alright we are back very excited for this episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay this is been a long time coming luckily we had a chance to catch up before this and i think this will be a very fun conversation for all of you out there listening today i'm joined by stephanie garcia the owner and ceo at mama brakes really doesn't need much of an introduction stephanie has done just a wonderful job ever since i've been following her on building her brand running awesome breaks building a community and then also just being a master online just like being in the right spaces providing value so not the most straightforward entry into sports cards and we're gonna get into kind of the background and how it all came to be but these are the types of conversations i love to have so without further ado stephanie welcome how are you thank you so much fred thank you for the kind words and the great inter introduction just hearing founder and ceo of mama breaks sounds wild even four years later when i just told you right before the show that i used to listen to you on my commute to work four years ago before i decided to do this and and wonder how you were doing it you know you were putting in the work then and i really appreciated the value you were providing in my in my learning of the industry and my just keeping cards as a part of my everyday life when i was still teaching when i was still working and kind of when all of this was still a dream so it's a it's a really really full circle moment for me here being on the pod and i'm really grateful to be here so thank you for having me on i appreciate the kind words you mentioned teacher i i think there is a lot of people that listen to sports card content that are collectors right now with the industry doing what it's doing questioning hey whether it's a teacher working at a desk job running a business that's non sports card related people are asking the question like how do i make the move how do i do cards how do i do more cards how do i do cards full time maybe take us back to you in that teaching profession which is very important shout out all the teachers out there but like what happened when you made the decision to say you know what like i'm teaching but there might be an opportunity here in sports cards take us through that it it all happened so fast and i think where it started was during covid i found out lamelo ball rookie cards were going crazy and i was like oh my gosh this is so cool like sports cards i remember opening packs of sports cards that i would buy at target i remember i love pokemon cards so this was during covid i was teaching from home i was pregnant with my youngest my oldest was about one and you know teaching from home was rough it was stressful i remember my husband was working all day he was a delivery driver so i was kinda like i need a a hobby i think everybody felt that way during covid right everyone was taking up new hobbies i i i did a lot of like cooking for the first time too and i was i'm a baker by trade that was my initial work before i did teaching so yeah i was just like let me get into sports cards again i started you know searching them up online oh my goodness sorry sorry but i freak i have this like automatic light in my office but we'll keep it like this it looks intimate oh i agree yes but yeah i just found cards and i became obsessed like there was nothing about everything about parallels and autos and chasing my favorite players i'm a huge sports fan i love the dodgers i love the clippers and the lakers and i would say those are my two favorite sports basketball and and baseball definitely got more into football as i got older but i became obsessed and i became obsessed with consuming the content and opening packs and watching breaks online where i became so entrenched in a specific breaking community that my husband thought i was going crazy every night where i was watching breaks till two in the morning and said you know what i think you would be great at this i think you could be a breaker and that he kind of put the idea in my head and i just started setting small goals my first goal was i started my card page mama breaks it just came to me it felt like like i said like it happened so fast it felt like wildfire like okay i love cards i'm gonna start a page i love ripping if i get to a thousand followers on instagram i'll do a break on instagram live it happened within a couple of months i did my first break i learned a ton and it's just been goals goal setting and hitting goals since then there was to be in the position i am today very grateful but was never the intention to have a twelve person multimillion dollar business in card breaking at this point i could have never imagined when i started i could have never even imagined when i left teaching that this is what it would become but now it's it's a lot of the same thing so now at this point i'm like i have no idea where this could take me but i'm enjoying the the journey that there's for anyone who's building a business in this space with just a environment that's changing so rapidly like there is always just this level of uncertainty obviously when you decided to go all in and pursue mama breaks as your professional livelihood like that took some risk and took some some some some courage to make that jump what was maybe going on in your head when you were in the process of like leaving your teaching profession which is a regular reoccurring salary that you get a paycheck and well every two weeks and you know it's coming like how did you process those decisions on like i'm okay with not getting that regular paycheck because i think the upside in doing this is a lot more and i think i'll be happier like take us through like that decision making i think i'm lucky that in my life i've been in situations where i've had to take risks and i've built