Welcome to Howlieters Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning 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 authent icate 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 got to warn you, listening to this episode is going to 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, Nat Turner. You know, Nat, 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? Ooh, probably be the first baseball card I ever got, which my dad gave me. It 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. It's definitely in second grade, not the most valuable, but definitely the most prized, I would say. 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 lost it somehow. I don't know if somebody took it or I lost it, but I bet it's worth the fortune . I think it changed my life if I had that box these days. Your mom probably threw him away. I mean, that's everyone's mom, including mine, threw 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. Well, I had a lot of them. You 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 gotta 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, 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 mean, at one point, maybe near a thousand 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 the FedEx would be smart, like fish don't need old air holes on the side of the boxes. But anyway, that's what we would do. And I had a package, actually it 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, my mom got this phone call and a very angry legal letter. And yeah, so I mean, I tried for like 10 years after that and still wasn't able to. So I've never really met anybody in the snake breeding business. And you actually started that when you were only 12, which is absolutely fascinating. I mean, you had to be a strange kid. I mean, come on, getting in the snake business. You know, how did you build inventory like, like you just talked about and what was the biggest challenge in the snake business? Well, not many businesses require you to feed the inventory. So, you know, in my, in my case, I had to actually breed mice and rodents to feed the snakes. It's a, you know, cost of goods sold. You very much learned a profit and loss statement quickly when you have inventory that both requires feeding and perishes 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, as 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. That was pretty much working the whole time. But the snake business, the snake breeding business really took you into the world of technology as I understand it. And you built a thriving website building business, you know, when you were in high school, you know, how'd that happen? 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 at 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, if you will, believe it or not, there are actually thousands 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. You know, while we're on the subject of your early years, you know, I understand that your father inspired you by starting his own company. 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, 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, so enough. And so I want to say it was around fifth grade when I started my, my first company, he decided to leave, uh, conoco and start his own kind of exploration company and 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, um, you know, I 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, very fond memories of, you know, that process and I would work out at 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. Yeah. So that startup, uh, business kind of got your blood back then, you know, and for sure. And I also know that you're, you're fascinated by leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Richard Branson and you even wrote them letters and applied for internships. You know, uh, did anyone ever respond? Actually all of them did. Um, I'm sorry, Bill Gates did not, you know, one of them was actually Trump who , uh, who wrote back to me and said, I'm far too busy to meet you, but my new book's coming out. Here's, you know, here's a link to where you can buy it. My mom actually found that letter, uh, that he sent back to me or his assistants and back to me. But yeah, um, Warren Buffett, I got a return from, uh, 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, um, Richard Branson sent me a copy of his book at the time. And then I actually ended up meeting him, uh, right after college at a book launch for him, that a friend of mine had a ticket to and I, I went and I got a picture with him and, um, showed him a picture of the letter. Uh, that was pretty cool. So when you think about it today, that what leader would you admire the most? Ooh, there's quite a few. Um, you know, I would say, you know, Bob Iger at Disney's probably one that's up there for me, just digital transformation of a, you know, hundred plus or not a hundred years, but, you know, 70 plus year 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 him, but he's in the arena, giving it a go. Have a lot of respect for that. So tell us how you started invite media. You vary again, you know, you're in college, basically. Uh, and you sold it for $80 million at the ripe old age of 24. I mean, uh, what, what took you to that business? Yeah. So I have a lifelong business partner, uh, friend, Zach Weinberg. And we met freshman year, uh, 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 and ideas and I would sit there with my computer and we would, you know, make, um, designs, if you will, prototypes. And fast forward, we started a company freshman year that didn't really work. And fast forward, sophomore year, uh, we both got an internship out in, uh, California at this, um, 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, um, 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, uh, it became really a software platform more than a ad format, if you will. Um, yeah, that was a three years start to finish. That was a fun one. So you start this business with Zach while you're in, in warden. How'd you two meet and what makes your partnership really work so well? Cause you guys are still working together, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, freshman year we met in writing class. It was, it was a class. It