what is going on welcome back to another episode of hobbyjobs here on the stacking slabs network has the dust settled for you yet from this year's national that is the question what a time there are so many thoughts going off in my brain and i'm going to try to document them here on the stacking slabs network both from a collecting and business building perspective in the coming weeks and when there's opportunity in the calendar i am going to share conversations that i had at the national i spent much of my time at the national watching the sports card industry work that might sound strange when you consider everything happening inside that building you had collectors buying cards you had dealers negotiating companies launching products friends connecting having conversations money moving across the room at a pace that was impossible to track but i think underneath all of that activity were people working i had conversations with a lot of people working and it's an interesting mix you have individuals there on their vacation collecting connecting with others and you had a group of individuals that were there to build the people who were building were answering questions solving problems helping their customers or prospective customers checking data building those relationships that work became one of the themes i kept thinking about throughout the week you know we spend time talking about growth of the sports card industry it's undeniable that if you attended the national you saw that growth in real time there were more people more companies more cards than i'd ever seen before record sales signs of progress but growth really creates something else it creates responsibility i think the more people who use your product consume your content trust your data or rely on your service the more responsibility you carry it doesn't matter how successful you are success doesn't move that pressure it changes the type of pressure that you feel that is where i wanna begin this episode of hobbyjobs my guest is my friend chris mcgill cofounder of card ladder you've heard chris on the stacking slabs network many times over the years this conversation's a little bit different we recorded it from the card ladder booth at the national instead of focusing on cards i wanted to focus on the work with chris card ladder has become part of the infrastructure of the hobby collectors use it to understand sales dealers use it during negotiations buyers pull out their phones before making offers collection values market indexes and transaction data influence decisions involving real money you can walk around a card show and see card ladder opened on phones across the entire room from the outside that looks like success chris sees something different he sees responsibility when he notices someone using card ladder his first reaction is not necessarily pride it's pressure is the data right is the product working can the customer find what they need is there an issue waiting for someone on the team to address that response tells us something about what it means to build a product people trust the goal is not to become known the goal is to become dependable those aren't the same thing attention gets people to try your product dependability gives them a reason to build it into their own process you know once that happens you are no longer working on an idea you are maintaining a promise and people are making decisions based on the work that you produce they expect the product to work they expect the information to be accurate they expect someone to listen when something goes wrong that obligation is part of the job it is also the part we tend to leave out when discussing careers and sports cards working in the hobby sounds like a blast it is i enjoyed my time i get to spend my days talking with collectors recording podcasts building media products and studying an industry i care about i don't take it for granted but loving cards doesn't complete the work it does not answer the customer email fix the product prepare the interview send the invoice it does not build the system that keeps the business running when the market slows down passion gives you energy it does not give you permission to avoid the parts of the job that are really hard this is where chris's story becomes useful for anyone trying to enter the sports card industry card ladder was not built because three people wanted jobs near sports cards it started because collectors needed a tool that did not exist in the form they wanted chris josh and christina understood that need because they felt it themselves they were not standing outside the hobby trying to identify an opportunity they weren't inside the problem that distinction matters it is an e it is easy to say you wanna work in sports cards it is harder question is whether you care about a specific problem enough to keep working on it after that excitement wears off chris says that the card letter team would still want the tool even if they were the only users that is a strong foundation for a business the product is connected to their own lives as collectors their customers' needs aren't abstract the team understands the use case because they live it that does not mean instinct replaces customer feedback card ladder spends a large part of the time talking with collectors and responding to questions you saw that if you walked up to the booth at the national that was part of the conversation that really stuck with me we think of card ladder as data and a technology company chris describes much of the daily work as customer service that is the work behind the product it is not part featured in some big shiny launch announcement you do not see it on a sales chart but it is where trust gets built a collector asks why a sale appears in the database someone needs to explain the process a customer wants to understand how an index works someone needs to teach them a person cannot access an account someone needs to help some requests are valid others are driven by personal interest a seller might want a sale removed because it hurts the perceived value of a card that is when a company needs more than customer