September 12, 2025 • 11 mins
Paul Corvino sits down with Henning Strauss is a visionary leader, entrepreneur, and CEO of STRAUSS, where he oversees the operations of Europe’s leading workwear. STRAUSS has evolved from a catalog-based retailer to a multi-channel powerhouse, boasting four megastores, a flagship store in Venice, California, and one of Germany’s top five e-commerce platforms.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is CEOs you should know with division president of iHeartMedia,
Paul Corvino. Today, I'm here with Brian Lee, the CEO
of Arena Club, a digital first sports card marketplace and
grading service.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Okay, so hey, before we get into the actual interview
and conversation that we're going to have and learn about
your entrepreneurial journey, what I'd like to do first is
a quick Q and a rapid fire where you have
to answer quickly, where you get the mind working and
the mouth moving. You ready to go?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I think, so go ahead, Okay, Skier, beach vacation, beach Beetles,
are Stones, Beatles, Tom Brady or Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan,
Sean Connery or Daniel Craig, Sean Connery, Star Wars or Godfather,
Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Celebrity people say you remind them.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of Brad Pitt.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I just see it right here. We have Red Pitt
in the office today. That's great. So before we learn
a little bit more about Arena Club, which I'm excited
to learn, I'd like to really know what a grading
service is and how it all works. But before we
get into that, let's find that a little bit more
about you and what your journey was and how you
eventually got to become the CEO of this company. I
(01:18):
know you've had other businesses and companies in the past
that have been very successful. So where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I grew up in Orange County, California, in Huntington Beach.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Huntington Beach. We just had our big Wango tango concert
down there in Huntington Beach. All right, and go to college.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Growing up in Orange County. I went to college at
UCLA for undergrad and I stayed there for law school
as well. So seven years straight go UCLA.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Okay, so you went, you graduated law school. Did you
become a lawyer? I did.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I worked at a law firm called Scaton Arps, a
New York based firm focusing on tax law.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
You based in New York.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was based here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, it was a New York firm. And you're working
on tax law. And how long did you do that for?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I did that for a couple of years. Enjoyed it,
enjoyed the the work I was doing, but just wanted
to get a little bit more fulfillment out of what
I was working on, and so I started my first
company called legal zoom dot com with a few friends
of mine.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Okay, you started legal zoom dot com. I didn't realize that. Yeah,
that's very exciting. So how did you start that?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
A partner of mine wanted me to form a corporation
and I formed it and they charged the client over
two thousand dollars. I was like, wow, that only took
five minutes to form, and so I figured we could
automate a lot of the process and put it online.
So it was a very early internet company. This started
in nineteen nine nine, two thousand.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Where'd you get the funding?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
That's a great question. We couldn't get any funding. We tried.
We met with probably thirty or forty venture capital firms
at the time, and everyone said no. And so I
borrowed a little bit of money from my parents, and
my partner who I started the company with, borrowed some
from his parents, and we started that out of my
condo with almost no funding.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So now you've got it set up. You built the process,
you built the product, but people have to know about
the product. Yes, Usually where we come in and we'll
try to sell you. So advertising at that time, and
you guys actually did a lot of advertising.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Did eventually ye with us, that's right. So initially we
just kind of started small. We got very fortunate. We
were not a lot of people know this, but we
were probably one of the top or one of the
first ten advertisers to ever pay for a click online
on online average PA it's called PPC advertising, right, price
per click advertising. That was early days of a company
(03:29):
called Overture based in Pasadena. And what year resist Now,
this would have been two thousand and one, right, two
thousand and one timeframe, And so I stuck twenty dollars
into one account and it was one cent per click
back then, and we sold some wills and that was
the start of legal Zoom.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Wow, that's that's pretty exciting. Yeah, And so how long
did you work there? And what was I was there?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I was at legal Zoom for about ten years as
president and co founder, and we kind of grew that
business and then I left that to start my second company.
Because honestly, it's like, I'm a startup guy. I'm an
entrepreneur at heart, and the most fun days I've had
are the earliest days of a company. Like a few
people gathered around a room making decisions and executing.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I see entrepreneurs so often they sell their company and
then they've got to stay off for a few more
years to get the full payout. Right, It's like those
are the hardest years of their lives.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I see that. But yeah, so for me, it's like
I just always reminisced about the early days of a company,
and so I wanted to get back to that. And
I started a company called Shoe Dazzle with Kim Kardashian
and my wife Mira and my friend MJ and so
we started that one about after ten years of legal zoom,
I started that one, and then we sold that one
(04:44):
to a company called Textile down to Elson Gondo, and
then I started my third company called The Honest Company
with Jessica Alba, and we took that one public, and
now I've started my fourth company.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
That's a pretty exciting exciting run there.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, I know, it's been a I look back in
my career and I just honestly, it's sometimes doesn't feel
real because I've had fun all along the way, and.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Three great successful companies, one right after the other. There
had to be some point along the journey where it
got tough, where you said, this is not going to happen,
and we're not going to be able to make it.
