welcome back to another episode here of hobby jobs big week excited to be here hopefully you are too there is a lot on my mind we're gonna be talking about a nine hundred and eleven million dollar test and who supports the collector but i wanna start with some news about hobby jobs there has been a lot of conversations a lot of work going on in the background and i am fired up to announce that moving forward bcw supplies is sponsoring the hobbyjobs platform the formal kickoff will begin next week you'll hear more about the partnership then today i wanna take a minute to tell you why this matters bcw has served collectors since nineteen eighty one if you collect cards there's a good chance you have used one of their boxes sleeves top loaders binders or displays their products sit underneath the daily collecting experience they help people protect store and display the things they care about now bcw is supporting a show about the people who sit underneath this industry that alignment means something hobbyjob started as a simple belief the belief was the people building the sports card industry deserve media made for them collectors have podcasts newsletters videos social feeds built around every corner of the hobby the professional side has never had that same kind of home there are people trying to build companies here there are people leading teams here there are people outside the industry who have skills this industry needs but they do not know where they fit there are also people inside the industry trying to get better at their work without a clear place to learn from one another hobby jobs exist for them for bcw to see value in that audience is a great signal it says the people skills systems and operating decisions behind the hobby are worth investing in i wanna thank the bcw supplies team specifically noah doc for believing in what this can become no one of i have had a lot of conversations about the industry he was on an episode of hobbyjobs we've talked about the people inside it and where hobbyjobs fits he understood the purpose of this platform he understood that supporting the people who build the hobby supports collectors on the other side and i appreciate his trust i also want other companies across the sports card industry to pay attention bcw is not attaching its name to another conversation about what card is going up it is investing in a conversation about how this industry gets built that is where hobbyjobs is going more to come next week excited for the partnership for today i wanna talk about a number that should get the attention of every person running a hobby business or trying to earn a career in this space card ladders industry page currently shows nine hundred and eleven point seven five million dollars in online card sales during august twenty twenty six that is more than two hundred million above the previous monthly high it is a record it's also a test the easy conversation is about how much money moved the more useful conversation is about how much work that movement creates who helps a collector understand what to buy who makes sure the listing is right who catches the bad data who gets the order out who answers when the package is late who handles the dispute when the card does not match the description who looks across hundreds of support tickets and realizes the same product problem keeps hurting people who earns enough trust that the collector comes back nearly one billion cards can move through a market in one month that does not mean the experience surrounding those transactions is ready for the scale that is what i want to examine today this is hobby jobs a show about the people systems skills and operating decisions building the future of the sports card industry let's start with the operator note nine hundred and eleven point seven five million before we draw conclusions from that number we need to understand what it measures card ladder says its industry page is built to reflect the online secondary market for trading card singles across platforms that publish sales this includes ebay auction houses and independent card marketplaces sealed product is included when those platforms publish those sales it does not include most retail sales it does not include most card shop transactions it does not include most deals made at shows it does not include most sales made through social media or between two collectors card ladder also updates its database as sales are verified and as more platform data becomes available the number can move this is not a count of every dollar spent in the hobby it is not revenue earned by one company it is not profit it is proof that it is not proof that every category is rising or every business is healthy it is the best view we have into a large part of the public online secondary market the previous high was around six hundred and ninety five million august added about two hundred and sixteen million on top of that that is an increase of more than thirty one percent across thirty one days the average was more than twenty nine million in online sales per day sit with that for a second more than twenty nine million dollars per day a market does not process that much activity through passion alone it needs infrastructure it needs people it needs process judgment support we often talk about hobby growth as if demand is the whole story more buyers enter more money comes in more cards sell the line goes up that is the visible part the work begins underneath it every transaction creates a chain of responsibilities someone has to source the card someone has to identify it someone has to describe it photograph it assign it to the right category establish the price at auction process payment protect it against fraud locate the card in inventory package it and ship it provide status updates someone has to handle the exception when one part of the process breaks the transaction gets the headline it'll always get the headline the system makes a transaction possible this is the first implication of the august number for anyone working in the industry volume creates opportunity but volume also exposes weak operations a company can handle one hundred orders through individual effort it cannot handle one hundred thousand orders that way a founder can view every angry email with in a business as