service it needs a standard serving customers does not mean giving each person the answer they want it means creating a clear process and applying it when the outcome is uncomfortable that is how a trusted product protects its credibility trust is not built by saying yes to everyone it is built by making decisions people understand this matters across the sports card industry if you run a marketplace collectors need to understand your rules if you grade cards collectors need consistency if you create content your audience needs to know where you stand if you report sales people need the confidence in the data if you sell cards buyers need to trust the transaction every company in the industry is in the trust business the product is how you get trust or how trust gets delivered there's another layer to the conversation that matters for people who want a hobby job the sports card industry is attracting professionals from other fields i met people at the national with backgrounds in tech finance recruiting marketing legal pros operation sales they want to bring those skills into the hobby that's great for the industry sports cards need people with experience from outside the category but wanting to be near cards is not enough of a reason to change careers chris makes an important distinction near the end of our conversation he would not take any job in the sports card industry because he loves collecting the work itself still needs to fit building a data product connects how he thinks what he studies and how he participates in the hobby that is alignment your professional ability needs to meet a problem you care about solving if you're a talented accountant that does not mean you'll enjoy accounting more because the company sells sports cards if you hate the daily work now placing sports cards around it won't fix the problem the logo does not change the function of the job before trying to enter the industry you can ask yourself three questions what work am i equipped to do what problem inside the sports card industry needs that ability do i care about solving it to solving it to stay when the work becomes repetitive stressful or invisible the overlap between those answers is where you should focus there is no single path into the sports card industry chris went from the music business to law school and then helped build cardlyer none of those chapters were wasted his entrepreneurial experience taught him to tolerate uncertainty his legal education influenced how he evaluates rules evidence and process his work as a collector helped him understand the problem his content helped him build relationships before the company even existed that combination became his advantage the industry does not need you to erase your career history and start over it needs you to apply what you have learned to a problem that is worth solving the same has been true for me my years of working in marketing and corporate environments influence how i built stacking slabs how i learned how businesses make decisions i learned how partners partnerships operate i learned how to communicate with customers i learned the value of consistency preparation and systems when i entered sports cards full time i did not leave that experience behind i brought it with me your background is not a barrier for entering this industry it is part of the value you offer the question is whether you know how to apply it passion is really really common in sports cards walk around the national and you meet thousands of people who care about the hobby passion is the entry fee it's not the advantage your advantage comes from the skills you have developed the standards you maintain the problems you understand and your willingness to keep serving people after they begin depending on you and that is the work chris and i get into all of that during the conversation we talk about the energy inside the national we discuss the growing confidence in the card market we explore how card ladder became part of the way collectors transact chris shares what customer service looks like inside a data company we also discussed his path from law school to building one of the most used products in the hobby and as you listen i want you to think beyond the story of card lighter think about your own alignment do you want to work in sports cards because you love the category or have you identified work in the industry that fits the way you are built that's the difference one gets you through the door the other gives you a reason to stay here's my conversation with chris mcgill cofounder of card letter recorded live from the national i always value my conversations with chris

alright we are back and i've got the most prolific guest in stacking slabs history here with me mister chris mcgill card ladder chris we've talked about a lot of different topics over the years we talk about topics every month with card letter confidential there's a lot going on here stimulation overload i can't get up without saying hi to someone and having a conversation about something so we're gonna have a conversation here but i wanna talk about like the industry side focusing on working and building a business in this space but before we do that it's the national how are you feeling right now it's day two how are you feeling well it's great to be back and we just need to keep forcing me on the audience because i will not relinquish that title you there who's the wrestler who would be the right analogy for just keeps coming back for the crown on pure volume yes pure volume stats yeah i would say probably like a i feel like a brett hart back in the day he was the mark of consistency just heads down always contributing when he can what do you say okay good alright the national has been a great great show you know here's here's my big take so far from like thirty six hours i guess of the show being open or not even we're we're really more like at twenty four hours i don't know that there's there's certainly new people i don't know that there's some like insanely overwhelming amount of new people it's a lot of the same people plus new people but the attitudes and the optimism and the