#248 Dave Stack — Riches in Niches and Marketplace Development

Dave Stack [00:00:00]:
All these businesses I run, I'm a solopreneur. So a one person company, everybody's wanting to scale and get lots of employees and millions and millions of dollars in revenue and the chart that keeps going up like that. And for for a one person company, I don't need to have hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues and 20 or 40 or 100 employees. If I can do it, do it all just like the tagline is riches in the niches. My dad used to always say another thing he always said was keep it up, keep it small and keep it all. So I kind of like that welcome

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:34]:
to the Lay of the Land podcast where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host Jeffrey Stern and today I had the real pleasure of speaking with Dave Stack. Dave is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder of Music Stack, one of the early online marketplaces for rare and out of print music, which he began building out of his dorm room 30 years years ago in the early days of the commercial Internet. Over the years he has gone on to build a portfolio of niche vertical marketplaces under the banner of vertical commerce, including Music Stack, Bearpile Reborns and BJD Collectors, which has grown to facilitate tens of millions in gross merchandise sales. In our conversation, Dave and I explore how a love of music, of coding and of selling turned into one of the Internet's early marketplace businesses, and how he kept following overlooked opportunities into passionate collector and creator communities that most people would never think to serve, like lifelike baby dolls and handmade teddy bears. We talk about why niche marketplaces can be so powerful, how trust and community become part of the product itself, the leverage that AI now affords a solo founder, and why Dave chose an intentionally lean and independent path rather than the conventional startup playbook of scale. More than anything, this is a conversation about building durable Internet businesses, staying authentic to yourself and designing life around work that you genuinely love. Dave is thoughtful, unconventional and deeply true to his own path and I really enjoyed our conversation.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:14]:
Please enjoy. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance, headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio. Roundstone shares Lay of the Land Same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our community's entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders. Since 2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising healthcare costs, helping employers offer affordable, high quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the Voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO, Mike Schroeder. Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation, and community to be the cornerstones of progress. To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per employee per year healthcare costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com Roundstone Insurance built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland Sometimes I think about what the title for an episode might be in advance of us having a conversation, trying to capture the spirit of themes that I imagine we might discuss.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:33]:
And when I was thinking through what I know about your experience and journey, as we've talked about it before, the idea that I found compelling and myself coming back to was the old riches and niches aphorism and that some of the best opportunities are often hiding in corners of the market that so many people dismiss, misunderstand, overlook, never take seriously enough to serve well or even at all. But you've spent a career as an entrepreneur, I think, understanding and exploring the value that is hidden in those pockets. And it's awesome. And I'm super excited to have you here to talk about it and really just wanted to ground our conversation in that idea and maybe as a starting point, just kind of explore that topic. All right, so what do you feel draws you to those kinds of opportunities that so many other people will never even consider?

Dave Stack [00:04:36]:
Yeah, I think a lot of people don't even, don't even realize they're out there. And honestly, I think, I think, I mean, I kind of stumbled into these, so I can't say that I really pursued them and looked for a weird niche that no one has heard of. It just kind of organically happened and I kind of went along with it and it just kind of snowballed and kept getting bigger and bigger. And, you know, I got a little corner of the Internet that, you know, captive audience that keeps coming back for more.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:08]:
So how do you stumble into these, maybe take us through, if you kind of reflect on, on a few of these and even maybe before that, you know, what kind of precedes it. When do you first feel you felt like your entrepreneurial instinct?

Dave Stack [00:05:22]:
Oh, well, you know, I, I've always been a lifelong music lover. Been addicted to buying, you know, vinyl and CDs, you know, pretty much my whole life and through high school, always dreamed of having a record store and I thought it would be cool. But, you know, as the, as the Internet came along and it's just a lot, a lot of overhead and it's not really that glamorous of a job. You know, maybe it is when you're in high school, but you know, in college I would buy records down at the record shop and then some of them I would like and some of them I wouldn't. And the ones that I didn't like, I would sell on the Internet. And you know, this was in the days before the world Wide web was around. So it was more like a text based forums that were out on, called Usenet newsgroups. And I would, I would list vinyl records for sale and I kind of developed a captive audience of people that every week would kind of look forward to what I had for sale and I would sell it to them and in turn get some more money so I could go out and you know, support my habit or my addiction.

Dave Stack [00:06:22]:
And that kind of snowballed into me creating, you know, a website for selling vinyl records and CDs. And that's kind of where I got my launch. And you know, music, I'm very passionate about it. I love coding and it puts you together and you know, if you can make money from it, that's even better. So I started that business. So that, that was kind of where the heart of it all all began. And the other businesses in my other marketplaces that are, you know, more, more niche kind of evolved from the music stack site. I have a neighbor that had a teddy bear shop, like a physical store, which she would sell handmade teddy bears.

Dave Stack [00:07:02]:
And this is around the year 2000. And she saw what I was doing with my music site and saw how it was, you know, back back then it was pretty cutting edge where the sellers could go in and update their own pages and you know, take care of their inventory and orders. And around that time most websites were just very static and HTML based. She was like, hey, can you create something like that for my website so I don't have to pay my HTML guy, you know, a hundred dollars an hour to, you know, add a picture or change a price. And so I created a little system, a content management system back then, which was like several years before that Word was even around or you know, WordPress was around and allowed her to update her website easily so she wouldn't have to pay out. She could add items and change prices. And I created the software and when I was ready to roll it out for her, she had lost interest in the project. And you know me here, I spent three months working on this and I was really excited to launch it because we kind of had an agreement where I was going to get a cut of the revenue and it all just kind of fell apart and she never used it.

