what's going on everybody welcome back to an episode another episode of passionate profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay excited for this chat bringing a friend on the podcast i've been listening to his content and talking about building his business and it feels like he's very much in a new era as a owner operator ceo and so i thought talking about that would be a lot of fun you know him ryan johnson at card collector too ryan we're here we did it we i didn't even share on my end what i was dealing with before we hit record with three kids running around getting help and perfect all that stuff and maybe some tech woes here and there but we're here man welcome how are you i'm good i'm good yeah sorry for the the little delay this morning a little hiccup with with technology but man excited to be here excited to to sit down i know you know we got to have you on our podcast and and chat what that was like so excited to to be on here and to you know chat with you and have a fun conversation this morning let's warm it warm up the conversation a bit obviously you're a big college football fan oh man big buckeyes fan i want i i wanted to ask this because i was in the car picking up my kids and i was listening to the notre dame podcast that i listened to shout out pete sampson and talking about spring ball and talking about kind of what's being reported what's being seen and i knew we were talking and i wanted to know if at this point in the calendar year are you like deep in the weeds on what's happening with the buckeyes all the moves the practices like what's your following of the buckeyes you know in april right now what are you doing yeah thankfully i have some really good friends who cover the team for a living so i get a lot of lot of the inside scoop on kinda what's going down at the woody right now you know who's making who's making an impact early but yeah when when there's ohio state chatter it's it's it's really you know outside of cards and you know family and friends it's it's pretty high on my priorities list so if the buckeyes are doing anything if it's you know playing tag football in the backyard i'm probably listening in to you know see who's doing something so yeah i'm definitely definitely tuned in what can you tell me about mylan graham who came from your buckeyes and now is on the irish and all reports say this kid's pretty good like what kinda do you have a scattering report on him should i be excited you should definitely be excited especially with cj carr there i was you know as a obviously we played the national championship game you know a few years ago don't wanna bring up such a sore subject this morning but you know i i'm definitely not a notre dame hater you know they were honestly i picked them last year to be one of the best teams in the country i did not wanna play them we didn't beat miami but i didn't wanna play them in the second round cj carr is the real deal you got kean keely like feeling pretty good about you know some of the pieces already leonard moore feeling pretty good about you know some of the guys at at notre dame and then he had two five star kids from ohio state quincy porter is humongous six five and this kid's this kid's ginormous mylon graham is the one i thought was gonna stay at ohio state like he seemed like the next guy in line to play everybody had said it and it wasn't because he just wore number five but all of the talks i had heard through camp last year was like this is the next garrett wilson at ohio state like this dude can can go up and make a play he's he's shifty i i i yeah i mean it obviously sucks to lose wide receivers when hartline left i wasn't super surprised not everybody stuck around yeah notre dame's gonna they're gonna be one of my you know final four picks for next year for sure i mean just a lot of talent on that team marcus freeman seems to be a great coach so it it wouldn't surprise me next year if we're competing again you know near the the end of january that's we're tracking in the same direction at least hopefully on my end and we're gonna talk about the business but i wanna you you i've been following kind of your content on collegiate collecting obviously it's a passion of yours and it it it feels like there's a lot of momentum around college cards whether it's bowman or prison draft picks what in that in that category like what have you seen like what excites you about what's going on because it it feels like there's more individuals that are collecting those cards than ever before yeah i think it it really changed with nil like obviously i collected the college stuff pre nil existing right like going back through the timeline of cards a decade ago you know twenty sixteen the ohio state national championship team has now gone pro so you have zeke mike mike thomas bosa cardell jones like braxton miller like my all time pc guy those guys go pro we're in you know we get to april may right around the draft timeline panini's producing prism draft picks elite draft picks contenders draft picks and you're being you're now able to buy those those cards of those guys post national title all time college status now you just get to do it during the moment so really you know you you've got a a prism draft picks and a bowman first really this is an opportunity to collect these guys at the beginning of their college career before heisman's before national titles before bolitnikov winners before you know those big moments happen you can collect these cards real time now and then it leads to obviously a very very passionate loyal piece of the hobby right i've always said you know when i look at some of the most passionate loyal like true collectors in the space i think college football is