willingness to transact is that's the thing that's spiking is that there's a confidence there's a willingness to an excitement a a motive to just do things all of a sudden and you know you see that that had been like accumulating before the show like you can see that in the market data of prices escalating but seeing it in person is is unique it's like oh this is this is the embodiment of the the numbers on a screen like you can feel the there's a palpable desire for people to make deals buy things sell things make moves it's just in the air and like if you're trying to buy something it's very competitive right now if you're selling something great great time to be a seller so in twenty twenty one everyone points back to and you still hear it today it's like i saw this gary v video where he was talking about cards and i got interested in cards because i was home bored during covid it was like the perfect stars aligning where you have hype beast talking about cards everyone sees the video because everyone's on their devices more than ever and everyone's like i'm not doing anything but watching reruns there's no sports on so let me get into sports cards so people came in and then you know it's like darwinism like the survival of the fittest some died yeah some survived yeah and and some died but came back to life that's right when the when things started getting hot again what what do you make for in this moment the you mentioned like there are new people but maybe it's not overwhelming but like you've got a lot of people that with a new confidence and a willingness to spend more money than they ever have before i'm one of them like i'm i'm spending more money than i've ever spent in my lifetime and part of that is i build up the equity in my collection to afford me to do that but yeah i don't know i've just that that's you look at the sales all the time like what do you like what is the reason people are feeling this confidence in this moment yeah great question love the the long term build up like i think most collectors experience that at some point like when you're in it for a year or two you're like man how am i ever gonna but you just keep your head down you keep adding more cards you keep rotating improving learning and then by year four year five year six you're like oh man i have a real asset here in terms of a collection that has liquid like liquid value that i can use to turn into other cards at some point it becomes a really powerful tool and i think that's empowering some people because there are some people who came back in the early twenty twenties who are at like the half decade mark five or six years they probably have some real equity built up too but but i really think the mechanism is this it is the new people the new people are well capitalized the new people are aggressive the new people feel like they're catching up like they have to play from behind and they want to really like carve out a an identity and a space for themselves and make a splash and do it now and so that provides the pressure on the rest of us to also have to suddenly play by a much more aggressive set of rules mhmm if we wanna continue on the paths that we're on or it forces us to get very creative and to say you know maybe i wanna keep some of my collection and that means i can't really maybe swim in as deep of waters as some of these new buyers can so i have to pivot i have to discover something else so i think discovery is absolutely happening too you know i was talking to josh i don't know if you and josh talked a bit about this but like josh and i were walking the floor yesterday the upstairs area and josh was like i don't see as many downtowns and kabooms this year the the composition of the display cases has changed and that's partially i think the license transfer is playing a role in that and the products that are producing very liquid cards like repacks like make cards very liquid to buy and sell like they're looking for stuff from the new license regime so like dealers maybe don't have as much incentive to keep downtowns and kaboombs anymore but also i just think like tastes change and evolve and update and revise and i i thought that was a great observation they made the composition of these dealer display cases is different now so yeah i think i think new buyers are creating new pressure that we all feel and quite frankly it it it seems like there was actually plenty of plenty of dry powder there's plenty of cash on the sidelines that just didn't feel the pressure the motive or the need to rush back in and get spent on cards and and now that the pressure is being applied that that cash is coming back into the game so you have built a company with your teammates that is integrated and ingrained in the hobby culture i was telling josh that i recently made a deal at a new car exchange and when i talked to shane about the deal he's like do you look at card ladder values and i'm like of course i look at card ladder values and so that was like a starting point for us to be able to come to terms on a deal you mentioned all the new buyers dude i walk around i just see people with their phones out and they're looking at card ladder which is i don't know like a a compliment to like the brand that you all have built like with all of these new people entering with the recommendations from other people saying like oh you gotta use card ladder if you're gonna try to like understand values and understand your collection like i mean i know this isn't like an overnight thing like you've been at this for you know six seven years like what like as someone who literally is consistently working on this business every day for that time no matter the holidays no days off like how what how do how do you like do you like react to that do you recognize that is it just like part of the journey like how do you respond to that yeah it's it's a great honor and it's a responsibility that we take seriously like there's a lot of people depending on the data populating every day every hour and that it's accurate that it's precisely captured that the site functions properly so it's it's a it's something that like i