What's going on, everybody?

Welcome back to Passion and Profession brought to you by my good friends at eBay. Excited to be here. It's crazy. We have almost an entire year of conversations in the can from owners, operators, entrepreneurs in this space.

It has been a blast to learn from some of eBay's top sellers, people outside of eBay working in hobby businesses, individuals building their own businesses in this space.

As an individual who is set out on my first year of following my passion in building a business in this space, it has been like consulting for me.

Hearing the stories, hearing the hurdles, hearing the obstacles, the errors, the adversity, all of the stories that have come along with this series has been super impactful, and I am a better operator because of it.

I hope you all have been enjoying this series. There is so much to be said about the entrepreneurial spirit that this hobby gives us.

You don't need to be all in, and you don't need to work full time in this hobby. Although, I would say that feels like a trend, feels like there are more individuals in my network that are pursuing that, and I'm all about that.

I support that. But you have to think like an owner when you are managing a collection, when you're trying to make decisions, when you are buy, sell, trade, when you're at shows, when you're transacting online.

And I believe that having that entrepreneurial mindset will make you a better collector. And part of this series has been to share the how. And it's been a diverse offering of backgrounds.

It's been a diverse offering of skill sets, roles, and it's been one of the more rewarding projects that I've worked on in a long time, and wanna thank eBay for being here to support this, to support these stories, to share them with you week in and week out.

And so we're rounding the corner on the year.

There's only so many weeks left. And I thought that it might be a good idea to try one of these episodes solo because I feel like I could be a guest on this show based on stacking slabs, and that's what I wanna do today.

I wanna give you all the first episode of Passion Profession, without a guest. It feels like the right moment as I'm concluding my kind of first full time year or so in this space.

I wanna pull back the curtain and walk you through how this went for me or how this is going for me as a collector to a full time business owner in this space.

My goal here is to show you what happens when you follow the thing that gives you purpose, when you let that passion that's inside of you, take over, and you begin to make decisions and follow those decisions and see what happens, and it's been crazy.

And I'm someone who likes to plan. I like to build strategy. And I'm gonna tell you right now, there has been no plan or strategy to end up working full time in this space, and I think that has been part of the story.

But, hopefully, when I unpack how this all happened and why this happened, it paints a pretty clear picture that me as a individual, as a human being, is meant to work at the intersection of collecting and content, and I feel very, very fortunate for that.

So let's start here. I wanna start with the makeup of myself as a collector. We all have labels as human beings. We are coworkers.

We're dads. We're moms. We're brothers and sisters and cousins and athletes and so much more. We're we all have these labels. I have always viewed myself as a collector. My earliest memories have been around collecting.

I think part of the reason why I show up every weekend, especially on Wednesdays in the flagship and, like, obsess over the psychology behind collecting and why we do the things that we do.

Part of the reason why I do that is because I'm deeply fascinated with trying to respond and answer the question for myself of how did I get here?

How did I become so obsessed so early in my life with building this identity as a human being around collecting. My earliest memories are all related to collecting.

Collecting wrestling figures, ninja turtles, collecting starting lineup, collecting video games, collecting CDs, of course, collecting cards, amassing collections around these physical objects that I deeply appreciate, that I deeply admire, and that get me so excited.

I can remember the earliest days of trying to complete sets, trying to complete runs of action figures, and obsessing over the gaps and trying to identify pre Internet, well before Internet, how I was going to get the items to continue to build out the collections that I'd want.

I've told this story, years ago on stacking slabs, but I can recall when I was not even in kindergarten, my mom driving me to Toys R Us every week to try to find the Nasty Boys Hasbro's tag team for my WWF Hasbro collection.

For whatever reason, they never showed up at my Toys R Us.

I remember every week, we had we knew the people within the Toys R Us. They knew us. We'd have them. They'd go back, and they'd bring out cases, and they'd open it up before in front of us and always filled with disappointment.

And I would obsess over getting the Nasty Boys. And that that's that mindset that I've had about building these collections and having meaning and being deeply connected to items that I truly love is all I know.

