what's going on everybody welcome back to another episode of hobby jobs here on the stacking slabs network this is the show where we talk about building businesses in the sports card industry and we hear from builders themselves really excited about hobby jobs in the platform we are building here on the stacking slabs network so much great feedback from industry professionals about this content the b to b side of the sports card industry is forming it's maturing this content is carving a wedge right in that zone for builders operators entrepreneurs i have a ton of passion for this this is an opportunity for me each week to talk about things that interest me as an individual building a business within the sports card industry hear from others learn gain insights and hopefully share that with all of you for the foreseeable future some really cool things happening right now behind the scenes at hobbyjobs hopefully we get a chance to share some of those updates very soon but what we are going to do in today's episode is share with you a conversation that i had with a good friend at the national and that is josh johnson the chief technology officer at card ladder i have known josh for some time now we have never really had a conversation publicly about building card ladder and his mindset mentality how he thinks about working with a team in the space we get into that it was a fun week at the national with josh we did our annual excursion with a group of hobby runners running on the trail system behind the convention center year two we've done that it's one of my favorite parts of the trip before we get into that conversation i wanna share some perspective and that perspective is the thinking around the difference between being able to build something and knowing what deserves to be built the difference matters more today than i think it did a few years ago the barrier to building a product has fallen you no longer need years of technical training to take an idea and turn it into something people can use ai can help you write code design an interface organize data and launch product faster than ever before this creates opportunity it also creates a lot of products searching for a problem i receive messages from people building tools for the hobby all the time they want feedback they want introductions they want help reaching collectors in some cases that person can explain every feature of the product but struggles to explain why it needs to exist they started with the desire to build they never spent enough time with the problem this that is one of the ideas that's at the center of my conversation with josh josh has spent his career building tech he worked inside companies such as amazon he understands engineering systems scale and product development he also understands cards the second part matters card ladder was not created because josh sat outside the hobby and identified a market he wanted to enter he was already there he was collecting he was talking with other collectors we had chris on here recently and chris was doing work that josh believed he could help automate that work turned into graphs the graphs turned into sales records the sales records turned into more tools one addition led to the next card ladder grew out of problems its founders were experiencing themselves they wanted to understand what cards were selling for they wanted to see movement of a market instead of relying on small pieces of insight here and there or nuggets they wanted better information when making decisions about their own collections they built something they needed then they stayed close to the people who needed it with them the sequence is important live in the product understand the people affected by it build a solution listen to how many people use it improve it keep going many people wanna reverse that order they build something then they search for the person who needs it technology can speed up the act of building it cannot replace the judgment required to know what is worth building ai makes that distinction easier to see josh talks in our conversation about the difference between an experienced engineer using ai and someone relying on ai to make every decision the experienced engineer uses ai as leverage the tool helps that person move the through work faster the engineer still brings the architecture judgment context and understanding of the user the person guides the technology we talk a lot about this on built in the hobby with the inferno red team when someone depends on ai for the idea the structure and the execution the products begin to all look the same the creator has not developed enough judgment to make the decision that separates a useful product from another collection of features access to technology is no longer the advantage it once was taste is an advantage judgment is an advantage understanding the customer is an advantage knowing what not to build might be the biggest advantage of them all that is where the card ladder story becomes more than technology story it becomes a story about restraint josh spent three months before the national working to make card ladder perform better at the show that work was not designed to produce a huge launch announcement it did not create another feature for a marketing campaign most card ladder users will never know what he changed the they will only know when they are standing on the show floor and need information the app just works think about the conditions inside the national thousands of people using their phone collectors are moving through deals dealers are checking prices people are trying to make decisions with another person standing across the table waiting for an answer a slow product is not a small inconvenience in that moment speed becomes part of the value reliability becomes part of the brand the work behind the experience is invisible until it fails that is one of the parts of building a business that people most always overlook building is not one launch it is not the moment when the logo goes live or the customer signs up building is waking up months or years later and improving the same thing it is fixing the issue that bothers you even if no one else reports it it is making search load faster it is simplifying the sign up process it is preparing for demand before customers feel the strain it is making the product work when people need it josh described card ladders' growth as slow and up and to the right there was no single moment when