we are back with another episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay this is the week of the national as this is going live we're recording it in advance of that because i'm sure both of us are gonna be running around like chickens with our heads cut off but we were reminiscing before we hit record we actually met in twenty twenty one at the national so time flies when you're having fun today's guest is beau thompson with one million cubs he has just an incredible story about collecting and turning his collecting into his business but without further ado beau welcome man how are you hey thanks for having me on it's good to catch up we like you mentioned it's been five years already since we first met back at the golden dinner that's it's crazy to think it's been and how much has changed which we're gonna get into it in this in this interview how much has changed in in those five years yeah and i was thinking about i i'm thinking about that golden dinner now and i'm thinking about all of the different conversations i had and most everyone i interacted with at that dinner is still building something or collecting something in this hobby so there are people that say people come and go out of this space which is probably true but i've learned that there are also a wide contingent of people that stick around and are deeply invested in this space oh without question and and even further you know i i think for both for for you know yourself and i we've we've gone even further into the into the hobby and industry before we jump in i'm assuming you're going to the national absolutely i'll be there all five days and what what is your plan at the event do you have a a plan or strategy you collecting you connecting you doing all of the above what are you what are you up to all of the above you know with with with my business on on ebay and it's specifically on ebay live inventory inventory inventory is is i can never keep enough so i'll be doing a lot of buying on the show floor so wednesday thursday is gonna be heavily in the buying mode i'll hit up the the youtuber get together on thursday night and then friday i'm gonna take the day for myself go to wrigley catch the cubs yankees at wrigley and then back to business on saturday at the national that's pretty awesome that the yankees are in town that's special for a cubs fan especially during the national oh without a doubt in in previous nationals i i just i am all business it's cards cards cards last year was the first year that i actually decided i'm gonna take a day for myself i don't need to be on the show floor from from open to close every single day all five days so the orioles were in town which was you know unique interleague interleague match ups so took the day and i'm like you know what if if if the stars align and the the cubs are home again next year and then it just so happens the yankees are in town which makes it even better also more expensive but well treat myself so yeah we're gonna do it again i was in new york and there was obviously you know the world cup going on but then there was also yankees dodgers which brought another element so all of the fun fantasy matchups that everyone wants to see are taking place in the summer obviously you love baseball you love the cubs maybe for anyone who is unfamiliar with one million cubs and are hearing about you and the project for the first time like talk about it talk about the story like the origin of it and how it came to be it's it it's it's a really simple story and it's at its core it's pretty boring but it turned into what it became i just i'd always collected cubs' baseball cards going back to you know my my first days collecting back in the late eighties i always had like a cubs collection and over time i would collect different things i was pretty adhd when it came to collecting i would i would jump on a a project and and then i would you know abandon it and go to something else but one thing that or a recurring theme in my collecting over the the last thirty five years has been chicago cubs baseball cards and the cubs are always has have always been my number one team rooting interest in in all of sports and cubs cards have always had that you know bit of nostalgia and something that i've always been attracted to and back in twenty seventeen of course we were coming off the world series win in in twenty sixteen i was acquiring i was starting to buy collections and acquiring more and more cards i had accumulated over a million cards many of which were you know your typical eighties nineties junk wax era stuff you can't really there's not an easy outlet for that stuff so i thought i'd always been kind of compiling the cubs what if i just keep the the cubs pilot the cardinals the yankees the white sox all of these other teams and i had done some team trades in the past and i'll trade my yankees cards for you know a hundred yankees cards for a hundred cubs cards and so that was kind of how it was how was how it was born in december of of twenty seventeen and i just i just you know put some some notes out there like hey i'm i'm i'm collecting cubs cards and and then it just kind of snowballed from there so i mentioned that i was in new york and as i'm a pacers fan it pained me when i realized when i got off the plane that i was going to have to enter the hysteria that was the new york knicks being nba champions and it was literally everywhere i looked everyone was wearing jerseys everyone had championship gear on rightfully so but this led me to think about this but it was like man forever that knicks culture is going to live and keep feeding off of this moment whatever happens next year is okay because they just won i guess as a cubs fan i know it had been a long winding road to the twenty sixteen world series championship but have you come down off that cloud