Collecting has shaped what I see around me in the world that I live in. Collecting has made me a better person. It has entertained me. It has been in my thoughts for so long.

I think we as individuals in this space view the this mindset and the psychology that go along with collecting, and we wanna protect it. We see the changes happening in the industry, and we see the directions the hobby is moving in.

Because collecting has made us feel a certain way for so long, we wanna make sure that we continue to operate in a space where collecting is at the forefront.

Collecting will always and has always been a foundational element for me. And the fascinated fascination with sports cards inevitably connects with my fascination and obsession as a fan.

And like many of you, there's been ebbs and flows on my collecting front, I would say, certainly, even in comparison by when I was a kid.

Well, the kid in me was such a hardcore sports card collector, and I would say the 40 year old dude in me is way more of a sports card collector.

And as an individual who has always wanted to follow my passions and an individual who's always wanted to work for myself, I am finding the opportunity that I have and that I found with stacking slabs to be the most rewarding career opportunity I've ever had.

And I've worked for some cool companies.

I've worked in a very cool industry and technology, and I have learned from so many great people. But this opportunity and how I got here with this opportunity is the most rewarding thing I've ever worked on in my career.

And sometimes, I'm left with this question of how did this happen. And I think that's cool because cool things happen when you give up control. You just work hard, and you just are deeply passionate. Opportunities come.

And that's counter to how this hobby is organized where a lot of us want instant gratification. We wanna win now. We want money quickly. We wanna sell our cards for the most money, and we want that money to continually compound.

Like, that mindset that is integrated in our lives based on the way social media is based on the way we can get stuff delivered at our doorstep in hours by hitting one button.

The fact that I can get on Apple Music and listen to whatever I want, or I can get on my TV and literally watch any old movie that I want to because of streaming.

This world we're living in is built off of instant gratification and getting what you want right now.

That's not how it was when people that are my age were growing up. We had to work for it. We had to be patient. We had to try to work other channels and angles.

And I think this combination of me growing up collecting in my early days pre Internet to working with the Internet now and understanding how things work and how things operate, and then piling on my love and desire to get up here on a weekly basis and be prolific at delivering collector focused content to you, the listener, because I appreciate and admire the relationship that we have built together.

All of those things get put together and provide the stage for me to get up and try to create a business and live out my dreams. Now I'll tell you my dream was never to start a business in the sports car industry.

My dreams were always to build a company and work for myself, but the fortunate thing is I've landed in this this this this opportunity where I get to spend more time than most people talking with people about collecting sports cards, thinking about collecting sports cards, organizing content around sports cards, and making it what I do.

And so I'm very fortunate psychology behind it, I think, is interesting.

And I hope through you following along, you're enjoying my mindset and how I attack and explore certain things. I I I would say as I look back, it it hasn't been just about chasing stuff.

It's more been around chasing connection and connection with items that make me excited. It makes me feel like I have a sense of identity and purpose, and I have a lifelong curiosity around things that I'm into.

And I don't just go one foot in. I'm all in, and it's my personality type. I don't stop. I just go. And I go and I run fast and hard towards things that very, very that that excite me and motivate me.

And that's what I've been doing ever since we started stacking slabs, in 2020. And my wife and I were talking recently, and, she checks in every now and again just to see how things are going.

And she was asking me about the when the first episode was and the date, and I went back and looked on my hosting platform.

And it was just crazy to see, like, the first episode, you know, we've soared past 800. We've hit a million downloads. You know, we're getting more streams, and the platform is growing quicker and faster than ever before.

And it's really interesting to go back to those early days and not only see what I was talking about, but where I was in my life and why I was there. And I thought, you know, it might be a good opportunity here just to, talk about it.

This is Passion and Profession. Maybe we we start with the why behind the birth of stacking slabs. We were at that point where we were all in our homes.

I'll never forget being in the office with my CEO and the executive team for the company that I was working for pre pan or as the pandemic was unfolding before our very eyes, and we're trying to figure out in what we were gonna do in a plan of attack.