up there i've always said wwe is really really high on that list like those are just true passionate collectors and then with the ability to to buy some of these guys and they're making real money and they're making big plays and they're gonna be the number one pick and they're gonna be the first running back off the board that leads to opportunity for people to invest and when people can make money people that that that leads to more attention so yeah it's it's a it's a way different landscape than it was a decade ago you know i was buying braxton miller one zero one cards for fifty dollars now to buy a will howard one zero one card it's a high state uniform it's thousands of dollars so it's a lot different more supply and honestly i think one of the cool things about the college card now is there's like real competition in it like topps makes a great bowman product they make bowmans best with game use patch autos and panini has prism draft picks and you know some of you know those higher end nt flaw like some of the other collegiate collegiate cards you know it's not one company has all of the licensing versus the other so i think it leads to you know some some cool college stuff so as a collector i obviously really am excited for for where we are in the space right now obviously like proximity from your hq to ohio state yeah lead you and your passion for the team leads you to want to make sure you have that product available make sure you're communicating about that stuff and that's one thing i've picked up from your brand is like you're very focused on college collecting and you don't just do it like locally like it's part of your brand nationally and so i just wanna get get some perspective because i feel like you you're carving out a little space where yeah there's a lot of companies that break this product and a lot of companies like see the big hits come and go but you're really making it a part of your dna at card collector too like does that give you an opportunity to maybe get the attention of other college collectors who might have been waiting for someone to be talking about college cards when they've been kinda sitting in a corner collecting this stuff all along yeah i've it it it definitely has led to some cool things you know you you mentioned the the college collectors it honestly got me connected pretty closely you know i'll give a huge shout out to my guy gabe cardstacks gabe is someone i've become a lot closer with he's smarter than mel kuiper i mean the guy knows everything about college football so it's been a lot of fun to get to know him and and talk college football and you know during the season and even sometimes during the off season we we talk we talk cards and you know who's up who's down like we track a lot of that stuff we have conversations weekly about it yeah i think there's a again it's not gonna be the biggest segment in the entire hobby but there's definitely a really again passion is the best way to describe it it is a very passionate piece of the hobby that is very interested in that that market and obviously it's it's not all of our brand but i think you know i want it to come across as like authentic i love collecting the cool college stuff it is i i would if i could only watch one sport ever again it would be college football it wouldn't even be close like there's nothing in the world that rivals it for me so to be able to you know i've started to collect like the mascot supers from the bowman chrome u the first time they've ever done them you know panini did it back in the day prism draft picks i think it was twenty nineteen i own two of those black one on ones including brutus it's the only brutus one zero one that exists like that stuff is awesome like i the tradition the pageantry the the the the fandom like it's just it's unrivaled and i i love being able to collect it and yeah i think that passion has led me to some really cool moments and discussions some relationships with you know that that that college football and college sport you know piece of the hobby when i got a chance to connect with you in grove city i didn't know what to expect from seeing your business but when i walked in my first reaction is there is a lot going on here you've got content team you've got shipping team you've got product there's live streams you are probably planning a show just so much act action and activity and i'm not sure that in anyone who sees you on the front end like on a youtube channel understands maybe kind of everything that's going in on the background but there was a lot and i i would kinda left this question as i was driving home i was just like i've heard you talk about it in your content but like when was that shift for you like you moving from someone who opens up a card store who's running a small business who might do some breaks here and there to having this big operation with a lot of different revenue streams a lot of different service offerings like when did that moment happen for you when you realized like this is a lot bigger than probably what i expected when i got into this probably when the decisions started to affect other people not just me that's probably the easy answer right like when you're building in the beginning you know i i tell the story a lot like i i started in twenty nineteen like there's the shop i bought it in twenty nineteen in early twenty twenty i like covid hits the us you closed for two months we reopened in may when i'm forced to go back online we're we're doing breaks like because all i could do was be online like i couldn't have a brick and mortar so i'm online doing breaks and i had a little bit of an instagram following and breaks were moving so i've got some people helping me ship and and