yet are you still feeding from that twenty sixteen moment we're i think cubs fans in general are still feeding off that moment and and i can certainly say that for myself because i was just at wrigley on saturday and the the twenty sixteen team was actually in town they opened champions gate at wrigley field so most of the guys from that team theo was back you know joe madden was back so all of these guys from that that team were celebrated over the weekend at wrigley field for the ten year reunion so it's it's it's fresh again but i was listening to sports talk radio on the drive back from from chicago over the weekend and you know i don't know if it was if it was one of the hosts or if it was a caller but stated i don't want this it's great that we celebrate the twenty sixteen team because it broke the the long drought but let's not celebrate this like we celebrate the chicago bears where we're still celebrating the nineteen eighty five eighty six chicago bears like let's let's get another one like we can celebrate twenty sixteen but let's add to it so that's kinda where we're at in your collecting of the cubs do you hold that twenty sixteen team in a higher regard like do you find yourself pursuing those rare and scarce pieces from that roster more than maybe any other years or is it just kind of all the same it's it's kind of all the same but there is a little bit more of a a you know i i find a little bit more if i'm digging through and i find like a jason hayward auto if if if that were you know if he was on the two thousand ten team or the two thousand you know five team it probably wouldn't carry the same weight but chris coughlin is a guy that it's like chris coughlin he's kind of an afterthought if he was on any other cubs team but since he was on the twenty sixteen team you know that like i'll pull the trigger and and and maybe pay a little up what i normally wouldn't pay on on other stuff so i think there definitely is that that championship premium on on the twenty sixteen cubs when was the moment that you put a target on it when you said you know what like i've been doing these team trades i've been ever since twenty seventeen i've been just amassing these cubs cards you have this just massive inventory of cubs cards when did you say to yourself you know what let's let's i'm a goal oriented guy let's put a goal let's let's throw one million at the wall and see if we can hit it it wasn't long at all it it it just kinda formulated you know over the course of i don't know maybe maybe months where i was i was starting to you know proactively pull cubs and like i'm just gonna collect cubs and then there was a number i'm you know it's like i bought this three hundred thousand card collection i bought this card collection and you know i have over a million cards now and it it probably from the the time that i committed to collecting cubs like that's gonna be my new goal it it kinda came together like all all of a sudden like okay i have a million let's trade a million non cubs cards for a million cubs cards and that's that's when i started the socials in in december of twenty seventeen and you know facebook groups initially is where i did most of those trades and then i was a little hesitant with twitter at that time and then eventually twitter kinda became the the main driver of these trades in in in getting the word out so you have this ambitious goal how do you you how do you like how did you did you have a like a weekly or a daily goal when you're amassing this knowing that you were trying to hit one million like i don't know if any of us listening can envision what one million cards looks like let alone what it would take to acquire one million cards obviously a lot of interactions online a lot of buying from ebay a lot of social media as you reference a lot of card shop stops a lot of luck all this stuff did you develop any sort of method to the madness on a daily or weekly basis eventually yes you know that first year that twenty eighteen was my first full year of doing it early on my focus was just getting the word out like hey i wanna trade you my whatever team for cubs and then i was i was i was trying to create an inventory system i was using excel i had probably started with somewhere between fifty and seventy five thousand cubs at the start that i had already had in my collection so just trying to find a way and it's it's if anybody's used websites or excel to to inventory your system it it's time consuming especially when you're dealing with tens of thousands of cards at that time so early on those were kinda my focus points but as you know as the months went on and i'm tracking and i would track i had spreadsheets from the very beginning alright john from california sent me a hundred and seventy five cubs cards and so i was tracking every single transaction every single trade that came in and i was counting every card and so then it became okay i'm i'm averaging you know twenty thousand cards a month okay if i do a hundred and twenty five thousand a hundred and thirty thousand let's extrapolate that out how many years is it gonna take me and so by twenty nineteen you know that system had been figured out through you know the first half of twenty eighteen so then in twenty nineteen i i had specific goals okay i wanna i need to get to this number this month i wanna be at a hundred and fifty thousand taken in for twenty nineteen and then so on over the years and then by the time the end came it was it was more on once i got to like the last hundred thousand i was focusing more on quality rather than quantity what throughout this building the system you know doing the outreach organically opportunities coming in you have this goal in mind what were some of the biggest roadblocks and challenges that you faced along the way initially it was paying for postage and this