what's going on everybody welcome to the debut episode of hobby jobs here on the stacking slabs network i am brett the builder of the stacking slabs network and this is a project that i am very passionate about i have been thinking a lot about my own build here at stacking slabs i have been fortunate each and every week to interview a owner entrepreneur someone working inside a hobby business on passionate profession getting motivated understanding how people think about building the infrastructure around this industry and it has motivated me it motivated me and i understood that there wasn't anybody really talking about the people behind industry the people working in the industry and so about three months ago i decided to start a newsletter called hobby jobs each week i share an operator note i first hand account from something that is on my mind in my building of stacking slabs i spotlight an operator i share a story about someone else doing it share a resource and then share five cool jobs in this space you know i'm really really excited about the response of the newsletter and if you want to check it out it's free just follow the link in the show notes you'll get it every tuesday and i felt like there was a gap because so many people that i would talk to one on one would want to hear more about me taking the leap in doing content in the hobby full time and there's a lot of really bright people in this industry building highly skilled and i wanted to offer my platform to them to share because i believe we need more smart people in this space creating the infrastructure to help this industry sustain and so the newsletter got traction i got motivated and decided you know what let's drop a new episode of hobby jobs where i can share some further perspective outside the newsletter if you look at the stacking slabs network now you've got two content streams one focused at the individual building in this industry and you have another stream focused on the collector i think they both coexist nicely i think one does impact the other and those are the types of content pieces you're going to get by tuning in to stacking slabs each week so maybe programming note here as we kick off the debut episode of hobby jobs you're gonna get hobby jobs every sunday here on the stacking slabs network you're gonna get passionate profession every monday and the newsletter will go out every tuesday the wnba card podcast is going to show up on your feed every tuesday those are the the big shifts here hopefully all additive but i'm really excited to dig in so welcome to hobby jobs this is not a show about what card to buy next it's not a show about chasing the hottest release it's not a show about reading off box prices or reacting to every record high sale in the market this is a show for the people building in the sports card industry shop owners the breakers consignors graders marketplace people marketers tech builders event operators and the people on the outside who are serious about getting in and if that's you you're in the right place and if you are collecting or a collector listening in that's good because collectors power this hobby but operators build the infrastructure that makes this hobby works and that is why i'm building hobby jobs i want to use this episode to tell you exactly why i'm doing this so over the past year and a half i've spent time talking to people who work full time in this space every week sixty minutes auction house operators market place leaders consignment businesses shop owners tech founders people building real companies in this space and after enough of those conversations a pattern became impossible to ignore the knowledge in this industry is real the opportunity in this industry is real the jobs in this industry are real but the roadmap it's still very much scattered too much of it lives on phone calls too much of it lives in text too much of it lives inside conversations too much of it lives in dms between people who already know each other there hasn't been a clear place built around the professional side of the sports card industry that's what hobbyjobs is for and i'll be even more direct if this just becomes another generic hobby podcast it's a waste of time there are plenty of great shows about collecting sales big cards hobby drama product conversation there is no reason for me to build a worse version of a lane that already exists the opportunity is narrower than that the opportunity is to become the place where operators and aspiring operators come to understand where this industry is going that's the ambition i want hobby jobs to become the sunday operator briefing for the sports card industry not just a list of jobs a filter a translator a place that says here's what happened this week here's why it matters here's what it signals and here's what you should be paying attention to if you want to build a career or a company inside this business that's the lane and i think it's wide open because if you look at broad job platforms the openings are already there linkedin is surfacing hundreds of roles connected to sports cards and adjacent trading card businesses from graders and authenticators to marketplace success reviewing pricing breaking roles you go look at indeed it's showing hundreds more sports cards job openings so the industry is clearly hiring the gap is not the existence of jobs the gap is the context the gap is who explains what those jobs mean and how they fit into the bigger picture that is what i want this show to own not hype not noise clarity and if you've read the first eleven editions of hobby jobs you know that's already where this thing has been headed we've talked about trust we've talked about systems we've talked about the cost of turning your hobby into a profession we've talked about the skill gap in the hobby delegation clarity shipping the work exploiting the moment playing the long game carving out your wedge and this week we talked about something i believe very deeply most opportunities in this hobby do not look like businesses first they look like observations that's the operator note i wanna spend some time on today most opportunities in this hobby do not look like businesses at first they look like something's been broken they look like a repeated annoyance they look like trust not being there they look like a workflow no one has cleaned up they look like quest a question collectors keep asking they look like too much manual work they look like a category that's getting bigger faster than the infrastructure supporting it that's where the signal usually starts i think a