How To Leverage Self-Confidence and Strategy with the CEO of The Steiner Agency - Brandon Steiner

Ever wondered how self-confidence, strategy, and peak performance translate from the sports arena to the boardroom? Brandon Steiner, the visionary behind Collectible Exchange and The Steiner Agency, joins us to decode these parallels. In a fascinating exploration of his journey from founding Steiner Sports to leading his current enterprises, Brandon illuminates the intersection of sports marketing, collectibles, and the poignant lessons he's gleaned from iconic athletes. His stories, including a riveting one involving Mariano Rivera, serve as a playbook for anyone aiming to replicate the dedication and consistency required for success in any field.

In the realm of business, it's not just about who you know but how you grow with them. I share insights from my own experiences on the importance of fostering meaningful business relationships and mastering the art of marketing. The dialogue shifts focus to the potent combination of gratitude and personal growth, proposing that these elements are indispensable for achieving happiness and success. With a nod to the strategic value of deepening existing connections and offering authentic value, we discuss how these principles have shaped interactions with renowned professional athletes and business leaders alike.

As we wrap up, the conversation takes a nostalgic turn through the vibrant world of trading cards and collectibles. Brandon divulges the insider perspective on Collectible Exchange's role in a booming market, where enthusiasts can authenticate, grade, and monetize their treasures. He shares personal anecdotes that will resonate with collectors and entrepreneurs, detailing the considerations that come into play when navigating the trading card business, and the enduring thrill of the hunt for rare memorabilia. Join us on this journey and discover how the pursuit of passion can lead to profit in the dynamic world of sports collectibles.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:41

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. On today's episode, we have the privilege to interview Brandon Steiner. Brandon is a trailblazer in the world of sports marketing and entrepreneurship. He's the founder and president of the Steiner Agency, a renowned athlete procurement source. In the vision behind Electable Exchange, an innovative platform for sports enthusiasts, we're very excited to have Brandon on the show. Welcome, brandon Well thanks, rob.

Speaker 3: 1:33

I look forward to talking to you about this. Listen, at the end of the day, I'm an open book. You're at your leadership entrepreneurs, online selling. Obviously, I'm a technology immigrant, but I've built two new companies that are completely different than what I've done before. I think it's just never too late. You've got a dream and you've got a vision about what you want, awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:52

Well, we're really looking to get you know hearing more about that. So, to start things off, can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your background and what you're currently working on Sure?

Speaker 3: 2:02

Listen, most people know me from Steiner Sports and they have 35 years that built that company up. It's a great company. I'm not there anymore. There's no more Steiner at Steiner. Four years ago I started a new company called Collectible Exchange. Recently I just purchased a company called Start Stock. Between these two companies there's over a million and a half trading cards. We help people, you know, evaluate, grade it, source out. You know if you're sitting with a lot of trading cards, you're not sure what to do with it. There's a lot of people are. We help you. And then Collectible Exchange, really just a true marketplace where you buy it, sell memorabilia. There's 150,000 items on the site we just ported up with eBay. So our site now is ported up with eBay on top of it. And my new show starts February 3rd for I'll be interviewing athletes multiple times a week talking about Collectibles, trading cards, sports, business, sales, entrepreneurship and they're really just helping people understand how the hobby and industry work. There's thousands and thousands of items out there, but a lot of them are not necessarily great things or good things to buy. So I'm hoping that show will, you know, be able to show people, like you know, some of those things that they should buy things to avoid. And we're going to do a lot of experiential stuff. You know, getting fans and customers close to the game meeting, greets, q&a, athletic. You'll also be able to get online and which is something I really did a lot of at Steiner and now I'll be doing a lot more of that with my new company, collectible Exchange. So I've been busy, you know, working on a fourth book. I'm not going to do it sports, but we'll get into that later. And then you know, read three other books. The books are free on Collect Bookshelves. Go on these paid for the shipping and I'm happy to personalize a red and note on there, whatever it is. But you'll see after this conversation what part of one of those three books you may want and I'm happy you can go on the website and pick one up Nice.