if it's small that stops working when the queue grows faster than the founder can read it a team can rely on one employee who knows how everything works then the employee takes a day off and the operation stalls when demand grows work that once felt informal has to become a system that shift is where jobs come from customer experience marketplace operations catalog and data management fraud and risk shipping and fulfillment product operations account management education and content analytics training these are not jobs sitting outside the collecting experience they shape the collecting experience that point matters for anyone trying to break into this industry you do not need to find a job with sports cards in the title that matches the title you wanna hold today you need to understand the collector problem and the skills that you can help solve it if you lead a support team in software you know how to manage a queue set service standards coach people document decisions and find patterns and complaints the hobby needs that if you work in warehouse operations you need to know how to build inventory controls reduce picking errors plan staffing and move through orders in a facility the hobby needs that if you work in payments or financial services you need to know how to manage risk detect fraud resolve disputes and protect customer trust guess what the hobby needs that too if you work in data you know how to create clean records define categories measure behavior and give a team information it can use the hobby needs that too if you work in media you know how to explain a product document a process understand a question and give a customer confidence to act guess what the hobby needs that too the opportunity is not limited to knowing the difference between a refractor and a parallel hobby knowledge matters it helps you understand the customer and the stakes it does not replace the ability to do the work that brings me to the central point in this operator note supporting the collector is not a department it's the business the collector does not experience your org chart they don't care about what mistakes you make in product marketing operations and support they experience one company they experience the search result that led them to the wrong card they experience the listing that left out the flaw they experience the confusing checkout process they experience the week where there's no shipping updates they experience the response that answered a different question from the one that they asked they experience whether someone takes ownership when the process fails each moment either adds trust or removes it this matters in every industry it carries more weight in collectibles because the product is not interchangeable if a retailer sends you the wrong pack of paper towels it can replace it with another pack no big deal if a marketplace loses a card you spent three years trying to find there might not be another one condition matters providence matters timing matters the meaning attached to each item matters that change the that changes the support equation you're not handling a unit in a database alone you're handling something a person chose for a reason the best hobby companies understand that they support the collector before a purchase by making it easier to find and understand they support the collector during a purchase by making the information clear and the transaction safe they support the collector after purchase by communicating delivering and taking ownership when something goes wrong they support the collector between purchases by helping that person learn organize protect and enjoy a collection most companies concentrate their money on the moment of conversion that is the moment when the collector pays the relationship is built across every moment around them i've referenced pwc studies and but pwc published a customer experience survey in twenty twenty five that should matter to every hobby business operator we've talked about this we've talked about customers in this study stopping buying from a brand because of a poor customer experience that matters that part stands out to me because there's a gap between comp what companies believe and how customers feel a collector can buy from you today and decide to never return the first transaction proves demand the second transaction proves trust collectors now see prices in real time they compare platforms they share bad experiences with one another there's so many options on where to buy your cards where to store your cards there is so many options and if you give one bad experience to your customer or your next customer there's they'll they'll just jump to someone else the bar moves every time one company improves the experience there's temptation to treat automation as the answer to all of this automation has a role certainly we need to use automation as the answer to all of this automation has a role certainly we need to use tech we need to get systems integrated to help improve the process but you use automation to send status updates or route a question or identify a repeated issue or give information to employees that they need to act but you don't use it to hide the collector automate the predictable keep a person close to the moment that requires judgment trust or empathy if the question is where's my package a system should be able to answer it if the question is why did you value my father's collection this way a person needs to own it if the question is why does this card look different from the listing a person needs needs to examine it if the question is i've never shipped out a five figure card before what do i do there's probably a person on the other line that is needed to help guide that individual through it support should not end with a closed ticket the immediate problem needs an answer the immediate problem needs an answer the company also needs to ask why the problem happened and how to keep it from reaching the next collector that is where support becomes the operating advantage a ticket is not noise it's evidence ten tickets about the same fee are saying the same thing twenty tickets about the same shipping status are telling you to commute the communication you're using is not working repeated questions about how to submit a card are telling you your onboarding