was basically the hardest class to get into a pin because it was the easiest way to accomplish your writing credit. It was basically you 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 finagled our way, you know, in the class. So we knew we were both a bit, you know, conniving, if you will. Um, 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, um, product minded, you know, more technical. I'm more of the do 50 things at once. Um, you know, I have the design skills. He was more of the, the product kind of ideator, if you will. Um, but we're both, you know, very outward face facing. So we could both do sales and I focus more on fundraising, maybe initially, and 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, um, and we had started having kids. Did you see it as worker? No, I mean, Zach and I, I mean, we're, we're, you know, like, you 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. Um, you know, no, but I mean, it's so stressful. It's, it's like starting a company. I mean, while you're doing it, 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, 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, you know, um, 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, you know, call some customers about it or, or design it. Um, yeah, no, it's not work, but I mean, it's, it's also very stressful. You know, 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, and that was flat iron health. Tell us a story behind that business now. 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 it to say Nat and Zach, you know, increase click through rates from point, oh, 1% to point 2%. It could 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 over corrected. So we sold to Google, the Google bot 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, what are we passionate about? And I have a cousin who, you know, Turner Simkins, who, whose son Brennan was, had just been diagnosed, this is 2010, he was diagnosed, I believe in '09, with AML leukemia, which, and was struggling with it. And it 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 docs, we're 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 won't talk to each other, blah, blah, blah. So that was the inspiration. We, we, 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 oncologists 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 in 2012, we sold invite in 2010, but in 2012, October, I remember we started it and, you know, it was a rough start, but, you know, we figured it out. Yeah, you certainly did. And, 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? Yeah, it changed so much. I mean, our first idea was, um, actually it was second opinions for cancer patients, not surprisingly because of Brennan. He was mistaken, knows twice, not necessarily the fault of the docs that 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, is doing that idea. But we pivoted because we couldn't aggregate enough cancer patients through a consumer facing, uh, play like that. So we decided to go B to B, which basically met 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. Um, that was the second idea. That didn't work because clinical trials. Dot gov, which is the kind of national database of clinical trials was pretty, um, I would say archaic, not super useful out of date. Um, so that wasn't very useful, but still we, we integrated with some of these cancer centers and 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. Um, they couldn't answer simple questions like that. So we built an analytics 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. Uh, 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, uh, five years before we sold after those first two. I mean, we, we, we had a blast. Um, we got up to one in four cancer patients on the platform and some really cool research, uh, happened. So. Well, I'm a, uh, a cancer survivor. So thank you and, uh, Zach for all the hard work you put in, put in on that, you know, you know, like a lot of people, you, you like to say the harder you work, the luckier you get, you know, and that's got to be true for you. Uh, as I understand it with flat iron, you negotiated $2 billion deal, uh, selling it to Roach, uh, while your wife was actually in labor. Now, how does that, is that true? How'd that go over? 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, which was the funding round before we sold. We had a wonderful gentleman on our board named Dan O'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. Um, we had already gotten to know the team. We'd been to Switzerland a number of times. You know, they shared the vision of personalized medicine. And, uh, we're very kind of forward thinking. And so, uh, our son was born on August 21st. And yeah, the, the deal started to be negotiated, you know, in August. And, and I remember being like, Oh no, like, you know, 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 it was technically in the recovery room. So it wasn't during labor, but, you know, they have these shared recovery rooms at NYU. So we were sharing with this other couple and, uh, 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 an important phone call, obviously. Yeah. Well, obviously with your wife, you have a great partner who understands that, you know, you, you, it is business. You, you got to be ready to, to make it happen whenever it comes, right? Well, yeah. And I met her before invite actually, well, uh, before we sold invite during the middle of it. So in fact, embarrassingly on one of our dates, I'll show you how weird or ner dy I was. I actually showed her, I, 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. Um, so she's, she's very familiar with the whole entrepreneurship thing as his Zach's wife. So, you know, one of the things I've heard you talk about is that it takes, takes someone from the outside to come in and really change and rethink almost any industry. Explain. Yeah. I mean, I definitely believe that. I mean invite media, Zach and I knew nothing about ads or ad tech before flat are we certainly didn't know about cancer. I mean, we were not even doctors, uh, let alone oncologists. And so, um, you know, in my opinion, it's, it's, you know, the, the, the status quo has a way of staying the status quo and, 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 flat, it was less than 2% of the healthcare industry invested its capital towards R and D. Uh, that's abysmal. Like you look at both industries, it's eight, 10, 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, uh, make it happen. And, and you know, I, Zach 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 misstepping and to 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's 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 they're 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. 