those reps i've built those reps where i know that i'm in a tough spot and i got out of it in a tough spot and i got out of it and i've have experienced quitting a prior job where i was a baker by trade and i said there's no way i can keep working this physically and raise my kids and and work nights and weekends so i that's the first job i quit where i had no plan whatsoever i just knew that some way somehow i would figure it out and that's when i went into teaching and that was great and it was amazing and i thought that's what i was gonna do for the rest of my life and then i found this and i said you know what let's try it again and worst case scenario i could always come back to teaching because i've built that foundation for myself so i was very very much of the mindset that as delusional as it may seem that anything that i wanna do in life i could at least try really hard and it's better to try than not is where my mindset was at and i really really really believe that i can figure anything out and with the support of my husband obviously because we did have we do have two kids at this point where i decided to to quit teaching with his support with knowing that in the worst case scenario possible you know he would be just taking care of everything for maybe a year worst case scenario i lose everything and we start from scratch and we'll figure it out that's kind of just the mindset that i was really really in at that point and i figured this is something where i can build a life where i can essentially craft my own life i can take the kids to school and pick them up from school i can be there whenever they need me so that that's that's what was worth it is the freedom to do what i want with my time when you started the business i think back in that time frame i'm just you met you've given me some signals you mentioned la bello ball rookie i'm just thinking about that time frame i think about just like the breaking industry during that time like you'd find breaks on your instagram stories you'd find breaks in like facebook groups it i don't think it gets talked about enough but like just like the infrastructure around like the the the breaking side of the industry has changed rapidly over the last like five years when you saw all these people breaking and you you you got encouragement and feedback from your husband saying you know i think you can do this like how did you think about not only doing it but doing it in a way that was going to maybe separate you from the hundreds and maybe even thousands at the time of other people doing something similar adjacent it's such a great great question and it's such a and so nostalgic for me you bringing it up that way just realizing that whatnot was a platform that was in its infancy not really doing sports card breaking just yet fanatics live and all these other live platforms are just completely not even a thought back when we started all of this right and people most people were doing facebook live groups or they were doing breaks on their website and going live on youtube or where i found breaking was on instagram live so you'd have during covid on any given night especially weekend nights livestreams just a bunch of livestreams on your stories and everybody's live ripping cards right it was a lot of personal rips and ships on instagram so that's that's where i was learning the most and definitely i like that that question because you have to have this kind of business mind where you in order to build something you have to you have to figure out what you're gonna bring to the table that's different right so it's obvious for me i didn't see any women card breaking so that was number one i knew i was gonna stand out a little bit there number two there's just this idea of just sitting there and waiting for people to buy stuff was maybe the one thing where i thought you know this is where i can be different i was teaching from home and i learned so many ways to engage with with students online all these new things that i was trying i was so excited and and i was so much better at being like engaging online i thought i could do this where it's more fun to hang out in a stream and that's def that's just been my number one goal this entire time is figuring out how to make it more fun more engaging this process of opening cards with so many people it's what really i enjoy the most it's what fires me up so it's that it's it's not just sitting there and waiting for stuff to fill and then going live to open it it's this process of bringing a community together that loves talking about the cards that you're opening and loves watching the cards get opened yeah whether it be the set or big pulls or awesome parallels like that's what i wholeheartedly enjoy the you know it's undeniable i think we've all been there whether you buy into breaks regularly or you do it occasionally like you pop into the rooms and we've all like bought into the break and you know we get sent to the screen and it's like no one's in the seed and there's just like bad music being played and we're just like waiting around but like you know anytime i've been in your streams it's like you've got your regular customers you're very welcoming like and also like there's a side about you that i think is very important and it to me as an observer and maybe i'm maniacal about this because i study everything and everybody like there's an authenticity especially around when you are ripping products let's just say star wars let's say disney let's say wrestling stuff that i can tell you really love and like it's just infectious like if the individual on the other side of the screen is passionate about it like that's gonna get the whole room excited about it so like as an observer that's what i i find like that to be like a secret sauce of yours maybe talk through just that i mean you've dressed up on streams like you