process then i was like man this is this is a real real thing like let's lean into this and by the end of twenty twenty i had six people and at the time it was like we just whoever could help us join the team and do anything that was of value at that time it was like hey no problem we could use this we could use this we could use this but if we lost money at the time like that the market was crazy there wasn't really a consequence to like losing money like if we bought a bad deal okay we'll we'll get the next one it didn't affect anybody else's paycheck we have thirty five people right now if we make a bad buy now it it it slows down progression it it it changes things now so i i don't take that kind of responsibility lightly that the decisions i get to make are impactful for not just my family and my well-being but also thirty five other people that are on this team so i think that's when i look back i don't think it was necessarily like one moment but understanding that making the wrong decision as you know kind of a ceo has impacts that aren't just felt by me i pick up on from getting to know you and watching you online and observing your content you're very particular about how you have how you kinda go to market with your brand what you do and it's it's very clean and i think about you are the individual who who who started this brand but then you bring in you mentioned thirty five employees you bring in other people how did you maybe get comfortable with offloading priorities and things that you used to do routinely but you realize like i need to go outs i need to go give this to someone else on my team because i need to be focusing in on more strategic things like what was that experience like going through and making the realization that like you needed to give up some of your responsibilities and to continue to scale and grow man that was a challenge for sure right like i i always when i again i go back to the early days i'm like why did i do this i'm like i wanted to show people what i was buying i wanted to be that that resource i didn't have when i was a kid that's very important to me it's like there was nobody showing you what it was like running a business or going to a show or opening boxes like it was youtube was in its infancy in days so i was like if i could be a resource and just show people like what i'm buying what i'm selling like those same things it would you know it would be it would be helpful and i would enjoy it and then if i could open a card store make a few bucks but just be happy like that's what i wanted i was like this beats nine to five and as it starts to grow like i love doing this i love cards like there's you know i was joking as i was setting up my phone like there's cards right they're they're they're everywhere i i mean i really really love this so not being involved in every decision in this place i was like that's crazy like i have to be so cautious of it right like you know you could take a decade and it's been long you know i've done this every day since i was six you can work your whole life to build it and it could be gone in an instant so i'm very very precautious of like how we represent our brands online and i think for the longest time understanding that like if i continue to try to make every decision and put my hand in every pot we'll never be able to grow we'll never be it because i'll be the bottleneck and i wanna grow i wanna get bigger i wanna have more people and i think ultimately putting good people in the right situation was game changing in this business for us in in in our company for sure just being able just being willing to let go of things like you go back two years i mean i probably priced ninety percent of the cards in this business i don't price any cards now i'm involved in some of that process like i'll give input i'll help on that but if a card goes out for sale in shop if it goes on our website you know on online goes on or and i'm not it's not me it's not me pricing it so it's taken a while to get there that was definitely one of the hardest things that probably prevented me from going sooner but it's it's man it's been a game changer for sure has there been anything during this scale up that has broken for you whether it was you somebody else the entire team where you were cognizant like at least you said like this isn't working this is gonna suck but we need to fix this because if we don't fix this we're just gonna be we're we're gonna be held down by whatever this is is there a specific example of something that jumps off the page honestly like communication that's probably been the the we talk about it a lot here but some of the things we did some of the processes we had in place for five to ten people aren't the same that will work for twenty five to thirty five people like those things have had to change and that's been a big focus for us over the last like six to ten months is understanding that this is no longer a company that has nine people employed right like we should hit forty in the next couple i would imagine by fanatics fest we'll be around that forty number and what we did in the first year doesn't really work now but but sometimes we just looked at things and we just continue to do them just because it just made sense that's always how we've done it but stopping and understanding that like well that doesn't work for what we have now and trying to fix those and kind of like you know update processes and procedures in the way we go about it as a company that has definitely been one of the the biggest things because if if we're with like you said earlier you came in and there's there's shows there's content there's live streaming there's our website there's our shop like you really go