everything changed the team did not force growth beyond its ability to serve its users they kept improving the product they kept talking with collectors they kept showing up at card shows they kept doing the work for close to seven years that answer will frustrate people looking for a shortcut seven years does not fit into a post about launching a business in thirty days it is difficult to package consistency as a growth tactic because consistency does not produce an immediate result you do the work today then you do it again tomorrow most days don't feel important the value appears when enough of those days are stacked together a collector walks into a card shop and the buyer asks do you go buy card ladder values this just happened to me recently think about what needed to happen for card ladder to become part of the language of the transaction the product had to earn trust with the shop it had to earn trust with the seller the information needed to be useful the app needed to work both sides needed to understand what card ladder value meant no advertising campaign creates that position by itself that position is earned through repeated use consistency is not a card ladder secret as josh as josh says in our conversation it's a life principle he connects it to running you do not become a runner because you had one strong run you run today then you run again your ability changes because you stayed with the work josh organized the run during the national last year i joined him with a group of collectors around six am we ran ten miles on trails behind the convention center getting up was not fun there was no part of me at five thirty in the morning that thought running ten miles was the right way to start a long day at the national a year later i remember the run i remember talking about cards and deals and moving through trades i remember the people i remember the experience i remember the alarm that is another part of building something that lasts the work often asks for payment before it provides the reward you give it time before it gives you momentum you serve people before they trust you you build the foundation before anyone notices the building people entering the sports hard sports card industry need to understand this skills from the outside the hobby have value here the industry needs engineers it needs marketers it needs salespeople it needs financial leaders it needs product managers recruiters designers operators bringing those skills into the hobby does not mean the hobby needs to conform to the way another industry works collectors can tell when someone enters the space to extract from them they know when the product is being forced into their lives they know when a company is using the language of community without participating in the community josh makes this point when he talks about people entering the hobby from technology you need humility you need a willingness to spend time here before deciding what everyone needs attend shows build relationships collect something have a have conversation that aren't always tied to sales learn why people care understand how collectors make decisions then look for the pattern your skills can help solve you cannot treat people here as a collection of logins on a dashboard these logins represent collectors standing at tables negotiating deals working on collections and trying to make decisions with their money josh has gone directly to dealers at the show and asked them why they were not using cardlyder what did they dislike what are they missing what would make the product more useful those conversations shaped the product they were they also created accountability when a friend runs a card shop and depends on your product the standard changes the product cannot work because the person wants to support you it needs to work because the person has a business to operate this is what it means to when i say staying close to the problem you see the consequences of your decisions you hear the frustration you watch how the product fits into a real transaction you understand that every feature adds something else the team must maintain that leads to another part of josh's approach that stood out to me the card ladder team receives requests for business features that might generate more revenue the opportunity can sound attractive add the feature and several shops will sign up move in this direction and the product will reach another market card lighter often says no the team asks whether the feature serves the collector would they use it themselves would the collectors they know value it does it support the reasons why card ladder exists if the answer is no the revenue does not make it the right decision that's discipline businesses need revenue they also need an identity every revenue opportunity carries a cost a feature creates maintenance a customer type creates expectations a new business line takes attention away from the product you already promised to support revenue is not good revenue when it moves the company away from its purpose or wears down the people responsible for delivering it josh chris christina protect the health of the team when they make decisions if an opportunity adds an hour to someone's workload every day they take that cost seriously if one person feels the decision will reduce their happiness the other two will listen they understand that the business depends on all three people remaining committed to the work that might look conservative to someone measuring the company by how fast it expands i see it as one of the reasons card ladder has lasted the team is building a company they still wanna work for they are protecting the conditions that allow them to keep showing up that restraint also shapes the brand at the national there are companies fighting for everyone's attention someone wants to scan your badge someone wants an email address someone tells you about a product before learning anything about you card ladder takes the other approach there's a couch there's hoodies there's conversations there's candy too if you use the product and need help the team wants to help if you do not use it they wanna understand why the interaction does not start with pressure that does not mean card ladder lacks ambition it means the product carries more of the burden make something people need make it work treat people well give trust time to build this conversation with josh is about technology ai product decisions brand building and working in the hobby underneath all of it is a lesson about becoming a builder who lasts do not enter this industry because you want something to build enter because you care to understand what needs to be built don't confuse more features with more value don't let access to technology replace time spent with people don't chase every source of revenue at the expense of the reason that your company exists stay close to the problem stay close to the people do the work no one sees then give the work enough time to matter here's my conversation with josh johnson chief technology officer at card ladder recorded at the card ladder booth at the national

