← The Money Mondays
The Money Mondays
Why Your HOBBY Could Be the Secret to Making a Fortune w/ Josh Luber & Noah Neiman 💵 E97
01:10:39
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- [00:00]
Josh Luber
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 1400 employees.
- [00:09]
Dan Niman
What?
- [00:10]
Josh Luber
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.
- [00:34]
Dan Niman
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays. We have our RV Motorhome parked here in Beverly Hills, California, but our guest flew from across the country, so I'm really excited to have him here. He has an illustrious career in 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 Lubrig, please give us a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.
- [01:25]
Josh Luber
Thanks for having me. I didn't know I was doing a two hour 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 the 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 tenured business, which is Go straight. Damn, that was quick. We got right into it.
- [01:57]
Dan Niman
Amazing.
- [01:57]
Josh Luber
Ghost R is a collectible toy company. Not to similar to Bear Brick, but we'll get into a lot of the details. But the idea is that 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.
- [02:26]
Dan Niman
So I love it.
- [02:27]
Josh Luber
That's it.
- [02:28]
Dan Niman
All right, so we're going to get back to ghost, right? We're going to go step by step along the career journey of Josh Luber. Walk us through what was before StockX and then how did you decide to start? When I'm wearing sneakers from Stockx right this second, by the way. So walk us through before StockX and then get into that.
- [02:43]
Josh Luber
You know, like you, I have the privilege of getting to speak speak at a lot of different places for a lot of different reasons. And one of the talks that I give is the everything but all the ones that failed before StockX. We'll do the short version of that. But the short version is that I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And early on, you don't know how to. I mean, I graduated college in 1999 when the word entrepreneur barely exists, the Internet barely exists. There were no apps, there were no iPhones, no smartphones, no. And so all the businesses that I started before, none of them had anything to do with sneakers. Almost intentionally so, almost like intentionally avoiding trying to create a business that was just an excuse to play with sneakers. And. But in between everyone, I had a corporate job. You know, the fact, I mean, Money Monday is like, this is the place to talk about the fact that, you know, you have to still be able to pay your bills and take care of your family. And I started my first startup when I was single, second married with no kids, third married with one kid, fourth married with two kids. Right. Every time the risk profile changes, your obligations change. And I was very fortunate that that 4:1 was StockX. And then, you know, it changed the financial profile afterwards. But I was at IBM. I was what I thought might end up being my career, as now I have a kid and just trying to figure out how to make ends meet. And I started working on campus on the side. Campless was the sneaker price guide that would become StockX. But that never happens if I don't go take the job at IBM, if I'm not there as a consultant learning about data in the weeds and then on the side trying to find projects and being in the sneakers personally. So those things came together, my work and my personal passion came together at IBM, which led to creating Campus, which led to StockX.
- [04:29]
Dan Niman
So this is an important Topic Josh mentioned being able to pay your rent along the way. A lot of times people on social media like to say, just quit your job, go be an entrepreneur. And what they're missing out and not telling you to is even if it works, let's say Josh and I start bluehats.com and Josh and I are like, hey, we're gonna do bluehats.com and we go out there and crush it. We do $1 million in sales our first year. Do you know how much Dan and Josh made our first year? It rhymes with zero. And if any profits happened, what do we do with that money? We pour it back into the business because we're hoping to do $3 million next year on year two, which sounds fantastic. How much did Josh and Dan make on year two? It rhymes with zero. You get where I'm going when things are working. How dare you take any money out? Because every dollar you put back in scales the business. If you're pulling money out, you're literally hurting the business. And if it's not working, you're not getting paid. So no matter what happens, you're not getting paid. As a CEO and entrepreneur now, I'm not trying to scare you away. It's a reality check. Is that what Josh mentioned? Is that if you can have income along the way and work a nine to five and make your three grand, four grand, five grand, eight grand, ten grand, whatever it is a month you need, depending on your city location, obviously it's more in New York versus Alabama or Texas, wherever. Like as long as you can cover your overhead, you can run your business from 5:01pm until nighttime if you have to. And work on the weekends. Too often there's people just saying, tell your boss to screw off and just go jump into that. Well, definitely not if you have kids like Josh just mentioned. So, Josh Luber, you get to StockX 2016, you're growing, you're scaling, and all of a sudden there's an inflection point. Like this is a multi hundred million dollar company about to be a billion dollar company, if not multiple billion dollar company. Like what happens along that journey? Going from fun idea, oh shit, we got 10 or 20 employees. Oh well, we have 50 employees. Oh boy. We're 100, 200, 300 million dollar company.
- [06:25]
Josh Luber
Yeah. First of all, I agree with everything you just said. A thousand percent over that is exactly true. I mean, StockX, I started working with Dan Gilbert and moved to Detroit in the summer of 2015. We launched in February of 2016. I was living paycheck to paycheck until 2019.
- [06:41]
Dan Niman
Wow.
- [06:42]
Josh Luber
Right. So, you know, like everyone sees the public success of StockX and the business blew up in holidays of 2017. So 18 months in the business blows up and you know, StockX becomes what everyone knows. But internally VCs are putting money into the company, not into my pocket.
- [06:58]
Dan Niman
Right.
- [06:59]
Josh Luber
And it's still about growing the business and you make those decisions. And it's only truly because of the generosity of the VC community and Dan Gilbert and people that understand entrepreneurs that you get to a certain point and they say, hey, we're going to do this next round, but we are going to carve out 10% of this for the early employees to take money off the table so you can stop living paycheck to paycheck and you can have a little bit of, you know. Yeah. And so, you know, and that's what you know, and obviously things have continued to go well and that business has been great. But yeah, it's, it's not even remotely overnight. In fact, it's, you know, years later that your life changes.
- [07:38]
Dan Niman
Even when they come like that, Josh is talking about doing tens of millions dollars in revenue, if not more. It's still not time to pull money out. So Josh, talk about the change as it goes from like you and your buddies and going to like 20, 50, 30 employees until like now you can't even name the employees because you get to 100 employees, etc.
- [07:54]
Josh Luber
Yeah, I mean, look, when I left StockX in the end of 2020, we had 1400 employees.
- [07:59]
Dan Niman
What?
- [08:00]
Josh Luber
Yeah. And you gotta remember StockX, in addition to the core business, we also had, I think maybe they're up to maybe nine or 10. But at the time, I think we had seven authentication centers around the world. You know, each of those has a couple hundred employees in it. So yeah, it was massive. And you know, in the beginning there were five of us. We sat right outside of Dan Gilbert's office. And then there were seven and eight. And you slowly build and all of a sudden you gotta get a different part of the, of the office. You gotta have your own floor. And, you know, you look up one day and you know, the only way to manage that size of a company is in, you know, is in theory, right? You can't know everybody, you can't touch everybody, you can't know everybody's job. You have to hire, you know, people to run it. And it's just a much different business than like it goes right now it's me and 10 other people and by the way, they're all people I've worked with before. They're all people that I know personally and have worked with many times over. But at that point you're learning on the job how to run a large company and frankly, that's not what I was interested in. I never thought that I would be in that situation. And one day then you are.
- [09:03]
Dan Niman
Right. So on the make money side, on the first segment, we like to explain to people the realities. When someone wants to become an executive or an employee for something like StockX, how can they make a decision before they dedicate the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years of working with a, a company that's scaling?
- [09:21]
Josh Luber
Yeah. Well, what's interesting about, you know, being a part of a startup, whether you're a founder or an early employee, you know, everybody takes a haircut. Everybody takes less than what they could go make if they were working at, you know, Facebook or IBM or whatever. You know, when, when I hired, I brought in the guy who would become the CTO at Fanax Collectibles and then CTO with me at ghostwrite. He had been a startup engineer for a while and then he left and he was working at Facebook, mid level engineering manager, making $1.2 million a year.
