David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen. And while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well buckle up, guys, because today's episode starts with 20 Snakes getting loose in the Houston airport. And it only gets better from there. You'll see just what I mean when you hear from my guest today, Nat Turner, he's the CEO of collectors, which helps collectors buy, sell, trade and even authenticate their collections. Now listen, NAT is one of those people who just has an entrepreneurial spirit running through his veins. He has been building businesses since he was 12 years old, and I'm serious, legitimate businesses since he was 12. And at every point, he has had this fearless ability to just jump in the deep end, and get started with the work instead of waiting around for perfect timing or the perfect idea. It's this kind of resolve and courage and hard work we can all learn a lot from and I gotta warn you listening to this episode is gonna make you want to clear your whole schedule and launch something big. And hey, maybe you will, because as you're about to see some pretty incredible stuff can happen when you just get started. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Matt Turner

you know, now I can't wait to get into how you lead and the whole collectible business, which is fascinating to me. But I know you're an avid collector yourself. What's your most prized possession? Gu probably be

Nat Turner 1:57 

the first baseball card I ever got, which my dad gave me would be a 1975 tops, Hank Aaron, kind of the later of his career second to last year. So it's not very valuable. And it's very beat up. But I still have the exact same card that he gave me. I was probably in second grade. Not the most valuable, but definitely the most prized, I would say,

David Novak 2:17 

absolutely. You know, I had a little toolbox when I was a kid and I had it filled up with baseball cards. And, you know, I was an avid collector myself and I I lost it somehow I don't know if somebody took it or I lost it. But I bet it's worth a fortune. I think it changed my life. If I had that box these days,

Nat Turner 2:38 

your mom probably throw them away. I mean that that's everyone's mom, including mine through through a bunch of cards away. She kept most of mine. But mine aren't worth much. I mean, I wish you know, the cards from the even before the 80s are very valuable. Now,

David Novak 2:51 

I had a lot of them. You know, I don't know, I was always searching for Mickey Mantle, but I could never really pull that off because he was my favorite. You know, man, I gotta I got to ask you this. You know, rumor has it that you're actually banned from using Federal Express? Is that true? And how did it happen? Yeah,

Nat Turner 3:09 

I mean, I was a kid I used to, I'm a very, I would say obsessive person around snakes and reptiles. I've always loved them. And as a kid, I had I bred them, I had hundreds of them. I don't know how my parents didn't kick me out. But I had, you know, literally, I made one point maybe near 1000 snakes, and I was selling them around the country, the world. And back then the way you would ship them is actually through FedEx, because delta cargo for animals was so expensive. So we'd all you know, put live fish on the side of these FedEx boxes, poke holes in them. And you know, you'd think FedEx would be smart, like fish don't need hot air holes in the side of the foxes. But anyway, that's what we would do. And I had a package actually was being shipped to me, but I guess I was on the watch list. And it broke open at the Intercontinental Airport in Houston, in the middle of the night, and I think like, over 20 harmless corn snakes were loose, and it was on the local news and everything. But yeah, the I got this, you know, phone call, my mom got this phone call and a very angry legal letter. And so I tried for like 10 years after that, and still wasn't able to. So I've never really

David Novak 4:25 

met anybody in this snake breeding business. And you actually started that when you were only 12 which is absolutely fascinating to me. You had to be a strange kid. I mean, come on getting into the steak business, starting your own business, you know, how did you build inventory like like you just talked about and what was the biggest challenge in the steak business?

Nat Turner 4:45 

Well, not many businesses require you to feed the inventory. You know, in my case, I had to actually breed mice and rodents to feed the snakes it's you know, cost of goods sold you very much learn a profit and loss state That quickly when you have inventory that both requires feeding and parishes, if you'd if you don't, if you don't tend to them well enough, but they reproduce. And so your cost of goods for new items is technically lower. So, but it's great. I mean, I learned supply and demand, you know, it's more snakes are produced, the supply goes up, demand will generally stay the same, and price will come down. So I learned a lot about scarcity, a lot about pricing. But yeah, I was definitely a weird kid, I had a bunch of businesses, I was collecting snakes, you know, trading basketball cards, designing websites, wasn't very social. I was pretty much working the whole time.

David Novak 5:37 

But the snake business, the snake breeding business really took you into the world of technologies, understand it, and you built a thriving website building business. You know, when you were in high school, you know, how'd that happen?

Nat Turner 5:48 

Yeah. So it was actually right before high school. So starting in fifth grade, I was doing the whole snake thing. And then I was also selling basketball cards on eBay. And through local card shows, like in hotel lobbies, and stuff like that. And the internet was just really starting this was probably well, it was clearly a thing. But for these industries, collectibles, and animal trade, you know, websites was kind of where you would sell your stuff. There weren't really like eBay was a thing. But most people actually had their own website for their businesses at the time. And so starting with snakes, I built my own website. Using Microsoft front page, I taught myself how to code and design. And it got noticed by a bunch of other kind of snake companies a few Well, believe it or not, there are actually 1000s of them. And I was asked by a few of them, Hey, could you build my website. And so I started charging, I think it was 500 bucks. And it would take me, you know, a week, you know, maybe eight or 10 hours to put together a website and I was making good money. I probably made over 100 websites for snake businesses. My dad was an oil and gas, he had some friends. So I'd make their business websites. I was focused on corporate websites. So yeah, I probably I mean, I actually found the folder the other day, I found my old external hard drive, I made like 380 websites or something before I went to college.

David Novak 7:04 

You know, while we're on the subject of your, your early years, you know, I understand that your father inspired you by starting his own company.