alright i am here with josh johnson c two at car ladder we're gonna be talking about working in the hobby you said something last night when we were standing outside the hotel we were just having a conversation about working for ourselves in this space a space that we love and how once you're in it and you're doing it it's really hard to get out of it and go do something else you've been doing this for a while building card ladder you've also worked in corporate america worked in for tech companies where kinda does that spirit of that come from like you've been on both sides what's what do you like about kind of doing what you're doing yeah i mean like you said it's mostly just the experience of having ten years in the corporate side of things working in the you know with managers and teams and huge corporations i've worked for amazon which is about as big as it gets and so the contrast of that versus me and my friends working on a product together is a huge huge difference and that's like i can't go back now so i i feel like i don't know your observations but it feels like there's been this rise of people from outside of sports cards finding their way into sports cards whether it's building their own businesses or plugging into a bigger business i think for a long time this hobby was just hobby people and now like outside skills are being applied to building companies what how do you think that impacts kinda like the next future look in just the hobby industry yeah some of that is they're they're some of those people are trying to apply what they know from the outside world into our space and it's it's probably a bit of a learning curve coming in because this industry will just they'll catch on to that very quickly it's a very honest group of people we we know like when you're coming in trying to sell us something versus trying to bring some added value i would say just an observation is you have to be very grounded and you have to be very humble about coming into this space and know that you you might go through some tough times trying to win over the average collector versus like you know coming in saying i know how tech works you guys need to listen to the way i do it you know what i mean because we like purposely come into this space to avoid that tech world to a certain extent we come here to avoid everything being automated in ai and we come in it's like i wanna sit down and look at shiny pieces of cardboard so people coming into this space from the business side it takes a a bit of time to i think adjust to that and we're probably going through we went through some of that pain in the last cycle and i think there's a lot better adjustment to it this time around do you observe kind of what other people are building and other tech in this industry or are you just heads down working on card ladder like making it as good as possible day in and day out like do you pick up and look at what else is going on regularly mostly the heads down but we get approached about business ideas and wanting to work with us so we we still like get a lot of the conversations around that kind of stuff which is great and i think most of it's with good intention probably just a lot of ideas that are trying to like force tech onto things where we don't necessarily need them which is which is normal but some of it is like yeah we're adding new stuff this is great let's see how we can incorporate it i know there's a big push to like put ai into things oh i wanna talk i wanna talk about that into every product or like make a new product and make an adjacent side product to your product that has ai bolted onto it there's a lot of that going on and that'll take some time to like figure out and and because like ai is changing so fast dude that like we don't even know necessarily what that product is going to be or if it's like integrated into the existing products or if it's like a back end service or what it is or maybe like fanatics takes it up and they just integrate it at the at the manufacturing and breaking level so we don't really know what it is yet so i don't know about you but i have seen or and received more messages from individuals that are building something and they want feedback on it now obviously the connection point is individuals have access to these tools through ai and they're building stuff and trying to get it to market you are like the type of developer that i am used to working with based on my career in technology i can just just tell by how you think and work like how how do you think about that from like you've built your career on the back of like engineering building product and now individuals with very little to no technical experience yeah are building things and bringing them to market in a very quick manner because ai allows us to do that like do is this a is this a a good thing a bad bad thing somewhere in between like what's your position and what do you see i'm not sure exactly i it's like the the thing i've noticed with that the pattern i noticed is that people's people like that want to build the product but they don't even know what it is necessarily like their first goal is to build a product as opposed to here's the idea and the need and then i build the product to fix the need which is very noticeable to me and those are like you know they're like ai vibe coded apps that i can tell right away so the difference between that individual versus the experienced tech person i think use the experienced person uses ai to augment what they're already building and uses it as like a hyper scale ten x yourself hundred x yourself and the way that you think about engineering and like scaling very quickly versus someone that's like fully dependent on it they those all start to like blend together and look very similar because like they're relying on the ai and the ai systems are