262 : William Seippel – Worthpoint has 15+ Years of Ebay sales history but he has so much more

will

I could listen to Wills stories all day long. He clearly knows a lot about a lot!  Great example of what it takes to scratch your own itch and you can have a great business. Get ready for an amazing Worthpoint discount. (ps.. its a lifetime discount!)

 

Mentioned:

Worthpoint –  use code: WS15ATL

(all caps) for 15% off (lifetime discount according to Will! )

HIP – History in Photographs

 

Sponsors:

Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)

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Stephen:                             [00:01:26]               Yes you’ve heard me say a bunch of times but I mean it because our Q4 was spectacular because of all the variations for a particular line we had that Karen entered. Seventy eight of them I believe and now I’m adding a bunch more because we’re not done. I mean it’s Tom a year going to sell right into January February and March. So she’s getting ready to add a bunch more. That’s the power of having that team member. That team works overnight. Quite frankly they work different hours than I do. She sends a file she’s XTI fill in these particular fields shoot it back to me and boom they get it done and you get it and fast and it just as allowed us to grow. It’s that silent team member that don’t call us sick they just handle things solutions.

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Stephen:                             [00:02:55]               And so I have a link out on this episode that will allow you to click through and get on the waiting list and guess what you’ll get right in. So it’s a special list. The other thing which is cool is there’s so many people learning because gays a teacher was a teacher still a teacher in this world now and we’re very lucky to have her. And so gateless group it’s awesome awesome group. Send her a note that I sent you. And you’re going to get in and it’s just going to set you up for real success for 2018. I don’t want to miss Go Daddy because they’ve been so good to me. I just so excited that they’re a sponsor of the show because I put so many domains through them and it’s so cool. So if you go to try go daddy dot com forward slash momentum.

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Cool voice guy:                  [00:04:34]               Welcome to the e-commerce Mendham board where we focus on Habibollah the products and the process of commerce selling your host Stephen Peters.

Stephen:                             [00:04:48]               Welcome back to the e-commerce MNM podcast. This is episode 262. Will Siple now. Maybe if he’d been a seller for a while you might know that name but you certainly have heard the name worth. Point will is a company worth point started the company worth point to scratch an itch. And it’s such a common thing for successful people. They had a problem. Nobody else was solving it so they decided to take the bull by the horns put the energy and effort and become an overnight success. Ten years later. Right. It’s a labor of love. And we spent a lot of time talking about it but it’s fascinating. His stories fascinate me because Will’s a seller bestseller still sells and set up another business which we also get into. Let’s get it to the podcast. All

Stephen:                             [00:05:36]               right. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast very excited about today’s guest. I did have some technical difficulties so redoing it. And he is so patient. However we do need to qualify because this gentleman has more knowledge about what we sell than probably any but wow for sure anybody. There’s

Stephen:                             [00:05:58]               no doubt in my mind there’s no one that has as much access as Will Siple of worth. Point has welcomed will.

Will:                                       [00:06:05]               Thank you Stephen.

Stephen:                             [00:06:07]               Well I appreciate your patience and understanding when it comes to this world doods and this technical stuff is tough for us old. I mean it’s just the way it goes. So wertha point is Will’s company and it’s a amazing company that has a few records on file new track pricing and history and for ten years now and I’m thinking you know he’d probably do in a couple thousand a year. Right. And I think 10 years a couple thousand times ten I can do that math and I’m like yeah maybe a hundred thousand. Could he have a hundred thousand. You know maybe maybe 150000. How many records are you up to.

Will:                                       [00:06:47]               Roughly roughly half a billion. So my math is wrong. We’ve been running a little faster.

Stephen:                             [00:06:55]               We’re running a little and I’m assuming it’s a hockey stick right. I mean it really is at this point.

Will:                                       [00:07:01]               It is you know what. When we started you know who was going to give us data. And now almost everybody gets this data.

Stephen:                             [00:07:08]               Well I’m fascinated to know why people give you data. I want to get to that. But first but first I want to go back to a little little Will was a guy growing up in Virginia. Correct. Correct. OK. And little Will was going to be a rocket scientist dentist lawyer.

Will:                                       [00:07:26]               What was the big plan Dick Butkus I wanted to play football.

Stephen:                             [00:07:31]               Have you heard the story about people who played football. I mean come on. Have you heard a I guess the good news is if you did play football you can get out of jail free. I mean no matter what. Just you know you got hit in the head too many times no matter what you did. You’re not responsible right.

Will:                                       [00:07:45]               No and you and I were joking about and never had to go to high school. You know I must have over half my senior year. You know we got away with anything.

Stephen:                             [00:07:53]               It really was a different time now today. You know much more corporate even even high school football has become corporate ties hasn’t it.

Will:                                       [00:08:03]               It has. I don’t think it’s as fun. And you know don’t want to make kids today. How much more fun football was. We’re looking at the Colts giants championship game in the 50s. You know and you know smoke coming out of everybody’s mouth because it’s so cold and you’ve got the grass stuck in your helmet and stuff it just a different world.

Stephen:                             [00:08:23]               It was real grass to it right. Yeah. Wow. And we’re living in a space age we’re living in space age times aren’t the Jetsons. It was different.

Will:                                       [00:08:34]               You know we set up our own football field we had our own regulation football field.

Stephen:                             [00:08:38]               It’s incredible to think about that takes a lot of initiative thinking about that. We said as I mentioned this is kind of a redo. So I know a little bit of information that takes a lot of initiative. Where do you find teenage boys with the initiative to put up a football field.

Will:                                       [00:08:54]               We had a limed we had regulation goalpost regulation the hype. We went out and cut down pine trees and made gold poles.

Stephen:                             [00:09:02]               That’s cool. I mean that’s cool when you think about that do you have pictures of that. No

Will:                                       [00:09:06]               I wish I do. I can remember vividly in my mind you know we listened to Sonny Jurgensen we put the Redskins game down there with speaker wire and just put it up there and you know it was great. Leventhal let them tackle all you know.

Stephen:                             [00:09:19]               Did you know little little known fact maybe people that the Redskins spring training camp was held in my town for many many years. Not anymore. But it used to be up here in Pennsylvania.

Will:                                       [00:09:30]               Many Alex Carl a college student.

Stephen:                             [00:09:33]               Dickinson College. Yes. That’s where my wife works and that’s right downtown. Yeah. Hey you a little little known fact. OK so football was it. You’re

Stephen:                             [00:09:43]               going all in your practice and every day you’re every night. Every weekend whatever it takes because you’re going to be successful. And how’d that work for you.

Will:                                       [00:09:52]               Well what worked great until my senior year in high school. And that was actually had my act together trying to get to an English so I could graduate and a drunk driver hit me with a dump truck at eight o’clock in the morning on my way to school and cracked my neck and put money through the dashboard and that was the end of football.

Will:                                       [00:10:13]               A lot of head injuries from not hitting people but getting hit by a dump truck. You know so life had to change and that was everything.

Stephen:                             [00:10:22]               I mean you had no plan. That was it. You were going to be football. That was what you lived breathe. You were. That was it.

Will:                                       [00:10:30]               That was it. Vince Lombardi is that once you walk over that white line you think drink and eat football.

