Welcome back to Hobby Jobs here on the Stacking Slabs Network. I am Brett McGrath, builder, collector here at Stacking Slabs. This is where we spend time with the people building the sports card industry and get into the work behind their businesses. Before we get into it, I gotta shout out my good friends at BCW Supplies for sponsoring hobby jobs. For over forty five years, BCW has helped retailers and wholesale partners stay stocked with the storage and display accessories collectors trust backed by dependable fulfillment and consistency to keep shelves stocked and margins strong.

If you're a business in the space, you can learn more at bcwsupplies.combackslashwholesale. Today, I wanna talk about something that connects a national retailer, a breaking business in Seattle, and anyone trying to build an audience around cards. What happens when someone comes back? They enjoyed their first experience. They gave you another chance.

What have you built to make that second experience worth their time? And can you keep delivering it when the excitement of launching starts to wear off? I had the opportunity this week to participate in an authority workshop about where growth in trading cards could come from in 2027. Howie Schwartz from Always Legit participated as well, and I appreciate Natalia and the authority team putting the conversation together. It was a positive experience.

What I appreciated most was seeing space being made for these kinds of business conversations about cards. There are people asking what changing sales channels means for operators, where demand might develop, how businesses should think about the year ahead. Those are useful questions to get into a room together and work through. If you are running a shop, a big sale somewhere else in the industry can be interesting, but you still have to decide what to buy next. You need products your customers want at prices that they can afford with enough room for your business to work.

One of the points I shared in preparation was that an index of 50 cards tells us how 50 cards are doing. It doesn't tell us everything we need to know about the experience of operating a card business. I also came back to repeat buyers in my comments by... About live commerce. A host can give someone a reason to show up before that person even knows what's going to be sold.

That's a powerful relationship. As an operator, I'd want to understand whether the people buying for the first time or if they're choosing to return. These are the conversations I wanna see more of. Bring different perspectives together, ask better questions, and give people doing the work something that they can use. That's a big part of why hobby jobs exists.

A lot of valuable knowledge lives in individual businesses. When we create opportunities to share it, another operator can make a better decision. And there's a story from this week that gives us a very concrete way to explore all of this. Dick's Sporting Goods announced early access to twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven Topps flagship basketball at 15 House of Sport locations November 4 ahead of the November 5 release. The plan combined product access with pack opening events inside its collector clubhouse spaces.

They announced guest lineup including Allen Iverson, Dirk Nowitzki, Hakeem Olajuwon, and other former players and creators. From an operator's perspective, the interesting part is how these pieces fit together. A reason to visit a... At a particular time, a dedicated place for cards, and experience people can share. That's why I think Dick's is learning how to operate like a hobby shop.

It's investing in some of the things that make people want to spend time around cards together. Think about the potential entry point. A sports fan already has a reason to be in that retailer. A card event could give that person a reason to explore collecting. A parent could discover it with a kid.

Someone who hasn't opened a pack in years could become curious again. Those are possibilities. We need to see what the experience can produce over time. The announcement doesn't tell us how many attendees became collectors or how many came back, but I'm interested in watching what follows the event. For industry growth, that matters because another business with reach is putting resources into the experience around collecting.

That can introduce people to the category. It can change what they expect from the businesses already serving them. If you own a local shop, I pay attention without assuming that the outcome is already decided. A national retailer can build an impression event. You know the collector's name, their favorite team, and the set they've been working on for six months.

Those relationships take work to develop. They also take work to maintain. Calling yourself a community shop doesn't guarantee that a new customer feels welcome. Having a larger budget doesn't guarantee it either. Here's what I'd want to know after an event like this.

Did a first time visitor find someone who could answer a basic question without making them feel uncomfortable? Was there an affordable way to participate? Did they leave knowing another reason to visit? Imagine a family coming back the following Sunday. No special guests, no early release, just a normal afternoon.

What can they count on then? The ordinary visit is where the business has to keep earning the relationship, and it brings us to this week's theme, be there when they come back. In the hobby jobs newsletter this week, I wrote about consistency through the lens of building stacking slabs. I spent seven years watching content business... Businesses enter the industry.

Some keep building, others disappear after all the early enthusiasm fades. I wanna spend our time here on what consistency actually does for the person on the other side. Let's say somebody finds a podcast they enjoy. They listen while driving to work. A week later, they have that same drive, and they look for another episode.

The creator sees a publishing deadline. The listener has made room for something in their day. I think about that responsibility with stacking slabs. My audience includes people with full calendars, families, and a limited time to spend staring at another screen. Audio can fit into parts of their day where they're already doing something else, but I have to keep making that time worthwhile.