all fairly similar so they kinda like create similar looking apps similar structure whereas an experienced engineer is like i said very exponentially skilled in that they can guide it very quickly like my limiting factor right now as an engineer is i can't tell it to go fast enough because i'm sitting here typing out with my fingers the ai is so fast that like it's like waiting for me to type faster it's like hurry up dude i've got the whole app in my brain give me the next instruction so it's you have built something very very it's very needed by the hobby with card ladder you've continually updated and improved it over the years based on i'm sure customer feedback market demand all these things there is this sense that i see that everyone wants to build something that already exists in card ladder at some fashion like do you is it like how do you when you see something like that someone building something that is similar or adjacent to card ladder is that do you do you view that as like competitive do you view that as like a compliment like how do you view people building stuff that more or less already exist through your work i can't really control it so i just don't think about it very much you know like i can't it doesn't it won't do me any good to like worry about it and try to keep up with every feature they might add and like try because i think the more that like i try we try to build and expand to like match everything else the more we would suffer on the things we're very good at and so we just kinda lean into the way it's gone improve the things we do have make sales history faster make the camera search faster make the you know sign up experience better and faster make everything load quicker optimize things for for the shows i've spent the last three months just like optimizing for the show making sure nobody has any problems with the app as opposed to like let me try to add a bunch of features that competitors are adding and things like that you know what i mean how important is it for like people think about new technology they think about all the bells and whistles but like maybe the most important thing about card ladder is the fact that when you're in a show like the national that it just works exactly how's the exactly like like how do you how do you what are you doing behind the scenes and you can get as technical or nontechnical as you want but like what are you thinking about what are you doing behind the scenes to make sure that the app just works yes when people are at a show this i think is kind of in the key to our success and it's that we are in the hobby and we just like first of all we want it to work for ourselves first and foremost i want it to be fast for myself every time i use the app and it does anything that's not up to par i freak out and spend the next six hours on my computer fixing it because it annoys me so much and then i know everybody else is probably thinking the same thing the other thing is when i'm at these shows i'm asking everybody like what they hate about it what's bad what what do you need for this to work and probably like four nationals ago i went to like every dealer and said how do i get you using a card letter why are you not using it now what would make you use it so i'm just sort of like thinking about it in terms of how is the community actually using it and not treating everybody as like some login you know i'm not trying to like add x amount of users or you know numbers on a screen i'm actually like these are all real people out here at this show i i need to go talk to every single one of them and figure it out and you know working with people like yourself getting getting people in the community that we're friends with and like get them excited about it that's kind of always been our strategy it's like let's get everybody friends with that's excited about it the dealers get everybody happy let's get them using it and then it'll kind of like go from there so you mentioned growth and i don't know if the any anyone on card the card ladder team has ever really talked about it but i'm i'm interested by it by just observation where you launch this product you basically introduced it via you know you you had the crossover early on and you were talking about building this thing and then it shows up and it's just kind of the ladder at first and then progressively over time there there's just a user base grows and grows and grows and grows and then it dude now it seems like i can be anywhere at this show and just looking at someone on a phone and it seems like everyone's on card ladder which is it's incredible it moved from just like an idea to a product to now i mean i think it's probably the most used product in this room which is crazy especially like there is competitive products too but it just seems like over time everyone is kind of leaned towards card ladder like those moments of growth like how did those moments of growth happen and were they like big chunks of growth or is it just gradually organic over time like how did those moments take shape i like to think that it's like the most slow up and right growth that you can imagine there was never like a big jump or a big spike other than like the industry itself jumping and spiking so it might have followed some of that just just because it just followed it and everybody saw that growth but other than that we never wanted to force overgrowth or grow too fast where we couldn't like keep up with it so we've always tried to be mindful of like let's not overdo it with hey we really need to force this we need to like push fast we need to we've always just been like nope keep going the same pace work with all the same people just keep growing it slowly not not like if we if because if we try to like overgrow it too fast then we just like would burn out right we would just like not be able to keep up so i feel like it's just followed our pace that we're comfortable with and it's just slow i mean six years dude it's like we're coming up on seven years if you do something for seven years every day like it's gonna be good eventually yeah the consistency thing i think has been huge for card ladder and i think so often people build stuff this can be from like a collector collecting perspective someone collects something for a year gets bored of it moves on someone builds something or starts a piece of content and it goes for six months and then it stops but like i don't know the real ones for me are always the