Stephen:                             [00:10:36]               OK. So that didn’t work out so well. So we had to go to a plan. We had to find a plan a way to create a plan B and going home wasn’t an option. Is that correct.

Will:                                       [00:10:47]               That’s correct. My dad was a disabled vet. So our house was kind of a wreck and I dropped out of Tulane and did a lot of odd jobs including learning to buy and selling antiques worked with Customs Customs Broker but just kind of scavenged and said What are you going to do next. What is your next plan. And one of mine was growing up you know going from 97 full absences in one year while you’re there you’ll learn your life. And you know it’s called Get your shit together and grow up good. You know I reapplied to college and went to George Mason.

Stephen:                             [00:11:29]               Do you think. Do you think I mean you know and I know the answer so I mean I’m leading you there but thinking back there is no way you were going to other than football. You would have had the success that you had. Is there. I mean do you think even in football you would have been successful. Looking back. Being honest.

Will:                                       [00:11:50]               No. I mean first the odds are terribly against you on injuries and it takes luck some luck. Second I mean that was big and I got hit but I wasn’t you know extremely fast. And so you know that would always be against you. I

Stephen:                             [00:12:06]               mean that hurts to admit it. Because most people rewrite history unlike Oh man I would have had a shot I would have been you know I made my tan. I was copying my notes off the side of you know me and that’s what happened right.

Will:                                       [00:12:18]               But you know it’s funny that some person that knows more than me about venture money said the odds of dreaming to be an NBA star and growing up to be one are greater than being a tech company that succeeds or actually there are less there’s less chance of being a successful tech exec dreaming you’re going to be an NBA star. So I’m I’m glad nobody told me that the guy is a professor of the Entrepreneur Center George Mason so I figured he knows what he’s talking about. But you know I look at the road that you had to do to play football. I mean I was a weightlifter and I mean I think one thing that keeps you young all your life I still have weights and that you know there’s a whole theory about the stem cells that that build that you and I were talking about and keeps you young.

Stephen:                             [00:13:10]               But well let’s let’s go on there because I don’t want to miss this because I I’m hoping that somebody hears that and they’re going to be like Steve what does this have to do with e-commerce. Well let’s talk about stamina. Let’s talk about longevity of life. Let’s talk about being comfortable for God’s sake.

Will:                                       [00:13:24]               But guys were using steroids. Back when I was you know 18 or 19 and I couldn’t I would not use steroids to build out my bulk but steroids were big even back then.

Stephen:                             [00:13:35]               So you had an injury. I mean you got this car. I mean you were really injured and though recently you had stem cell surgery. I did. And you were describing it to me that you took away pain forty years of pain. I mean that’s what blows me away. It’s not like you know hey once in a while it rains and you know I get a creek. You’re describing it that for 40 years you’ve had pain.

Will:                                       [00:13:59]               You had a rip DCL I had my cartilage taken out the inside of my knee and never had the ACL repair and osteoporosis it’s in it and you know to write some type of bad arthritis it set into the leg also. And five years ago they told me to replace the knee and I would listen because they told me I was done jogging. And it’s like I’m not going to stop jogging jogged most my life. And so I worked with a doctor that we had. You know I’m a supporter of a charity for Make A Wish For Mercy hospitals in Maine and the Dr Georgia joint replacement the hospital worked with me and kept me going for another five years until I just got stemcell surgery done in July and that does say it was a success a huge understatement I mean I did my first jogging today I told you this morning. You know it took me a few months but I’m jogging and no pain none. I

Stephen:                             [00:14:59]               even took that which support out of my shoe that’s on the ground doesn’t mean just incredible to think about that for you know imagine what’s coming next. That’s what gets me excited. You know even for us old dudes in our lifetime. That stuff is coming full force. And you know we can complain all we want to about the health care system but it’s incredible what they’re doing. I mean it’s just incredible what they do.

Will:                                       [00:15:20]               Let’s speaking of the healthcare system they wouldn’t pay for this insurance. We have great insurance at work. And they wouldn’t put a penny towards it because they called it experimental. And so for me I chalked up the seven thousand dollars and did it myself put it on a credit card and you did get those points. I

Stephen:                             [00:15:38]               mean there is that. And I don’t have to pay for you. I

Will:                                       [00:15:43]               floated it I put it on the first day of the billing cycle and then I just sold more stuff on ebay them. But you know the doctor does do charity work on weekends although he charges Middlemore for. And he rocks and you know say it was a success is just a huge understatement. So

Stephen:                             [00:16:03]               here’s the here’s that let’s just stay on this stupid thing of health care because here’s a guy who’s now much more mobile out of pain stop taking pain medicine that they were paying for gone or whatever they were whatever they had to take in.

Stephen:                             [00:16:16]               Right that’s gone. So now they’re going to save money. Small dollar amounts. I get it but it’s forever like forever and that thousand side effects you know that we all listen those commercials where it talks about get into third eye and you’re going to have another arm in this and they’re all gone because you’re not taking that medication. However it’s experimental. Well we really can’t do that. I mean we can fix the issue or we can keep giving you something as a bandaid over a giant open sore and pay forever. Never Heal.

Will:                                       [00:16:45]               They would have paid for the joint replacement which was that thousand dollars Evropy.

Stephen:                             [00:16:50]               Yeah that math is good let’s say 50 but not seven. No no therapy in this. No I had no therapy.

Will:                                       [00:16:56]               No not crazy. All

Stephen:                             [00:16:59]               right. I don’t get my soapbox because that’s the stuff that makes me crazy. You know I mean it’s just like silly you know. Anyway. OK. So you’re back 100 percent. But however as a kid you’re not doing so hot. And you started buying and selling antiques. What was it. I mean did you have a specialty you mean like some people you know you walk up and they just know that. Well that’s it. That’s a French provincial Graf’s Gladstein. Look at him like What are you talking about right. But there are people that know that are they know would they know how I can tell. You know I’m like. It looks like a piece of wood. What was it that you were specializing in back then.

Will:                                       [00:17:35]               I did furniture for the most part. And you know there was money to be made. God knows what we did to our bodies. You know it’s strip the furniture and refinished it you know and so you get out there with no gloves and there’s like stripper.

Stephen:                             [00:17:50]               Oh yeah. Yeah wasn’t it. There’s nothing you know.

Will:                                       [00:17:53]               There was no night was that night when I went to nightclubs and I didn’t know what you know. So.

Stephen:                             [00:18:00]               So you and a friend or you went a couple of friends were like hey they still gave you the kind of bachelor life. And yet it hit hard on that.

Will:                                       [00:18:09]               Yeah. You know we’re doing OK. And do some other things. I was a bouncer once too for then ran a nightclub in Georgetown. You’re a big guy. Yeah. You know what. You may make it. How do you make money. And so we learn really quickly about flipping things and that you know it always stayed in the back of my mind if I could have done what I wanted in college I would have been an art history major but I couldn’t figure out how to make money. So did accounting and economics and actually got a graduate degree in math but you know it’s things. It’s funny how things you do when you’re young set you up for when you’re older. Absolutely they lead you somewhere the size the constant exercise I did as an athlete you know it’s really useful and imperative as an adult.

