Welcome back to Passion to Profession, brought to you by my good friends at eBay.

This is Brett on the Stacking Slabs Network, bringing another conversation to you from a owner, operator, entrepreneur in the hobby space to share their story.

Now we've been doing this for a long time. This has been running the entire year. I've gotten so much joy and satisfaction from learning from other business owners in this space, and it's been a long time coming.

But I'm excited to bring my good friend, Chris McGill, the CEO and cofounder of Card Ladder, onto this show to talk about building a business in the hobby.

Now, if you're a long time listener of Stacking Slabs, you have heard Chris, probably more than any other guest that I've ever had on the shows, but I've never talked with Chris about building a business in this hobby.

And I think this conversation is going to be one that is going to be remembered when listeners think about Passion and Profession.

I'm really excited to share this chat with you. Would love any feedback. I released a book recently. It's digital. It's free. Collecting for keeps, finding meaning in a hobby build on hype. The link is in the show notes to get that.

Again, thank you to eBay for supporting this series. It wouldn't be possible without eBay. Alright. Chris McGill, Passion Profession, coming at you. Alright. We are back. Passion to Profession brought to you by my good friends at eBay.

This conversation is one I've been looking forward to over the last, twenty four, forty eight hours. We're gonna be talking about building a business in the hobby, and it could go in maybe any direction imaginable.

I'm joined by Chris from the card ladder team. If you listen to Stacking Slabs content, you've probably heard Chris's voice on Stacking Slabs.

Maybe the most, frequented guess probably likely. We've done a lot of content over the years, got a chance to spend some time together, at the national.

And as I was thinking about this topic, I felt like Chris would be a good person to dig in on it. But without further ado, Chris, welcome, man.

How's it going? Great to be here. Going well. Well, you could maybe task GPT with a word count of guests, and we could see. We could actually see if that's, and, also, I just wanna commend you on this series.

I enjoy the series. I enjoy the perspective of operators in the space, and I enjoy how Sacking Slabs is a platform where actually collector content, operator content intersects.

That's a that's a very rare mix, and it's I think both sides can help each other.

Yeah. I think the business side of this industry certainly fascinates me, and I think everyone's got their own unique angle of how they've gone about their business to build their business.

And you've certainly been a part of a team that's built a business around a product that isn't just a nice to have, but has become a must have.

I, you know, I was walking the national. I spent a lot of time at card ladder booth, but I, you know, walk in the national.

I just glance at phones, people who are using the app, and I'd see the brand and the gear, which is exciting and has to be exciting, to you. Let's just, like, start, like, super general.

Maybe I know we've talked about you and your story quite a bit over the years. Like, you went to law school and you decided not to be a lawyer, but you decided to spend your time and build a business in the hobby.

Like, why did you decide to build a business in the hobby in the first place? The it was a last second bailout from becoming a lawyer.

It was it was a lot of good timing. You know? It was, it it was, we we launched on 06/23/2020, so that was right in the wake of, stay at home orders and COVID nineteen, era beginning.

And it it just that that timing lined up with a a continuously ramping up interest and doing thing more and more things in the sports card space.

So, like, you know, Josh and I, started we became very fast friends around 2017, 2018, and we were, like, aware of each other sort of on the message forums and stuff, stuff, but we didn't really directly link up for a little while.

And then we just would constantly be brainstorming ideas. He was a content creator. I was a content creator. Christina was creating content with me as well.

And and it's similar to your path, Brett, too, where, you know, the content creation builds. You know, it builds into something more and you and it produces a network and you just get a hold you see things from a different side.

If I can just interrupt my own answer for a second and ask you, at what point did you did your content creation get to the tipping point when you decided, I'd like to I'd like to actually explore working in this space as as opposed to moonlighting?

01/04/2024, I got let go from my job because the company ran out of money.

And it was I'd never been in that position before in my life. I had some severance, and I had, you know, some time to consider. And I'd been riding the startup carousel in tech for fifteen years. And I knew I didn't wanna do that.

And I also knew I didn't wanna go work for Salesforce or a big company and be a cog in the machine. And it took me about a few seconds to realize that this was going to be an opportunity for me to do what I'm doing today, full time.

And I'd spent four years of building this brand, and it was my own belief that I could possibly do something like this.

But honestly, Chris, it was a lot of friends and people motivating saying, hey, this is an opportunity for you to go all in.

And it's amazing, like, when you have no safety net and you've got like, have no fear and it's like you kind of reflect and you just go.

It's like I've said a lot like this intersection between content and collecting is I feel like it's where I'm supposed to be. And so, yeah, it was like making the decision and it wasn't looking back.

And I'll also, like, comment on you connecting with Josh upfront. I think what's really special about this hobby is that there is a so many like minded individuals who have, like, unbelievable professional skill sets.

And, like, I'm like, today, like, I I'm I'm working with Caitlin at Cold Lunch Cards. She's a cohost of the WNBA Card podcast. Her background's in consulting. I'm working with John at Pack Nicholson.