people that just continuing continue to do it under whatever market conditions what under any circumstances like and i feel like across the board everyone on the card ladder team's a pretty consistent person do you think that's been kind of part of the secret sauce for card ladder success that's the secret sauce to life i don't think that's just i don't think that's like a business thing i think that's just everything you know why does not enough people not enough people talk about it i don't know dude it's like you know i think about it in terms of this for like my running you know i run every day and then and then five years later i'll be pretty decent at running hopefully and it's like now if i wanna take up another sport or something it's like the only way to do it is if i have to do it every day and i've gotta wake up and i've gotta do it and you know people maybe just like don't wanna hear that because it's like ugh you know i don't wanna i don't wanna like wait seven years i don't wanna wait ten years for something but it's like well you know you gotta start today if you wanna actually get there you have to you just have to do it consistently this is for everything dude it's for it's for taking things out of your life like let's say you have like an addiction or you're trying to lose weight or whatever it is dude you're not gonna do it tomorrow you have to start it today you gotta just keep doing it so i think it's just like a this applies to everything so you mentioned the running thing and and this is year two where you are organizing a group of people to go on a run i was a part of it last year and i look back when i think about last year that is a moment i remember and i remember it because it's an interesting setting you're which i never knew these trails existed behind right the convention center but you're running and it's no it's not a competition everyone's just running because we like running but you're sitting there running with people from instagram and you're having conversations with cars i remember talking about deals with coleman like running these trails and it's like wow what a unique experience like you obviously spearheaded it year one you're spearheading it year two like how important do you think those types of moments are to kinda connect with other people in a setting like that well it's funny that you mentioned all the like happy moments and you don't remember the fact that you woke up at five thirty and you suffered and you went over there and we ran however far we did and we were just like ten miles yeah we ran ten miles we were suffering dude to a certain extent you know we're not like actually suffering but it's like it's painful and you remember the part that's like dude we were like on a high high running together chatting about who knows what cards and how crazy we are to be up at six am and everyone else is sleeping and we're out here those are the kind of things that are hard at first you know in the moment it feels like it's gonna suck but then you're out there and then you a year later you're like that was the best part of the show for some people maybe or or like you remember the part that was enjoyable about it so i think that that kind of is like the underpinning of like what i'm trying to say with the consistency too is like dude if you do the sucky part upfront you'll get rewarded after when you have all the dopamine of running with your friends you know this is a small example but hopefully this year is as good hopefully everyone shows up and has a good time and it'll be a good time so i don't know like i view you as an individual like a tech leader of a successful business in the hobby like crossing all of these try checking all these boxes but there's not a lot of other there's people who do tech but maybe people who aren't as like public as you because like you get on the crossover we do a podcast once a month so like you're a collector but you're also a developer there's a lot of developers that also are collectors there's probably a lot of developers who are looking to build something like you built card ladder or plug into a a business like and they're working for some corporate america company right now like you've been through it like what would what's your advice to those individuals who might want to jump outside of corporate america and do kind of what you did hopefully you have you have a nice footing in the hobby first i think i do feel like you need to kinda like be a part of the hobby without trying to build the app for for some amount of time whether that's like you know you start going to shows you integrate into the space with a social media account or you make friends in the space you build a your own little sub community you have your own collecting friends you have your chats and then from there you sort of like organically can figure out what's the need you're trying to fill versus like i have to build something because i'm an engineer and i like cards i just have to build something i don't even know what it is i'll just start building it i would say like spend some time in the community and figure out what the need is first so how did like in your example and obviously like you've made this connection with chris and christine and you built this partnership but like what was that moment for you where i can't even imagine a world right now like especially at a show at like this with this scale with not having access to a tool like card ladder so obviously like there it fills a massive need that maybe we didn't even know we had right like when was that moment for you where you realize like wow i can actually apply my skill set and what what i'm doing to solve a real problem in the industry right now see i see i never even thought about it like that the way you framed it it was more like chris was working on something and i was like i can help you automate that and then it was like well what we just automated with tech is kinda cool what if we added this and it was really for ourselves it was like we wanted to track auctions that were going we didn't know what's we didn't know like what was a fair value so we're like let's just like track it on graphs and let's see what it looks like so we wanted to like we could anecdotally know what was happening with the with the market but i just wanted to see it on a screen and so it's like well let's build it and let's look at it on the screen and see all the numbers plotted and then after like a few