Dave Stack [00:08:12]:
And I chased her down for like two months, just saying, hey, let's, let's get this thing going. We can make some money here. But it never really worked out and she kind of moved on. And, you know, since I had spent several months working on the project, I didn't want to let it just go to waste. So I said, you know what, I might as well turn this into a marketplace like what I'm doing with the music site. And so that is what became my website, BearPile, which is a handmade teddy bear marketplace. And, you know, the week that I launched it, a week and a half, I had over 400 users that had signed up and were happy to sell their items direct to the consumers. And of course, the neighbor, once she saw that she was not too happy because suddenly they didn't need to use, you know, sell a wholesale price to her so she could turn around and sell it on her, her website.

Dave Stack [00:08:58]:
They could essentially just sell it direct. You know, basically it's a mini version of what Etsy is, you know, four years before Etsy was around. And then, you know, how I stumbled into the handmade doll website business. One of my teddy bear artists also did handmade dolls and said, dave, I really love what you're doing here with the bearpile site. Can you create something like that so, you know, us handmade doll artists can sell our dolls? And I said, yeah, sure, why not? You know, So I literally cut and pasted the end of the whole website and pretty much everywhere where it said teddy bear. I changed the word doll and, you know, tweaked it in a few places. And, you know, in a short amount of time, I had a doll site up and going. And that's kind of how I fell into these niches.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:40]:
What drew you to the, the Internet in the first place? I mean, early to E commerce, early to the Internet. Like, what did you see in this so far ahead of so many other people?

Dave Stack [00:09:50]:
You know, I've just always been into computers. You know, When I was 12 years old, I got my Commodore 64 and I'd stay up till 3am writing video games and learning to program. And I think it was just an evolution. You know, ever Since I was 6 years old, I've always been selling stuff. And I started when I was 6, I would sell golf balls on the golf course back to the, to the people that were golfing. And then, you know, gradually, a few years Later I would garbage pick things and resell them at flea markets. And then I'd sell things out of my, my locker at school. Candy and gum.

Dave Stack [00:10:29]:
And selling was just kind of part of my nature. I, you know, if I wasn't into computers, I'd probably be a salesperson. So along comes, you know, the Internet, you know, in the late 80s, you know, he had email and I was really into the music thing and buying and selling music. So it was kind of just an extension of, you know, what, what I did is I, you know, bought things, buy low, sell high, that sort of thing. And yeah, so the music, you know, anything you can sell, you can make money from.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:58]:
What do you see as like the through line that ties your, your career together? Or do you not like, think about it in that, in that context, what do you feel is motivating you?

Dave Stack [00:11:09]:
You know, I think I'm intrinsically motivated. You know, no one has to really tell me what to do. And I'm always seeking things that, you know, can, can turn profit. And you know, you wake up in the morning with an idea and you're like, okay, let me see if I can work on that. And you just kind of manifest it and you go with it. And sometimes things work, sometimes things don't. And yeah, I mean, I just, I mean, I love coding and I love making money. And so, you know, he puts two together and the Internet's the perfect vehicle for making that happen.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:42]:
So let's just take Music Stack for a moment. You know, started out of your dorm room, still in College, now approaching 30 years, you know, three decades later of the business.

Dave Stack [00:11:55]:
That's wild to hear that, right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:58]:
I mean, first off, congratulations. But there, there's longevity to, to all the companies that, that you've been building. And what do you think explains that kind of longevity in Internet business? Because it really isn't the, the norm. You know, most, most of these companies certainly started at that era of the Internet are, are just not around today.

Dave Stack [00:12:18]:
Yeah, well, I, I think the, the fact that they're primarily is because I'm very passionate about what I do. And I mean, I still love music 30, 40 years later and it's a great vehicle for me to listen to music and sell it and profit from it. So yeah, I think being passionate about it is one thing and I think another thing is all these businesses I run, I'm a solopreneur, so a one person company and they're all lifestyle businesses. And you know, a lot of times lifestyle businesses kind of get a bad Rap because, you know, everybody's, you know, wanting to scale and get lots of employees and you know, millions and millions of dollars in revenue and you know, the chart that keeps going up like that. And for, for a one person company, you know, I don't need to have, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues and you know, 20 or 40 or 100 employees. If I can do it, do it all, you know, just like the tagline, you know, there's riches and the niches. My dad used to always say, another thing he always said was keep it up, keep it small and keep it all. So I kind of like that, that saying as well.

Dave Stack [00:13:32]:
You know, if you're just a one person operation, you know, you just gotta sustain yourself. And you know, if I'm passionate about it, it's easy, easy for me to work on it. I enjoy doing it. And if it continues to make money, why would you stop if you're doing something you love?

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:48]:
I think it's, it's. There is a narrative today that is increasingly common. I'm hearing it from more places and we'll for sure talk about AI, but it's kind of a reversion to this more conventional startup playbook where you don't stay lean, where you don't stay independent, where you chase scale. It's kind of now been made clear to people how much one person is capable of doing with the leverage of technology. You were like 30 years ahead of this trend of the power of solo entrepreneurship.