Nat Turner 7:12 

Let's see, I was we were moving all over the world. I mean, I know you grew up moving a lot as well. I mean, I think we lived in a different house every year, every two years until I was in high school. And I think that really dragged on him, you know, moving us around all the time, I think we were about to have to move to Indonesia, you know, he was like enough's enough. And so I want to say it was around fifth grade, when I started my my first company, he decided to leave Conoco and start his own kind of exploration, company, oil and gas, and definitely inspirational. I mean, I remember the risk that he took, I mean, money was tight for a while, I remember very clearly, you know, when you go from stable income to all being on your own, you know, slept on a couch when we first moved to back to Houston, when he started for a while, you know, until we could afford a house like, you know, I remember very, very well, I mean, very fond memories of you know, that process, and I would work out of his office, do my homework. I think he rented a house like literally a house. And then he just converted it into an office like the dining room was the conference room. And, you know, that's where I would do my homework.

David Novak 8:14 

So that startup business kind of gotten your blood back that you know, for sure. And I also know that you're you're fascinated by leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson, and even wrote them letters and applied for internet. You know, did anyone ever respond?

Nat Turner 8:30 

Actually, all of them did. I'm sorry, Bill Gates did not, you know, one of them was actually Trump, who, who wrote back to me and said, I'm far too busy to meet you. But my new books coming out, here's, you know, here's a link to where you can buy it. My mom actually found that letter that he sent back to me or as assistants and vaccinated but yeah, Warren Buffett, I got to return from which was a very sweet kind of short letter basically said when you get to college, you know, ask again, sort of thing. And then Richard Branson sent me a copy of his book at the time. And then I actually ended up meeting him right after college at a book launch for him that a friend of mine had a ticket to and I went and I got a picture with them and showed him a picture of the letter. That was pretty cool.

David Novak 9:16 

So when you think about it today, that what leader would you admire the most?

Nat Turner 9:21 

Ooh, there's quite a few. You know, I would say, you know, Bob Iger at Disney is probably one that's up there for me. Just digital transformation of a, you know, 100 plus or not 100 years, but you know, 70 plus your brand. He's controversial but you know, Elon Musk, just how technical he is, but also, Dell posted this Michael Dell posted this, you know, he's in the arena, you know, he's people can make fun of them, but he's in the arena giving it a go. Have a lot of respect for that. So,

David Novak 9:48 

tell us how you started invite media. Very again, you know, you're in college, basically. And you sold it for $80 million at the ripe old age of 20. Before I mean, what, what took you to that business?

Nat Turner 10:04 

Yeah, so I have a lifelong business partner, friend, Zach Weinberg, and we met freshman year at college. And we started prototyping, actually giving a lot of credits, building websites for snakes and trading cards. You know, I had the ability to prototype and demo things and Zach's the smartest person I've ever met or worked with, and we would get in a room and just, you know, jam in ideas. And I would sit there with my computer and we would, you know, make designs, if you will prototypes. And fast forward, we started a company freshman year, it didn't really work. And fast forward sophomore year, we both got an internship out in California, this video company called Video egg was like a syndicated YouTube or white label YouTube. And we had this idea to basically create ads like you see watching a sports game or something, you know, these ads will pop up on TV in the bottom right corner, you know, promoting some upcoming show, we had an idea to kind of create that ad format, but for online video. And that was the inspiration. So we started this, or that was the idea and it evolved, like every business we've started together, or I've started as well, it's, you know, the first idea was not the last idea that the business ended up becoming and invite morphed into more of a platform for all ads, starting with display ads, banner ads, and moving into video and mobile and, and other things. But it became really a software platform more than an ad format, if you will. Yeah, that was a three year start to finish. That was a fun one.

David Novak 11:31 

So you start this business with Zach, while you're in Wharton, How'd you two meet? And what makes your partnership really work so well? Because you guys are still working together? Right?

Nat Turner 11:42 

Yeah, yeah. Freshman year we met in writing class it was, it was a class, it was basically the hardest class to get into a pen, because it was the easiest way to accomplish your writing credit. It was basically watched a movie on a Monday and you wrote no longer than a page about what you watched. And every athlete was basically in this class. And Zach and I were the only two non athletes and we had finagle their way through, you know, in the class. So we knew we were both a bit, you know, conniving, if you will. And Zach and I, we walked home one day from class and discovered, we both love entrepreneurship, and we're very different, you know, he's, I would say, more product minded and more technical, I'm more of the do 50 things at once. You know, I have the design skills, he was more of the product kind of Ideator, if you will, but we're both, you know, very outward face facing. So we could both do sales, and I focused more on fundraising, maybe initially, he focused more inward with the product and tech team, but because he was very good at the external stuff, and I also had the design and, and kind of front end skills. You know, we could switch in and out of meetings. So we were basically running twice as fast as any other company, or startup at the time. We worked so hard. I mean, we were in the office till two or three in the morning, you know, until we were probably 30 years old. And we had started having kids, did you see it as

David Novak 13:01 

work or? No, I

Nat Turner 13:02 

mean, Zack and I, I mean, we're, we're, you know, like natural born entrepreneurs. Like, I love working. I mean, I even if I'm on vacation, I find a way to, you know, do something, you know, learn something, you know, no, but I mean, it's so stressful. It's like starting a company. I mean, you while you're doing I always joke, I mean, it feels so stressful. Like, you know, each day, one day, you think the world's ending the next day, you you're conquering the world and, and, you know, you're you're stressed out of your mind. And then three years later, you look back, you're like, oh, my god, that was the most fun. You know, like, I want to be back there. And that's, and I think about that sometimes. And, you know, I remember like, cleaning ladies are long gone at the at the office, you know, like, it's, you know, lights are off. It's just us, you know, we're working in one conference room, no one else is there. And we come up with some idea. And, you know, we can't wait to get to work the next day to, to, you know, call some customers about it or or design it. Yeah, no, it's not work. But I mean, it's also very stressful. You know,

David Novak 14:05 

I've heard you talk about the importance of starting a mission based company if you can, and you certainly did that with your next really huge success. And that was flat iron health. Tell us the story behind that business net.