like to have fun with it like that to me separates you from a lot of other people like how important is that and the passion and authenticity to you when you're you know people are spending a lot of money with you like but you're showing up like you're showing up and showing like yeah if you spend money with me like you're gonna get like great service and you're gonna get a little bit of a show in a community like how important has that been to you as you've built mama brakes it's been the most important thing the craziest thing is that it's been unintentional for a long time it's kinda just been me going hey i'm spending ten thousand hours live i might as well make it fun and make myself wanna like go out and do this thing and i love cards so that's just it was pretty it came pretty easy to me i hate to say it that way but like i'm i love dressing up i love star wars i love the cards it's what i collect it's it's i adore it and i adore the people that love it it's it was unintentional for me at first doing that part and it's now i'm beginning to realize on the business side that that's what's helped build the brand and that's what helped build the business and now my number one goal is to figure out how to be more consistent in that because i can be very inconsistent it's tough to build around this idea that you know i can be ceo and manage this and manage that but what's most valuable in our company right now is me being live me being presently live and putting on the show so moving all the i have to figure out how to move all the pieces and and hire great people around me to do the other things to so that i can focus on that and more importantly so i can focus on teaching other people to to create this process again that i that i think i'm so happy to hear you that hear that you say it's infectious i just think it's it's the sauce that we're trying to recreate and recreate here i have two breakers tony and kevin who i think also also do that really well and i think putting the right breakers breaking the stuff that they're really passionate about is the first step and just going from there it's it's the most important thing in my business so there's a lot that you said there that i wanna dig into you mentioned ceo that is your role you are also on air personality like you are the brand like originally i know you have team members and you're doing a great job of trying to like elevate team members you have on the team because you likely know as a scaling business everything just can't go through you all the time like how do you manage that how do you manage the ceo like you need to make sure bills are paid you need to make sure new products coming in you need to make sure like pricing and inventory shipments are going all the stuff in the background that no one ever talks about like you need to make sure that stuff is running like the operation is running and that's like a ceo level role but then you're also like a a face of the brand and people hear mama breaks and they think of stephanie garcia like how do you manage your time between those two worlds of ceo and like face of the brand managing time is what is that kinda just wake up and live and do things but no i i think the it's always just hiring great people it's the investment is the best investment of my time always as a ceo and always will be is in people so any minute that i can spend with anyone on the team building teaching teaching something that i do or even guiding them through whatever like emotions come with like dealing with customers or emotions that come with being on stream after eight hours and not feeling anything for three days or anything like that anything that i can help teach someone this the more you put into people the more you build a more solid team where everyone has their role and does it really well is the best way to manage that and it's not always perfect and i don't always since i am on live a lot it's not always the best it's not always perfect is what i'm trying to say but that's i think the number one thing that you have to do is invest in people and teach and grow together so we got the opportunity to meet in person at fanatics fest and then obviously continued some of those conversations at the national shout out mama breaks for sponsoring wrestling card takeover but i also got a chance to interact and meet members of your team and everyone who i've interacted with and met are fantastic and awesome and so you are someone who's built this business that's become multimillion dollar successful brand in this space you've never done this before as a part of that and a responsibility of a ceo like you have to hire and bring on bringing good talent so that you can like trust people and offload some of your responsibilities like how did you get good at hiring and bringing on these individuals to offload some of this work off your plate i don't know if i'm good yet or i don't know how you are how you can say you're good i think i'm still learning one thing that i have learned is that it's my job to make sure that their job is a job where they feel comfortable at they feel safe and they feel that they can grow in so that's that's my i work for them me building this is building positions for them where they can look forward to coming to work so that's that's been the the biggest game changer that type of mindset i think is is important and you get better you know i a lot of recognizing how you react is big to certain things recognizing the way that you speak to people the way that you teach is all things that i focus on to to build a better team hiring is hiring can be tough you know like you go i go back and forth on questions i think i i feel i should ask and at the end of the day when it comes to hiring i think setting clear expectations of a job is super important yeah the gist of it yeah the the i i i on like the hiring front