Will:                                       [00:19:02]               You know as a matter of fact when I got my stem cells done that I set a record for the amount of stem cells they took out a person they got over a billion and a half stem that it’s a record you know whether you’re Tende or whether you’re 60 and the older you get you get the less you have. And they asked me why they thought I thought that you know and we talked about it. And despite all the time inflammatories I take it through my life that are supposed to kill stem cells here I’m sitting there at 60 with a record. And I attribute it to the weightlifting weightlifting build stem cells.

Will:                                       [00:19:41]               So you look at the things that you do through your life and for me as an athlete I’ve always done that’s the buying and selling antiques I got into it more and work and having a website that big is really about statistics and that’s what I ended up taking in my Master’s program that I never thought I would use.

Stephen:                             [00:20:03]               So all these things have led you to this point in your life right now. That car accident was critical because otherwise you know you’d be you’d have 50 concussions and you’d be well you’d be in jail. I mean let’s just call it that’s where they opened up and end up in jail you know. So you know all those things have led you to this place now along the way you did you did graduate and you went and worked for some companies.

Stephen:                             [00:20:27]               You’ve held some pretty pretty good jobs in your life but you walked away from it thinking back to walking away. How hard was it to walk away. I mean I know we all hit that point that tipping point is Malcolm Gladwell is that right. You hit that point but it’s still your identity. Right. How hard was that for you.

Will:                                       [00:20:50]               Inreality not hard. I mean the hard part was giving up the money. You know I don’t know. You

Stephen:                             [00:20:57]               know I have five kids so cheap that nice and cheap they don’t they don’t ask summer which are still in college.

Speaker 15:                        [00:21:05]               But you know you had to give up the money and yeah I save some but not have not a fortune and not enough for five kids in college. No

Stephen:                             [00:21:16]               .

Will:                                       [00:21:17]               We had a tech company we were taken public in 2001 and the valuation was two billion dollars and we lost it in bankruptcy with the crash. So financially that was a bad time for me and I went through 9/11 at the Trade Center I was down on the ground when the second plane hit. And so you look at you know that was a low point and you pick yourself up and say that’s not really who I am.

Stephen:                             [00:21:46]               Is that kid that grew up in Northern Virginia. Most people don’t pick themselves up well right there.

Will:                                       [00:21:51]               You know insane company big you know company. Everybody’s heard about you know when Halliburton bought us Landmark Graphics.

Speaker 15:                        [00:21:58]               My new job as CEO of Brown and the engineering company and that I walked out I walked out before I take the job.

Will:                                       [00:22:08]               And that you have to be grounded as to who you are and it’s not that corporate identification but you have to pay the bills and that’s what got me focused as a seller on eBay and reaching back and starting to buy and sell old stuff. First thing I actually sold on eBay was a children’s book.

Speaker 16:                        [00:22:30]               And that I’m now up to.

Will:                                       [00:22:33]               I think I’m approaching a million dollars in sales on eBay.

Stephen:                             [00:22:37]               No kidding. I mean do you still have that that excitement in a win something you know especially something very cool and somebody else sees the coolness of it and buys it. You still get that.

Will:                                       [00:22:50]               Yeah. You know I do Eisele first thing I saw this morning was a box of Sports Illustrated old ones that weren’t worth selling individually. And a cup of coffee mugs. But the last thing I sold last night was a thousand dollar jacket.

Speaker 17:                        [00:23:04]               And so all kind of jackets a thousand dollar jacket. Tell us well do I get to go search Northpoint aren’t you. You’re

Stephen:                             [00:23:10]               going to make me sign up that damn it this is a scam. I knew you were scamming me. I get it. I get it. Yeah bait and switch here we go.

Will:                                       [00:23:17]               People here are going to hate me. But it was a kabbala monkey code you know. So I don’t say you I’m not going to sell that. You know I love the animals you know. But the damn monkeys been dead for 80 years and it was the 1930s. You know Art Deco coat from a Beverly Hills furrier and you know it was in a lot of bought out this data Pearl Harbor from Pearl Harbor and the explosions the clash and you know she had a few furs and I sold one last night to the guy in Sweden.

Stephen:                             [00:23:53]               So bottlers do you only go for old stuff. I mean just because you still enjoy it I tried it.

Will:                                       [00:24:04]               I want my store to be an adventure and so I’m 60 and I still remember when they had the antique stores and you’d go in there and you’d find cool things you never know what you’d find to blow off the dust you go up in the attic and I have a live inventory 62 hundred items on eBay. And I have a 10000 foot square foot warehouse full of stuff still to list and still the list.

Stephen:                             [00:24:32]               Yeah. We’re kindred spirits.

Will:                                       [00:24:34]               I like to do things where my stuff is different and there’s a seven thousand coffee mugs I bought out of a basement that were all different coffee mugs or you know I think the highest price item I have is about twenty thousand dollars at my store. The highest price item I’ve sold is 27 and that you know walking through my store is the experience of my buyers tell me that you know this is cool stuff you can’t find anywhere else.

Will:                                       [00:25:00]               You know I’m kind of the opposite model of of an Amazon because everything’s unique and I’m not an arbitrageur but we can get into my new venture where I’m printing photographs and selling them. But you know I try to have really unique cool different stuff that people can get a good deal on.

Stephen:                             [00:25:21]               Do you still actively buy or are you just now going in. Let’s just take a half a step into the warehouse because that’s probably as far as you can get in. All right let’s take that load and let’s try to do something with that.

Will:                                       [00:25:32]               No I still buy. I bought your hooked. Yeah.

Will:                                       [00:25:36]               You know. But things tend to come to me instead of having to go out and get them and that saves me a huge amount of time. Although I’m you know if you want to go to a flea market with me we do a different one in the country every month and have a contest on who buys the best stuff but who you. Who. Any worth point users. Anybody that wants to join me and we were doing Orlando in Scott’s market in Atlanta next month. We’re doing all round top in the spring and we’re in Colorado. We’re going to go to Union Maine Brimfield. We travel the whole country going shopping and what does that do for you. That

Stephen:                             [00:26:18]               piece that that camaraderie those like minded you know. I mean their customers but I’m sure there’s more than that now especially if you’re traveling with them. You spend that much time whether you eat a meal or you drink a beer with him. Things change right that relationship changes.

Will:                                       [00:26:33]               And you know what people are saying I’m one of them. I challenge anybody in this industry and work points pretty sophisticated tech company to do what we do. But I challenge anybody to find another CEO in this industry. And

Will:                                       [00:26:50]               we now have 13000 users were over 4 million revenue a Europe believe but go find another CEO that does what their users do.

Will:                                       [00:27:04]               Why so walk. Yeah I know what my people need because you know what I built worth. When is a tool that helped me sell better on eBay.

Stephen:                             [00:27:11]               Well let’s talk about that because I think that’s so important. Most now I don’t say most a lot of successful companies there. That

Stephen:                             [00:27:19]               was the thing they fixed the problem. They went looking to solve a problem and they went to somebody for a solution and there wasn’t one so they had to create one for themselves. Walk us through where that came from for you.

