Unearthing Potential: The Relentless Mindset Behind Multi-Million $ Innovations w/ Brandon Steiner

You got to get out of your head and you got to be, it's not about only a strategy is you got to get out of your head and you got to start getting and start looking at things through other people's eyes. That's how you can find the white space. Increase your common sense, increase your empathy and compassion. So when I go out with different businesses, I'm just always looking at their potential problems. So I'm working on a deal right now with eBay and before I go to them, I may believe like I'm running eBay. I may believe like I'm the president of eBay and I'm thinking about what problems that I have. Where's the rub on the site? What's the stuff that they're missing? What other stuff can they do? Welcome to super entrepreneurs podcast. I'm your host, Shahid Durrani. Today we have with us Brandon Steiner. Brandon, a serial entrepreneur, marketing and branding thought leader, author, speaker, and media personality. Welcome to our show, Brandon. Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this all week. Hopefully we can get some things rattling, get some things rolling and get some people thinking about all the possibilities. The possibilities. How did you land into this niche market? Probably desperateness. What happened was I was always a marketer and a promoter, even some 10 years old, but the way I ended up in the sports business was back in the eighties. I'm old. When I got started, not many people were doing any of this. So now it's become really popular, but I was booking athletes and doing all kinds of stuff with athletes. And I wasn't making that much money because athletes at that time weren't getting paid a lot. So I came up with the idea of expanding those appearances by having them sign a bunch of stuff. So I go to a company, an athlete would do a speaking engagement and then he signed 20 footballs and I'd make some money on the footballs on top of the speaking engagement. And companies loved it because they gave it to their customers. I'd be at a trade show. They raffle off stuff. And it created a nice little hoop. I was really brand new to people. So just a way of, I would say your first idea is not your best idea. So I was working and my whole thing was I represented some players. It wasn't great. So I started representing companies and helping them grow through the use of athletes. I would go to a company and say, look, why don't you use one player to do the trade show, do some PR, do the golf tournament and they can do that radio commercial. You do it and you use them for all those things and sign up for one deal. Oh, great idea. Then I realized I started working some memorabilia into all that and it worked out well. It was, I was able to expand my margin and expand every deal I was doing. I was doing a lot of deals. I was moving a lot of talent and very blessed with Epic. Some of the players I got to work with in those days were really big names and they're happy to hear from me. Now you call a big name player. It's really a lot harder to do those deals. And believe it or not, I started my first company were $4,000. And then the second one, when I started doing the memorabilia with 10,000, so it wasn't a lot of money. And I turned that into a good 50 million plus dollar business. This new company collectibles changed the same kind of premise. I know there's a lot of people that have a huge amount of collectibles, cards, everything, and they need a place to go and trade and sell them. So you can go to collectible change and do that, which is a form of eBay, except we offer a lot more services. We help people evaluate what they have, authenticate what they have verified and tell them a little bit of the value and organize it. Cause a lot of people just sit with a lot of stuff. They don't know what to do with it. And I think the true entrepreneurship just comes from the white spaces. Get out of your head, trying to think of what the customer needs at the time and bring athletes to help companies. And I'm like, it'd be really cool to have some autographs and some really cool memorabilia to give out to our clients. We give to some people that didn't make it. Now I'm thinking I already put out like over 35 million autographs into the market. And there's a lot more than that. And I'm thinking now let's play. People need a really cool place to sell those things. And that's what I've been building over the last four years. It's been working out pretty good. Nice. Instead of going to the mall, that's where you'll find these stores where people are trading the collectibles. Instead of going to the mall, they can just come to your site and trade, buy, sell whatever they like to do. Right? Especially if you're a displaced fan. So let's say you're a Dodger fan. You're living in New York. The New York collectibles doesn't have Dodger stuff. He has, they have Yankee stuff. So my site right now has over 150,000 items from people all over the world. They're putting stuff up and it's growing like weeds. So you've got a much bigger assortment of variety. And what's nice is people know my name. They know Steiner, even though I'm not Steiner anymore. They know Steiner does. There is no gray area with what I'm going to be putting up on my site and what I'm allowing. That's going to be unbelievable stuff because I've been doing this for 35 years. And there's a lot of people that are weird collectors and sometimes the local collectible store, they've got the stuff more, more geared to buyers to those local teams and people are looking for more quirky different things. And the average collectible store may have a few hundred items in there, but not a few hundred thousand items. So it's been pretty good and it solved the problem. Somebody passed away. I