through what we have like there's so many different departments here if if couple of us are on the same page but some of us aren't on the same page like things can break down quickly and they can stop and it you know it can definitely cause some hiccups and that just it's a lot more speed speed that's one of our biggest our biggest things now is if we can be fast if we can execute so much quicker now we can really like move the needle and if we're not on the same page and it slows us down it it can cause a lot of friction here for sure i think we talk about just in the hobby in general communication and messaging externally a lot but i never really hear any conversations about internal communication and kind of the strategy behind it you mentioned like your team's growing which we gotta get everyone on the same page we gotta be fast and i think this would be helpful for anyone who runs a business just to get your perspective like how do you think about like what what what systems do you have in place on the communication side whether it's meetings like slack channels like what do you do in order to make sure that everyone on the card collector two team knows what's going on knows the objectives and everyone is kind of marching to the the beat of the same drum i mean the easiest thing is the right people in the right place for sure like our leadership team is is awesome i they make life a lot easier i've learned a lot about sops over the last you know twelve months around you know if you build it away and you teach it away and you keep it that way it makes things a lot easier it makes training a lot easier you know the the hiring and the training process is you know can be tedious and lengthy and can be expensive and if you know if you have you know an sop that is easy to teach to the next person makes it makes it a lot easier to hire and to scale and i think that's been a game changer for me again like i got in this like knowing like about cards and i can tell you about carnell take cards i got sitting right here i i can tell you about those but like growing and scaling a business again like you and i talk about you know we talk offline and i think that's been one of the hardest things is like transitioning from card know card collector and content creator to business owner ceo of a thirty five person that's not what i originally ever signed up for i love it i'm so much more interested in like building a business now but as someone that's never gone through this process and is learning like i didn't know about sops like i had no idea what what you know its interoperating procedure was like no clue so now getting some of these things in the business that make us more efficient and allow us to scale quicker has been has been really really helpful how how do you gain inspiration as a first time individual who's been successful you know on the front end doing content doing streams and then has moved into this role as a ceo that you said you didn't necessarily sign up for but here here we are like what are you doing to make sure that you continue to learn on the fly and you continue to gain skills and knowledge as the ceo of the business like what are those areas of inspiration for you talking and watching people who are where i want to be in business and in life i think that's been huge for me over the course of building this is going into it the idea that like i i know for sure i don't know at all i feel confident in some areas but in learning and leaning on people that are where i wanna be has been instrumental yeah so many great people like i obviously i couldn't name them all but just being able to talk with people that are like minded in the space and some of them are in the the shop space right so andy albert and ryan bannister too will always give a ton of credit and love to jimmy mahan at you know kentucky kentucky roadshow like those three were really really you know helpful for me early on in like the the the card space but also in life just how you operate as people how you do things the right way like you know those are some of the best human beings i know that that's it's not only who they are as as owners and operators in in this space right they they've built something incredible themselves but they're also just good human beings and i i think i've learned a lot from them in in in both areas and i think it's made you know it it's given me inspiration and some insight on you know where to go next or how to do things or you know what's really important when building this you mentioned cash earlier and one of my observations from talking with successful owners and operators in this space is they find a way to strategically put cash in the biz back into the business to continue to grow it and it's just like this entire process and everyone's got their own unique way based on what their products and services that they're offering but like how do you think about making all of the money work for card collector two as a business and allow you to continue to place bets in areas that are successful allow you to continue to hire people like how do you like there's a lot going on with what you're doing like how do you think about the money and where it's going yeah it is a it's an important conversation you know i i talked about it on the podcast once probably one of my earlier podcast episodes that i did and it was like man cash flow like big week coming up and i you know it got clipped and people you know it circulated online that card collector too is broken has no money and you know a lot of these things i gotta be careful with my words because i don't want that to you know to be the message but cash flow is such an important piece of it i i i learned it early on i i was