And I said something to the effect of because we had some pushback from some of the individuals who wanted to continue to come into the office.

And my I made mention of and I'll I'll never forget the statement. I just looked at everyone. I was like, we're a tech company.

If we can't decide if we can't figure out how to work remotely, there's a massive issue here. Little did I know that was the that would be the last time, March 2020, that I would step foot and work in an office space ever again.

I've been working remotely ever since that moment. And I remember, like, finding my footing, trying to, like, navigate, building in the new routines, doing the thing.

Mo most of us were trying to figure this out during COVID. And I will never forget, I was involved in a wrestling memorabilia community, and people started talking about breaks.

And I it's a good reminder now because I think about all the different ways that we can be brought into collecting sports cards and, you know, the mainstream topics breaks, those sorts of things that pull peep pull people in.

And I think at some level, there is, the diversity, the hobby, and the way we can participate in a hobby is good, I will say, and this is an episode for another day.

We have moved way too far on the gambling front, and there's going to be churn based on if if the industry keeps pushing things this way, there will be churn.

People won't stay along for a while. That's why I feel like my platform, stacking slabs, is valuable based on education stories, the content that's going to get people to, be engaged more, to find purpose and meaning.

That's me going off on a little tangent there, but I remember learning about breaks and be like, wow.

Cards, wrestling cards, and I got curious, and I started to explore. And I started to do what many of us do when we get back in the cards.

You're like, this looks a lot different than it what it did last time I was here, and you started to figure out sets, the lanes, the people, everything. And I was a sponge for, like, a month.

I did nothing but research, learn. And the more I dug into it, the more excited I got about cards And, you know, started to buy packs, started to buy PSA graded cards, started to do all the things that we do.

And I started to take notes, and I would document stuff. And then I'll never forget this. I got done with a podcast that I was running for the company that I was with.

Just got done with an episode. And I got some lunch. I looked at the microphone, and I was looking I was beginning to curate my sports card feed on Instagram, and I it just clicked.

And it was this moment I'll never forget. I just thought there's gotta be a lot of people my age that are getting back in the cards in this time.

I'm doing podcasting. I love creating content. What if I started to tell the story of my journey, and along the way, we'll bring some people on, and it'll give me an opportunity to network and level up?

What if I started a podcast? And part of the reason for why I started the podcast, not only was I interested in cars, but I was I was looking for a a a void to fill.

I had, you know, a year prior, I was in my first year of, sobriety from alcohol, and, it was bringing me down. It wasn't doing anything good for me.

I was abusing it, and I made the I was looking for something new to connect with, and that's part of the reason why I got into cards. It's like looking for a connection, and then I thought saw an opportunity.

It was, man, I can I can get into sports cards and then also create content around this, this seems like a no brainer? So I hit I I started thinking about what I wanted to do, and I just went.

I didn't overthink it. I just recorded. I started to do what I'm doing here. I started to talk, started to share my experience, started to figure out how I run my own podcast.

The the stacking slabs name, was I had a wrestle in my old house, I had a wrestling room. I know this is pre, you know, having multiple kids, and I had a whole room dedicated to my memorabilia and wrestling figure collection.

My wife is a saint. I'd go and watch pay per views there. It was it was it's bringing me back a little bit. But it also became my card room, and I'll never forget seeing a bunch of PSA slabs stacked up.

And I was thinking about branding, and I just looked at them. And I love alliteration, and I just said stacking slabs. And that was it. That's the origin story of the name.

But when I I started to record and I started to just put myself out there, started to build the Instagram account, and I just got obsessed with it. I got obsessed with the, I'm someone who loves to publish.

I love to get a reaction. I just love to share. And I was meeting so many cool people, like, by building an Instagram account, building, audio platform. You know? It becomes a magnet for conversations.

And I got to not only talk about collecting and flex that, but then I got to create, and we're in at home in this pandemic working this job. So I just, like, felt a sense of purpose, and I felt a sense of identity.