Speaker 4: 3:40

No, that sounds awesome and so glad to have you on the show. Brandon, excited to dig into this and first question I've got for you. Once I saw your bio and saw, like all the athletes that you've been working with, I was I was super excited. So you work with legends like Derek Jeter, eli Manning, marcus here. What did we learn from athletes at that stature about leadership and teamwork that can be applied to other businesses or other spaces?

Speaker 3: 4:04

Well, you know, let's say I think this to be a professional athlete. You're already an anomaly. I mean, it's something special. You can't just become a professional athlete. I mean you're talking about a lottery ticket to get to play at a pro level and then to be the best of the best amongst those. There's a level of extraordinary, and that's what I've learned is that there's probably two most important lessons, and one is you know you have to have to have a strategy, a confidence in yourself, and then a confidence in God. There's got to be a faith. When you go into these kind of situations where you're talking again about some of the most difficult, highest level of competition, you've got to make sure you've got a confidence in yourself, certain level of confidence, certain level of strategy about how you want to go about your business, and then you got to have faith that the good Lord's going to take you where you need to go. And a second most important thing that I hear and I see is there is not such thing as a big game. You have to be on the highest, highest level every day. There is no like day off or out of bad week. Every day you've got to be trying to reach your highest level and then beat it. So you know, give an example, as I was spring training one year it was in March and the Yankee people playing Tampa Bay and I was doing an appearance of Mariana Rivera pretty good closer in his time and certainly one of the most consistent pitchers we've ever seen ever and he's supposed to meet me after the game and the fifth inning he came down, sat next to me. I'm like what are you doing here? I thought we meeting after the game because no, I pitched last inning. I told Joe to Joe Torrey that I needed to do something after the game so he could put me in earlier. I said that's just a spring training, because I went and got a pretzel. I didn't see him pitch. I'm not a spring training. Are you kidding me? I just knocked that one, two, three, nine pitches. I said yeah, but he trained, he was casting because I go on the mound in the middle of March same way I would in a World Series game. In a playoff game, game seven doesn't matter, night thing doesn't matter. My approach never changes this way. When I go into a game seven and we're in the World Series, the bottom of the ninth, people ask me how I deal with it and the answer is I don't, I'm prepared, I don't weigh, I don't vary it, there's no sustain is a big game. Every time I walk on the mound it's the same approach, same mindset, and I tell people like if you have a surging, you want a surging coming in, operating's as not that big an operation. The great surgeon is, the great lawyer is. Every case, every operation is on the highest level, using their knowledge, ability and the consistency of it never wavering. And I think it's a great lesson to learn that there's those things a big game, those things a big sale, those things a big meeting, because you disrespect all the other meetings and other sales. I think every sale, every meeting has to be the most important one and you don't want to waive your mental mindset and your attitude with an up and down approach depending on what you think is big or what you think is not so big.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Awesome response there, and I think that anybody listening can take some lessons away from that, and I really like what you said about by not taking things seriously, say in a meeting, you're being disrespectful to the people in that meeting. That's an interesting way to frame it and I really, really like that. So, brandon, you've had an incredible journey, starting with a one room office to purchasing Yankee Stadium. Can you share the pivotal moments that shaped your entrepreneurial path?