really big early brett on on putting every dollar back into the business like i i really wanted to to grow and that didn't mean always cards it it meant merch or giveaways or content or ads or new product in the show like always there's so many opportunities in this space i was very big on like keeping money in and using it to grow and just you know eighth wonder of the world compound interest i just wanted to keep that money in there and just keep it growing so yeah now it's it's a lot it's a much bigger conversation i think the thing we look at now and i talked about it earlier is i think one of the biggest advantages cash offers now is speed right just being able if we believe in something hardcore being able to go all in on something very quickly is a huge advantage like if you think bohman chrome uni or bohman chrome university basketball is gonna be great because it's now a combined product and we wanna buy you know wemby's rookie year because they're not gonna make it as a stand alone because it's now in combined and we wanna go buy it well if there's ten cases online like a couple years ago that wasn't a a thing for us now being able to execute so much quicker i think that's one of the biggest things cash does and i also look at it now as like it is a tool to grow for sure like being able to hire people with that money and and grow the talent pool here at this company like that is it's it's instrumental like the cards are great those are those are awesome but it's people that really like that's our number one asset for sure is people like without a doubt so if we can find good people that can help this place man it's the the the sky is the limit for sure how do you find the right people the right fit what is your mindset in terms of like recruiting we talk about college football right ryan day marcus freeman they're top notch recruiters right they're able to work the portals get the right people on the team have successful teams on a routine basis like similar mindset is needed in business like how do you think about acquiring the right talent to continue to help card collector two grow stay out of the process early for sure in all honesty i'm not in the process of hiring until the very very end we have a i got some good advice from some people early on in hiring and i know i am i'm pretty optimistic when someone comes in for an interview i'm like i think back to so much in my early days when it was just me hiring i'm like oh oh you could do this you could do this you could do this and it was only about like need we we just hired on need i need someone to sleeve these cards i need someone to list these cards i need someone to scan these cards and ship these cards now it's so much more about fit cultures matter so much more than talent i can teach you to scan cards and list cards and grow the website and we we can talk about all of those things we have processes we have good people in place here but if you're not a culture fit if you're not necessarily the best person it it it's not gonna work and that that's what we wanna avoid and i and i think i'm the type of person especially i just know it from my early days i'm like this person could do this this person could do this this person could do this i just try to really see the best in everybody and i think having good people that can lead some of the interview process and the search for talent has been a game changer it's it's also one of those things i don't enjoy as much of you you know i i look back to some of the early things when you know early days when i did everything right i hired i'd payroll like you do everything so early on now it's like i only have a finite amount of time right where is my time best spent in the business it's not hiring people like i'm not the best evaluator of talent in this company and i know that would i like to be better absolutely but my time is not best spent there it's it's on other areas of of the company so having good people in places has made it made it a lot easier for sure has there been a particular role or individual or decision that you've made with your group of hiring managers that was kind of a bet like it was like okay we need to make a bet because we see this potential need and you made that role or you you created that role and you hired that person and it and it it it kinda changed the trajectory of how you thought about a part of your business like can you think back to any of those moments that were like truly impactful on the hiring front yeah probably hiring someone for like the the people side of the business again i think early on i was not as cautious or aware of like what motivates people i think that's probably one of the things i look back on and be like that's probably a mistake of mine was not being i was so focused in the early days of like what everybody's motivated by like building this as fast as possible and and getting this up off the ground and like just go go go go go all the time and not everybody wanted the same thing that i wanted and it probably cost me i i know it did it cost me people that i cared a lot about and i think looking back on it having somebody that can like help with the people management the the hiring some of the staffing has been has been really helpful to me that's that's probably one of the things i'm trying to work on the most is is is really the people side of it is is is trying to get better at understanding that people are motivated by different things mhmm so it took me a long long long time to really get to that point longer than it should have so it's probably one of the few regrets i have in this is not developing that sense sooner so i would say hiring somebody one of my high you know probably one of our highest couple