He's, working in media. And to have people who have the same passion as you in cards who also have these professional skill sets and, like, coming together to work on something and build something is, that that's what's exciting to me.

And, like, as you were talking about meeting Josh and, like, pursuing this path, I'm sure you probably had, like, a similar feeling going into this.

100%. Now let me ask you this, Brett. If you weren't at the four year milestone when when life events put this opportunity in front of you. But let's say you were at, like, the six month or the or the twelve month marker.

Would things still have gone the same or maybe different? No chance. Yeah. Yeah. So This this is the I think it's like the the short term mindset we all have in the hobby, especially with, like, cards, but I think also with businesses.

I mean, dude, think about 2019. How many businesses came because they saw an opportunity, and are no longer with us?

And what afforded me the opportunity to do what I'm doing today is the equity that I build up with my audience and then, members of the audience who actually worked at companies in the industry who saw an opportunity to work with stacking slabs and, you know, gain further exposure.

So the four years I spent doing everything for free because I loved it and I was passionate about it is the only reason why I'm able to do it full time today. I'm convinced of that.

Yeah, man. Like, that that time, and the the the time needed to build network, to, experiment, to try things, to it it it's, it's very unorthodox and risky to step out, and, and the opportunity cost is very high too.

Like, if you notice, you know, if you look at the ordinary participants in the in the space, whether they're, teachers or, you know, dentists or or, you know, lawyers or, business people, lots of entrepreneurs, you know, these are very capable yourself obviously included, Josh, Christina, These are all very capable people who could be doing very lucrative things in other sectors of life.

And so somehow that our industry is able to recruit these people to actually put the time and effort in to develop and build things here is very underrated.

It's very underrated that that we're able to convert, collectors into business people and business people who, you know, need to make a product that that needs to that needs to to serve the market because there are vanity projects in this space too, which are completely fine, but that but we have projects in this space where, you know, there's people who are have already done very well in life or they're retired and they want to, you know, participate in this hobby on a professional level, but but they don't necessarily pay a huge price if they fail.

But there but there are other people who have risked their livelihood and will pay a big price if they fail.

And so because of that, and especially the content angle, so, you know, Christina and I made the House of Jordan's podcast from 2018 up until the launch of Card Ladder.

Josh did cardboard chronicles for even longer. You with stacking slabs four years prior to your launch into a professional endeavor in this space.

The content of it all, it's so important, man. Content has been my anchor to collecting when I would have droughts of not picking up or selling or doing anything with cards for months.

The content anchored me, And I I do like to make this pitch whenever I can to any hobby businesses that are listening, and and many hobby businesses already do this.

The the chance to what to whatever extent possible, within reason, to sponsor and support content creators and to foster the growth of content, to continue the proliferation of content, that creates such a positive feedback loop because that's what keeps collectors engaged.

That's what keeps people coming back.

That's what builds community. That's one of the purest, truest ways to grow the pie in this space is by supporting the great content creators, and there's only a handful who have actually had the courage to go off and do this full time.

And especially when people do that, I think it's really, really important for businesses to support them.

Not only does it benefit the businesses and the space, but it can create this canon of content that just that that that we've that I'm I selfishly really look forward to.

I love it. And you're preaching to the choir here, pal. The digging into the content ever since Card Ladder was a a a product and a company that was forming in your building.

You know, as an observer, right, I'm I've been in marketing. I've been in go to market on products my entire career. So I'm watching what you guys are and and girl are doing.

And the why it always made sense to me was the fact that you're building this product that you really believe in, but you're also spending all of this time on with content yourself.

And it is this, you know, whether it's the crossover, whether it's, you know, posting on Instagram and stories and educating people about things and your thoughts about what you think about cards.

Like, it just is it's always been a pillar of card ladder to me. It's like the content and the product. And you you you do that because you're you you enjoy it yourselves.

Yourselves. Like, you love talking about cards. And then also, like, the most important side effect of that is you're you're literally building and developing trust with future members of Card Ladder.

And naturally, like, it's not while you have competitors in the space, there is a connection point to you, in the brand through your content that, you know, people are just going to sign up for card letter because they listen to your content.

But it what's crazy to me, and maybe I'm, like, so far in the weeds in this and an observer and this is what I believe in and, obviously, I'm going all in.

But it seems like it it, everyone might not see that or might not have that same realization.

Like, is when when you started doing content, did you have that mindset of, like, well, I enjoy it, but, like, most importantly, like, this is building trust for this brand that literally no one knows about outside of us posting about it on Instagram?

Definitely.

The the content creation, even prior to the launch of Card Ladder, created a community of several thousand collectors from the Cardboard Chronicles side, from the House of Jordan side that were the first adopters of the product, especially when it was in its infancy.

And, you know, one of the things that I always think about was when, Rodman, Rodman PC sort of, like, told us at the twenty third hour before launch, he's like, maybe that should have a collection feature.

And we're like, oh, you know? And then Josh, like, whipped it up really quickly. And and it's, you know, so it's lots of stuff like that.

