What's up, everybody?

Excited for another episode of Passion to Profession, brought to you by my good friends at eBay. We are going to have a fun conversation here with a hobby friend of mine, business contact, collector, all those things.

And when I was thinking about kind of this next wave of, individuals who I wanted to talk with, Ryan was one of the first names that came top of mind for me.

Ryan and I have been, in communication with each other regarding, being collectors in the hobby and working together between kinda PSA and stacking slabs for some time now.

Ryan's a long time collector and, works for the PSA team, so we're gonna get into the story of Ryan as a collector and just taking the leap and working inside the industry.

Ryan, we're coming off the heels of the national. We are catching up a little bit ahead of the show.

How are you feeling? What's top of mind for you right now? Man, I feel great coming out of the national. I, I messaged you yesterday. I I listened to your episode of stacking slabs with your takeaways from the national.

I thought everything you put in there was spot on. I just I felt such great energy at the show across the board every category. I know for PSA, it was a great show, obviously.

And, you know, just I felt really good energy coming out of there. The the hobby just feels like it's in such a healthy place, for so many different reasons that you recapped really nicely. I I just feel good.

And, also, I'm relieved to not be sick because I was sick after the last two nationals. So I'm I'm you know, knock on wood, we're a few days out, but, that's honestly probably my biggest relief coming out of the show.

That's a good one. We'll see if the sickness, continues to, wane, and we're we don't have to deal with that.

Although you and I, we commiserate every once in a while because football season starting in over the last couple of years, few years, our teams really haven't delivered like we want them to deliver as fans.

And for anyone who doesn't know you, Ryan is a massive Chicago Bears fan. And I gotta ask you before we get into the conversation, like, I my my squad plays its first preseason game tonight.

It's it's here. Like, how do you feel, like, real talk, honest take about your Chicago Bears hanging heading into this season?

Cautiously optimistic. I'm I'm tired of us being off season champs. I wanna see it actually translate in September, October through January. Cautiously optimistic.

I'm trying to block out all the noise of the hot takes on Caleb Williams and some of the clips going around because I just I just keep reminding myself this is, like, peak season for the content machine in the NFL and everybody getting their hot takes off.

So I'm I'm holding my confidence in Caleb and Ben Johnson in the young defense having Dennis Allen there, like but I'm not getting too far out over my skis because I have done that before and been really let down.

You're doing the right thing. You know?

I'm sitting here, and I'm I'm sitting here, and, I hear these, you know, Anthony Richardson having his best camp in three years, then you'll I'll lean over and see content and everyone reminding me of all the missteps and misfortunes.

And I'm like, I don't need this right now.

I just need positivity. Put on the blinders and let I feel yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm protecting my headspace with the bears until mid September. Smart. We'll we'll do a a midseason check-in. Hopefully, we'll we're both, sane.

Only time will tell. I wanted to start this chat by kinda talking about kinda Ryan as the collector and thinking back to those early days of you entering the hobby and collecting maybe as a kid or whenever you started collecting.

What what would you say is your first memory you have in the hobby in collecting sports cards?

Yeah. So I'm I'll I'm 43 years old. I've been collecting since the nineties. I really started getting into it when I was around, like, nine, 10 years old.

My dad I grew up in the suburbs in the Chicago Suburbs, and my dad actually worked for Leaf. He worked more on the on the candy side of the company, but at the time, Leaf was really big in cards with the Donruss brand as well.

So, you know, through my dad, I kinda had an automatic entry into, you know, ripping packs, getting into cards. And, you know, I was a sports fan as a kid, so it was just a natural progression into cards.

The most vivid memory for me, like, my core my first core memory with cards is always gonna be, the 1992 upper deck Shaquille O'Neal rookie. You know, the famous, triple exposure image, the number one draft pick in gold foil up top.

I'll never forget at my local card shop. I think I was 10 or 11 years old. You know, I would go every Sunday with my allowance, ride my bike. I think the shops shop was called Hotshots in Vernon Hills, Illinois. And I ride my bike.

It was about a mile away, and I would buy a few packs of upper deck. And I remember you could open the wax and the foil pack and all the cards have white borders. But if you had a Shaq rookie in there, you can see that sliver of black.

And I'll never forget seeing that sliver of black for the first time at 10, 11 years old, getting it in a top loader, riding my bike home. That was, like, my first real dopamine hit in the hobby, and, it's one I hold on to forever.