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 learn 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 learn. 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. evening. Like everything we do at How Leaders Lead, it's completely free and you can sign up for it at howleaderslead.com right now. This weekly leadership plan is a great way to prepare for your week each Sunday And I hope you'll sign up today at howleaderslead.com/plan. You know, whether it's you know, breeding snakes, you know, creating 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 a collector universe for a billion dollars? Yeah. 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, 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 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 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. Zach and I had a bunch of conversations about becoming full-time investors maybe, which we were already doing, you know, with 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. I was very burned out by it. And the only thing I could think of was trading cards and spent, 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 collector's universe. 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 reality of the finance come into play versus the passion that you have? Did you ever kind of say to yourself, hey, is my passion meter getting a little bit out of control here? 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 say it is a passion, but it's a real business. Something I love. But, you know, I treat it just like I did flatter and invite. It's a very stressful, you know, work my ass off far to my language. You know, I don't sit there and play with cards all day. I wish. Yeah, it's a big one. We have 1400 employees, it's offices all over the world. I mean, it's very different from Flatiron and invite. Flatiron got close to that size. But, you know, this is different. This is not a cash-burning, SaaS 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, you have a lot of staff that you have to manage. And it's just different, but it's a lot of fun. You know, when you think about the collectible business itself, what do you see as the major growth driver going forward? 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, fun copops, 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 might at least kind of would choose the latter. They can show them off a bit. You know, it's more nostalgic. And then there's what we call the investor collector, which are the folks that really treat collecting as a investment. And that's why they do it. They're speculating, they're buying rookie cards of 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. We 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, grade, authenticate the thing that you just bought. You know, that's, that's all wrapped up in helping collectors pursue their passion. 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 segments, you know , which, which segments are really going to be the growth segments going forward? 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. Yeah, guys like Steph Curry 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, Yu-Gi-Oh, Digibon, Metazoo. There's, believe it or not, I mean, it's like 20, 30% of our business is those things. How are you going to bring technology to this industry, Nat? 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 there 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 . It's 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, you've already made a couple of significant acquisitions. Tell us about them and why you did it. 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 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 an auction software company called Zen Auction and a few other small ones. You know, as I understand it, you teamed up with billionaire and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen. He's one of your partners. What brought you two together and what have you learned from him? 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 $950 million by the company in the kind of throes of COVID. And I didn't meet a single one of those people in person before we closed 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 all some 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, D1, 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 or more. And you know, he, I still remember some of the questions where, 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. Give me an example of a zinger, Nat. 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 to 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's Steve God. He's a very smart person. 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. 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. Flatir, 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, observ ant. But like I said, we try and stay, stay heads down and build product 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. 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. You know, what's been one of your biggest failures and, and what did you learn from it? You know, a few of them, I can think back. I mean, Zach 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 gotten the way of the actual product and business and, you know, choose your partners wisely. You know, one 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, Flatiron, we, you know, our first idea, remember, I mentioned the second opinions and then the clinical trial matching, like those were good ideas on paper, but were 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 necessary 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, certainly, but we managed through it. We ended up making that acquisition, which was a big part of that pivot. You know, you start up companies and you're a 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 in the category and try to solve it. You know, tell us why you think getting the seed of the ideas is the best way to start. We have this, Zach 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. 