And when I it it took about six months, and the key here is the consistency. I just I I didn't stop, and I I first two years, I think, or three, two episodes a week, never stopped that.

And part of it was because the biggest reason why I never stopped and I just kept going was because I loved it. I loved everything about the process. I loved talking about cards, exploring cards, the the whole nine.

It I became obsessed with it. It helped shape the way I think about cards, and I think that was a key for me. It's like, if you are building something and you want to do something special, you have to love it.

And you to to show your love for it, you have to consistently show up to produce it in whatever setting it is. So I'm I'm in this house. I'm trying to navigate COVID, being at home, building a new routine, starting a podcast.

And this podcast became not only a sense of identity for me, but it was a big reason why I wanted to show up every day because of what it was doing.

Now this became something that I didn't expect. I didn't expect the volume of people to show up and listen to it regularly. I didn't expect the volume of feedback.

I didn't expect how excited it made me feel on a regular basis, but that that's how things go. I felt energy creating each episode. I felt enjoyment by meeting people in the way community found me.

Feedback and connection made me double down. This this doing this project showed me that there was there was something else out there outside of this tech bubble I had been working in for so long.

I never thought that this show, this platform could become my full time job. I just thought it was something that could keep me more interested than my work. And that journey for this to become my thing was unexpected and surprising.

I'll say this. I say this I've said this a lot early on in this show. One of the more interesting things about collecting cards in this hobby, in this space, and this can just be purely from a collecting perspective.

We all have unique professional skills. We all have these superpowers and traits that we learn from our professional life.

It is so fun to see those on full display in the hobby, and I have found that the best or collectors I admire the most use their professional skills to build incredible collections.

For me, my toolbox has been marketing, messaging, positioning, storytelling, the thinking about products, content, relationship building.

Those are things that I have taken in my fifteen year career and applied them to building a brand in this hobby. The more I lean into certain areas, the more good things happen.

I don't show up and just talk into a microphone. I deliver each of these episodes with intention, and most of that comes from areas of focus that I've had in my previous and, professional life.

Those skills were learned over time, and those skills meeting with this desire to keep pushing gave me the opportunity to double down on what I was building and what I was doing here at Stacking Slaps.

Now there's a a a very pivotal moment.

If you look at the life cycle of this show and this platform, there there's a very pivotal moment for me, and that happened in January 2024, Right after the New Year, I think it was 01/04/2024, I was working at a start up.

I'd spent three years. I was employee number two preproduct. I was the, I was the profile of our buyer. I was the brand builder, the marketer, the content creator, all the things, head of marketing.

And I worked my ass off for this company because I believed in what we were doing. And, also, it was the a time in my career where I closely operated how I operate at Stacking Slabs with this opportunity, and it was exciting.

And then January came along. We had a rough q four and had a conversation with my CEO, and I was told that didn't have the funding to support my role anymore, and I lost my job.

And it was the first time in my career that I was being told that I didn't have a job anymore.

Luckily, I got had some severance that was helpful, obviously, and we left on good terms, but it sucked. I had poured three years of my life into this role, into this company to be let go sucked, man.

And you've all been many of you, I'm sure, have been through that. It sucks. You you have no control over it. And so I'm left in this situation for the first time in my life trying to figure out what do I do next.

What what what am I going to work on? I've got I just we we just had our second child. I I had two kids. Have in this new house I've been in for six months that the mortgage is a lot more than it was at my last house.

And it was one of those pivotal moments, and I'll never forget it. Started to have a few conversations, started a network, but I I deep down, I was like, I'd been on this startup train for fifteen years.

I was so burnt out on it, and I was so into stacking slabs and so into cards. I'll never forget having a a few pivotal conversations with individuals, and they just said, you need to just do this.

Build stacking slabs to your full time job. And I'll never forget those chats, and that feedback from those individuals was so important.

And I knew right away. I was like, okay. If I if if if this is possible or if the if I'm able to do this, how do I do this? And I knew it wasn't just going to happen overnight. I had a mortgage to pay, and I had to figure it out.