Lots of little moments like that where not only do they or do they support us, on a personal level, and we we we try to support people just the same too, but, but also that, that, you know, there's feedback and that, you know, I honestly, it it it's it has reached a point where, walking around the national, I could literally be doing a deal with somebody I'd never met before, and they could be pricing a card on Card Ladder, and they would literally have no idea who I am.

They would have no idea I do podcasts. They have no clue.

But the but one of the ways how Card Ladder was able to to go beyond our network and and to take on and develop its own legs was because of this feedback loop of, early adoption feedback from a core community that helped us refine and tweak the product and the provision of of all the content to to get to a level where it could expand beyond just people who's who are intentionally supporting and actually get adoption from people who find it very practically useful.

And then they that that next tier of adopters gives feedback and stuff, and it just it grows from there.

But it becomes less personal. You know? Then it's then it's like people see us as a as a business, you know, and, like, the tone of the discussions changes, and so there there's that phase of it.

But something that's interesting about businesses and the hobby is that, the the the distinction between content and business or content and product, it's it's very narrow.

Mhmm. Like, what is card ladder? You know, card ladder is content.

It's, it's it's looking at information, and the product, gathers the information and contextualizes it and organizes it and provides tools and features that help people make great use of it, but it's it's content, man.

It's like when I'm using CarLite, I'm like looking at pictures of cards, I'm looking at prices, I'm looking at my collection. It's not so different than reading, collecting for keeps.

You know? It's it's that's a different form of content. I I will sit there in the same scrolling session and read a chapter of your book and then go look at sales history on card letter.

Like, that's true of a lot of stuff in the in the hobby space, like eBay is content, you know, it's obviously a product too and there's a lot of there's a lot of great technology backing it, but dude, I get a lot of entertainment out of scrolling my safe searches on eBay, you know, and a lot of times I'm not doing anything.

I'm just looking at contents being provided. So there's there's an there's an there's a narrower distinction in this space than in most between content and product.

Obviously, I have a a big belief in content and its application in this industry and the importance in this industry.

Do you ever think about, I don't know, to measure the value of what I'm doing, oftentimes, I'll, like, take a step back and be like, what if Instagram didn't exist?

What if there were no podcasts that existed? Like and then you, like, really start like, I really challenge it. I'm, like, starting to think of, like, is content a core pillar of this industry?

Like, is it needed? And I always come back to the point of, like, this would be super challenging and super difficult, and it wouldn't be as fun, and there'd be way less entertainment.

And I share this all the time. Like, love that you're doing the Hochcast now.

Like, I listen to all your stuff, and I I listen to so many other creators in this space because being in this business of being in this industry and building a business, I I wanna be informed.

I wanna be informed on categories and things that I don't collect or don't care about because it just makes me a better creator.

So do you ever measure the world we're we're working in right now if content didn't exist or didn't exist at the level that it it does today? It would be very, very bad.

So the I I think the the state of the hobby today, the reason why it's flourishing today, the reason why it went through the developmental arc that it took to get to today I mean, a a decent chunk of what has uplifted the hobby over the last decade has been the return of people in our age bracket, and the people in our age bracket being, you know, plus or minus 40 years old plus or minus 10 years of of 40 years old, 30 to 50, that band.

And this isn't to take away from the collectors who are younger or older, who have been here or who are new and returning.

They are very foundational and important too, but I can specifically speak to this band because I was part of that, cohort that came in ten years ago right around the age of 30, and I've seen how we've changed, things basically and the impact that that that particular cohort has had.

And the the thing that that I believe is a necessary condition to us returning was Beckett magazine content in the nineties. Mhmm.

So if those Beckett magazines and those Beckett price guides didn't exist, if doctor if doctor Beckett never had that vision to create this editorial content and to pair it with pricing and to sort of synthesize those two worlds and to to conduct his pricing enterprise with the integrity that he had to have the to have the mission statement of reflecting the market, not directing the market.

I mean, those are important methodological choices that could easily get fumbled.

And and not only did he not fumble it, but he scaled up hobby content to a point where multiple issues of the Beckett Monthly magazine and the different sports, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, had circulation upwards of a million copies or more per month.

Mhmm. That was and and it was, it was, for for, for my birthday when I was in the nineties as a kid, I had an aunt who her birthday present to me every year was a annual subscription to the Beckett Basketball Price Guide.

And I just, I, I can't imagine, and that was our really my only lifeline to the external collecting world.

There was no eBay. There was no Instagram. There weren't message boards. There were there was local card shops. There were regional card shows.

But how am I what am I doing? I'm 11. Like, I can ride my bike, you know, to a a shop or something, but that's about it. So that was really the lifeline to the outside collecting world, and it was done so professionally.

You know, the select the the use of, the cover photography, for example, you know, we see now, like, how grassroots this hobby really is, but Beckett magazine made it feel so polished.

You know, Beckett magazine selected these these like Doctor. Beckett will sometimes talk about, he would he would say, I want to show superstar athletes always on the front cover.