Nat Turner 14:19 

Yeah. So Zach. And I, I mean, invite media was a ad tech company advertising tech company. It wasn't something you want in your obituary, if you will. I mean, it's, we were very proud of it. But, you know, we didn't want to say that and Zach, you know, increase click through rates from point A 1%. To point 2%. Like it just, it's not something you'd write home to your parents about, you know, like, how cool is this? Right. And so we we kind of overcorrected. So we sold to Google, the Google bought invite media and we were hanging out, frankly, at Google for two years. They integrated the business like within five minutes of us arriving there, they said, Okay, you know, you have no direct reports. We want you to stick around but, you know, start thinking about what's next perhaps and So we met Google Ventures, and Zach and I had this whiteboard in our office and we started writing down ideas, and we all wanted them to be mission oriented. So naturally, a lot of them started to be healthcare related. We didn't know anything about, you know, climate change or any of these other things. And so, and we finally said, you know, what's, what are we passionate about? And I have a cousin who you know, Turner Simpkins, who, whose son Brennan was, Ted just been diagnosed, this is 2010 He was diagnosed, I believe in oh nine, with AML leukemia, which, and was struggling with it, and mightily, you know, number of bone marrow transplants and ended up at St. Jude and all that stuff. And Zach, and I kind of latched on and Turner called us and said, Hey, is there any way to find out what other kids like Brennan with that same disease, what drugs they they got? And did it work? And of course, we pull up Google, like any normal person, and obviously get nowhere with that. And we start calling around docks were like, Hey, how would we get this data? You know, could and all of them kind of said the same thing. You can't it's impossible. You know, each hospital has its own medical record system, there's no aggregation. They'll they won't talk to each other, blah, blah, blah. So that was the inspiration, we started pitching the idea. Going back to how we started invite, we started prototyping very early. So we could walk into meetings with something visual, it wasn't just a conversation. And, you know, about a year and a half later, of frankly, not even starting the business, just learning talking to oncologists. We started talking like oncologist ourselves, we started picking up the industry, it took a while. But you know, within I'd say two years, we were ready to go. And then 2012. We sold invite in 2010. But in 2012, October, I remember, we started it. And you know, it was a rough start, but we figured it out.

David Novak 16:49 

Yeah, you certainly did. And you know, you talk a lot about the importance of iteration. How did the business change so much as you iterated over? Over those two years?

Nat Turner 17:00 

Yeah, it changed so much. I mean, our first idea was, cleanup actually was second opinions for cancer patients. Not surprisingly, because of Brennan. He was misdiagnosed twice. Not necessarily the fault of the doctors diagnosed him more because it was such a rare thing he was he was dealing with. But that was the idea. We actually bought second opinion.com we were you know, had this prototype for cancer specific second opinions. There's a cool company now called Grand Rounds, that kind of is doing that idea. But we pivoted because we couldn't aggregate enough cancer patients through a consumer facing play like that. So we decided to go b2b, which basically meant go build products for cancer centers. Our first idea was clinical trial matching, which meant, hey, send us all your patient data de identified, of course, and we'll tell you which patients match to which clinical trials. That was the second idea. That didn't work because clinical trials.gov, which is the kind of national database of clinical trials was pretty, I would say archaic, not super useful out of date. So that wasn't very useful. But still we integrated with some of these cancer centers, we said, hey, you know, this data, we know, we're data guys, like invite was very much a data platform as well, we can start making sense of this. So we decided to build an analytics system for the cancer centers. Like if you went to Penn, for example, you said, how many breast cancer patients have you had this year, they had no idea. They couldn't answer simple questions like that. So we built an analytic system for cancer centers using their own data. And in return for that we got the rights to de identified conduct research on that data. We call this now real world evidence as an industry. So these are not clinical trial patients. These are routinely collected data for routinely treated patients. So not prospective, it's retrospective data. And that's that kind of took off. It took about two years, but we weren't making any money. You can't charge cancer centers for that. So we decided to buy a company that was an electronic medical records company for private practice, oncologists. And that was a great acquisition, we probably had 10% market share at the time. And we grew it to probably 50 plus percent market share over the preceding five years through better technology, innovation and better sales. And it was an awesome five years before we sold after those first two, I mean, we we had a blast. We got up to one and four cancer patients on the platform, and some really cool research happen. So

David Novak 19:24 

Well, I'm a cancer survivor. So thank you and, Zach, for all the hard work you put on I put in on that, you know, like a lot of people you'd like to say the harder you work, the luckier you get, you know, and that's got to be true for you. As I understand it with flat iron, you negotiated $2 billion deal, selling it to Roche while your wife was actually in labor. Now, how does is that? Is that true? How did it go over?

Nat Turner 19:53 

That's true. That's true. Yeah, we were doing the deal. So we had a great relationship with Roche they had led our Series C Eat, which was the funding round before we sold, we had a wonderful gentleman on our board named Daniel Day who, you know, we thought the world of and he called us, you know, was very interested in, you know, us becoming part of the Roche family because we could invest more and just accomplish the mission faster. And we were really excited about that. We had already gotten to know the team, we had been to Switzerland a number of times, you know, they shared the vision of personalized medicine. And we're very kind of forward thinking. And so our son was born on August 21. And yeah, our the deal started to be negotiated, you know, in August and and I remember being like, oh, no, this can't be worse from a timing perspective. But um, you know, I think one of the one of the pivotal phone calls occurred, yeah, when we were in the hospital, actually was technically in the recovery room. So it wasn't during labor, but, you know, they have the shared recovery rooms at NYU. So we were sharing with another couple, and I had to sneak out and talk to Dan. And we basically agreed to, you know, take take something to our board to discuss at that point in time, which is a important phone call, obviously,

David Novak 21:07 

yeah. Well, obviously, with your wife, you have a great partner who understands that, you know, in this business, you gotta be ready to make it happen whenever it comes, right.

