welcome back to hobby jobs here on the stacking slabs network i am brett excited to be here excited to continue to share some meaningful conversations that i had with operators building cool things in the sports card industry at the national in the card ladder booth i'm spending some time this week going back and listening to those chats i almost don't know what was said because it was all a blur so much going on having those chats in person stimulation overload people passing the national was quite the event but the result here for stacking slabs is being able to deliver some some of these conversations to you the busy builder or aspiring builder in the sports card industry got a lot of good feedback at the national about the hobby job stream i'm having a blast building this out i think it's needed i think it's wanted and i'm going to continue to deliver great operator conversations you're gonna hear one today make sure you hit the follow button tell a damn friend if you're not already subscribed to hobby jobs the newsletter new one comes out every tuesday link is in the show notes it is free there is a side of the sports card industry that receives most of the attention the cards the sales the record prices the people building audiences the activity taking place on the show floor then there's another side the companies creating the products systems and services that allow the hobby to function you do not see much of that work but you see the result you place a card in a penny sleeve you slide it in the top loader you protect it inside a magnetic holder you store it in a box you rarely stop to think about the company that manufactured those products transported them stocked them and make sure they were available when you needed them that is part of what makes my conversation with noah dock so useful noah is the cfo at bcw supplies noah and i have had a chance to get to know each other over the last year i spent some time at bcw supplies' hq bcw is one of those companies that has been part of the collecting experience for so long that collectors tend to view its products as part of the furniture they're just always there that familiarity can hide the scale of the operation behind them bcw employs more than a hundred employees the company works with manufacturers distributors card shops breakers dealers and you the collector noah shares one number during our conversation that helps put the size of the business into context bcw moves around two million one hundred count packs of top loaders each month that is two million top loaders every month that is not a small hobby business shipping orders from a spare room it is part of the infrastructure of the sports car industry noah joined bcw after working in finance private equity financial services and a his family's pawn business he did not spend his career trying to land a job in sports cards he was looking for the right company and that distinction matters there are people listening to hobby jobs who want to leave another industry and work in the hobby some of them have spent years building experience in finance sales marketing operations technology or customer service they look at the energy inside the space and wonder if there's a place for them there is but i think people approach this question from the wrong direction they start with their love of cards they think the passion should be enough to earn them a role it's not passion can create interest it cannot replace the ability to solve solve a business problem noah did not join bcw because he knew more about cards than everyone else by his own admission he entered the national feeling like he had less hobby knowledge than most people in the room bcw hired him because he understood finance operations and how to help a company scale he brought skills that the business needed his connection to collectibles gave those skills more meaning that is the combination people should be searching for what have you learned outside the hobby that a company inside the hobby needs maybe you understand how to build sales process maybe you know how to manage inventory maybe you have spent a decade recruiting people maybe you know how to improve customer retention maybe you have experience running events leading a team or managing cash flow those skills do not lose their value when you enter sports cards they become your advantage the hobby does not need more people who are excited around cards it needs people who can take that excitement and turn it into dependable work noah's decision to join bcw was also based on something deeper than the role he wanted to work for a family owned business he wanted access to people making decisions he wanted the chance to help scale a business he wanted to work with people whose values matched his own the last point became the center of our conversation companies talk about core values all the time they place them on office walls they add them to job descriptions they repeat them during company meetings most employees learn how to ignore them the problem is not the idea of core values the problem is that many companies treat them as statements instead of standards a value only matters when it changes a decision it matters when it influences who gets hired who gets promoted when to wet walk away from revenue it matters when following it it costs the business something bcw faced one of those decisions during a period of tariffs the company added a surcharge to its customer orders it needed the money to continue operating under the increased cost bcw later received tariff refunds the company then had a choice it could keep the money its customers had already paid the surcharge most of them had moved on there was no reason to expect that money back bcw returned millions of dollars to more than five thousand customer or four thousand customers some received a few hundred dollars for a large corporation that amount might disappear in spreadsheet for a card shop operating out of a hundred square foot storefront a few hundred dollars matters bcw returned the money because its first core