- [09:55]
Dan Niman
Come on.
- [09:55]
Josh Luber
Swear to God. Right.
- [09:57]
Dan Niman
And this I'm going to go become an engineer.
- [09:59]
Josh Luber
Exactly right. And so to convince somebody like that to give up that pay to come and work for 80% less. Yeah. You know, and sure there's equity and maybe you'll make some more money, but you know, it's truly about, at that point, it's truly about lifestyle. And you ask people that live like that, lifestyle, it's rough, it's hard, you know, it is growing and everything. Every bad trope you've heard about startup life and bureaucracy and politics, like that's that, that's what you're paying for and that's why you get paid that, because those companies need every great engineer that exists. And so like that's the extreme, but that's the conversation you're having with every person is, you're, you're convincing them to come work with you. It says, hey, yeah, I know you can make a little bit more over here, but you are now going to have all this autonomy to do great work and to do it on your own. And we can go down this path. But I found that more than anything, like great people, they want to be able to do great work. And you know, at the end of the day, a difference of 10 or 15%, you know, dollars, one way or another. They would much rather have the autonomy every day coming into work, do great work and as opposed to being micromanaged or being, you know, constrained by budgets or plans or whatever like that. So any, that's the conversation that you have with people. And by the way, I spent six years where all I did was try to convince people to move to Detroit to come work for StockX. Now post pandemic, that's all a little bit different, but at the time it was important for everyone to be together because that's how we were able to have that environment, to be able to do great work.
- [11:29]
Dan Niman
When did you realize that sneaker flipping was an industry?
- [11:34]
Josh Luber
What's interesting about now, being the founder of StockX and meeting people. I mean, I, you know, we're, we're here in LA because I'm speaking at USC Business School later today. Last week I spoke at Emory Business School and at Georgia Tech. And every time I speak at a school, there's a line of people afterwards and they are not there to, to take pictures. They're there to tell me, hey, I made my first $10 selling sneakers on StockX or I, I'm paying for my education because I was, I was flipping sneakers in high school, like 90% of them are. That is awesome. That is the coolest thing. We actually, at StockX, we created what we called StockX Day in our second year where all we did was just invite people to come, our top customers, mainly our top sellers, to come to StockX to have that conversation with everybody. So, I mean, it was going on well before StockX, but StockX go, you know those companies that made it so easy to sell. And we can go down that path if you like. Like that's what the real business of StockX was, to make it as easy to sell a pair of sneakers as it is to buy. And that enabled it to become an industry because it became so much easier for everyone to be able to sell sneakers.
- [12:47]
Dan Niman
So during my speeches I talk about the economy and oftentimes people think about every eight to 12 years there's a recession. Well, our last recession was 2008 and that was also big, big because of the mortgage industry situation and the banking situation. The difference was and why we didn't have one. What I say in between 2016, 2020 is the smartphone. Never before 2008 did you have a smartphone. Now people can become a Uber driver, Postmates, Lyft. Now girls can sell their clothes on poshmark. People can sell their shoes on StockX and I literally. That's part of my speech is StockX explaining that before you had, if you lost your job during a recession, you had no other way to make money back in the days. 2005 technically is back in the days.
- [13:29]
Josh Luber
Totally.
- [13:29]
Dan Niman
Right. Like you didn't have about all those apps. You couldn't go work as a postmates driver, Lyft driver, Instacart driver. And now you can literally make money from your phone. 15 year old kids can make 6 grand a month just buying and flipping shoes, making 200 bucks a day. And so I look at it as literally changing the economy.
- [13:47]
Josh Luber
Yeah.
- [13:47]
Dan Niman
I look at companies like StockX as to really change the economy where 15 year old kids, I see them at Sneaker Con I was an advisory board for sneaker conversations. 12,000, 16,000, 20,000 sometimes showed up to a show. There's 450,000 people. The shows last year.
- [14:03]
Josh Luber
Yeah.
- [14:03]
Dan Niman
For sneakers.
- [14:04]
Josh Luber
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:05]
Dan Niman
It's become this mega type.
- [14:07]
Josh Luber
And look, people love sneakers, but most people there, to your point, are some form of a small business.
- [14:12]
Dan Niman
Right.
- [14:13]
Josh Luber
They are there because they can either buy or sell on one side or the other. They can make. 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, that live marketplace that's happening at that moment in that place. That's why they're there. It's almost like the old like trading pits, you know the New York Stock Exchange.
- [14:30]
Dan Niman
Right. Ebay's who bought Sneaker Con. Yeah, that's what came in. Yeah. All right, so along the path, when did sports cards, comic books, when did that become part of your life?
- [14:40]
Josh Luber
Yeah, I mean like, like all of us. Right. I mean I collected cards as a kid. You know, I am 46, so 1991 was my bar mitzvah. And as my bar mitzvah present for my parents was 1952 tops, Willie Mays. So that was kind of like, you know, the peak of my childhood. But you know, I always like everyone collected cards during the junk wax there, et cetera, put them all away when I went away to college and you know, kind of always sat in the back of my parents closet. At StockX, we launched in 2016, blew up 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 bear bricks. We Added Supreme Streetwear and, 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 got to meet this guy, Jason Coons, he lives in your backyard. He's like. And so, and you obviously know him well. And he became my Sherpa back into the industry. You know, he'd obviously have been collecting cards this entire time. And I was like a kid in a candy store again to just like get back into cards. I started like opening up packs of cards at my desk in meetings at StockX. Everyone thought I was nuts and so I started collecting stuff myself. But really it was like got got serious when we were trying to figure out can this be a real category in StockX for growth. And I was just very fortunate to be ahead of that curve a little bit. So then I started buying cards myself and those things snowballed.
- [16:15]
Dan Niman
Yeah, I mean I bought a lot. I bought three dozen bear bricks off StockX and I've also bought a ton of car, mostly boxes.
- [16:21]
Josh Luber
Boxes.
- [16:21]
Dan Niman
Boxes.
- [16:22]
Josh Luber
And look, the reason why StockX isn't a leader compared to eBay or golden or PwC or Fanatics from a marketplace standpoint is the StockX model doesn't work very well for singles. Works great for boxes, but not very well for singles. And that's just a limitation of the StockX model.
- [16:39]
Dan Niman
So around 2020 ish, you decide, okay, I'm going to retired, take a break, maybe figure out what my next move is and then boom. I see you all over the news as the CEO of fanatics collectibles. Talk about that transition journey. You know, I jump back in the saddle.
- [16:53]
Josh Luber
So pre pandemic.
- [16:54]
Dan Niman
Saddle.
- [16:55]
Josh Luber
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pre pandemic I was, it took me about a year. So back up the summer of 2019, we do our billion dollar round. I also step down as CEO. We bring in a, you know, professional CEO to start moving the company towards an IPO and growth. And it took me about a year to realize that just because I started the company doesn't mean I can't leave. And so that, that whole next year, which obviously then leads into the pandemic, you know, I was sort of feeling my way around, still looking for other products, other categories and I really wanted to try to grow sneakers, excuse me, trading cards at StockX. But it just wasn't a priority for the, for the, for the sort of crazy ideas that I had about could we go out and get licenses, could we make trading cards? I just, it was clear that that industry was going to be something more pandemic happens. Everything, you know, obviously, you know, changes. And during that time, I just started having conversations with everyone else in the trading card industry. And I left, partnered not with Michael Rubin, but with another organization who were going to fund me to go after the licenses for trading cards. I just thought that was where the opportunity was. We spent about. I left in September of 2020. We spent two months together and this group said, you know what, Michael Rubin's probably a better partner than we are. He's been asking about trading cards. Maybe you should meet with him. And we met in right before Thanksgiving of 20. And I sat down, I told him what I thought this thing could be and he's like, I can get the licenses, let's go. And we spent all 20, 21 going after licenses. It was extremely organic. There was never any plans to end up on the other side of that. I mean that at the end of 21, after we got our licenses, we did around that value the company at $10 billion. And I was the only employee of the company. There was no company. It was me. All the licenses.