was a big collector. The wife comes to me, I can help her sort it out. Somebody sitting with a ton of cards when they were a kid, they don't know what to do with it. We have a white glove service and we actually help people sort the cards out, tell them what they're worth. Unfortunately, sometimes that's a bearer of bad news. Sometimes those cards are worthless and sometimes those cards are gold and worth a fortune and I'm able to dissect that for them and then show them what to do with them, how to sell them. That's interesting. Brandon, do they actually do this as a business trading collectibles? Right now, business is pretty good. They're right now have a trading card business. There's a lot of people that are trading and buying and you're seeing locally card shops open up all over the place literally and you're seeing a lot of things called card breaks where people opening up boxes, you can buy a spot and see if you want a special card. So the trading card businesses is very hot and then you see collectible stories, but a lot more of the collectibles because it's such a diverse amount of products and also diverse amount of costs are more of an off becoming more of an online thing. Listen I think there's nothing like going to an autograph show and getting something in person. I'm a fan of it, but if you can't, then I think our site solves a good problem because you're going to see stuff on a site that you'd never see in a collectible store because you're never going to go to see the guy in Des Moines, Iowa or in Beverly Hills, California, or up in Rochester, New York. Babe Ruth was barnstorming 80 years ago and now he had some stuff from Babe Ruth and he's barnstorming some collector. So the site ultimately is I'm hoping to get people in Europe, cricket, rugby, and I'm hoping it becomes like the largest most diverse worldwide collectible site of all time. Oh, hopefully we can help with this episode. Thank you. It's been fun, man, because you think I just, listen, I built a big brand. You think you've done it all and you think how great you are and then you realize you've done nothing, no nothing, and you're just getting started. And that is the true, that is the true path to growth. It's been a rose. Beginners mindset. What's your rate of self efficiency? What's your rate of growth? And if you don't have, if you're not analyzing your rate of growth on a regular basis, you're probably muddling around and headed to mediocrity. Nothing wrong with that, but you're probably not going to be headed towards extraordinary. Not good for business, right? Yeah. For Steiner Sports, you formed some giant partnerships, right? New York Yankees, Madison Square Garden. Can you share some advice to entrepreneurs that are looking to build partnerships for their startup or for their business? The P word is always, that's a big word, the P word, which is partnership, parenting. Partnerships are really critical. And the only reason you would have a partnership is that it's going to be with someone that's going to expand the roof over your head. And I think sometimes you get caught up in partnership with your ego, but if you're going to get into a partnership, that's not going to help you really go and grow and you shouldn't do it because they're painful, a lot of work, especially when they don't go well, the bigger, the partnership, the more meaningful partnership, you got to put work into it. Everybody who's married for any length of time knows what I'm talking about. You got to put work in. If you want to keep the marriage going, it's the same thing with partnerships. So when you go, for me, like as a leader, your job as a leader in industry is to fix what's broken in the industry and take what's going well in the industry and make it better. And sometimes that doesn't always purely benefit you. But as a leader, as the company, as the industry you're in is growing, you'll grow because you have market share. And I think I'm not enough leaders of people leading, have leading industries realize that every time Nike comes up with something great, a new type of sneaker, it helps the overall footwear business in which they have a very solid market share on. And that's how they keep growing. And not everything can, they do can be just good for Nike, right? So that's what I feel about the collectible thing. So when I partnered with the Yankees, Massacre Garden, the Cowboys, Notre Dame, whatever. I knew that those are brands that had to get involved with collecting because they'd be putting out more product. They have a great connection, obviously with the biggest fan bases on the planet, and we'll get more people collecting. And I figured if I can get more people collecting, it'd be good for the business, good for industry. And certainly a lot of people have benefited from this, by the way. It's kind of part of the deal. When you want to be a leader in an industry, you got to do stuff for the industry, not just for you. And I think sometimes people struggle. If you want to fill yourself, you got to sometimes forget yourself. And you got to be a little selfless in some approaches. And I knew that some of those deals were going to be better for a lot of other people than it was even for me. But that's part of the growth process, especially when I got involved with the business was relatively small. And I hit a wall. I was like, I gotta get more people collecting, I gotta get more people to understand collecting. It wasn't an easy chore. Now people talk about collectibles like they're talking about going to the store and getting a Coke. It's been a long road to get people to understand what even a collectible is and how the business works. So it sounds like you had a major hand in that transition. I think so. I invented so many different concepts that now become a little bit