Speaker 3: 7:03

I started in a small office at 400 hour a month rent and a $4,000 investment to a $50 million company and certainly built an industry up amongst it. Besides making a lot of money, I took the hobby and turned it into an industry, which certainly has paid off and it's been really good. I mean it's been very gratifying, but when I think about some of the most important lessons is really some of it? I think the brain is in the basic, simple stuff. First of all, try to avoid raising more money than you need. More money you raise, more accountability and the more pressure you're going to put on yourself to not only do well but to make money for your investors. And it does sometimes take a while. I always think, like when I even started my first company, I started off. See, it always takes like four years to get everything set up, solid and get your vision clear, and if you're pressed to do things faster, sometimes you're compromised about what you should and shouldn't be doing. I think the second thing is spending a lot less money than you have. If a cash flow profit is critical, a cash is king. Like making sure your cash flow is positive, not overspending, not getting ahead of yourself, is one of the most important ingredients in entrepreneurship and starting off. And then you got to brace yourself. You got to be good at difficult. If you're not prepared to take some risks and you want to start something new, it's probably not a good. It's not a good set. Starting new businesses are risky, starting entrepreneurial businesses even more riskier and it comes at risk and there's a good chance you may fail. And you got to brace yourself to deal with the difficulties. The really good entrepreneurs are not that much talented than the bad ones. They just have the resilience to work it out. Like I think one of my keys is that I'm resilient and I figure stuff out. I'm not afraid to abandon a dream and an idea how the year and a half ago because it's not working out, and try something else. I think sometimes people get SOS, they get stuck on, stupid, and I think just because you came up with a great idea and a dream, you raise money doesn't mean it's a good idea and sometimes you need to abandon it. And I see a lot of people that start off with really good ideas. They don't seem to be able to execute it and you got to be able to move on and get changed direction. So you can do that. There's a good change.

Speaker 2: 9:00

You can win. I do have a follow up on this. Brandon, At the beginning of the podcast, you had mentioned that you're a technology immigrant. What did you mean by that?

Speaker 3: 9:09

Well, I'm the first to do an online auction and first to even collect those, to even do a website. But just so, you know, it took me like two years just to learn how to turn my computer on. Like I had somebody in my office would come on and turn my computer on and get me set up, so I didn't even have to do it. You know, it can be very daunting when you get into the tech and into the online part of the business, but it can be gratifying when you figure it out. And what's funny is this new company is all online, everything's online, everything is a marketplace, everything is done through social media. So when you think about it, it's amazing that I've made the transformation. But one of the things I tell people is like you got, if you're green, you're growing, but if you're ripe, you're rotten and you cannot get stuck in your ways. So I put a bunch of young kids around me that taught me about social media, taught me how to post, taught me how to do video production, taught me how to go and build up some of the different social stuff to get people to interact. And, uh, I've always kept really, really smart people around me. On the e-commerce part Knowing that's not necessarily my strength and gradually over the years I've gotten better at but, um, I think when I talk to older people and that, well, I'm not on facebook, I don't mind on instagram, I'm not on snapchat, I'm like why? Everybody else is like why would you distance yourself? It's been really good for me. I'm a flexible guy that really doesn't feel like I know much. I'm always in learning mode and I think the most important thing I think in business is what you're rated gross. If you really want to look at a great company, there's always a rated growth on some level, whether it's on the business development, new product development, training and developing your staff. This always got to be gross. If you don't have gross, it's really hard to win and it's hard to be happy. A lot of happiness comes with gross and Gratitude and I think for me, I've always been a little shortcoming on the gratitude part, but I've increased my level of gratitude. So what I have and what I'm trying to do and be grateful that I'm able to do it, so I would say like happiness resides on the cross-section of gratitude and growth. If you want to be happier, turn up the volume on your gratitude. Turn up the volume on your rated growth. I know you're probably pretty smart, but could you be smarter, could you do a little better? Could you know a little bit more? And people that stop growing, those are. That's your first side of editorial.

Speaker 4: 11:13

It's a neighborhood of misery for those listening, I would say rewind that for the last three minutes and listen to it again, because Brandon is dropping some old nuggets there. So great advice. So, yeah, yeah, I really like the SOS analogy to start on soup and that. That one is good. I'm not the borrow that one and put it in the full box, kind of bridging it to. The next discussion is building business Relationships. Or, david and I, over the last couple years, building great business relationships is crucial and I know they've been a pillar for your success. What's your advice to those who are listening for establishing and nurturing meaningful business connections?