feel stressed about all the time that we do it right and that if i walk around the show and i see too many screens looking at card letter i start to get like anxious and like want to just like get myself in front of a laptop and start fielding like requests about like oh you know know something's inaccurate here like i just feel like i need to make sure that the product is perfect and up to standard and doing everything i can to play my small part in in doing that so it's stressful and but it's but it's it's a great responsibility it's a great honor it's cool to see but but yeah it's a very serious obligation like when i when i see that it's like it's really cool but the but the frankly the the overwhelming sensation that i have is like stress like this is a we really need to make sure this product is firing on all cylinders and functioning properly so that people can use it in their journey to to transact and do what they wanna do so there's when you're dealing you're you're reporting on something that has interest for a lot of different people and is tied to a monetary outcome and anytime you have something that is money related it's gonna be very controversial if people are gonna have their own ways of seeing things and i'm sure like i dude i don't imagine i can't even imagine what the support queue looks like for card ladder and the volume of requests like how do you wake up every day knowing that you're gonna get this like you're gonna have this whole plate of support issues requests and some of them will be like oh shit we gotta fix this we gotta figure this out like someone's locked out we gotta change this but like other instances you can or you notice different directions like customer success and support is such a big part of like growing the business like how do you wake up and think about that function of the business business every day that's a great question like we we are obviously a software app and a technology company but you'd be amazed at how much of our time is spent as a customer service company it's the vast majority i think of all of our time i've seen it all day here which is nice that's why it's cool we have a booth so that and we had to staff our booth with four additional people this year to help when people walk up and have questions whether it's something as basic as like why can't i log in to my account or it's something as sophisticated as like why didn't this card get put into this player's index all ranges of questions that we we're happy to take but it's it's a it's a it's it's even on the day to day basis even when we're not here like a big big part of the the daily job that we do is just replying to people and trying to you know help them get what they should what they should reasonably expect to get out of the product now to your point sometimes there are very self interested requests and then we have to be extremely careful to follow our procedures and best practices to make sure that you know for example like sometimes we'll get requests to remove a sale and we don't do that especially if it's a situation where you know there's it it is because the the the card didn't line up with what they thought the market should be and so in a situation like that we say well the source of truth is the marketplace and if the marketplace is certifying that it was a paid transaction a paid transaction and we have relationships with many of the marketplaces where they provide that information to us then we remove it then we remove that sale but we need that proof we need we need to know that it didn't get paid and so it's it's like we're we're a database and and sometimes people come to us when when really the person that they have the question for is the marketplace that that generated the sale so you know we try to do our best to really strictly and transparently provide data that people wanna see and so you know you get that's that's one flavor of a customer request but you know you get all types like like indexes are sophisticated methodologically like we try to keep ours as basic as possible but they're difficult to to understand how they work especially if you don't have a familiarity with finance or finance related things so plenty of times people will ask hey how does this index work and why are these cards in it and what does this index mean what is it supposed to represent is and then the more sophisticated question askers will be like is it market cap weighted is it price weighted how does it work so we take a lot of time to explain those things in-depth and the hope is that that's not just helping one customer understand but it's an investment of time into if that customer understands it and then they have friends who use card ladder and those friends ask them the same question then they can share it with them and then we have lots of faqs and stuff too but it's i found that it's always worth taking like who wants to read an faq document you know it's like if somebody takes the time to come up and say how does this work like i i can take the time to explain how it works and and why but it's it's that that's kind of like the sneaky hidden part of how our business works is it's it's a lot of customer service and personal relationships which you wouldn't it doesn't you you might not think that on the you might just think it's a software app but we we allocate a strategically it's a business decision we allocate a ton of time to talking to the collectors and the dealers and the participants in this space and and and as as much and as and as often as they wanna talk to us we'll we'll interact with them how have those requests changed over the years is it always is it kind of the same steady flow of the same types of requests or feedback or does it shift when the market is like where it's at right now where people are literally like screaming right next to us and there's people everywhere excited to be here yeah i would have to sort of like think for a second here kind of like systematically about the patterns like certainly the the intensity and the aggressiveness of the requests were lower in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four