The Money Mondays - The Business of Scarcity: Nightclubs, Trading Cards and Collectible Drops 📉 E171

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

What do a successful nightclub, a rare trading card and a poker community have in common? They all depend on attention, experience, scarcity—and the right operator behind the business.In this special double-feature episode of The Money Mondays, Dan Fleyshman sits down with nightlife veteran JROC and StockX co-founder Josh Luber. JROC breaks down the economics of nightlife, celebrity appearances, lifestyle investments and the experienced operators behind hospitality brands that last. Josh explores collectibles as alternative assets, blind-box products, market-based pricing, major licensing partnerships and his newest venture building a social network for poker.From VIP tables and viral restaurant experiences to numbered collectibles and blind Dutch auctions, this episode reveals how entrepreneurs turn culture into commerce—and why the team behind the idea is often the most important investment of all.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Monday's podcast. We cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. This next guest I've known for two decades all throughout the industry. But first, I'm going to give you guys some quick things. Number one, these episodes are not just for you. It might be for someone from your past, present, or future. It might be for a child, a parent, a friend, an employee, or a coworker that you're having lunch with six months. months from now that you might learn something from this episode and you share it with them,

they could literally change the course of their life. That's called the butterfly effect. So as you listen to these episodes, keep that in mind, not just for you. The industries, the specifics that we go through are for the people in your ecosystem, even if you haven't even met them yet. You could share this podcast with them. Also, the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 to 36 minutes for your listening pleasure. Without further, do. J-Rock, give them the quick two-minute bio, so we get straight to the money. Yeah, right. Big Money Mondays, go. Good to be here, Mr. Fleshman. Am I giving my elevator?

Yes, the two-minute bio. Two-minute bio. I'm a guy who came up the hard way, you know, worked kind of every position, started in nightlife and, you know, started as a trash guy, worked my way up to ownership, started my own companies from there, been involved with stitched, a brand for 13 years now over at the cosmopolitan. And I'm an entrepreneur by heart and I'm still chasing dreams. I love it. Okay. The make money side. How do people make money in the nightlife space? Let's walk through from the front door to the back door. How do people make money in the nightlife space? There's a lot of money being thrown around in there. You know, for me, I started out as, you know, in a service position where I was getting tips and, you know, trying to just save my money like everyone else.

continue to move up. For me, it was, you know, just working hard through the positions that I was in to continue to move up. And that's what I wanted to do was eventually, you know, even starting as a trash guy, I wanted to own the club, you know. I had that vision. I saw, you know, something. Yeah, honestly, like, you know, and I'll always say, like Mike Myers, you remember, you know, kind of took matters weighing at the time and just kind of seeing how the nightlife world was exploding at that time and it was a it was changing everything was changing so there was like this white space you know and for me it was being a part of that initial trend that really kind of launched nightlife in and Vegas you know and really around uh the u.s like first getting big name djs

big name celebrities to be hosting bottle service was invented by a gentleman named stevie d yeah he was i like to say Andrew Anderson will have his have his battle with who who invented it but These were my partners, you know, some of the godfathers of the game, you know, were my mentors. And I learned a lot from these guys. And, you know, there's a lot of old school methodology that they applied, you know, and really sales training. You know, the sell, right? It's can you sell this pen, right? But can you sell this bottle?

This bottle. Or this ticket to get in. Yeah. But you're really selling lifestyle. You know, you're selling the experience that comes along with that bottle and, you know, the area that you're in, you know, and filling it with the right people. You know, there's a lot of things that happen within the nightlife space that, you know, the outside wouldn't understand, you know,

all these kind of things that are happening. But it's definitely a symphony that needs to be orchestrated in the right way. And there definitely needs to be, you know, funding specifically here in Vegas because of the talent and, you know, the competition to compete with those guys. So when I was talking about Stevie-D, I was talking about him booking Britney Spears. He was one of the first. And everyone, and he did this famous article, they're like, how could you pay Britney Spears a million dollars to host an appearance? That's insane.

He's like, well, it's New Year's Eve. The tickets are $200 per person. There's $300,000 people. That's $600,000. The tables next to her on each side were $50,000 each. The surrounding tables are $20,000 each. And then the general tables are around $5,000, $10,000 each. We sold around $1.4 million He said, so think about it. $600,000 here, 1.4 million there. We did $2 million in sales before selling one drink. Is it okay if I give the girl a million bucks? And that story's been stuck in my head for so many years because he was like going and getting like people from the real world and road world shows that you were part of as well. Like getting them to be hosts. And you're like, well, why would someone go to that?

The personal brand. The personal brand is why someone goes when Britney Spears is hosting or a certain person in a TV personality or an athlete is hosting or a famous model or Instagram girl is hosting. They can get people to come to the club. Walk us through the concept of, okay, where I'm going to pay this person. Let's say it's Polly D. We're going to give this guy $50,000. He's going to be the host or the DJ for the night. Walk us through the economics of how you think about that.

So, you know, first thing, obviously, like Stevie D was ahead of his time. And, you know, having Peres Hilton and Kim Kardashian at the time, you know, we didn't have the social media we have now. So your only chance to see these celebrities. We're at these type of appearances off, you know, your regular television. So he really capitalized in that area. We try to do the same thing with the palms and kind of be ahead on those trends. Paul E.D. in like Jersey Shore and the popularity is the attention economy, right? The beginning part of that. You know, so nowadays it's, it's, you know, we're really digging through KPI's a lot

deeper where we're looking into these artists, you know, we're seeing what their ticket sales look like in the region, you know, what's trending on their socials, you know, to try to tap into their, into their fan base, right? And we look to see, you know, is this fan base going to be big enough to fill this, this venue plus our sales team? And general audience and also people that have money to spend. Exactly. You know, and so, you know, you're looking at who you're speaking to, like, who's your core demographic, right, that you're trying to sell to in the first place. And, you know, stacking those around the right weekends. And then also, you know, because Vegas and, you know, some of these cities are so competitive, you're seeing what your competition looks like as

well. And you're, and you're kind of vetting against, you know, who you're going against, you know, as well as the artists themselves, right? And then building, you know, engaging content with that engaging with their fan base, you know, to tap into everything and every resource that they have, as well as, you know, all the resources you're getting through the casino and the marketing and, you know, all your efforts as well. So there's tens of millions of restaurants. There's hundreds of thousands of brands. There's tens of thousands of franchises. But when you really think about it, there's like a dozen names that have been doing this for two decades. And when we go to a city, you know, Tao. You know, Marquis. You know this restaurant. You know that. Like, you know,

know these brands that have burned to your mind, carbon, and they're owned by like the same dozen or two dozen groups that are the brand. Look at Jason Strauss being two decades later, Tao is still the number one grossing restaurant on the planet. Like two decades later, it's still good luck getting into a lot of his nightclubs because it's just Marquis is sold out, lava sold out, the brunch is sold out in the morning and it's also sold out at nighttime. Walk us through. How does someone like a Jason Strauss, that you've known for so many years, how do they last for two decades when there's millions and millions and millions of competitors is that we don't know their names.

You know, he's, he's, he's, you know, Jason's always been a pathfinder, you know, and looking at all the new trends and obviously on the music side, it's really staying involved in who's trending there, but also Tao group, you know, their process and the way in which they approach the venue from, you know, all the way from the aesthetic to, you know, the talent and the entertainment inside the venues, you know, that's a big, that's a big portion. You know, you're seeing these venues are all. take getting remodels and they're getting upgrades constantly. You know, some people see those.

Sometimes they're bigger where you're seeing, you know, this big kind of overhaul change. But Jason's always kind of, you know, trying to feed the market what it wants, you know. And then also diversify, he's diversified in so many different areas and different, so many different styles of music that he's able to, with his operations team, go in and build a venue that's going to be, you know, what people want. And then it's really filling it with the right people, having the right kind of talent and programming that goes along with that. And they've, they've just, they've figured that out, you know, in every market.