It's still my favorite basketball card ever made, and I was hooked from that point. If if people of our age bracket, the Shaq of it all was such an impactful time.

I remember, like, when you were talking through that, I it brought me back to me going in, my hobby shop as a kid, which is on 70 First in Benford in Indianapolis.

And I'll I'll never forget looking at, like, the hobby boxes and seeing a pack of stadium club with Shaq rookies, and they were $8 a piece. And I I remember being like, I can't believe these packs are $8 a piece.

And I know. It was like hysteria in the hobby shops because people were paying for them, and the only thing people cared about you had Jordan in this time frame and Reggie Miller here locally.

The only thing people cared about was trying to find a a Shaq, rookie so they could, retire early.

I always make the joke. I like, the one hobby decision I made that just aged like milk is I grew up in the Chicago Suburbs in the nineties, and I didn't collect Jordan at all.

Because I was always, like when everyone's zigged, I always wanted to zag and just do something different than anyone else.

So I really wish I would've, I really wish I would've zigged on that one and collected Jordan and held on to some of them.

What what was the moment and, you know, we go through these cycles as, you know, collecting as a kid, stop collecting, maybe swing back to the hobby later in life.

What what was was there a specific moment where you realized that cards for you were going to be more than just kinda like a childhood hobby or more than just a phase?

Yeah. You know, one thing I I always think back to, and it's funny that we're talking about this right after the national. So I spent a few hours on the show floor, at the national on Saturday with, my best friend and wife, Derek.

So we actually met in ninth grade gym class, and we both connected over cards. And here we are twenty five years later, we still collect together.

And I think that was really it for me. It was like Derek was my first friend who was really into collecting, and that was kind of my first window into, like, what a hobby community can be like.

And I think that was really it for me. And obviously now, you know, twenty five years later, you know you know, me and you have connected. And, you know, if social media didn't exist, would that have ever happened?

And all the people that I've kind of built my little community with, you know, in the hobby who I've connected with, I think that was that was really what connected me to it was, you know, just meeting a friend in the hobby early on in my collecting years, you know, when I was, like, 14 years old and then that growing over the course of a few decades.

I think that was really eye opening for me.

We've talked a lot about just different sets and players that we've collected over the years, what we like, what we don't like. You mentioned Shaq, obviously. I know your collection is, pretty broad.

You have your your Bears fan, but you like football. You have a lot of different interests. Are there any specific players or sets that you would say have kinda defined the way you have collected over the years?

I think the most formative set for me, that kinda really taught me how to collect and, like, really started to give me structure with collecting was the 1998 SP authentic football set.

For those that don't remember, that was '98 was the first year, SPX and SP authentic were the first two sets where you had base set rookie cards that were serial numbered, and it was, like, so revolutionary at that time.

And I was just so drawn to that set. And, I built that set when I was 16, 17 years old, you know, working at Best Buy part time and, like, half my paycheck going towards completing that set, chasing Peyton Manning, chasing Randy Moss.

And, you know, over the course of three decades since then, I've taken that set apart and rebuilt it. I wanna say, like, three different times.

I currently have it. And now what I'm doing with it, I'm, kind of my final phase of it. All the future watch rookies, I'm trying to get them all in PSA nine or higher grades, and I'm about two thirds of the way there.

It's that was the set that really first, like, gave me an identity of, like, this is what it's like to focus on something and really, like, set a goal in the hobby and go after it and achieve it.

And I mentioned my best friend, Derek. Like, we both collected that set together in the late nineties. And, you know, fast forward all these years, we both have complete sets of, you know, 98 SP authentic.

And then when I came to work here at PSA, I met a lot of coworkers who had formerly worked at upper deck, and I've learned so much more history about that set and some of the early years of serial numbering and things like that at upper deck.

So it just has a really rich, you you know, just place in my own personal hobby journey. So that set's forever gonna have a special connection for me.

Let's get a little nerdy for a second. Maybe share some nuggets with the audience on what are some things about that set that you didn't know in the years collecting it that you maybe picked up over the years.

That makes it even more interesting to you. Yeah. My favorite one is so the serial number, you you know what this card looks like. The the Yeah. Use the big Manning 98 s p authentic, for example. Serial numberings on the back.