I want to really show these these huge larger than life athletes, and so if you look back at those Beckett magazines, I mean, they look just as polished and professional as Sports Illustrated. They or ESPN Magazine.

They these are these that publication was top notch and I so that that's the that's like the gold standard of hobby content without which I don't think any of this boom that we're experiencing now that's to the extent that it's driven by people in our age bracket, I don't think that it's possible without just what you're showing on the screen now, without these Beckett magazines.

I mean, look at that. That's that's fantastic, man. And we know what the hobby's like now. As you were talking about it, instantly, I looked it up, and it sent me to an eBay listing, which is great.

But this is this Larry Bird, from September 1992, this issue. And Bird, it it's what came to my mind, and I just remember the ball being over the Beckett logo.

And I remember this collector's choice, card being in the corner. And I it just as you were talking about that, that visualization of the player and then the card.

And, I mean, you can rack I mean, neck on this on the other side, you've got Sean Kemp in the skybox photo, and it's like, man, this really did set the stage for not only content in the in the hobby in this era, but just, like, businesses forming in this era.

So I I do think we should pay homage to Beckett at any cost because it as we were growing up, it was it was pivotal in shaping kind of business and content, in what we're seeing today. 100%, man.

There were millions and millions of people eagerly receiving these magazines, and they created the the aura around collecting that I think was very important to making it feel special and then being a part of why we all came back.

But now, you know, content is very different. So, like, even on a macro level, content in the nineties was very monolithic.

You know, there were a few news channels. There were a few channels that broadcast professional sports. There was no league pass, in other words. There was no NFL Sunday ticket.

There was no red zone channel. Like, it and and now it's very different. Now content is democratized. Authenticity is at a premium. You know, we don't we don't want necessarily to watch guys in suits talk about sports.

We wanna watch guys in hoodies talk about sports. You know? There's it's there's a there's a there's been a shift in what in how content gets produced and what's valued and stuff.

And, like, in the hobby, it's continued in that tradition too. It's it's very the content is very grass roots, but I bet Beckett magazine proves, I think, how important content is because I'll ask this.

How many of us would have come back to the hobby or would have even gotten involved deeply in the hobby during the nineties as kids if that Beckett magazine didn't exist?

So I I think that that's that's a good hypothetical. That's a good thought experiment to see how important content was then and how important it still is today.

But content is very diversified today, you know, like, content, like we said, is just scrolling eBay. Content is looking up sales history on card ladder. Content is going to Instagram. Content is pulling up podcasts. That's all content.

I love it. Shout out content. I love the, connection around content and card ladder, and I never think about it. But I'll be sitting here, in between calls, and I'll just be scrolling card ladder reading the headlines.

And I'll be looking at the cards, and I just it's a, content platform in a way that I've never thought about. So we've covered content, which is good.

I wanna, you know, there's a lot of people out there that really wanna are excited and motivated and have ideas and wanna be doing kind of, you know, what you're doing and just going all in building business and the hobby.

Maybe help the audience understand or anyone in the audience who's in that spot.

Like, what from what you've experienced on the card ladder ride, like, what is what have been some of those challenges that have exist along the way, things that, you know, maybe you just wish you were you knew in advance, but, maybe obstacles that you've overcome in building the business.

There's a lot of little obstacles.

Sometimes it snowball into bigger ones, but I can I can really just take this question one clear direction, which is that working alongside very capable, very talented people results in the conquering of all obstacles, and not working alongside talented and capable people would result in even the smallest obstacle stopping me?

So it all comes down to that.

Having a great team, having great collaborators is is, in my view, I I have been entrepreneurial my whole life. I've I've I was entrepreneurial in the music business, had a variety of different partners in that setting.

I've I've in the entertainment business writ large, and then here in the sports, you know, sports card community industry, and and the constant is always that, when if you're working with great people, then things are gonna look up.

It's not it's not a silver bullet. It's not a guarantee, but that that's the recipe. And so, you know, and that's that's nothing that's in my control.

Like, I've met Christina because we went to undergrad together ten plus years ago. I, met Josh because we both, like, came back into the hobby of almost the identical time in 2016. That's just that's random, man.

That's that's just luck. And but it turned but and then my and then my brother who does the social per card ladder, all the socials and the content, you know, he's my brother. Like, I didn't choose that. You know? It just worked out.

So the you know, that's that's just that's happenstance that all these that these people, we all just happen to our paths happen to line up at the same time. And even though that's random and that's happenstance, that is the key.

That there is no card ladder without that team. The team is everything. I was, talking with, Steve Sloan on this, CEO of Haystack, and we're talking about hiring, and he said something and it just it resonated with me.

And he's talking about hiring people and he like, we're talking about the criteria and, like, one of the big pillars that he talked about is, like, you know, having a passion and actual knowledge for cards in this space.

And when he said that, it, like, hit me like a ton of bricks, and I couldn't agree. And, you know, I have conversations with a lot of different people in a lot of different businesses.