value is to do the right thing that is where the phrase stops being corporate language the decision had a cost the cost gave the value meaning it also created something no marketing campaign can manufacture and that's trust a customer will remember the company that returned the money when it had the option to keep it they will remember who protected the relationship when no one was forcing them to do it this matters across the sports card industry because our market runs on trust collectors trust sellers to describe to describe cards with accuracy customers trust breakers to run their rooms with integrity partners trust each other to honor agreements employees trust leaders to make decisions that match what they've been told once the trust breaks every interaction gets harder when trust grows the business gains room to operate the challenge is making sure those values exist across the company and not only inside the executive team noah talks about communication as one of his main responsibilities of leadership he says the ceo has to become the chief repeating officer that phrase stuck with me leaders often think they have communicated something because they said it once they announced a new direction during company meeting they wrote the values in an employee handbook they sent an email they just assume everyone understands that is not communication that's introduction people understand what a company values after they hear it repeated and see it applied they see someone promoted because that person lived the values they see someone corrected because their behavior violated them they watch a company return money to customers because keeping it would conflict with what the company claims to believe the repetition gives people the language the decisions give the language credibility this is how culture forms that this applies to companies with a hundred employees it also applies to a business or a person building a business alone if you run a shop produce content sell cards or provide a service you are making decisions that show people what you value your audience is paying attention they notice how you handle mistakes they notice whether you keep your word or not they notice how you treat people when there's no public reward attached a brand is not what you claim during the easy moments it is a pattern created by your decisions when something is at stake this is one of the reasons i wanted to record hobby jobs conversations at the national the show floor displays the visible output of the industry behind every booth there are people making decisions about inventory cash hiring customer service partnerships growth those decisions determine whether the company we see today will still be serving collectors years from now passion matters in this industry you can feel it through the conversation with noah he was attending his first national walking the floor in a game worn verne fleming jersey go pacers trying to understand the scale of the hobby meet the people building it but passion cannot stand alone a durable hobby business needs people who know how to operate it needs values that survive financial pressure it needs leaders willing to repeat the message until everyone understands it it needs employees who bring skills from outside the hobby and apply them to problems in front of them the question is not only whether you love cards enough to work in the industry the better question is what can you help build noah spent his first year at bcw answering that question here's our conversation from the national in the card ladder booth coming at you

alright we are back and i'm excited to share this conversation with all of you most of our conversations have been private we've i've been to the bcw headquarters it's crazy i got a chance to see you meet with you over the last several months you're sponsoring wrestling card takeover which we're very thankful for i'm joined by noah dock cfo at bcw supplies noah you're sitting here in a verne fleming pacers jersey which is making my childhood heart melt don't forget it's a game worn verne fleming jersey i wore this specifically expecting to be on camera today so i'm a little disappointed yeah well so you can't win them all if i guess this is your first national from what i gather what do you make of this experience so far i mean like talk about drinking from the fire hose and just kinda seeing the hobby like i'm when i came in i went straight to the i flew into flew into o'hare this morning came straight to the bcw booth dropped my dropped my stuff for the weekend or for the week however long i'm here and and then just went out to explore went out to meet people went out to look at what the space looks like and it's like just really inspiring seeing everybody carrying around their cases full of slabs carrying around their cards seeing the buy the sell just just seeing how many people are passionate about the about the space so i mean i think what i'm what i'm really just blown away at is the scale like the scale of this thing is just and not just the national in and of itself but the people the scale of people that are passionate about the hobby and it's just i mean it's inspiring it's one of the reasons why i wanted to talk with you on this is because you are newer to this space as it being a space where you're working in professionally so you're like observing the craziness and you're trying to figure out what customers want i guess maybe like set the stage what were you doing before you worked at bcw what kind of roles were you in what kind of companies so so i'm actually gonna take a take a little bit of a deeper step back and and almost like look back to my to my upbringing a little bit so you're gonna get the longer version here let's go so i you know like like many many many guys in their forties i collected cards as a kid and and loved it and it was and it was really fun and but but you know a lot of my background and and you know this was this was actually my college essay for my liberal arts education i know you can appreciate the liberal arts education