is and this is you know almost ten years ago now where the the the postage rates were you know significantly less although i did see some some labels where we are saving some money on on different sizes but postage was really what drove me to create a side hustle or to build on my side hustle of selling cards on ebay because i was paying so much in postage just for these trades where it was going into my collection it's like i'm spending thousands and thousands of dollars in postage just for trades i need to recoup some of that money and that's that's where i really started the high end or high volume sale sales on on ebay just to pay for that pay for that postage was there a point in this build where the product project size got to such a ridiculous scale that you had to like kinda change the way you thought about storage or thought about the way you those cards were coming in like what was was there ever a breaking point i guess not necessarily a breaking point but there were a lot of challenges along the way based on and and when you're dealing with this this amount of of of inventory now i did start with over a million cards of of other stuff but what i what i learned quickly is that it's not easy to find other team traders and i think that was early on was kinda difficult like who wants a thousand cardinals cards from nineteen eighty five and nineteen ninety and ninety one in a lot of those trades where i want ohtani i want mike trout i want derek jeter i want this and that so a lot of the trades i'm only trading five or six cards for a thousand or two thousand cubs cards so as the trade started coming in i'm i'm sending out less and receiving more so even though i i was i was built to hold a large amount of of inventory in in my card room i quickly outgrew that over the process of of this project talk about the people and the relationships like how important was it to have a network of people who you did reoccurring deals with as opposed to just one offs with a lot of different people oh that was i think that was the most that was the most important part of the project and it was also the most rewarding piece as well just meeting people and developing friendships and relationships within the hobby you know some of the some of the connections i had a guy steve who was who worked with greenie sports cards and our first trade was at the chicago sports spectacular we did thirty or thirty five thousand card trade i introduced him to a a a guy david who sent out cards to multiple team collectors like myself and i probably got a hundred and fifty thousand cubs cards from from david in the chicago area so just developing those relationships and and introducing those to other guys and then all of a sudden a year later two years later it comes back and they're like hey this guy has has these cards and and and this and that and and and just some of the friendships and and relationships you develop in fact at the cubs game i'm i'm at a a bar waiting out the rain and a mutual friend introduces me to a guy and he's like wait you're the one million cubs guy and i said yeah he goes i sent you cubs cards back in twenty twenty two and i'm like really and he's like here's my twitter handle and he showed me the messages we were exchanging four years ago and so we ended up talking and and he's like if well i've got a bunch of seventies cards you know if if you're interested and you know my wife's gonna make me throw them out eventually so he's like i'll reach out and see if we can make a deal so just some of those relationships that you know from somebody you've never met you've done a deal online five years later you meet them in person and you know you can strike up that friendship are there any specific or i guess what are the most impactful or significant moments and i wanna maybe get specific if there are like cards that stand out to you because you know i'm sure at some point you're amassing all of these cards and stuff starts to like bleed into each other and look the same and you're you know building these sets but then there are these moments where there are these pieces that come your way that truly get you to like stop and slow down and you recognize not only the importance of the player but the importance of the card and it just like hits this sweet spot for you were there any of those moments and if so like what are those moments that stand out yeah there there were several several of those moments where you know i would receive a package and it it would just blow me away one in particular a guide that i had had started exchanging messages with on twitter it's like hey i've got a package coming your way and sometimes i wouldn't check my you know i'd i'd have piles of packages on the on the counter i eventually get to this package probably a few days after it was delivered and open it up and i i go through and it's a bunch of vintage cubs cards and there's a nineteen fifty four tops ernie banks the ernie banks rookie card and i'm like i flip it over this is real it's authentic it's it's you know a little creased up and i'm like this isn't ernie banks rookie card which i didn't have in my collection and i read the letter and his name is michael sent me a letter he's from ohio and this is where it goes beyond just the hobby it's it's about you know our personal relationship our personal relationships and and and things that happened to us in life i lost my dad ten ten years ago passed away of cancer in twenty sixteen couple months before the cubs won the world series and so and i shared that you know i shared my journey of of of losing my dad on on social media and through blogs and michael had sent me this letter and he had also recently lost his dad and it just so happened on the day i believe it was the day of the funeral he happened to see a blog post on my one million cubs dot com website