welcome back to another episode of hobbyjobs here on the stacking slabs network excited for you to be here appreciate all the engagement and support for hobbyjobs it has been an awesome project project to sink my teeth in digging into the industry side of the sports card hobby and everything that makes it up and as this episode gets released we are here it is the week of the national i will say this upfront last year's national was a pivotal event for the stacking slabs business not only was i running around doing content recording episodes making connections but i had so many new conversations at the event with business owners and operators that then turned into business opportunities on the other side there is something special about the national there is something special about everyone being under one roof and if you are building a business in this space you should do whatever you can to make those connections because they will be fruitful on the other side if you handle those relationships appropriately i'm fired up i've got a full slate i hope i get some time to look for the cards but i will be doing content at card ladder booth we're throwing wrestling card takeover july thirty first the friday at the embassy suites i've got meetings i've got dinners i've got all the things i'm thrilled i'm motivated i've got a lot of energy even after fanatics fest this week a large portion of the sports card industry will be in that convention center the national is opening on wednesday and for collectors that means cards it means showcases it means trying to find something you have not seen before it means the trade nights the autographs breaking buying selling and probably walking more miles than you planned make sure you get some good shoes on those feet they're gonna be sore when you hit the hotel room each night i can promise you that but if you're working in the sports card industry or you want to work i want you to look at the national maybe a little bit differently the national is not only the biggest card show of the year for five days it becomes the temporary headquarters of the sports card industry the official numbers tell part of that story this year's show will cover five hundred thousand square feet more than six hundred dealers the organizers have already added an extended show area with more tables and more corporate space even the way companies buy space tells you what the event has become corporate footprint start at ten k the largest tier around eighty k that is before the booth is built before the staff files in before hotels dinner signage activations giveaways and content companies are making massive investments to show collectors and each others that they matter last year i professionalized more companies had dedicated spaces more teams were present the show floor felt less like a collection of separate hobby businesses and more like a visible industry and i think that distinction matters especially for the people listening to this show if you have wanted to build relationships inside grading marketplaces manufacturing tech supplies auctions retail or media you rarely get this many decision makers in one place but i wanna be very clear about something being in the building does not automatically create opportunity walking up to somebody and saying i love cards and would love to work in the hobby is not enough passion may earn you ten seconds fluency earns you that second conversation so before you go identify five companies you generally care about learn about what each one does what their problems are understand what they serve look for one problem it appears to be solving and prepare one thoughtful question not a pitch that proves you've paid attention maybe it's something like what are collectors having the hardest time understanding about your service maybe it's what part of the customer experience becomes more difficult as your volume grows maybe it's when collectors try your product once and do not return what do you believe is getting in the way those questions open up better conversations because they are about the business and the collector not about what somebody can do for you then listen do not corner somebody during their busiest hour do not hand them your life story do not force a job conversation on the show floor make a real connection learn something follow-up after the show with enough context that they remember you the opportunity at the national is not to collect business cards the opportunity is to begin relationships and if you are already working in the industry i think the same principles apply don't spend the entire week inside your booth talking to the same people you already know walk the floor meet the operator sitting one or two steps before you in the value chain meet the people sitting one or two steps after you ask what is creating friction for their customer the national gives us a physical map of the industry the most valuable thing you can take home may be a better understanding of how all the pieces connect and this brings me to this week's operator note because the size of the booth the polish of the activations and the volume of transactions can all make the industry look healthy but those things do not tell us whether collectors feel supported in growth that leaves collectors behind is not durable growth there is a sentence i keep hearing in different forms when businesses talk about growth it sounds like we need to bring new people into the hobby i totally agree new collectors matter new demand matters more people discovering cards can create opportunity for everyone but i think the industry has become so attracted to the top of the funnel that it sometimes ignores the people already standing in the building the collectors who are already buying collectors who are already submitting those that are already trading those who have already trusted companies with their money their cards and their time they can start to feel like a completed transaction like the hard part is over we acquired them we converted them now we can move on to the next person that is a dangerous way to think about the collector a collector is