And one of my coworkers that I worked with early on here at PSA was telling me about how after that set came out, they would go they this was really big for them, having serial numbered rookies, and they kinda wanted to go into the market and see how they were being, you know, received.

And he was talking about going to a show in 1998 after the set came out, and he would be at a dealer showcase.

And dealers would have these 98 SP authentic cards in their dealer showcase, but they would be upside down with the sticker price on them.

Them. And he was asking, why are these upside down? And they would say, well, these cards are serial number, but nobody knows it.

So, like, you wanna show that prominently. These are serial number rookie cards. So the cards would be upside down in the case. Now you see that card in the case.

It's right side up. Everybody knows. But that was that piece of hobby community feedback from dealers was the reason that then 1999 SP authentic, the serial numbers were on the front of the cards of the rookie cards.

So, like, you remember, like, the Edron James with that great portrait photo. The serial number's on the bottom of the front of the card, and that was the reason they did that.

So just, like, learning little nuggets of history from, you know, these early days of serial number rookie cards just really is fascinating to me.

Oh, man. I love it's whenever we can get the tribal knowledge that's deep inside Yeah. The bowels of someone's head or something else and they share it out, that's always good info.

So let's dig into, you and just maybe a professional setting. You I know you haven't been working at PSA forever. You've had a great run there, but maybe talk to us a little bit about what you were doing professionally and before PSA.

And did you have an idea that you wanted to eventually jump into a big hobby business like PSA, or, did it just the opportunity kinda just come to you?

Yeah. So about the the decade before I came to PSA, in my career, I I was originally a journalist, out of college.

I did that for about seven, eight years before transitioning over to PR, marketing, you know, content, social, kind of that space. So the seven, eight years before I came to PSA, I was working.

I have couple stints working in professional boxing with a couple of major promotions doing social media and live content and content marketing, and, I also worked in hospitality.

I worked at MGM Resorts. I lived in Vegas for eleven and a half years before I relocated to California in late twenty nineteen.

I moved to California about three months before the pandemic hit. And, you know, working in professional boxing, you're working a lot of live events.

You're traveling a lot. So, you know, obviously, COVID threw a wrench in that where, you know, we were doing live events in a bubble in Las Vegas, and it was just a very different experience.

So fast forward early twenty twenty one, the company I was working for, we were starting to open back up to traveling for events. And, really, those that year and a half was the most time in my professional career.

I'd, like, spent long periods of time at home not traveling for work, and I was kinda like, man, I really like this. I like not traveling three weekends a month for work.

And just like kinda talking about all the pieces aligning, you know, I was living in, here in in Costa Mesa in Orange County about eight, ten miles from the PSA offices. Nat Turner and his group had just acquired PSA.

I've obviously been a collector. I got back into the hobby in about twenty thirteen, fourteen, and I've been active since then. And I'm sitting there thinking, I really wanna do something different.

I'd love to get a job closer to home where I can have a regular schedule and a regular kinda, you know, just more of a regular life. Sunday night, May twenty twenty one, I just decided, you know what? Shooters shoot.

You gotta take your shot. I've always been a believer in this. I typed up a DM on Instagram to Nat Turner and just kinda introduced myself, said, here's my professional background. I live 10 miles from your office in Santa Ana.

If you ever have a need for someone with my background, I'd be more than interested in, you know, finding a way to to get on board at PSA thinking, you know, there's probably a good chance I'm never gonna hear back.

He wrote me back like an hour later and connected me with, the head of the people team here and, one of the recruiters here at PSA.

And there was no position at the time, that really aligned with me, but they kinda said this might be coming.

And four months later, I was working at PSA. I had my first day at PSA at the September 2021. So I always say this to people professionally. You you shoot your shot.

There's you know, it's it's such a cliched quote, but, like, you miss a 100% of shots you never take. And, you know, what was the worst thing that was gonna happen? It just gets left unread and I never hear back, so be it.

I did that and and it worked out, and it makes me take even more pride in my position here now at PSA four years later. How many times did you reread and reread that message before you sent it to Nat? I I think I've told Matt.

Like, I sat there for, like, over an hour with it just like and, you know, it ended up being, like, a really long Instagram DM. So I'm like, he's not gonna read all this and but, you know and and maybe he didn't.

But, you know, he at least acknowledged it and and, you know, made that connection for me and, you know, it's I'm so thankful for that to him, and it's it's been a great ride here for four years in county.