maybe not a different flavor of question but the intensity and the anxiousness and like the rush to get an answer is stronger today and i do feel bad for people who kind of don't really understand like we do try to get back as quickly as we can but there's a there's often a large queue of inquiries that are waiting to get replied to so it it's just it's it's not really so much a change in the nature of the questions it's a change in the volume and the intensity they just there's more right now and people want the people really want the answers quickly right now too and that kind of fits the room right like there's there's an energy of a frenetic energy right now there's a push right now for people who are who don't work in sports cards but are collectors who are interested in working in sports cards and part of the reason why i'm having these series of conversations is to give those individuals some sort of guiding light on like these are what these people are doing and how they did it like it's well documented that you were in law school you're preparing to be a lawyer and you instead started a company called card ladder not a very conventional path but that's okay like you ended up building with your team one of the most popular products that our industry has like maybe talk a little bit about like that shift and that experience like what pulled you away from like what you thought you were going to be doing and that is some sort of legal work into building this business that everyone uses in the hobby yeah no i have a pattern of evading real adulthood responsibilities that started when even when i was in high school i graduated high school and i kind of had this plan that i was gonna go to college and then like i was like no i wanna pursue a career in the music business sorry you know so but but my family kinda felt that was coming anyway so drop me off in atlanta and i'm just gonna see what i can do for myself and like i remember one of my buddies' dads was like you know if you don't go to college right away you're probably never gonna go like you really should think about it very responsible advice but i just i very infrequently can i be reasoned with when my mind is set on something and then i did that again after the so like i did do the music thing and then i did go back to college and i did go to law school and then as we were at the end of law school once again it was like ah i'm staring down the barrel of having to be a real adult this this is i'm not ready for childhood to end quite yet bear in mind i'm like how old am i at this time i'm in like my mid thirties so you know quietly in the background for a while josh and i had been discussing building something and we both had content podcasts his coming before mine he had the cardboard chronicles youtube series interviewing collectors and then christine and i came out with the house of jordan's podcast a little bit later i think his came out in twenty seventeen maybe and ours came out i know when ours came out ours ours came out in december of twenty eighteen and so we were making content we were making networks of collectors and audience members not really for any purpose just because it was fun and a way to continue enjoying the hobby when you can't you know nobody can buy cards and sell cards every day like how do you how else do you fill the time how else do you continue to enjoy the hobby and content is an amazing way to do that and so we started making content became friends bonded over the content in fact you can go back on youtube and see when i first appeared on cardboard chronicles so i think it's like twenty nineteen maybe or something and like i brought a piece of paper that i wrote down like price information on and we talked about the market and stuff and so you know there's always the concepts of a plan there are always concepts of a plan and we always would talk about it we're both very entrepreneurial it's like it was just a synergy of of that spirit and then the the the catalyst was the covid nineteen and so what happened was he had to start working from home i was in the final semester of law school all my classes went to pass fail and became online and i gave a few extra hours a day and we just were like let's try this and like there was a lot of uncertainty it was like i you couldn't we you they were delaying all the bar exams which i was supposed to sit for and i definitely didn't wanna study for and so it was just it was like wow there's this moment where you can do anything you want and like the kinda like the world is frozen right now and so we cranked out a very very basic version of card ladder so so the i love the story i wanna focus in on the like very realistic element of like we gotta make money so we can continue to do this and live our lives so you're you're coming off of this law school experience where you're just like hunting like taking the next step and instead placing all your chips in this like idea that isn't probably fully baked out but it's frozen in this moment of time like how did you think about like the financial viability of what you were doing and like actually turning into something that you can make money off of to to to pay your rent to buy cards to buy your groceries do the things well josh and christina were much more serious adults than i was josh had a great job christina had a great job and i had never had a real job arguably still never have so i had a long long set of experience of like like my i worked in the music industry for a while and here's how that works like if you are receiving like royalty payments you know for for publishing and stuff like maybe you'll get those once a year or once every six months and then otherwise you're you know if like i was a producer so i would license or sell the rights to my music that'd be very sporadic like one month i might license or sell the rights to my music that'd be very sporadic like one month i might sell a bunch of you know sell license a bunch of music and then i might not have any opportunities for months so i was very acclimated to basically not having money being in a very unorthodox setup from like a business