Speaker 3: 11:47

Well, here's the thing. First of all, I love when people start talking about you know relationships, everything that's not be excused about where they are, especially if you're playing the long game. But what I like to talk more about is how do you initiate relationships? You know, building relationships for young people out there, like how do I even get a relationship started? And I think initiating relationships is critical and then you could build them and then you can keep them to guess you know you got to value them. But I think what's really important at least the way I look at this before you start going out there and networking which is a common going out the network, when get to know that you know a little better. We all know what the average are about 200 people. It's about the average, I think, between cousins, relatives, friends, neighbors. Get to know those 200 people and who they know before you start meeting complete strangers. I always say it's not who you know and it's not what you know, but it's what you know about who. If you take a minute, just really think about who you know and actually who you like and who you already have relationship with, maybe go a little further with it, you'd be surprised how far that could take, because there's nothing better than going to somebody that likes you, that you have Relationship with. What better referral you're gonna get than somebody like that. You meet a common stranger and this will work to be cut out. So you know back to that. So you know again. Now you, you let's say you've mastered that and you've you've got this nice little Little list of people that you know already, got to meet all them and people that you know. But to initiate a relationship, the first thing one must think about is what value you provide. Relationships get initiated and started by providing value, and value is what you can do for someone that can't do for themselves. So at the end of the day, when I meet somebody, particularly like a famous athlete or whatever most people think, or what can I get out of this? Well, this is gonna be big. I get this big customer, I met the CEO. My immediate reaction is what could I do for this person that they can't do for themselves? What value can I provide? What can I do to make this person's life easier? Because when you think about people that you know and that really like you, they have a good relationship with Usually, if you're adding some kind of value to that on some level and the more of that value you can add to somebody. Those are the people you have probably the better relations with. So first thing is get to know the people you already know better. Take a minute, do inventory of all the people you actually know. You'd be surprised how many people there are that you've gone to school with, people that you get your hair cut, people that you get bartenders, family cousins. And then at the second thing is if you want to start initiating relationship, something about value you have to offer them and making sure that the value proposition is what you step forward with to initiate a new relationship.

Speaker 2: 14:05

I really like that, that answer. I'm curious when you meet a professional athlete, what is your value proposition or or how are you providing value?

Speaker 3: 14:13

at this point is a lot different, because I've been doing this a long time. So there's not much that I mean there's a million things I could do for an athlete that my goal is trying to find out what I'll be needs. So it's not about what I know and it's not about what the answers I got. It's a question. So I do not try to dig in and find out what's really important. I would say you know, you got to figure out who's important and what's important and do what's important. So who's important? Every day when I meet a high level athlete, first thing I want to do is try to figure out what's important and mirror what's going on from them. And when I know what's important, I see if there's any difficulty rattling around with that. That's what I want to jump in, even if it's not convenient, even if it costs me money, even if it's something that has nothing to do with my business, so I can figure out some kind of solution to maybe a problem that they're having or struggle with I'm participating in, I'm going to jump in. That's where I want to get. That's the entry point. The entry point is where the struggle is, where the potential problem is frustration. Yeah, I meet a professional baseball player doesn't need my help show them how to hit. So he's looking for you know he's maybe trying to find start a foundation he's looking to maybe try to find a place to live. You may need a new car, eat this maybe lost and, as you know, no, as no family or friends in the area. You know everybody's a little different and that's why the questions you ask, you know, obviously having a lot of answers is important to one of you Really good at what you do. You got to have knowledge. But having the right questions and really listening as you meet different people along the way and trying to find out what's important to them and then zero in on what's important to them, will help you initiate or at least build relationships that maybe have started. I don't think it's that complicated but you know. You know people listen, everybody wants what they want. They got a number to try to make sales. I get it. There's pressure, but you got to play the long game and you know you got to make sure that when you meet people and they're good quality people and somebody you want to do business with, a company you want to work with you've got to have the patience to develop and build relationships through value proposition, meaning doing what you can have for these people Because they can't do it themselves.