i'm curious where like making that first hire where it's like all the money coming in isn't going directly to me but like i need to give up some of that money to pay someone because i need help like when when was that moment for you and how did you know that like instead of you trying to do it yourself you were just going to you needed to find the right person to help you with some of those responsibilities and pay them for it yeah that's an amazing question because i think it's all another thing that you have to really get set on is what you want and that's why goal setting is so important so is your goal to reach let's say the next revenue target you really gotta look back and look at the big picture and see what is it going to really take to hit this number can i possibly hit this number by myself like how many cases is it gonna take for me to rip on live by myself sort and ship how much time is that gonna take and go well you know what it makes no sense for me to just do it by myself i should have someone helping me sort i should have somebody helping me ship and and that's kind of a i've always set those revenue goals for myself is figure out for example if i wanna do this one month what does that look like in terms of hours live what does that look like in terms of cases and what kind of cases and what the price points are what does that look like shipping wise how many people is it gonna take to manage shipping how many people is it gonna take to sort all of it how many people is it gonna take to handle the customer service behind all of that so for me twenty twenty three bowman draft i went from selling one case a day which i was sorting and shipping same day and sending out the next day to all of a sudden i was so busy i was filling four cases a day and then realizing that after i was done i didn't feel like sorting and shipping i was tired but even if i did sort and ship for eight hours i couldn't get it out and that's the moment where i'm like yeah if i wanna keep doing this type of volume if i wanna get to the next revenue level i maybe should hire someone to help me sort and that was my first my first employee that's that's very real and appreciate you sharing maybe digging into like the brand side in your relationship with customers i think anybody who's listening understands that or should hopefully understands that if you're buying into a spot and a break like the chance that you pull the product hit yourself and you get rewarded from that it's like it's very small and i think customers spend money on breaks for a lot of different reasons obviously like the upside is one of them but then it's like there's community and right there's entertainment like whenever i'm spending money on breaks like for me it's usually a it's a friday night i'm smoked from the week i'm sitting on my couch my kids are in bed it's like you know what like my wife's in bed early she had a long week it's like you know what like let's let's see who's breaking and let's see if anyone's ripping wwe products and let's buy a new break but i'm doing it because i wanna be entertained and so like i'm curious as the individual behind the operation like understanding that the customer's likely not everyone's gonna get something like how do you how do you continue to nurture and build trust with those individuals who are spending money with you and and especially individuals who might be coming by for the first time it's like they're joining mama breaks for the first time like how do you make sure that like they keep coming back and they keep coming back to experience what you're offering on you know a regular basis like how do you think through that that's a great question that's the business that we're all in when it's breaking it's one of the hardest things because like you said it's a lot of the times you're not getting those huge cards that you're hoping to get when you get the spot right we all have that dream of like how about a nineteen dollar spot and hit a ten thousand dollar card it happens all the time it really it happens more often than you than that's why i asked yeah for the last three months it has at least but but it doesn't always happen and i think with us or with me in particular it's that it's showing up very present very ready to be positive and have a great time and entertain and make people feel welcome and make people feel seen you know i i learned that a lot as as i as the years have gone by that i really need to just like be in a good mood before i go live i think smiling goes a long way i think developing connections over things that people love to collect and remembering details goes a long way and then i think the most important thing is what happens after the stream it's who are you sending thank you letters to who are you connecting to on dms one of the last things i always say before i leave or end a stream it's very at this point it feels scripted but everyone who's joined my breaks knows i say the same thing every time it's remember everybody it's not all about the hits yes we want a hit it's a big part of it but it's not all about the hits it's about the friends and the memories that we make along the way we have a big community full of incredible people who are lawyers who are dentists who are graphic designers and tech wizards and take value where you can make connections with people in the chat help each other out learn how to buy sell trade learn how to make some money back on the refractors that you hit there's so much more value in cards that people don't recognize it's like all this like focus on the big hit sometimes really does bother me if i'm being honest there's so much value that we can find in each other so much value that you can find in the cards that we are pulling and so make some friends and memories along the way and again if there's anything that i can help with please reach