So you work with the company that actually builds the sound and lighting and the holy smokes that we see at some of the most amazing nightclubs, not just in Vegas, but around the world. Talk us about that company. Yeah, so trustful technology group, you know, been happy to get on the other side of these, of the nightlife venues in a sense. You know, and really when I started working with Doug Green, CEO there, he was showing me conceptual of things that they were building, working on. And it just kind of blew my mind because, like, I at the time was really looking hardcore in Dubai. I was really trying to understand, like, how the market's going to shift there, right? Because alcohol isn't the thing there. You know, entertainment is a focus and they're spending a lot of dollars.

But, like, how can you create entertainment without, you know, just the heavy factor of the alcohol being the only monetization point? So the technologies that are now being applied and what trust fall has built, you know, this is what I think is going to lead in every kind of F&B hotel, food and beverage space is really these technology builds. You know, and being able to change the venue, being able to change the mood of that space, you know, at the flip, you know, at the snap of a finger. You know, so getting with trust fall, it was really exciting for me because I've been a part of, you know, designing venues and designing the flow and the entertainment side. For me, the entertainment side was always really important. you know, I still have a hard time going into venues and just relaxing. Right.

I'm looking. I want to fix that? Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, uh, the lighting's a little off in here, the sound, you know, like I have that problem, um, good or bad. Um, but, you know, with trust fall, they, they've solved a lot of these issues, you know, from a production standpoint, you know, the technology's gotten better, right? It's like, it used to be like, how much LED can you have, but like now it's about hiding it, you know, and hiding the technology.

So it's still there. and you still get effect from it, but you're not seeing just a giant screen in your face. So, you know, Trust Falls is doing a lot of custom builds, you know, working with the wind, working with MGM, you know, built Zook Nightclub, got a lot of big projects ahead, some exciting things and working with Tau Group on some exciting, some projects coming out. Awesome. So let's go to the investing side of the space. Someone wants to invest into a nightclub restaurant.

We call that a lifestyle investment. They are high risk, mostly dependent. on the operators. That's where you can reduce your risk. If someone like you has done it for 20 years, it's more likely to succeed compared to someone that's just a passion for making cheeseburgers, a passion for making pizza, a passion for opening a bar, whatever, someone with experience. Walk us through someone's like, hey, you know what, I've been making a couple hundred grand a year in real estate or as a doctor. And I do want to invest 50 grand, 100 grand, 200 grand, into my friend's nightclub or restaurant. What should they be asking for? What should they be looking

for? What should they be expecting this high risk investment? Well, I mean, it is a high risk investment specifically, right? And I think the first thing is who's the operator, you know, who's behind, you know, the planning and wanting to have that, you know, you want to have some wins and losses, right? Because the losses actually teach you a lot, you know. And so you need somebody who's had the experience and had that, you know, gumption to take the risk, you know, at times, you know.

So for me, I look at the person, you know, behind the operation specifically. And then I'd say also, you know, you know, see what the, marketing plan, you know, see what's unique about it? You know, what's your IP here? Like, what is, what is it that you're selling in a different way that no one else is? You know, and how are you presenting that? You know, I think content right now is, is, I always say content is king and data is God. So, you know, what kind of content compelling that you're going to get people to look at what you're doing, right, and get that attention to that space, you know, and then when you get them there, you got to deliver. So there's a lot of different options when

investing into a restaurant nightclub, which is a high-risk investment. So here's some things to consider. There's a structure called a FIFO. First in, first out. A FIFO structure is, let's say I'm going to put in $100,000. J-Roc's going to open a new nightclub in San Diego, California. Jay Rock's going to raise $2 million for this new small boutique nightclubs. It's kind of like a sidebar-sized nightclub. He needs $2 million. He needs about $1.2 million to build it, $300K for marketing, expenses and staffing, and $500K to sit in the piggy bank to help with the run operations. Cool. I want to throw in $100,000. I'm going to get a few of my friends as well.

A first in first out structure would be I put in $100,000, and J. Rock and the management team can decide a percentage to pay me back along the way, which reduces my risk. So let's say he's going to do an 80, 20 split until I get my $100,000 back and then flip it, where now I have, me and the investors have 20% of whatever the equity is of that deal. So in this example, let's say that we're putting in the $2 million, and it's going to be at a $10 million valuation. We're buying 20%.

You follow? $2 million, $2 million, $10,000, 20%. We get our money back along the way at an 80% structure, this FIFO, 80% of the money comes back in. So let's say that he does $6 million in revenue, profits $2 million, for example. Well, 80% of that $2 million is going to come back to us with $1.6 million. Sounds fantastic. We almost got our money back in the first year, year and a half. That would be exciting, right?

Then once we've gotten the full $2 million back, let's call it two years into it, we then flip. So now we go back to our normal equity, which is 20%. We own $2 million at a $10 million valuation. Let's say he does $6 million again. Nets around $2 million. We are now making, we're printing money at this $400,000 a year. That would be exciting, right? That's just the perfect example of a FIFO structure.

Other versions are I put in $100,000, same $2 million total raise, same $10 million in this example. I am an equity owner. I'm going to start making money along the way, but after, here's what's important. After the profit margin, what I'm really truly hoping for is a sale or an exit. I'm hoping one day, Jay Rock and his team get bought out by a management group or get bought out by a private equity group or they start to open up location two, three, four, five, and six in different cities, Chicago, New York, Miami, etc. What's important is when you're doing this type of angel investment, let's say $100,000,

you have to be prepared to be in it for the long run. Sometimes you get your money back in a year or two or three. Sometimes you never get your money back. Sometimes it takes five years. You have to be prepared to put that capital in and prepared to be trustworthy of those type of operators. When they have experience, you reduce your risk. What most people don't understand is restaurant and nightclubs, you have to love it and live it. You're going to be in there four hours before it opens and one or two hours after it closes, day in, day out.

It's not just on Fridays and Saturdays. A lot of these venues are open all week long. So keep in mind that you got to bet on an operator what I call ride or die. This person is willing to be there Sunday mornings for lava brunch. Sunday afternoons prepare for opening. Dinner setting for Sunday dinner. Boom, now it's a nightclub, and we're going to be open until 2 in the morning. You need someone that truly loves this business to want to invest into them.

So, Jerok, brands come and go. Certain brands, like we've been mentioning, these legendary brands, excess nightclub so many years, Tao group, so many years, Marquis, so many years, so many years. There's certain brands that withstand the test of time. What do you think is different for those brands than the brands that come and go? Um, you know, I'd say, uh, it's, it's being able to adapt to the market. And, you know, um, we've gone through a lot of different, uh, changes throughout the country, you know, and it's about that adaptability. Also, you know, being for, you know, ahead of, you know, Tao has done major purchases of other nightlife groups and venues, you know, they've stayed, you know, really consistent on growing their EBITA, um, you know, and they've also, because they have the talent pool that they have, you know, they're also now able to spread that talent pool throughout all of their venues,

which saves them dollars, you know, from a singularity's type of a space. So they're able to spread their marketing. They're able to spread their network and those dollars across all these different cities because they have such a big footprint at this point. And a lot of these companies are doing that. They're building for the future. You know, it's really like what's your end goal here with this space? You know, are you looking to build it into four, five, six?

Is it going to become a brand that you're looking to launch in that aspect? And they've done that with a lot of. of their, a lot of their key brands and been able to kind of keep those alive in multiple cities around the world. How do you choose now when people come to you? Because they know you've been in the game for a long time. They know you're an industry veteran. You've been through and seen all the ups and downs of so many different brands.

You've done into multiple cities now. Let's say I had a brand. I said, you know what? I want to open up a high-end restaurant. And on Friday and Saturdays, I want to do this nightclub. But I actually want to do a sports bar on Sundays. and I also want to do like jazz then on Tuesdays. How do you decide to tell me bluntly,

no, that's not going to work or you can't do all these different things? Yeah. So, I mean, every project we're going to do a deep dive market research on the space itself, the area itself, on what you're looking to achieve specifically if it's jazz or if it's sports, you know, really kind of understanding the comps that's like who's in the market doing the same thing.