Speaker 2: 16:40

I really like that, and I think a professional athlete is a great example here, because from an outsider looking in, they seemingly have everything. But you just listed off a number of things that somebody, when approaching an athlete, could pitch or help with. So, moving on, your expertise in marketing and personal branding have been widely recognized. Can you delve into the core principles that have fueled your marketing success?

Speaker 3: 17:06

I know this is not going to be a sexy answer, but I think it's the obvious truth and thanks for me. I don't want to waste the truth. Good, bad ugly. I mean, if you know what you're doing, you know your product and you're going to handle all your customers, the best strategy you need is your brands to tell the truth, and that's what I've gone about. My PR, my marketing, advertising is really analyzing. Well, actually, let me say it better, like, if you want to really increase the level of your branding, increase the level of your common sense and common sense comes from being able to take your feet and put them in someone else's shoes. Really call that empathy. But empathy is like taking yourself, putting yourself in someone else's head. So when I think about my branding and why I've been able to get spot on about branding and rebranding and making sure that my, whatever, my platform match up to where people think, is because I can get externally outside of my own head and get it to other people's heads. My kids would tell you that you know my dad's not that smart, but he's got a really high level of common sense and I think that's where it comes from. You got to know what people are thinking. You got to know what people are feeling. You got to know what people want, more importantly than what you want, than what you're thinking and what you're feeling. And when you could do that, that's how you could brand and hit it right on the head. You can find the white space and I think it's just critical that you want to rebrand you. People want to build a brand. Start with increasing your common sense and shot really understanding the way people look and feel about a certain category or certain part of service or product.

Speaker 4: 18:26

I like that. So, brandon, I kind of want to pivot here. I see here you've written, you've authored four books and so I kind of want to get into that a little bit and kind of share you know what inspired you to write the books, and kind of go over it a little bit on each one and share with the middle ranking and the fourth book is nothing to do with business or sales.

Speaker 3: 18:44

It's about urban policing and the difficulties without having communities, and my feeling is how we've lost one of the most important aspects of our life living in this country, which is safety, and it's starting to escalate bigger and greater every year and we need to actually fix the problems we're having in our communities and some of the connections we have with how police can police and what communities, particularly in urban areas, need so that we can get along better and we can do better. We can get along better and we can manage this stuff better. Just right now we're in deep trouble with some of the levels of pride, with retail stores closing and people just are doing a lot of different things they shouldn't be doing in urban areas that are creating a lot of discomfort. The first three books the business playbook I wrote when I was coming out of college. I couldn't find a job and I think you know finding work is really important. I wish kids would start doing it before it's too late. Kids should be looking for work in high school and middle school. Learning how to find work and learning how to create value, since somebody wants to hire you, is one of the most important things we do. So when I couldn't get a job coming out of college, I'd been working since 10. I said you know I'm going to go and write a book about all the different little things you got to do and you can't wait to get started. You got to have balls my mother's favorite line. That was a book all about. You know all the stuff I learned from my mom and it basically just gives you a whole outlook on how I built the world and how I our company and like what you do after you have success. Most people are preparing many, many years through college. They want to go to, they're preparing to be the profession they want, the family that they want to have, and they spend tons of time but they don't really spend a whole lot of time what they can do after that. What do you do when you get in your 40s and you have made a lot of money? You have that success and that book kind of outlines a little bit of what the real point stuff is. It's a long story how I come up with that book, because it doesn't tell you what to do, but it showed you what I did and I went to a lot of gurus around the country. You know about marital, how you become a better dad, how you become fit better, how you eat better, sleep better. There's so much good stuff in this book and a lot of it is really not mine, but all these different, really smart people around the country. And I think, listen, at the end of the day, if you want to have a high level of growth and your rate of growth is important to you, why wouldn't you go to the best and smartest people you can to show you how to do it? And I think you have to become more than one dimensional, whereas you know, obviously the business and making money is important. We all go to trade shows, read books, seminars, but you got to take the same kind of interest on your health, same interest on your family, friends, fitness, faith. All that stuff are really important. Funnels, too, that you got to make sure are growing. So I try to explain all those different funnels and some of the things I did to just grow in those funnels, to be a better person.