lot of people make mistakes here they start by asking what business should i start first i think that's the wrong first question a better question in my opinion is what friction keeps repeating because when something keeps repeating in a growing market that's not random that's demand trying to reveal itself and in the sports card industry there's it's full of it right now there's tons of it the space is professionalizing in real time collectors the company behind psa sgc car ladder now beckett is talking openly about product and technology grading and operations marketing and creative and a global team of more than two thousand employees psa says it's already authenticated and graded more than eighty million collectibles now grades ninety thousand cards per day globally and is putting in two hundred million dollars into infrastructure because demand keeps rising that is why they came out this week and made the announcement that they had to pause certain service levels that is not the hobby acting like a hobby that is an industry building systems around itself and the same pattern shows up on the commerce side ebay spent twenty twenty five expanding ebay live internationally and rolling out new trading card tools like ai powered card scanning historical prices pricing psa population data and its own collectibles reporting ebay has also pointed to grading and storage at checkout and a new price guide that matters because it tells you that the market is rewarding smoother buying smarter pricing and stronger trust signals in other words the opportunity is not just is not just in having inventory the opportunity is in reducing friction around inventory then you can just look at live selling there is so much going on in the space so many platforms everyone is just running towards our live selling but outside of some individuals i've talked about on this space and me dipping my toe in to try to understand how it's working not a lot of people are talking about it live is not a side experiment anymore live is an operating model and here's where i think people still miss the point when they hear live selling they still imagine a guy opening up boxes on camera and i think that's too shallow at scale live selling means inventory flow show structure pricing strategy on camera talent trust and safety packaging sorting shipping customer retention community moderation repeat buyer behavior and content cadence that is operations that is media that is hospitality that is business card vault by tom brady is a great example their site shows a business running across fanatics live ebay live whatnot while also handling grading retail and content their own breaking guide talks about expert breaking transparency real time commentary and fulfillment operation that securely ships out cards after a show again that is not just breaking that is coordinated commerce and media engine and then you've got the gamestop of it all gamestop now accepts psa graded cards for cash or in store credit it lets people submit cards to psa in store with no card minimum no subscription required and at the top of that there's roles that are emerging for instance at gamestop senior product manager of graded collectibles that should wake people up because when a mainstream retailer starts building workflows around graded cards and staffing product leadership around graded cards that tells you the category has crossed into something more serious than we added cards because they're trendy it means collectibles are becoming a product surface that needs systems process and ownership so that brings me back to this operator note most opportunities do not show up with a giant neon sign they show up as repeated friction inside a market that is moving that's what you need to train yourself to see not what would be cool not what sounds like a startup not what looks good on linkedin what keeps breaking what keeps getting asked what still takes too long where does the trust still fail where are people still stitching together workflow with duct tape if i were trying to build something in this industry right now i would be paying obsessive attention to five things where trust is still weak where manual work is still everywhere where content is being treated like promotion instead of infrastructure where the customer experience still feels fragmented and where serious companies are hiring for jobs that really or didn't really exist in the hobby five years ago because those are the tells those are the breadcrumbs those are the early sign of what this industry is becoming and one more thing a lot of people wait too long because they think they need full clarity before they move you don't you need enough curiosity to start taking reps that has become one of the reoccurring truths across the entire hobbyjobs archive trust compounds clarity matters delegation matters differentiation matters but none of it matters if you never start action is still the teacher i've been enjoying sharing operator stories and the operator stories are a great way for me to get motivated get educated and that's why during my conversation with jeremy lee it was a a fun chat where i resonated with a lot of what he said because from the outside i think it looks really easy to look at sports cards live and think of course that worked but that's hindsight talking the real lesson is much more useful than that jeremy's own site describes him as a lifelong hobbyist who started collecting in nineteen eighty and built sports cards live around passion authenticity transparency and thoughtful conversations jeremy shared that on last week's episode of passion profession and we got into talking about how we ended up doing what we're doing and there is no blueprint there was no instruction booklet for jeremy or myself that said oh you wanna do content in the hobby professionally go follow this it's about figuring it out and stacking slabs and hobby jobs can be a platform to share those stories and share other people's experiences in building in this space none of it started as a a plan to build some grand media company and i think that's the point it started with being close to the culture close enough to understand the language close enough to understand the people close enough to know what the what conversations really matter close enough to build trust before jeremy even knew how to monetize the attention and there was another detail in the conversation that i really loved very early on in the run jeremy brought on his friend carvin chung who's the architect behind exquisite he's been responsible for the cup product of in upper