And then also the viability of that, you know, in that city or in that area, you know, is jazz the right thing to, speak to the right crowd. Right. It's a little bit probably skewed from 40 to 55. And is that your target market? Because if it's not, then, you know, you're booking the wrong stuff.

Yeah. You know, so looking at the overall plan and trying to get you to a place where you're happy at the same time, and maybe there's a hip-hop jazz type of a thing. So it's more brought into the new school so that it's, you know, fresher for a younger audience, which we're trying to probably capture in the nightlife space. You know, so really kind of going through it and also understanding, you know, you know, what budgets we have.

It's a big deal, right? Making sure that you have the right team alongside you from marketing perspective and all those other positions that you're going to need to operate. So for me coming, you know, you telling me, hey, this is what I want to do. We're going to try to pull, put a plan together, you know, that fits to that. And at the end of the day, if I don't feel like it's a viable thing,

I'm just probably not going to do it. Yes. You know, I mean, I'm at the point. now where I understand where, you know, if you're short on capital or if you're short on specific things, you know, you can only get so far, you know, I can make a lot with a little, you know, but I need that, I need that understanding of what exactly that is and, you know, the consistency to, to your point, you have to be into this. You know, if the investor is specifically involved, you know, really kind of day to day, that can make things a lot harder. Sure. Right.

You know, obviously you're trying to please them, but at the same time, you know the pitfalls and the pain points that they don't specifically. So it can be a, it can be a dance, you know, but obviously at the end of the day, you know, you are, you are in a sense working for your investors as well as yourself. So, you know, you do your best to work around those, those things and, you know, try to get the vision that your investor does want without, you know, sacrificing revenue and, you know, the brand itself. So from an investor perspective, they're looking at profit margins, and even a,

but the VIP host is like, well, I need to comp those four girls because they've got a million followers. I need to comp those three guys because they spent 10 grand last time and I want them to get this. Let's comp them 300 bucks

so they might spend 10 grand this time. Talk us the mentality of comps when it comes to relationships, networking, and social media now. It's a really important thing. This is where, you know,

I've seen hotel groups and others who haven't been in nightlife specifically make mistakes, you know, because they're just looking at the black and white numbers, but there are certain people you do have to take care of. Obviously, as we've been saying, you know,

when it comes to the attention economy, you want these tastemakers, you want these people, you know, trying your product and loving your product. You know, so you do want to have those people in your venue. You are willing to, you know, from a trade value perspective, if they're willing to post and do social media and show off your space, that's a trade value of marketing that you do need.

You know, you need to have these kind of tastemakers, you know, inside your space. You know, you need, obviously, girls is the thing, you know, in nightlife because a lot of the bottle customers are men, you know, and so the music, all these things, but, you know, you're playing a balance of, you know, kind of the, you know, the hip up and coming kids to the guys who do have already dollars and want that lifestyle. So you're kind of providing that lifestyle for these people who don't have time, who are probably working in the office every day making their money and they want to go out and they want to

have this fun experience that they see on social media you know so you're trying to deliver people you know something that they're not normally getting and so you're putting them around people that they might not normally be around but they want to be around so let's do a comparison really quickly we saw the the rise and fall of salt bay when he came in and made a really fun marketing when the the pioneers really to make viral marketing turn into a A hundred million I don't even hurt sometimes someone's had a billion dollar franchise around the world. But then a huge decline. The restaurant in Beverly Hills, I go to that.

It's called Nusorette to the Salt Bay Steakhouse. You know why I go there? I had the place to myself. It's like having a gorgeous steakhouse. That has really good food and no one is there. So you see that where we've watched the rise and fall where there was, I call it like a one trick, you know, one trick wonder. A one hit wonder where he was doing this viral thing in the viral marketing, spraying the salt on the steak. slapping the steak, putting steak pieces into the girl's mouse, and sometimes the guys in the mouse,

and that would be the viral content. Huge decline after the fact. However, we're now seeing Poppy Steak. The number one grossing restaurant under Dave Grutman's properties, that's a big thing to say, because Dave Grumman has a lot of restaurants, the most iconic nightclubs in history. He owns Miami, literally. Every celebrity goes there, and Poppy Steak is outperforming everything because Poppy, you know, is doing such a great job. David Einhorn is doing such a great job making this route content.

By the way, just in the last few weeks has gone to overdrive on content. This podcast will be out this week. Go look at Poppy Steak. Go look at David Einhorn. He's on fire making state content. So my question is, there was all this capital, this fun viral thing that Salt Bay was doing around the world, and then this humongous decline and crash of that brand. I don't think we're going to see that with Poppy Steak. I think he's going to continue to crush it. I think he's going to open more cities, and I can envision him doing it in Dubai, London, New York, etc. Talk us through the comparisons. Why do you think one had this fall off and one has continued to rise? I'd start with Poppy, you know, himself.

You know, he's a really fun guy, you know, really nice guy. You know, you meet him, you know him. You know, and he's taking advantage of the attention economy, right? Like he's really made spending money fun. Yeah. You know, I mean, we're in this little bit of a decline of alcohol, you know, in some of the venues everywhere across the country, you know, and what do people still want to get out and they still want to have a good time? They want to be seen, right? Like being seen is a thing.

So he lets people be seen, you know, when when people spend money there, they're almost, you know, they're celebrated for that. A thousand dollar beef case. Yeah. Yeah. You know, all the, all the different, all the different presentations are so well done and they're done at the right times. And, you know, we've been trying, you know, we've been doing this sort of thing in the nightclub for many years with the bottle presentations and all these, you know, these things that happened. And he took that, he took that into a restaurant space, right? And, and, you know, is rewarding people for this $1,000 steak, you know, and branding. And it becomes this whole experience that, you know, this is somebody's whole

night experience sometimes now, instead of going to the club. You know, they'd rather spend their money on a full experience. I'm kind of the same way now. I'm kind of the same way now. A great dinner and the things that are kind of happening, it feels like you're in a, almost like in a club. and they're up until midnight. Exactly. You know, and people are dancing in there on the tables and they're having a great time.

So he's changed really what the traditional dining experience is into a nightlife experience, you know. And so I think that's where he's really won, you know, a nurse set. I went to a couple of those, you know, I actually had some great meal, a great meal at both of them. But, you know, you're not going to get him doing that every time.

You know, the people that are trying to redo it whenever they do it, you're like, ah. Yeah, bro. You know, and so like they, they, they just, you know, also, you know, he, he did some public things. Yeah. Put him in a bad light, you know, which I think, yeah. And I think that really hurt him from that aspect.

But I think, I think Poppy's really built a great, a great brand for himself. I do believe that he will go to a bunch of different cities. I think it brings fun, you know, it brings fun in dining, you know. And when you're thinking about like, where are we going to go, we want to have a good time for dinner. Right. You know, a couple of places pop right into your mind and poppies is one of those. Yes. Okay.

Let's talk about the charity side. Why do I think it's important for nightclubs or restaurants to get their staff to go do charity work in their city, whether it's feeding the homeless, going to children's hospitals. Not about writing checks, right? It's easy for Tao Group or household names to just write here's 10 grand or 100 grand, whatever to charity. Talk about getting the staff, the bottle service girls, the bartenders, the, the, the busters, etc. Why get them involved in the local community? You know, the most valuable asset we have is time. You know, so getting the staff's time to go and, you know,

work at one of these charities, you know, help raise funds. You know, they're giving back to the city in a way that I think every corporation really should, you know, and find some kind of philanthropy within their, within their company. You know, obviously they're doing very well, you know, Tau groups and some of these, that are doing very well. But even the ones that aren't and are still finding time to do these type things, I mean, it's a real way to connect with your community and help people. For me, you know, it's a, it's a big cause. I like helping people. And so it's always been something I've looked at within the companies I work with because it's also a team bonding experience,

you know, and getting them, getting them outside their comfort zone maybe at times. But giving back is an important thing that I think all of us, you know, should should take note of. of the companies that do do it, I really appreciate it. You know, when I see Tao cares or, you know, these other type initiatives, I think it's important for the culture of those companies, you know, to give back to people, you know. I mean, especially in a lot of these ones where,

you know, people are making a lot of money and they're doing really well. You know, giving back is important. I see, what's that bottle of the little red can over there? Oh, that's my nice. My nice, do you want? Can you explain what nice is? So nice is a new,

product. I'm going to go ahead and show you. Nice is a new product that we just launched. Nicotine brand. You know, we just, we had Justin Gagey when the, the biggest house, the, the, the biggest fight ever at the White House, you know, which was, I haven't been that, I haven't been that nervous for a fight in a long time, you know. I mean, it's like a five to one hundred dog, even though he's such a great fighter. He's up against someone that was generation of He put him down. It was insane, you know, and he was the only American to win a title, you know, at the White House, which was, you know, a big deal.