of course so so my family owns a pawn shop and so i got really i got really connected to seeing people being passionate about things and and in a pawn shop a lot of the business that we do is is taking people's prized possessions and giving them short term loans and and these are you know these are intrinsic value things like to to to me as the pawnshop owner which i you know i i operated as the operating partner for a while later in my career but you know to me i look at it and i think about how i can commoditize this and what i can make off of it no no different than you know i see a lot of these kids that are running around i call them kids but you know we got people in there that are teenagers running around here moving and shaking yes and they're buying stuff they're buying low and selling high and i and i love it and i love it and that's what i was doing but but on the other side which is i think where you and i have connected so much is the passion behind it and so in the pawn in the pawn industry you have people our ideal customer people that that need money and they have something of value and i can quantify it and say that this thing is worth you know a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars but to them it is priceless and so so that's where i came up i was working there when i was in high school i worked summer jobs there in college after i finished college and you know went our long long about way i've i've done the financials there and the bookkeeping for them since i was in college so you know twenty some odd years and and then you know i i worked there i i was approached by my uncle who's the managing partner and asked to come in and help operate and run the business when he stepped away and i did that for five or six years and just got you know a deep understanding of a lot of you know a lot of different fields and a lot of different items and and so that's always been kind of in my space but ended up you know so this is the question that you asked my my career i because i i that's certainly part of my career but it's i almost consider it predating my career so when i decided to move away from the business i went back and i got my mba and focused in finance and operations and and when i got done i i joined a private equity firm and worked there for a while and and i i kinda spun that and ended up going and working as the director of finance at a financial advisory firm and just you know kinda picked up traits along the way and when it was time to move on i really was focused on finding the right place and the right place that was gonna be the next step for my career and it wasn't so much about it it actually had zero to do with collectibles it had nothing to do with collectibles it was about finding the right place with the right core values and the right people and and you know not to take big hits at at you know these large corporations that are here like i won't name some of the ones that you work with directly brett but but we'll say like upper deck or you know or topps or or any of these large companies that are here i mean those are corporate entities and and they're gonna operate like a corporation as well they should they owe that to their shareholders but i really wanted to be in a small privately held business i wanted to help scale the business and grow the business and i wanted to work with people that had really strong core values and so i i went around on kind of a talking circuit and chatted with people and got introduced to folks and that led me i got introduced to the to the owners of bcw and it just so happened that they were looking for someone with my skill set and we really hit it off and it just happened to be in a really awesome hot growing industry that has just limitless potential that's something that i actually knew something about but certainly you know i would say that i'm probably in the the bottom one percent of knowledge here in this room in this giant national room so i love the flyby of the the career the thing that i've noticed a lot especially on at the executive level i have gotten a lot of conversation and conversations based on this content from very successful executives in other industries that have kicked ass in other industries for a very long time and are looking at this space looking at the sports car industry and the hobby in this moment and they're like this is insane like the infrastructure is forming like there's opportunities out there like should i leave what i'm doing my comfortable job that i've been successful at and go like plug in and work in a space that i care about deeply and and and maybe lead a sales team or maybe lead a finance team like you're you are someone who you know is working in an executive level position who maybe that wasn't the plan and you weren't you didn't have those questions you just ended up with that that way but like what would you like what would you say to that individual about like the opportunity like right now to plug into a business in this space that's building products or has services for collectors who are you know running around at the national so i'm gonna i'm gonna preface this by saying that you're speaking to a cfo and cfos are are generally speaking very risk averse but i mean in in all if i do a lot of networking i do a lot of running in traffic and and playing in space so to speak you know for i love i love meeting new people i love having coffee with people i love just chatting with people and hearing people's stories and and ultimately you you know it i would really say that you know whether people are taking a leap or anything else you know you you've gotta be happy with where you are and so if you're not you know if you're happy in your current role you know me as a risk averse person you know i don't know like in my in my previous role like i helped build a company like i helped scale it like we went three x in five or six years like i i did what i came there to do and i and i i was bored and so in terms of like taking that leap i think it in my opinion risk averse