and it was about my top ten most wanted cubs cards and of course at that time i didn't have the ernie banks rookie so what cub collector you know wouldn't have number one ernie banks rookie card on his want list that's number one on my want list and so just based on you know what he was going through what i had shared and then he goes it was just it was meant to be and so he he sent me this letter sent me this card and and he goes this belongs in your collection based on the circumstances he goes this belongs to you and so it's moments like that that just kinda make you take a deep breath and and think about you know how it's it's not just about pieces of cardboard it's not about your favorite team about your favorite card but it's about the personal personal connections that we make in life through whatever it might be but in this circumstance it's baseball cards that's an incredible story and i think so much of this hobby gets focused on what's new what's trendy what's going up big hits pulls and all those things and they're though all those things are great and i think we need those things in order for our hobby to continue to expand and new people come in they attract attention but think what gets lost in this growth is stories like that the connections the relationships people helping people how much of this project i guess at the conclusion of this project did you kind of take stock in just the emotional value in what you were doing like how do you think about that now you know it's it it's kind of that that whole journey thing where the journey truly is better than the the ultimate goal and it it's it's every step along the way it's every story that i just shared about the ernie banks or one of one of the guys that i did a trade with he was in from alabama and happened to be doing some contract work for a company and i'm like what company is it and it was a company that was literally you could see from my backyard and i'm in madison wisconsin he's coming in from alabama for contract work has these old cubs cards and he's literally you know a block away from my house and and i'm like i invited him over my wife's like just stop inviting random strangers to our house but you know just those those those little steps along the way of of that journey and this was a seven and a half year journey to to collect a million cubs you know because i didn't want it to be i i wanted the the end goal i wanted to have you know memories like this and you know i could i could have bought a million cards from craigslist facebook marketplace ebay card shows card shops but i think what made it more special was how much of this collection came from other collectors and all the stories that that they shared along the way so this was a heck of a build a heck of a story or many stories all turned into one when did you realize that this could lead to something bigger and that something bigger being this is kind of what you're doing as a full time job when was that moment where you stopped and said like i have inherited a lot of skills to this i have a lot of relationships i use ebay when when was that moment where you said i might leave my job and just go all in on this you know it's it's it's funny you ask and i loved i i i love this question because i didn't wanna sell cards full time and i wanted to keep you know i i loved having the extra the extra money that i did that i sold cards on as a side hustle i like taking that money to a card show and just buying whatever and and i knew that i couldn't do that if this is my full time i've gotta there's gotta be a com a solid line between business and hobby but it was it was the twenty twenty one national and i mentioned to you this before leading into that national i had zero aspiration to to to be in the industry full time to sell cards full time and we were at the golden dinner and you know i'm sitting with you and buster sure was was at our table yeah and i i i can't remember his name but he was the soccer guy yes the messy guy the messy guy and so we were sitting at this table and i'm like and and i didn't know who buster was at the time he's telling me all these stories and i'm like man what do you do like who are you and so like when i got back from that i'm i'm telling my wife and i'm like man i don't what am i doing here why was i in this room and i i you know i think things just happen for a reason and you know i think that gave me i think the confidence to it gave me the confidence to like okay i can do this like this is this is what i can do and and from that point you know i i kind of in my own head before i shared any my wife had actually leading up to because my business my side hustle business was really building leading up to to that that point and but again i was just no i don't i wanna keep these separate even though i didn't really care for my job at that time my full time job so i started you know crunching the numbers and it's like i i think i can do this like i can make this work and so that was that was my springboard like you know you were sitting right across from me when the wheels were turning like i think i can do this there there needs to be a the the golden team needs or omaha productions and the manning crew they need to do a behind the scenes on that dinner because i think a lot of projects maybe it was something was in the air that night because as you were saying those names i was like yes like i remember buster being right there and i had the same feeling i was like why am i here why was i invited to this event so that's funny i've never talked with anyone about that dinner until now but you said something there that i think is really important and i think it's awesome for anyone who's thinking about building a business in this space and it it does change things and i i'm i go through this regularly where i'm a collector