And, dude, within, like, a few seconds, I I know if they can hang in a conversation with me about cards or if they're just here to make money.

It's, like, really apparent. It's, like, I'll ask a few questions, and then if we spend the next, you know, five, ten minutes talking cards, and I'm like, alright. I feel a lot better about this.

Do you do you, like, do you see that or do you think about that a lot when you're just, like, having conversations with because your card ladder's partnering with a lot of different companies based on the nature of APIs, bringing in data sources.

Like, do do you think about that at all?

Yeah. I do. And, and I think that there's so, like, there's a natural selection process, a natural filtering. So the thing that filtered me out of going into the sciences at the college university level was organic chemistry.

You have to, like, pass that class to go into medical science or to do anything science, and that class filtered me right out. And it's the same thing in the hobby, at least with hobby businesses too.

You're gonna get filtered out real fast, dude. I don't know what our, analogy of organic chemistry is, but whatever it is, like, it it it exists pretty early on, and I think people get filled.

Like, in in terms of trying to float as a business, if if a person doesn't, think like a collector in this in this industry, it's gonna be really, really tough to last.

It's gonna be really tough to understand anything of how this, business and market work.

What do you what do you think makes building a business in this ecosystem unique maybe compared to other industries? What makes it unique? That's a great question. There's a lot of things that make it unique.

I think one of the things that makes it unique is that it's it's actually not it's it's almost, like, kind of echoing something I was saying earlier on In in the sense that of all the people who are eligible to succeed in this space and, you know, which which would be people who are long time collectors who's who identify a need, very few of them are are going to enter into this and do do it as a business because they're the CEO of some company somewhere, or they're a partner at a law firm, or, you know, they're they're or like in your case, they're they have a a very successful career in marketing and in tech startups.

And so it it it's actually a miracle, I think, when somebody who's very capable somehow makes the decision or stumbles into working in this industry because it's very it's, you know, it's not very institutionalized, so it can be you can all of us can fall through the cracks very quickly and there's no safety net here and, you know, that's part of the nature entrepreneurship, but it's eve it's even more so the nature of entrepreneurship in a sort of wild, wild west setting of of an industry like sports cards, which is just very organic and and very, you know, just just sort of created out of thin air.

And so so part of it is that actually starting a business or even getting into content creation, it's not super competitive.

It's it's it's mostly, you know, you you'll, you'll run into a ton of really talented, smart people in this hobby, but you'll run into them and they're, they have the collector hat on and they're not trying to come in and, you know, leave their practice to do this, you know, so it's not, it's not hyper competitive.

And it's, it's actually, if one can do a nice job and bring their professionalism to the table, they can, they can succeed pretty quickly, I think.

I think they can actually get a footing and, and, and actually launch and do well, and and they will also find that there's so much support from collectors, from people who do other things professionally and do the hobby recreationally.

They're very grateful for the people who provide them content, provide them products, provide them services. So that that's like this weird dynamic where, like, it's not super competitive, but the stakes are very high.

If you fail, you know, you're gonna be out on your on your butt in in the street. So, you know, that's that's the double side of it.

But but, yeah, that that's one of the interesting things is that, that there there there's so many ways to provide services and contents in this arena and that, and I think anybody who's capable, willing to work hard, they can find a lane.

They can they can they can contribute to it. And I think, you know, if they're up for it, they should.

I, I have to ask you this question. I just like, before we got on this call, I was I left a lunch, and I was actually having a lunch with the CEO I just I used to work for who actually let me go.

And we were just catching up. Still have friends, still keep in touch. And he was asking me how this was going for me and, you know, I tried not to, like, spew everything out of him because I could talk about it for days.

But his question was, because you have made this this your full time job, has it jaded you in any way?

And I was like, that's a great question. And I, like, took a step back and I thought about it. I was like, actually, it's made me even more obsessed.

Like, I can't get enough. Like, I just this is all I wanna do. All I wanna do is and it's it's interesting. It's like I'm spending all of my time building this business within this space.

And then whenever I do have free time outside of this in my family, I'm collecting cards or trying to track down the cards. So it's like this constant card like, cards are the culture that I live in.

It's I've got my family and I watch sports, and I'm either trying to make money building a business and growing a company in the hobby, or I'm spending money trying to build my collection.

Like, you're you're kinda in the same boat where you're you're you're wheeling and dealing, and you're also, building, you know, a a company in this space.

Like, do you do you, like how do you think about those worlds? Like, do they blur together? Is it all the same?

Like, how how do you recognize it? Well, like most, entrepreneurial types, I don't really like being told what to do. So, you know, like, that's that's a huge perk, first of all, of of, starting and building something from scratch.

Although the irony is that, when you provide a product to a community, you you actually trade out having one boss for thousands of bosses. Every customer becomes your boss sort of.

But, my whole adult life has been turning passions into professions. So that was true first when I was in music, and, I was doing that as a kid in high school, and then I wanted to branch out and try to do that professionally.