- [18:43]
Noah Neiman
Right.
- [18:44]
Josh Luber
And. And then we had to go and run it. I was like, holy crap. You know, so it's. The whole stockx is amazing. It was a rocket ship. Fanatics, Collectibles is crazier, bigger by every metric you can imagine. Yeah.
- [18:56]
Dan Niman
Okay. So end of 2022, you're like, okay, I'm good. I'm going to take a break again. Why? Instead of jump back into a saddle and I don't know if there's any saddles left that are that big. Because you're talking about two of the household name brands in the industry. Decide I'm into a startup and start making my own version. The bigger, better version of bear bricks.
- [19:14]
Josh Luber
Yeah.
- [19:16]
Dan Niman
Unlike stock pain, like the pain of startups.
- [19:18]
Josh Luber
Yeah, that's the fun part. It's so much more fun. More pain is sitting in like budget meetings and trying to. Yeah.
- [19:25]
Dan Niman
You know, actually got cringe when you said that.
- [19:27]
Josh Luber
Yeah, yeah. And look, the big companies have to be run a certain way. Get that. But you know, it doesn't mean that I need to be the ones doing it. What was great. And you know, it's crazy. You look back on the just serendipity and the similarities between working with two different billionaire MBA owners, Dan Gilbert and Michael Rubin, and you know, being at the center of these two industries, which is, you know, very just fortunate for me. But what Ruben understood when we started was that I'm an entrepreneur and if that business got as big as we thought it might be, then he didn't need me running it. I want to be running it. And so we were, we were 100% on the same page. So once we acquired tops and ingested there 800 people and we hired some other people, including a CEO, he and I were on the same page. He's like, yeah, if you want to leave, great. And. And so I planned the whole time. And so like October of 2022, I left specifically to make GhostWrite because it was the same idea at Stockx, at Fanax Collectibles. The through line of all this is what we call market based pricing. The idea that these are all products that aren't arbitrary retail price, but they're products that are driven by supply and demand, by the community, by resellers, by collectors. Right. The market sets the price for these products. They're products that are, that are equal parts consumer good and financial asset. And. But all the sort of big crazy ideas that you might be able to do with that concept sort of get stymied when you have to deal with the biggest companies in the world. Sneakers, you have Nike and Adidas and Foot Locker trading cards, you have the NBA and NFL and fanatics. So trading cards, excuse me, Collectible toys were this like Goldilocks industry where it was big enough to matter. It's big enough to work with all the most important brands and artists and companies. Right. I mean, you know, Chanel has done bear bricks, right? But it was not so big that you have these monoliths in the space, in the collectible toy space. You have Funko, you have Metacom, which makes bear brick. And that's kind of it. And both those are relatively small companies. Hasbro and Mattel and Lego. That's different, right. So it was a really this sort of like perfect place to go after this idea that we'd always had around the different ways that you could buy or sell these products, these sort of hype economy products. And so it really was this like perfect transition for me to be able to do this. Look, today we have to make collectible toys and it's a toy business, but underneath it, it's this idea of how the hype economy grows. These toys, collectibles that are our financial assets. So there's a lot to it. But the short version is it's actually the same idea for me as an Entrepreneur. The same big idea that I've always wanted to go after, and now I get to do it on my own. I don't have a billionaire MBA owner as a partner. That's good. Maybe that's bad. We'll find out. But anyway, I get to go after it. And most importantly, I get to work with exactly who I want to work with. It's me and 10 other people. They're all people that I've worked with before at one or both the other companies. And a business is just people, man. Like, that's it. And so I get to work with the people I want to work with.
- [22:32]
Dan Niman
So on a personal level, why not go be the CEO of Funco or go buy Bear Bricks?
- [22:37]
Josh Luber
Well, I actually tried to buy Bear Brick. I tried to buy Metacom. I was. I'd heard they were sal. Yeah, yeah, those. I really think that that Bear Brick has this. This sort of perfect product that I love it. You know, they. They've been making Medicom, the Japanese company that makes Bear Brick. They've been making for 25 years. And, you know, Bear Brick, the whole rest of the collectible toy industry, it's all ip, it's characters, it's Spider man, it's Astro Boy, it's. Cause, you know, it's Iron Man. But Bear Brick is just. It's just a shape. It's a. It's a blank canvas. It's human body with a bear head. And so because of that, it gives them this much wider aperture to work with all the most important brands. Right. You could put Iron man on a Bear brick, or it could be a Warhol painting or the American flag or whatever. Yeah. And so, you know. And by the way, that's what a trading card is. A trading card is a blank canvas. It can be Wemby or it could be the backup shorts up for the twins. And the value of that is depending on who is on that blank canvas. So I always thought there was all this you could do with Bear Brick, but they are a very Japanese company. They've stayed very much in their ways. They've done the same thing for 25 years. And so I thought I was like, you have this iconic brand. You know, maybe I could sort of. And you know what? They just really weren't interested in having that conversation, so.
- [23:47]
Noah Neiman
Great.
- [23:48]
Josh Luber
So then we had to figure out, how do we create our own blank canvas? I left Fanatics Collectibles in October of 22, and we spent eight months designing the shape. A ghost, like a Bear Brick is a blank Canvas. There's no face, there's no gender. Like, the ghost itself is not a character. It's about how it takes to skins. And it took a while to get to a shape that wasn't too much of a character, but also really took well at the skin. So, yeah, so I absolutely considered it, but this is the better path. And you get to start all this from scratch, right? You get to build a company from scratch, taking everything we learned. And you can look at 25 years of medicom, Things they've done well, things they've done poor, and you don't have to correct it. You can just start new. So that's pretty great too.
- [24:32]
Dan Niman
So walk us through ghost right now. Like, how do people buy into it? What do they do with it? What's the plan?
- [24:38]
Josh Luber
Well, also under the category of funding the company yourself and not having to answer to investors or billionaire MBA owners is we made. We started making Ghosts in August of 23. So we spent a year. All we did is make ghosts to give them away. So we ran a company with 10 employees making products in China, and all we did was give it away. So under the money part of this, and I thought that was important from a brand standpoint, from building the credibility within the industry of partners who might want to work with us. And we finally started selling Ghosts in August of 24. We've done four releases so far. We've actually done three. The fourth one is currently ongoing and this was the first one. Everything, all the ghosts, same three sizes, bear brick, which is. You have a. I have a. This is actually a gift for you. This is a sample of 100%. This is one of the first 3D printed samples. It looks like drugs. It's not drugs. It's just a. But. So this is 100%. This is usually for blind boxes and we can talk more about that. But this size and. And then. Which we call the one 100, the 400, which is this size. And then the 1,000%, which is about 28 inches tall. And here, this is for you. There's only. These basically don't exist, by the way. These were internal samples. Only one has been sold. We sold it at Vcon Live with the veefriends guys. And it went for $510. So, yeah.