months of having it launched with just like the graphs and the ladder and stuff then it was like what if people just wanna see all the sales you know or like i just wanna see the sales let's just add that and see what happens it wasn't like the industry needs this necessarily it was more like a slow organic like hey let me just slowly add this one thing next and next i know like there's this common saying in business to never like really get high on your own supply so like i i don't know like do you guys realize how valuable what you've built is and how important i'll give you an example so i went into indycard exchange last week i sold them some cards i could've consigned them or whatever but they were colts cards and i figured like take them to a local shop and when i walked up to the buying station i said what's up to shane their head buyer and talking through it and he's getting ready to like do the values he's like so do you go by card ladder value and i'm like yeah like let's let's look at card ladder value like a phrase now yeah and so i thought like caught my attention it's like wow this is one hobby shop in one city in america during one transaction like at i mean this is global like glow globally card ladders being used like i don't know like how do you like you built like you built this with members of your team like how do you think like how do you think about that those moments well i've been friends with andy for years and i remember when we were first launching it it was like andy how do i get your shop using this app like what do you need what can we set you up with and he i think i guess his whole shop uses it yeah mostly partly because you know we're friends and he wants to support me but then like it got to the point where i have to make this good because he needs to run a real business it can't just be like he's my friend supporting me you know like it has to be really good but to me like i you know i again like i don't really think about it in terms of the business success and like the number of users we have and the fact that people are using it which is great you know i obviously love hearing that but it's more like two of my friends in the space like get value out of it and then they're happy or they make a deal that makes sense i'm more i get more excited about like my friends in the space using it you know what i mean like i just i like that part of it i like i like knowing that people like it and they they get enjoyment out of it that's kinda like the you know like the legacy i would like to have from it not the money or the number of users or the scale or the fact that like you know people at the show use it it's all great it's fun but i'm more excited to hear stories like that where it's like dude me and andy were like using the app and it worked it's like i like that the is there a difference in how you think about the build of the product from a collector or consumer perspective versus the business owner builder perspective like i want you to talk about that because i the way i'm thinking about my content right now is there is a consumer or collector side and there's a b to b and business side and i'm there's like a line and you can listen to both and enjoy both but like i am there's a delineation between those two just in terms of content i would imagine in building a product like there's similar thoughts like how how are you thinking about that we have to fight the urge every single day to not add something into the app that we don't feel is core to a collector and what i mean by that is we'll have people on the business side say to us if your app just did x everyone would use it and it would scale to the moon but the three of us would say back like well that doesn't really apply to the collector or like we would never use that ourselves or like our friends that we chat with that feature just doesn't apply and it's just too focused on b to b or it's too focused on something that's a little bit outside our comfort zone so we're like fighting the urge to take the risk of you know jumping out and like trying to overexpand and get into lanes we just don't wanna get into because it's it's enticing sometimes like hey if you just do this we would jump on and we would sign up our four shops and we'd have this thing running on your system and it's like yeah that'd be great but it's just like it doesn't get us excited it's not like a collector thing that we're excited excited about it doesn't like apply to the individual at the show trying to improve their collection it's just like outside of our core value and we're just like not excited about it so we're just not gonna do it how do you all make those decisions as a team like especially when there's revenue on the other side like hey if we do x we can you know bring in this much revenue which then might lead to this much because another shop or another person would do it like how do you like come to those conclusions when you like is it just via slack is it like there's team meetings is it one person makes a decision like how do you do that well really everything is run by the three of us christina chris and i and so the three of us are so like lockstep with all these decisions and like how we feel about as a team and like if one of the three of us loses one percent happiness with a decision then the other two are just gonna say well we're not doing it you know or like one of us is like if we do this it's gonna add an hour extra to my plate every day well i guess we're not doing it and it's just like a very it's like a very strong threesome of maximizing everybody together you know it's like a completely genuine unselfish team where it's like we need all three of us to be happy and successful or we're not doing it usually i don't ask a technology guy about brand building and brand but it's undeniable like i've been here for one not even two days yet and it's the same thing as last year like people continue to come up they wanna be a part of these conversations they wanna be a part of card ladder i think like card ladder's built something very special from a brand perspective not only do people use your product but everyone enjoys the card ladder brand they enjoy the people like how how special do you think that is how important do you think that is it's awesome it's fun i'm not sure like what causes that or like it's almost like because we don't wanna be out in the public too much that's what kinda draws people in because the the hobby