of the way people do business. Not only in sports, but in a whole bunch of categories. I show people systems of how to do, and how to create collections and how to expand and take advantage of celebrities of all different types and how to put out different products, combining collectibles with meet and greets, combining experiential stuff with, uh, ability to meet players, signing things in a certain way, creating special products and reproducing them. So like you would take a song that a band wrote and reproduce that song. Haven't been handwritten and then have the artist sign them. We've come up with a lot of replications back then. A famous home run got hit. Only one person getting the bat. We replicate the bad, do a hundred of those bats and have the player sign that in a certain way. So I was very big on the replication of collectibles, although the actual original collectible itself is always a big deal, but the average Joe can't always afford that to replicate an actual collectible. So it's almost exactly like that collectible, but it's a replica. I think it means something to people. Relive those favorite moments, memorabilia moments. If you can bring those moments to focus time and time again, there's a happy moment. Usually it's a good thing. So Brandon, can you share a specific strategy of how you form those partnerships? Is there anything in the marketing realm when entrepreneur can use to create those partnerships? Because these strategic alliances are a big deal in business. If you're creating a partnership, first thing you need to do is you need to look at something that our partner or an area that can use your help. Most people look at an opportunity to partner with somebody and to think about what they can get. I'm thinking about what I can get, what I could do for them. See Yankees, for example, they need me. They're fricking Yankees, bigger brand than them. I went to them more with the approach and this is what really made sense wasn't the money grab. But listen, there's a lot of fake stuff out there. Babe Ruth, Blue Garrett, no one knows what's real. Imagine if we could put in a safe system in, I was talking to Raina Levine, who I trust about this. Imagine if we could put something in place that would protect the fans. So down the road, they would know that what they were getting is a real Derek G or bad or a real Mariano ball or glove that he used. And they love that idea. And then we moved to the money-making aspects. I always say, it's not about what you can give. How about what you can get? It's about what you can get. But I think that most people and to harp on this point is when you're trying to form a partnership, focus on value, what value can you provide? Value is what you could do for someone that they can't do for themselves. So I was able to go to a bunch of these teams and look, I can go grab a bunch of your players, partner up with them, and then partner up with you. So that as a pulling different game, you stadium, you use stuff. I can have those players sign that everybody's making some money. I'm taking down a sign that somewhere in the stadium, I don't have it. A couple of players sign that sign. And then I'm getting authenticated in a way. So it was really brilliant kind of the way it all fit together in that triangle. And I think it started with value. It's look, I could go and set up a system that everything that comes out of the Yankee stadium would have authentication and would have a kind of a purpose and a game plan to it and get the players involved. The team can profit, but more importantly, the fans were protected and the fans knew where to get the real stuff. And then we were able to add experiential stuff in there, which made the whole thing even amazing. So I did that for many teams with many players, and I think it's a really took the whole industry. We took what was a hobby and turned it into an industry. I think it was a big game changer. Fantastic. So for, from what I'm hearing is basically requires some research on who would be the ideal partner and then find out how you can add the most value to that partner by giving more. And then come up with that unique plan and then approach them. Let me help. Let me actually simplify for everyone who's listening because someone's listening to, I don't know how I'm ever going to approach the Yankees. Oh, yeah, I am stupid enough. And it took me two years to do it. So it wasn't like it happened overnight. It was not a snap, crackle, pop, but the way you, we have to think about it. First of all, you got to get out of your head and you got to be, it's not about only a strategy is you got to get out of your head and you got to start getting and start looking at things through other people's eyes. That's how you can find the white space. Increase your common sense, increase your empathy and compassion. So when I go out with different businesses, I'm just always looking at their potential problems. So I'm working on a deal right now with eBay. And before I go to them, I may believe like I'm running eBay. I may believe like I'm the president of eBay and I'm thinking about what problems that I have with the rub on the site, what's the stuff that they're What's other stuff can they do? And are those things that I could actually execute and go to them with those ideas that either help them grow confidence with their customers, grow sales, increase customer loyalty, all those things. So when I go to them, I already thought about it through their eyes. I know what eBay could do for me, their huge website, but I'm thinking about what they need help with and ideas that could actually help with the guidance of things that I'm knowledgeable about. So when I go to them, I'm thinking about the best case scenario of ideas that they could use. And I do that by increasing