Speaker 2: 21:17

All right, very nice. Let's chat a little bit more about collectible exchange, what it does, people does, it serve, and if people are interested in checking it out along with the acquisition that you just made as well, let's chat about that.

Speaker 3: 21:29

Well, thank you for asking and you know collectible exchange is interesting because a lot of people save a lot of things, particularly the people that are a little bit older. We've all been big savers and people are just stuck. They don't know what they have. There's a big push now. You have a collectible, you need to get authenticated. If you have an old trading card, you get a graded and you know people don't know how to do that. They don't know what to do and they're not sure what stuff's worth. So what our company does in collectible exchange, we focus on those people and we get collections all day, every day, all week. Amazing to the kind of savers there are with people out there. But what's crazy is that it's the main focus just helping people liquidate, turn that cloth to cash. People are seeing what closet is, some memorabilia, all that stuff, and we're helping them Start a stock. Same thing people sitting with trading cards all over the house. Parents save their cards. They don't know which ones are good, which ones are bad. We help them get a graded, we help them kind of give an idea which ones are valuable, and then we also have a vault that will warehouse those cards for them as well.

Speaker 2: 22:23

Okay, and did you get into this out of personal interest? Were you a trading card, as trading card has been a part of your life for a long time?

Speaker 3: 22:30

Yeah, I've been a big card collector and a big collector and I have everything. Frankly, I have a lot of issues, so I've been trading and collecting everything. But I got into deeper into the pool on the trading card, which I hadn't done before, because it is a big part of the business and a lot of people are collecting cards. Hard business has grown and I still like for me to be authentic and cover the aspects of collecting, which I try to do on collectible exchange. This was an opportunity where they dig deeper in on an area that was really important to people and give them solutions to some of the problems I'm seeing out there. As I've been a business for four years, more and more people come in with trading card issues. They have all these cards and it was a deal with a lot of people sitting with a lot of garbage. The cards are not worth much. So the starslockcom comes in at a perfect time. The trading card business is definitely booming, doing well, and there's definitely a need for somebody that gives insight. What's it worth? What to do with these cards, should you hold them, should you fold them? So that's the goal of that company as well.

Speaker 4: 23:23

Yeah, that's cool. So anybody that's got something. Not only do you guys on collectible exchange, not only do you help people grade them all that, you also have stuff on here for sale. I'm looking on the site now. I see some Chuck Liddell. A lot of people are gonna buy.

Speaker 3: 23:36

Yeah, I mean there's so many cool things on this site. I mean my ultimate goal is just to have everything. I mean we're working on so many deals, layers and teams and on any given day this site dramatically changes. And what's great is a lot of the stuff is really priced incredibly well too. So that's nice, because I remember I'm selling other people's stuff, so a lot of the times this stuff is priced to sell, so it makes it easier without a huge overhead here. So it's exciting and it's fun. I mean I want to take it all home myself but I can't go.

Speaker 4: 24:04

I forgot me, I'm gonna have to own myself back on this site here. So no, that's awesome. Well cool, Brandon. Before we get into the fire on this, are there any questions? We didn't ask you that you want to share.