Will:                                       [00:27:31]               Well Google actually used to be a better search engine than it is today. And you know when I got selling I believe you sell stuff you don’t know anything about. So

Will:                                       [00:27:41]               now I’ll sell anything if I can you know start learning about it and that all because when you go to an estate sale or you go to a flea market you can’t say I have to have this is the only thing I’m not buying the whole place. It’s the only thing I know. And you really limit yourself in buying. And so I need prices on stuff I needed to learn about stuff. You know I joked with you I didn’t drop out of the womb knowing all this stuff so I needed a research blade. Google is cluttered. I mean do an image search and you have to pull out Pinterest anymore because Pinterest kills their image search. Right. And so if I want to do an image search I go to Pinterest and I’ll go to Google anymore unless I do you know a billion search and take them out.

Will:                                       [00:28:20]               So I wanted to make it easier to find stuff or when I would describe as civil war but incorrectly and get into a debate with the police that eBay as to is this a civil war button. And I wanted to list it correctly and I wanted to learn quicker and I needed stuff at my fingertips so we started building work point and compiling data records. But if you go to work now it’s way more than data that you can do research that has marks it as patterns and as autographs added symbols. It his books and we’re connecting it all together on a common taxonomy. So you can do all your research in one place quickly and efficiently and pretty accurate. And it’s the best place on the Web to go to get one thing you know information on collectibles.

Stephen:                             [00:29:07]               But the thing that gets me is I don’t understand this and maybe you can enlighten us and maybe it’s that corporate America again. But why didn’t eBay just do this themselves. Why do they limit the amount of you know history that you’re allowed to see when you look at completed listings or whatever. Forget how long it is. And I know it’s changed a couple different ways. But I mean why wouldn’t they just do this themselves. Is that not the business they’re in yet. I mean you and I both know that content is everything right.

Will:                                       [00:29:34]               I mean look today I think I think Devon gets it and we work closely with the eBay Devins a new CEO. Yeah but it’s a different business model. I mean it’s it’s data data is a different business model than than you know a platform to sell. It’s why Bloomberg builds a platform for the stock markets. And heaven forbid there are different things. And understanding data especially data on unique items it’s no easy task and keeping the records is one thing. And that’s one point of. Yeah we have records but how you relate it into a taxonomy. You know our users need to do two things. What is it and what’s it worth. Right. And eBay has a lot of records on data. But you have to understand that we’re also geared to a market where stuff may come along once every 10 years once every five years. It’s not like keeping records on an ice success and what did it self-aware and what options that have. It’s a different model.

Stephen:                             [00:30:39]               So the e-book that you take in every single record from eBay though and doing something with it. Are you excluding certain things. We

Will:                                       [00:30:47]               have algorithms to exclude certain things.

Stephen:                             [00:30:49]               So like Apple’s cell phone cases. Is that something you know that you would check today because it’s not a collectible. Okay so it’s okay. There we go. So so there are categories. That’s your first place you slice it and then you slice it from there.

Will:                                       [00:31:05]               Correct. And then things will exclude the Zagreb revenues. We run the promoted and we’re getting better and better and better at it.

Stephen:                             [00:31:13]               Well let’s talk about that so you get a record from eBay and we’ll talk about all the other places because eBay is I understand that just that you get from but you get it from an enormous amount of places.

Will:                                       [00:31:26]               Heritage isn’t going to give eBay their data but they’ll give us that data because we don’t compete.

Stephen:                             [00:31:30]               Yeah okay. Now that makes sense. What you just described that makes sense so you’re completely independent they get the benefit I’m assuming because they want access to that data too. They don’t have to manage it. They don’t have to pay to get it manage. So it’s win win.

Will:                                       [00:31:44]               Yeah and God bless the people in the bay. I mean there’s a huge amount of trust in letting another company this amount of data. They’re wonderful partners and hopefully we put it in return.

Stephen:                             [00:31:53]               Yeah I mean think about it right they don’t have to carry that on their balance sheet so that’s not a bad business model for them. And as well I mean 10 years proves I mean that’s the proof’s in the pudding right. You know it could work for oh yeah everybody promises everything. It’s what’s been delivered 10 years that’s it. That’s a good history. OK so you get a record from somebody sells a Seattle Starbucks mug. Somebody else I just saw somebody in Jason Smith’s group sell one. So they sell this mug and then they get a mug and they’re like hey is this valuable. So they go into worth point worth point is free to sign up and go look and you’ll be able to see and you’ll see a history of that. That cup would be on there I’m certain. And it would say it’s sold. And I assume it’s most recent you could filter it a couple of different ways. Correct.

Will:                                       [00:32:46]               You know you can fill a filter and by most reason you can do only searches you can do everything search all you Philbert by price. You can do anything you want.

Stephen:                             [00:32:57]               And so that records there. Now if you want to see the price you have to have a paid subscription to see that price right which is a fascinating model which is genius by the way because you mean again you lead in the candy store and you said Hmm. Take a look at this. Look at that as. Steve I know you don’t like chocolate but milk duds and Twizzlers. Look at those babies. Oh they’re fresh too.

Will:                                       [00:33:20]               And by the way the Starbucks mugs. Do you think are inside.

Stephen:                             [00:33:24]               My bet is. Now you have half a billion records dude. You know I’m going to say 100000.

Will:                                       [00:33:31]               It’s over 100000 because my page is a thousand.

Stephen:                             [00:33:35]               I like it better at this. So you led me in a candy store I’m looking at the candy. I’m salivating. And then it’s like OK let’s go home now. Now I want something. So it’s a great system it’s a very. Where did that idea come from to let people look but not touch.

Will:                                       [00:33:54]               Well that’s an interesting question that worth point used to be free 100 percent for one ad on the site for me and you get paid by sponsors or advertisers that you made money.

Stephen:                             [00:34:05]               OK.

Will:                                       [00:34:05]               And I saw the handwriting on the wall fortunately we worked at large companies and had to run them you get to be pretty astute at some things. And the ad model was going to die. And so we went to paid subscriptions about six or seven years ago I think and had to reprogram the whole site from Drupal into Grail’s which is a job a toolkit and we did it in about two months and we tried this pay model with this type of stuff in the first day.

Stephen:                             [00:34:37]               We sold probably around 50 subscriptions. Yeah they hated you got to right they were real hate mail. Yeah they wanted to kill you. You know hey I’m used to free you’d hold my soul out.

Will:                                       [00:34:48]               You know you can find a lot of what’s on work when I’m free. But how long is it going to take you and how long is it going to pull all that information together. What’s your time worth. A lot of sellers lose sight of that. They’re more focused on being cheap. I hate to say it. You know I used to have this one friend that was a seller up in Maine and she refused to pay for her packing material. And she would even go to the dump and pull stuff out of the dome and have a yak gin and a how long it’d take her and to be the thought of it.

Stephen:                             [00:35:18]               You know it’s like the TB thing would kind of throw me off you know hey you know you got it for free. But is it you got to take these shots now for the rest of your life but I mean they.

Will:                                       [00:35:28]               So you know where time and what’s it worth to you just to go into a site and pull all this stuff together you know and be a smart sell or even if you’re in the field with a cell phone you can do it. You know we have apps for both iOS and Android and it’s all included.