not a conversion a collector relationship and in this industry the relationship can last for decades the business case for supporting that relationship isn't soft it is not simply about being nice it isn't about retention it is about trust it's about repeated activity it's about referrals it is about what your product actually feels like from the other side pwc surveyed more than five thousand five hundred customers for its twenty twenty five customer experience study twenty nine percent said they have stopped using or buying from a brand because of poor customer experience more than half had stopped buying because of a bad experience with a product or service here is the part that should get the operator's attention roughly nine out of ten executives in this study believed customer loyalty had increased only four out of ten consumers felt the same way that is not a small disagreement that is an operating blind spot the people running the business think the relationship is becoming stronger the people buying from the business are not nearly as convinced and i think that gap can become even wider in sports cards because collectors are unusually invested in the outcome this is not always a normal package it might be a card someone searched for five years it might be the most expensive collectible they've ever purchased it might be tied to their father their childhood favorite athlete or best season their team ever had it might be an asset they are trusting a company to authenticate grade insure store and sell when something goes wrong the collector does not experience it as a line item in a support queue it feels personal that does not mean the collector is always right it does not mean every demand should be met it does not mean a company should abandon its policies every time somebody gets angry supporting the collector is not the same thing as surrendering to the collector good support requires boundaries it requires consistency it requires people who can explain a decision clearly even when the customer does not like the answer the standard cannot be make every collector happy that's impossible the standard should be did we make the process understandable did we set the right expectation did we communicate before the uncertainty turned into fear did we treat the collector's concerned like it mattered did we make a fair decision and did we learn enough to make the next experience better that is real collector support i think collector support has four jobs inside a sports card business the first is resolution it's an obvious one package is late card is missing payment is held submission status is unclear a trade does not match the agreement a customer needs an answer resolution matters but the company that defines support only as resolution will always be reactive it will spend the time cleaning up problems after the collector has already felt them the second job is education this is where many hobby businesses are leaving value on the table if a collector does not understand how to use their service then that's not just a collector problem it's an education problem every repeated support question is telling you that something in the customer journey is not clear enough the question can become a better onboarding email more content checklist help desk article a piece of content that shows a real example of someone using it education does not does not education does more than just reduce tickets it gives collectors confidence and confidence creates participation people use products they understand they return to processes they know how to navigate they recommend experiences they can explain to someone else third job is intelligence your support team may understand your product's weaknesses earlier than anyone else in the company they hear the language collectors use when they're confused they know which promise is being misunderstood they see where expectations and reality separate they know which product decisions look clean in a meeting but creates friction in the wild if those insights stay inside a support inbox the company wastes them support should be connected to the product it should be connected to operations marketing and leadership the goal is not to forward a pile of complaints the goal is to turn patterns into decisions what are the five questions we understand most often where do consumers most frequently abandon the process which status creates the most uncertainty what promise are we failing to explain what issues keep returning after we believe it was fixed those are not only support questions they are business questions the fourth job is advocacy someone inside the company has to represent the collector when the collector is not in the room when a new feature is being planned who asks how a first time user will understand it when a policy changes who asks how it will be experienced to the person affected when the company prepares a major activation who asks whether it creates value for collectors or merely creates attention for the brand when the business is moving faster who protects the parts of the experience that made people trust it in the first place collector advocacy does not mean the loudest voice on social media gets to run the company it means decisions are not made as though the collector is an abstraction the best businesses bring the customer into the decision before the decision reaches the customer i think there's a few reason sports card companies struggle with this the first is volume when the market gets hot companies are rewarded for moving quickly more orders more submissions more transactions more inventory growth exposes every week system an experience that felt personal at a hundred customers can feel cold at a hundred thousand the founder who answered every direct message can't do it forever the informal process that worked when everyone sat in one room begins to crack and that is normal what is not acceptable is pretending the relationship can remain strong without replacing founder attention with a real system the second reason is that support is often measured as a cost how many tickets how quickly did we close how many people