And and, and I did become a little bit jaded. I still love to make music, but the problem was that once I decided to go professional, I suddenly had people telling me, you know, you need to make music that sounds like this.

This is the music that's gonna make money. This is this is what your music has to sound like. And I did that, and I adapted to that, and I still enjoyed it, but eventually, it it definitely robbed the process of of its enjoyment.

And then, you know, you have and then there's a you have a lot of bosses. You know? You have well, this should sound like this. You know? Turn up this snare.

Turn down this high hat. You know, the bass needs to be louder. You know? You just and there's event you can very especially if you're a person who doesn't like being told what to do, you can very quickly lose interest.

And so, you know, I I so I experienced that and a little bit of of how that, how I could become jaded from that.

And then, you know, law was a little bit the same way for me too. I just I went into law just because I love learning, and I love, ideas and stuff. And law was just a a decent extension of it.

It also had practical applications. But very quickly, you start to figure out that once you get to the level of practicing law, you know, your client is really calling the shots, and they're supposed to.

That's how it should work. But, but the but the room for creativity really starts to diminish. And if I make a creative mistake, I'm really not the one who suffers the penalty for it. The client is, and I don't I don't like that.

I don't like how the incentives align there. I like to either reap the rewards or pay the price of of my own creative ideas. So, you know, that that I I already could sense the jadedness coming there too.

But in sports cards, I think the reason why I've never approached becoming jaded about it is because there's been this really nice unison of like the thing that I'm passionate about is the art of collecting and the art of collecting is perfectly lined up with making a good product, with making good content, with forming relationships.

There's a really nice harmony among business providing business services, providing content, and then building a collection.

You know, that never like so to make the comparison in music, it it when you professionalize, it's like, well, you got to do it. Now you have to do it in a way that makes money.

You have to start thinking about how do you make money. And and and, and but in cards, it never I never had to make that shift. I never had to say, well, now I have to look at my collection as how do I monetize this.

You know? I don't get to collect what I like anymore. I don't get to make the music that I like anymore. Now I have to do what the market says is valuable. And in in sports card collecting, it never really worked that way.

There was actually just a really nice harmony of, like, the the more I enjoy collecting and think about collecting, actually, the better that integrates me with the community of collectors and the in the marketplace and the product that we're making.

So it it would it would be really hard to get jaded because the thing that I naturally am passionate about carries over into the product.

Digging into, the product, and we're not gonna do a demo or anything like that. But I I just I'm curious in being a guy who's worked in tech, and you've built a tech product in the industry.

How, like, how do you how have how have things changed maybe since you have launched Card Ladder? And I remember the early days, and it it looks so much different than it did when you first launched.

But just how do you think technology in this industry like, I'm going from building tech in the tech industry to doing media in the sports card industry where then I observe tech and try to observe tech trends just because it's been so much a part of my previous professional background.

But, like, in those last years from, like, card ladder launching to being at the National this year, like, how would you say tech has changed in this space for the better, for the worse, in between?

Technology has certainly changed the space for the better. You know, social media is a is a technology. You know, so much of our collecting experience happens through a device, you know, through, an iPhone or a laptop or whatever.

So, you know, technology is huge, but, but the technology is only as useful as the collector use case allows it to be.

So there can be a lot of times where we point the gun of technology at a problem, but if it's not solving the problem in a way that is coherence with helping people make better collections, then it can really just become a big waste of time.

That can I ask the question about card ladder?

Sure. Is there an example of, you all going through the process of building out a feature or functionality that you thought was needed, but you got feedback and was like, this no one cares about this?

Yeah. I mean, there there there's a survivor bias here that sort of, like, it won't be visible if I when I look at the app right now.

So it'll be hard to, like, sort of trigger in my memory because we would have phased it out, like, if it wasn't working. But I'm sure there's been plenty of oh, yeah.

I'll give a I'll give a great one. So this is this is an amazing one because it was actually a foundational idea to Card Ladder was I had this idea that I really wanted there to be, like, like a PER of of prices.

I wanted there to be a number that measured how prices were performing because there were so many there are actually so many numbers you have to reconcile when you're actually trying to compare cards.

So, like, if a $50 card has appreciated to $100 it's doubled in price.

If a thousand dollar card appreciates to $10. 50 dollars it's appreciated by a much, much, much smaller percentage, but the $50 price change is the same. So how do you how do you actually compare those two?

You know, you can compare them on a percentage basis, but then you're missing that that they both went up $50 or you can compare the fact that they both went up $50 but you're missing the fact that one had a huge percentage change and the other one didn't.

So I tried to come up with this formula that took into consideration price, percentage change, volume, quantity, transact frequency of transactions, and I came up with this little, like, advanced number, this one number catchall that was called the score.

And I wanted the whole ladder to be sorted by that. And nobody cared at all about that score.

Nobody people were like, what is this? I don't understand how this means, you know, the it's a formula like hell, nobody cared. And so so that's a great example of, like, that was that was foundational.