Nat Turner 21:17 

Well, yeah, I've met her before invite actually Well, before we sold invite during the middle of it. So in fact, embarrassingly on one of our dates, this will show you how weird or nerdy I was, I actually showed her if she wanted to say, I gave her like the pitch deck for invite media that we were showing fundraisers, she said, What do you do, I was like, here, like this is, you know, if you can't understand this, have you never heard about it, then I need to rework the deck. So she's, she's very familiar with the whole entrepreneurship thing as his ex wife. So, you know,

David Novak 21:45 

one of the things I've heard you talk about is, is that it takes take someone from the outside to come in and really change and rethink almost any industry. Explain.

Nat Turner 21:57 

Yeah, I mean, I've definitely believe that I mean, invite media, Zack, and I knew nothing about ads, or ad tech, before, flatter, we certainly didn't know about cancer. I mean, we were not even doctors, let alone oncologist. And so, you know, in my opinion, it's, it's, you know, the status quo has a way of staying the status quo and developing habits that good or bad or kind of, you know, resistant to change. Healthcare, I think is probably the number one example of This Just In lowest percentage of of budget or GDP goes towards technology innovation, when we started flatter, it was less than 2% of the healthcare industry invested its capital towards r&d. That's abysmal. If you look at most industries, it's 810 12%. And, you know, it takes sometimes not always, you know, but it takes sometimes some kind of enterprising folks who are willing to shake things up and maybe break things, you know, and take some serious entrepreneurial risk to make it happen. And, you know, I, Zack and I, we do a lot of angel investing, it's something we look for in entrepreneurs, you know, folks who are not scared to take on a challenge. It's a balance, like, in our case, you know, we brought on oncologists and doctors to our team to make sure we weren't Miss stepping into educate us, frankly, and, and have the right conversations with regulators. But in a lot of industries, you don't need to do that. You know, and it can go wrong, like, you've seen that with crypto and some of the other stuff, but, you know, generally that's okay, you know, failure is normal. You know, fraud is not normal, to be clear, but in a lot of industries, it's the, it's the naive folks that come in and don't know any better, who have a chance and usually the ones that are written off as well. So you can kind of fly under the radar and hire great people and, you know, build your product without any distractions.

David Novak 23:46 

Now, you listen to this podcast, so you know how much I love learning about leadership from some of the world's greatest leaders. We make it a priority to break down the insights from our guests into practical steps so you can apply what you've learned from our episodes into your own leadership style. A lot of times though, it can be easy to listen to an episode and forget what you learned. That is exactly why I created the weekly leadership plan. Every Sunday, I send out a weekly leadership plan that lays out in three simple steps the key learnings from that week's podcast, it only takes about five minutes to read and it gives you practical steps you can apply to your leadership process for that week. Like everything we do at how leaders lead is completely free and you can sign up for it at how leaders lead.com Right now, this weekly leadership plan is a great way to prepare for your week, each Sunday evening, and I hope you'll sign up today at how leaders lead.com/plan

You know, whether it's you know, breeding snakes you know, to create he'd websites trying to make a dent in this awful disease, cancer, you seem to have an incredible knack for turning your passions into a great business now, is this one of the major reasons why you bought collector universe universe for a billion dollars?

Nat Turner 25:17 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, every hobby I've ever had has turned into a business. And it took 30 years for trading cards, because I got my first card when I was what, seven or eight? And, you know, 30 years later, but yeah, it's I've never been able to do things kind of just, you know, as a hobby, I guess. And trading cards. Well, actually. So what happened is we sold flatiron in 2018, we were at Roche, we were having a great time, kind of in year, two out of three of a transition deal and COVID happened. And the pandemic, you know, everybody went home to live with their parents if you were in our age group, and we were no different. My wife and I and our two kids went back to to North Carolina, and my mom wheeled out the cards that she hadn't thrown away into the living room. And she's like, Hey, when you go home, you got to take these with you. And you know, for about a month, I sat there and played with these basketball cards and stuff with my kids. And I just remembered being reconnected with my childhood collection brought back so many great memories, I was still collecting cards all the while, by the way, since I never really stopped but having my, my kind of frankly, trashy old cards that were all beat up, because I had them in my bicycle spokes and all that. It was very nostalgic. And so I was deciding what to do next. Zack and I had a bunch of conversations about becoming full time investors, maybe, which we were already doing, you know, we started a VC fund just with our own capital. And I just realized, you know, I wanted to be an operator still, what do I love, I don't really want to start another healthcare business. So it's very burned out by it. And the only thing I could think of was trading cards and Spence, you know, a soul searching as to what business I didn't want to start something from scratch, wanted to kind of buy an existing asset or business and the company that meant the most to me was actually collectors at the time collectors universe.

David Novak 27:01 

You know, it's interesting, you know, you paid a pretty healthy price for it. A billion dollars, that's a lot of money. Where do you let the the reality of the finance come into play? Versus the passion that you have? Did you ever kind of say to yourself, hey, is my my passion meter getting a little bit out of control here?

Nat Turner 27:22 

You know, if the business wasn't, what it is, meaning the brand that it has the profitability and size of business that it has. And in general, the industry is actually quite large. And it's one of the biggest categories on eBay. You know, I would agree with you, but, you know, it's a real company. At the end of the day, I'd say it is a passion, but it's a real business, something I love, but you know, I treat it just like I did flat out in an invite, it's a very stressful, you know, I work my ass off pardon my language. You know, I don't sit there and play with cards all day. I wish. Yeah, it's a big, it's a big one. It's you know, we have 1400 employees, it's offices all over the world. I mean, it's very different from flat iron, and invite flatter and got close to that size. But you know, this, this is different. This is not a cash burning SAS company that, you know, you try and grow at breakneck speed. This is a, you know, more operational, you know, you're familiar with this world, too. I mean, it's, you have a lot of staff that, that you have to manage. And it's it's just different. But it's a lot of fun.

David Novak 28:18 

You know, when you think about the collectible business itself, what do you see as the major growth driver going forward?