out and dm if there's anything that i can be a in any way that i can be a resource i truly appreciate your support in helping us build this thing that i love building and after you know going into the dms replying to dms sending thank you notes and the team working working very hard to you know ship accurately and as fast as we can so people get their package right away is is that's the goal that's the system so far it's for it's working stephanie i wanna talk about you as a creator but you've mentioned something in your last response that grabbed my attention and like you said before i turn the stream on like i wanna make sure like i'm like in my best self i'm in a good mood and i'm like gonna show up and you know you know be the type of person that reflects the mama breaks brand and you know i i've never in viewing you online to meeting you in person it's like the same person and very upbeat very positive but there's also like we're real people and there's there's there's life and stuff happens and not every day is great and this happens to me a lot where like people will say to me like they'll mention me as like someone who's very positive and stuff but like i'll be catching that feedback which is great on a day where i feel really shitty and i'm in a bad mood so i like how do you think about that like the the ebbs and flows of life and personality and knowing that like you're responsible for being live online being upbeat because if you show up in a way a certain way like that not only can negatively impact like the customers that return but like that can negatively impact the brand that you're building so like how do you how do you manage that i love that you asked that question because i think it's something that i've recently learned that's super important about that is look at the way that you just said that right like one negative stream can negatively impact your business and one bad review or whatever right like that's a lot of pressure you're putting on yourself first of all you have to recognize in myself anyway and this is what i've learned in myself that you're human there's so many different factors that affect your mood and what you might say that you don't mean whatever it is it could be something as like as as very as like i i guess like that hits you in your heart like something that's going on with your family to as little as like you just didn't get enough sleep the night before and you're a little hangry you know it's like it's human nature and and your mind is so volatile is that you have to be able to forgive yourself after bad days though yes be very intentional focus on building discipline figure out why you're in a bad mood all the time and figure out how to fix it maybe you know exercise exercise and working out has been a huge part of me building my business i cannot stress that enough to anyone listening you gotta get healthy you have to eat better and work out it helps with discipline that's so important in building business and it it prepares you to be a better version of yourself but also when you inevitably do have a bad stream where you're a little cranky say something that you didn't mean i'm live so much i do it all the time is you have to be able to forgive yourself and move on it's like i love to see it as like i love to see building businesses being an entrepreneur as an athlete and i just think sometimes i think cristiano ronaldo is one of my one of my goats just because of his work ethic and how he sees life and and knowing that people are always gonna have an opinion of everything that you do and you're gonna have great games and you're gonna have bad games where you didn't win but you go and hit the every day is a new game where you can go out there and make an impact you can't you cannot beat yourself up too much on the bad days you just can't so but you do have to have that intentional discipline to wanna be a better version of yourself every day it's tough yeah shout out shout out looking out for your mental and physical health it's definitely a part of my regular routine and i think very very important especially as someone who's talking into a microphone all day every day but i wanna talk about you as a creator so one of the things that i observed and i think naturally like as someone who breaks like you're on streams and those streams can get clipped and you can throw big hits go out and like everyone sees it those clips get in the algorithm and go viral and that's just like a very natural like content stream from being a creator i would i like separate like that activity which is something that like obviously like i see but then you're the personality behind the brand and you're very front and center and like you go anywhere any show like people know stephanie they we've seen stephanie on your for for you page or they've they've seen one of your breaks or participated like you've built your reputation and your personality online in in the hobby and then i noticed like at fanatics fest like grabbing gilman and doing a quick interview and your team's like ready to go and then i at wrestling card takeover in the national it's like your team shooting everything pictures content like pictures pictures pictures with people it's like i'm watching it i'm just like watching it unfold as someone who creates a good space and i'm like there is such a method it there's such a method to this madness and like the amount of amazing content that can be captured in like two three hours that then you use as a brand to continue that story after like an event is incredible so like you got you all get it like you understand it like did that come naturally to you or did you learn that over time like help me understand from one creator to another like how you make that happen no it didn't come natural at all i think i still hate listening to myself when i watch the content back and i