Speaker 3: 24:14

No, first, I just appreciate the opportunity. I mean. So those of you know me know me out there. You know I've been committed this category forever, but I just speak around the country, you know, and all my money goes to charity, so you get that on brandonsteinercom. So when a commission about that? If you're looking to drive your salespeople or come up with an innovative lab, I'm happy to come and speak to your group and just let them fly high. But all is good. I mean, I appreciate the time and you know it's not. I'm having fun at 65, you know which is which is important. You know it's like you definitely want to be working, you want to be having fun and growing and you know you always get a little nervous. Four is this can be for me, so I'm really fortunate to be able to keep enjoying that.

Speaker 4: 24:50

Oh, that's awesome Cool. So every guest we have in the show we run through a fire round. It's a series of four rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Of course, what is your favorite book?

Speaker 3: 24:58

Swing with the Sharks. Harvey McKay has been a mentor and a friend. I've earned so much from Harvey. Definitely look up McKay 66. They're principles that I lived by for the last 40 years and I've made. I mean I should be putting JL for everything I've stolen from Harvey. Then next one what are your hobbies? Well, that's a good question. Well, certainly going to a lot of games and collecting and certainly, why don't I play basketball when I can't with my friends? I have an indoor court at my house so we have our bi-weekly games, which is always a big deal to me. If anybody out there has any ideas, I'm looking for some new hobbies, so please send them to me. I love your messaging. I'm looking for new hobbies, new ideas, and my wife and I definitely are traveling a lot. That's definitely on the agenda to do a lot of.

Speaker 4: 25:37

All right, question three what is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man? Oh, boy.

Speaker 3: 25:42

The meetings, the forecasting and the lack of empathy when you work for somebody that doesn't have empathy and then I'm thinking about what you're thinking about, even though you're the expert very frustrating. The meetings and forecasting. I've just never been a big fan of sitting there every month and trying to predict what's going to happen, which you have no control over, by the way, which is the whole oxymoron of it all. You don't have to control anything in life. Went along these numbers who's going to come to my site and buy stuff, but you're just guessing as you get into the bigger companies. That's such a big part of it. I don't miss it when I order. Now that I'm working back on my own free.

Speaker 4: 26:16

All right. Last one what are these things? That's a part of successful entrepreneurs, from those who give up, fail or never get started.

Speaker 3: 26:23

Oh boy, I mean, there's a few different things. I certainly think you got to be no doubt and you got to be curious. I think the two most important ingredients for just a nail down two would be you got to have a high level of curiosity. It's not really about where you are, but it's what you want to accept, and curiosity is the driving force behind that, to not just take the status quo but be curious enough to find out and want to find out more. And then the second thing is you got to maintain a high level of enthusiasm. You got to go about it with a really opportunistic spirit, and those are two things you can control. The root word of enthusiasm is enthusiose, and that means to be with God. So as you increase your curiosity and your enthusiasm, you need to have faith to know that what you're doing is going to be good, it's going to work out, you're going to grow, you're going to learn. Regardless of the result, there's always, when you put your heart into something, something good is always going to come from it. So I think enthusiasm and curiosity are two really, really big ingredients that you can control. That's your energy, your attitude, your mental mindset. There's a lot of things you can control, which is a majority of things, but those are things you can't control.

Speaker 4: 27:26

Excellent answers.

Speaker 2: 27:27

Absolutely, Brandon. I want to thank you for being a guest on the Firing Demand podcast. If people are interested in getting in touch with you or getting on Collectible Exchange, will it be the best way being a Collectible?

Speaker 3: 27:39

Exchange. You can jump in. I registered if you want to find out about the eBay Live show. No doubt it's going to be amazing. These shows are going to be a lot of fun. Go to brandonstinercom. I'm a big LinkedIn guy. Message me. Follow me all the way through the limit. Follow me. Message me. If you have a question, don't be hesitant to go to Collectible Exchange. I'll be the free book. I love hearing from people. Tell me about your. Tell me the good, the bad, the ugly, whatever. I'm happy to answer. Help me respond. Look forward to the conversations. It always going to be a better post with what's going on. I appreciate being on the show today. Thank you.