So that's when I got some encouragement, and it was like, alright. Do a Patreon group. Start building relationships with brands. Start doing these things while you're building and creating content.

And then, like, do some fractional work. Go do some consulting. And so that's what I did. I was fortunate to meet a CEO who liked what I was doing and wanted to pay me for standing up marketing at his agency.

And and I told him, I was like, hey. I'm trying to build this brand. And he's like, alright. We worked out the hours, worked out the pay.

I was doing part time standing up a a brand in a at an agency, and then I was spending the rest of the time working on stacking slabs. And at that moment, I was to say I was at capacity would be an understatement, but it was fun.

It was amazing. I was able to produce more content and get more enjoyment while working on some other stuff that was less exciting, but it was paying me, and I was just making it work.

I started having a lot of different conversations with brands in the space.

Shout out eBay being one of them. And I reached this point in November where I looked at what was going to be happening in the next year, and I started to look at fine the finances.

And I said to myself, this is the opportunity. This is the chance to go all in into check the box on working for myself and check the unexpected box of being able to work for myself in a space that I truly love.

And it's not only that, but it's the contribution. It's being able to contribute. You know, I had conversations with my wife.

You have fear. You are trying to think about your small kids. You're trying to think about what going all in is. And people would tell me this throughout the years. You won't know until you just jump head first.

You can't have one foot in, one foot out. And I always thought, like, is that true? It's couldn't be more true. And when I jumped and went all in, cut off the safety net, I had a conversation.

And and here's, like, a small aside is that in the mean in the middle of this, the CEO wanted me to work full time. I told him I didn't want to, but then we ended up doing it.

And I but I told him I was working on stacking slabs, and, like, six, four, five months later, I was had a conversation. I was like, man, I I gotta go. And he was like, oh, really? And I was like, yeah.

And then I was it was told him on a Thursday. My last day was on a Friday. And then that Monday, it was in November 2024. It was like, alright. Time to go. And so I had a vision. This is what I wanna do. This is what I wanna accomplish.

I wanna continue to expand. I wanna my vision is to much like Bill Simmons has with the ringer, I want to build that sort of platform for this industry. I want to create collector the the basis is being collector focused.

I wanna create niche shows with underneath the stacking slabs umbrella and continue to find to continue to offer tiny pockets of the hobby that are deeply invested in specific lanes content that they love.

And I wanna bring people in outside of myself to run those shows, and I want to continue to spin this and create more content and create volume and create meaning in this space.

And that that's been my vision this whole time and haven't been able to execute it up until I I was able to do this full time.

And this first year has been awesome. Has it been all roses? Absolutely not. And any entrepreneur would tell you, you're gonna stress yourself out.

You're gonna worry about things you're gonna you're gonna worry about. You I my role right now is I play all the roles. I I'm the head of content. I'm the CEO. I'm the finance guy.

I'm doing budgets. It's it's a lot, but I love it. And my goal is to continue to push this forward until the wheels fall off, and we rebuild it, and we do it in a way, and we scale, and we continue to go. I believe in what I'm doing.

This year has been so much fun. We've stood up, I think, nine new shows throughout the this this being one of them throughout this and not my wildest dreams. I could have envisioned that being the case. But you learn as you go along.

You learn specialization of time, how to allocate what you're doing and put putting yourself, in the right spots. And it's it's decisions like, okay. I'm spending 80% of my time on content, 20 on business development.

Like, how do I shift this? And making those shifts. And it's all about networking. Me be meeting people, continue to find partnerships, relationships, other opportunities.

I I could not have asked for a better year one. I have met so many people. I have had so many amazing brands, eBay being a big one, who believe in what we're doing here and who wanna support what we're doing here, and that's valuable.

That's important, and that's motivating for me. There's been so much good. Right? There's been so much good. I love the building the shows.

I love growing the network. I love building trust with you. The feeling of alignment, the freedom of my schedule, which I say freedom, but I'm more bound to my desk working than I ever had before in my life.