think being able to be yourself on camera is the one thing that i've had to work on the most and it's so hard i i usually like the camera's on and i turn into this like i gotta be i gotta be a teacher wait i gotta be like everybody thinks i'm this person so i gotta be this person i gotta do that and even though i haven't eaten or you know we've been working sixteen hours every day and it's like day seventy five of the national and i can't believe i haven't been home in three months and all this stuff right like you have all this stuff going on and it's you go you as a creator especially when you're creating for a business i think puts that extra pressure on you you're building we are building content to support our brand that inevitably hopefully you know gets people to buy into our breaks that's the system that we're trying to create and it's i think it it for a while removed me from the content that i really actually wanted to create because i was so focused on hey this content costs a lot of money like like you said like we have like two people i'm bringing here to do this like it's not free so we need to figure out how to make sure that we're actually getting some monetary value out of it when we're not doing brand deals because those are never guaranteed or when we're not it's hard to do brand deals when you create content for a business in a lot of ways but it's just been this like this back and forth of trying to figure that out and i the beautiful thing about all of it is i think that i never will figure it out and it's just part of the journey and along the way we've had some trips where we make we crush on content the content crushes and we've had trips where we go that content sucked and we're just gonna move on and try again and forgive ourselves and keep going so i mean that's the the the good thing about it though is i i do personally enjoy creating a lot and i have a team who does as well so it's never loss it's never a complete loss because we enjoyed it and we are creating experiences put it this way like some of the content i've created even though the content didn't crush i maybe met four or five people that have over the course of this journey changed my life in some way whether it be you know introduced me to someone who helped me do this or just explain something in a way where i would have never thought of and help me build this or help me become better at that so it's i think there's so many beautiful things about creating putting yourself out there and and meeting new people but that too you do you do get to share your story and hopefully it resonates with enough people where they get inspired to do the same and we just keep growing all this industry together it's a crazy thing that's happening right now it is crazy the you mentioned it's like you know the content's expensive and like there's goals around the content right like ultimately you're trying to build awareness for mama breaks and you're trying to catch the attention of someone who might be interested in something that you're breaking or selling and you're it's it's a continual cycle of content and trying to catch people and bring them into your ecosystem ultimately in order for all of this to be successful like you need to have product you need to have new product you need to be there and you need to be ripping on release days and because that's the expectation from the market especially when a new and exciting price product is available like you need to be there you need to be in the game like i know they're like allocation it can be challenging and it's all about like building the right relationships like how because having the product is such an important part of your business like maybe over the course of time like how have you thought about making sure that that fuel is constantly going into the mama brakes engine like you constantly have the new product that's coming through like how do you think about that especially as all there's more breakers than ever before more competition for new product like how are you thinking about making sure you're ready each time a new product drops is that's been a huge part of this for me too and i think just not being afraid to take risks not being afraid to try a different break format not being afraid to go big on something not not being afraid to take that leap where you go you know this is where i'm gonna make a name up for myself i think galaxy chrome star wars is the first like that was like my first big girl position that i took on a on a product where i was like you know what i think i could sell this better than anyone else let me go out there and just buy it everywhere that i possibly can and go so hard that no one else is gonna think about anyone else but me when this stuff comes out next time and then just create that cycle again and again and again i think wrestling is another thing that i'm just like you know what no one's doing wrestling i love it let me go buy every case i could find and make sure that i go so big and i go so hard that that no one's gonna think about anybody else but me and wrestling and that's gonna give me a better position put me in a better position for allocation next time and next time so it's definitely always looking into the future seeing how the risk that i can take today can help build upside for me next year when the same product releases and just that cycle again and again and yeah you gotta know you gotta know what you're good at you gotta know where you wanna go hard and just try it and know that if sometimes you could fail and lose a lot of money and figure out how to make it up again and that this is a lot but it's fun i think what i appreciate about what you are building is the fact that you are willing to take risks and you're willing to go out on a limb to support a niche community around a specific product a specific ip like star wars or