal the fucking cow All right, and I just lost the cow. So what does it do? It does it influences behavior, all right.
Speaker 1:And a good brand is, you know, when a message aligns with the values of the people that you're, you're speaking to. So you look at the Dylan Mulvaney thing with um, bud Light from a marketing standpoint really good marketing, a lot of eyeballs, got a lot of attention. Terrible branding All right, because they didn't understand who their core brand was or their core customer base was at the time. And so the alignment of the brand with someone who's a transgender with Bud Light, their core audience kind of disassociated with that. So that's why Bud Light saw a huge pushback right. And then they went with Shane Gillis and people that are more in line with their brand. Bad branding, good marketing results in a loss, right.
Speaker 1:So for us, when we think about brand, we want to create these positive associations with things that we want to move, like somebody asking for a gift, maybe, but yeah, no, it influences the behavior, right? So me, you know, we get more tactical. You know what is our brands, what? What do they represent? You know? I think you know. Look at the Gary V brand represents a lot, right, and and and brands have multiple things.
Speaker 1:But if you're not into entrepreneurship, if you don't like tough love, if you, you know, if you hate cussing, if, like, that's big stuff for you, then you probably wouldn't have much alignment with the Gary Vee brand, right? Or there might be certain things you align with really heavy, or content you align with heavily, and that's the brand you fall behind, and there might be stuff that you don't, right. So there's all. There's the y allow you to stand out and it's going to allow you to influence the behavior and have the people around you that you want, right? Obviously, my brand, or the brand that I'm trying to build, is I want to have the biggest, baddest Skelly collection and then I want to have my streams be the most fun, most engaging streams on the platform.
Speaker 1:So to do that, I need to do a lot of low. You know low. Second giveaway sudden deaths, fast movement, high energy, big bangers at the end that we can roll. And I got to keep getting up inventory and I got to continue to do that over and over and over and over again and put as much value out there as I can and then that will build that, that super strong brand identity. And that's not going to happen overnight, right, it's going to continue to happen over and over again. But the longer you continue to build that positive reinforcement in two, three, four, five years, that's what everyone's going to know you for and then it's super easy, right. And yeah, slow and steady is the name of the game. And I got to tell you, the slower you can go, like I used to be fascinated with going, how fast can I go? And the reason why I fucked up and I got into that mindset was I, I helped grow.
Speaker 1:I started off as a door knocker and then became the vice president of a solar startup and grew that thing to 25 million in less than a year. So completely conflated what I thought was possible. You know, I didn't understand. Marketing conditions were perfect for it at that point. I didn't understand. I had already a team built there, the CEO that started the company was already well-funded, um, and so when I started my water company, I said, okay, I'm going to build this into a $10 million business in the next five years. Right, I was like, oh easy. And so I said, okay, year one, we need to do a million bucks. And we did a million bucks. We did 1.1 our first year.
Speaker 1:But you know what happened? We didn't make any money because I spent so much just wasted energy and time trying to build it as fast as I could, to hire a shit ton of people in buying all these trucks, spending a ton of marketing, just so I could say I made a million dollars, but it didn't matter. It didn't fucking matter. They made no money. I, literally, I actually lost a shit ton of money. I think I lost $90,000 that year. Right, not fun. So you know it.
Speaker 1:And then this last year is when it took me two years to figure this out, by the way, guys like I'm a slow learner, um. And then two years ago, um, you know we, we had to make that tough decision where we basically cut the team down to the best people. So now it's me and two guys and we are selling about the same we're doing about what are we gonna do. We're doing about 70 to 90k a month right now, so it might be a little under a million this year, but last year was the first, or last month was the first month I actually made a profit in the business. We made 30K in profit last month, with less people Going even slower, with one piece of marketing spend. You know what I'm saying? Like so the.
Speaker 1:I think social media really really ruins it as far as like, oh, I want to make all this money because it looks cool, right and it feels good on your ego, like you know, being fully transparent. Um, my ego felt great when I had a huge team but I wasn't making any money. Yeah, exactly, it is a highlight reel and that's why, like, with whatnot, it's actually super free and be able to like understand that the slower I go, the bigger the brand can actually be, because you don't make the mistakes. And if, for any of you who are, like trying to start a business, like I had and guys, you can, if you guys are trying to start like an actual business outside of this, like, let me know, I've done it all. I've done solar, done the. Uh, I have my own home service business, obviously, and I do some consulting for for other companies on the side, so I'm super into business. So if you guys are trying to start a business like, please, I'm here to help. Just just let me know what you guys need.