point of view and understanding that like dude i've you know i'll i'll do whatever it takes i'll make it work i'll i'll however long it takes like we need to make sure that that we give it a real shot and with that and that we properly you know we need to be able to admit if it's if it doesn't work but we'll i have a i i think all of us have a have a have a much stronger tolerance for like breaking through barriers and like sticking with something and consistently doing it day after day that we all got from different avenues of our life but i my unorthodox background like i think made it not a shock to my system to just be like yeah no this is okay so maybe i'm not gonna make any money for months like i've done this many times i've lived this life many times so i've observed this about you which i appreciate because i have a little bit of it in me where it's like you get to this point where it's like a one track mind you get focused in on something and you obsess over it and so i don't know like do you think that has been an an advantage for you in building a business with your teammates from nothing to something like dude i don't think people realize i know this because we're friends and we interact and you talk about it here and there but like i don't think people realize like the amount of hours that you put into building your business and the hours that you put into building your business do you think that like one track mind and the being consistent do you think that's been kind of like a a superpower for you and card ladder to take continue to take the next step it's a really good question it it's more of a superpower in more vanilla traditional industries i think like to your point in our industry you have it in spades i have it josh has it christina has it look around this room a lot of people have it there's like this is this is and when you're in like a passion fueled industry with people who are like the the the profile of somebody who gets into this industry is usually somebody who's conscientious who's open minded who's adventurous who's passionate who's able to focus and explore and learn things that other people maybe haven't explored and learned already our group already selects for that like you need to be self starter you need to be passionate you need to be you know willing to step out stick your neck out a little bit do something that maybe has never been done before not quite the way you're doing it i think those are very very valuable asset personality traits to have maybe in other industries in this industry i think there's already a lot of it i think there's a lot of people like that already so i don't know if it's a differentiator i do agree that you have it josh and christina have it i have it my brother our chief content officer he has it as much as anybody i've ever known like the singular focus you know like like you look at the the art content creators like yourself adam jeremy the ones who and several other great ones who have gone full time there is a a focus a drive a specialization a mastery that only comes from a very specific combination of personality traits i i find that i'm attracted to the people who i who look and feel like they have a similar mindset to me and what i'm doing and it's always like i'm attracted to the consistency the body of work so many things come and go in this space from people to collectors to content to companies they come and go and it typically happens when the market goes up and then when the mark it's like try building what you're building when the market sucks tell them to try to get excited in front of a microphone when the market sucks yeah but i don't know like i find that part of the space very very interesting because i think i might like i might disagree with you a little bit that like i think it might be like the you you all called out consistent examples and i agree with all those but like i find it like fewer and far between that there of builders that are that way and my mindset is and i wanna get your perspective on your mindset my mindset is dude i get to wake up every morning and i get to like take my kids to school and then i get to go back to my desk and i get to work on cards and talking about cards all day and yeah there's like some business development and yeah there's some some like operations and finance and systems building and like the corporate stuff that i'm trying to do on my own but like dude i get to i get to literally talk about cards with people who talk about cards so like i have this like i've been in the corporate structure and i don't wanna go back i i wanna protect what i'm doing at all cost so i don't know i just wanna get like your reaction because i feel like although you just said like i've never really had a real job i feel like you the way you approach your work it's like you're you're you wouldn't be up at three o'clock in the morning checking sales if you weren't trying to protect what you're doing at all cost yeah i know we are we are violently passionate and like about not just about the product although that's obviously true and not just about the hobby although that's obviously true but we're also just as a function of the personality of all three of us like i promise you if josh wakes up to take a leak at three in the morning or four in the morning and he glances at his phone and there's a customer request in our customer service portal and he looks at it he will reply to it before he goes back to bed just because and it's and it's it is because of passion and because of skills and everything but it's also just how he is he is just there's something funny about josh more than anybody i've ever known in my life he okay so you know what a procrastinator is yes a procrastinator i have that to some extent every normal human being procrastinates once in a while or often he is the anti procrastinator he his his like achilles heel or his pet peeve or whatever is like he can't stand when there's an outstanding task to be done he like just he he if he if we were talking homework like he will be doing it on the bus before he even gets home after the day and it's done and he has