May maybe share a little bit about the role you were hired into and what you're working on, what you were doing, and then you have since moved on to a new role.

Talk about what you're responsible, for in your new role. Yeah. So when I was hired here, you know, they were really in the process of of rebuilding the marketing work here at PSA as the company was scaling following the acquisition.

A lot of my specialty the last few years before, coming here was just in brand social media.

And so that's what I was brought in as was a, you know, senior manager of social, and I basically, you know, took that on, and just ran with it.

You know, I was able to kinda push some boundaries, just build a lot of new things from the ground up.

And, my my role just kind of evolved from there. You know, as we got more serious about PR here and and media relations, I had a background in that.

So I kinda took that under my wing with my team. And then the big piece that translated over was, you know, with us being more involved on social media.

We made a lot of connections with athletes in the space who were collecting, you know, artists in the space who were collectings, you know, celebrities in the space who were collecting.

And I started managing a lot of those relationships just as a point of contact.

And, you know, about four or five months ago, I moved into a new role here as our director of athlete and artist partnerships at PSA as we're building up some formal programs around some of those relationships, we've built, and we've got a lot of really cool things cooking.

So, you know, it's it's very different from the job I was originally brought in for, but one of the things I've really loved about this company from day one when I got here was they really just wanted to bring in passionate people and let them, you know, to use some, you know, just slang.

Let them cook. Like, let them just go for it. Try new things. And you see it all over the place in the company, and you can see the fingerprints of that on all these new products we launch and everything like that.

So I've had a really cool opportunity to just come in here and try some new things, and it's and it's really been a fun ride.

Oh, I I'd I'd love to this question I have as you were describing your role in social media and the hobby, the, you know, PSA and the PSA brand is viewed by collectors as premium.

We all spend a lot of money with PSA to get our cards, you know, authenticated and graded.

It is the gold standard in the industry. However, there are always issues, and people have issues whether it's cards not getting back in time, grades, that sort of thing.

Like, I would imagine, on from a social perspective, a lot of those issues and complaints might have been aired out online, and you probably or people on your team are on the receiving end of that.

Like, maybe talk a a little bit about that and just, like, the management of it, and how do you do it in a professional way to not only maintain the brand, but also make sure that, you know, your customers who are unhappy at this point leave with a a a pretty good experience?

I always say that if you're gonna work in social media for a major brand, you have to have thick skin.

And if you don't have it coming in, you gotta develop it quick. So keep in mind, when I came in and got the keys to social media for at at at PSA, this was September 2021.

So we're in the throes of a 15,000,000 card backlog. We're still probably a good year from coming out of it in full. So there's obviously a lot of frustration. There's a lot of customer frustration.

There's a lot of there's just a lot of general hobby frustration. So it was you know, when I first got here, like, you would look at our DMs and and look at the comments under anything we posted, and it was toxic.

It and understandably so. I was a you know, I'm a PSA I was a PSA customer for years before I worked here.

So, like, I remember when PSA shut down submissions in hurrying to get my last one in before, you know, that happened. So I I I definitely came into it with some empathy for people and what they were dealing with.

And, you know, we really worked hard over that first year or so to set up, a really good structure for just triaging real issues that were coming to us on social.

And, you know, we have a really you know, fast forward now, three, four years.

You know, I'm not part of that social team day to day anymore, but we've built a really good internal infrastructure where, you know, look, we have customers calling and emailing our customer support team all the time, but a lot of customers take those issues to social media.

And we have a really good infrastructure for being able to help customers, who are coming to us on social, but then also seeing issues that are being kinda aired out not directly at us over PSA on social and being able to go meet those customers where they are and help those issues.

And, you know, now you look at the tone around PSA's brand on social.

It's just it's kinda crazy now to look back at what the overall sentiment around the brand was in 2021 versus now in 2025. It's just in such a healthier place. I think it would be, interesting for anyone to maybe understand.

In every time I've talked with someone from the PSA team, I'll just individually one on one setting. I'll ask a bunch of questions out of curiosity on, like, their role, what do they do, like, what does their day to day look like.

And everyone has always been, like, super open and, you know, forthcoming about the work that they're doing.

It seems like some individuals look at a company like PSA or any other big companies within the industry and feel like it's a kind of a a black box where you you can't understand anything when I've always found that's not true.