And so, you know, we brought on a lot of fighter ambassadors, you know, back to the attention economy. It's really, you know, we're starting there as a niche, you know, and we've started online as our soft, you know, opening and getting moving, you know, but a product's, you know, always been in my mind. And, you know, we have a non-nicotine product that. we're also launching alongside this, you know, for energy, neutropics. And so, you know, with this product, you know, we're, we're in a, we're in a space where there's a lot of competition and, you know, doing all the things that we can to stand out, you know, as you know, some of these things, like with the chain and the merch and, you know,

looking at all the different ways that, you know, we can stand out, we can bring fun to what we're doing. And the ambassadors also, you know, have a good time, you know, working with the brand itself. There's so many companies or products that you could. to work with why nice why this one what made it stand out for you to say you know what i'm going to put my roll my sleeves up and work on this well honestly you know meo um the CEO um we've been we've been partners in in multiple companies um and he had this vision you know he's most of the team is from sweden and and this product has been originally very popular yeah very popular in sweden for like

20 years you know we're seeing this crazy kind of influx of it right now um and for me you you know, I had actually, you know, I was working with Ignite for a little bit, and the vapes, and I started getting stuck on those things. And when I moved over to a pouch, you know, and I first started, you know, with Zen, you know, it was just such a good changeover and to get rid of that nicotine vape. The vapes are the worst thing. And I couldn't stand the fact that I was doing them. And so when I switched over and I started trying the product at the same time, you know, Mio was like, we need to build this. We need to do, you know, we need to build our own company, you know, like I have all the right guys from Sweden and he was able to bring in a team of

people who help builds in and Swedish match and some of like the very popular brands that you see now. And so, you know, with, with that, it was, you know, let's just, we got to build, we got to build a strategic plan and a marketing plan that, you know, I have a lot of experience in this space, you know, specifically. So it was, it was really the team that kind of came together that made me feel very confident about jumping into it. So if you notice the running theme of all these questions I keep asking or we keep discussing is the people.

When I invest in the companies, I'm betting on the team. I'm betting on the founders. When he's deciding if he's going to join a company or product, what did he say three or four times? It's the team. It's the people. It's the CEO. You have to bend on those people kind of like when I mentioned the restaurant nightclub thing, like it's ride or die.

Starting a business is hard, running a business is hard, keeping a brand going four years later as a restaurant or a nightclub is hard. A lot of restaurants and nightclubs fade away after a couple years. Why do these brands stick around for five, ten, twenty years, like the names we've been mentioning, Dave Gratman, Jason Strauss, Andrews has to. These are all icons and legends in the restaurant nightclub space. They are right or die.

You still see Dave Grumman at the nightclubs that live at two in the morning. He's still there. He doesn't have to be there. He's very, very wealthy. He's there, literally there at two in the morning. You still see Jason Strauss fly. lines, his properties all over the world, and you see him with black coffee. I don't know how he does it sometimes.

Sometimes he'll do New Year's in two cities to celebrate New Year's twice in the same day. Sydney, Australia. Yeah. And so, four birthday parties. Right. Ride or die is the point in this. So we keep talking about the people. And so when people pitch you, restaurants, nightclubs, clothing brands, whatever the thing is that people are pitching you,

do you believe this person is right or die? Do you believe that when things get hard two and a half years from now, they're going to fight through it because they're always going to get hard. No matter what stage, zero to one million, super, super hard. One million to five million, you've got to roll your sleeves up and get to work. $5 million, $10 million, systems and processes. $20 million, $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, things break.

You've got a lot of staff because the same person that got you to $1 million is not getting you to $50 million. It's just not the same person. They don't have the experience. Same person that's doing $50 million, not going to help you do it at $300 million. They don't have that experience. And so things break, things get hard. you're always constantly firing and hiring. There's so much that goes on, you need to find people that you believe two and a half years from now are still going to be right or die.

And also, if you're raising money, do you love the thing? You've got to love the restaurant space. You've got to love the nightclub space. You've got to love music, clothing, sneakers, whatever that thing is that you care about. You've got to know that you love it because things get hard no matter how good things are going. Things still get hard. Jay Rock, walk us through. where can they find you on social the brands all the things that are going on tell them everything i am j rock on

social you can see me there um nice dot com you'll see that uh if you follow justing gagey you know he's been rocking the brand um trust fall uh technology group you know um i don't want to i don't want to get the uh the email wrong um and then nevada production partners you know getting into film and and uh trying to make some movies and shows and whatnot. You have like tens of thousands of square feet you've been working over there as well. Tell us about that real quick. Yeah. So, you know, open day a film studio and a production company, you know, again, trying to

see where there's, there's white space, you know, in the market, specifically in Hollywood's had a tough time. And, you know, we've had this possible Hollywood 2.0. And, you know, I was looking in gaming and understanding, you know, better the internet culture. And, you know, it kind of came about from a dream I've had a long. time ago and saw an opportunity and found some good people and am running towards it. You know, so right now we're in the phase of, you know, rentals inside the studio space, but our whole goal there is really to fill it all with our own IP and our own shows, you

know, but right now we are, you know, launching out and taking in, you know, different rentals from podcasts to, you know, full production commercials and other. So got that moving. And, you know, that hasn't been easy. it's a new category for me, but taking, you know, the business practices and the entertainment side of things

that I've learned and applying it, you know, so it's a, it's a mountain that I'm climbing. Yeah. You know, I'm addicted to climbing those mountains. The game is fun. So as you guys know, I've been running this commercial free

for over three and a half years now, hundreds and hundreds of episodes. I do work with high level because I'm actually part of the company. Like, I've been part of the brand for the last year and a half. I speak at the high level events. I use it.

is running my entire back end, high level operates it, but I don't give out like affiliate codes or discount codes. Just research high level if you're a course, creator, et cetera. And fanbasis.com, fanbases has obviously been something that's powering so much for like 9,000 creators or something crazy like that. It was like 4,000 just last year. They pressed over a billion dollars. So if you need merchant account processing, check out Fanbases also.

There's no affiliate code. I'm just talking about brands that actually are part of my ecosystem because it would help you with your backend. And just like I'm saying that now, if it doesn't. doesn't apply to you, it might be to a friend or family member or someone later, they're like, oh yeah, I heard Dan talk about a high level or a fan basis. You could refer them. You might be hearing something that Jay Rock's talking about, restaurant, nightclubs, the nice products, something in the entertainment space or personal brand space. You're like, wait a minute, I need to refer this to a friend.

Forwarding this podcast episode, posting these clips is what helps us stay top 100 podcasts in the world. It's what helps us stay on the top of the charts when it comes to the business and entrepreneur space. Is you guys liking, commenting, and subscribing. Appreciate you guys. Check out Jrock across social media. We'll see you guys next Monday here at the money Mondays.com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Monday Mondays podcast, where we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity.

This gentleman has lived multiple lives in some of the most fascinating companies in pop culture and in human history. I have been involved in them. I've bought from them. I'm a fan of them, et cetera. So we're going to dive deep into that. First, let me explain a couple of things. One, the average workout is 45 minutes.

The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 37 minutes for your listening pleasure. Next, these podcasts are not just for you. It might be for a friend, family, follower, staff, etc. Also, it might be for someone from your past, present, or future. So when you listen to these episodes, don't just think about it for yourself. It might be three months from now. You're like, wait a minute.