- [26:16]
Dan Niman
Thank you.
- [26:17]
Josh Luber
And then. So the third size is 28 inches. So the three they released all this size, which is 11 inches, all sold on stock. Excuse me. On Ghost, Right. As a blind Dutch auction, which means that we don't set the price. The Market sets the price. This One, there were 20 units sold, sold for $1,026 apiece. The second one, which was with Rocky's Matcha, which is a local matcha company here in LA, there were 20, excuse me, 30 units sold for $500 with a clearing price. And the third was Eastside Golf, which there were 30, and that one sold for $300. And so this is what we do. We get to make ghosts and the flagship and the core is this size 11 inches. But then as we evolve on the 100% size, the blind boxes, that will really be the future of the company.
- [27:04]
Dan Niman
What is a blind box?
- [27:06]
Josh Luber
So blind boxes are trading cards. You open a pack, you open a box, you don't know what you're going to get inside. This is the first time that I'm showing the WNBA blind box. We have licenses with the NBA, with the wnba, with Major League Baseball and all three players associations. And this is the WNBA blind box is going to come out in December. There are 16 players. Here's a checklist that I'm not showing on camera, but includes people like Caitlin Clark and Asia Wilson. And then it has parallels that have all different color crowns, the same way that, say Prism works, where you have your base color and then you have gold number to 10 and you have, you know, black one of one and all the different things. I mean, we get to take everything we learned about scarcity and collectability and creating brand and creating demand and trading cards and apply it to just a different blank canvas. We didn't make any of this up. All we do is just copy how the stuff works great over here and apply it over here. So we're fortunate to have the licenses with these three leagues because of my history at finance collectibles, creating the trading cards there. And when this comes out in December, we think this is going to be a big deal. We're going to have. Well, we think this is going to be a big deal. So we'll see what happens. We got to actually, you know, run the company and grow it. I think I have. I think I have one of the others here to show you. This is because we're in la, this is the first time I'm showing Lisa Leslie. Oh, cool, there's a Lisa Leslie ghost. So there's 12 stars, there's three retired players legends, and then there's one actually famous fan that we'll surprise people with later. But anyway, so this is Lisa Leslie, the first of one that we're sharing here.
- [28:54]
Dan Niman
That's really cool. There's a famous book called steal like an artist. And the concept of what Josh talked about is you don't have to necessarily reinvent the wheel. You can make it faster, more efficient, and take all the things that you learn to make a bigger, better mousetrap. You don't have to. And in my career, that's what I've done. There was 900 energy drinks when I started who's your daddy? I just wanted to make the first zero sugar, zero carbs, zero calorie one. All the other cans were black and silver. I made bright yellow. Bright red. They were 299. I was 199. Remember what McDonald's and McDowell's.
- [29:25]
Josh Luber
I was about to say the same thing. You sound exactly like James Earl Jones right at this moment.
- [29:29]
Noah Neiman
Yeah.
- [29:30]
Josh Luber
They got the golden arches. We got the golden arcs. Yeah.
- [29:32]
Dan Niman
And coming to America. And so we went out in one flavor of the year. And that was my. That was my shtick versus 900 drinks. There was hoverboards. There was two companies. 1800 bucks, 1500 bucks. And I was like, that's crazy. What if you've got two kids like you do? That would be like three or four thousand dollars to buy two toys. Yeah, right. I don't care how rich you are. That's a lot of money. Like, that's. And so I made mine for less than half the price. They didn't have speakers. I put speakers in them. They didn't have lights. I put in color. Different lights. You could change the colors. And they took four to eight weeks for shipping. I did same day shipping. So I just fixed the thing. I didn't create hoverboards. Mine went off to do millions of dollars in sales right away because I was just faster, better, more efficient.
- [30:13]
Josh Luber
Yep.
- [30:13]
Dan Niman
Online poker. 550 poker sites. I go get Dan Bilzerian, Steve Aoki, bunch of Playboy playmates. And Trevor was traveling around the world with us 2008, 9, 10, 11. And we made a poker site. There was 550 sites. I just made us the cooler site. And so throughout my career, I've just gone by this exact same methodology. In theory, it was just like, I'm just taking what someone else is doing and make it better, more efficient, faster, etc. Okay, as we go into the final part, we talk about how to make money, talk about how to invest, talk about giving it away. Why do you think that people or brands should have a charity component to their lives?
- [30:50]
Josh Luber
Well, from a. Let's just talk about the company. First of all, I think too Much is put on the sort of obligation to have that if there's not something actually that's core to the founder or the company itself, it's pretty obvious when it's just sort of tacked on at the end. You know, we at StockX were part of Dan Gilbert's organization in Detroit. We live the revitalization of Detroit. Everything that we did was Detroit focused. Still today at the bottom of StockX website, it says, you know, made in Detroit or whatever the languages, right. So all of the charity components were tied into Dan and the things that he cared the most about. And he's put his money where his mouth is for decades. And so that was a very obvious one for us at the next collectibles. To be honest. I don't know if they ever got there. I don't know. We were so new and it was so fast and I was so, you know, I was such a brief part of it, I can't even tell you what that is. So again, like, like every part of running a business, right, it just has to be authentic to what you're doing and why. On a personal side, there's a moment when you're gaining wealth that you look yourself in the mirror and you're like, this is just nauseating. Like, not from a dollar amount, but from like a distribution wealth. Because no matter how rich you are or where you come from or who you hang out with, there's always people that you know that you grew up with or family members or whatever that have significantly less and are in a different place. And so if that doesn't happen, we can put that aside. If that doesn't happen to someone, you know, but at some point that happens and you're like, oh shit, like, okay, I need to start thinking about this. And you have to think about strategically, because what happens is the flip side of that is as soon as people know that you have wealth, everybody comes out. And I'm not just talking about like people that are gimme money, but, you know, like the schools that I went to, oh, they, they send me more emails and they call me more often than they used to. Right. You know, I spoke at Emory this past week and you know, there were meetings that were put on my calendar with different people in the, in the organization there that wanted to talk to me about that. So it's important that if you don't have your own thing, then people will make their thing your thing. And that's important for it. I, I met my wife in law school. My wife is the first person in her family born in America. Her family is from Chile and we met in law school and I went to work for the largest law firm in Atlanta and she was an immigration attorney, family based immigration attorney, which is basically one step above pro bono. And she doesn't work now. She stopped working when we moved to Texas. Her mother lives with us and they take care of her mother. But what we're trying to figure out is can we create some sort of organization for Hispanic immigrants that she can spearhead that is something that is personal to us, that we're trying to figure out how to do. But I never had something that was as personal to me that made sense for otherwise you're just doing it to check a box. So again, I think it's an organic thing that happens naturally. But again, if you don't have something structured yourself, then people will put it on you for sure. Yeah.
- [34:07]
Dan Niman
So there's a question that I ask almost every time and I've never gotten the same answer. This is also a personal question. 100 years from now, with modern technology, let's say 150 years from now, when it's finally time for Josh Luber to pass away and those two kids maybe have more kids, let's say there's those two kids and you acquire or accumulate a billion dollars, two billion dollars. Who knows what could happen over the course of time.
- [34:30]
Josh Luber
It's a lot of toys.
- [34:31]
Dan Niman
It's a lot of toys. What percentage goes to those kids?