Dave Stack [00:14:30]:
I think, you know, I'm just being true to myself and it's simple. And you know, I've learned a lot from watching other people in business and it feels like, you know, every time I've seen someone go into business with a partner, it just goes down in flames and it just complicates things if they, if they're not as passionate as you are, you know, you kind of start to resent the other partner. And it's just, you know, if you can do everything yourself, you know, why, why take on a partner things you're not good at? Why give away equity in your company when you can just hire out for that sort of thing? I think a lot of people go into business with a partner because they're lonely or scared. And you know, for me, these were all just kind of like projects that I did. You know, I didn't plan for them to be running for 30 years or to grow as big as they did. They just kind of snowball. You start with a little small project and you just keep Adding to it and I think just being persistent and showing up every day and, you know, adding more and fixing bugs and listening to your customers, it just naturally grows.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:33]:
When we were last talking about the kind of nature of this work, one thing that stuck with me was how centered to all of it trust and community are as part of the platform, part of the, part of the business, part of really everything across all the things that you're doing. And I love if you could just riff for a little bit on how you think about community as part of these niche marketplaces and trust and the kind of interconnection of all those. Because I, I, I appreciated hearing your perspective on it last time.

Dave Stack [00:16:09]:
Yeah, that is one common thread through all the marketplaces. You know, when you're buying and selling online, you have to have trust because, you know, you don't know who you're dealing with on the other end. And nobody wants to feel unsafe or they're just sending their money off and hoping that something might show up. So that is definitely something I focus on in each of the marketplaces. And you know, you do that by, you know, having feedback systems where people can rank their purchases and you know, what they think of the other seller and you kind of get ratings. So that helps to build trust. And then, you know, on the platforms, since all my niches are essentially collectible hobby type niches, everyone who's involved in these things, you know, they're very passionate about what they do too, and they like to share what they're working on with other people that are in the space and the hobbies. And so what I try to do on my sites is kind of emulate what happens in the real world.

Dave Stack [00:17:10]:
You know, if you get together at your church or, you know, community center and you're, you're sewing with your friends that also sew, you sit around, you talk about sewing and different things that happen. I try to do the same thing here with my sellers. I give them a internal forum on the websites where just the sellers can talk with one another and ask questions and kind of go over problems. And while technically all the sellers on the platforms are technically competitors to one another, bringing it into a community area, it kind of makes them all feel that they're in the same boat together, working on a common problem, stamping out fraud, trying to get more sales, streamlining, keeping prices lower on packaging and shipping, and tips and tricks that you can learn only from, you know, talking with others. So creating this online community component is a central part to all my marketplaces that Help make the marketplaces sticky, keep people coming back, you know, for more, because they get value out of it, and it helps them to become better sellers in the end.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:19]:
There's. There's. The Internet today has also kind of evolved in many ways where the. The communities that have developed are. Are often not the. The. The most friendly, the most helpful, the most kind. And I'm curious because, again, I feel like the specificity of.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:40]:
Of your communities are. Are so distinct from kind of the broader pockets of the Internet that you really get these. This aggregation of real collectors and enthusiasts that care deeply about the problem, the product, the space. I'm just curious at both, like, how you've seen those kind of interpersonal relationships evolve within the communities over time and if it. If it feels materially different today than it did 30 years ago.

Dave Stack [00:19:08]:
No, I'd say the communities, you know, they're very strong and similar to how they were back then. 1. One of the things that, you know, that with my communities is that creates a lot of value is, you know, I don't. I moderate all the communities and make sure that there's no funny business or bullying or BS that goes on with them. So the minute something like that starts, I kind of tamp down on that. And I think a lot of the members appreciate that because everybody wants to come and get value out of a community. They don't want to just sit around and listen to people complain and attack one another. So when that starts happening, you know, I have methods that, you know, pull them aside, just say, hey, you know, cut it out here.

Dave Stack [00:19:51]:
This is not what ARC performs for. And I have some basic rules like, you know, not allowed to talk about politics. It's a seller's platform. So everything needs to relate to selling music or teddy bears or dolls. So it's going to kind of have the, you know, the core focus of, you know, why. Why we're here. And if you want to, you know, talk about your puppy and that sort of thing, you know, go on Facebook or Instagram for that kind of stuff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:13]:
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Jeffrey Stern [00:20:50]:
Complexity can become clarity. To learn more please Visit or call 216-464-6266. Today Sentity Partners proud to be recognized as one of the top financial advisory firms in the country. As a solo entrepreneur, how do you manage all the different aspects of the business? What do you think about marketing? Obviously you have hands on engineering, but business development tax, you have to do everything. And so I'm, I'm like literally curious what your stack looks like. Like how do you handle the actual day to day operations across all these companies that you have simultaneously going?

Dave Stack [00:21:34]:
Well, you know, without knowing anything about what I do, you'd think that I'd be like super, super busy. But it's quite actually the opposite. You know, all these systems that, you know, that I created, if I'm doing my job right, I make it so I can take myself out of the equation and I want them to run kind of on their own for the most part. So, you know, a lot of these systems, especially, you know, being built up over 30 years, you know, I find that if I'm getting asked, you know, the same questions over and over or the same problems that tells me that, you know, I'm not doing something right with my system where, you know, people aren't understanding how to use it or it's a common problem. So, you know, I need to either change the interface or, you know, the flow of how something works so it can be more streamlined without them having to come to me. So, you know, the marketplaces themselves, they run themselves. I mean I literally, I can spend as little as five minutes a day on them if I have to because, you know, the sellers upload their inventory, the buyers come and order it, the sellers process their orders. So there's really no reason to get me involved unless there's some sort of problem.