Speaker 1:Um, but what one of the things that um I I really learned from from from that was if I had just gone slower from day one, I'd be in a way better spot now. And it's so much more freeing when you're able to just go so slow. Um, and Alex Ramos, he says it's the best. He's like the fastest way to 5 million is not the fastest way to 20 million, um, and it's so, so true. And you hear these things right, and if you're going to start a business, you, if you've listened to Gary for any any number of days or my content, um, you know you'll, you know these lessons like. I knew all this stuff. All this stuff I'm saying now, I already knew it, but I didn't have context. That's the problem and that's the difference is you guys, I think a lot of people get afraid to make decisions.
Speaker 1:They can't jump at an opportunity because they're afraid that you're going to make a mistake. That's part of the game. Right, you're going to make mistakes. There's no way, no way around it, and unfortunately, you kind of have to learn through fire, um, and having context is so huge. So, you know, I've, I've learned, I've heard these lessons before, but I didn't have the context to apply them.
Speaker 1:Um, and I think that's been the biggest thing. That I'm now less afraid of is I'm okay making mistakes because you know it's how you, it's how you grow, right, it's how you're big. I mean, I like going to the gym, how do your you know how do your muscles grow? They got to fail, right. So failure is the prerequisite for success. I think the key is how do you keep your cost down and not lose your ass while you're making those mistakes? Also, there's no way, the way whatnot you hear isn't going to beat. Get you out of here. Context is you guys massive. You're the king of mistakes. Modern deals Well then, you're probably the king of knowledge too. Absolutely, yeah, all right, god dude, what questions you guys have.
Speaker 1:We have like a few minutes left here. I want to. I want to see if you guys have any questions, or I can just keep riffing, um, but I want to give you guys some value as well. Um, you guys have been listening to me riff for the last 50 minutes. Um, oh, so little plug. If you guys want to see kind of how my mindset has changed and what, literally listen to me. Go from day one of the business to now.
Speaker 1:Um, I've been documenting the journey on my on my Spotify podcast, so this this will go on Spotify as well. I got two episodes I got to edit, um, but it's called harmony of hustle. You can see it right up here. If you search that on Spotify, you'll find it. Um, and you can literally go from day one of my water company to today. So, um, I search that on Spotify, you'll find it, and you can literally go from day one of my water company to today. So I think I hope that'd be entertaining for you guys. Yeah, of course, any ideas on taking things off? What not once audience established event swag store one offs? Yeah, yeah, I own a water company. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's always the play right. I think it's going to feel good. I think that's always the play right. I think, um, it, it's gonna like feel good. I think it's gonna come down to you know what? What innately.
Speaker 1:Do you actually enjoy doing um events? I've ran a ton of events um. You're most events lose money, just being honest with you um, so a lot of times those are more for like brand recognition and building culture. Um, unless you're like super, super established I, I mean I used to. I know a lot of the Grant Cardone guys and the Andy Elliott guys and on some of Grant's biggest like 10X conferences, he's actually lost a shit ton of money on those.
Speaker 1:Now, it's not, you know, it's a little different, but like a water project alkaline to liquid death, fiji I'm working on something like that right now. Like, uh, I'm working on like something to sell um at retail, but I do like whole home water filtration, commercial water filtration, so like reverse osmosis units. Um, carbon softeners, stuff like that. Yeah, but yeah, no, I think feel good.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think swag is huge. I mean swag is something I'm going to be building out once I have a big enough audience of people that could actually buy it. Um, because that that just goes to brand right here. I'm going to get this giveaway live too. Um, that just adds. That just adds to your brand identity. Um, and I love, I love swag. So, personally, that's something I'm always going to have have a solid system to get rid of our hard water, our cutter oh, that's nice, that's great. Yeah, we don't. We definitely don't have that here. We don't have that here. Um, yeah, I mean, listen, guys, and I'll tell you starting a business is not all it's cracked up to be. That's why I love the whatnot thing.
Speaker 1:Um, I'll tell you, having a team of people is so stressful. Sometimes. I love belt like this is it's just me and you guys. It's so much more fun. I don't have to worry about employees or anything. I can just literally just worry about making sure that the stream is super fun. It's great, super great. My son and I are trying to do that. Yeah, dude, feel good. That's amazing. My two virtual assistants Do you have a VA company Virtual assistant is good. It's a definitely competitive and see, that's a talent. That is a talent and recruitment business, right, yeah.