Nat Turner 28:26 

Yeah, I mean, cards, it's not just the only thing we do. So collectors, we authenticate, trading cards, everything from baseball, to Pokemon, coins, and currency, video games, autographs, Funko, Pops, all sorts of stuff. But the big one, you know, I'd say in the last few years, and going forward is the nostalgic collector, which is kind of like myself, you know, once people get to be of a certain age where they have some disposable income, they tend to buy things, what we call alternative assets. Would you rather own a brick of gold? Or would you rather own a bunch of comic books that mean more to you? You know, I'd say most people my age, at least kind of would choose the latter. They can show them off a bit, you know, it's it's more installed. And then there's what we call the investor collector, which are the folks that really treat collecting as a investment. And that's what they do it, they're speculating, they're buying rookie cards to players each year that they think will perform better in the future. And it's very much a business for them. And, you know, both are very important. You know, you go to card shows, these days, kids are back at card shows, like they were in the 90s you had about a 20 year period where I would say cards were not very cool. But you know, my son's school, you know, they're trading Pokemon cards and basketball cards on the bus and just like it was back in the 80s and 90s. And I think the growth area there will be the next generation is pretty healthy, you know, of up and coming collectors. But yeah, that's the big one. And for us, it's grading and then marketplace, we want to help people find, buy and sell the things they love. Is that the mission for the company? Yeah, it's basically help collectors pursue their passion, which could mean find the thing you love, sell The thing you want to sell great authenticate the thing that you just bought, you know, that's, that's all wrapped up in helping collectors pursue their passion.

David Novak 30:08 

You know, as I mentioned, I collected baseball cards. You know, I never collected basketball cards, you know, I was a coin collector, I have some of this in my blood as well, you know, when you think about the the segments, you know, which which segments are really going to be the growth segments going forward.

Nat Turner 30:25 

It's pretty synonymous with kind of what's popular in sports. So baseball during season, you know, I think is huge, but some would argue the sport is, you know, an aging fan base. basketball and football have just taken off as collectibles in the last five to 10 years. You guys like Steph Curry and, and Tom Brady. And you know, those sports are just rocket ships from a from a collectible perspective. But you know, the one that most people don't talk about is what we call trading card games TCG which is Pokemon YuGiOh, Digi, Bong meta zoo there's, believe it or not, I mean, it's like 20 30% of our business is is those things?

David Novak 31:04 

How are you going to bring technology to this industry? Now?

Nat Turner 31:07 

Yeah, there's a lot. You know, you think about digitizing a lot of what we do. Having images of every card we grade, being able to buy and sell those without the be any shipping. So just think about there being a virtual vault, if you will, where these cards are securely stored, and they can trade, you know, without changing hands physically, is one big way. image recognition. So being able to detect counterfeits and detect alterations to cards using software is a big one. Those are probably the top two areas. You know,

David Novak 31:41 

you've already made a couple of significant acquisitions. Tell us about them and why you did it.

Nat Turner 31:47 

Yeah, we bought a grading company that specializes in vintage video games, which is super cool. I wasn't a gamer I didn't really have time to but you know, a lot of people my age were and they collect them now. Think about like sealed Zelda and Tetris games and stuff like that. We bought a marketplace called Golden, which is an auction house, but now have a fully fledged marketplace for largely trading cards, but also memorabilia. That was a very fun acquisition. Great team. We bought an analytics company for card pricing called card ladder, which is the kind of preeminent you know, database for what certain cards are worth. So you can value your collection. And we've integrated that throughout our ecosystem. And then some smaller ones, we bought a, an auction software company called Zen auction and a few other small ones.

David Novak 32:39 

As I understand that you teamed up with billionaire in New York Mets owner, Steve Cohen, he's one of your partners, what brought you together and what have you learned from him?

Nat Turner 32:49 

He's fascinating. I've had a great experience working with him. You know, at first we met actually through zoom, actually, funny little story. I didn't meet a single investor, we raised nine or $50 million dollars to buy the company in that kind of throws of COVID. And I didn't meet a single one of those people in person. Before we close the deal, including Steve actually. So we had a zoom, I think it was on like a Sunday, and we were putting the deal together, it was very much it was a public company. So we were taking this company private. So it was a very complicated process, you know, you have to be careful with information. And it was very fluid. You know, we were having weekend calls and bankers involved. And Alan and CO was the banking group that we were working with. And so they arranged a bunch of meetings with various funds. And one of the funds D one, which ended up being our lead introduced me to Steve because we were looking for strategic investors, individuals, family offices, who had a long term view on things but also had an interest in sports, because that's where the majority of our revenue comes from. And Steve was obviously perfect for that. We had a zoom, he asked me some questions, frankly, that I mean, I had 100 investor meetings, and or more. And, you know, he's, I still remember some of the questions were, you know, it was unlike everyone, I mean, 99 Other people just asked the kind of down the middle of the fairway questions, and Steve would ask you these zingers where you're here, and you but as an entrepreneur, you respect that you know that it makes you want to work with that person more.

David Novak 34:14 

Give me an example of a zinger that

Nat Turner 34:17 

there are a few I probably shouldn't share, but one of them actually was interesting. He goes, you know, with your collection, you know, actually similar what you said before, are you doing this because it's your passion? Are you doing this because you're going to help make me a bunch of money. And I remember, it was so direct, and you know, you know, blunt and I was I respected it so much. You know, because it was, it was true. We were bringing shareholders on we had to treat it as a business as well. You know, it is a passion, but it's also a business. And, you know, he was one of the few people who, who, frankly made sure that I was you know, balancing those two things appropriately. But he's been great. You know, the first time I met him, he invited me to a Mets game and there's a reason he Steve got he He's a very smart person.

David Novak 35:01 

So you're driven by passion, but you're also driven by paranoia. Give us an example of when that mindset really paid off for you.