Publishing something is only part of the commitment. I still need a useful question, preparation, and a conversation that rewards someone for listening. The same idea applies to a shop. If you tell people you help beginners, that needs to be true when the shop is busy. If you're known for careful shipping, that needs to hold up during a release week.

If you run educational live streams, the learning needs to continue when the cards are on the table might be less exciting. Over time, people develop an expectation of you. They can decide whether your business fits into their life because you've given them repeated evidence of what the experience will be. That's valuable. Coming back takes less effort when somebody already knows how to participate and has a good reason to trust what will happen.

And here's the part I think builders need to hear. Being consistent doesn't require being available every hour of every day. You can run one useful show a week. You can host one well planned trade night a month. You can tell customers you'll respond to grading questions on a particular day.

A clear commitment gives people something that they can plan around. An ambitious commitment you regularly miss creates confusion, and that's the trap here. You can reliably deliver something people don't find useful. You can publish for a year without learning how much about, or anything about the audience. You can keep a calendar full of events that no one wants to attend twice.

So the commitment has to include listening. What questions keep coming up? What do people think of it? Where do they get stuck? What makes the regulars return?

And what keeps a newcomer from becoming one? Consistency gives you repeated opportunities to learn those things. You still have to use them. If the audience isn't responding, look at the subject, the experience, and the way you're reaching people. Keep the part of the promise that matters to them.

Improve how you deliver it. Brian Dennison's story in this week's newsletter is helpful here. I got a chance to interview him for Passion and Profession. He spent years publishing videos for Cajun Cardboard, sharing what he was learning about cards, including Michael Jordan cards. The business connection that stood out to me was how he paired useful education with a clear invitation.

Viewers could learn from him, and they also knew he bought collections relationship somewhere to go. Someone can watch for a long time before they have a collection to sell. When the moment arrives, they already have a sense of who Brian is and how he approaches cards. That's an important distinction for builders. A person can get value from your work before they're ready to become a customer.

Their timeline may vary, and it might be different from yours. There is research that helps explain why repetition and context deserves our attention. A randomized study published through UCL followed adults trying to establish an everyday nutrition behavior. People link that behavior to either a daily routine or a time cue repeatedly carrying out the plan was a key predictor of how automatic the behavior became. The study was about nutrition habits.

It doesn't tell us how long it takes to build a podcast audience or a card shop community. The application I'm drawing is that familiar context and repeated delivery can make participation easier. For a show, that context might be the weekly commute. For a shop, it could be a reoccurring trade night people put on a family calendar. That experience becomes familiar because the business keeps giving people an opportunity to take part of it.

You have to give that process enough time to learn whether it's working. If you change the schedule, format, or audience every week, it gets harder to figure out what people are responding to. You can pick a useful commitment, repeat it long enough to gather evidence, then use that evidence to improve. We also released an operator conversation this week here on Hobby Jobs with Bert Ryan of Grand Salami Sports Cards. If you're building in the industry, go spend time with some...

With that conversation. Bert gave us several practical examples of how this theme shows up in a breaking business. The first is how far he extends responsibility for the experience. He talked about product knowledge, thoughtful pricing, what it's like to watch the break, and what happens to the cards afterwards. He described using Haystack to get his cards...

Card images into his customers' hands quickly. He also discussed consignment, free grading evaluations, and careful protection through shipping. What I hear is that an operator is looking for places where a customer has to work work to do and asking whether his business can help. If somebody wants to sell a card, images matter. If they want to consider graded...

Grading and evaluation matters. If they're keeping it, they want it to arrive safely. Those services don't guarantee what a card is worth or what grade it gets. They give a customer a clear, more useful experience around the card. The second part is what Bert shared about his team.

He described six people in the operation with three focused on breaking and three on logistics, sorting, shipping, and imaging. That tells you how much of the experience happens away from the camera. Someone has to do the work that makes the customer's expectations hold up after the show ends. The third point is how he thinks about growth. Bert talked about experimenting with other platforms while recognizing the strength of the core community he's already built.

He also described welcoming new people in the chat and giving interested customers a way to participate in group conversations. I think that's a useful tension for any operator. You want new customers, you also need to preserve the reasons your existing customers choose you. For Bert, the long term vision is a community shop in Seattle. He described the online breaking business as the foundation for that ambition.

It's a good reminder to understand what the business you're operating today needs to support the outcome you want tomorrow. My takeaway from our conversation is that repeat business depends on a lot of small decisions being carried out very well. The format on the screen is one part. The person sorting cards, the speed of communication, and the way a new customer gets treated all matter. If you wanna listen...