Stephen:                             [00:35:46]               So let’s talk about why somebody would want to use worth point because you know what most people are taught hey use eBay completed listings completed sold listings right. And that’ll give you data for how many how many months they keep.

Will:                                       [00:36:01]               Now it’s not uniform I don’t think. Others good recipe but generally it’s no longer than 90 days and some grunt is much shorter.

Stephen:                             [00:36:09]               And so you could say well that’s the market price Steve. Well yeah. Ok it’s Christmas. Christmas happens once a year. And so 90 days isn’t going to carry you back very far. So what happens. You know where in Amazon’s world it’s keepa right. You know one of those magic tricks to keep is one of the tools that people use. And you can see I think it’s two years back and so you can see over time hey there’s a spike. There’s a I forget between Maliki’s to have a good term for it and it was it was his crown almost like. And so that would happened once a year. Well you’re not going to see that. And so you’re going to miss out on those opportunities. Correct.

Will:                                       [00:36:44]               Correct. And you know you also trending trending huge.

Stephen:                             [00:36:49]               If you’re at a hold your merchandise and eBay’s not a model where you buy and flip it quick. I mean I guess there are people that do that. But if you’re building out especially in the collectible world I guess I should qualify that. You know if you’re selling an iPhone cases you better sell it fast because guess what. There’s a new one coming. If you don’t know it 10 on elevens.

Will:                                       [00:37:08]               So by having the ability to trend right you can see that I’m not bought things because I mean I stayed away for a mouthful awhile or pottered just looking at the trend of pricing over the last four or five years. I mean I don’t like to buy things that are bigger and break. But it was like a lead anchor looking at pricing and stay away from it you know not only a big and as a break but the prices are going down.

Stephen:                             [00:37:35]               And if you would have bought it. I mean especially in the tech world prices are declining right. A There’s you know people don’t want it. People who used to buy it are dying right. They’re older. And now you can get it. There’s a you know that well or pottery which was so that Ohio I think or something like that you can now get it everywhere because it’s sold. People brought it everywhere you just never knew that it was out in California. Nobody but guess what they found it. And now they’re selling it. So by seeing those trends so. So the reason that worth point is valuable to people is what’s your elevator pitch.

Will:                                       [00:38:11]               It makes you way more efficient as the seller makes your money. And you know by the way the stuff that we sell doesn’t come along every day either. There is this my my story about my turkey call you got to tell that you’re not going to just drop that and just move on from that. You’ve

Stephen:                             [00:38:28]               got to explain that third that you call a male target. Hey big boy. And are we talking Jason Smith again. Oh ouch. I can’t resist. Sorry Jay. We got this.

Will:                                       [00:38:40]               I got a chance to buy it. My car on this date for ten thousand dollars.

Will:                                       [00:38:46]               And that plays hard and had outbuildings. Wait wait wait wait that was the deal. Thank you see my car. It’s that big. Yeah.

Stephen:                             [00:38:55]               And I want it then I want to buy a bunch of stuff. Then it’s like you know the book was at a book sale to fill a bag.

Will:                                       [00:39:04]               I got to fill a car. It’s still a car day. And that’s it. And thank you guys.

Will:                                       [00:39:10]               Second six pack in the morning with a third pack of cigarettes and his girlfriend and his dad had died as was his dad’s estate.

Stephen:                             [00:39:19]               And so he was going to handle the sale himself. He didn’t get an outside company.

Will:                                       [00:39:23]               No. And I was not the first picker through there. By any stretch I would say I was probably more number 10. So I picked that place and got some great finds one still in here it’s Easter Island. Seven inch carves volcanic stone figure Tigue and he’s probably worth what I paid for the whole carload so I got home imagine the stuff is full of dirt. Black I’m black and I get home and I’m going to put the stuff in my foyer now.

Stephen:                             [00:40:00]               You’re married at this point. Yes. And how does that conversation go honey. Not very well yeah. First off I feel the car that’s always popular because you know as you described you have 11000 square feet full already. And so I found the deal. She could see it in your eyes right.

Will:                                       [00:40:20]               Yes. I unload this stuff on our floor and it’s not clean. And I picked up this object on top which I grabbed at the last minute going out of the house because it wasn’t very big it was on the mantle that was carved nicely and she says What is that and said it’s a turkey call because I picked it up and looked on the bottom.

Stephen:                             [00:40:42]               How can you say how did you know that it was a turkey. I you read it. It’s

Will:                                       [00:40:45]               like a cartoon. You know I didn’t know what it was I pick it up on the bottom Innes’s Gibson Turkey Google and she says Great. What are you going to do with it. I looked it up one more point. We had one you try to find a raise anywhere else on the Internet you can. How

Stephen:                             [00:41:01]               long ago did that item sell five years prior to that. No kidding. So. So this is information on eBay going back 15 years. So five years ago. So like you said there’s no information. So you would have sold it at one that was equivalent as much as you can see today. Right. And today you can buy Turkey calls for you know I think three dollars from China all the way up to you know probably a good one probably 100 or 200 dollars right. So it’s a 200 dollar item by Ubell it’s old so maybe can get a little bit more from it so it’s worth about 200 bucks right now.

Speaker 17:                        [00:41:37]               Twelve thousand dollars. And you have the nerve to price at a 12 grand. I started the 1990s an auction. Oh my God.

Stephen:                             [00:41:49]               How do you get next door employees pause a second because you’ve got to get me here.

Stephen:                             [00:41:53]               How did it how do these nut cases that won a twelve thousand dollar Turkey call. No that there is one up there. They saving these searches for it. Or did you go to the turkey circle and you know whatever there they are communicating groups.

Will:                                       [00:42:11]               Put it out or is it just are competitive.

Speaker 16:                        [00:42:15]               So you have to understand there are a voracious group of people and that you know very competitive with their collections and it happens that Mr. Gibson handed the box call so he invented the box call.

Will:                                       [00:42:33]               So this was what he had made himself.

Speaker 16:                        [00:42:37]               And there’s about a dozen known out there if that many and I guess these guys saved their searches. I

Will:                                       [00:42:44]               mean the next morning it was up to 10000 dollars. Are you kidding. And I had a e-mail from a car dealer in Tennessee offering to send his chauffeur down with a bag of small unmarked bills.

Will:                                       [00:42:57]               If you take it down I lost it. Not kidding you on this story. He offered to bring me fifteen thousand dollars in cash if I would stop to sell he kidding that you didn’t do it.

Will:                                       [00:43:11]               I didn’t know what and I can tell you for me struggling as a startup exec 15000 dollars is a ton of money. You know and a guy that’s with his company what his paycheck and everything some Ayyam decided to roll the dice and go. And I went out to speak. And Linda rollies convention that weekend and that was the day the sale ended and we started her her speech. I was the first speaker that morning we started with pitchers of bloody marys. Those who wanted them and they recorded Lynn has a recording of the end of the sale. Because I was on a plane coming back from Las Vegas at that point. But it went for twenty seven thousand dollars. Oh my. Now tell me what a work is worth.

Stephen:                             [00:44:00]               You just bought it for the next 500 friends for 20 years. Did you get paid.

Will:                                       [00:44:06]               I did. The guy was the founder of baseliner boats.