Dave Stack [00:22:44]:
And like I said, if a problem happens over and over, I figure a way to streamline it so they don't need to contact me. As far as like moderation of the forums, you know, once, once you've been in my, my system for a while, you learn very quickly that, you know, you're there to help be helpful and add value and not cause problems. So most of the time I don't have to get involved. But people can flag various messages and it's very easy for me to take care of things, you know, in an almost automated fashion. So it doesn't really require that much. Most of my time is actually spent thinking about, you know, new features that I can add to the site how I can add more value and, you know, continue it to grow, you know, if I feel like working that day, so which, you know, I'm kind of addicted to doing all this stuff. So unless I have something better going on that day, you'll find me in front of the computer, you know, coding out a new feature.

Jeffrey Stern [00:23:39]:
The automation component feels fundamental to the durability in a lot of ways of the businesses.

Dave Stack [00:23:46]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, if I had to be there every day, you know, do. It would, if I had to be in the trenches, it would be hard to do new development and it would just, it wouldn't scale very well at all because it's, you know, there's only one of me. And you know, I've got four companies I'm running. It would be very hard to keep things going smoothly and it wouldn't be as much fun. It'd be a lot of work.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:07]:
So with that all said, you know, you mentioned when you feel like working, which is awesome, but how do you think about how to spend your time, what to work on, what you feel yourself curious about, just like your orientation around where, what's, what's got your, your attention at the moment.

Dave Stack [00:24:28]:
So, you know, I mean, like, like I said earlier, I'm like intrinsically motivated. You know, I want to have the best marketplaces out there. I want to create the best tools and the best experiences for the sellers and the buyers. So, you know, a lot of times I wake up in the morning, I'm just like, okay, what am I going to work on today? You know, what's important? You know, if I'm working on a project, you know, I know what I'm doing. But a lot of times projects really don't take that long to work on. So a lot of times I get ideas from my users. You know, I listen to my customers and they tell me what's important to them. And so that's where I get a lot of my ideas of what needs to be worked on.

Dave Stack [00:25:06]:
And you can never have enough security and trust. So that's one of my big focuses. So I'm always trying to create tools and add in functions so the sellers can vet the buyers and vice versa. But yeah, anytime there's problems or if people contact me and they're confused about something, that's an opportunity for me to improve the system. And, you know, that could be something I work on that day.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:27]:
You mentioned how you stumbled into most of the niches that you found yourself building these companies around. Do you Find yourself exploring other niches, looking for the right marketplace opportunity. And how do you go about seeking those out as opposed to by chance encountering them?

Dave Stack [00:25:48]:
Yeah, you know, I do think about other ideas and I get people all the time, hey Dave, I love what you're doing, you know, with these dolls. You know, could you do the same thing for car parts or collectible cards or, you know, this or that? And you know, while the answer is probably yes, you know, I could tailor my software to do that. I've learned just by going through this four times now that the software component, especially with AI nowadays is actually the easiest part of it all. Creating the marketplace and getting it up and going pretty simple. The next, the hardest part about all this is kind of a chicken and the egg problem is getting sellers that want to come and sell on your site and buyers to come and buy from those sellers. And you know, if you, if you have, Just because you have a bunch of sellers doesn't mean you're going to have a lot of buyers. And sellers aren't going to stick around very long, spending their time adding products and, you know, hoping that sales are going to come in and if they don't, they leave. And how do you get buyers to come to a site, especially when you're a one person operation.

Dave Stack [00:26:51]:
And I spend zero on marketing and ads advertising. So anytime I go into a niche, I make sure that it's a niche that people are very passionate about and that they talk amongst themselves. So I think that's where I have the best success for growing a marketplace. A niche marketplace is something that people are passionate about and they're going to tell their friends if they like the experience that they have. So that's, I wouldn't consider any other marketplace. Yeah, it's just too hard.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:23]:
How do you then go about circumventing or getting over that kind of catch 22 chicken or egg problem of building network effects? Building both sides of the equation.

Dave Stack [00:27:36]:
It's, it's a real challenge. And you know, I've been successful with, with my marketplaces so far, but it doesn't happen overnight. One of the things that I do is I give everything away for free for the first two to three years. And if you can't give a service away for free and have people use it, there's no way you're gonna be able to charge for it. So if people have, you know, zero risk in trying it, you know, they're more likely to try it. But when you're first starting, you know, you gotta hit the pavement. You gotta reach out, you gotta find a bunch of the sellers, reach out, hype it up, tell em about this awesome new marketplace or it could help you sell your products. It's not gonna cost you anything, there's no risk.

Dave Stack [00:28:17]:
Please come give it a try and if you like it, please tell other people about it. And in my experience it's taken you know, two to three years in order for this to kind of the chicken and the egg equation to kind of where it's kind of self sustaining where it kind of starts to get some traction and grow.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:36]:
You mentioned this, the captive audience which I feel kind of dovetails on that. The, the stickiness. Once you have built sufficient network effects. How do you think about competition? You know, are there, are there comparable of these niche marketplaces out there that, that you, you encounter or find yourself up against?

Dave Stack [00:28:59]:
Well, you're always going to have competition in life. So you know, if you don't have any competition, usually there's not a market for what you're selling is my experience. I, you know, some of the largest competition I have is you know, ebay and Etsy. So I end up getting a lot of my sellers and buyers from both those marketplaces and a lot of them are kind of happy to learn about my site once they learn about it because those big marketplaces are very bloated and you know, they sell everything under the sun and you know, there's no community really in there and a lot of fraud and fakes and at the end of the day the fee structures on my systems are a lot more economical than what they charge on Etsy and ebay. So when they find out about me, they're happy to come out. And I've had, you know, many of my customers, they, they, they just stop selling altogether on ebay and Etsy when they find out what I have and especially if I'm providing them enough sales. But there is, you know, competition out there. There are other niche marketplaces so that's always a good driving force to want to make me to continue to improve my marketplace and make it better by adding more features and more tools and driving more traffic to the site.