i want to keep everything but then i also have a business to run-in the business it it's expensive to run a business so you have to pay bills you have to pay people you have to make sure your family is taken care of so sometimes like you have to sacrifice cards to be able to take care of those things and i guess when i went all in on this i didn't realize that was going to be a dynamic but maybe share like your perspective of that and how your mindset changed once you realize that like yeah i'm a collector i'll always be a collector but i'm running a business now yeah yeah i think everybody is wired so differently and and i think there's a lot of people in this space that have that they may wanna take the jump they may wanna make the jump but they're just not wired to do it because they want to collect everything like there's that collector mentality and i think fortunately i have i have the collector mentality i've i've got way too much hoarder mentality is what my wife calls it but like i can clearly delineate what i want for my business and what i want for you know my my hobby my personal collection and you know i keep it simple like anything cubs is like is mine and when i'm buying say bulk or a collection i don't you know i'm not gonna go buy you know a ten thousand dollar cubs collection for my business because that's foolish because i would keep everything so i know that that okay if if i have the money and i want that i'll pay for it i'll buy it but it's not you know it's not for the business and i i think i can i can i can differentiate the diff you know i can i can differentiate what i want for my business versus what's my hobby i know when i buy a collection i know what oh this is gonna go over in this side on this on this side and everything else is gonna be inventory so i think that's i think that's the biggest key in having sustained success is just make sure you know you're not you know you're not you know feeding on your own stash and and i i'm pretty sometimes to a fault i'm pretty i'm i'm pretty stubborn when it comes to some of that it's like you know i'm this is this is my price you know i you don't have to sell it to me i certainly don't have to buy it and we can go our separate ways if if need be so i think that's what's helped me the most is just knowing where to draw that line i wanna get into your business and you are selling a lot of cards at scale on ebay and the fun part about this show is learning from all of the people who are selling cards on ebay and everyone's kind of method to their madness is different but maybe let's start with i don't wanna say i i think i i don't i don't think probably no day is is standard or typical it's probably changes rapidly but like what is your day if there is a typical day like what is your typical day look like it's it's fairly standard you know basically my day starts i'll kinda rewind it and start at night so most of pretty much ninety nine percent of my business now has gone to ebay live where i am i am doing mainly ebay live sales and i'm doing that usually six nights a week so my nights typically start seven thirty central i'm doing a four to five hour stream usually sometimes longer depending on the room and so i'm i'm going to bed at like two am which is a complete complete i used to be in bed at nine pm and i was up at four am now i'm in bed at two am waking up at nine am so my my lifestyle has completely changed so so i'm typically in bed by you know one am and then i'm up at nine and that's when i basically do the the shipping from the night before sometimes it's longer than than others so i'm spending like the daytime hours shipping and i wish i had more time to sort and organize because that's crucial especially in live selling so i'm i'm trying to get as much of that done as as possible so it's it's really and i i joke about this a lot like you know it used to be listing and shipping shipping and listing listing and shipping shipping and listing and now it's just selling and shipping shipping and selling where my listing is has been replaced by the actual process of selling which i love tremendously more than just sitting at a desk and and listing cards and i'm actually selling them so what was the obviously ebay live came out ebay live became very popular what was i don't think i've talked to anyone who made the decision to move from you know selling you know via auction or buy it now to ebay live almost exclusively like when was the moment that you realized that change was going to be best for your business it didn't take long for me at all i was fortunate enough to be semi early on ebay live and i know it's been around for a few years now but it was it was very very much in beta for a couple years mhmm and then they ebay really started putting marketing and financial efforts behind it last spring in in march of twenty five so i had started in april of twenty twenty five and i ran a high volume store i'm you know sixty thousand listings in my ebay store and you know i'm moving a hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty cards on a daily basis you know low end mostly low end cards you know high margin but low dollars and after getting that early on on ebay live just finding i'd never done live selling before so i'm i'm really having to find my bearings on what what's a schedule i can maintain how many auctions can i you know reasonably do in a day in a in a stream you know how long what's the shipping process just getting all of all of those nuances down and by july so we're talking three months or less i'd had everything pretty much to to my liking and my comfort level on on what what i can accomplish in a in a weekly basis and at that point in time my my sales my revenue on ebay live was just clearly outpacing my buy it now sales of you know the dollar ninety nine stuff so it was also slowing