needs work complaints about an item description are telling you to examine the listing process not to write a better apology the weak company answers the same problem faster the strong company removes the reason the problem keeps happening the work requires the support team to have a path in to product operations marketing and leadership it also requires leadership to view customer support as a source of business intelligence if your support team knows where collectors struggle but has no power to change the process your company is choosing to relearn the same lessons every day last week's hobby jobs newsletter was about curiosity and curiosity is a business advantage curiosity helps you ask the question collector support begins with what you do after you hear the answer if you ask collectors about their experience they leave the same they they leave the same policy backlog product flow and communication gap in place the question did not create value listening without action becomes theater the job is to turn what you hear into a better system for operators i would look at four parts of the work you have to capture the signal do not let the same complaint live across email dms phone calls employee memory without some sort of shared record next you have to separate the exception from the pattern one late package needs a resolution fifty late packages from the same workflow needs an operational change third assign ownership outside the support queue the team that can fix the source of the problem needs to see it needs to understand it and own the deadline lastly close the loop tell the support team what changed tell the customer when it makes sense then measure whether the issue returns that is how a company moves from reacting to collector frustration to building around the collector needs the august number says there's demand and a whole lot of it the next question is whether the industry can support it that question leads us into today's operating storter story i talked with leighton shelton this week of just collect and auction wire many of you might have heard my episode with him on passion and profession shout out ebay for sponsoring that series he has spent more than two decades building in the sports card industry he founded just collect in two thousand six the company says it has bought and sold more than fifty million dollars in vintage cards memorabilia over the last decade leighton's path started long before that he bought his first pack at eight in eighty nine he split the cost of a thirty five dollar card show booth with two friends he worked his way through rutgers by buying and selling cards while also working as a financial analyst at johnson and johnson after school he chose the hobby over a path of consulting he worked for mark murphy known as the baseball card kid and then he spent four years at leland's auction he rose to the director of acquisitions before starting his own company that background matters because leighton did not build a career on product knowledge alone he learned finance acquisitions how auctions worked he learned how to evaluate collectors he learned how to sit across from someone who has cards questions and knows clear sense of what happens next we used leighton's story last week to talk about curiosity i want to look at it through a different lens today leighton built a business by supporting people before they were ready to complete a transaction think about the person who contacts company like justcollect it might be a collector who spent forty years building a collection it might be an adult child adult or child sorting through boxes it might be someone who found cards in an addict and has no clue what they're looking at it might be a collector who understands the cards but has never sold anything of that size those people arrive with different levels of knowledge they also arrive with the same basic questions what do i have what is it worth who can i trust the business earns the right to buy the collection by helping the person answer those questions just collect describes its process as transparent and tied to real time market values that language is not a small detail transparency reduces uncertainty current data gives the seller a reference point an explanation helps the seller understand the offer and the offer still has work for the buyer this is business margins matter the seller also has to understand how the business reached the number that is support it happens before the company earns a dollar from the collection leighton told a story in our conversation about traveling to arizona to look at a collection and that collection had a thousand gaudi cards the collection included eighteen raw babe ruth cards it was a six figure opportunity sitting inside a pink shoebox the cards made the story memorable the way he handled the person made the deal possible he asked questions he took time to understand the collection he didn't force the moment curiosity helped him understand what was in front of them trust helped close that deal that line applies far beyond acquisitions your customer might not need you to move faster they might need you to make the decision feel safer those aren't the same thing one of the clearest signs of leighton's operating approach sits on justcollect's website the company has resources that explain how to understand card values photo photograph cards scan images pack cards for shipping think about grading and deal with the emotional difficulty of putting collectibles in the mail read that last one again the emotional difficulty of sending collectibles in the mail that is a business recognizing that the obstacle is not always price sometimes the obstacle is fear sometimes it's lack of knowledge sometimes it's meaning attached to the collection an operator who understands that the collector sees those obstacles as part of the work content can support that work we tend to put content inside the marketing box we ask whether it creates views clicks or leads those measures certainly matter content also answers questions before the support ticket exists it prepares a customer for the process it makes expectations clear it gives an employee something useful to send when a customer needs help it proves that the company understands the decision from its the customer side that is not content