wwe because you would enjoy you enjoy those things yourself like i am a big believer in just the more these niche communities grow the stronger like all the markets will get like the more collectors like i'm a i'm a big advocate for that what what have you found in like focusing in on star wars or focusing in on wwe like take us through because i don't think we get the opportunity to hear enough about this but like take us through like that that formation of like you can just focus on star wars or wwe like what do you see like in you because you're into it like how do how do you feel how does that make you feel as a as a business owner helping contribute to those spaces i just think that there are a lot a lot of the times they're the ones that get left out right even when it comes to just the big picture wise in product they don't get a cool topps chrome some of them right release or they don't get a cool like cosmic and it's not it's not until i think there's more demand or more response from the community that we start getting better sets and we get we start getting the the companies to pay more attention to what they're putting in and the autos that they're putting into it so i feel really really excited to be a part of growing it and i also feel really excited to put it this way like to even provide breaks where sometimes they couldn't even join breaks for wrestling in star wars when i was doing wrestling in star wars breaks no one was doing pick your character breaks at the scale that we were doing them no one was doing pick your wrestler breaks at the scales that we were doing it's just providing more to that community is where i get most excited and going okay what's what are they doing in sports that i could bring to marvel like for example this is something like a fanatics live filth bump breaks they put on a like a hundred case player break for update chrome baseball this was a few years back and i remember thinking like wow this is so crazy what they're doing like no one's done anything like this before and then i thought wait no one's done anything like this before for non sport kurtz so i went really hard into the first year marvel chrome and i started putting up cases cases of pick your character breaks and it was like wildfire then it was because no one else had done it and it's just so cool to see both sides grow like that i see it all the time with like people running a lot of random teams right that became huge and popular and whatnot i was not on whatnot for a while and i'm back now and i'm looking like oh shoot like these random things are so crazy for non sport and wrestling cards where four years ago they were nonexistent people were just weren't doing that so it's it's exciting to see the growth and ex excited to be a a part of it and like i said i do it because i love it and i love the community i love the fans what what have you found in terms of like representation and being like a female breaking in the space and especially like with a brand name like mama breaks and i think about like there are probably other females out there who see someone like you doing what you're doing and feel maybe more comfortable in your space than other spaces obviously like because of the brand name people know you're a mom so like that might also cause a mom or a dad to bring their kid to a stream to watch breaking and have fun and entertainment like what has that been ex experience been like for you maybe representing more underrepresented segments of this hobby through your work it's not something that i do intentionally and i do you know feel really responsible to uphold it and i'm very grateful that i can i guess i guess it's a crazy question because i don't i never intended for this you know i never intended for this i never intended to represent women or intended to represent families in any way like i'm just doing something that i really love but the really the part that i'm really grateful for is that i hope that it does do that that it it makes little girls who made me feel like this is a boys' thing to go like well it's not a boys' thing like girls can be breakers too because i think if i look back at myself when i was eleven and twelve years old i was called what i don't know if like people use this term still like a tomboy yeah i got called a tomboy all the time and i used to be so mad when i was a twelve year old eleven twelve year old girl like why are people calling me a boy like the boys aren't gonna like me because everybody says i'm a boy because i'm just this tough like tough girl that loves baseball and playing in the dirt and playing basketball you know and and thinking like oh well it's so weird that i like these things and i'm a girl maybe they're right maybe there's something wrong with me and being hopefully if i could see that's a cool thing right like when you're doing something that you love when you're older that i could i think i could talk to my eleven years year old self and my eleven year old self would think that i'm pretty pretty cool and would say like you're doing something that you love it doesn't matter if it's because you're a boy or a girl or not i don't i i botched that that explanation but what i'm trying to say is that this isn't a a thing just for boys so if i can represent that i feel very grateful that i can yeah i don't it means a lot to me yeah no i as a guy who's a daughter has three daughters i took my daughter to indycard exchange and had her first experience and we were ripping squishmallow packs and yeah she she they're like two two bucks a pop in and she kept like i was selling some cards and it was just it was like one of my favorite experiences this year because i saw her light up i saw the way she organized the cards andy was great he was like here's some stuff from dcw supplies to put your cards in and i was like this is such a cool experience and