you've gotta you've gotta judge your happiness level and so you've gotta take you know how happy am i today and so if you think that you can take a large step and add to your happiness i think you need to take that step and if you're happy in your job by the same token like you know as a risk averse person i don't know but but i mean the space is so fun like there are so so many people there are so many people out here like today i'm walking around with one of our sales guys and he is introducing me to you know salespeople at upper deck and cgc and you know various breakers big breakers in the the industry and like like and i'm asking these folks like hey how many people work at your company and they're like oh you know like a hundred and i'm like what you have that many people like like i am just blown away at the amount of profit that this industry is generating right now and i mean it's inspiring what ever since you've been in your role for about a year like what has surprised you most about working in this space has there been any moments where you've just like you stopped and been like man i can't believe this is happening or there's this much money here like what stands out to you honestly like i don't when i think about the space i think about the people i mean from my from my business background like i learned i learned to kinda simplify businesses i come into our business so bcw we make we make supplies we make supplies for collectors so we can help them build their collection we can help protect store and display their items and that's what we do and we do it really well but ultimately i like to i mean you know that's our that's what it says on our website that's what's in our our mission statement but but how i look at at our at our business specifically is i look at what we're really good at and we're we're good at really doing things at scale you know we're you know we run through about two million top loaders every month sorry we run through two million packs of a hundred counts of top loaders every month not to mention all the other different variants of those top loaders so so we're really good at doing things to scale and we could pivot into anything and do it at scale and bring in connect manufacturers and ideas and build products and distribute them and do it really well and that's what we do that's what we do well what i take away from this space is the people the people are awesome people are passionate you and i connected we've connected now probably like five or six times now and like i mean like the people are real here they wanna have real conversations you know i'm walking around and like you know i'm walking around with our sales guy and he's beaten all these guy all these people that he hasn't seen in a year because he just had a he just had a little girl about eight months ago and like and and and just seeing how people care about each other there's a real passion here that you know in the in the financial services industry in the private equity world you know it's very much i'm not gonna say it's dog eat dog or anything but but like it's it's more clear cut it's like we're here to make money we're gonna make money we're gonna move on and and i know that in this room there are plenty of people here that are here to make money by no by no and that's not a knock on them but like i mean if i had to like if i'm looking around at the people that are walking around in this room right now like if i had to say anything about them it's like they're all passionate about stuff i on my way over here i chatted with the guy who who had like a vintage clothing stand and he had all these sweaters from like the nineteen twenties and thirties and like wool football jerseys and i'm like man i i don't see i haven't seen that many things like this and he's like well you know why it's because it took me two days to set this exhibit up and and that's because i'm passionate about it and i love it and you know it's awesome how you mentioned that you're able to make decisions quickly and scale like those decisions like what is it about what is in place at bcw that affords you the opportunity to be able to do that so we're i mean we're a lean company we're we're family run we're family run we're on our second second generation of owners at our company right now they are passionate about the hobby but you know there are plenty of businesses out there that are you know first second third fourth generation and they're passionate about their businesses but and they're lean too we make quick decisions because we've we've really invested we our our owners they they invest in the invested we our our owners they they invest in the infrastructure they invest in the hobby we just we actually just gave back millions of dollars to our customers in tariff refunds we actually haven't even like published this really so first to hear right here yeah there we go but we we had charged during the tariffs last year we charged we charged our customers a tariff surcharge because we needed to to to you know really remain solvent and operational and and we applied for tariff refunds when they when they were ruled unconstitutional we gave that money back we gave that money back to all our customers because it was the right thing to do but how does a decision like that get made internally hundred percent on core values hundred percent we believe in doing the right thing and we got that money back we got that money back from the government and and the right thing to do was to give it all right back to our customers what do you think that moment means for the customer and the relationship when they get the call or the email or the check from bcw that is just money that they thought they'd given up like what does that do for the brand well i i wish that i could say that we called them all but but we gave it back to four thousand customers okay so so so it was an email it was an email but i mean we've gotten just crazy i mean we've gotten people that have reached out to us and i mean they got back two hundred bucks three hundred