Speaker 17:                        [00:44:10]               No kidding. Yeah.

Stephen:                             [00:44:12]               And so you got paid eBay. They did a happy dance.

Will:                                       [00:44:16]               Yeah. EBay was happy. I was happy. And you know but I couldn’t have known that without work.

Stephen:                             [00:44:25]               How many stories do you get like that I mean I know they’re not the twenty seven thousand dollar store but it’s still the you know I would just put this up for twenty bucks and boom it sold for 300. Because I would have never known.

Will:                                       [00:44:37]               Yeah. And a lot a lot in there people don’t realize that something I did as a picker from having come up in this business. All the good stuff is really in people’s houses is just the tip of the iceberg that you see at the big auction galleries right.

Stephen:                             [00:44:53]               And a lot of stuff you never see all of a sudden they find one magically well it wasn’t like somebody went back there and made it it’s been sitting there forever.

Will:                                       [00:45:00]               Yeah and you know we want to talk a little bit about the picture business. You know before we end up here but I post some of my raw pictures up on on Facebook and this is just the tip of my iceberg. We have about 10000 negatives that are going to be putting up on my site and I’m still buying more. But the most fascinating picture I put up there for people was a picture of people picking the dump in 9300. I saw that and people still fantasize about that that that needle in the haystack is still out there. I was on NBC News in Denver and a lady text me or e-mails me about a picture she pulled out of the trash in Boulder and it was at Taky. Talkin Norio geese Impressionist painting she pulled it out of the trash and had it in her closet for years. And we identified it for immediately as 100 thousand dollar painting. She helped the results of these. They’re out there they’re out there every day. So

Stephen:                             [00:46:03]               the value of having this tool as you said is that it gives you that that gives you that really a good competitive edge because you kind of go with a little more confidence hey if this is historically sold for you know 300 bucks 300 bucks 300 bucks you could reasonably expect to try to get 300 bucks. Maybe that was that one buyer that wouldn’t you know is done. He got the one thing that he was looking for. But it’s a lot more powerful to know that that’s the potential. Maybe that’s the right way to say that has the potential to get to that level.

Will:                                       [00:46:34]               I mean I was just a good example of something I was researching was a movie insert which is a 14 buy I think 36 poster from the mole people the 50s side by movie Cool and work combines heritage movie posters and eBay results three biggest poster markets in the world I think. And you have it right there at your fingertips so I could get the prices from the three sources. And there’s a huge you know sci fi movie poster. I think it’s been down for quite a bit except for the really early stuff but a lot of volatility in the pricing of that it doesn’t combine that often that insert. But it’s somewhere between two to eight hundred dollars. If you look at the last two years. And so I I priced that at five and I know I had my pricing done in two minutes. I copy the veteran description changed for my poster and I was done with the listing in five minutes.

Stephen:                             [00:47:31]               And that’s the other thing that that really is important to know is that a lot of the research is done for a lot of the wording that is worked right. We always talked about on Amazon keywords right well this sold. That’s a pretty good predictor of future performance past performance right. So the fact that it’s sold is a big deal. I

Will:                                       [00:47:48]               haven’t noticed it right away for 200 but I didn’t take it. I mean I had it within an hour and I want you know three to four hundred dollars with that poster.

Stephen:                             [00:47:55]               I think that’s a fair price and I have my Compston well because I do want to get to the picture thing because it sounds cool. I mean it’s very cool. Let’s just let’s close out with this. It’s half a billion. You’re approaching half a billion images sold items. It comes from how many sources are you up to now.

Will:                                       [00:48:14]               There’s hundreds. The auction house is like real auctions.

Will:                                       [00:48:20]               Sold. And we even have the Buy It Now prices now for eBay.

Stephen:                             [00:48:26]               That’s huge because people don’t know what they are make offer. Right. You never know what it is. Right. Right. So you can actually tell oh that’s big. How many. And you alluded to this before with the Weller but how many items do you buy with having this now. Just not the stuff that you buy. A lot of it is the stuff you don’t buy knowing to buy something is very powerful.

Will:                                       [00:48:49]               I turned down a I just bought a movie poster collection out of an estate.

Will:                                       [00:48:55]               And I turned down the autograph collection based on that knowledge and using that and work has some experts you can draw on for help. We

Will:                                       [00:49:04]               have global authentication. EBay accepts the authentication for autographs. Steve Sipe over there worked with me a little bit and with utilizing him which any of our customers can I figured out two important signatures were not right. And pricing I turned down the collection and that was that was a significant amount of money.

Stephen:                             [00:49:29]               OK we’re going to talk about that because he’s giving us a discount people if we want it and Steve doesn’t benefit other than getting the discount. That’s a big deal. OK. So let’s talk because you’re bored. You don’t have enough to do. You got free time apparently you decide hey I’ve got another idea I want to do is this a passion for you. I mean when you think back you know why would you. I mean because point has become a passion. I mean there’s no doubt about it you can’t get this big with this much information seven employees. I mean you and millions of dollars a year without being passionate the photography side what is it that that keeps that spark. And as well as making it now take and get some legs.

Will:                                       [00:50:10]               Well I’m amazed with the Lushan as the black and white photography. So you know it’s a perversion it’s a lost it’s a whatever. And I’ve always liked. If you followed data which I’ve been in Dayton for a lot of years if you look at stereo music it’s better than MPE 3 lot of kids won’t tell you that. But it’s much higher quality people going back to this the same astrophotography if you look at the old photography it’s much denser in its image than modern pixels. And what you can do with black and white photography is amazing. And so I looked at my career picking out of garages and warehouses and places unmentionable negatives. People would generally throw negatives away. They didn’t want the negatives and so on especially those old glass ones you know when they used to print off a glass.

Will:                                       [00:51:08]               So I would start saving and I had a whole storage place full of old glass negatives and some with no plan no plan except one day I wanted to reprint them figuring that technology would be here to do something with them. And you know I been in the computer data business and hardware since 1983. So I see the 40 percent improvement. You have to have a year in your performance or your hardware to just keep your price the same. So every year in the hardware business in technology you have to have a 40 percent improvement. It’s called Moore’s Law. And so I knew that one day and this is why work started saving images early because storage would get cheap. And I knew that the technology would come along. So your home you could put the stuff into so low and behold 100000 negatives later World War II stuff you know all the way back to the end of the civil war.

Will:                                       [00:52:12]               I’ve saved these negatives which modern photography and negatives became big in 1870 so I just got lots of these things and really only saved the best stuff. And I add the flaw in the whole business model for us antique sellers is we have to sell things one at a time we can’t go buy a skill like you do on Amazon. And so you have to do individual listings and I’m quick as I can be we joke about my fingers and my photographs on stage and that I wanted stuff to that I could just say hey I can just replicate it. It’s like you know printing money. So we started figuring out how to digitize these images these negatives work the copyright issues and get them cleaned and get them on the market.

Will:                                       [00:53:04]               And we’re about to launch my new company called hip history and photographs. We’ve solved all those technology and problems even though it takes us two to three hours to do one picture and the images will just blow your mind. I’ll send you a printer’s proof. I’ll get your address later. Yeah I can print these things up to wallpaper size and keep the clarity when they meet me.