- [34:36]
Josh Luber
Oh, that is an interesting question. I mean, obviously the smaller the numbers, the higher, the higher the percentage. Right? I mean that's just, just math. I think it's pretty small. I think it, I think it's probably in the like, I don't know, 10 to 15% range. You know, there, there's something that's there, there's some sort of like nest egg. But they're already fiercely independent. They're 12 and 9. And I'd be pretty shocked if, if they grew up to a place where they either expecting or want that money. So I don't know. But I mean there's no way that you're not going to create some sort of, some sort of nest egg and some sort of way to do that. So I don't know. So let's say like 15% each. So 30% and then, you know, 70% is not to them definitely not the.
- [35:39]
Dan Niman
Same answer we've heard. Yeah, it's so across the board from 0 to 100.
- [35:44]
Josh Luber
Yeah.
- [35:44]
Dan Niman
And the reasoning behind it is always very different. And Also the trigger points of like, oh, if they do xyz, they can get it unlocked or if they have a fund, they can do this and this or we can have it managed and then they can get it. Oh, if they get married, they can have this. Or if they go to college, they can do this.
- [36:01]
Josh Luber
In fairness, my kids are 12 and 9. I think if you ask me when, you know, they're 24 and 27, I might have a much different answer. Right. Of, you know, we're at a different stage of our life and, you know, seeing where they're at in their life and what they do, whether they're married, what kind of career they have, what they've chosen to dedicate their lives to, you know, but, you know, again, it's so early to even think about that for. But the flip side of it is, you know, obviously the way the will set up right now, if I got forbid something happened to both Patricia and I didn't get all this. Yeah, exactly.
- [36:36]
Dan Niman
All right, last question. As we go into 2025, this last, this summer, especially actually just this week, it feels like sports has taken over the world.
- [36:46]
Josh Luber
It's the best time of year. It's the best.
- [36:48]
Dan Niman
I mean, two days ago there was, I think it was 12 hockey games, Monday Night Football, World Series, baseball, like all the same night. Right. And then two days before that was ufc, boxing. Like sports is on fire right now. Where do you think we go from here now that finally, like sports is like sports always been around, but now it feels like it's the dominant force of television.
- [37:09]
Josh Luber
Well, it's not changing. Right. Who was it? Alexis Ohanian, who's been on the soapbox about, you know, that, that, you know, sports are basically the future of business because of AI and the other things that will change so much other parts of business. I mean, it's not wrong. Right. You look at fanatics and look at just the state of fanatics business today versus five years ago and how it's evolved and we still have a long way to go. Yeah. I think that it's only going to become a bigger part of the economy. Bigger part of.
- [37:40]
Dan Niman
Culture.
- [37:41]
Josh Luber
Yeah. Of culture and content.
- [37:43]
Dan Niman
Right.
- [37:44]
Josh Luber
I mean, it just is. I also think, by the way, this is why, and you probably know a lot of these folks as well, there's a lot of people trying to create large organizations around sports other than basic basketball, basketball and football.
- [37:55]
Dan Niman
Right, right.
- [37:56]
Josh Luber
Like I, I have a friend who is trying to. Yeah, well, not even that, but like I have a friend who's trying to Create a real organization around track and field. How do we make track and field matter other than once every four years? Because those athletes are extraordinary, right? And so I, I do think that those sort of areas of sports will also continue to grow and become more prominent.
- [38:14]
Dan Niman
Very cool. All right, everybody, I'm going to try to get Josh back on here. If he's ever traveling back to Los Angeles, we'll take this motor home, wherever he is to visit him and try to get him back on this podcast. But follow him on social media. Check out ghostwrite. What's the website? Ghostrite.com that's very simple, very easy. I like the branding. Make sure to watch what's going to happen here. Each of his releases obviously has been selling out. I've been buying them without even telling him. I've just been buying them because it's fun to collect. And I just believe in his vision and what's happening. And the characters are cool. It's fun to have. And I enjoy the process of what he's doing because I've been buying bear bricks for years. And so why not buy the next best thing that's coming out and doing all the new, better features and the concept behind it and now jumping into WNBA, etc. So check out GhostRide.com. check out Josh Luber on social media. And as you guys know, with the Money Mondays, it's really truly important to have these discussions about money. We grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money, but as you guys know, I think it's rude to not talk about it. That's part of why a lot of our community just doesn't have money or they're in bad debt, they don't know how to pay their taxes, they don't have to do loans, they don't have to pay for their apartments, their lease, their cars, their what happens when their friend borrows 400 bucks? They don't know how to talk about it. Like they think it's rude to talk about money. I think it's ridiculous. We have to talk about it. We are zillions of dollars in debt because of this situation and we need people to talk about it. So liking commenting, subscribing, sharing, that's why our podcast has stayed top 10 for 84 weeks in a row is because of you guys. And there's no ads, as you notice. Like, I'm here to support and I want you guys to really have this discussion with your friends, family, followers. So check us out on the money Mondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays podcast. We are sitting inside of an RV motorhome parked in the streets of Beverly Hills right next to our next guest location. But he actually has like 80 plus of these locations. We just happen to be next to one of the locations that we co own together on the corner of Sunset Boulevard here in Beverly Hills. Now, as you guys know, on the Money Mondays, we keep these podcasts under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes, the average commute to work is 45 minutes. So this episode will be between 34 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. Now, we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. We here at the Money Mondays think it's rude to not talk about it. You've got to talk about credit, salaries, loans, finances, credit scores, all the things that come along with real life. Because it's real life. There's nothing rude talking about reality. These are the things that have to happen with your friends, with your family and with your followers. And so thankful to you guys. We have been the top five in the business and entrepreneur category for over 84 weeks in a row because of you guys liking commenting, subscribing and sharing. And with our next guest who's helped build this franchise from scratch. You're going to want to listen this episode and like, comment, subscribe and share with Mr. Noah D. Niman.
- [41:15]
Noah Neiman
You didn't tell people it's a hot ass rv. This is like your version of Hot Ones.
- [41:19]
Dan Niman
Absolutely.
- [41:20]
Noah Neiman
It's just, it is about 105 degrees in here. So as the interview progresses and I'm sweating, it's not because I'm nervous. I'm excited to be here. So thank you for having me. Hot ass rv.
- [41:30]
Dan Niman
I forgot to tell you in his bio that he's an exaggerator. It's only 103.
- [41:34]
Noah Neiman
Okay. It's beautiful. Listen, penny saved is a penny earned. Gas is very expensive, so we're keeping expenses down and revenues, the noise, the.
- [41:41]
Dan Niman
Air conditioning is noisy. And you like it. You like saunas.
- [41:45]
Noah Neiman
I do. I do.
- [41:45]
Dan Niman
Literally paid a sweat. You get to sweat.
- [41:47]
Noah Neiman
You've been listening to the Huberman podcast. You're like, all right, we need 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off.
- [41:52]
Dan Niman
Okay, so what I would like for this to happen right now. If you can do a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.
- [41:58]
Noah Neiman
Oh, wow, that's. You're putting me on the spot here. So, name is Noah Neiman. Thank you for your time, effort and Energy listening to me. So I actually started out as an accountant and like most other people, first off, I don't like how you looked at me and were like, this kid does not look like an accountant at all.
- [42:16]
Dan Niman
For those of you watching on YouTube.
