The Young Entrepreneur

Let’s start with a little bit about your background. You immigrated to the US from Russia at a young age with your family. What was that experience like? And how has it influenced your business journey?

Well, it’s influenced quite a bit, because living in Russia, you’re not exposed to capitalism, you’re not exposed to the opportunity to kind of work hard and maybe earn the fruits of your labor. And so at an early age, I started doing entrepreneurial things, because I knew that was sort of the American way from a huge paper route when I was young, to starting a small business that grew into sort of a medium sized business for a teenager, selling sports memorabilia. So, the experience really influenced by a desire to seek entrepreneurial opportunities.

And your entrepreneurial ambition started early, as you said, you had come up with a sports memorabilia company when you were still a teenager. How did you come up with that idea in the first place?

Well, you saw kids in the neighborhood buying and trading baseball cards, particularly. And what I noticed is that often if they wanted to get rid of duplicates, or ones that they didn’t want anymore, they would go to dealers and sell them, and the dealers would buy them for let’s say, $5, and then resell them for 10. I thought, well, that’s a pretty interesting way to do things. Maybe I could become a dealer and start reselling cards, and I did exactly that. I got a license to resell in New York and then wound up setting up at different conferences and shows, and it gave me my first really foray into what it is to focus on customers, focus on customer value creation, hustle, work hard, and get something out of it as well.