We're in trouble. Our our burn rate is too much.
We're not getting people going tell me when that happened
or if it ever did happen, and what you did.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It happens at every company, no company, I don't care
what company you look at. No company is ever up
into the right forever without roe bumps. And so we've
had I've had plenty of roe bumps at every single
one of those companies, even the company I'm running now.
And you think like, you know, this is my fourth
time around. You think like, Okay, I've learned a lot
(05:50):
from my prior experiences and I'm gonna, you know, avoid
making certain mistakes or whatever. But inevitably you make some
of the same mistakes time and tell me again, it's.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Just human nature, my dating history.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, So basically, you know, robumps happen all the time.
I mean there there are definitely dark days at every
single one of these companies where you wouldn't where you
think that you're not going to make it through. At
Arena Club up until a year and a half ago,
even I wasn't sure if it was going to make it.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Tell us about Arena Club.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So, Arena Club is a it's a trading card platform
and marketplace, so baseball cards, basketball cards so forth, Pokemon
cards even And basically the idea is to bring technology
to this industry. And so we started with grading. And
for the not familiar with grading, you take a card
and you grade the quality of it on a score
(06:39):
of one to ten, ten being the best.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
And then what quality condition of the card.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That's right, the condition of the card, so it's everything
from the centering of the card, the edges, the corners,
and also you know the surface to make sure there's
no creases or scratches on the card.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Or bubble gum stains that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So basically, based on those four criteria, you grade a
card on a scale of one to ten, ten being highest.
Once it's graded, you encapsulate it in hard plastic. That's
it becomes a slab. We call that a slab in
the industry, and so that's what we do. But we
use AI to grade the cards. So it's adding technology
again to this industry. So we grade cards using AI,
(07:23):
and then once the card is graded, at Arena Club.
We actually put that card, we digitize it, put the
digital version on blockchain, and so we use Polygon as
a blockchain, and then once it's digitized, it's put into
your online showroom. Once it's in your showroom, you could buy,
sell and trade it very quickly with other showrooms and
anytime anyone wants their physical card back, we mail it
(07:43):
to them.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Wow. Now you also you buy cards and you sell cards.
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You could buy and sell and trade cards at Arena Club.
The other product that we have is we have a
digital rip product, if you will, so you can rip.
So we call it ripping versus ripping up on a
pack or a box of cards. And so we basically
do these digital packs called slab packs on Arena Club.
And it's a way to click cards. So you could
(08:11):
open a pack of cards online. You don't know what
you're going to get, and you might get something great
that you're going to keep. You might get something that
you want to sell back or put onto the auction exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, the thing about this hobby, we call it the
hobby about opening cards packs of cards. It's always been
about to chase right from the beginning, right. So you
know even back in nineteen fifty two, you know when
people were buying tops cards and so forth, and that
comes with the piece of bubblegum. What were you looking for?
You were looking for Willie May's, you're looking for Mickey Manto,
(08:45):
You're looking for the stars. Right. It's the same Hold
Street today. So if you're ripping a pack of football cards,
you're looking for that Jade and Daniels Rickey card, right,
that one of one, the autographed card or the card
that has his jersey.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Buy that when you buy this box. It could be
cards from twenty years ago or brand new.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Most of them are brand new, right, so modern cards.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Right. How could someone who's looking to buy or sell
cards get in contact with your company?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So you go to Arena club dot com.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Or you can go to aar e na club dot com.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
That's right, a r E n A club dot com.
Or you could go to the app store and download
Arena clubs app.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
What's the next big thing for arena cards?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Oh, I mean Arena club. We're having so much fun,
just growing. We're growing nicely. It's a very exciting time
for the business. We just launched our first television commercial
so that's starting to air, and we're going to start
even more radio advertising.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
That's always that nice rest year.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But yeah, we're definitely adding in more kind of technology
to what we're doing, where we're actually going to start
working on some physical aspects of the business, so more
kind of physical slab packs that we will sell at retail,
but we also looking at card shows and so forth,
and kind of bringing it all together online offline.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Let me ask you if you could have a conversation
with your nineteen twenty year old self just or just
you know, your twenty two year old self just graduating college,
what advice would you give yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I would say, you know what, there's good days and
bad days, and life is always a roller coaster, but
really enjoy the thrills and just know that on on
down days it's going to get better. It's never as
good as it seems, it's never as bad as it seems.
You just got to keep going.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That's always great advice. Well, once again, the name of
the company I had a contact.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Arena Club dot com, a r E n A club
dot com.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Once again, this is Paul Corvino, Division president of iHeartMedia.