That was one of the things I was most passionate about was, like, coming up with this this neutral metric that could compare the price performance of cards and take into consideration all the different variables, and it was it just was completely irrelevant to what people were doing.

And so we we learned very quickly that, like, hey, this is something that Chris is excited about, but let's just bury this over here, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna focus on what people want us to do.

And that was a new concept that really that Josh's background in software development was so important with was, like, Josh was the one who insisted we need to put out a minimum viable product.

We don't this doesn't need to be ten years of refining and perfection.

Let's put this out. Let's take back feedback. Let's build as we go. Like, he was familiar with that process. He preached that process, and that you know, I wasn't familiar with that.

And, like, that's like, coming from the background in law, that's not how things work. In law, I'm up all night refining my documents that I'm presenting to the court. You know, I'm looking at those very carefully.

I'm making sure there's no typos. I'm making sure every citation is airtight and says exactly what it's supposed to say. You know, I'm like, I'm I everything needs to be perfect before I get to the get go in front of a judge.

And here, this is completely different. This is like this would be like going before a judge and you're saying, hey. Your honor, I'm kinda thinking about arguing from this case.

What do you think? And then the judge would be like, no. I think you should look at this case instead. Like, tech is just a very iterative process like that where you're engaging with the with the customer.

So, you know, he was he was instrumental in just pushing that. Like, yeah. We'll do stuff. We'll try ideas. We'll push push stuff out, but, you know, we just have to take the feedback as it comes and and build it from there.

You mentioned the Rodman example of saying collection and, like, you hadn't thought about that. And then it was like, oh, wait. Maybe this is something we should do, which dude, I'll be on my couch.

My cards will be in my office, and I'll be on my couch. I'll be on my phone, and I'll be looking at digital scans of my cards and being like, oh, these cards are sweet.

And I never thought I would be at that point, but it's I'm on my phone all the time, so it's like, why not look at my cards?

Is there is there another example of, like, a customer need or demand that you weren't even thinking about, but you elicited so much feedback that all of a sudden, it was like a light bulb in your head and you're like, alright, Josh.

Let's figure out how we can put x in the in card ladder and that and then, like, you see it now and you're just like, man, I can't believe that wasn't always there.

Is there a, like, a feature or functionality that you think of, in that example? Well, I wanna run with that specific example of the collection feature. So the biggest consumers of card ladder are are Josh, Christina, and myself.

So in a lot of ways, we are the customer of the product. And one philosophical approach that Josh had from the earliest goings was above all else, the user experience should be oriented or oriented around big, beautiful images of cards.

That that is the focal point of the of the experience and that whether somebody's looking at a card profile, looking at their collection, that we should have these huge, beautiful images of cards ready to go.

And that's a very sharp distinction from the philosophical approach that many other data provision entities per that take that that, you know, for a lot of them, you know, the graph is prominent or, you know, doesn't matter if there's a picture or not.

You know, but his philosophy was very different. It was big, beautiful pictures. Cards cards are awesome. We are here because we love cards.

We are not here because we like looking at numbers on a screen. So make the cards big, make the cards beautiful, make the cards the focal point, and that's why, you know, collection feature looks awesome.

That's why you have the ability to look at these big tiled images of cards. That's why when you look at early marketing material from Cardlyde from the early going, it was all these just big, beautiful images of cards.

You know, that all came from his vision that when when he was browsing this site, he wants to see nothing but big, beautiful images of cards, and that that spilled over into everything.

Alright. So I wanna, like, maybe kinda head get us towards it near the end of this. There's a couple other things that I wanna maybe dive into. And one of them is I I think about just in knowing you all these years and your schedule.

I know you're up late. You're working on the product. It's data. You're trying to make sure all the data is clean and it's up to speed on a night. It never stops.

It's just it's every day. It doesn't matter if it's the holidays. It's you're laugh you're laughing because it's, like, it's nonstop. And so you're, like, fostering the data and card ladder and, you know, doing your thing.

And then you're also, you know, waking up and then running the business. You're also collecting, doing your thing there, making deals. How how do you define success when your your passion becomes your business?

Like, do you ever think about that? So how is success defined? I think, success is, I think success is defined well, look, I mean, I think the arbiter of success, oftentimes is just as happiness is enjoying what I'm doing.

But, but for every person that's really different, you know, sometimes like when I hear people sort of trot out that idea, it just sounds like, you know, the the idea of success is just if I could just pitch, an umbrella and lay in front of a body of water on the beach all day, then I've been successful because I'm enjoying myself, and that's not how it works.

And when you're actually confronted with tasking yourself with obligations and, and responsibilities, it's, it's actually you, you quickly find out that it's actually in those challenges that, happiness emerges is when you take on a challenge and you try to solve it or approach it, that your mind is is being is constantly being challenged, that you're that you're that that or at least that's how that's how it works for me.

So, like, I I I would say happiness, you know, am I happy doing what I'm doing is very important, but happiness isn't this, like, abdication of responsibility. It's the opposite.