Josh said this thing. Dan said this thing and you forward this episode to them, that's called the butterfly effect. You might literally change their life by them learning something that helps them save money, do something in the industry that they love, maybe not do something in the industry that they don't know about because of the things that you heard today. So sharing these episodes is truly important to help people in their daily lives. Now, without further ado, Josh Loeberg, give us the quick two-minute bio, so we get straight to the money. Thank you very much for having me.

I love dropping into people's business who know exactly. what they're doing and how they're doing it like just listening to your intro is like hell yeah you've done I mean how many of these have you done oh god hundreds yeah that's the best it's the best two minute intro uh I was co-founder of stock X I left stock X to start fanatics collectibles with Michael Rubin which is the trading card business at fanatics I left fanatics uh in 2022 to start ghostright which is a collectible toy brand that is almost exactly like trading cards and in the last year for the first time ever I'm now running businesses at once. I've started a new company called Alligator Blood, which is a poker-related company that we'll talk about. And GoStraight is about to split into two different companies.

And we can talk about that as well. But by the end of the summer, I think there will be four companies. And I've never not been running one company, like the cardinal entrepreneurial rule, focus, focus, focus. But I think we're now finally at the point where, yeah, we're going to start expanding. So that's it. So I have a rule when it comes to multiple companies. I hire what's called a quarterback, a CEO to run that company or that division because it's really hard as Josh is going to get into and you listen to the next 35 minutes, you're going to hear putting on a lot of different hats.

There's accounting and finance and deliverables and shipping and distribution, warehouse, three POs, finance, taxes. I got to hire this person. I got to fire that person. Oh, my God. Now times I buy four, which is he's talking about right now. So what I do is you hear me talking about restaurants and sports cards. stores and investments and live events, everyone has its own CEO for cards and coffee,

every bowl restaurants, et cetera. Each one has its own CEO running that operation. So we're going to dive into this because Josh has built some major companies. And for the first time in his career, he's decided, you know what? I'm going to juggle four different brands. So let's walk through each brand one by one. Let's go with Ghost Wright first. Yep.

And by the way, the only reason I'm doing that is because I've now identified that quarterback at each of those companies and have worked with those people long enough and trust them and be in the place. And so I will continue to be the day-to-day CEO of Ghost-Rite for sure. Ghostrite is, I mean, God, we've been doing it for four years now, but you know, you and I sat together in an RV outside of my hotel. And thank you very much for bringing it up to and making it easy. I literally walked out my hotel room into an RV.

That was All-Star Weekend, 2025 in Los Angeles, February. We had been building Ghostrite as a collectible toy brand. at the time, kind of an image of Bear Brick as a collectible toy brand. And we had just done one blind box at that time, which was the WNBA. And this is just basic, basic just like startup operations, you know, getting factories in the line. So we hadn't done any others. And then that summer, August of 2025, we did our first major league baseball blind box,

and then September was NBA. And not the WNBA isn't great. And Caitlin crushed, but like baseball and basketball and another level. level. And overnight, those two blind boxes, and we said, oh, this is a completely different business. And so the ghost that you see that are 11 inches tall and taller are art, collectible toys, bare brick cause. This is trading cards. And the first baseball set, the Otani one of one from the first MLB set sold for $44,000 on the resale market. And this is, you know, a two-inch plastic. The irony is that the two-inch goes sell for more than the three-foot goes.

And this represents trading cards in every single way. And after years of building the trading card market and being a trading card collector, I still buy and sell cards personally every single day. Every day. I'm on eBay, every day, you know, looking at stuff. Yeah. So now I can recreate it. And I actually think now more than ever, because now we have licenses with the NBA, WNBA, Major League Baseball, NFL, W. W.E. UFC, U.S. World Cup team, magic the gathering, you know, and there's more in the works, is that I think that Ghostright can be on par with trading cards, art, watches, you know, any like true collectible alternative asset, and that's the business that we're building.

And it looks like we're playing with toys and we are. But man, like, we have copied how trading cards work. And it's simple. They've been doing the same thing for 100 years. And it's a pretty fun place to be in and making. this product. So I did bring one box that we can open in a minute. But yeah, so that's the basis on Ghostright. Got it. Where do people check that out?

Ghostright.com and on Instagram. We sell most of our product through trading card breakers. So our customers are sports card collectors, period, full stop. And we do sell some wholesale DTC on Ghostrite, but most of it goes through big breakers like Bledz and backyard and cards and coffee. and it's great because it is, we didn't intentionally design it as a breaker product, but man, it is a good breaker product.

It works really well. Sure. That's where most of it is. Got it. Okay. Well, that's, I got more friends to introduce you to then because there's a lot of breakers that we've been working with for the last half a decade that would love to sell this then.

I didn't realize it's, I mean, we sell it obviously, but I didn't realize that's one of the primary focuses. Yep. Yep. Okay. Next business. Walk us through.

Next business. So we'll do this short version of a business that we'll talk about a whole lot more later. So GoStri, most of the products that we sell on GoStrae are sold by what's called a blind Dutch auction. And I'm not going to turn this in an economics class, although I think partly is an economics class. But the short version is a blind Dutch auction is a means of pricing a product that allows the market to set a price for the product rather than us setting an arbitrary retail price. And we didn't make this up. It's been used for decades in different areas of finance. The first time we ever did this was back at StockX, where we did a couple of releases

with different people. We did this at Finanics Collectibles, where we did a set with Gary, V-Friends trading card set at zero cool. So like this mechanism of pricing products using a blind-out auction and letting the market set the price. We can do a real-life example real quick? What does that look like? Sure. Okay. This is like, this is the fun part. All right. So let's say that there's 10 widgets we're selling, whatever it is. Okay. We market it fully the same way you would market get anything. So all the pictures and whatever information you would need to know about any product. Okay. Now, for some set period of time, we usually say three days. For three days, everyone can

come and place a bid on that product. Okay. That bid is blind, meaning you can't see what anyone else is bidding. So I bid $800, you might bid $800 or $200, but I don't know. That's right. And everyone comes and everyone has the same fair shot to bid. There's no FOMO, there's no bots. You have plenty of time. You have three days to come and bid whenever you want. Now, your bid is tied to your PayPal, your credit card. So that is true demand. You are saying that I'm bidding $800, and if I'm selected, I will pay $800.

We put a hold on your credit card, the whole thing. At the end of that period of time, let's say, again, there's 10 widgets we're selling. We stack rank all the bids, and if there's 10 products, 10 units, they're all the same. The 10 highest bids win. They're the ones who are allowed to buy the product. But the price is set by what's called the clearing price.

and the clearing price is the lowest winning bid. So in that case, it would be the 10th highest bid. Oh, interesting. And everybody pays the clearing price, even the highest. So if the highest bid is 1,200, you know, 1,21, 8, 7,000. Yep. The 20,000 guys pays 900. And it's like, 900 is the 10th highest bid.

Everybody pays 900, right? And those people all get it for that product. And the other people don't get the product. There's only 10. Now, what that does is it does three things. Super powerful. So first of all, just in the interest of like, equitable distribution, everyone's buying the same product at the exact same moment in time.

So it would be inequitable for people to pay different amounts. So, okay, we all pay the same amount. No one can argue that's not a fair market price. Everyone is willing to pay at least $900 in that example. But here's the thing is, in that case, nine out of ten people get the product for less than what they were willing to pay. And obviously, if we do a release and there's thousands of products, that ends up being like 99%.

The other person just pays exactly what they pay. And what's really powerful is after the release happens. So everyone pays $900, they take possession of the product. Well, now they can do whatever they want with it. And some people are going to choose to resell the products. So once you go to resell your product and you now put it out on the market in the full market, well, there's some percentage of the population that was willing to pay more than $900. Right.