deck when he was telling the story i it didn't what didn't stand out to me was the fact that oh he got this amazing guest what really stood out to me is that he had the relationship with carvin and that was really the catalyst to try something and that was to livestream a conversation with someone in the industry who's done something cool that kind of early guess doesn't happen because someone suddenly decided to build their personal brand it happens because the relationship equity was already there years in the culture real participation building trust credibility that is what people underestimate when they look at operator stories from the outside they only see the finished version they don't see the years of proximity that made the finished version possible and that's the part i want aspiring operators to really hear you do not need to have the whole plan but you do need to get close enough to something that you can actually hear the signal and in that conversation with jeremy i learned he stayed close then he started the conversation then he kept showing then he learned in public then the consistency turned into audience then the audience turned into trust then the trust turned into opportunities that progression matters because that is how a lot of the best businesses in this hobby are actually built they don't start as companies they start as repeated curiosity they start as a collector who can't stop thinking about something they start as a person who keeps noticing the same gap they start as a relationship builder who becomes the connective tissue they start as someone who just keeps showing up when everybody gets distracted and i think about jeremy's story the biggest takeaway for me is not become a creator it's proximity is a competitive advantage if you stay close enough to the category long enough you bring real thought and consistency to it and you'll start to see what other people's miss what other people miss that applies whether you want to build a media company whether you want to build software you want to open a shop you want to be great at consignment you want to work in grading whether you want to build the next trust layer in marketplace transactions the people who win are not always the people with the slickest plans a lot of time the people who stayed connected long enough to become useful are those people that's jeremy's lesson and it's a good one there were some cool jobs that i added to the newsletter this week and maybe i'll spend a second to share so the role i kept coming back to was the head of content opening at card collector two with ryan and i like this role so much because it says a lot more about the industry than it says about the company on the service people might hear head of content and think social media i think that's too small way too small when a sports card company hires a head of content especially a business like card collector two where content has been the infrastructure of that business it says we understand the intention part of the business we understand the story is part of the business we understand that audience trust is part of the business we understand that media is no longer optional and card collector two is a perfect example of why that matters so when a business like that hires a head of content here's how i would read the signal they are not hiring someone just to make posts they are hiring someone to help turn attention into enterprise value that means building narratives around products that means creating repeat audience behavior helping commerce platform perform better supporting events strengthening the brands giving people reasons to come back even when they're not ready to buy that date that is serious work and if you are aspiring professional listening to the show that matters because maybe your lane into this industry is not grading maybe it's not content maybe it's not breaking maybe it's not opening your own store tomorrow maybe your lane is email social community operations creative direction or brand storytelling and if that's your lane you need to understand that the best sports card businesses are going to keep moving in that direction because they are not just competing on who has inventory they are competing on who owns attention and the businesses that treat content like infrastructure are going to separate from the ones who treat it like an afterthought i'll give you one quick secondary signal too if the head of content role is the clearest signal for creator minded operators then the gamestop graded collectibles product role is the clearest signal for systems minded operators because the role says that there is now room in this industry for people who know how to design workflow simplify the complex and make trust feel like seamless at scale that is very different picture of working in the hobby than most people grew up with and this is exactly why hobby jobs exist so let's bring the debut episode home hobby jobs exist because the sports card industry needs career infrastructure it needs a place where the professional side of the hobby gets taken seriously it needs a place where people can learn from operators instead of guessing from the outside it needs a place where jobs are not just posted but interpreted it needs a place where stories are not just celebrated but broken down and it needs a place where aspiring professionals can start to understand what this industry is actually becoming that is what i want this show to be every sunday i want to take the signal from the week and turn it into something useful not louder useful if you are building in this industry right now the show is for you if you want to build in this industry this show is for you if you're hiring this show is for you if you are trying to figure out where the next wave of opportunity is this show is for you and if you know someone who keeps saying they want to work in the hobby but they still don't know where to start send them to hobby jobs tell your damn friends because this is where we're going to start making the path a little more visible so if you haven't already subscribed to hobby new jobs link is in the show notes make sure you're listening here every sunday get that newsletter share with somebody else and if your company is hiring or if you spotted a role that the right person in this audience should know about send them my way i'm easy to find because the goal here is bigger than content the goal is building a real resource for people building in this industry i'm brett mcgrath creator of stack and slabs network this is hobby jobs and we're just getting started