Stephen:                             [00:53:28]               Let me ask you because it brings up so many questions but I just want to get the first one. So how do you get around the copyright issues and I assume that older ones are different than newer ones and logically generally yes.

Will:                                       [00:53:44]               Having worked with a printer you know where were essentially a media company. You learn a lot about copyright law and it’s pretty technical. So the old stuff is in the public domain anyway. By definition that time some of the artists have registered their copy marks and their material so it may have been renewed. So when you know things are by particular artist you better do your homework and find out if their stuff is copyrighted. For example I bought some negatives about one famous Western artist and he never copyrighted his work and it was done before the dates. You know I think it’s 1923 or something now. So none of his stuff is copyrighted now. One of his peers may have copyrighted along the way and there’s stuff maybe so you have to go do your homework and if it’s significant you’d better know who would buy into your copyright work.

Stephen:                             [00:54:44]               If I show you know it’s within his family at Disney World and they’re in the back his ears and you know whatever does that. Am I allowed to reproduce that image. And it’s your family standing in front of Mickey Mouse land. And you know welcome to Walt Disney World. Am I allowed to print and sell that.

Will:                                       [00:55:05]               The answer on that one I don’t know. Honestly no I’m not using photos.

Stephen:                             [00:55:10]               Jermaine I think you could sell the photos but I just don’t know commercially whether you can sell them to be reproduced. I think that’s where the the whole thing. I

Will:                                       [00:55:18]               mean we’re looking at for example the states and when I’m selling some stuff from the 100 battalion which is the only Japanese American unit World War II they were a part of the things that 440 Second Regiment they were the guys that are famous. They had their guns taken away after Pearl Harbor and there’s one guy that particular that I have that was a photographer and it slides that he you know just probably a thousand beautiful photographs on Kodachrome mostly and in his case the family sold the entire estate. They sold the negatives they sold the positives they sold everything and I would sit there and debate under the Copyright Act that when they sold the negatives and they sold the estate they intended to sell everything. And otherwise why do you have the negative. It’s not like taking somebody positive and making a copy out of it. Right. And you know we have our own lawyers that hip and they written opinions agreeing OK. It makes sense though. It’s not like taking the pictures. The negative view was a whole different issue.

Stephen:                             [00:56:32]               OK. All right. And so I guess the lesson here is you really do the research and do your homework on it. Right. So what’s your goal with that. So now you’ve got 100000 images you’re going to digitize them. You’re going to put them in some kind of sortable feature. Right

Stephen:                             [00:56:47]               . You’re going to be able to can sort and say hey I want to see war scenes from Hawaii Pearl Harbor blah blah blah. And what can I do with that. First off I’m not going to pull it up and snip it right. I’m sure there’s a watermark or something in there right.

Will:                                       [00:57:02]               We now have copyrights because by cleaning everything up and improving it now and we own the copyright right.

Stephen:                             [00:57:09]               So you’re now the company that yeah there’s a famous company that comes after everybody for images. What’s her name. Getty Images. Right. Very similar concept. Ok so what can you. Can I come in and I’m sure it’s not free. Right. It’s a service. What can I do with this. We

Will:                                       [00:57:27]               sell images or we will license the images.

Stephen:                             [00:57:30]               OK so I can I get a shirt. Can I get a coffee mug shot a war.

Will:                                       [00:57:34]               Initially we’re doing our very high end pictures in limited editions so I’ve actually had my first revenue the way so a limited edition like a print.

Stephen:                             [00:57:47]               So just like an artist would do a print. They would say one of 100 to of 103 of 100 right. That’s

Will:                                       [00:57:53]               the kind of thing you know cool and that all the sizes of the pictures range from a five by seven to four feet by four feet.

Stephen:                             [00:58:02]               Wow. And then you frame them I mean do you have the ability to do that or use a third party.

Will:                                       [00:58:07]               We’re like what we saw on eBay will be framed. So we’re going to take her brand and use eBay as a platform and on our Web site you will be able to have framing custom framing even bigger images if you want and we will also get into selling product with the image on it from coffee mugs do shower curtains to wallpaper. So

Stephen:                             [00:58:28]               you know thinking about this I mean it’s genius. It’s really. I mean you’ve really again taken a lost art right these images right on and brought them to the masses. And so you know you really get a chance pretty inexpensively to get one of these things done. Love it.

Will:                                       [00:58:47]               And you’re going to talk about the springboard in your network. An auctioneer in Massachusetts auction wall the item hoping to walk Kolenda. But Wall had an auction that he was doing and Gloster and it was in the dead of winter and he had a huge amount of negatives there. And the guy who put the collection together Fred Bowden was famous for his collection and was called me afraid to do the auction in the dead of the winter in Gloucester with snow problems with the roads and everything. And he finally talked me into coming after about 20 phone calls I went up and looked at his collection. And I was blown away. And I beat out the Smithsonian and the Cape in to get those things. And you can hit her Bieb Kidder Peabody Museum. And I just went in there and I made him an offer for everything and said You got two weeks Wall.

Speaker 18:                        [00:59:42]               And that includes any copyright’s and the museums and the timidness. So what can we match them and.

Will:                                       [00:59:52]               Well you can but you’re not going to win because he has a chance and he has a price you have to raise him and two weeks later I had a truck full of slides in the history of Gloucester’s and down to Atlanta.

Stephen:                             [01:00:05]               No kidding. And so now you’re going through and let me think a lot about a pocket cost to get these converted as you say digitized. You said it a couple of hours per image Rick. And it’s obviously getting faster. I’m

Will:                                       [01:00:19]               assuming you found touchpoint so you could reduce it stuff like that but it’s still a couple of hours per slide and you can’t you can’t use the screening and stuff and a lot of those techniques because you lose the detail so it has to be done by hand.

Stephen:                             [01:00:33]               Well you know what. Look you just see them there. Beautiful yeah. Oh they’re unbelievable. But the story to me like that that dumped story My mind immediately went to. Can you imagine how the stuff that would have been thrown out. Right because nothing got recycled nothing got. It was just get buried. Can you imagine the stuff that people had to get rid of today. What would be in that dump American Pickers show you know when they find that stuff they’re like how does this exist.

Will:                                       [01:01:00]               And they think that the towns don’t let us pick Google dumps anymore.

Stephen:                             [01:01:03]               You know it’s a mistake. You know mean when you think about again we’re back to healthcare kind of thing right. It’s like well you know. Well it’s a safety issue there will you let me sign a waiver I’ll sign a waiver.

Will:                                       [01:01:15]               What would have been lost if these pictures and been safe. The significant things about the ones in Gloucester as they were taken by women and women did not do photography back then. But these were ladies that lived in Gloucester their husband were famous painters and they needed something to do. And so they started photography as a career and a club. And so a lot of what’s really significant in this collection about women when you think about where you’ve come from. Right

Stephen:                             [01:01:44]               . And you’ve had this corporate career you’ve obviously done some corporate ties to this business otherwise worth point wouldn’t be successful. Your approach here and taking on the photography the hip the history and photographs business as opposed to going and buying in caps at Target and those kind of things. Do you recommend for people to get to dip their toe. I guess that’s where I’m just trying to you know. I mean you’ve got the bug and you’ve obviously got a passion for it. I’m assuming your employees do too. Is there a way for somebody to dip their toe into these worlds to start getting a taste of what it can be.