But I'd I'd love to maybe get your insight on just, like, your your obviously, you were at the the national with the team, last week, but, like, what is, like, a normal day for you, look like?

And it can be in, like, your previous role or your current role, just, like, how it how it shakes up.

One of the things I really love about being here is, like, a normal day very rarely looks the same as the day before for me in this role, especially being in a newer role with a newer program that we're in the process of standing up.

But I get to wear a lot of different hats here, which I really like.

I work a lot directly day to day with, athlete partners of ours who collect, submit to PSA, are learning to use our vaults and marketplace services, etcetera, working on, new programs that we're standing up and currently working on a lot of the foundational stuff to build those up.

A lot of that you're gonna start seeing really come to market stronger later in 2025 and heading into 2026.

And, yeah, I it's it's a little it can be a little nebulous day to day, but I wear a lot of different hats here, but I really love it.

One of the things that I really appreciate here is that we have a really good balance at PSA of people like me who are, you know, hardcore collectors and not just working here at this brand, but also consumers, with this brand.

And then you have people who, you know, don't collect and kinda can bring a little bit of, like, an outsider perspective to things on things where maybe sometimes people like me can be a little too close to it.

So, yeah, it's just a it's a really good, it's a really good balance here.

And I I work out of our Santa Ana office four, five days a week. I genuinely love, you know, being able to come in here and talk cards, talk business with, you know, fellow collectors and just coworkers here at the space.

But, yeah, that's one thing I really do about I like about the day in the life here is that, especially in my newer role, things can change day to day.

I I never know who I'm gonna get put in contact with from, you know, one day to the next that maybe wants to start working with us in those new spaces that I am.

So, it's really been good in that my role my new role especially keeps me on my toes.

I I think I talk about this a lot with you just like one of my favorite things that PSA does from a social perspective is, like, whenever there's a big card that's graded, like, that gets published on x and Instagram.

And, I think about that, and I think about that at scale.

And it's just like PSA is the central point for so many incredible cards that are sitting in collections or just get opened up in packs. Mhmm. They go get graded. Like, maybe help it like, bring all of us into that setting maybe at PSA.

Like, I would imagine it's kinda like high school when a big card is there or it it pops that people start talking about it and there's a buzz in the air. Maybe, like, set the scene there for us as the listeners.

And then also any memorable cards that kinda come to your mind when you think about just, like, biggest, best, or most significant to you that you've seen since you've worked there.

Yeah. It's this was when I first joined the company in 2021, this was one of the first things I wanted to figure out is for social media.

How are we figuring how are we getting alerted to these big cards that are coming in? What's the best process for us to to to utilize so we know what's coming in and and when it's getting through the process, when we can share it.

So, you know, it alerts to big cards in in the building can come from any any, from multiple different points.

You know? There's some cards that, like, you know, Nat and guys he collect collects with maybe, you know, Nat maybe steering people to submit cards, with us and and, you know, maybe we'll get a heads up from him.

Hey. This card's coming in. Keep an eye out for it.

A lot of times, it's our, it's our results team that's at the end of the, you know, end of the grading process where they're the ones, doing any fee adjustments on big cards that are coming in, with upcharges where they basically know, you know, you know, our social marketing team will check-in with them.

Hey. This product just came out. If there's any big hits from, you know, like, say 2024 Bowman draft just came out, any big Jack Haglione hits that are coming through results just, you know, give us a heads up.

So, you know, we use Slack here internally. There'll be like a Slack channel where those cards are being flagged for the social media team. So we've got a lot of different ways of finding out.

And then, you know, there's those big cards that people are hunting out in the market. It gets found and it comes to PSA and, like, Wordle just kinda get around the building that that card's here.

Like, the one I think there's there's two that I think about. One is the, the one ring from the, Magic the Gathering release back in, I think, 2023. When that card showed up here, that was a big deal.

Seeing that in person was a really big deal. You know, the the Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, one of one ultimate collection logo bin, I I can't remember what year product that was from.

It might have been of I think it was o three because it was the year with LeBron's rookie logo man. Those came in together raw the same day, back in 2022.

That was nuts. And then, of course, you know, coming off the national, The national is just crazy every year because, you know, you got a lot of high end things that people just don't wanna put in the mail.