And that's that's a here's I could work on stacking slabs all the time every day, every moment, but I've got kids, and I have to manage myself to pull the plug, especially in the evenings, or I'll just run myself into the ground.

There's great things. There's challenges. You got revenue pressure, balancing creativity in the business, navigating sponsors, their expectations timeline, avoiding burnout, saying no, which is a big one.

Learning to say no is very important for any entrepreneur in any walk of life.

Specialization of time has been a theme for me this year is how do I make sure my time is being put in the right places that are going to push the brand forward?

You're gonna second guess yourself. You're gonna carry the weight of trying to run your own business, but also learning that passion and profession don't always sink as neatly as you want.

But isn't that why we show up every day to to work to be challenged? At least that's why I show up. I absolutely adore this industry. I adore the opportunity I have every day.

Sports cards are fascinating, and that's why it pisses me off when I see so much surface level conversation and the hobby being treated mere merely as a transaction. It's much more. It's much more.

There's stories. There's meaning. There's sense of purpose. There's a sense of identity. There is so much that we have as collectors to offer and this industry has to offer. I'm a big fan of almost all of it. I'm on the sideline.

I want it to grow. If it continues to grow, if it continues to expand, it probably means for good things for little businesses like mine to survive and to continue to maintain. As I look forward, I'm going to continue to push new ideas.

I'm going to continue to push content at a limit that I don't think the hobby has ever seen. I know that I can't be stopped when it comes to creating consistent, valuable, collector focused content in specific niche verticals.

I can't be stopped, and I'm not going to be stopped. And I'm fired up to be able to say that to all of you with so much confidence and conviction.

There's a lot in my head right now. There's a lot going on. I I I I would not be here without you, the loyal listener of stacking slabs, certainly brands like eBay supporting what I'm doing.

As we kinda close this out, just some things, some topics that are on my mind or just themes of this episode.

Purpose grows when you protect it with action. You gotta ship. Gotta go. Keep going. The more you do it, the more great things happen.

Consistency compounds. Consistency is a superpower of mine. I know it. I am habitual in my actions and activity, and it is a reason why I've been able to do what I've done for as long as I have.

Collectors are my people. There are lot of different labels, a lot of different types of people in this hobby, but I'm building it specifically for you.

Anything worth doing will always scare you at first. Something that I've had to think about, something I've had to navigate. I've said this a lot, but this is maybe the most important takeaway from anything I've done this year.

Trust is the strongest currency in the hobby. It's not money. It's not cards. It is trust. We've seen trust destroyed this year by scandals, stupid situations, and it's impossible to recover from it.

I think a lot about building and developing trust with all of you in every piece of content that I produce. I am very mindful of the reputation. I'm very mindful of the brand.

I'm trying to do whatever I can to make sure trust between us is always there. You can build a profession around what you love, but it takes intention, patience, and belief, and I am a talking example of that.

Letting go of the old version of yourself, whatever that is, whatever's weighing you down is the hardest thing but the most important, and that has been so important for me as I've transitioned into doing this full time.

I wanna thank you all for being a part of the journey. Your support helped change my life. Anyone who's listening, who's feel stuck, take that one step towards whatever it is that gives you energy.

It's a new year, man. New beginnings. There's a lot going on. This is the time. This is the time. Don't keep thinking about it. Just do it.

Passion isn't just a thing that we talk about. It's real. Passion is the feeling you get when you're aligned with what matters to you. And what matters to me is delivering exceptional collector focused content to you, on a daily basis.

It's crazy to say that, but it's it's a daily basis. And I feel responsible for that, and we're gonna continue to make that happen as we move into 2026. I hope you enjoyed that.

First solo passionate profession all year, the opportunity for me to talk about my story at Stacking Slabs. We're working on some awesome stuff this year. Hit the follow button. Make sure you're following me wherever I am.

I do appreciate that. Thank you so much eBay for giving me the space to be able to talk about my story and to have other entrepreneurs in this space share theirs. Excited for more down the road. Take care, and talk to you soon.