Dave Stack [00:30:16]:
Because at the end of the day sellers really aren't that loyal. You know, they go wherever the sales are. So if your sales start, you know, start to drop, you're probably going to lose some sellers to other marketplaces or vice versa. And you know, thankfully my sites do pretty well and you know, I've been retaining the sellers and growing them but you know, I feel that like the pie is big enough for everyone to get a slice. So, you know, even though there's other competition out there, not everyone shops, you know, at my site they might shop at other sites and vice versa.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:46]:
You've mentioned AI as a material change maker in this. Your ability to build the features that you're thinking through, the speed with which you can address them, and even the joy that you get out of this whole process. Maybe just speak a bit to how you've thought about AI. I think both interestingly as a solo entrepreneur and the leverage it affords you, but also in the broader kind of technological arc of having been so deeply in the Internet since the early days and you know, where, where you see the state of it today and just your perspective on all of that.

Dave Stack [00:31:24]:
Well, I definitely welcome AI. I mean, I think it's amazing, especially being, you know, a one person company, you can really leverage it and get a lot more work done a lot quicker. And you know, having done this for over 30 years, you know, some of my skills aren't as sharp as they used to be and I'm a little bit lazier than I used to be. So AI fits in really well that I get to learn a lot from it and it outputs great code that I can use. And the fact that I am a, you know, engineer and a software developer, I understand what it's spitting out and so I'm not just vibe coding. So it, it really helps me to work on my projects and get things done in a much more efficient, quicker manner. So yeah, I'm all for it. It's definitely changing landscape.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:14]:
It certainly has. That's the understatement. Maybe just speak a bit to the scale of the marketplaces and kind of the business side of it. You know, niche I think might suggest a certain smallness to it, but at the same time I think you've been able to, to connect a lot of people over the years and so just, just like how you think about the growth of these businesses over time and how, how you kind of measure them from the business side.

Dave Stack [00:32:43]:
Yeah, I guess niche is a relative term. You know, could be micro niche or mega niche. You know, it's hard to say, but you know, at the end of the day, I obviously want to get as many customers and as many sellers as I can on my websites. But you know, just to give you an idea, on the music site, you know, I get close to 70,000 people a day that come to the website looking for music. And over the last 30 years I've done almost 3 million transactions. So you know, when it sounds like that, it doesn't sound as niche, you know, just guy working out of his house kind of thing. But you know, relative to Amazon, you know, that is a micro niche. So I guess everything is a relative term here.

Dave Stack [00:33:25]:
You know, my doll site, I get about 7,000 people a day that come to that site and we sell between 50 and 60 dolls every day on that website. So, you know, for a one person business, I feel that's a good, healthy marketplace.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:41]:
What, what sticks with you as some of the biggest lessons you've learned along the way? What have you changed your mind about as you've gone through this and with those as a solo entrepreneur, who are you bouncing ideas off of beyond yourself as part of this process?

Dave Stack [00:33:58]:
Well, the great thing, you know, even though I run it's a solo business, I feel like I'm not in this alone. You know, all my sellers and my buyers on my site are essentially my sounding board. So I have thousands of people that, you know, I get to, you know, be my guinea pigs and experience, you know, experiment on so I can create software. And I roll it out, you know, very quickly. A lot of the times, some of the times, you know, it's 80% working instantly. I get, you know, feedback, hey, this isn't working or this doesn't work quite right. So I go through, you know, very quick iterations and quickly, you know, usually in matter of a couple of hours, hammer out bugs and little quirks here. So I would say listening to my customers is the best way to do that.

Dave Stack [00:34:45]:
And you know, the fact that this is, these are niche businesses, collectibles, you know, I'm not doing banking, so it's not that big of a deal if I roll something out and you know, somebody, you know, is having a hard time, you know, adding something to the cart for five minutes, like, okay, it's not the end of the world, I get it fixed and then, you know, the system becomes stronger, you know, once that bug or, you know, that feature has been implemented. So there's definitely growing pains along the way. And you know, all the sellers on my site, you know, one of the things that I learned a long time ago is to be authentic and just be yourself. So everybody knows me as Dave. You know, the admin of the sites, they all know that I'm a single person. And you know, I, a lot of times I'll send them emails with my pictures, tell them about my holidays and what I did over the weekend. I really personalize, I Feel like I know a lot of these people because they've been with me for, you know, years, decades in some cases. So, you know, I get to know them, they get to know me, and, you know, we're both, we're all in this together, and we all want to sell more products.

Dave Stack [00:35:53]:
And the fact that they know that I'm just a single person working on this, they don't expect everything to be 100% working, or they're more forgiving if it doesn't always work out of the gate. And in the end, a lot of times, a lot of my users are older and they don't like change, so if I roll out some new change, they all hate it out of the gate. But then, you know, I take time explaining on the forum, like, the benefits and, you know, how to use it. And then, you know, slowly they come around, and usually in the end they're like, oh, yeah, this is great. We really like this. You know, once in a while, it just doesn't fly at all. And then I have to revert back and be like, okay, you guys win. This was a terrible idea.