Nat Turner 35:08 

Well, like any entrepreneur, you have to sleep with one eye open when it comes to your business, you know, we were very focused on building products. You know, we don't fret about competitors as much, but you know, we are terrified of all of them. Meaning, you know, you want to focus and build your product always be building with urgency. flatterer, we had a bunch of examples of, of, kind of copycat companies that got started invite same thing. Collectors is no different. We're always, you know, observant, but like I said, we try and stay, stay heads down and build products internally. You know, we're product people, myself, and everyone around me. I mean, we try and let the product speak for itself and the brands, but,

David Novak 35:50 

you know, there comes a time when every leader has to pick himself up off the mat, you know, it doesn't always work out perfectly it, you know, what's been one of your biggest failures? And what did you learn from it?

Nat Turner 36:01 

You know, a few of them, I can think back, I mean, Zack and I's first business was a disaster. It was freshman year of college, we started with some co founders that, frankly, didn't have their heart in it. And it just ate us apart. You know, as a team, we just basically disbanded because the internal frustrations and relationships just got in the way of the actual product and business and, you know, choose your partners wisely. You know, once Zach and I had a good thing going, we stuck together, you know, I'd say that's probably the biggest failure we had. But we learned a lot from it, you know, flat iron, we, our first idea, remember, I mentioned the second opinions, and then clinical trial matching, like, those were good ideas on paper, but we're not in practice. And we probably burned five to $10 million of our seed capital and series a funding on those pivots. I mean, they were unnecessary for our learning process. But could we have avoided them? Absolutely, you know, we could have realized sooner that, you know, data aggregation from hospitals was going to be necessary. And we could have gotten to that conclusion quicker, we would, it would have resulted in less dilution for everyone, for certainly, but we managed through it, we ended up making that acquisition, which was a big part of that pivot,

David Novak 37:11 

you know, you start up companies, and you're huge angel investor, and you talk about beginning with a general area of interest and look for the seed of an idea, you know, most people talk about, look at the problem, you know, look at the problem, the category and try to solve it, you know, tell us why you think getting this seed of the ideas is the best way to start,

Nat Turner 37:36 

we have this, Zack and I, we were very vocal about this, we've talked about it a ton, which is basically you know, if you're going to start a company, just get started, you know, have an idea. The like I said before, the idea you start with will very likely not be the idea you end with so just getting started is 99% of it, you know, you same goes with exercise, and, you know, anything, just make the initial effort, you know, get out there and start and startups. I mean, it's, it's probably the best example, in my opinion, which is, once you get going, you know, luck begets luck and work, you know, you start to see things, you start opening doors, you start meeting people, opportunity, kind of, you know, start, you know, serendipity is a very powerful thing, I'll tell you, because when you start a company, you know, you just so happen to meet someone at a conference or in a meeting, and then they follow up, or you follow up. And, you know, some of the best employees we had at Flatiron or early team were folks that we met in that year learning process where we were just going around the country meeting hospitals and pitching ideas. And you know, if someone was smart on the other side of the table, we would get their business card. And, you know, a week later say Do you want a job and, you know, that's you don't get that unless you're out there making it happen. And and that initial idea is so important. Because when you have conversations with people, they can respond better to an idea, they can respond better to a prototype. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs will say, Hey, can I have 30 minutes for coffee? Busy people like you, like you're not going to me like we're not going to, that's not going to be very productive and let but if someone says, Hey, I'd love to show you a demo, and they open up their laptop, and they allow you to react to something and provide feedback on something tangible, that requires an idea, obviously, and that's the best way to get going. And then pivot that's the thing you have strong opinions loosely held. So as you as you start going, you know, don't be don't have any pride of authorship. You know, Zack, and I remember one meeting at Flatiron. We walked in with two laptops, we had two ideas. We were pitching the second opinion idea. And clinical trial matching. We had demos for both. And we were going in the meeting and we had the second affinity and he was this guy was not loving it. And so it said okay, we'll put that one down. How about this idea? And we pulled up the second laptop and had a great second half of the meeting.

David Novak 39:44 

I love that I've wrote it down, you know, strong opinions loosely held. I love that. You know, how do you go about getting feedback, Matt on your ideas these days? At collectors. Let's use that as a place.

Nat Turner 39:58 

Yeah. We have Great, great set of investors, and board, frankly, probably stronger than our prior two companies. You know, very kind of product savvy, you know, been around the block, like Jesse Jacobs from turning group is a great example, I spent a ton of time we do demos with the board, our board meetings aren't just, you know, we certainly go through financials, but half the meeting is getting real product feedback on the demo, Steve will literally, you know, he'll provide us feedback on demos, which is probably, I would say, quite different for him, you know, given the world he's in, we have a lot of great customers and dealers who love spending time with us, thankfully, you know, because we're willing to kind of bring them under the tent and show them our roadmaps. And it's not just software, you know, we have new plastics that we're working on, and labels and all sorts of things. At least once or twice a week, I'm having lunch with another founder, CEO, and in New York or California that, you know, I've grown to grown a relationship with that little last week, for example, I was meeting with someone, friend of mine who runs a company, and we were discussing, you know, in this new world, macro environment, you know, how he's approaching budgeting, going into 2023, with, with hiring, with promotions, with merit increases, basically compensation philosophy going into next year. And, you know, that's a great helpful, you know, conversation to be able to have,

David Novak 41:17 

absolutely, and you're a real product guy, real innovator, big idea guy, yet you got to execute to really drive performance in any company, What quality do you think is most critical? When you think about execution?