I've just had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Lee, the
CEO of Arena Club. Hope you enjoyed the interview and
if you want to get in contact. If you're looking
to buy sell cards, go to arenaclub dot com. Thank
you for listening.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Listen to CEOs you should Know on the iHeartRadio app
This is CEOs you should know with division president of iHeartMedia,
Paul Corvino. Today, I'm here with Brian Lee, the CEO
of Arena Club, a digital first sports card marketplace and
grading service.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Okay, so hey, before we get into the actual interview
and conversation that we're going to have and learn about
your entrepreneurial journey, what I'd like to do first is
a quick Q and a rapid fire where you have
to answer quickly, where you get the mind working and
the mouth moving. You ready to go?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I think, so go ahead, Okay, Skier, beach vacation, beach Beetles,
are Stones, Beatles, Tom Brady or Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan,
Sean Connery or Daniel Craig, Sean Connery, Star Wars or Godfather,
Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Celebrity people say you remind them.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of Brad Pitt.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I just see it right here. We have Red Pitt
in the office today. That's great. So before we learn
a little bit more about Arena Club, which I'm excited
to learn, I'd like to really know what a grading
service is and how it all works. But before we
get into that, let's find that a little bit more
about you and what your journey was and how you
eventually got to become the CEO of this company. I
(01:18):
know you've had other businesses and companies in the past
that have been very successful. So where'd you grow up?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I grew up in Orange County, California, in Huntington Beach.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Huntington Beach. We just had our big Wango tango concert
down there in Huntington Beach. All right, and go to college.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Growing up in Orange County. I went to college at
UCLA for undergrad and I stayed there for law school
as well. So seven years straight go UCLA.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Okay, so you went, you graduated law school. Did you
become a lawyer? I did.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I worked at a law firm called Scaton Arps, a
New York based firm focusing on tax law.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
You based in New York.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was based here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, it was a New York firm. And you're working
on tax law. And how long did you do that for?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I did that for a couple of years. Enjoyed it,
enjoyed the the work I was doing, but just wanted
to get a little bit more fulfillment out of what
I was working on, and so I started my first
company called legal zoom dot com with a few friends
of mine.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Okay, you started legal zoom dot com. I didn't realize that. Yeah,
that's very exciting. So how did you start that?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
A partner of mine wanted me to form a corporation
and I formed it and they charged the client over
two thousand dollars. I was like, wow, that only took
five minutes to form, and so I figured we could
automate a lot of the process and put it online.
So it was a very early internet company. This started
in nineteen nine nine, two thousand.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Where'd you get the funding?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
That's a great question. We couldn't get any funding. We tried.
We met with probably thirty or forty venture capital firms
at the time, and everyone said no. And so I
borrowed a little bit of money from my parents, and
my partner who I started the company with, borrowed some
from his parents, and we started that out of my
condo with almost no funding.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So now you've got it set up. You built the process,
you built the product, but people have to know about
the product. Yes, Usually where we come in and we'll
try to sell you. So advertising at that time, and
you guys actually did a lot of advertising.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Did eventually ye with us, that's right. So initially we
just kind of started small. We got very fortunate. We
were not a lot of people know this, but we
were probably one of the top or one of the
first ten advertisers to ever pay for a click online
on online average PA it's called PPC advertising, right, price
per click advertising. That was early days of a company
(03:29):
called Overture based in Pasadena. And what year resist Now,
this would have been two thousand and one, right, two
thousand and one timeframe, And so I stuck twenty dollars
into one account and it was one cent per click
back then, and we sold some wills and that was
the start of legal Zoom.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Wow, that's that's pretty exciting. Yeah, And so how long
did you work there? And what was I was there?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I was at legal Zoom for about ten years as
president and co founder, and we kind of grew that
business and then I left that to start my second company.
Because honestly, it's like, I'm a startup guy. I'm an
entrepreneur at heart, and the most fun days I've had
are the earliest days of a company. Like a few
people gathered around a room making decisions and executing.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I see entrepreneurs so often they sell their company and
then they've got to stay off for a few more
years to get the full payout. Right, It's like those
are the hardest years of their lives.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I see that. But yeah, so for me, it's like
I just always reminisced about the early days of a company,
and so I wanted to get back to that. And
I started a company called Shoe Dazzle with Kim Kardashian
and my wife Mira and my friend MJ and so
we started that one about after ten years of legal zoom,
I started that one, and then we sold that one
(04:44):
to a company called Textile down to Elson Gondo, and
then I started my third company called The Honest Company
with Jessica Alba, and we took that one public, and
now I've started my fourth company.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
That's a pretty exciting exciting run there.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, I know, it's been a I look back in
my career and I just honestly, it's sometimes doesn't feel
real because I've had fun all along the way, and.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Three great successful companies, one right after the other. There
had to be some point along the journey where it
got tough, where you said, this is not going to happen,
and we're not going to be able to make it.