That's totally understandable. So just the things that get uncovered and brought in at the national every year is just is just mind blowing. I always a friend of mine asked me not long after I came here.

They're like, what is it, you know, what what is it like to just see that stuff every day? And I said, you think of the national and the cards you only see once a year on the show floor at the national?

I was like, here, it's like the national every day. There's just something cool coming here every single day. And, like, some of it, you do get desensitized to after a while, but some of it, you don't.

Like, there's some stuff that comes in where you're just like, holy cow. I mean, my first six months working here, I held two different t two zero six Honda's Wagner's in my hand.

I mean, when else are you ever gonna get to do that? There's there's been a handful of cards like that that when I've held it, I can see the hair raise on my arm and I get goosebumps.

So that you know, there's still some of that stuff coming in regularly that just will just make you stop in your tracks.

But there's a lot of people here who appreciate it because there's so many collectors who work here. So it's just cool to see how excited so many people get about some of those things coming through the door.

Oh, that's what I wanted to dig into, like, your colleagues. I mean, we we as individuals in this hobby have content in Instagram and naturally, like, we'll get ideas from different people we respect and be influenced.

But, like, you're you're literally, like, you know, going to, you know, fill up coffee and sitting there talking cards with your coworkers because they're collectors.

Like, how big of a role does like, what, like, what does influence look like from your colleagues or just working at one of the biggest businesses in the industry?

Like, do you get influenced by what to collect through that? Mhmm. I mean, I you know, there's so many different collectors who collect in so many different ways here.

You know, from people who are player collector to people who are you know, we have a we have a Slack channel here at PSA where people just share cool stuff that they're collecting.

And just the way that different people collect in different genres is is very influential. You know, I I always think about, sorry. I lost my train of thought there for a second.

Sorry. Okay. So let me restart there. You know, the the the people who collect here, you know, find their you know, find people here who collect the same categories, the same genres, etcetera, as them.

You know, a perfect example of that. Everybody knows that Nat is a big nineties basketball collector. So, like, we have this, you know, we have this idea a couple years ago, Nat did, where he just said, hey.

I'm coming to the office in a couple weeks. Let's have, like, a nineties wax, like, rip party. Like, invite whoever you want. Bring your bring bring a box of something from the nineties to rip.

And we've done it a handful of times where you get all these people in the same room who are all kind of around the same age, all love nineties product, and we'll we'll put on nineties music in the conference room and just sit there and rip wax for an hour or two at the end of the day.

That's some of my favorite stuff here is when we get a chance to really get to the to the core of the hobby, like, and just rip product in here.

You know? When there's a new tops, you know, tops grown baseball release, sometimes we'll bring in a couple boxes here and just rip them as a team. Bowman baseball is always a popular one here.

I think that's been my favorite thing is when we all get to get together here, you know, groups of us to just rip product together and get to the the core of what the hobby is all about, see some big cards, get it.

I mean, there's just there's just nothing that can match that. It's it's really cool for building, like, culture and camaraderie among groups here.

That's amazing. Wanna dig into maybe and you've shared a lot of this, but focus in on just some lessons for anyone listening that wanna break into, hobby and working in the industry at a company like PSA or another one.

I know you gave the advice, like, shoot or shoot, which is good advice. And I I live by that. Like, no one's gonna do it for you.

Like, you gotta go do it for yourself. What what maybe what's, like, a a piece of advice you have for anyone out there who's looking to move from their corporate job to work in the industry full time just from your experience? Yeah.

I think, you know, referencing your episode of your podcast you had yesterday from the National, I think you you have one line that just, like, really hit with me and it it's just the core of everything is that, you know, it's not just money that this hobby, you know, keeps this hobby going.

It's the people. The people drive the hobby.

And, honestly, every step in my career, but even before here, I've always been such a proponent of just heavily networking. Just always be networking. And you just never know, you know, where building relationships can take you to.

So I'm a big I'm a big believer in you know, I get reached out to all the time on, like, LinkedIn from people who wanna break into the hobby and just kinda talk to me about it, and I'm always open to it.

Anyone who reaches out to me, I always wanna have a conversation with them because this is how it's done.

Like, start you know, tell me a little bit about yourself. What's your background? Like, we might not have something here right now at PSA for you, but I might know someone else who does. I might know somewhere else to to direct you.