sitting next to the business it is content doing part of the business leighton's career also gives us a useful model for professional growth in the hobby he combined three forms of fluency he understood cards he understood business and he understood the person most people trying to enter the industry concentrate on the first one they want to prove how much they know about cards and that helps but it's not enough can you make the process clear can you make a hard decision without hiding behind a bunch of jargon can you stay calm when the customers are worried those are professional skills they are part of why someone stays in the industry for twenty plus years instead of writing one cycle leighton also helped create auction wire because he saw another problem in the market collectors have have cards spread across auction houses and needed a better way to find what is available the pattern is the same get close to the work see where the collector loses time confidence or context build something that reduces the friction this is what supporting the collector looks like from a business perspective it is not agreeing with every request it is not giving away margin it is not saying yes to everyone it is understanding the job of the collector is trying to complete and designing the business to help them complete it with less uncertainty when you do that well support turns into trust trust turns into transactions repeated trust turns into a durable company i wanna close today by highlighting one role from the latest edition of hobbyjobs and i think this is a company recognizing support matters and they need more support maybe more support than ever before especially support coming from outreach on channels like instagram comc is hiring a customer support manager in algona washington the site it's on-site a full time role the title fits this episode the language in the job description fits it even better com c says it wants someone who can move the support function from reactive to proactive that sentence should tell you what the company needs it does not need someone to keep the ticket queue moving in the same way it needs someone to build an operating system around the queue the role owns standard operating procedures it owns escalation pathways it owns daily team operations and staffing it monitors support metrics to identify issues before they grow it owns its zendesk improvements it coaches frontline reps it works with product operations customer success and a company leadership when you're addressing a repeated pain at the source this is not a back office role that person will sit close to the collector and close to the decision that shaped the collector's experience customer support leadership is skilled work building processes is skilled work managing escalations is skilled work turning ticket data into decisions is skilled work in a month when more than nine hundred and eleven million dollars move through public online card market this part of the infrastructure require is required to serve that activity com c is looking for at least three years of customer support or customer service leadership it wants experience managing frontline teams building sops improving escalation processes and working inside zendesk zendesk or a comparable platform this is the kind of opening that should change how people outside the hobby think about entering it if you have led a support operations in software ecom fin serve retail travel or another marketplace don't disqualify yourself because your resume does not include a card company translate your experience into the problem com c needs to solve do not write i manage customer service show the scale how many people did you lead what are the metrics response time resolution time backlog what is that data bring the evidence then show that you can understand why support inside the hobby carries different stakes a delayed order is not a number alone it might contain a card that can't be replaced an inventory mistake can damage years of trust a weak answer to a consignor can cost the company the next collection an unresolved pattern can affect thousands of collectors before a leadership sees it in a dashboard your hobby knowledge should help you explain the customer and the risk it should not be the lead argument for why you deserve the role lead with the work you can do use your passion for cards as proof that you understand where the work lands the stronger the application this is stronger than the application telling com c that you've collected since you're a kid everyone's collected since they were a kid i would also study the phrase reactive to proactive that's the thing that stands out to me it's important to provide clear examples of how you made that shift the story will tell comc more about your fit than a list of support tools this role is one opening at one company it represents a wider shift as hobby jobs as hobby grows companies need people who can turn collector activity into an experience that businesses can sustain that creates room for operators it it creates room for leaders it creates room for people who know how to build systems around real human needs the latest edition of the hobbyjobs newsletter make sure you sign up it's free link is in the show notes it's called curiosity as a business advantage it includes the operator note the operator spotlight on layton shelton a practical resource and a group of open roles across the sports card industry including the one at comc i just talked about you can read it make sure you sign up if you want to work in the industry hobbyjobs is built to help you do the work with more context if you want to work in this industry it is built to help you see where your skills fit and how you can position them if you run a company it is built to help you understand the people in the systems required for your next stage of growth card ladder's nine hundred eleven point seven five million dollar number tells us the market is demand the companies that last will be the ones that know how to support the people creating it bcw supplies' decision to support hobby jobs tells me this conversation matters thanks again bcw the formal partnership kicks off next week i'll have more to share then until then happy building appreciate all your support take care we'll talk to you soon