that just i've never met a person who has even close to that ability to just knock things out knock things out knock things out knock things out and it's a great balance to sort of my disposition where i'm like i wanna stay in the background i wanna perfect i wanna refine i wanna build i wanna like oh i'm not quite sure if it's ready yet and he's the total ops he's like do it do it do it let's just do it let's just put it out there let's just keep going i think part of that he learned from the software industry but a huge part of it is his personality and then same thing with you you have a special and and this is for all of us in the hobby one of our super powers is that we all have other backgrounds i brought entrepreneurial experience in the music industry running my own production company i brought legal background and an interest in academic and intellectual topics and an interest in economics you bring a background in corporate structure a rich background in culture a rich background in collectibles prior to cards you bring the your thing which i always notice when you put this on podcast consistency you love consistency you are the paragon of consistency you're still making content a football card podcast came out today i don't even know how that came out because i've seen you here for the last two days how did you even put that out it's like you prepare you're well in advance you schedule things well in advance you have everything set up the like the super powered superpowers that sort of differentiate each of us is like we have these other backgrounds that like help us bring a special framework to how we approach whether it's the industry side or the collecting side that i i think those those are like really interesting quirks that people have have and then you know if you if you're like really strong with it like you know that that that's the key too it's like like you you said like imagine talking to a microphone during a down market and it's a great example right because like where does the fire come from you know where do you where do you get the fire and the energy from and and so you have to you have to dig deep and you have to find it you know or like try building a a software company or a a content and entertainment company like you really you there are you will very quickly much quicker than you think you'll come up on those days where it's like is this working is this am i did i what am i doing there was a time where everybody was getting emails from card ladder about how much money we were losing in our collection every day yeah and there is like it's like it is funny like when the market is down like we love doing the crossover every week you know like because like there is like something to the zag of it all like when the market is down it's like oh like so now like the zag right now is like oh everybody is exuberant everybody is flying high so like let's temper this but when everybody is flying low and the energy is low then it's like oh this is that opens up an interesting space to fill with ideas and content that doesn't exist like right now right now everybody's a genius everybody's right everybody is hitting home runs and to be fair that's true like the the miracle one of the miracles of this hobby is that and one of the things that makes it so difficult for other hobbies to compete with it is like once you get into cards and if you really do like the beauty of them and the cultural significance of them and you like the connection to sports or entertainment or whatever your field is when when you have that whole like network sort of appears clear in your mind and then many times you can get your money back out of the card that you purchased or even if you're in an environment like right now you're making hand over fist gains on things that you purchase how does another hobby compete with that how do how do you go back to like mountain biking or something which like is great for you and like the health benefits and everything like i'm i'm i'm not trying to make it like an absolute comparison i'm just saying like it's tough to to to see to get to to to be pushed away from this hobby if you're if you're if it's working out for you it it can it just it compounds the enjoyment factor compounds there's a financial component that compounds there's a network a culture a friendship community building it's just unlike anything else it's tough it's it's a it's very it's such it's such a virtuous circle that this hobby experience creates that once you get into it it's it's tough to to imagine leaving it how do you think about the fact that your hobby is also leads over to your profession they're one they're they're one and the same like for me the only time i'm not thinking about cards building something for cards buying cards my self bidding on cards the only time the the the the only the only time i'm not doing that is when i'm with my family like picking up my kids and and then once the kids are in bed and once dinner's over with and everyone's quiet i'm dude i got my laptop i'm planning out the next day i'm looking at auctions that are ending and it's like i take a step back and there's sports on tv or wrestling on tv but it's it's it's nonsense it never gets boring to me it's it's what i want to be doing so how like how do you how do you think about those two worlds the hobby and the the the job being one and the same essentially same exact way there's always a question of like is there a risk of burnouts if you're working in the space that you also have a passion for and you do for fun and i think the thing that powers us through every day is that even if we weren't professionally offering a product or a service just like even if you weren't professionally providing content you would still turn on the microphone and do it anyway and you would still get the utility out of it i think you're a person who thinks through your content and thinks through like you're you're as much as you're providing content that you've already prepared you're also learning as you make that content too and so it's enhancing your collecting it's enhancing your hobby as you do it it's