my common sense by empathy is increase your empathy, putting yourself in a common person's shoes. I'm trying to think like an eBay executive, trying to feel what he's feeling. And obviously there's always the growth of sales, but there's always the maintaining customer loyalty and showing the customers that we're able to provide them with more services. If I can do those kinds of things, then maybe I got a chance for a relationship. So if you're approaching a company, forget about you, what, what struggles are you having or what are they excited about and how can you help them grow? How, where's the white space? What are they thinking about? And that does take a little time and figure out. And then once you help somebody with their problems and helping somebody with what they're dealing with, a lot of other stuff falls into place. No matter how daunting it may seem, nobody turns away somebody that can help them with their problems. It just doesn't happen. Yeah, very true. Thank you so much for that, Brendan. Can you share the components of a strong personal brand that stands out in today's market? Plus using that branding to get media attention. How do you amplify yourself enough that you can leverage media like you have from ESPN, et cetera? I mean, listen, not everybody can do that and it's not for everybody. And by the way, I don't think I could replicate what I did because the media is so spread out and there's so many different versions of ways to communicate, which is what makes it so hard to market, but I think it's more about, I'll give you an example. Do you, what hotel do you go to when you walk in and you get two nice, warm chocolate chip cookies, double tree, double tree gives you two nights, fresh cookies. They're a moderate hotel. I would put them on the lower end spectrum of a hotel. You don't see a lot of advertising for double tree. They give out 75,000 cookies a day, 25 to 30% of those people that get cookies posted, talk about it and share the experience that they got their cookies and it's definitely something that gets people going. You don't have to, you don't have to go beyond 60 minutes to go get the world's attention. What you need to do is come up with an idea that makes you a little bit unique, that separates yourself from everyone else, do something that's replicable, remarkable, repeatable and relatable. Like me was the dirt. I've sold over $50 million of dirt, took all the game, used dirt around all the leagues and sold the dirt and make pens and all kinds of different clocks and capsules and that's what kind of, believe it or not, put me on the map. Amongst all the other things, yeah, selling a Yankee stadium, but you got to go look and do something that's unique and it's not always the most expensive thing and that's the thing. Sometimes it's scaring you right in the face. You got to find that one thing that really can help you connect with the customer that is worth that customer going to dinner with some friends on a Saturday night and talking about you. What's unique and what I feel really blessed about is like a lot of people call me and say, yeah, we're just talking about you yesterday. I'm like, wow, what a blessing. Thank you. I mean, there's a lot of things people could be thinking about talking about. And the fact that my name came up for some reason meant that I did something that was remarkable, repeatable, that reached them and that's really the goal. It's like not everybody has the money to go do a Yankee deal or maybe the insight or maybe that exact connection. I was very fortunate and lucky along with some of these other team deals I did, but the dirt, everybody laughed at. That's the thing that people, if you watch the Ted talk on YouTube, Brandon Stein or Ted talk Syracuse, it talks all about how I created all this dirt sales and how I went and blew it up and turned it into a $50 million plus amount of sales. So regardless of the company and what you're doing, it doesn't really matter. It's the question is, can you get your head on the swivel and look at your business in a unique way, because the riches are really in the niches. You don't have to hit a home run to win the game. You don't, I'm sorry. I'll give you another example if you don't mind. Um, there's a guy named Jack Taylor. Do you know who Jack Taylor is? No. Good answer. It was a trick question. I knew you probably wouldn't know that, but Jack Taylor was the founder of enterprise rent a car. Oh, Jack Taylor. When he came out of the Navy, he was on the enterprise. That was the ship that he wrote on and he named the company after enterprise. So that's how they came up with that name. So anyway, he went to work for Cadillac dealership. He noticed that a lot of cars were breaking down, car accidents, and people need a replacement car for a week or whatever. So he went to the owner of the dealership and said, do you mind if I rent a car to people for a week or a few days, I'm going to, I got an opportunity to go buy these four cars. He bought four cars and he started giving to people that needed a car for a couple of days and whatever. The four cars turned eight, the eight to 12. And then the rest is history. The enterprise is the largest car rental car agency in the world. Bigger than Avis, Hertz, budget, and whoever the next one is all combined. That's how big they are. But do you know what percentage of sales enterprise rent the car uses towards somebody going to the airport and renting a car, or if you're a tourist, you're in another city around the car, your percentage that is 15%, 15% of the largest rental car agency barely rents cars, but if you go to a collision shop, you go to get insurance, you're getting into an accident and you need a car, you go to a dealer that you put your car in there, you need a car for a couple of weeks, you see the enterprise rent the cars and that's where they suggest that's where they recommend. 