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, the same goes with exercise and, you know, anything. Just make the initial effort, you know, get out there and start and start ups. I mean, 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 Flat iron 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'd, we'd 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 the 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, 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, 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, Zach and I, whenever one meeting at Flattern, 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 opinion idea 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, we pulled up the second laptop and had a great second half of the meeting. I love that. I've wrote it down, that you know, strong opinions loosely held. I love that. You know, how do you go about getting feedback, Matt, on, on your ideas these days at collectors? Let's choose that as a place. Yeah, we have great, a 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 spend a ton of time, we do demos with the board. Yeah, our board meetings aren't just, you know, we certainly go through financials, but half the meeting is getting real product feedback on the demos. 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 they were working on and labels and all sorts of things. At least once or twice a week, I'm having lunch with another founder, CEO in New York or California that, you know, I've grown to a grown a relationship with that, the last week, for example, I was meeting with someone, a 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 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. 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? 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, are you going to sit there and think about something or are you going to just going to go and make it happen? And the latter is what we look for. Even in a company our size, you know, it's what's the other, you know, perfection is the enemy of the good is another way. The other quote I love is this general patent, which is, you know, a perfect plan, sorry, a perfect plan executed tomorrow is worse than a halfway decent plan executed violently today. And, you know, I paraphrased it, 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 it's probably scrappiness, you know, just gets started. You know, and that's execution oriented thinking. You know, you're an, and 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 the valuable insight that can build a business? Which, do you have a process for that? Yeah, it's funny. I still have, you're writing things down. I mean, I write a lot of things down. I have a notebook. I found all the notebooks from Flatiron, and I still have them from invite. I use these moleskins, these little black m oleskins. And the way I do it is every meeting Zach 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'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 paper and pen is much more, much more respectful. And so we would, we would bring, you know, moleskins to every meeting and notebooks and generally after every meeting, Zach, and I would star things during meetings that were important. So, you know, maybe an average meeting was a page or two, and I'd have just a simple star next to things that were critical. And then after the meeting, highlighters as well, Zach 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 pat it, you try and pattern recognize really at the early days, which is as you're ideating, you know, you try and find patterns in people's needs or challenges they're experiencing, the opportunities you might see, you know, in the healthcare world, as you meet a hundred hospitals, I mean, we 'd go to Boston and Philly and all these cities and stack meetings, you know, sometimes 15, 20 a day, 30 minutes after, you know, 30 minutes each and 6 30 a.m. breakfast all the way through a dinner. And, you know, you'd have a lot of notes after those days. And, you know, we'd, 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 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 in doing so and create that alignment. So that was a big part of the process. But yeah, the ideation, you know, note taking, I can't, kids these days, they don't, they don't take enough notes. 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. Joyce Willinger, the co-founder and co-CEO of Allbirds, is passionate too about fighting against climate change. And he's doing it with shoes. 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. So if you want to know how to tackle issues you're passionate about, go check out episode 31 with Joyce Willinger here on Howl leaders lead. You were on the cover of Forbes magazine in their 30 under 30 edition, November 30th, 2018. You got a- 32 when they did that. Yeah, okay. Well, you're close enough, okay? You got a wonderful family, beautiful kids. You're nearly a scratch golfer when your back is healthy. You're a good athlete . I wouldn't say you're good looking, but how do you stay humble? Do you ever have doubts? And how do you overcome them with all this kind of success? Or does the success just say, help you take on more and more? Oh, no. Yeah, there's no need for- if you knew my kids and wife and business partners, it's easy to stay humble. Meaning like, they give me a hard time and the key is surrounding yourself with people who don't just say yes and, "Oh, what a great idea, Mr. Novak." You need people who aren't afraid to- my ideas are just as stupid as the next person, if not more so. Right? 