Dave Stack [00:36:40]:
But that's how it goes. And so it's, you know, a lot of iteration and a lot of, you know, sounding board back and forth. And, you know, they help me debug and give me ideas for improvements. So it doesn't really feel like I'm in it alone. Alone.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:58]:
Yeah, I imagine over the years there may have been pressures from folks to lean into, trying to scale it, to try and maybe fund it, to accelerate that kind of growth.

Dave Stack [00:37:11]:
Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:12]:
You talked a lot so far about just being authentic to yourself and your conviction in that. Like, where does that come from? Like, why? Why not?

Dave Stack [00:37:22]:
Well, like, like you said, I, I, I want to be authentic and true to myself. And at the end of the day, yeah, this is, you know, a job or a career for me, but it's also a lifestyle business. And, you know, I want to live my life how I want to live my life, and that means that, you know, I can do what I want, when I want. And, you know, the minute I start taking on funding or I start scaling and bringing in employees, suddenly a lot of that goes out the window because I have a lot more responsibility. I have to answer to people. You know, I've got to get consensus with my partners, all that kind of stuff. And I, I really don't want to do that. I'd rather just, you know, do what I want to do when I want to do it, if I want to do it.

Dave Stack [00:38:05]:
So that works up really well with me. And you know, you know, I've had opportunities where I've could have scaled. Like for example, on the music site a long, long time ago, one of the things I could have done to really scale it was right now. When people do transactions, when you make a payment, you're literally paying directly. The buyer pays directly to the seller. You know, what's popular in a lot of the marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon is you pay Amazon with your credit card and then Amazon gives the seller their payment minus their cut. Everything kind of goes through Amazon. And nice for me to implement something like that.

Dave Stack [00:38:45]:
You know, it would. And this was back in the day when it was a lot harder to get merchant accounts. Nowadays anyone can get a merchant account, but in order to process credit cards, it makes for a nice feature to have something like that if you're not able to get a merchant account for yourself. But behind the scenes, what it takes to do all that, like, it would not be something that could be easily automated. You know, especially when you take into account fraud and returns and all the headaches that come along with when transactions don't go as planned. You need to have, you know, multiple people or that would essentially be my job all day taking care of that upset customers. And I didn't want to do that. You know, there's opportunity where I could have earned, you know, a few more percentages on each of the sales, made more money.

Dave Stack [00:39:35]:
It's just not where I want to spend my time, you know, going through each transaction when there's a problem now. And since I didn't do that, you know, the buyers transact directly with the seller and if there's a problem, you know, the buyer and the seller work it out and if they can't work it out, they go to PayPal and file a dispute. So I'm pretty much left out of that process. And, you know, I think that was a good decision on my part in order to keep, you know, the lifestyle business, just a single person business with, with less headaches. So it's not, it's not always about making as much money as you can. It's, you know, I want to keep my lifestyle how I want to run it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:14]:
Yeah. And is that how you think about success? How do you think about success?

Dave Stack [00:40:20]:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, the other day, you know, a job or career is just a means to an end. You know, I love what I do, but, you know, try not to let it define me too much. I want to make money and pay my bills just like everybody else. But, you know, I don't want to sit in front of computer all day. So if I have opportunity to go outside and, you know, do something nice when the weather's nice, I'd rather do that and, you know, delay working on some computer stuff till maybe in the evening. The weather's, when the sun's not out. And if you have lots of employees or you're working a 9 to 5, it's not so easy to do that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:54]:
Yeah, the autonomy of, of your, your.

Dave Stack [00:40:57]:
Yeah. So I've been very fortunate to, you know, be able to design my career, my job, and my skill sets around, you know, a lifestyle that, that works well for me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:07]:
Absolutely. It's, it's amazing. What, what do you find yourself most excited about today?

Dave Stack [00:41:13]:
Gosh, that's a hard question to answer. You know, I enjoy like, like the AI stuff is very exciting because it allows me to scale a lot and, you know, get frees up my time even more. So I guess, you know, working less is, is what I'm more excited about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:31]:
Right.

Dave Stack [00:41:32]:
After doing it for 30 years, there's not too many nights where I'm banging out code to three in the morning like I used to in my earlier years. So, you know, keeping things streamlined and just kind of running in the background and then, you know, just working when I want to work and, you know, focusing more on family and friends and, you know, spending time where it really matters the most. You know, that's, that's kind of what's most important to me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:55]:
What, what are some of your favorite stories or at least the ones that come to mind from within the community that you've experienced and curated ultimately?

Dave Stack [00:42:07]:
Well, I have some interesting stories, like for example, with my teddy bear site, bearpile.com right around 2022, I think it was right at the start of the Russian Ukraine war. Basically my, my revenues and my seller base pretty much got cut in half overnight because a large majority of my sellers on my teddy bear site are from Russia. So, you know, a lot of the artists over there are amazing artists. And you know, I'd say close to 70% of my artists were out of Russia. And when that war happened or started, you know, we put sanctions on Russia and suddenly, you know, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, any way that you could pay or transact money, you know, to or from Russia was, you know, pretty much stopped overnight. That was kind of, you know, kick in the, in the pants there overnight. People are like, oh man, what am I going to do here? The sales have go dropped in half, and nobody, you know, they want to sell, but they can't. So, you know, quickly I added, you know, cryptocurrency, so people can transact in cryptocurrency.

Dave Stack [00:43:21]:
You know, some of the sellers started doing that, but not too many. You know, a lot of my sellers are older and they don't understand crypto, and a lot. Most people don't really buy in crypto that much, so it really hasn't helped that much. So, yeah, that's. That's one story that wasn't so pleasant. And, you know, I'm still. Still reeling from that here. And if that ever.