So think of that those bids as your distribution curve, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, set. So what happens is, and every time, the resell price will be greater than the clearing price, but less than the highest bid. And so it ensures that people can flip the product and make a little bit of money if they want. Now, they can all say they got a deal. Maybe the clearing price was 900, and the resell prices is $1,300. So you can keep it, you can make a couple bucks, right? And so the brand ends up getting more money than they would normally get because you have this mechanism to price it fair to market. But the customer gets it for less than what they're willing to pay

and less than what the market says. And so we built Ghostright. The entire business was built to show that we could run a brand using this theory. And we did. And every single ghost that we've released, the resell price in the period of time directly after release is greater than the clearing price, like it, to a T. No, over time, demand change.

find changes. And the whole purpose of Ghostrite was that. And then last summer when we created baseball and basketball blind boxes, we were like, oh, man, this is a really big business. And I don't want to disturb this. But the whole purpose of Ghostright was Blind Dutch Auction, market-based pricing. And so we are going to evolve Ghostright and we're going to split the two companies. And there's going to be a marketplace. It's the retail half of Stockex's resale business. This is what I've been trying to build for a decade. We try to do this stock acts. We try to do this at finance collectibles. And along the way, we build a product that I think is going to be extraordinarily interesting and valuable in GoStrike the core toy brand. And so we're

going to split to two businesses. And this is, I guess this is breaking news because we're literally in the process of doing it right now legally and financially. And so there will be a company that'll call Chase. And Chase will be a retail marketplace for brands to release products using a blind extra auction and blind boxes and everything else and then go straight the collectible toy brand will be a separate company so right now they're they're the same they'll split apart and i now know who the quarterback is for chase right and i'll still oversee everything but i'll be day to day go straight there'll be a quarterback of chase but these two businesses are sort of like spawned out of one wow that was fun and then this week i saw in the poker world when the main event was going on

this article go viral and a lot of people start talking about it you got michael the grinder is rocky main event champion and four-time champion of the hardest tournament in the planet to win. Somehow he won it four times. Phil Hummuth has the most poker bracelets in history. Both of them, both of them are on my $25,000 fantasy team. You go to 25K Fantasy.com. I saw you in that room.

I was like, oh, good pick. Yes. It's a running joke. I booked Helmuth every single time. I draft Helmuth in the 25K fantasy draft every single year. He always stops by for like three minutes to film a video just to make sure I did it. And Michael Mizraki, I've drafted every single time for 14 years. except for last year

when he won the main event and the 50K tournament. Okay. What is alligator blood? Walk us through it. I mean, let's just to give you a quick context. Alligator blood

came from a movie called Rounders. Rounders is far and away the biggest poker movie of all time. Hopefully they're making Rounders too. They keep saying that they are and it feels like it's going to happen. But Rounders is, if you haven't seen it,

go watch it. It is the movie in the poker space. It's fun. It's interesting. It has Matt Damon, some great characters that are in there. But Alligator Blood is a line from the film from Matt Damon winning a poker hand. All right.

Dive in, what is alligator blood.com? So before I do that, what year did you start your first poker business? So we launched in 2009. 2009. Yes. Antonio Svondari, Dan Bolzary, and DJ Steve Ayoki. I mean, social media was just kind of getting started. We had like Myspace and YouTube back then and some tweets.

And that's about it. That's right. Yeah. So you've been in the poker. business world for for a very long time. We both played poker our lives. I played poker since 1999. Yep, same year. I was 18. Yeah, I was, I was 21. I lived in Philly. We'd go down to the trop at Atlantic City. I lived in Atlanta. We used to like drive to Biloxi to play. But I'm like the definition of like a wreck player. You know, I was a go sit down at one two with 200 bucks and

see if we can make it last all night. And then in 21 when I moved to Austin, I found my way to the lodge and met Doug Polk and met a bunch of people and sort of got involved in that group. And about two years ago when Gigi bought the World Series and I was sort of watching Doug Polk has a number of different businesses, and one of which was Upswing poker, which is a training site and WPT bought Upswing. And man, for the first time ever, after all these years of sitting at a poker deal, by the way, the only reason that I can play poker is because it can be on my phone at the table and basically crush email. Everyone on my team knows when I'm at a poker table because I get a barrage of emails and text, you know.

But it really is a perfect, perfect side hobby for an entrepreneur. And so for the first time ever, I started thinking, I was like, man, what business would I create if I was going to create a business in poker? Because I've always sort of like shied away from that, you know? And, you know, it just so happens that I have a lot of connections to the poker industry before, for trading cards, for Ghostray. You know, Jared Blesnick is probably our largest wholesale,

of Ghost and, you know, and then... Super good poker player. Right. And Phil Helm Youth and Jeff Gross have been investors in numerous companies, including Ghost, right, and including some previous companies. So I've known a lot of these guys. And, you know, just looking at the poker,

it was like, man, the poker industry is so incredibly fragmented. And, but everyone is some form of small business, even like your average player. And everything is geared towards the tournaments. Everything is geared towards the vocal, minority of, you know, the people that we see on, yeah, but it's so small, there's so few of them. So the idea was, I think that the poker industry is right for essentially a social network.

And it's kind of an antiquated concept because this is what we were building in 2010 and 2011 of these, like, niche social networks. But I think that poker is, it's like Goldilocks industry with like the nature of, of the people. And by the way, the growth that's happening again in poker. I mean, main events back on ESPN, like, you know, we're. sort of like riding the coattails of prediction markets and fantasy sports and legal sports gambling

that I think the poker's about to go through another boom and so it's like man it's so fragmented there's so much value in being able to bring this together and it's so inherently social in real life but it is so it is so disconnected externally so we're building

Facebook for poker it's the most basic business that you can think of but it only works if you get everybody. You literally, this is, you're either Facebook or your friends or you either, you can build up. And so it's feast or famine. And so I was like, all right, I think this is the big idea. I think that in the poker industry, this is real. But we're only going to do it if we can get everybody. How can we, how can we get over that like chicken the egg, like internet 101? You know, it's hard to get people until you have a lot of value. It's hard to create value.

So I was like, well, we know these guys. Yeah. You know? And so we put together, for lack of maybe a less cool word, steering committee. And it's a group of like 10 or 15 of the most important poker players in the world who all said, hey, we will support you from day one. And it's Phil, it's Doug Polk, it's Alan Keating, it's Grindr, Blez, Schwannl, Shwanloo, Ryan Feldman, Ben Roll, Corey Eyring, Kevin Martin. And so to have this group of people to like help us jumpstart this thing. And so we just opened the waiting list two days ago. It's kind of cool like gaming mechanic or giving away some money as part of it. But, you know, maybe like two to three months from now, we'll open it up and like it's building social network from scratch, man.

And like it's a, it's so much fun to be building poker business with all these guys and friends. And I just love playing poker. Very cool. All right. Since you have a lot of options, obviously, people bombard you with different things to work on projects. How did you decide on these projects when you have. access to the world and you know so many athletes, celebrities, investors, billionaires, zillionaires, people, fans, sports cards, you know so many people in different worlds and

ecosystems. How do you decide what you're going to put your time and energy and money into? Yeah, you know, the, um, there was a time where I intentionally, I intentionally avoided working on product, projects that I had personal interest in. I used to think that, you know, like pre-stock X, I, I created a number of, of startups, none of which had any of the success of Stock X. But I almost thought, like, I didn't want to create a sneaker business because it felt like just an excuse to play with sneakers. I felt like I had to, like, be in, you know, like the business world and

outside of it. And I think there's probably some irony here. But the first business that I ever built in, like, a true personal passion of mine was the first one that ever became successful. And then from there, it's been a very organic evolution of all things that are, connected. All these products are the same. Sneakers, streetware, collectibles, trading cards, right? They're all supply and demand. They're all, you know, resell and authentication and tie into the intersection of culture and commerce. And so for me, it's just been an evolution of really the same, um, the same theory. And honestly, the, the blind Dutch auction and pricing mechanism have kind of become like a accidentally economist through this. Like that's the fun, like part.