of people that has that has managed staff and does a lot of the hiring goes through a lot of that process has been has been really big and i think what it also did again just to kinda like piggyback on some of the early conversation is in the beginning it was like we wanted a lot of people to be like utility tools right there wasn't always cards that needed sleep there wasn't always cards needed scanned but there was always something that needed to be done well as you scale and you hire so many people it's been a it was a good point to get to but it was okay we now have somebody that can do this and they do this really well and this is what they do and and then you hire somebody else when that needs you know when this needs done or when that needs done rather than like build everybody to know how to do every job in the company we only had six people like we had six people to do all of the work now we have thirty five people to do all of the work so i think hiring people for like very specific things and just continuing to delegate more and more and understanding that like one or two or three people can't do all of it like you've gotta have people that can help i think that's you know those those things have definitely been part of our growth over the last you know two years what is what does accountability look like i i don't think it's a topic that gets discussed enough but i you know when you're investing in people process systems you've got you know leadership team you're hiring like that car working in cars is fun but if you're trying to grow a business like you need to make sure people are being held accountable and you know that means like from the the top down everyone's being held accountable so how do you how do you think about account accountability at card collector two yeah mean i think about it from a couple a couple ways i think the communication piece is a big thing i think if communication is clear and concise we've got the right people here that are willing to be accountable but you can't ask somebody to be accountable if the what they're asked to do is not abundantly clear and so if if leadership is not clear on expectations and how we how we operate and how we do things then the only people we can blame is ourselves so i think you know the communication has to be there and then you've gotta have people that are willing to be coached you've gotta have people that understand like listen we we ship a lot of cards we touch a lot of cards like there's a lot of stuff happening here like we miss things there's there's errors all the time like it's it's impossible like we have really good sops we make mistakes it's just human nature like it's it's gonna happen next week i can i can assure you there will be a mistake but if people are accountable and trying to get better and we have you know great leadership communicating that it's it's a breeze i i you know i mentioned it earlier about people but that is definitely one of the things i am most grateful for here now is like man it's been a it's been a journey to get to where we are but the group of people we have here now like is man it's it's top notch it's a lot more fun building it with like good people and there's there's a lot of them a lot of them here i wanna hit the topic of decision making you said speed earlier we've talked about communication you have to make a lot of key decisions in your role yep maybe talk about a challenging decision that you made in the last twelve months like what was that decision how did you process it talk through just like your mindset as a ceo going through and making a decision that maybe wasn't as easy as like i wanna buy more cases of bohme and u because i like it and i know what sells it man that would have probably been a really good answer yeah a specific decision repeat it for me one more time yeah just just try to figure out like i you're doing a lot whether it's streams events you got the storefront lot of different things going on i'm sure there's challenging decisions that come your way on a regular basis and hey like is there a specific example over the last you know maybe twelve months of a decision you had to make that wasn't necessarily easy but now that you're on the other side of it it was it was the right decision yeah i mean there's a couple things that that come to mind right like obviously anything around hiring is always near the top of the list like just again people are the greatest asset that we have the the product one is is is you know i hit on it earlier but the ability to execute things quicker and just being able to like go all in on the things you really believe bohman you know bohman chrome's a great example if we just really believe in something like you know that's that has been a a a game changer i would say like one like it's a little bit more tangible and you know i i don't know if i can sit here and answer it as like has it been a great decision i feel pretty good about it but it took us a long time to get to the decision to run a show at the convention center i know you and i have spent some time talking about that you know brad and i that's a piece of our business is is is shows we had looked you know brad joined the team at the end of like early q four and twenty four so this would have been i wanna say around october and we had talked about running this like bigger show in columbus for a while like it it was really always on our radar and we'd looked at different dates it just kept falling through and it it's such a bigger expenditure than like any other show we had run i mean you're talking about a convention center in the capital in columbus the fourteenth largest city in the united states like it's a much bigger you know undertaking