Dave Stack [00:43:43]:
The sanctions ever get lifted, the site ought to bounce back because, you know, they still want to sell on my site. It's just I can't do that right now. But, you know, one of the nice things, you know, about having four different marketplaces is that, you know, one may be up and the other may be down. While now, right when that was happening, you know, the bear site kind of took a hit. My doll site, it's kind of been on a slow incline, and Covid actually really accelerated it. A lot of people suddenly said, hey, I'm stuck at home. I want to start painting dolls and selling them. So my doll site totally picked up.

Dave Stack [00:44:23]:
And, you know, by the end of the year, the revenues kind of evened out. So ultimately, my income kind of remained pretty level. So that was kind of a cool byproduct of that instead of taking a big hit. And, you know, to this day, the doll site keeps growing, and right now it's my. My largest site for, you know, making profit and having people use it. So. But yeah, I get a kick out of the doll site because it's the doll site that I have these dolls, they're called reborn dolls, and they're lifelike baby dolls. So, you know, a lot of times you might just think they're like porcelain dolls or rag dolls or whatever, but these are like, they look like actual babies.

Dave Stack [00:45:02]:
So it's definitely an interesting niche that's not for everybody. And, you know, a lot of people think they're kind of creepy when they first see them, but, you know, I've kind of drawn a, you know, a special liking to them here and more the people that, you know, make them and sell them. And, you know, I'm going in on 15 years of running that website, and just last month, you know, I said, well, you know, I've been doing this 15 years, and, you know, it does really well. And, you Know, I. I probably should start taking this more serious. So I actually went out last month to la. They had a west. West coast dolls show specifically just for the reborn dolls.

Dave Stack [00:45:46]:
And I got, you know, up until now, 15 years, I had never even held one of these or, you know, touched one of them or seen them in person. And so when I got out to this convention out on the West Coast, I got to, you know, hold these dolls and meet a lot of the people that have been selling on my website for many years. And it was super cool. And, you know, I kind of felt like a minor celebrity when I was

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:10]:
there because everyone knows Dave.

Dave Stack [00:46:13]:
Everyone knows me because I've talked to him and helped him over the years. And it was, you know, it wasn't awkward at all. I thought it would be really weird, but it was really fun. And, you know, I'm looking to go forward to going to more of these doll shows and meeting more of my sellers and the buyers, you know, spreading goodwill and just letting people know that, like, hey, this Dave guy is real. You know, he's not just some techie in his basement helping you sell your doll. So they got me as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:40]:
That's like the value of the community right there.

Dave Stack [00:46:42]:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's really energized me and it makes me. I want to even focus on it more and, you know, create more value and bring people together more. And I see the joy. And so many people came up to me at the show and thanked me for what I'm doing and, oh, if it wasn't for your website, you're my sole source of income. And so I'm really appreciative and it's really great to meet you and all that kind of stuff. So it was.

Dave Stack [00:47:06]:
It was really, really humbling. You know, I didn't realize how. How much people. How much they thought of me. And now they like me, which is kind of unusual. Speaking earlier, we were talking about competitors. There's one competitor in the doll space that used to be a seller on my site, and they thought they could build a better mousetrap. And so they left my site and started a competing website.

Dave Stack [00:47:29]:
And one of their big that trying to tear me down to build up their system. And one of their big talking points was like, oh, this Dave Stack, he doesn't even know what these dolls are like. And you shouldn't trust him because he's just a computer programmer or whatever. And I feel very fortunate that a lot of the women that are my customers, that they're happy that I Don't paint these dolls. Or they like the fact that I'm a techie and that I look after them and I'm looking out for their well being and the security of the website and all the technical stuff that they paid, they don't understand. So that, that was really, really nice to, you know, that they accept me because, you know, with the dolls and the teddy bears, it's, it's 99% all, all women.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:16]:
Oh, wow.

Dave Stack [00:48:17]:
Especially when I started this, you know, I was, you know, 15, 25 years younger in the beginning. They were like, hey, why is this young guy getting into this space? This is really weird. And in the beginning they were a little distrusting, like, okay, is this guy going to scam us somehow or whatever. But I've earned their trust and they, they really respect me over the years. So it's, it's a, a good working relationship. They help me out and I help them out and we both kind of look out for each other.

Jeffrey Stern [00:48:42]:
That's awesome. It's, it's probably an impossible question, but do, do you have a, a favorite amongst all your marketplaces?

Dave Stack [00:48:50]:
So it used to be the music site for probably 20, 25 years and I was just so into it, but lately that's kind of been waning a bit. There's. I have a competitor out there that is honestly just killing it. You've got 30 people working for them full time and they're just, they're blowing it out of the water. So it's a little deflating there that, you know, it's hard to compete as a solo guy. Even though I get my little tiny slice of the pie, it's nice so that that site's kind of just been kind of stagnant there. But the doll site is, it's my favorite one right now. It's growing and the women are really engaged and it's just super fun to, you know, create new features.

Dave Stack [00:49:33]:
I roll them out and I get all sorts of praise or hate. It's very interactive and it's, it's, it's definitely captivating and has my attention these days. So it's kind of fun too. In this last month and a half, these reborn dolls are. A lot of people don't know about them and when they find out about them, like I said, they're either freaked out or intrigued. The media has kind of picked up on it and you know, I've been interviewed by People magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Newsmax, cnn, NBC. So everyone's like intrigued and wanted to know more about these lifelike baby dolls called Reborn Dolls. So it's been kind of a new

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:11]:
added fund, you know, because there's a certain it's worth for people to look them up because the uncanniness and it probably converges with some of the AI humanoid robot stuff going on right now.