That's like the nerd to me that like just really wants to just build this thing. I mean, they did a case study in Harvard Business Review about this concept back in 2019, the first time that we ever did a blind Dutch auction for a release. And so like it was so exciting for someone. I have a grad school and law school and business. Like this like this sort of like, you know, economics nerd to have this validation by these Harvard professors that were on it something like. And so this is the stuff that gets me excited and it happens to be this intersection with. you know, the most interesting products in the world today with the way the trading card

industry is going and everything else. And so, yeah, this is like, this is me through and through. I'm just like happen to be that every man of like, I'm 48 years old. This is all the stuff we collected as kids. And I just get to be the guy who creates business on it. And like, it's a pretty fun place to be. So on the investing side of the space, why is it that people should consider investing into sports cards, Pokemon collectibles? Why is that an interesting category since we've been seeing a lot of memes, stories, news articles about family offices are investing now, funds are coming together to invest now, sovereign wealth is thinking about buying big collections and investing into the space, but also your everyday person that lives in

Montana is buying and investing in cards. And we're also seeing the comparison to S&P 500 versus Pokemon, etc. Talk to us about the investing side of the collectibles industry. You know, we wrote a white paper called the Blind Boxification of everything that we published in It was 140 pages and it was kind of a deep dive into the current state of the trading card market. And just blind boxes everywhere, you know, Lubbu. But, you know, the interesting thing that's going on with repacks, right? With a repack for anyone doesn't know is if you think of a trading card product where a company like Tops makes trading cards and then they sell it, this would be any random person can buy the their own 100 cards and put it in a box and sell it to you.

And so this idea of the market continuing to evolve how trading cards are bought and sold, which is, well, I don't want to go down that far too far. Let's just like back this up. Trading cards became standardized assets on grading. And once that happened, if you look at the macro size, of the trading card market. And it's so accessible, it's so easy for anyone at any price point at any level to be able to buy and engage in that.

As a starting point, it makes it so much more interesting to come into this industry. Like we've been comparing this to like these collectibles that have come and go on stamps and coins and trains and like all this thing that come and went Lubbubu that were that were fads around that just the demand part of it. but the supply of trading cards is so solid. It's so big. It's liquid. It's finite.

You know, I'm rambling a little bit, but if you, like, strip away the, like, if you strip away the, the idea that the trading card is, is, like, a kid's product, and you look at the economics of it, of how it stacks up to actual financial assets and stocks in terms of its liquidity and how it's bought and sold and everything else, like, it's almost identical. identical. Like it is identical. And so, but it's also then more accessible. And you have brands that actually create it and push it and market it. No one is marketing stocks. No one, no one's marketing financial assets to the public and creating this. And so it's this really like, I don't know, I'm rambling a little bit, but it is an extraordinary time where I think we've crossed a threshold.

And I think the trading cards are the only true collectible. They're the only, everyone else has, has, like, our watches, handbags, you know, they all have, they all have little problems that, that will prevent it from being this, like, these big long-term value, but trading cards don't. Trading cards are this, like, egalitarian, like, massive. Anyway, I'm, I'm realming, but it's, I'm so excited about where we're at and there's going to be ups and downs, but like, and by the way, and so we've tried to create ghost right in the image of trading cards in every way, and people still have to want to own it and buy it, and we still have a long way to go.

We've been making ghost blind boxes for a year. Trading cards has been 150 years, but trading cards are not going away. Trading cards are not going away. Can we open it? Can we see it? Yeah. So it's a somewhat interesting day to do this as we're filming this a day after the U.S. got knocked out by Belgium.

But it was a good run. It was a good run and it was fun. So most Ghostright Blindboxes are 12 ghosts. And this happens to be a six-pack because it's just for the U.S. men's team. And most are based on the season. So the NBA set that we released earlier this year was this past season. So it had Cooper Flag and Dylan Harper and, you know, and Vijay Edgecombe rookies in it in addition to all your stars.

So you're trying to find the stars that you want. Christian Polisic is probably your best hit. But then you also want the rare variants the same way you would in trading cards. So the fire crown, the red, shiny one of, that's your one of one. Chrome is number to five. Gold is number to ten. So we'll let you open it. There's six boxes.

I'll open one or two with you, but you can get it started. And they're guaranteed to have one hit per box. The hits will range from numbered from, there's a little pull tab there. From number to 100, 50, 25, 10, 5, and 1. And then there's also one short print, which is the mascot, which is banner. So we want Polisic, we want Balligan, and we want one of the rare ones. So this one. All right. Talk us through it.

All right. So I wish I could say that we like intentionally made it this way, but it's such a good breaker product. And this is why so much of our product gets sold through breakers is we open it up. Inside, there's going to be a little foil bag. and Dan, there's a little notch on one of the sides right there. And so when breakers open this, and they create all the excitement, they're way better than me.

And so they'll pull it up, and there'll be a little, let's see what crown. So this looks like it's a base. And we got Tim Wea. And, you know, they're wearing their black unis here. Who we got? And who's the back there is? Tyler Adams.

Okay. So here's our first two so far, neither of which is the hip. Tim Wea, Tyler Adams. And every ghost on the bottom of the foot has the production quantity. So why is numbering production quantity? Why is it important? Why is limited runs importance? Well, it's even less so than limited than just transparency into supply.

You know, again, all of this is supply and demand. And collectors need to understand how many of something that exists to create value and to build your basic market liquidity around it. There's 334 PSA 10 Michael Jordan rookie cards. Exactly. The numbers burn in my brain. There may be one or two that pop up in the future, but it's unlikely. That's right.

Why does that matter? Why does 334 PSA 10 Michael Jordan's matter for a market? Because if you want to own one, right, there's a finite number, and there's way more than 334 people that want to own the greatest. The legend. Right. And some people own more than one. In fact, we know people that own many of them.

And that's the foundation of any financial asset is understanding supply. So boom. So here we have our parallel and an interesting story. Okay, so this is Diego Luna, who has been on the U.S. national team for many years and was not on the World Cup roster. I think he got injured. And so he's actually, he's in our set. and this is our first what's called a ghost crown.

So this is number to 100. And so on the bottom, you can see it. It's got production date and then dot 100. And so actually this means that this box is not our greatest box. That's our least valuable parallel because they're a number to 100. How much do a box like this retail for it? 200 bucks. That's fun.

Yeah. And, you know, if you hit a implicit gold, that's going to be, you know, a couple grand. And then here's Matt Turner, who maybe some people wish had been in goal yesterday rather than Matt Freeze. And so Matt Turner obviously is a different outfit also number to 1500. So your base are number to 1500. Your parallels are 150, 25, 10, and 1. Look, we'll see how Ghostright evolves. And, you know, we have a long way to go.

But the first baseball set, the base were numbered to 1,000. Like, there are parallels in trading cards that are numbered. to a thousand, right? So it'll be interesting to see over time how we evolve this, a number of parallels, and continue to grow. So for someone that's creating a brand and they want to go get a licensing deal or a partnership, how did they go talk to, and this is the Olympics and you've got NBA and W.W.E and household name, like the Undertaker, like, how are you getting these brands? Like, let's say how you, how would someone go out and try to talk to these huge corporate if they want to do it with their clothing brand like there's a brand called young l.a like the

t-shirt brand that you don't realize they actually did like a hundred or two hundred hundred million dollars in tails and just did a big deal with like looney tunes or some like brand like that's how do you go get a brand partnership type deal on who do we have here sorry before we go yeah yeah and there we go and so we have the man himself uh balligan um and i don't know if maybe the reversal of his red card uh amped up belgium a little too much and maybe that that's what happened but um uh anyway So there's number 20, Balgaon, also base, so number to 1,500. Bang! That's what you got to say. Yeah.

So we didn't hit a Plyssick, and we didn't hit one of the rare ones, or the rarest one. But it's still a fun product. And for us to be able to create a product for the U.S. Men's National Team has been awesome. We actually at Fanatics Fest will have an alternate U.S. men's national team product. That'll be the first time that we have a new parallel system. So our one of one is called fire. It's red shiny crown. And so at Fanatics Fest, we're introducing ice, which would be an alternate 101.