itself is like a very it's like a very individual sport it's like a humble individual sport where people are trying to build their collections so a lot of people just like don't wanna see like the flash and the marketing and the come do this thing and they kinda just maybe more vibe with the hey we're just here to hang out and have fun and here's a hoodie and we're not pressuring you to buy anything or like there's literally we haven't said to one person like oh are you signed up for you know that kind of stuff it's more like if you have it great do you need help with it do we need to make better if you're not using it and you wanna tell me why i'm here to listen so i think it's more of like a we let everybody else lead and we're just kinda here to hang out here's a couch here's a hoodie what so that so i'm standing in line day one trying to get in and i hear someone behind me and they're very very excited they're very loud and they've got little things with their company and i just keep hearing them say like are you into repacks are you into repacks and i'm like oh man don't don't don't tap my shoulder and the guy taps my shoulder he's like are you into repack's trying to sell you something yeah i mean it was just trying to get me into their funnel so i get the emails about the repack products and whatever and it's like you you know we've been in the space of building products for these tech companies where they help businesses like get people in and market it to and i'm just like man i i'm going to the national like i just wanna have conversations i wanna explore for myself like i i don't wanna tell you what to do but that strategy is probably not the best strategy i think that's opposite of the way like card ladders organized and i think like most people in most a lot of companies in the space like force try to force their way in through like being loud being on camera saying their things that are a lot of hyperbole like well you and i don't wanna be bothered so why would i bother other people that doesn't make any sense yeah if i don't wanna if i don't wanna be bothered then i'm not gonna go yell at somebody yeah so i don't know i just i find that like it's hard but there's a certain level when you're building a business here it's like coming from a place of abundance and just saying if i build something that people need if i treat people well like eventually the things we want to have happen sure will happen i think this isn't a political thing but elon musk always talks about this he always talks about like just build the product really good and people will just have to use it you don't have to like make them use it you know what i mean the product itself is the thing that will speak for you you don't have to tell people about it it will just be good and that kinda reminded me of that so as we're closing this out like what do you expect in this next wave like this the you track it the industry obviously you're the the industry number is gonna come out soon of that everyone looks at at the beginning of every month i think it's two days from now keeps going up yeah the first of the month we released first of the month yeah which is coming up this will be out by the time that probably comes out excellent like what's your expectation like do you think that the excitement for this space continues that do you think new ideas continue do you think people wanting to work in the hobby continues like what are your expectations for the next twelve to twenty four months oh man i'm terrible at predicting the future you are you always say this every time i give you a because i'm more of a pessimist and i'm like this is too much you know yeah and it's like oh but you must be so excited because the business is growing it's like oh man i'm nervous about all this this is too much too fast you guys are way too excited there's too too many pokemon cards because i get asked about pokemon a lot you know and it's like there's every time i say there's too much the price goes up more so i'm an idiot what do i know you know so i just kinda say like we're just gonna keep doing the same thing we always do whether it it goes up whether it goes down if it goes down i'll buy more cards if it goes up i might sell more people are nervous of me selling a card on a story or whatever and it's like well the prices are high and i'll buy stuff that's cheaper instead you know i'll switch to football so i'm always gonna just do what i do and just keep adding to my pc just keep making card letter the best i can and there's really no i can't control anything else and if it if it crashes tomorrow i'm gonna be here doing the exact same thing our booth will be here next year we'll be giving out hoodies no matter what dude the market goes to ten percent today we'll be here because because that just means we'll be buying more cards like it is i it's a win win win i don't even care what happens how high it goes i'll still be here you know it's like you gotta take the wins from any situation so i just you know i don't know because of that i don't wanna predict because i'm i'm gonna just focus on trying to be happy in any of those scenarios you know sometimes the best thing to do is just keep your head down and keep doing what you're doing right i need to start stretching for that run tomorrow josh always good catching up man six thirty am six thirty am we'll make it happen hopefully it doesn't rain on us it's supposed to rain after we'll be fine yes appreciate it man thanks man

i hope you enjoyed that conversation that i had with josh it was always fun catching up with builders in the hobby and that's what we like to do here on hobby jobs we'll bring more content around different topics around the sports card industry and the building of the sports card industry in the coming weeks make sure you sign up for the newsletter it's free it's in the show notes there is a lot happening in the space the infrastructure is forming new jobs are popping up individuals are coming in applying their professional skill set across the industry and i just find this all fascinating the cards are cool that's what we're here for but there is a storyline behind the cards behind the businesses and that is with the people who are going all in on the sports car industry and going all in to create better experiences for all of us there will be more hobby jobs on the other side looking forward to sharing more stories in the coming weeks take care happy building talk to you soon