it was i don't know like i was i felt very proud to be a dad and to expose my kid to cards and they're being her feeling comfortable so i'm a i'm a fan of there being voices outside a bunch of forty year old dudes in this space i think it's really important especially as we're trying to grow and expand this industry maybe let me make one point about that that i think is another reason why i started all of this that i don't talk about enough is that that connection that i wanted with my kids mhmm so i think another to to kinda like a better answer for that question that you had is the what's been most impactful in my journey through all of this is getting those dads reaching out to me and saying thank you because now my daughter kinda likes cards because she thinks that you're cool or whatever right and i think obvious thinking people think i'm cool is awesome but like the fact that i can somehow be a bridge to a dad having a better relationship with their daughter is amazing because if i look at my journey i was a tomboy because my dad loved playing sports with me mhmm because he shared everything that he loved with me and whether or not i was like bored that he was always wanting to watch soccer or football and hating it sometimes eventually it just became a part of who i was and it became what i was really passionate about my my dad loved star wars when i was a kid we had return of the jedi on him almost every day and and now when i look at star wars i feel it with every bone in my body even though i can't you know be with my dad every day he's always with me and it's a huge part of why when i had my own kids i realized that as parents we struggle so much with the idea of like how do i spend quality time with my kids how do i connect with my kids and it's tough but very simply if you share what you love with your kids it really becomes a part of who they are and that's i hope that people can do that through cards it's a card through cards is a beautiful way to do that so it's a huge part of this for me i love that you you've talked about you being a baker and then being a teacher and then now being a ceo of a business like is it is it become normal for you to go to a show like fanatics fest or the national and be stopped by so many people and like you have that one to one conversation like has that become normal for you or is it still like are you still like i can't believe this type of activity is happening in my life like where are you at with that right now i think it's become yeah first initial initially was a shock and i was like why why do these people wanna take a picture of me wild like i'll even often think like what is this picture gonna do for you like i have nobody you said i so since i wanna take a picture of famous people because i'm like i'm gonna get a lot of likes when i post it you know what i mean but but i think i've re reshifted my mindset towards this especially this last fanatics fest in national where it's like i consider everyone who wants to spend some time with me deeply deeply a friend so it's very important for me so anybody listening if you ever see me anywhere it means the world to me if you come and want a moment with me because i wanna give you as much as i possibly can that's anybody that has any question or any way that i can help in any way even even maybe if it's just connection in that moment like i very deeply feel like people that want time with me are my friends and i appreciate all the support because even one view even one like even one comment on our pages does so much to help our help us grow so i'm just i'm now filled with so much gratitude when that happens it's insane it's a blessing i love it as we're maybe rounding out this chat stephanie what do you think entrepreneurship has forced you to learn about yourself that's a tough one everything it's been the ultimate growing as a person activity i've ever done in my life i think sometimes in business not sometimes always in business something that may be wrong with your business is something that's actually wrong with you and you do a lot of self reflection and you do a lot of growing so if i can speak on something specifically it's just learning to be more self aware looking at the big picture and and like everything that we we talked about a lot of different things today just how important it is to set goals and how important it is to believe in yourself when when people hear mama breaks five years from now what do you want it to stand for ask me in five years that's a good that's good how about how about we close it with this because i'm genuinely curious there's a lot of stuff happening in the industry right now it's nuts like we we could literally go down the laundry list of just a million updates press releases new drops new categories new people celebrities athlete i mean literally go on and on what right now and as we're recording this mid august twenty twenty six what excites you the most about this industry right now it's it's unbelievable what's happening now to me being in this five years ago what excites me the most is that we have no idea where this industry is gonna be a year from now and where before even as as soon as last like as soon as last year i was afraid of what's unpredictable i've grown and i've learned to embrace what's unpredictable and choose to have fun yes i have never had so much fun in my entire life and i can't wait to wake up every day and have so much fun and hopefully everyone around me and everyone who is helping me support this and build this whether you're a customer or working for me whatever is having fun with me i wanna give as much as i possibly can and have fun that's what i'm most excited for what a wonderful conversation stephanie it was a pleasure looking forward to doing this again down the road this is stephanie mama breaks really appreciate the time thank you brett