can one employee handle those metrics matter but speed without resolution is not good support a fast useless answer is still useless closing a ticket is not the same thing as restoring trust companies should ask did the collector need to contact us more than once did they have a repeat story did the issue cause them to stop using the product did we identify the root cause did we remove the same friction from the next collector the third is distance as a company professionalizes more employees may enter the business from outside of sports cards this is a major advantage i've been talking a lot about it on hobby jobs the industry needs experienced operators it needs people who know how to build systems lead teams manage logistics and scale tech but professional experience without collector fluency can create decisions that are technically correct and emotionally wrong if you do not understand why a collector checks tracking ten times in one day a delay can look trivial if you do not understand the difference between replacing a commodity and replacing a one of a kind card a re reimbursement policy can look complete when it's not if you do not understand how reputation travels through the community one unresolved case can look isolated when thousands of collectors are watching it this is why category fluency is an edge it helps an operator understand what the spreadsheets can't show but i need to add the other side collector passion without operating discipline is not enough either knowing every parallel in a product doesn't automatically make someone good at support the work still requires judgment documentation empathy clear writing de escalation pattern recognition follow through and the ability to distinguish a one time exception from a broken system the best collector facing professionals combine both sides they understand the category deeply and operate with discipline if i were advising a hobby business that wants to improve collector support i would start with five moves first map the collector journey write down every meaningful step from discovery through repeat use what does the collector expect at each step what information do they receive where are they waiting where are they trusting you with money or an item where can they become uncertain you cannot support a journey you've never mapped second audit the moments of highest anxiety in cards waiting creates stories if collectors do not know what's happening they fill in the blank themselves usually it's with the worst case scenarios we've all been there a useful status update can prevent a support request before it exists proactive communication is not decoration it is part of the product third turn repeated questions into education pull the top twenty questions that you've received from the last ninety days do not write answers for the sport team fix the point in the journey that created each question if ten people misunderstand something assume the eleventh person will too fourth create a feedback loop with an owner someone has to be responsible for carrying support intelligence into the rest of the business not occasionally on schedule the same theme should be reviewed by support product operations marketing and leadership that meeting does not need to be long but the loop needs to be closed the team should be able to say we heard this we investigated we changed it here's what happened afterward fifth measure trust not only ticket volume track responses track resolution time but also track repeat contacts recurring issues customer retention after a problem and the percentage of support demand that could half prevent it then talk to collectors not only the whales not only the people with the largest followings talk to the new collector who found the process confusing talk to the long time collector who quietly stopped using the service talk to the people who had a problem and remained a customer because somebody handled it well the people who stay can teach you what creates loyalty the person who leaves can teach you what the dashboard missed here's the larger point collector support should not live at the edge of your business it should influence how the business operates if the sports card industry wants to keep growing it cannot only become better at acquiring attention it has to become better at keeping trust that idea came through clearly in my recent conversation with evan parker it's on the main feed passion and profession go check it out evan is the ceo of onnit athlete he also helped build mantle a community platform for collectors and his career has moved through journalism agency work nascar and the athletic what stood out to me was not simply that evan understands brand it was how he defines the people a brand serves he does not talk about community like it is an audience sitting at the end of a distribution channel he talks about community as a participant in the business the difference is enormous evan has said that the goal is not to build for the collectibles community it is to build with the collectibles community that can sound like a nice line until you consider what it demands from the operator building for someone allows you to keep control you decide what they need you create it you present it then you measure whether they accepted it building with somebody requires listening earlier it means the community can affect the product before it even launches it means you have to hear the feedback you did not request it means some of your assumptions will be dead wrong it means the people closest to the passion may see things the operator can't evan also made a point in the conversation that applies directly to onnit onnit has to understand multiple people who may encounter the same product one person may buy collegiate cards because the player means something to their school their family or memory another person may buy the same card because they believe it can be resolved those are different motivations they create different behaviors and a business cannot serve them well if it pretends they are the same customer the collector may want context why does this athlete matter what makes this