I might know someone else to connect you with. So I'm just a big believer in just planting as many seeds as humanly possible in the space you're trying to break into because you just never know what it's gonna lead to.

And, you know, I love that there's the unknown of, you know, how long it might take me to break in, but I'm a big believer in that if you put that out there and you and you start creating those relationships, you know, you can get to where you wanna go.

So I'm always I'm always mindful of that with just paying it forward. I I know how lucky I am to to be here, and I think about that all the time.

So anytime someone's reaching out to me saying I've been a collector for a long time, I'd love to work in it professionally, like, that resonates with me personally because that was my journey.

So I'm always gonna be open to helping out anyone however I can when they reach out to me. This can be from, like, a PSA hiring perspective or it can be from anything you're observing across the industry.

But when you think about, like, skills and needed skills inside scaling businesses in this industry right now, what are some of the top skills that come to your mind?

Yeah. I think one of the things I really like about what we do at PSA is just we're we're always trying to innovate.

You know, we're not we're never really resting on our laurels with our core product or with our new products that are coming out. We don't just launch things and then it just it's just there.

We're always trying to innovate and try new things. So, there's a there's a very real feeling here at PSA that there's very you know, almost any ideas worth pursuing, at least drawing up a plan around it. What can you do with this?

So people who are coming in here wanting to innovate, wanting to think different, wanting to try something new, you know, being scrappy and just really going after an ideas and really fleshing it out at full, I think is just a really good quality to have.

You know, and and that goes all the way up top to our leadership. Like, our leadership pushes for that. They want people to really try new things and and try to push the limits of what we do.

So, you know, it it's it's kinda general to say, but just being scrappy and being willing to you know, if you have an idea, bring it to the table, and let's flush it out and see what can happen with it versus just feeling like, they're not gonna like this.

I'm just gonna keep this to myself. Like, that's not that's not what you wanna do, especially here.

You know, there's there's a lot of you know, you look at a lot of the programs that we've stood up in the last and and the products that we've launched in the last couple years.

Like, I think about the PSA offers program within our PSA vault. I mean, things like that just came from, hey. What if we tried this? Hey. What if we tried this? Let's suss it out and see what we can do with it.

And these things come to life and they're really successful. So, just having an innovative mindset at all times and never just feeling like you're gonna come here and do the same thing every single day one after the next.

How did you, like, going through the process of outreach to NAD and then going through the interview cycle and then landing the job, how did you think about balancing the collector side of Ryan and the professional, I've done x, y, and z experience and, like, the blend?

Like, can you over index in one or the other when you're kinda going through these phases of trying to land a job?

Maybe share what worked for you during that Yeah. Kinda recruitment process. Yeah. Totally. That's a that's a great question.

I think one of the things it it wasn't even so much during the interview process. Like, during the interview process, I felt like my experience as a collector and the fact that I knew the space really well helped me.

One of the things that I really had to challenge myself on, and I kinda touched on this a little bit earlier, is that, you know, when you get here and you get really into the mode of working day to day, sometimes being so close to it isn't such a good thing.

And then on top of that, you know, I go home from from work at the end of the day, and collecting is, like, my biggest hobby. So it's it's finding a way to have a balance where you know what I mean?

Like, I have a I know I know I know exactly what you mean. I have a couple of coworkers where I've I've, like, made the joke before, like, I feel really burnt out on cards this week.

Like, I need, like it'll be a Friday, and I'm like, I need to not think about cards until Monday. So, you know, finding a way to strike that balance so that you're not burning yourself out.

But then also being able to have self awareness day to day at work when there's you know, I've definitely caught myself in the last couple years where I'm involved in a project, and we're getting really nitty gritty down into a detail, and I'll stop myself.

And I'm just like, I'm really overthinking this because I'm way too close to it.

And the other piece of that is also, you know, from working previously on our marketing organization, understanding that when we're marketing products or marketing messaging, not everyone collects the same way you collect.

And you need to think about things from the core customer's point of view versus just your own.

Now the the core customer has a lot of different approaches, but, like, sometimes, you know, you'll find yourself, well, this is what I would wanna see with this.

And you gotta remind yourself to take a step back and view it from a broader perspective versus just what's the messaging I would wanna receive with this as a collector.

So there's you you have to have if you're coming to work here as a collector, you absolutely have to have that self awareness and that perspective just to be able to keep yourself honest and and and deliver the best work you can.