We're in trouble. Our our burn rate is too much.
We're not getting people going tell me when that happened
or if it ever did happen, and what you did.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It happens at every company, no company, I don't care
what company you look at. No company is ever up
into the right forever without roe bumps. And so we've
had I've had plenty of roe bumps at every single
one of those companies, even the company I'm running now.
And you think like, you know, this is my fourth
time around. You think like, Okay, I've learned a lot
(05:50):
from my prior experiences and I'm gonna, you know, avoid
making certain mistakes or whatever. But inevitably you make some
of the same mistakes time and tell me again, it's.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Just human nature, my dating history.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, So basically, you know, robumps happen all the time.
I mean there there are definitely dark days at every
single one of these companies where you wouldn't where you
think that you're not going to make it through. At
Arena Club up until a year and a half ago,
even I wasn't sure if it was going to make it.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Tell us about Arena Club.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So, Arena Club is a it's a trading card platform
and marketplace, so baseball cards, basketball cards so forth, Pokemon
cards even And basically the idea is to bring technology
to this industry. And so we started with grading. And
for the not familiar with grading, you take a card
and you grade the quality of it on a score
(06:39):
of one to ten, ten being the best.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
And then what quality condition of the card.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That's right, the condition of the card, so it's everything
from the centering of the card, the edges, the corners,
and also you know the surface to make sure there's
no creases or scratches on the card.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Or bubble gum stains that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So basically, based on those four criteria, you grade a
card on a scale of one to ten, ten being highest.
Once it's graded, you encapsulate it in hard plastic. That's
it becomes a slab. We call that a slab in
the industry, and so that's what we do. But we
use AI to grade the cards. So it's adding technology
again to this industry. So we grade cards using AI,
(07:23):
and then once the card is graded, at Arena Club.
We actually put that card, we digitize it, put the
digital version on blockchain, and so we use Polygon as
a blockchain, and then once it's digitized, it's put into
your online showroom. Once it's in your showroom, you could buy,
sell and trade it very quickly with other showrooms and
anytime anyone wants their physical card back, we mail it
(07:43):
to them.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Wow. Now you also you buy cards and you sell cards.
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You could buy and sell and trade cards at Arena Club.
The other product that we have is we have a
digital rip product, if you will, so you can rip.
So we call it ripping versus ripping up on a
pack or a box of cards. And so we basically
do these digital packs called slab packs on Arena Club.
And it's a way to click cards. So you could
(08:11):
open a pack of cards online. You don't know what
you're going to get, and you might get something great
that you're going to keep. You might get something that
you want to sell back or put onto the auction exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, the thing about this hobby, we call it the
hobby about opening cards packs of cards. It's always been
about to chase right from the beginning, right. So you
know even back in nineteen fifty two, you know when
people were buying tops cards and so forth, and that
comes with the piece of bubblegum. What were you looking for?
You were looking for Willie May's, you're looking for Mickey Manto,
(08:45):
You're looking for the stars. Right. It's the same Hold
Street today. So if you're ripping a pack of football cards,
you're looking for that Jade and Daniels Rickey card, right,
that one of one, the autographed card or the card
that has his jersey.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Buy that when you buy this box. It could be
cards from twenty years ago or brand new.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Most of them are brand new, right, so modern cards.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Right. How could someone who's looking to buy or sell
cards get in contact with your company?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So you go to Arena club dot com.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Or you can go to aar e na club dot com.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
That's right, a r E n A club dot com.
Or you could go to the app store and download
Arena clubs app.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
What's the next big thing for arena cards?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Oh, I mean Arena club. We're having so much fun,
just growing. We're growing nicely. It's a very exciting time
for the business. We just launched our first television commercial
so that's starting to air, and we're going to start
even more radio advertising.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
That's always that nice rest year.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But yeah, we're definitely adding in more kind of technology
to what we're doing, where we're actually going to start
working on some physical aspects of the business, so more
kind of physical slab packs that we will sell at retail,
but we also looking at card shows and so forth,
and kind of bringing it all together online offline.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Let me ask you if you could have a conversation
with your nineteen twenty year old self just or just
you know, your twenty two year old self just graduating college,
what advice would you give yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I would say, you know what, there's good days and
bad days, and life is always a roller coaster, but
really enjoy the thrills and just know that on on
down days it's going to get better. It's never as
good as it seems, it's never as bad as it seems.
You just got to keep going.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That's always great advice. Well, once again, the name of
the company I had a contact.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Arena Club dot com, a r E n A club
dot com.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Once again, this is Paul Corvino, Division president of iHeartMedia.
I've just had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Lee, the
CEO of Arena Club. Hope you enjoyed the interview and
if you want to get in contact. If you're looking
to buy sell cards, go to arenaclub dot com. Thank
you for listening.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Listen to CEOs you should Know on the iHeartRadio app
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