me down because in a live show i'm moving two hundred you know two hundred items two hundred cards in a show so i'm pulling when i go to ship i'm pulling two hundred car i'm pulling from two hundred cards when i'm selling buy it now listings i'm pulling from a hundred plus thousand cards in multiple four row boxes all skewed out in in you know and somebody might buy twenty five cards but they're in twenty five different boxes so that process is taking me twenty minutes just to ship a twenty dollar order so i learned quickly that that process just wasn't it wasn't feasible for me as a one man show to do both the high volume buy it now and the live selling at the same time well what's making me the most revenue it's the the live selling and so by july i was taking down all of my buy it now listings with the exception of anything that was like ten dollars and over and leaving that in my in my stores of buy it now so i'm down to three four hundred listings and still a trickle of sales but it's nice i would like to get a better balance get some more items in there just to drive traffic to my store so people can see that normally don't know about my live streams they can come in they see a buy it now listing and check out my shows i think it's very it's very impressive that be a one man team operating a live selling business at the scale you are i think my question as i'm thinking through or just envisioning you running through your process is just the organization like how do you keep organized with all the cards all the live streams all of the shipping and making sure that everything's getting out of the door on time from a micro level it's very insanely organized from a macro standpoint if you walked in if you walked in to any of my rooms in the basement you would say what oh my there's no way you can do what you're doing but but what i'm selling what i'm listing you know it's it's it's super you know it it's super organized fortunately ebay has you know people complain about the like i think the fees are phenomenal like in in i'd hopefully ebay is not listening like they'll read money but i think for what you get from ebay the fees are phenomenal just based on like the you know the management system on the back end and how easy it is you know just do a twitter sale or an instagram sale or a sale where there's no back end there's no you know management system on the back end and and start trying to get payments and fulfill orders and get addresses i mean it's so people are gonna be throwing throwing stuff at me now but so ebay does really help and and not to you know to to be a bootlicker but i mean that helps tremendously just having that that management system on the back end and it makes things so much easier on on my on my side where i can okay this is this is where i put this and it can be in a box where i have three million cards in my basement but i only need to focus on this two hundred or this thousand so from a macro standpoint i have a professional organizing team that i hired that's that's helping me be more efficient on on some stuff on the macro level that way i can be more efficient even more efficient on a micro level how do you manage a professional organizing team for all these sports cards like how do you manage it so they're doing things the way you want them to so so it's it's a general so they're they're they're a general like home organizing company so they're they're not sorting cards they're not they're really not doing much with the cards at at that level but it's more of a systems mhmm where okay here's here's my process you know i this is this is how i work my live streams this is you know where my inventory is my shipping area this is where my supplies and so they they can have they have a an idea of okay what's the most efficient way for you to okay you have everything that you need for shipping is in this spot and it's probably you know it's probably something that you know i could do but like i'd i'd well probably not but but it's it's one of those things where it becomes so overwhelming with the amount that as i started the process of of getting a lot of my cards i i wanna get these out of my basement into a storage unit and it's like this is just this is too overwhelming i need help like i need i need a professional to to step in and guide me to more efficiency so we've been running this show for almost two years at this point and part of the pitch on this show specifically was there are a lot of people selling high volume high dollar on ebay but no one knows who they are they're just logos but people still buy like what what would it be like if we started telling the story and start humanizing the people behind these businesses like people buy from people or probably mean better reputation more sales thinking about your story and you went from you know being a guy with the story who was just selling on an ebay store to then being every night or not every night but most nights being up in front of an audience via livestream you're a very likable guy like you have passion for what you're doing you're very authentic and genuine how much do you think that plays into your sales and it being a live platform where you're not just a one million cubs logo but you people every night get to know what beau is doing what's going on with your life like what cards are available like how much is that live experience humanize your brand and increase kind of revenue and your reputation online i think that's really important because in in for in my instant in in my in my case i have a radio background i worked in in morning radio for almost twelve years i did play by play at the high school and and division one college level for a few years i can talk i i have a lot of experience doing play by play where i'm just literally doing play by play of you know a sporting event