Do you do you think working at a company like PSA has deepened your love of cards or changed the way you think about cards in any way? I would say it's it's deepened my love in the sense of who working at PSA has connected me to.

And, you know, whether that be new friends in the industry, collectors, you know, getting to work with a lot of athletes who collect, which, you know, is a big part of my job.

I always say that I think athletes being involved in the hobby where they're featured on the cards themselves is good for the hobby in general.

I think back to you know, we were talking about the late nineties when I was really getting into collecting as a younger man.

As a teenager, you know, I didn't know if any of the guys I was collecting also connect collected and, you know, that connection wasn't there.

And social media plays a big role in it. You know, a perfect example you'll see him right over my shoulder here is, like, Bobby Whitt Junior.

Right? One of the best young talents in baseball. PSA has had a great relationship with Bobby for three plus years now, and and he's been fantastic to work with.

I and he's been so public about his own collecting journey. And I personally think that that helps him from a hobby standpoint of people wanting to collect his cards with collectors knowing that he's into it as well.

So I really gained an appreciation for what the like, just the power of the hobby community and, you know, anyone who's in it.

Like, what that what that can mean for the overall health of the hobby. So I I've really I've my mind's really opened up on that front in my four years here.

When you think about your personal collection, is there one specific card that stands out and if you look at it, it's like, this is this best represents me, Ryan, as a collector.

What's that card? I always will come back to the 1998 SP authentic Peyton Manning rookie card. It's the first card, it's the first card that I think I was really old enough to not only love but fully appreciate.

And it's been a regular piece in my collecting journey over the course of thirty years, you know, with, like, a you know, there was about a six year window where I was not really in collecting from about 2006 to 02/1213.

It was, you know, the last card I kinda moved when I got it. It was the first card I got when I came back into it.

It's still a very central piece of my collection. I look at it, and I'm taken back to 1998, being 16 years old chasing it for the first time. It's really been a testament to a lot of pieces of my collecting journey.

So that's one that's just it's always gonna be my favorite card ever made, and it'll it'll you know, no matter how many times copies come and go from my collection, it'll always be, like, around my collection or in it.

So yeah. You know, I love, that answer. As we kinda close this out, I wanna maybe ask you a question about you you sent that, DM to Nat. You end up working at PSA.

You've been there ever since. If you could kinda go back in time before you started, knowing what you know now about the the hobby, cards, the industry, the company, like, what sort of advice would you give yourself?

Really, you know, I I know this is gonna sound a little cliche, but I really, really, the appreciation of being able to work doing what you love and working with content and things like that that you really love, it's been really fulfilling for me.

I'll be totally honest. And I and I'm very aware of the fact that not everybody gets to do that. And so I I try to keep very good perspective of you know, I I just say it out loud.

I feel I feel very lucky, and I and I and I know how lucky I am. I'm like, you know, when I talk to my mom and my mom asked me about work, like, she'll always make that comment.

Like, who would have thought you would be you know, you collected cards and now you'd be working. Like, I try to think about those things. It's very real.

You know, so I'm very appreciative of that, and I think it really makes me take even more pride in my work here and value what I do here knowing you know, just kinda always keeping that perspective of of you're really fortunate to be able to do what you do.

And I've I've worked very hard here since day one, and I wanna keep doing it for a very long time. I think if anything, it's just taught me really good perspective professionally.

It's it's kind of a general answer, but it's very true and that, you know, I value the opportunity here so much and I, you know, I've, like, thanked Nat in person before.

Like, thank you so much for the I had you know, even a couple years after being here because I truly do mean it.

I love being here. I feel very fortunate to be here, and I I I take a lot of pride in what PSA does in the hobby of what it means to a lot of people and how we help people along in their journeys day to day.

Awesome conversation, Ryan. Always good catching up. Most of the time, we're doing this behind the scenes and texting and having chats, but sometimes it's fun to hit record and let others in on the conversation.

Thanks so much for for being here. Appreciate, your thoughts and all the time. Thanks for having me anytime, and, I can't wait for football. Hopefully, we're not miserable together again this season.

Hey. If it's if it's just I know we both wanna be happy, but maybe if it's just one of us this year, like, what's better than none. No. No. No. No. No. So we'll we'll see. Alright. Take care, man. Thanks, Brett.