- [42:17]
Noah Neiman
I read books too. I don't just lift the weights. I read some books. So I started out, I was actually a very good accountant too. I work for Shout out to J. This has never happened in the world. Shout Out JH Cohen, mid size accounting firm in New York City. No, I actually learned a lot about being an entrepreneur and managing the books through that. No, but also, you know, throughout the work, I would run into the bathroom and I'd be calling my family, like crying, like, this is not what I'm destined for. I can't be destined to, you know, take the L to the F train and the F train all the way up to 46th street and 6th Avenue in New York and get out and sit in a cubicle and have to go to Wilmington, Delaware and count mattresses. So I always had this potential energy and I felt it. And there was always a disconnect between where I could place that energy. Because I'm a creative at heart, I'm a storyteller at heart. But as you know, an accountant is very data driven, analytic. There's not much room for creativity. So through a series of misfortunate and fortunate events, I ended up almost ODing on drugs, which my family will say is the best thing to ever have happen to me. And I know that that's dark and I know that's kind of privileged to say because I had a great support system to help me get out of that hole and to help me support my fight. And I ended up in New York City. A friend asked me if I wanted to go to this boot camp to kind of get out of my own head. He knew I was going through it, suffering with these depressive and anxious states, coming out of that situation where I almost died. So I went and I remember going through this class for the first time and looking at the mirror and smiling and that was the feeling right there. Being in that dark state and looking at myself and getting lost in the music and the workout and the physicality of what I was doing and finding salvation in that moment. I knew that that was my purpose from that moment on. And I knew that I had to scale that and bring that to as many people as possible. So that got me actually working at that space for a few years, five years as I built up my Own brand through. I was very fortunate. It was right around the time where, you know, Kim Kardashian was talking about her favorite workout and all the celebrities now it was cool to talk about working out and training. So I built up my brand with them and Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar and Bravo gave me a show just because I had this boundless energy powered by knowing that this was my purpose, that saved my life. And I know that there's others like me that are probably going through what I went through. And if I can create that environment, then I know I'm going to be giving something back. And instead of taking things, which was kind of my career trajectory before, what can I take? What can I, you know, consume? What can I buy? As opposed to my favorite Ali quote is service to others is our rent for our room here on Earth. So building up my own brand within the constraints of another brand left me a little unfilled as well. So I was posting all these Facebook videos of me boxing while I'm still at this other space. And my now business partner, who the co creator of Rumble, Eugene Rem, who I'm sure you know from Catch restaurants and from some of the most iconic nightclubs in New York city, he created 10June, which is any given Sunday, you'd see, you know, Jay Z grabbing the mic. This is pre Instagram when, you know, clubs were actually fun and celebrities, people let loose. Then, yeah, you weren't on your phone like this. You were more just like, you know, trying to shake. He came to me, he was like, listen, do you want to start something? And I had already known in my heart of hearts what my version of a group fitness experience was going to be. So after a few back and forths of me initially saying no because I was scared, I ended up, you know, locking down with him and starting Rumble. And you asked for a two minute bio and that was about 17 minutes. So I apologize. Brevity is not my strong suit, but I'm trying to get the story out. It's important. It's important.
- [45:51]
Dan Niman
Thank you guys for listening to Money Monday. Yeah, see you guys.
- [45:53]
Noah Neiman
That was the whole podcast.
- [45:53]
Josh Luber
I'll see you later.
- [45:55]
Dan Niman
Okay. Rumble Boxing.
- [45:57]
Noah Neiman
Rumble Boxing. When always be Brandon.
- [45:59]
Dan Niman
Here it is. I love it.
- [46:00]
Noah Neiman
There's my dog, Oz. This is version one of a new retail drop and actually a new company that I'm dropping correlating with Rumble called Knuckle Therapy.
- [46:08]
Dan Niman
Knuckle Therapy.
- [46:08]
Noah Neiman
That's my dog, Oz. So this is version one. Reed Hastings famously said, if you're not Embarrassed by your version one of your product, you've launched too late, you know, CEO, co. CEO or founder of Netflix. And this is not what it's going to look like, but this is kind of a prototype. Unleashing it here first.
- [46:23]
Dan Niman
I like it.
- [46:24]
Noah Neiman
Unseen from the world.
- [46:25]
Dan Niman
Yet what is knuckle therapy?
- [46:27]
Noah Neiman
So knuckle therapy, I told you that moment where I looked in the mirror and I was going through such mental anguish and I was suffering panic attacks and I was doing everything that I thought to get out of that space. I was talking about it all the time. And I was. What I didn't know is through talking about, I was actually reinforcing how I felt about myself and I was putting out in the universe how depressed I was, how lost I felt. So, you know, there's a famous stoic quote that says, I train the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. So, and that works as a one way street, you know, you can't will yourself into a healthier body. But when I took control of my physical body and I became present with that rigorous physical effort, I was able to better control my mind and I started thinking clearer, I started my creativity came back, my wit came back, myself, soul came back into my body. So knuckle therapy is a brand that's going to start in merch that embodies that, but will eventually be subscription workouts and podcasts talking about those principles that saved my life, especially men's mental health. And my dog recently passed away, 18 and a half years old.
- [47:32]
Dan Niman
Oz, 18.
- [47:33]
Noah Neiman
So this is honestly. Yeah, 18 and a half. I rescued him from North Shore Animal League. He was left by the side of the road. He survived tumors and infections and he was one of those key people, key things, key spirits that taught me a lot about myself and was very therapeutic for me. So this is kind of honestly just a healing part for me because I'm really shaken up about it. I'm still really torn up about it. So I wanted to create something in his image that would live forever, that would help spread kind of the gospel of these principles that helped me when I was in my dark, focused hours. So, I mean, it's the same as Rumble. Why, why I created Rumble was it got me out of a hard spot, it really saved my life, it got me out of my own head and it put myself in these physical endeavors like a boxer. You know what's more analogous to life than fighting? You know, getting hit on the chin, getting knocked down, having your corner support you having your cut man there, having your coach, and then. But at the end of the day, it's up to you to knuckle up your fists. So Rumble embodies that. And now knuckle therapy is going to be a tangible way to breach the four walls with the ethos of Rumble and kind of what has saved my life. But obviously bring it to the masses in Oz's honor. So.
- [48:47]
Dan Niman
So you open up location number one of Rumble boxing when you decide, you know what, I'm going to open up locations number two and three. When did you decide that this is going to work?
- [49:00]
Noah Neiman
We were very fortunate because when we launched, we had launched with almost 100 pieces of press already.
- [49:06]
Dan Niman
Wow.
- [49:07]
Noah Neiman
We had the right people involved. We were so confident in our product and presentation and the why, like, literally this thing saved my life. So there's no greater why then this was my literal salvation. So we were so confident in that we knew we could have fun in the margins, which is where greatness happens. So the public responded that also, you know, we always talk about networking and why your events are so impactful because you get incredible creatives and the best in the world in their industries in a room together and magical things happen. So when Eugene and I, who is probably one of the greatest restaurateurs, one of the greatest hospitality, I hate the word guru, but I mean, he's a sensei. He's a senpai of hospitality. And then you got me, who is probably arguably one of the most impactful group fitness coaches and most notable group fitness coaches in the market. The market at the time, we already had eyeballs on us, so we knew we could have some fun. So when we launched January 9, 2017, we instantly, within I'm talking weeks, were put into the rafters with the Barry's boot camps, the soul cycles, because of our ability to execute on our ideals and present it in a unique and novel way, but then also how we made people feel, you know, we traded in feelings. So when you walked out of Rumble, all you wanted to do was get on your phone and tell the world. It helped that we had, you know, the Justin Bieber's, the Selena Gomez's, we had, you know, Scooter involved and we had all these big celebrities involved, obviously to amplify. But at the end of the day, if you pay to play with these people and then the product or service isn't credible and it doesn't have that impact, then you're going to have this huge customer churn. So not only were we getting Great eyeballs and great hype. Our follow through, our meticulous ability to consistently deliver on the promise that we were going to make you feel like a fucking rock star every time you put those gloves on and every time you saw that brand logo, that's what shot us to meteoric heights. And I mean, through a pandemic. Now, like I said, we just opened up Tokyo, we're opening up Dubai, and we're entering the Middle east, all from One little shop. 23rd between 6 and 7. 6,600 square feet. That used to be an old traditional gym, which I think is really cool. Used to be called Steel City Gym. And I remember when I was touring the space with Eugene, before we picked it, I walked down to this little basement and I made a left and there was this. She must have been 75 years old, this woman, and she was in posing trunks, definitely, like geared out of her mind, like all the steroids and everything. But she was ripped and she was posing and she caught eyes with me and I caught eyes with her and she gave me like a little like.