whatever whatever sport it was morning radio is basically like hey what what do you have for dinner like just dumb topics you know it's kinda like the seinfeld like it's it's it's not really a show about nothing it's really a show about everything because everybody can relate to the topics that was was a topic on seinfeld so i bring that to my live streams because that's a it's what i know but i think you know some of the biggest when you get you know when you get interaction chat interaction a lot of it comes from it's not from the cards you're selling like there's very little reaction if i wanna put up a joe montana rookie card like there may be a couple comments about oh joe montana was my favorite or that's an awesome card but the most interaction comes from you know what's your favorite pizza and you know it's it's not about and i think it also takes away like we're you know we're we're we're selling cards but at the same time we're we're trying to build rapport with our you know with my clientele and and i want them to you know come back and if they don't bid on the cards that's okay as long as they wanna have fun and and interact and you know i think a success a successful show isn't about the sales and the and the money it brings in it's about the relationships the the potential relationships and and and customer relationships that you bring in and having fun and i think that's the biggest key about live selling is is just having fun and is it for and and i think the most frustrating part is and i get frustrated and i think all live sellers do when it's a slow room and for me it's an okay it's okay when there's a slow room with slow bids but it's it is kinda it's it's kind of defeating when there's no chat and so just trying to get the chat interactive it's not about the bidding it's just like let's you know i'm i'm here like hopefully you know i i wanna be here to entertain you and sell you cards like that's that's the goal like i'm i'm i'm i'm here to sell cards and to entertain and you know i think that that's an aspect that can be lost at times including myself i'm i'm guilty at times where it's like my focus turns to okay i need to be at this this monetary number and and i kinda lose lose that that thought process of no like it's it's tonight can be about something else not just about you know making a certain amount of money so you started with collecting then it you have this project then you turn this project into a business it was selling on ebay then it turned into hosting a show so it's it's evolved quite a bit and i would imagine each step of the way you've had to be adaptable based on the conditions and what were in front of you and then obviously since this is your business like there's can be a lot of pressure and there's a lot of uncertainty i would imagine there was a lot of uncertainty when even though you thought you felt that things would go well when you moved to ninety percent live selling there was still uncertainty like how did you self manage through all of those phases especially as someone i mean you've got the support of your wife which is great i'm sure but there's you don't have like a manager you don't have a coach you don't have these things like you're having to be adaptable and manage through just based on the elements like how did you get good at that that's it's it's it's a blessing and a curse i think you know because you don't have you don't have that manager or even an employee where i can bounce things off of i fortunately i do have a great network of people both inside and outside the hobby from from the business side and whether it's you know in sports cards or not you know sometimes my struggle is i just put my head down and keep grinding which is also like is very good but at times it's it's that stubbornness where it's like i'm just gonna put my head down and get through this where if i asked for advice or help it probably could get me through the storm quicker you know there was a time where i it was last year i the calendar turned into twenty twenty five and i'm looking at my numbers and i kind of i got comfortable with what i was doing the high volume but the sales just plateaued and i'm looking at my numbers and i'm like i've i've gotta make a change somewhere like i'm not giving up i'm not quitting what i'm doing but i do need to adapt and you know i can continue doing what i'm doing but it's not going to get me the results that i want and i looked at multiple things and i and i at this point in time i did i talked to a couple of of friends that have been great mentors and i'd thrown a couple ideas around and and and you know took some steps with with one of the plans and almost at the same time like it's timing just works out ebay reaches out and it was somebody that i that i had known through social media and asked me if i had ever considered selling on ebay live and i said well yeah but they're not taking new sellers and he said yeah they are i'm new in a position and like let's talk so that call came at the you know exact right time because it was right at a point where i needed to make a change and adapt my business model because it wasn't for what i wanted the goals that i wanted to reach i wasn't getting i wasn't going to get to that goal doing what i had been doing the last few years and so ebay live stepped in and and allowed me to reach those goals and and beyond i don't know if you can relate with this but well last year my father is my accountant which is very very handy i don't have to deal with the tax work i can outsource that especially as one a one man show here but you know we're having a conversation doing taxes and he was telling me just like how i did and it was way better than i anticipated and i i it was hard for me to celebrate that because i felt like i wanted to be doing much more i wanted things to be