Nat Turner 41:34 

We call this a bias for action. So we have, that's what we look for in people, you know, if you were to start a company, you have to have bias for action, right? Which means, you know, when are you going to sit there and think about something are you going to just gonna go and make it happen and the ladder is what we look for, even on a company our size. You know, it's what's the other Perfection is the enemy of the good is another way the other quote I love is this general pattern, which is, you know, a perfect plan. Sir, perfect plan executed tomorrow was worse than a halfway decent plan executed violently today. And and, you know, I paraphrased but that's, that's true. Like, why wait for the perfect plan, just get going. And that's what we look for another word for its price scrappiness, you know, just gets get started. You know, and that's execution oriented, thinking, you know, you're

David Novak 42:23 

an, I'd say an avid know, how builder. I mean, you cast a wide network, you ask lots of questions, you get out there, and you try to learn as much as you can. How do you call through just the myriad of data and thoughts and ideas which which come into your world and find that valuable insight that can build a business? Which do you have a process for that? Yeah,

Nat Turner 42:49 

it's funny, I still have your writing things down. I mean, I write a lot of things down, I have a notebook, I found all the notebooks from flat iron, and I still have him from invite, I use these mole skins, these little black mole skins. And the way I do it is every meeting Zack and I were in we would, you know, take copious notes, actually, and we were very clear on doing it handwriting. If you take notes on computers, people think you aren't, you're not paying attention. And even worse, if they're on the phone, and it's the very subtle thing, like millennials, these, you know, we don't think about that. But you know, when you meet with other people, it's important, I think cat paper and pen is much more much more respectful. And so we would, we would bring, you know, mole skins to every meeting and notebooks. And generally, after every meeting, Zach and I and I would start things during meetings that were important. So you know, maybe an average meeting was a page or two, and I'd have a just a simple star next to things that were critical. And then after the meeting highlighters as well, Zack, and I would, you know, basically, sync on what what we believed what our takeaways were, for that meeting, and then who owns the follow up. And every meeting, we'd say, you know, who are two or three other people you think we should meet, that's a big part of the process, it kind of expands your network, and you pattern you try and pattern recognize really at the early days, which is, as you're ideating, you know, you try and find patterns and people's needs or challenges. They're experiencing the opportunities you might see in the healthcare world as you meet 100 hospitals, and we'd go to Boston and Philly and all these cities and stack meetings, you know, sometimes 1520 a day, 30 minutes after, you know, 30 minutes each, and 6:30am breakfast all the way through dinner. And, you know, you'd have a lot of notes after those days. And you know, we'd sit there and comb through them and you know, you're absorbing them, you're mentally identifying those patterns. But generally, the most important part of the process is circling back and showing them that you took their feedback and showing them prototypes, and demos of things that you think would respond to whatever the feedback or ideas or challenges they told you about. And you know, that's the iteration model and, and the smartest people that would give us the most time we'd bring on as advisors and say, hey, you know, we really appreciate your your feedback. Up to this point, you know, would you be interested in formalizing a relationship where we don't feel bad about asking you every month and, you know, there's an actual, you know, incentive for you to do so and more importantly, an upside and doing so and create that alignment. So that that was a big part of the process. But, yeah, it the ideation, you know, note taking, I can't stay kids these days. They don't, they don't take enough notes.

David Novak 45:25 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Nat Turner in just a moment. As you've heard, passion plays a huge part in how NAT has launched his various ventures. Over the years. Joy's will injure the co founder and CO CEO of Allbirds, is passionate to about fighting against climate change. And he's doing it with shoes.

Joey Zwillinger 45:47 

We were thinking about what we stood for as a company. And we really knew, we believed in innovation based on low carbon intensity, environmentally sensible materials. That's what we were, we weren't a shoe company, we weren't a wool company, we were going to be something and we aspired to be something that stood for much more, both from like a lifestyle, what we did for people and our customers, but also in terms of the leadership and what we stood for.

David Novak 46:12 

So if you want to know how to tackle issues you're passionate about, go check out episode 31 With Joy's will injure here on how leaders lead.

You're on the cover of Forbes magazine in their 30 under 30. Addition November 30 2018. Yes, 32. And they did that. Oh, okay. Well, you're close enough. Okay. You know, you got a wonderful family, beautiful kids, you're nearly a scratch golfer when your back is healthy. You know, you're good athlete, you're Oh, I wouldn't say you're good looking. But how do you how do you? How do you stay humble? I mean, you do you ever have doubts? And and how do you overcome them with all this kind of success? Or is this the success? Just say, help you take on more and more?

Nat Turner 47:06 

Oh, no, yeah, there's no, no need for if you knew my, my kids and wife and business partners, it's easy to stay humble. Meaning like, you know, they, they give me a hard time and and, you know, they the key is, is surrounding yourself with people who don't just say yes, and, you know, what a great idea, Mr. Novak, right. Like you need people who who aren't afraid to, you know, my ideas are just as stupid as you know, the next person's if not more. So Right. When you, when you get to a certain level in your career, you really risk thinking all of your ideas are great. That's frankly, the most dangerous thing as you become successful, I've found is not realizing your ideas are stupid. That's very dangerous. For investors. It's very dangerous for entrepreneurs just the same. And like I said, find people who have that bias for action, who are also very, like I said, strongly opinionated. Zach is the best at this. I mean, he, he does not care if Bill Gates if it's Bill Gates his idea or some 22 year old intern, you know, if it's the right idea, let it speak, you know, let the merit hold on its own and that's the way to stay humble.

David Novak 48:16 

I'd love to meet Zach sometime he sounds like an inquiry person. And I have to ask it could Could you ever imagine not being in charge of a business? You've got your private equity, you know, your venture capital fund, you've got you know, collectors, your your you run things? Can you ever imagine?

Nat Turner 48:32 

Not? You know, it's good point. I mean, with during the whole COVID thing, you know, 2020 I mean, I had that moment of weakness, where I thought about not running something, right. I don't know. I don't think so at this point. I mean, it'd be hard to imagine getting the same fulfillment, you know, of without everything being on your shoulders and good or bad, right. Like, like the living with the consequences, good or bad of your decision making and execution. I can't imagine anything else? I don't know. No, I can't

David Novak 49:03 

imagine you doing anything else either. You know, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my lightning round of q&a. Are you ready for this net? Sure. The three words others use to best describe you.

Nat Turner 49:16 

Yeah, I would say hard working. Definitely put that in there. Say probably add working on a lot of things at once. Passionate, definitely.

David Novak 49:26 

If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be and why?

Nat Turner 49:31 

Rory McIlroy, so I would know what it's like to hit a good iron.

David Novak 49:36 

What's your biggest pet peeve?