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. Zack is the best at this. I mean, he does not care if Bill Gates is- if it's Bill Gates's idea or some 22-year-old intern, if it's the right idea, let it speak, let the merit hold on its own. That's the way to stay humble. I love to meet Zack sometime. He sounds like an incredible person. I have to ask you, could you ever imagine not being in charge of a business? You've got your private equity, your venture capital fund, you've got collectors, you run things. Can you ever imagine not? It's a good point. During the whole COVID thing, 2020, I had that moment of weakness where I thought about not running something. I don't know. I don't think so at this point. It'd be hard to imagine getting the same fulfillment of everything being on your shoulders and good or bad. 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. I can't imagine you doing anything else either. This has been so much fun and I want to ask some more with my lightning round of Q&A. Are you ready for this, Nat? Sure. The three words others use to best describe you. Yeah, I would say hardworking. Definitely put that in there. Say, probably ADD, working on a lot of things at once. Passionate, definitely. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why? Rory McElroy said, "I would know what it's like to hit a good iron." What's your biggest pet peeve? Buzzing, notifications and group meetings . If someone's phone 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. Most impactful movie you've ever seen and why? It's going to be an odd one for you, but Glingarry Glen Ross, the Alec Baldwin movie. And what made that so impactful to you? It's an awesome business movie. We use quotes from it all the time in the office. You lived in different places . One of those places was Scotland. What would you know about Scotland that would only happen if you lived in Scotland? It's always gray and rainy. How about the Netherlands? You lived there as well? Yeah. Jesus great. What's the highest quality 1952 Mickey Mannell baseball card go for? There's three 10s, PSA 10s. One hasn't traded in 20 years, but if one were to, it would easily be $30 million. If you turned on your radio in your car, what would we hear? Oh, definitely. Channel 26 on SiriusXM Classic Final. What's something about you that few people would know? Most people don't know about the snake thing, so I got to go there, but I'm an avid fisherman too. I do a lot of fishing. I probably enjoy fishing more than golf, honestly. Now I understand you are an avid collector as we've established. Someone actually broken your garage and took part of your personal collection. What did the police do when you told them what it was worth? I've had to shock them a little bit, right? The responding detective goes, "Are you effing kidding me? I'll be there." I think they got a kick out of it. Honestly, a bunch of the police officers are collectors, funny enough. Turns out they understood exactly. They knew the business that I ran. They knew where our office was. They were very in tune with it. Did you get them back? They happened to not be. They weren't that busy that day. The person who stole the cards out of the trunk took my backpack too, which had my iPad and the GPS tracker led us directly to when he was trying to sell them in a Starbucks parking lot. Technology saves you again, Matt. I got every single card back. It was like 250 cards or something. Every single one. That's great. What is it about business, Nat, that drives you the most? I'd be lying if I said economic incentives. Once you accomplish that, you realize after it doesn't mean much. What matters most is the impact. What drives me is respect from peers and investors and being known for building something that has both a 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 I 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. He goes, "Who helps more people in their life? A doctor or an entrepreneur?" I remember saying a doctor, obviously. He was like, "Well, no. What if you're an entrepreneur and you build a company that employs 100,000 people? You helped more people that way?" I think back, I 'm like, it very much internalized. For me, it's job creation, it's economic creation, impact, and maybe goes back to that quote. That's a great story. What's one bit of advice rapid up here? What's one bit of advice you give to aspiring leaders? Yeah, I would 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 really learn from what others are doing. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Some of my biggest leadership mistakes have certainly probably could have been avoided through having more people to talk to or bounce those ideas off of and get ahead of those issues. Certainly, as businesses scale, 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. You can't explain it. There's a chasm. It's a completely different thing. Understanding and knowing that as you're building a business, as it grows, as a leader, you may be outgrown in the job and you have to reinvent yourself or bring people around you that can compliment you. It's a hard reality as your company grows, that you have to continue to evolve with it and the third of these chasms you have to jump across or not and figure out an alternative solution. Realizing that when you're 24, you're invincible. By the time you get your teeth kicked in a few times with business, you realize it's not the case. That's what I would say. You don't add as I reflect back on this last conversation we've had here. I can't help but think that anybody that thinks the American dream is dead in this country needs to talk to Nat Turner. I mean, you are a great example of what can happen in this country if you have ideas, you work hard and you put your mind to make it happen and make any difference for others. This has been inspiring for me. I have to tell you, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk. No, it's been a pleasure. Well, it's pretty clear to see God broke the mold when he created Nat. From an early age, he has marched the beat of his own drummer and he's been incredibly successful as a result. 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 whether it's digging into uncharted ideas, asking discovery questions, meeting new people, boy, he just dives right in and that ability to just get started has helped Nat 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 have 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? What we learned today is that 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 hair. 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. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]