bucks and these are small businesses these are little tiny businesses that have you know eight hundred square feet and on main street and you know whatever town usa and like they're like you guys gave that like it means the world to these folks and and i mean we it wasn't a hard decision it was an easy decision like it we look at our core values and that's our number one core value and you know a lot of companies write their core values on the wall and that's all it is i know you're a corporate guy yep yeah background and like and like i've i've been a corporate guy and like they write it up there and they you know they they preach it all at the company meetings but you know it it it's not it's not really real unless it costs you something yeah so at a company i worked for a big core value company and it was literally i had the gm of my business unit come up to me one day he he lived lived out of town came by stopped by my desk he said said brett you're doing a good job and i said you know i met i was junior in my career it meant a lot to me and he said if you embrace just one of our core values and you live by it and you make every decision off of it every day you're going sky's the limit for me for you i remember thinking about that and the the core value was think like an owner that was the one i took take ownership of your decisions and it sounds kinda cheesy and stuff but you know it was on the website all this stuff but like i i can i think back on that that time and then i think about just like running a business and it's like i'm not sure without embracing a core value in a corporate setting i would really be serious about what i'm doing today so like i say all that to say like core values they might seem cheesy in corporate jargon but like what are the positive ramifications that take place when the whole business rallies around them i mean we're we're still implementing all this stuff it's new it's it's i mean i was brought in i was brought in because of my experience implementing a lot of this stuff but i mean we drive every single one of our decisions off of it every single business decision can be based on a core value whether that's hiring firing you know who you're working with from a from a customer standpoint from a vendor standpoint you can fire your you can you can fire customers just like you can fire a vendor and and a lot of the time and i mean obviously just like you could you could you know hire or fire an employee and and a hundred percent of the time that needs to be driven off of core values if you can't see eye to eye with with people on the basic the very basic simple core stuff then like there's there's nothing there and and honestly i mean that's why i really think that's why one of the reasons you and i get along so well is is because i you know speaking nothing about core values we have we never talked about it they're just like i mean and that's the thing about this industry is that so many people are living off of stuff that they believe in you asked about transitioning jobs based off of belief which i know is something that you have done you believed in yourself so you went out and did it and like i mean like what better thing is there to do right i wanna get nerdy on core values and the implementation and this is gonna be like for the people listening that are building a business that are hiring right now that are have core values or thinking about core values this is gonna be gold i just already know it the implementation of core values like you are new to newer to the business like one of your objectives is the implementation of these core values across all employees this is not easy work this is really hard work it involves communication it involves like strategy with it like you can't just say it once and expect it to stick like what what is your what's the game plan like what's your playbook for making sure that something like core values is not just looked at as some cheesy corporate jargon but like the employees the inside they feel like they believe in what you're doing and then they they implement it in their day to day i mean so i'm gonna get so if i'm if i'm reading you right here if i'm reading you right now we're gonna talk about the ground level yeah we're talking about the worker bees yes not us lazy executives up at the top so you know one of the things that i that i learned that i learned in my education that i that i've struggled with honestly like throughout my career is communication and it's something like that's been the theme the the theme of noah since i since i started at bcw is like communication and i wanna like i wanna over communicate i wanna over communicate everything one of the things one one of the things that you know i'm i'm the cfo here i work really closely with the ceo and i and i feel like he and i really we communicate well and we talk about things but one of the things that i've you know i hate to say that i'm coaching him on is the like i tell him he needs to be the chief repeating officer and he needs to say these things and he needs to say the core values any chance that he gets in front of people he needs to repeat them again and again and again and again and so people are like literally rolling their eyes at them and they're like yeah we get it do the right thing i know i understand but like when you repeat you know it's almost like my my grandpa my grandpa long departed you know rest in peace he was he was an alum of of aa and one of the tenants of aa is kinda like fake it till you make it and and you know core values are are no different they're no different than that and that you just come in and you need to keep repeating them and saying them again and again and looking at yourself in the mirror and and honestly when i sit down with my direct reports and i talk to them when i do reviews when i do anything in the business really that's you know outside of using ai which is which is something to circle back to later because you asked how i'm able to make quick decisions and it's and it's ai it's claude he's your