If if you want a few to listen for that episode, pay attention to his thinking about full customer experience, the work the team does off camera, and how he balances testing new channels and serving the community that he already has. So how do you apply this without creating another overwhelming project for yourself? Start with one commitment that customers can actually experience. If you make content, maybe it's a weekly explanation of a product your audience keeps asking about. If you own a shop, maybe it's a beginner session on the first Saturday of the month.

If you run breaks, maybe it's a clear shipping schedule and updates people can rely on. Describe the commitment and language a customer would understand. They shouldn't need to know your internal process to know what they're getting. Then look at the work and what's required to keep it. A weekly video needs ideas, research, recording time, and edit, and someone to publish it.

A trade night needs space, staffing, and someone paying attention to the person who walked in alone. A shipping promise needs capacity after the sale. Put those tasks on a calendar before you add another public commitment. If the only available time is whatever happens to be left at the end of the week, you've found a weak spot. For a solo builder, this is where you have to be honest with yourself.

You may be capable of doing it all at once. Can you do it during a difficult month? What happens when a guest cancels or a family needs more of your time? An evergreen episode you prepared ahead can help. So can a small format that still answers a useful question?

For a shop, it might be teaching another employee how to run the beginner session. For a shipping team, it might be setting a realistic order cutoff before a major release. And when you do miss a commitment, communicate. Tell people what changed, what it means for them, and what they should expect next. If the same issue keeps happening, change the process and revise the promise.

I also wanna look at how much effort it takes to return. Is the event schedule easy to find? Does a listener know how to subscribe? Does a customer have to send three messages to learn when you're gonna open? Baymard's research on online checkout gives us a useful example of friction.

Seventeen percent of US online shoppers in the study reported abandoning an order because checkout was too long or complicated. That's checkout research, not a measurement of loyalty and cards, but it gives us a reason to examine the unnecessary work we ask people to do. Here's a hypothetical shop example. You run a monthly trade night, but the only announcement is an Instagram story that disappears. A customer enjoyed the last one and now can't find the next date.

You may have delivered a great event and still have made it difficult for them to return. Fixing that could be as simple as a current calendar and an optional reminder. The answer doesn't involve building any sort of new technology. Then measure something that can tell you whether the commitment is helping. Start with two questions.

Did we deliver what we said we would, and did people choose to come back? Suppose 20 people attend a beginner event, and six of those same people return within a month. That's a hypothetical example, and it's useful because you're following the same group. A bigger total crowd in the next event doesn't tell you whether the original visitors return. For content, use the repeat audience information your platform provides and listen to questions people send.

For retail, use the customer information people have chosen to share. You don't need perfect attribution to start learning. Also, check whether the experiences work for the business. More repeat orders can still create a problem if they're being bought with discounts you can't afford or service your team does... Can't sustain.

Ask what you learned at the end of the month. Where did the process break? What did returning customers value? What can you simple... Simplify before you ask the team to do more?

That's how I want operators thinking about consistency. Make a specific commitment, support it with actual work, and keep checking whether it's useful. The role I wanna highlight this week is content creator and video editor with Steel City Collectibles. It's a full time on-site position in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. The posting calls for four to five videos each week for its watch before you buy series along with related short form content.

It also asks for hobby knowledge and the ability to plan, shoot, and edit work independently. This fits today's theme because it's a reoccurring service a collector can learn to expect. Someone has to turn product questions into finished videos and keep the work moving through a production schedule. If you're interested in a role like this, show that ability in your portfolio. Build a small series around a clear collector question.

Let an employer see how you research, explain, and finish the work across several installments. For the owners listening, pay attention to what the job requires. If you want useful content every week, give someone the time, access, and direction to produce it. Publishing consistently is a responsibility that needs support. You'll find the application in the link in the HobbyJobs newsletter.

Make sure you subscribe to that. Link is in the show notes. It goes out every Tuesday. As we close this out, choose one thing people should be able to count on from your business. Look at the next four weeks and identify the work that will make it happen.

The authority conversation asked where growth could come from. Dix is investing in attracting people to collecting. Bert shows the care that goes on by serving them once they're there. Give people an experience that they want to repeat. Keep earning that decision.

Wanna shout out again, BCW supplies for believing in the growth across the industry, believing in supporting hobby operators. Make sure you check out them at bcwsupplies.combackslashwholesale. Really having a blast, having conversations for hobby jobs, doing episodes like this. You can expect a whole lot more from the hobby jobs platform going into 2027. There is so much time, so much energy that I have to help support what is happening right now across this industry.

There's so much knowledge and information inside of these businesses. And The more that we can share, offer perspective, the stronger our hobby gets, and that's how you find growth. Happy building. Take care. Talk to you soon.