Nat Turner 49:39 

buzzing like notifications in group meetings, like if someone's phone is on is not on silent, but the biggest would be basically if you have a chance to do something, thinking too long versus just doing it. The

David Novak 49:53 

most impactful movie you've ever seen and why

Nat Turner 49:56 

it's gonna be an odd one for you but Glengarry Glen Ross the alcohol One movie.

David Novak 50:01 

And what made that so impactful to you?

Nat Turner 50:04 

It's an awesome business movie. You know, we use quotes from it all the time in the office. So

David Novak 50:11 

you lived in different places. So one of those places was Scotland. You know, what would you know about Scotland? That would only happen if you lived in Scotland?

Nat Turner 50:18 

It's always gray and rainy.

David Novak 50:21 

How about the Netherlands? You

Nat Turner 50:23 

live there as well? Yeah. Cheeses Great.

David Novak 50:29 

What's the highest quality 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card go for?

Nat Turner 50:35 

There's 310s psa 10s. One hasn't traded in 20 years. But if one were to, it would easily be $30 million.

David Novak 50:43 

If you turn on your radio in your car, what would we hear?

Nat Turner 50:47 

Oh, definitely. Channels 26 on Sirius XM classic vinyl.

David Novak 50:53 

What's something about you that few people would know?

Nat Turner 50:57 

Most people don't know about the snake thing. So I gotta go there. But I'm an avid fisherman too. I do a lot of fishing. I probably enjoy fishing more than golf. Honestly.

David Novak 51:04 

Now I understand. You are an avid collectors we've established someone actually broken your garage and took part of your your personal collection. What did the police do? You told them what it was all about? What it was worth? I bet yeah. And they had to shock them a little bit, right?

Nat Turner 51:23 

The responding detective goes, Are you effing kidding me? Like, I'll be there? I think they got a kick out of it. I mean, honestly, a bunch of the police officers, our collectors funny enough? You know, it turns out, you know, like, they understood exactly knew the business that we that I ran it like they knew where our office was. I mean, they were they were very in tune with it. Did you get them back? And did not? Yeah, they weren't that busy that day, the person who stole the cards out of the trunk took my backpack to which had my iPad and the GPS tracker, let it lead us directly to when he was trying to sell them in a Starbucks parking lot. So yeah, I got every single card back. Oh, that's 250 cards in every single one. That's great. Yeah.

David Novak 52:10 

What is it about business net that drives you the most? You know, I'd

Nat Turner 52:14 

be lying if I said, you know, kind of economic incentives, but like that, once you accomplish that you realize after it's doesn't mean much, you know, you what matters most is the impact. So what drives me is respect from peers, and, you know, investors and kind of being known for building something that has both create shareholder value, but also impact in a market. That's why we did flatter. And that's why I'm doing collectors, accomplish some sort of goal that makes the world better. Some people might think my dad was not great for saying this. But I remember when I was 10, I wanted to be a doctor at one point. And he goes, who helps more people in their life a doctor or entrepreneur? And I remember seeing a doctor obviously. And he was like, Well, no, what if you're an entrepreneur and you build a company that employs 100,000 people, you know, like, you helped more people that way. And, you know, I think back I'm like, it very much internalized. And so for me, it's it's job creation, it's economic creation, you know, impact and maybe goes back to that quote, so that's a

David Novak 53:15 

great story. You know, what's, what's one bit of advice, wrap it up here? What's one bit of advice you give to aspiring leaders? Yeah, I would

Nat Turner 53:25 

say read a lot and have a lot of connections with other, which is, one of the great things of what you're doing is, you know, really learn from what others are doing. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. I mean, some of my biggest leadership mistakes have certainly probably could have been avoided through, you know, having more people to talk to, or bounce those ideas off of and get ahead of those issues. as certainly as businesses scale. You know, there's a great book called Crossing the Chasm, which explains like, as companies grow, there's a very big difference between a company that you know, everyone's name, and then around 150 People that no longer is possible. And you can't explain it, there's a chasm, like, it's a completely different thing. And, you know, understanding and kind of knowing that as a business, as you're building a business as it grows as a leader, you know, you may be outgrown, you know, in the job, and you have to reinvent yourself or bring people around you that that can, you know, complement you. It's a hard reality, you know, as you as you as your company grows, that you have to continue to evolve with it, and that there are these chasms, you have to jump across or not, and, you know, figure out an alternative solution. So, kind of realizing that, you know, when you're 24 you're invincible, right? But by the time you've, you know, get your teeth kicked in a few times with business, you realize it's not the case. So that's what I would say.

David Novak 54:45 

You don't as, as I reflect back on this last conversation we've had here, you know, I can't help but think that anybody that thinks the American Dream is dead in this country needs to talk to now Turner, I mean, you know, a great, great example of what can happen in this country, if you have ideas, you work hard. And you you put your mind to making it happen and making a difference for others. And this has been inspiring for me, I have to tell you, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk. Now it's been a pleasure.

Well, it's pretty clear to see God broke the mold. When he created an app. From an early age, he has marched the beat of his own drummer. And he's been incredibly successful as a result. You know, I say pretty often how important it is for leaders to be curious, and no doubt about it. Nat has lots of curiosity. But in that curiosity, there's a powerful sense of fearlessness, where there's digging into uncharted ideas, asking discovery questions, meeting new people, but he just dives right in. And that ability to just get started, has helped that pivot, adjust and find his way to some truly breakthrough companies that are really helping people. Unless you want to count all those snakes and they used an airport. I'm not sure how helpful those were. But hey, I got to ask you, where do you need to just get started? What did you been dragging your feet on? Where are you letting perfect be the enemy of good this week, embrace that bias for action that NAT talks about? And just dive in? Decide right now, just one step you could take to get started? And then go out and do it. So do you want to know how leaders lead? Well, we learned today as the great leaders just get started. Coming up next on how leaders lead is David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. I'm a big believer in taking the long road investing good things happen when people take kind of a longer, slower perspective. I'm a little bit of a tortoise as opposed to a hare. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be