Dave Stack [00:50:25]:
You might be freaked out because if you go to reborns.com, you can check it out, but it's all handmade artistry. And once you get past the weirdness of man, these things look just like actual baby dolls. You can appreciate how much time and energy and artistic creativity goes in to creating these dolls to make them look so lifelike. So, I mean, it's really amazing. I mean, there's so much talent on the website. So I, you know, I. I'm humbled by, you know, how much creativity is flowing through my little web platform. So it's pretty cool.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:06]:
Well, a topic I wanted to kind of round us out with here was, was Cleveland, which we've also spent some time discussing before, but just how you think about Cleveland in the context of your own story and journey. And I thought, you know, a brief mention of Plugged in Cleveland, which you had told me about before, would be, oh, yeah, yeah.

Dave Stack [00:51:26]:
I mean, I run the marketplaces and I've been doing that for a long time. But being a serial Internet entrepreneur, I've had several other ventures on the side. You know, a lot of it involving affiliate marketing, lyrics, websites. And Plugged In Cleveland was one of my biggest that I ran. I ran that from 2003 to 2018. And plugged in Cleveland was a place that people could go. It was out before, like, Facebook was around. And so I was kind of doing like, social media, taking pictures and tagging people.

Dave Stack [00:51:58]:
And people could leave comments and connect up and, you know, they could look for real estate and find out about events happening around town. I even had a dating section on there at one point. And so I just had all sorts of sections. And it was purely just a hobby, but it really, a lot of it really connected people through Cleveland. I think at its peak, I had close to eight or nine thousand people a day coming to Plugged in Cleveland looking for, you know, events or real estate or dates or whatever. So that was really cool. And this happened in my younger years when I was going out a lot more. So it was really fun to go out and have people recognize me as like, hey, you're that Plugged In Cleveland guy.

Dave Stack [00:52:37]:
Take my picture. I want to be on your website. So I Did that. And as time went on, Facebook came around@realtor.com and match.com and oh, yeah, I had a Craigslist section where you could buy and sell stuff. And over the years, I really helped a lot of people. But as the national big sites that people were being ran to profit from came about, it's pretty hard to compete with that sort of thing. So once, once the Facebook and Craigslist and, you know, all those were like, the place that everyone went, I kind of like just kind of silently dropped that section of the website. And it wasn't until about 2018 where the site was just basically events.

Dave Stack [00:53:20]:
The national sites, Facebooks of the world, they did a pretty good job. But not until the mid teens of 2000s did they really start coming around to nailing local events. You know, they could get national events, but it was really hard for a national company to tell you about the cool event happening in the secret place in Cleveland. So my site did that very well up until 2018 and finally figured like, okay, we got it all covered and shut it down. So it had a good run and I met tons of people through it and went to lots of good events. And it was a really cool little website.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:56]:
Yeah, it is really cool. I enjoyed kind of going through it.

Dave Stack [00:53:59]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:59]:
Is there. Is there anything you wish we had discussed here that we haven't really touched on yet? That feels particularly important when you reflect on the journey, entrepreneurial or otherwise.

Dave Stack [00:54:10]:
I think we covered it pretty well here. Just trying to be myself here and sitting and coding and feel very fortunate to be able to have made a career out of doing stuff that I love and getting validation by people using it and being able to make a living from it. I mean, I think that's really. I feel very blessed that I've been able to do that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:54:31]:
Absolutely. It's awesome. Well, with that, Dave, I'll ask you our traditional closing question, which is for hidden gem in Cleveland.

Dave Stack [00:54:41]:
Okay. There's so many cool things to do in Cleveland. Probably one of the coolest spots that I like is down downtown, right by Mall C, by the convention center. If you go on the grass there and you just kind of walk towards the stadium and you look over the railing, there's a really cool hidden urban farm there. And, you know, living in Ohio City and having chickens and bees and bunnies and I appreciate that sort of stuff. And you know, right in the heart of downtown, they. They've got chickens and I think they have pigs there and they got beehives and people don't even realize it's there. So if you're downtown, go check that out, you know, on your lunch break.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:22]:
It's a great hidden gem. Well, David, I just want to thank you very much for. For taking the time and sharing a bit about your story and. And being true to yourself. It's awesome.

Dave Stack [00:55:30]:
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me today. It's been fun chatting about my. My websites.

Jeffrey Stern [00:55:35]:
Absolutely. If folks had things they wanted to follow up with you about, learn more about any of it, where. Where would you direct them on the interwebs?

Dave Stack [00:55:45]:
Yeah, you can reach out. You can contact me on my website, davestack.com there's lots of information on there. And all my old pictures from Plugged in Cleveland are on there as well. You can contact me. I love meeting new people. I love talking about, you know, entrepreneurial pursuits. So if you got any ideas and you want to bounce it off a seasoned Internet veteran, I'm happy to talk and give you some ideas or connect you up with the proper people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:13]:
Awesome. Well, thank you, Dave.

Dave Stack [00:56:14]:
All right, thanks again.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:18]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to Jeffrey at layoftheland or find us on Twitter Oddle of the Land or at sternfa J E F E. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on itunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:55]:
The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with the UpCompany LLC at the time of this recording. Unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on this show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next week.