85% of their revenue comes from replacement cars, not rental cars. Jack Taylor took a very ordinary, simple business and completely put his head on a swivel and came up with a completely different niche and turned it to be the biggest, one of the biggest companies in the world, not to mention the largest rent the car agency in the world. So my question to people that are listening, you may think you're in a pretty typical, ordinary business, but there's no such thing. There's always another way to look at your business and that's where, how you have to look at it. There are many people that maybe got autographs signed before I came along, but nobody's thought about the dirt, but there was always there. No one thought about, Hey, Derek, he kicked the dirt around. I'm going to take that dirt and sell it. Nobody thought about that. There's always been lineup cards at the beginning of time. No one thought about going in the dugout, taking the lineup cart and selling it and maybe replicating and selling copies of it. I did. No one thought about that because I looked at the business different. I wasn't trying to do the same old thing that everybody else was doing. And the only way you get in the mindset to do that is to get out of your own freaking head and start thinking about people that are around you and what they're thinking about and what they're needing, the guy who was in a dealership at a Cadillac dealership, trying to sell cars, but he knows people came in and had accidents, they get a replacement car. What are you going to do? So we figured out a solution for that. Think about your business and what the solution is, what the people that you're dealing with, what they really want. And can you expand or pivot over to that? You can end up being a Jack tell yourself. Yeah, that's a wonderful example. Appreciate you sharing that. Can you share with us what you feel your innermost superpower is that got you to this point in life? I don't think, I think there's no doubt. I'm relentless. I'm not somebody who takes no for an answer and I'm not afraid to go after what I want. I think taking action over anxiety is really important. And then the other thing is I take a very simple mindset, you know, wake up, broke, don't, don't, at the end, nothing great happens unless your back's against the wall. So regardless of whether you're really your back, you have to, if you have to fake yourself out, do it, but get your back against the wall, put the pressure on yourself, and then you'll be surprised at what you can respond to. Because we're built for that. So if you're not pushing yourself and that's my superpowers, I can get, and I can create an underdog mindset, even though my soul knows I'm a favorite. I know I'm good. I know I'm going to win. I know I can do great things. I know I can work really hard, but my mindset's doubting it. Maybe you can't, maybe it's not going to work. Maybe nobody's going to buy the dirt. I don't know. It's stupid. But then it's like, you're always going to get back going, but you have to make sure that the soul is strong because knowing you're a good person, knowing that your ideas, if you work really hard, can work and sometimes they don't, but I think that relentlessness, and if it does fail, there's always two lessons. There's a lesson and there's a blessing. So if you fail, you probably learned something, learned something that good came from it. And to be extraordinary, you got to be able to bounce back and move on and take those lessons. And what I've learned in just in closing to answer that question is the superpower is you're not going to like this answer, but it's true. You got to fall in love with the stuff that you have that's happened to you, that you hate the most. So the worst thing that's ever happened to you, you got to fall in love and be grateful that it happened. The guy that dumped you, the divorce that you happened, the job that you got fired, the money you lost, you got to fall in love with that and be grateful that it happened. Because usually you can't go forward to do the next great thing unless you resolve that and realize that life happens usually for you, not to you. And that's not an easy, that's not easy to get in that mindset. But if you can, it'll clear the path for you to do some great things. Yeah, it's important how you're set up within, because if you make yourself programmed into looking for the good in those failures, and like you mentioned, fall in love with it, because there are always those messages in them, you're not going to be afraid. You're going to decrease that fear when you're taking other steps in the future. It's not easy. You're talking about some of the worst things that's happened to you. It takes programming. That's what we do. Yeah, it's not easy to find some of the worst things that's happened to you and then feel good about it and fall in love with it. But that's a big part of leadership is getting yourself to feel safe. Yeah. Yeah, it's mindset. Natural ability is that you want to be safe in your comfort zone, but with the right programming, the right training, you can train your mind to do incredible things like you mentioned. We have such huge potential. So it was, I was so grateful to have you on the show and talk to you today. And about all this stuff is very exciting. Actually, I'm looking forward to what you're going to do in the future and wishing you all the best. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it too. And go to my website, get my book for free. I've written three and just go click on it and you just have to pay for the shipping and hopefully enjoy that. Or I'll look for you on LinkedIn. I'm a big LinkedIn guy. Perfect. Thank you, my friend. Take care.