it is increased tables it's increased admission it's increased parking like everything about it is bigger so it's how do you like do we wanna take that on do we you know this is working the shows we're running now are working like they're they're great we've got things we love about all of them but it was you know that i think that was a different undertaking and a little bit more of a of a sweat and it just got to the point where it was like we believe in this we believe in what we're doing how we're doing it why we're doing it and we think this is this is something we wanna challenge ourselves on and ultimately made the decision to commit to that earlier this year and you know we've started the promo and you know some of that stuff now but end of june if you ask me again i'll i'll be able to give you a better answer on you know how it fared but i feel i feel pretty good about it right now is there is there anything at this stage of the business that you have to like say no to now that maybe you would say yes to in the past in a previous life anything stand out to you just in terms of specializing your time learning to say no has been one of the hardest things i've ever had to do seriously like i i i am very cautious of how our brand is portrayed online like that it's something that like just matters to me and matters to us again i want to be a resource to so many but as it has grown that's definitely one of the down you know it it's not i wouldn't say disadvantage like because it's not but like as you grow and you know our audience has has has grown too it's led to a lot more requests for for time or investment or advice or just so many different things and i think early on when i tried to do all of it everything as much as i could i mean i i just was a workaholic and i and i still work a lot now but i just learning to say no was really one of the the hardest things for me because i just yeah sure i'll give you fifteen minutes i'll i'll give you thirty minutes i'll i'll do this and just with running a thirty with with this company with so many people and trying to grow and so many just different things internally i think that's probably one of the things you know you saw it a little bit more in person but like i think when people see us online it's like this guy goes to card shows and you know he opens boxes and that's it but it's like most of my time is is meetings and leadership and growing the business and creating content and then i'm a dad and a husband and like a friend and that's if i'm not in this place like really trying to grow the team we have here there's it's with my wife and my son and some friends that's that's really it it's it's learning to protect my time a little bit better by just unfortunately having to say no a little bit more often i i want you to talk about the guardrails you put up to separate the the worlds of ryan the business owner and operator and ryan the dad and husband i consensus i know you're obsessed with cards we've talked about it you're obsessed with building your business you love it but you also love your family and i'm get i say this about just my work if i didn't have a family i'd just be working twenty four seven but my family gives me the opportunity to like take a breath and focus on them like how do you put up those guardrails to make sure that your your family time is protected yeah it sounds crazy and but it but honestly it's scheduling it's it's really like making time for you know like these are the nights i work these are the days i work this is where like we're hanging out at i've gotten as we've grown so quickly i've gotten a lot better at like prioritizing things and again that just goes back to like saying no like you know we we got back a couple weeks ago from disney like that is one of my son's favorite places my wife used to work there i collect disney cards it's a very special place for us like we get to go a couple times a year those trips are planned and when i'm there i'm there now my phone is always on like and you know reg my amazing wife who makes this job a lot a lot easier because she's an amazing partner and mom you know she understands that like my phone's on like i am responsible for a lot so the phone's gonna ring that's gonna happen but there are also times where listen we have really good people here you don't need me to figure out every decision anymore it's it's not like that so yeah it's it's always a challenge like i i don't sit here and say i've got a perfect answer i'm you know i'm i've i've always got this like it's it's a challenge like there's only twenty four hours in the day and i'm trying to you know maximize every area of my life as much as possible some days i'm better than others i'm not perfect but you know i'm i'm cognizant of it i think that's important is that like i want to be present when i'm here and i want to be present when i'm home make a concerted effort and you know do the best i can and hopefully people see that i gotta i love to understand this from a business owner perspective if you're running a business in the space you undeniably have to love cards i spent some time in your office looking at your collection which i don't think people understand how absurd your collection is it was very fun and i think back to that time and think back to those cards very fondly but when you're in the business of cards it can maybe change your perspective of like cards in a way obviously you're a collector but you've got a business to run maybe i'd love before we get out of here just to maybe get some understanding of like how that has changed over the course of the business if it's if it has changed a lot like how do you still be a collector and run a business that sells cards at the same