Will:                                       [01:02:23]               Absolutely. And you know I think there’s a closet entrepreneur is what I call it in a lot of ways. And my my issue with a lot of these big companies is they don’t let entrepreneurship go you know come out our employees we did at Landmark and other companies like ran or help run. And that you know people are just striving to do these creative things. It’s kind of a bug in Americans gene pool. So in my mind you try something you get out there you focus on it as a business. You keep track of your time and money that you put in. And think of it as a business and that you try something and then if that works expand if it doesn’t learn and rejigger it you know when you go fishing you don’t try one bait and quit that it takes time and experiments and we did not do everything right here.

Will:                                       [01:03:19]               Trust me. And I joke and say every rat is smarter through the maze a second time. But you have to try it and rejigger it and learn and you have to keep changing. We talked about that earlier. I mean the is changing quickly. You got to change it it’s changing lightning fast faster and faster ain’t it worth it. You know we keep changing the world but seven employees with creative people again.

Stephen:                             [01:03:46]               So what’s next. You know I want to I want to close with what’s next to me. We’re going to have links for all this stuff so worth point. There’s a discount. You

Stephen:                             [01:03:54]               didn’t get photographed by the way.

Will:                                       [01:03:56]               Oh yeah it hit me with the code WS 15.

Speaker 17:                        [01:04:01]               The ADL to you all caps all caps will get you 15 percent off all caps and that’s 15 percent off one time 15 percent off versus it don’t tell anybody for ever data like ever. I

Stephen:                             [01:04:20]               like that. I like the term. OK. Well you’re not going to tell anybody it’ll be just between you and you. So let me do this again. WS fifteen eighty eight. All in caps and I’m gonna have a link there. And you know I’m going to. If you could send me an image or two for people to see just because it is so cool then I’ll link it to your face because it is just so cool for people to sit back and think about. Now let me ask you this. I come along this stuff. If I find all these glass images is that something that they could reach out to you or reach out through Facebook or whatever is that something that you would consider absolutely by.

Will:                                       [01:05:02]               And we’re also going to have a licensing agreement that we can agree to a price where you get a very nice because I thought it was a pittance. Would they give that smug mug which is one thing that pissed me off enough to start my own company. But we will have a very generous licensing agreement if we agree to use your images or you can sell them to me. That’s awesome. Okay. And we also will restore images for people that will have services and that’s an art. I

Stephen:                             [01:05:28]               mean again we’re bound to this isn’t art. I mean it’s at this point when you’re at this degree what are you hoping I mean what would be nirvana for you. That somebody. I mean is it a family thing. You know my great uncle died and we never knew and we you found it the missing photo. I have my stupid example Michael Jordan plate’s right. Do you ever see the plates where he’s got his arms extended. I think there’s like five plates. It’s his image and his arms go out and each is a plate that goes out and it’s like cleats. It’s really cool. Right. And it’s really graphic. When I sold it the lady wrote to me and she said Oh my God my son lost his in the fire home. Wow that’s cool right. I mean this guy. I mean she was able to bring something back. I’m sure this is a you know for him if he’s in love or Michael it’s spiritual right. What are you. What would be the thing that would say. I did well.

Will:                                       [01:06:26]               I mean just like selling people’s stuff that makes him happy you know. And this is if you keep in mind we’re in this because I gave up my grind world of the corporate world for a lot of different reasons. And I want stuff to make me happy. And I’m more concerned about you know transactions and I’ve sold myself a lot to museums. Things that make people happy and make people whole. And to me that makes my day to sit there and bicker about you know somebody and I’ve only had a few bad experiences on eBay and selling tens of thousands of things. You know it’s like life is too short. And so when you do transactions. If I sell an image to somebody that makes them happy and emotional experience that’s a good day.

Stephen:                             [01:07:20]               Who would have thunk getting hit in the head with a football would lead you here. I mean who would have thunk that. Right. Otherwise it’s jail. I mean it’s one or the other and it’s just such a cool story. Man oh man. Well the best way to get in touch with you so I’m going to have worth point links here. I’m going to have history and photograph links here. Best way if somebody has a follow up question and wants more information. What’s the best way.

Speaker 17:                        [01:07:44]               Will it work. Dotcom that’s a tough one. Worth point.

Will:                                       [01:07:51]               There’s two L’s in will those bubbles the one. Others though.

Stephen:                             [01:07:55]               OK. And again worth point is free to go look at and he’s got a good look at the stuff and you’ll be like somebody bought that. Yes they did. And will they buy it again. Probably. Now you need to know what it’s worth than you could say 15 percent forever. I like that forever. I mean that’s not like a gray area. It’s forever. And that’s just awesome. So I really appreciate you taking the time and appreciate your patience with my technical difficulty. Amazing story and just a great job. Thank you so much. All right take care. Mobei amazing interview an amazing guy. What a history. I

Stephen:                             [01:08:30]               mean just an amazing history and to be so accomplished and to think that it might not have happened. We do talk about how things one thing leads to another. And it’s such I think Will’s a great example thinking about his early career. And I told you I had a little bit of technical difficulty and some recording and one of the stories he told and I didn’t get it in the second time we recorded was about selling golfballs lived across the street from a golf course collected the golf balls sold them back to the people. Arbitrage right. Simple arbitrage. Low cost good. Other than Labor and they get a wait in ponds and all that kind of jazz. But that led him to that mindset right that mindset of Hey I put some effort. I get a reward. Right so think back to that when you’re looking at your business.

Stephen:                             [01:09:15]               Think back to all the different things that you have done. You can bring that to this business. You know if you’ve been a homemaker. I respect that. That means you can manage eight million things that I couldn’t possibly manage at one time. And guess what. That’s a skill set that you need in this business. You can hire the rest. You could always outsource the part that you don’t want to do because it’s not interesting to you. And I think Will’s a great example of that. I mean just amazing what he’s accomplished and he’s accomplished it again with words point. And now with this new business just a great stuff e-commerce momentum dotcom e-commerce women and dot com the sponsors. You know I hope you don’t take them for granted because I don’t.

Stephen:                             [01:09:53]               So are labs just amazing group amazing stuff that they’re doing you know just really cutting edge and they’re so supportive of what I do and I can’t say how much I appreciate it. But scope is the tool that I use I use. It’s very similar right. You’re able to do research kind of similar to the worth point model right. I’m able to do research on what keywords work and then I’m able to put them in to my listings including my wholesale listings and improve them. That’s a smart move for it. And you can save 50 bucks by going to solar labs dotcom scope for its scope and then use the code momentum. Use that code and save that money. And I just thank them Jeff and the team and Brandon just amazing group of what they’re doing. Man they’re just so supportive of what I do. E-commerce momentum dotcom e-commerce momentum dotcom. Take care.

Cool voice guy:                  [01:10:41]               Thanks for listening to the e-commerce momentum as Tomoe was mentioned today and we found that e-commerce momentum don’t come under the surface of numbers. Please remember to subscribe and like us on iTunes.

 

Stephen-Peterson

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