Well, you guys are hearing this. Fanatics Fest is actually happening this week. So, Nanx Fest, if you're in New York City, over 100,000 people will be in attendance. Michael Ruben at Fanatics has built this humongous event. Josh mentioned earlier. He went there in the beginning to start Fanatic's Collectibles with Rubin. And now Fanx Fest has Tom Brady, Kevin. Hart, Logan Paul, all these amazing characters, athletes, influencers, et cetera, that are all

there for the fans, for the games, et cetera. And so this brand, Ghost Rights, can actually have a boot set up there. So if you're in New York City or you have friends out there, it's definitely a fun event to go to. It's a four-day experience happening next week. Quickly, to go back to your question, because I think it's a great one about licenses. You know, we're extremely fortunate to have licenses with the NBA, major baseball, NFL, etc. but all of these organizations have licensing departments that their whole job is to find

interesting valuable brands to partner with and to license with and so they will take your call they have people there that are more than happy to if you have a brand if you have a product to be able to do that and like for young l.A. to have a Looney Tunes license they want to license their products they get money back from it we pay a royalty of every product to each of the the leagues that we license with. Now, obviously, they're going to then do their diligence and decide if they want to work with you and if it's a brand match.

And I'm fortunate that because of creating fanatics collectibles with Rubin and that we had the relationship with all the sports leagues to be able to create this product. And so we're in a good place. But they are still always looking for great companies to work with.

And so just reach out. You can literally look up their licensing departments online and reach out. That's awesome. Okay. Let's go to the charity side of things. Let's talk on the brand side. Why do you think it's important for brands, companies, to have some sort of charitable

element, whether it's for their employees inside internally or out liking for the outlook for the brand with investors, customers, employees, etc. Look, I mean, at this point, it's absolutely the ante to play. And, you know, the number of, we've been hiring a lot of people who are doing a lot of interviews lately between all the different companies. the number of young employees or young applicants that ask questions around that is at an all-time high, right? Like way more than ever was at Stock X back in when we were hiring in 2016, 2017, 2018. And, you know, that's good.

Like, you know, we're happy to have those conversations and happy to do that. And so, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, basically the Andy to play. And it's an interesting place to be where we're starting companies. And we're small, you know, across all of it. and so you have to figure out how you you fit in. We're fortunate that because we work with these large brands, that we usually tie in with the things that they're doing, and particularly the MBA,

because they're such an important partner for us. But, you know, there's a wide range of, yeah, there's a wide range of being able to do that. So there's one question I ask on every single episode, and I probably asked you last time, that I've never gotten the same answer before. So you build up all these companies. You've got four companies this year,

and who knows, you might have 40 more in the future where you invest into a bunch of other companies and you make billions of dollars over the years. But unfortunately at some point, Josh passes away. What percentage of that net worth do you leave to your children? Yeah. You know, it's a really interesting question. So my daughter is 13. My son is 11. And my son is super into all the stuff. He collects Pokemon cards. For sure. He's so in a ghost right. Literally every day, every day comes home. He goes, what can we open? We open a box. And we've all these boxes in the house, and they're not meant to be, you know, open. I'm like, these things cost money.

About a month ago, he asked me and he said, when you die, can I run ghost rate? Wow, interesting. And I was like, well, I was like, there's probably some stuff we can do between now and then, you know, to do that. I'm only 48. Yeah, it was very, it was awesome that he's so into it and he's so, he's so interested in the business aspect of it, understand the value and how it works and all that. And so I think I would love it to be like the inverse. I would love to be in a place where, you know,

I can actually bring my children into the business and for them to understand it and get that education that maybe it's not me leaving them the money as much as it is, you know, me literally passing down. The torch. I would love to give the value because he is the CEO of the company. and he knows how to run and get, you know, like that's, and give him whatever percentage of the company's CEO would get and be like, that would be so much more meaningful than any of, you know,

than any of a, you know, bequeath or stuff like that. And so it's fun. And like, I'm not going to push them, but on his own, it's pretty awesome to do that. Yeah. So someone's out there and they're considering diving in. There's sports cards, collectibles, Pokemon. You can do sealed video games now. There's just so many things that they,

could be learning about how do they research and figure out what they might like or do they have to go back to their childhood to try to remember yeah look that this is this was a problem in in 2020 when we were starting fanatics collectibles it's still a problem now in the trading organ industry it is still extraordinarily difficult to really get a handle on everything that that's going on i cannot recommend enough to find a shirpa to find a human being that can help you bring it. There's just no, and for me it was Jason Coons for, you know, when I was in Detroit and I met him in 2018, you know, he was my shriper back into industry and, you know, I'm forever grateful for him to do that. You know, outside of that, you know, I do think that

the, the materials that fanatics and tops are continuing creator getting better. And I think that they will only get better. They don't have any choice but to get better. And fanatics being the, the leading player in the space will do that. So I would say is, is, you know, but like there's so many people to understand what's going on now that it's not like it was five years ago where you're like, oh, you collect cards. Like, you know, we see what's going on. Yeah. John Brady's doing it every day.

Every day. Logan Paul posted this morning about it. Like guys are, I mean, at the draft, they were signing their cards at the draft live on the right. It's like, Dana White's breaking cards and the guys are multi-billionaire. Exactly. It's just so fun. Exactly.

Exactly. So. All right. Tell us, walk us through quick, each of the companies, website, social, yourself, etc. Yep. Josh Luber at Instagram and Twitter. Ghostright is underscore, goes right, is underscore everywhere. Alligator blood is gator blood on all socials.

Chase doesn't exist yet, but it will. Chase is going to be interesting, man. Yeah. It's going to be the market-based pricing is the like the economic nerd stuff, But like the business is going to be blind boxes of service. How do we let all brands sell blind boxes even if they're not in that business? It's, it's, yeah. So Chase is coming soon.

And by the way, I really appreciate you mentioning Alligator Blood the name because a lot of people, the first reaction is like, wow, that's the worst company name I've ever heard. That's great. But like nobody forgets it. Yeah. And obviously it's a deep cut to rounders and everything else. And as a brand guy, I've always been like, you either create a brand or you don't, but like don't try to cut through the noise.

When we created the name for Stock X, we fought forever over the name, but the one rule everyone agreed on us, it's not going to have the word sneaker or kick or soul in it. It's like you either, you know, and same thing for, for Alligator Blood. It was not going to have the word poker in it anyway.

So anyway, alligator blood, go straight. Those are the two main business. Very cool. Yeah. So as you guys know, I run these shows commercial free for many, many years.

Now hundreds and hundreds of episodes, there are two partners that are people that actually use. There's no affiliate codes or promos that don't do commercials or like read you a 60 second thing. But fanbasis.com is who's been my ecosystem of almost 7,000, 8,000, 9,000 creators on their back end. Process over a billion dollars in the back end for companies. So when products sell, that's what they help with. So if you need a merchant.

I use fan basis and then go high level. High level is also a multi-billion dollar company that powers my entire ecosystem. So whenever you get emails from me, text from me, you sign up for Money Mondays, the MoneyMundys.com or anything. everything's powered by a high level in the background. What you heard today, keep in mind, might pop up four months from now at dinner. You literally might be sitting with a friend who's like, oh, I want to invest into this, or I just bought some Pokemon, or I want to look at this ghostright thing I just got. Or hey, I want to buy Michael Jordan card, etc.

And you forward them this episode. Because Josh is one of those true people that have lived and breed this category as a buyer 20, 30, 40 years ago as a child to actually still doing these things that are childlike in experience. and energy now pioneering some of these categories in such a huge, huge, huge way. And so check out these things, check out these products and brands. It's fascinating and fun. You might get your children involved that want to buy a ghostwrite, but also your older brother might want to do it.

It might be your best friend that might want to do it. When you start to talk about these things, it is one of the true things that make people happy and enjoy. And so the spirit of this thing is what I love is the projects that Josh is working on are fun for people to be involved in. you can make money in between, but also truly it's something that you can build bonds with your children, your friends, family, etc. I appreciate you guys. Check out Josh and all these companies across social media. We'll see you guys next week here at themoney Mondays.com.