per personal assistant this this podcast is brought to you by claude and all the data centers but but honestly it's just it's it's just doing it it's doing it again and again and again and again and again and again and repeating it and telling people why you're doing it and this is why we're doing it and this is why you're being written up and this is why you're being promoted we're our promotions our hires every new hire here's our core values here's our core value speech the things that are important to us and like and you know if you're gonna succeed at our company it's gonna be because of core values it's not gonna be because you're smart or a hard worker or anything else it's gonna be because of core values i think you could say bcws anywhere here and people will probably think of like penny sleeves think of top loaders like everyone knows the brand but it doesn't it feels feels like a brand that peep like people just have an expectation like they it's i put my cards in their sleeves or this and that i feel like you probably have gone through this big understanding of like what our brand represents to our customers and our stakeholders through your like evaluation of onboarding on your role like what do you think there's what do you think exists at bcw that you know by working there that you feel like you should like you wanna be at this top of the mountain tops and scream it and you want more of the of the hobby to understand who you are and what you do like what do you think that is like what is something that people just don't know about what what the business does i mean boy that's a that's a great question i mean i i hate to like hit back on all of on like all of these things but but it's like i mean we're we have a hundred plus employees now i think we have a hundred and seven employees right now and they are they are you know bringing bringing in the product manufacturing product boxing it making it we're a family owned business we've scaled a lot i mean just like many of these companies that are here at national today i mean a lot of these places have scaled because the hobby has grown so much but i mean you know i i hit on our on the tariff refund that we did to our customers but like you know we we believe in things and we do things and and we're gonna do them the right way and if we don't do them the right way we're gonna fix it and we're gonna make it right and so you know we're a hobby supplies company you know we're not sexy we're not sexy i was just joking with a couple of people around here that like yeah you know supplies companies are kinda like the toilet paper in this industry we're not your one out of one logo man cards and things like that but i did just see i did just get a text here that this doesn't mean much to me but it probably will to you but the one out of one ohtani card dual gold logo man has been found and guess what it was put in the first no piece that it was put in bcw was a bcw magnetic let's go and so you know that rule and so you asked like you know we're just kinda on the sideline logan paul published something the other day or when i say the other day i i mean like maybe a month or so ago and he was he was ripping apart some pokemon card that me as a as a non collector a non collector of cards didn't really understand but he pulled apart this you know five hundred thousand dollar card that was a ten rated a ten by you know that was rated a ten and he ripped it out and guess what he put it in a bcw magnetic and so like i mean that's what that's what we wanna want people to know that we're there for if you're gonna be in the collector space like like you need to put your stuff into something you're not just gonna put it into your underwear drawer like it needs to go into something it needs to go into the penny sleeve the top loader the magnetic you know we've got a bunch of really high end graded card catalogs that are really super neat honestly but but like like we're here we're doing things the right way you know for anybody listening if if if things aren't done the right way with bcw you reach out to our our customer service team and we will make it right if as we close this out a lot of people listening are you know working in this space or wanna work in this space like you've been in here for about a year like what's maybe one piece of advice you'd offer to any any operator who's considering kind of working full time in the hobby looking to break into the space yep man just like whatever you're doing just like do it at a hundred percent like don't half ass anything go with your passion go with what you love go with what you believe in like i believe i think you believe that the reason this space is doing so well right now is because like people are passionate about it and so like when people follow that passion like i'm not saying that good things are gonna happen like i feel like i am the luckiest healthy family i've got a i've got an awesome job like you know i'm running around i'm getting paid to be up here and running around talking to people today wearing my wearing my nineteen ninety three ninety four let's go jersey and and like just just if you're gonna do something do it right like don't just don't just mail it in noah doc bcw supplies thanks noah appreciate it thanks man

i love the conversation about culture we'll be talking a lot about culture in the coming weeks here on hobbyjobs it's very very important i have worked in companies with great culture i have worked in companies with shitty cultures there is a massive massive difference it is very very early here at stacking slabs in terms of where we're going what we wanna do but i am constantly thinking about the culture we are building here for future employees at stacking slabs for the broader audience listening i appreciate you supporting hobby jobs i appreciate you supporting stacking slabs we'll continue to put out more content for you the builder in the sports card industry or the aspiring builder i'm looking forward to more of these conversations ahead happy building talk to you soon