time man that's i you see it like you you got to see it a little bit it's hard for sure i love like i love cards i always said i would collect these cards if they were worth nothing at all and they didn't pay my bills it just it happens to it's definitely hard i think i the the the why i collect cards i think has changed a lot more over you know the last couple of years obviously i care less about building the best ohio state pc on earth like i did five years ago i have a son now so like buying the cool disney cards with him and ripping batman or spider man boxes at dad's shop is far cooler than buying another carnell tate auto like as much as i love that stuff and i you know i've acquired some really cool ohio state stuff and i i will continue to do so collecting buzz and woody cards in moana and remy and zurg disney cards is far cooler these days so i look at it like collecting with my son is is for sure the thing i care the most about like i would sell you know i have i have the woody know you and i talked about it i have the first year disney super woody in a psa ten my son's second birthday party was a woody's roundup birthday party i own brady autos and i have a jordan rookie and i have a fifty two tops mantle and i have some like i've been very fortunate to acquire some cards i care a lot about in two decades of doing this and i would sell every other card on earth before i would sell that woody super unless it just changed my son's life in some crazy way i i couldn't see a world where i do not have that card the rest of my life so it i think it's the the purpose and like why i collect has been my biggest thing it's it's lot of it for me is like the memories like i know again you and i talk a lot about this but why we collecting stuff i couldn't collect when i was a kid when i was younger those o six seven eight nine ten days like picking up that stuff yeah a little bit more strategic but at the end of the day like i don't wanna stop collecting because i have a business to run because then it would just becomes work and i don't want it to feel like burnout i don't want it to feel like i don't enjoy it because i love like i i love doing this i love collecting cards so i think for me it's it's still understanding that if i don't keep buying and collecting what i like it it won't be as fun so i i i i definitely keep up with it i definitely still collect really really hardcore it's just the the focus has shifted a little bit to to what that is we've covered a lot of ground and a little time in this conversation ryan before i let you go when you think about your business and what you're looking to achieve and accomplish and we it's amazing we didn't even talk about how insane the industry is and the six hundred and five million dollar number cardladder put up it's it's i try to talk to people that i used to work with in tech like this is a real industry and like the infrastructure is like still forming and it the opportunities are endless if you wanna start something like this this is the time to do it and i'm i'm having a lot of fun i'd love to get your perspective of like two to three years with what's happening in this market like what do you envision card collector to the brand to look like in a a couple years man that's a an amazing question yeah i mean i i would sit here today and probably resonate a lot of like what you've said and you know i know we have similar feelings around the market feel very optimistic about the trading card landscape and where we're headed you know i think we could have a full podcast discussion on licensing and autograph deals and all of those things but what tops and fanatics have done in a very short period of time makes me optimistic are there flaws sure are there imperfections sure are there things everybody would wish would be different sure but i don't i would be foolish to sit here and think what they've done in such a short period of time with one and you know you've had basketball for a few so mainly what baseball licensing with some of the other you know wrestling or f one or disney or some of those but mainly it's been baseball now they have basketball and then they just got football a few days ago if what they've done with a few of the licensing isn't isn't enough to get you optimistic with where the market is as a whole man i i don't know you know that that might be a bigger picture conversation for you because i think i feel really good about where the market is headed i think for us it's you know i i i don't sit here and say like i want ten card stores i i love having one i love having it in columbus ohio and i love building it with people that i care a whole whole lot about i think for me that's just the goal is do i want the card store to be a little bit bigger and in a better building and to build that yeah do i want to continue to grow the podcast yeah do i wanna continue to grow our shows and evolve and make them some of the best most enjoyable nicest card shows in the country yeah i i wanna do that like i don't have this big grand vision to have like ten card stores in every state i just wanna get better at the things we're doing now and do it with people that i care a lot about i think if we can do that yeah this is this is better than anything else i could have ever done on earth and i'm grateful to be doing it ryan card collector two always enjoy our conversations it's fun when we get to share some of these conversations with everyone else it's fun to learn more about how you think about your business your role as the ceo of the industry and all of the above i'm sure we'll catch up on the other side of this but appreciate the time my man appreciate you having me good luck with the with everything and we'll chat soon