the same thing with a card letter product like i we would be building this and using it even if we were the only if it was just the three of us who were using it we would still have the exact same need and exact same strict requirements for the data that we would want to be able to access for the collection management tracking and the and and all the suite of features that we provide we would still want those for ourselves even if we were the only three people using it so it's still like it's it's like the the business side of it is amazing and it's great that people want to use it but we would still be the the we would just be moonlighting doing it we but we would still need the tools and the feature set and and everything that it provides like that's that's how it always stays a passion it's it's designed ultimately to service the needs of the collector but what how we divine and interpret what those needs are starts from our own needs as collectors and then other collectors give us great ideas too obviously but that's where it starts to close it out there's a trend of people wanting to apply their professional skills to this industry which i think is great because i think that these new i this i the ideas from the outside are going to be responsible for growth in the inside here i think that's seeing this in motion and it's becoming a theme and something i'm monitoring so there's people listening who fall into this camp and maybe they're looking for a job i dude i got a dm from a very very very successful professional recently and rich rich career history and they told me they wanna work for a company in this space and apply that i was like this is great so i guess like for you like what what sort of advice would you share for anyone out there who's like listening who's like or continues to listen to this content and has a desire to work in this space yeah there's there are two night and day different worlds in my opinion i would not want to work in this industry if it wasn't because the area of work i'm doing in this industry lines up perfectly with what i'm passionate about so for example if i did go into law and if i had gone down that path i wouldn't want to be a hobby lawyer i mean nothing that we actually have an amazing hobby lawyer paul paul lesko is brilliant i couldn't do what he does and i wouldn't want to do what he does and i'm glad that he exists if i were to go into law i wouldn't choose sports card related law i would i would my path in law was gonna be litigation i was i was gonna be a litigator so like if i'm not if i'm if i'm my that's that's that's the starting point it's like if i wanna if i'm gonna work in this hobby the way that it makes sense is that it's because the work that i'm doing is a direct overlap with my passion whether it's building a tool or it's creating content for the collectors that doesn't mean like i'm just gonna love every minute of it that's not even true it's not even remotely true it's it's it can be extremely stressful it can be incredibly challenging it can be incredibly difficult but the big picture is there so that's that's my piece that's my personal perspective or bias on that is that if you're doing what you love it's tough to imagine something more fun than working in this industry because we love it because we love collecting because we love the community we love we love the products and the content that we're building that enhance our experience but if it were like would i like to you know do a more ordinary job in the context of this industry i probably wouldn't do that so i i probably if i like the law example i would i would i would do law in a different field most likely purely as something that's in my non professional hours always good insight and advice from our man chris a little different flavor this time appreciate it can't wait to you'll you can find us on card letter confidential next we'll be talking more about cards but anything in closing what national we're here right now what what's on your mind i'm the brett hart of stacking slabs content and i'm keeping that belt and i see a couple guys trying to creep up on me just know i'll be back and i would love somebody out there in the audience or maybe an ai should tabulate what is the number of appearances i'd love to know i'm sure i can find that for you we've had a lot of conversation maybe at some point we'll turn that into some sort of artifact i'm sure somebody maybe it'll just be us reading it but i'm sure it'll be fun to listen to or read about the conversations we've had over the years plenty come to my mind the unveiling of your jokic plaque we talked about what happened when the boom wasn't happening it did never happen there's been it's been a whole journey we've been doing this for quite some time amazing i remember that episode i was in a hotel room in arizona when i talked to you on that episode the jokic black one i remember the prism black finite episode learning about this i so many so many alright until next time chris appreciate the time man yep

it's really fun to dig into these topics topics that we have not necessarily explored together there's a lot we can learn from listening to individuals like chris miguel someone with a ton of passion but someone with a lot of outside of experience in different areas that you might not think would translate into sports cards or building a business in sports cards or building a undeniable product that nearly every individual in this hobby relies on there's a lot of really cool stories that come from talking to people building businesses in this space that's why we're building hobby jobs i have a ton of passion for this stream on the stacking slabs network and we're going to continue to bring it i appreciate all your support i appreciate all your interest in hobbyjobs if you are a business building something cool in the sports card industry and you think hobbyjobs can help get at me i'm easy to find you can email me at stacking slabs at g mail dot com we're gonna continue to put out these conversations from the national in the coming weeks hope you enjoy them happy building take care we'll talk to you soon