Happiness is taking on challenges and ideas and concepts that I find really interesting, trying to solve them, working together with others to solve them, or, you know, outside of the challenges part of it, providing a service, doing something for a community of people that, you know, I feel like is important and I feel like is meaningfully contributing to the operation of that community.

You know, those are the things that that bring me happiness and my measure of success is, am I enjoying my work?

Do I feel like there's purpose? Do I feel like this is meaningful? And, you know, the so so those are my measures of success or is is really just, you know, am am I doing something meaningful?

Am I doing something that gives me pat that ends up resulting in happiness? I don't know if you experienced this.

I'm sure you do at some level. But I had this moment at the National this year, and it was, right before I was, like, stepping foot in trade night, which I'm at some point, I'm gonna do a whole piece of content about this.

But I, like, just got done with a full day of work, and then I'm walking to trade night to do more work. And I I just felt so excited. I should have felt exhausted.

And I just, like, fired off this tweet, and it was just, like, something the effect of, like, this is the best time ever to build a business in the hobby. And if you're thinking about one, just, like, go do it.

You you'll you won't regret it. And I don't like, it just, like, was, like, all of this energy, and I just felt all this excitement. I felt compelled to share that. What for you and you've been doing this longer than I have.

Like, what for you right now? Obviously, like, we're seeing prices just absolutely soar. You know, we could spend we could spend probably ten hours talking about just prices of cards and what's happening.

But for you as a someone who's, you know, running a business, someone who's deep in the weeds in the hobby, like, right now, what is exciting you the most about the future of this crazy wild space that we work in?

That's there are still, lots of well, there's there's still so many things to do in this space that haven't been done yet. So that's that's another thing too.

It's just sort of if I feel like I'm retreading something that somebody else has done or I feel like somebody else can do what we're trying to do, but they can do it better, you know, then at that point, it starts to feel, I I start to feel unnecessary, duplicative.

But as long as, you know, we and our team are providing a service and we're doing it at a level that is unique and that there's a real need for us to do it, that there's nobody else who can who can actually quite do it the way that we do it, then I'll I'll continue to be really excited about it, I think.

And to that end, I think we have that with card ladder.

And I think there are new things on the horizon that, for card ladder, for, for just, content creation and collecting that, that there are, there are new things on the horizon, on the horizon that there's so many, that there's that, that in some ways, you know, this, the organization of this, of this community and, and, and the, and the potential of of card collecting and the industry is it's it's still in in some ways, it's it's still so undeveloped.

It's so untapped.

It's so organic and grassroots that, I think I think a lot of people with an entrepreneurial mind sort of set their eyes on this space, and then they just they can see many different ways that that there's opportunity here.

So I'm I'm, you know, I'm I'm I'm very excited on on, like, a million levels, dude. Like, that's why just having one podcast wasn't enough. I needed to have a second one, you know, just because, like, there's so much to say.

There's so much I'm thinking about. So and then, you know, the other thing that's exciting about cards too is, like, it's this microcosm, this whole industry. It's this microcosm for life, you know?

And and, but but the stakes are so much lower. Right? So it's not so it it's actually a really nice way to look at things and sort of think about the human experience, but but on a on a very playful level, level. You know?

So that's that's what's always fascinated about me too is the social aspect of cards, how important that is, and how and you you think about what would this industry look like without social media and without, without the national.

You know, there's a reason why, you have so many people flock to these shows, you know, that's, the social element of it is really interesting and really, really underexplored.

Like, I know, like, I know you like you love looking at, at things through the lenses of marketing, through the lenses of psychology.

I mean, this is this is so unanalyzed. You know? Outside of your book, you know, how many people have ever taken the time to put pen to paper and discuss the psychological aspects of sports card collecting.

I, you could certainly count on one hand. You know, I mean, this is, is that as an example, you know, there is no textbook of sports card collecting, you know, like, and, but this is a multi multi billion dollar industry.

And I'm not saying it needs a textbook, but what I'm saying is that like the, the, the body of knowledge here, the content is one example.

Like this is things are so raw. There's, there's just so much opportunity for contribution here that, you know, that I to me, that's very so to to some people, it's scary.

You know, to some people, it's like they want something more institutionalized, something feels a little safer, something more regimented. And to me, I I I tend towards the opposite.

I love seeing something new that's growing, that's developing, that that can still be shaped and molded and where I could actually contribute something novel rather than just repeating and retreading the same tracks that somebody else has already made.

A lot of great insight and information shared. Chris McGill from Card Ladder. Chris, always appreciate these conversations, man. Looking forward to the next one that we have. Me too, buddy. I always appreciate Chris's insight on cards.

I've listened to maybe every piece of content, whether the crossover's new podcast, the HoshCast, everything he's put out. I really appreciate his mindset when it comes to building a business in this space.

I think there's something I certainly learned from this episode. Hopefully, you did too. Thank you so much, eBay, for supporting this series. Everybody, take care. We'll be back with more. Talk to you soon.