- [51:48]
Dan Niman
Yeah.
- [51:49]
Noah Neiman
And I was that moment there where I was like, this is the space where we bring in and usher in this new era of fitness where it's much more obtainable, it's much more digestible, and it's going to be our point of view. And we executed and we consistently, you know, kept the trust of our customers and the customer thanked us by blowing us up.
- [52:10]
Dan Niman
So then you get to 11 locations, 12 locations, 13 locations. During 14 locations. Why do you decide to work with private equity? When is that turning point where, like, you know what, maybe it's time to bring in some capital or other partners to really scale US from 14 to now 80, and even growing faster than that, farther than that.
- [52:29]
Noah Neiman
Well, complete transparency. I think the pandemic, it didn't force our hand, but it definitely persuaded our hand in a different direction because we actually had no plans. We wanted to keep it small, tight, corporate, free. Because when you're dealing with the brand that has such a unique identity and presentation and soul like Rumble does, and the execution is so important and the people involved driving that execution are so important. Oftentimes when you throw that to a corporate machine, a lot gets lost in the sauce. But with that being said, we are coming out of the pandemic. We were getting back up to our pre pandemic numbers and some studios were actually doing better, but there was still that uncertainty. We had been told, you know, we're open, we're closed, 50% capacity. 30% capacity, social distancing. I mean, I remember filming in a, in a, this, a group fitness, a live experience. I remember filming like a podcast style audio to play over the loudspeaker so two customers could sit in the physical space while the workout and the trainer played over the audio. It's just like. But that's what I'm saying. Like we're fighters. We learned how to pivot. I mean, talk about knuckle therapy. Like, I apply a lot of fighting principles into my entrepreneurial and personal life because we had a pivot. So we launched a digital channel called Rumble tv which helped us gain international viewership. So now everybody across the world, not just 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, Louisiana, San Francisco, D.C. philly, Chicago. Those are our 6600 flagship, 6600 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 2200 square foot smaller footprint, a little bit more financially digestible for these franchisee owners. But we've. 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 want to bring this to every household, I want to 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.
- [55:07]
Dan Niman
So then you go from 14 to 80ish, and then now 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, location that you can name them all to becoming a large scale corporation.
- [55:24]
Noah Neiman
You use a lot of corny office jargon, I'll tell you that.
- [55:27]
Dan Niman
Thank you.
- [55:28]
Noah Neiman
Yeah, no, but it's necessary. I get it. Listen, we got SOPs now before, when it's 13 and it's your boy's just doing some cool things like, hey, What? 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 gonna 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. Cause trust is a huge thing for me, and 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 got to have a meeting about the meeting and then you got to 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 and obviously it takes much more momentum to steer the ship. You can be much more nimble when you don't have these corporate constraints. But then again, like I said, I would never be able to scale to Tokyo. I would never in a million years without them, thought that we were going to be that I was going to be walking past the Sydney Opera House and I hear, yo, Noah, I used to take class in New York. In 2017, I moved out here and now I heard Rumbles opening in bondi like I OD'd on drugs. And now I'm walking past the Sydney Opera House like one of the wonders of the world in magnificence, beauty and splendor. And people are screaming my name, not because of me, but because of how something that I helped create impacted them so profoundly and positively. Everyone needs to fight for that. Everyone. So I don't know where I was going with that, but I just know that, like, that needs to remain, as much as I can, the soul of the brand. And I'll do my best to work within, again, a corporation to still keep that essence alive.
- [57:37]
Dan Niman
Why are group fitness classes important for people to consider to add to their workout schedule each week? Week?
- [57:42]
Noah Neiman
Because we're tribal creatures and I think social media has made us as connected as ever, but more disconnected than ever. So there's a lot to be said about just getting together with a collective group of people and amplifying our own energies. So, you know, there's this African proverb that Nike likes To say a lot. It's like if you want to go fast, you know, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. So I think that there's a certain intangible, innate kind of thing at play with group fitness that allows you to come into this space, know that you're surrounded by some people that are probably like minded, that you can feel supported by. And then, you know, it's like the bodegas in New York City. Need a penny, take a penny, have a penny, leave a penny. So you're being amplified and you're, you're losing yourself in this crowd and the music and the lights are low and you're doing more and you're training harder than you ever would independently because you're surrounded by this dope collective of people. So that was important to me. And also, to be honest, I've created things very selfishly. So when I was going through those dark moments in my, in my time, I was sitting, you know, by myself in a basement, which me and Oz literally just thinking about all my problems and I was looking at my phone, just praying that somebody would call to like, ask me out somewhere to go to a movie. So I created a space where no matter how you're feeling and what you're, what's going on in your individual life, you know that you can come to rumble. And like I said, you can get out of your own head, you can get out of that basement where, where I was and you can find yourself, you know, catching your, yourself in the mirror and smiling maybe for the first time that week or that day. But if I can kind of scale that feeling, then I know the business is going to be rooted in something that's positive. And I know that it's going to be, it's going to last.
- [59:33]
Dan Niman
So let's say there's someone out there that's a personal trainer and they want to raise their price, but they don't know how. They're charging 60 bucks a session, but they want to charge 80 or 100 or maybe even more. How do they talk to their clients? How do they build their brand? How can they justify in value to raise their price from, let's call it 60 to 80?
- [59:51]
Noah Neiman
Well, listen, I mean, there's a reason why, you know, an Hermes bag is pricier than, you know, the Ikea shopping bag. Although Balenciaga did turn that Ikea bag into a multi. But anyway, that's capitalism, baby. You have to give the value and not just give that value. You have to be a storyteller. So you have to. And you talk about this a lot. You have to put your value out into the universe consistently. You know, Steve Jobs famously said in a Pixar meeting with executives that, you know, the world is ruled by storytellers. Your profession is going to be ruled by the storytellers of it. So if you can show how your energy is infectious and how you're going to be reliable and show up and how you have. You've amassed all this energy that's going to get your clients to the goals as quickly as possible. And to be honest, you got to be a person that somebody wants in the room no matter what the profession is. So if you're putting out your brand consistently, people are going to see that value. You should never have to manipulate your way into a higher billable rate. You should be so undeniably good and position yourself as a premier product or service by who you're associated with. It helps if you have, you know, the celebrity clients. Hell, but it's not necessary. But obviously it does help because everybody wants, you know, the trainer that is in their favorite sitcom. Who's there, who's getting trained by them. They look great. Who's Jessica Alba's trainer? I want them so that. That helps. But again, it's not necessary. But what you do have to do is, again, tell your story consistently and show, not just tell. Show people why you're more valuable than anybody else.
- [61:31]
Dan Niman
So someone's building up their career and they want to stand out. There's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of personal trainers. How can they make themselves stand out if they want to become a more known personal trainer?