going faster i wanted partnerships to be growing there was all these elements and i sat there and i'm like i'm getting to talk about sports cards and i'm supporting my family but it's still not enough and i think this is a hard part and this is maybe a solopreneur therapy here but this is a hard part about running your own show is that like in self managing it's like there's these really high expectations you put we put on ourselves when we're running our own businesses do you like do you feel like no matter how high the sales no matter how great it's it it's seemingly going that like you struggle with never quite being satisfied to where you wanna be like does that kinda enter what you're doing at all in the from a mindset perspective every single day every single day you know my and the the numbers that i the my worst day today is a a multiplier of what my best day would have been a year and a half ago and that number now is not good enough and so it's just and i think that's that's just the entrepreneurial mindset where if you have that entrepreneurial mindset it's never you're always gonna be chasing a number and that number hopefully keeps rising and that's i think that's ultimately the goal is we're never satisfied we're gonna we're gonna just keep bettering ourselves and and chasing for for you know more and more and i think that's just that's just part of the territory and yes i feel that every single day what what are you trying to build with your business over the next you know few years oh man i that's a tough question you know ultimately i and and this is you know my answer would probably change next week next month but you know it was you know five years ago it was i i just wanna replace my salary at at my job and then you know i wanna grow and and i i wanna make more sales and you know i i i love i love teaching other people i love helping other people whether it's you know through volume sales through card show promoting although i i i wanna be careful and and it's really hard when when you're trying to make a point but not like paint with a broad brush where like this is my story and i think that's it's hard to convey that message where this is what i did but it doesn't necessarily mean it's what you should do and we're all different where we all have different you know backgrounds and you know family and you know all that stuff so to answer your question it's just i i i don't really have an answer i just want to keep growing what i have and and be successful i want to lead i wanna help ebay live be the number one online live selling platform you know and that's you know that's part you know that's partly selfishness because i'm you know a seller on that platform but i wanna be a part of that where you know i watched it grow from where there were four of us on and and you know at seven o'clock on a wednesday night there's four live streams and i was one of the four and now we're you know even today it's only been you know a year and a few months but now we're at maybe forty live streams and but you look at other platforms and they're at five hundred or more so i'd like to see it you know grow and then you know with that grow with it bo as we close this out you your story's awesome you've got a unconventional journey to be a operator in the sports card industry there are a lot of people that listen to this show that aspire to work in this space and it might just seem like it's unattainable based on current job structure making the leap like what advice based on your journey would you have for anyone out there who's looking to get started and and work in sports cards full time i would i think my my my number one piece of advice when when somebody asks this is go in with the mindset that this is a business and not a side hustle like treat this as a business sock away money and if you're really like and and run the numbers i think knowing your numbers is is is crucial to success or failure knowing your numbers you know give it a a good solid three months three months i'm gonna operate this as a business this is not a side hustle this is not just for fun this is a business treat it like a business for three solid months and then you can crunch the numbers it's like okay can i build on this or not and sock away that money and at the end of the three months you know if it's something that you can aspire to do you'll have that that income and i think the timing for me was was just right timing is everything i mean the best time is right now you know if if it's something you've been thinking about just do it like you don't have to quit your job and and sell if if you want to go in to sell sports cards full time you don't have to quit your job today and and do it like that's the great i think that's the greatest thing about being in the sports card sales sector is that you don't have to quit your job like you can you can replace a full time income on a part time basis if you know what you're doing and take the proper steps but i think absolutely number one treat it like a business solid quarter three months and and then go from there you know put some money aside to to pay for bills because you're gonna need that one way or another down the road so that would be my my number one piece of advice alright before i let you get out of here where can people obviously ebay live but what's the schedule where can people come stop by one million cubs and i have i have my one million cubs dot com website which is a blog and that's one million cubs all spelled out the number one million cubs takes you directly to my ebay live homepage typically i have a month of live streams scheduled out that you can find there and then on all socials one million cubs on pretty much all the socials beau thompson one million cubs awesome chat man hopefully we can do this again soon absolutely thanks so much