Meet George Higby | The Antique Nomad content creator on YouTube

We had the good fortune of connecting with George Higby and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi George, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
For someone who considers myself “risk-averse”, the reality of my business life has been to take on risk and thrive in it whenever it appears!

I was groomed in college to be a stockbroker, only for the market to tank right when I graduated. It took a year to find a “career” job, and I took a chance on a tiny little classified ad (way back when that was the way to find a bad job) and applied to be marketing assistant for a family who were developing a factory outlet center and a chain of antique malls. I wasn’t aware enough to realize I was underqualified, so I showed up to the interview in my classic car, a 1960 Studebaker Lark.

It worked! They chose me over more qualified applicants because they saw the car and figured I could understand the collector mentality, and I got the job. Immediately I realized that I loved the antique and vintage world way more than selling new stuff in an outlet mall. I studied the field and eventually took the risk of putting my life savings into the business as a partner, only to see it threatened a year later by internal family problems, so I risked it all by resigning. Two years later, I risked it all again by returning as the trustee while the family worked out their issues, and managed to steer the firm away from insolvency (with 45 minutes to spare) the first month I was back.

Three years later, all was resolved…and I realized that day-to-day management wasn’t exciting me, so I risked it all again by leaving to become self-employed in the antique business! For someone who swore in my college days that I’d never work a job without a steady paycheck, this was a great leap of faith. I made about $600 the first month, but it grew with much effort into a business that could sustain me. I took a chance on doing antique shows, and then took a bigger chance by partnering with a friend to create an estate sale business from scratch.

Years later, things were going well, I had five income streams and was making an above-average living, even though demographics and economic upheaval were contracting the antique business in general…and then the Pandemic happened. Suddenly, four out of five income streams disappeared overnight! But a chance discussion with a friend had led me to start The Antique Nomad channel on YouTube, and suddenly, I was one of the few people with enough inventory and experience to keep broadcasting at a time when everything was shut down. I took a chance and redoubled my efforts, and what started as a channel with 59 subscribers in late 2019 has grown to a channel with 59,000 subscribers today!

Looking back on all this, I realize how much my attitude towards risk has changed! Where once I saw risk in the notion of taking chances and going forward with things, I now see that risk is greater when you freeze and try to protect the status quo. Risk brings rewards, and everything I have done (including forming my closest relationships, buying real estate, connecting with clients/friends/benefactors, etc.) has happened because I was willing to take a chance without having any clear notion of what the outcome would be in advance!

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
What sets me apart is that I learned early on in my business that knowledge is most powerful when it’s shared, and that we all benefit from collaboration and do much better when we’re willing to exchange ideas, rather than holding back and keeping “secrets” that we falsely imagine no one knows but us. Before eBay, my job was to make and send an old-fashioned shopper newspaper about antiques to our customers across the country, showing and telling them about all the cool stuff we had for sale, and we made a nice national mail-order business out of it, and sold a ton of vintage stuff.

Then when eBay started, the prevaling sentiment became that people could just look stuff up online…except they only looked up what they already knew they liked, and didn’t experience anything else. The business atrophied for years under that scenario, and I became convinced that we had failed by not continuing to get info out to the masses about the breadth of what we had to offer, so I started The Antique Nomad channel on YouTube.

Some antique dealers criticized me for “telling all our trade secrets to regular people”, but my response was that if we didn’t tell them, they’d have no reason to share our enthusiasm for what we do, and there wouldn’t be a future generation who knew or cared about it! So I did it anyhow, and now we’re seeing older collectors reinvigorated by new categories they’re discovering, and a younger generation who are repurposing, reusing and reselling, and are eating up this information! Sales and traffic are up in ways no one imagined in the antique business a decade ago, and I’m proud to be helping to contribute to this renaissance and helping preserve these great vintage things and their interesting stories.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I obviously love history, and believe it tells so much about how things came to be the way they are today, so I take people to the vintage downtowns and the places where interesting people and events took place (e.g. in Seattle, the Underground Tour/Pike Place Market/Pioneer Square/1962 Worlds Fair site). Those places also tend to have the cool walking districts with fun and funky specialty shops, non-chain eateries and bars and other places that distinguish older cities from the faceless suburbia that covers most of our urban regions now, and are usually the awesome places that cool people like artists, artisans and young hip folks like to hang out. By showing how and why and who came to places in the old days, people get a much better idea of why the current culture is the way it is!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I owe everything I know and all the knowledge I share on my channel to the people who took time to teach me along the way…every business partner, antique dealers in shops and shows, collectors who did deeper dives and shared their passion, my partner and tech guru who encouraged me to share what I’ve learned online…none of this would have happened without all of their input, and I feel great gratitude to everyone!

Website: theantiquenomad.com

Youtube: @theantiquenomad

Image Credits
credit to: George Higby @TheAntiqueNomad