- [61:45]
Noah Neiman
You get tattoos, you get a nice watch, you get a beautiful dog. No, you, to be honest, you just, you got to know yourself. They always, you know, people are always like, you got to know your customer and, yeah, identify your customer, but you have to know yourself. And if you know yourself and you present yourself to the world again consistently and with energy and passion, you'd be so surprised at what you naturally attracted as opposed to, you know, being insidious and trying to. Again, I call it manipulation, manipulating people to work with you or deal with you. So you should create a personality and a presence and a. In a, in an educational wheelhouse that's so undeniably powerful that it ain't what you say, it's how you say it. So if you can be confident in that, you're going to stand out naturally.
- [62:35]
Dan Niman
Can a personal trainer become bigger than the gym that they work at?
- [62:39]
Noah Neiman
Absolutely. I mean, it happened to me. So, I mean, I'll shout out Barry's boot camp because I would never have a platform. That's the gym I was talking about before. I would never have had a platform, but it was that it was a platform. And now I chose to work seven days a week. I chose to make sure that I was in the right rooms with the right people. I remember teaching a Saturday class with this guy, Michael Roark, who was the founder of Hudson Media. And I made sure that, you know, I always took care of everyone, but I really made sure to take care of the people that I needed to take care of. He was a big producer and I didn't expect anything, but I just made sure to always make sure that his Saturdays with me. Those Saturday mornings at 7am he was walking out buzzing. And then one day I get a call, hey, I'm filming this series for gq. Never been on camera before. I'm filming this series for GQ called Fighting Weight. Would you want to be in it? But if I had tried to manipulate him into, all right, I'm going to see how I can finesse myself into getting into this show. It never would have happened. It would have come off as disingenuous. So I believe, you know, the podcast right before, you know, it talks about give that value. I chased relationships and not checks, where I think a lot of people go wrong. And it's. It's very important on Money Monday, Money Mondays to say that chase relationships and not checks. Checks will get you the short term. You know, I call it the crypto money real quick. But if you chase those relationships, you're going to build lasting wealth. And those people, because of the value that you gave them, they're going to want to authentically help you, and you're going to be top of mind for other projects that maybe you didn't even think because, again, I never thought that I was going to be in Vanity Fair. I never thought I was going to have a show on Bravo. But what I did do is every day I showed up and gave that same energy. So I think that that's really important and underrated. As a trainer, if you want to break the four walls of where you're at, you have to be special. And sometimes just that, that specialness is just that consistent energy that makes another person feel incredible when you're around. And, you know, you never know when you're going to get your next investor that might invest in your own gym, that might invest in your own fitness platform, your own line of merch or you know, clothing or supplement line. But you can't go about it with the angle of this is why I'm doing it. You have to go about it as this is the value that I've created and this is the value that I want to give consistently to every single person whether they can do something for me or not. And you'd be surprised. You'll find those people that can do something for you and they want to give it back to you.
- [65:09]
Dan Niman
Why do you think that people should incorporate charity into their lives, whether it's their family or their office?
- [65:16]
Noah Neiman
I mean, I think we said it before, service to others that are rent for our room here on earth. So incorporating a charitable component and is really the bedrock of society. You know, we're tribal creatures. We have to look out for one of, you know each other. So for knuckle therapy, the first thing that I started with was how can I use this brand to help animal rescues and lower income families with veterinary services? Because for me there was. When Oz was 15, he, he had internal bleeding, he had a tumor that I didn't know and it bust. And I rushed him to the hospital and the surgery was like, you know, $10,000. And they told me, they're like, listen, we can do this surgery. Chances are 50, 50 is not going to make it through. And this dog saved my life. Like I'm serious, like the times when I was like going through panic attacks and he would come put his head on my, on my head, on my thigh and just let me know it's going to be okay. How could I not? But I was fortunate enough because I had those finances. If not, I would have had to make the terrible decision to just literally let him pass. And now he ended up living four more years almost. So three and a half more years. So I want to provide that for family. So if you can have those charitable elements authentically laced into your brand or your service, then I don't know, that's just another point of differentiation that's, that's authentic and it's not disingenuous and it showcases who you are because it's almost unimportant what you do. There's a thousand garments that are the same, there's a thousand workouts that are the same. But having a really strong charitable component laced into the business model is going to be one of your authentic points of differentiation. And it shows that you're a human and not some amorphous, soul sucking brand.
- [67:04]
Dan Niman
So 100 something years from now when it's Time for Noah to pass. Maybe 100, maybe 200 years from now.
- [67:11]
Noah Neiman
Oh, my God.
- [67:12]
Dan Niman
It's time for you to pass. And you go from 80 locations to 250 locations to 2,500 locations, and you've got, like, Scrooge McDuck money. How do you decide what percentage to break up amongst family, friends, charity? No. 1. Everyone. What do you do?
- [67:30]
Noah Neiman
You remember that scene in the Joker where he just lights it all on fire? Yeah. You're on your own, suckers. You earn your own shit. No, I'm kidding. I don't have any kids. I will eventually, but to be honest, I don't. I want to give away. I mean, that's my plan right now. Even if I have children, I want to make sure they're okay with school and they. But there's something about earning your own and finding your own way that I think was really impactful to me. And I've been around a lot of people that have been given a lot of things. You know, they have the McLarens and they have it, but they haven't earned it. So they are left feeling super empty. I have to do some deep soul searching when the time comes, but I plan on giving a ton away to probably dog shelters, dog sanctuaries, dog charities, because, again, I don't know if I'm here talking to you without Oz. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I obviously have a loving family that. That helps, but I'd want to do more for animals. So I think that. I don't know whose cat I think it was. Oh, my God. Lagerfeld's cat is worth, like, 300, like, million or something. Like Karl Lagerfeld's cat. Look it up. I think I have two dogs, Tyson and Zoe. They're going to be zillionaires. Yeah, they're going to be quadrillionaires. So, yeah, I'm gonna. I'll give a lot away, but again, I'm gonna have to do some deeper thinking about the ramifications of leaving a fortune to your loved ones.
- [69:02]
Dan Niman
Where can people find you? The brand, the business? Talk through it.
- [69:06]
Noah Neiman
At Noah D. Neiman, it's a lot of ugc. It's really just me and the dogs and some workouts. So at Noah D. Neiman N E, I M A N. And I still teach. I'm in New York, I'm in la, I'm all over. I might be in Tokyo and in Bondi. So I post my schedule a lot and kind of where I'm at and that's it. I mean, I'm out in the streets. I mean, hit me up online DM me and just say what's up?
- [69:31]
Dan Niman
All right, guys, so it's really important for you to discuss finances, money, situations, accounting, salaries, credit, all those things with your friends, family and followers. These discussions have to happen. There's nothing rude about talking about reality. Money is reality. It helps pay for healthcare, rent, food, a lot of great things. Have you ever tried desserts? Like you need money for desserts. Have you ever tried, like a smoothie? I like smoothies, but they're 8 bucks and 10 bucks and 7 bucks and 12 bucks around.
- [69:58]
Noah Neiman
You're not going to Erewhon for the $25 Hailey Bieber smoothie.
- [70:01]
Dan Niman
Come on.
- [70:01]
Noah Neiman
Now we're in Los Angeles.
- [70:03]
Dan Niman
And so those things that you might want take money. And it's not rude to talk about it. We have to be able to discuss it with our friends and family. And it has to be part of our society. Because daily life, when you have credit cards and debt and situations and rent and leases and borrowing money from your friends for 200 bucks, like, those things are real. And we have to be able to talk about it with our people. And that's why we've stayed so consistent up on the charts with the Money Mondays, because of you having those discussions and sharing our clips with your friends, family and followers. So Visit us@themoneymondays.com and we will see you guys next Monday.