release meaningful how does this card connect to school season or community the reseller may prioritize liquidity timing and demand neither person needs to be insulted but the product and communication should understand what each person is trying to do that is one of the most useful lessons an operator can take from evan do not flatten your customers into a demographic understand their motivation sports card collector is not a complete customer profile neither is college football fan the useful question is what job is that person asking the product to do are they trying to feel closer to the school commemorate a season support an athlete build a set find an early card make money join a community share the experience with their child the answer changes how you should serve them evan's career offers a lesson for people who want to work in the industry the collectibles business is not only hiring people who have spent their entire careers in card shops it needs people who can bring proven skills into the category evan brought journalism communication content community and executive leadership but he did not treat the hobby like a generic market onto which those skills could be pasted he paired his professional experience with real curiosity about why collectors care that is the combination transferable skills plus category fluency if you come from the outside of the hobby do not apologize for it your outside experience may be exactly what a company needs but do the work to understand the collector and if you have spent your life in cards do not assume passion completes your resume learn the professional discipline required to turn your knowledge into a repeatable result the future of this industry belongs to the people who can do both the job i wanna highlight this week is the collector's relation lead at veriswap i chose this role because it sits directly at the intersection of everything we've discussed veriswap is a marketplace built around card trading instead of two collectors shipping directly to each other both sides send send their cards to veriswap the company verifies the trade before the forwarding the cards think about the trust involved in that process two collectors have agreed on value cards are moving in two different directions cash cash may be added to one side packages are in transit condition and identity matter each collector is waiting for the other side to perform the product does not work without confidence that makes a collector relations central to the business not peripheral the company says it's completed more than a hundred and sixty million in transaction in three years that's a ton serves a hundred and twenty thousand users and handles trades as large as three hundred k at that scale the collector experience cannot depend on a founder answering every message it needs ownership the qualification tells us that veriswap believes that ownership requires they want deep knowledge of high end sports cards completed sales industry trends collector psychology they also want at least five years of customer support or sales experience and they want someone with a high agency mindset who can launch experiments learn from imperfect data and scale what works that combination is worth paying to paying attention to that isn't generic customer service job with sports card added to the title it is category fluency plus operating experience the right candidate has to understand that the card and the person they have to know when a collector is raising a legitimate issue they have to communicate under pressure they have to see patterns across individual cases and they have to turn those patterns into a better marketplace if you're interested in that role do not apply by saying only that you love cards show evidence where have you owned a difficult customer relationship where have you improved a process rather than merely followed one where have you turned feedback into measurable change build your resume and interview stories around questions like that the role also tells us something larger about the sports car job market collector relations is becoming a real operating function that creates an opening for people who have built their careers in customer success account management sales operations hospitality or support the industry needs builders who know what collectors feel and know what scalable businesses require if that sounds like you this might be a role to take seriously this week hobby jobs will be on the ground at the national i will be recording conversations at the card letter booth with owners operators and entrepreneurs who made the decision to build their lives around sports cards you will hear many of these conversations in the coming weeks on this show they'll be integrated in these episodes i wanna document what they are doing before cards what they left behind when the business became real and what the industry has forced them to learn because the professional side of sports cards is growing in public but too much of the operating knowledge stays private hobby jobs exist to change that if you work in the industry and or want to work in it or care about building better hobby businesses make sure you subscribe to the hobby jobs newsletter link is in the show notes every week i go deep on operator psychology i talk i highlight people i'm having a lot of fun doing it if you're gonna be at the national i'd love to say hey if you are a business who wants to get involved in hobby jobs or wants to have a chat about how what we're doing can help you i'm always open to that conversation i appreciate your engagement your support hobby jobs is just getting started this is episode ten we put out more newsletters but there is a growing need and demand for content like this in this space and i believe i am an individual operator who's running a business who is also worked fifteen years in tech and scaling businesses building go to market strategies creating operations doing marketing doing sales i have a lot of experience and i have a lot of knowledge to share i'm really fired up about what we're doing here happy national week we'll take care talk to you soon