what's going on everybody excited for today's conversation we just spent i don't know fifteen twenty minutes talking about basketball and basketball cards that you're all not going to get a chance to listen to but hopefully that'll make its way throughout the course of this episode i'm joined today by adam gray and adam is someone who i have wanted to have on the show ever since we started passionate profession i think it's really fun to meet and connect with other people who are building businesses inside this hobby and adam has been someone i've been following ever since i got back there wasn't many people doing podcasting adam was there and you know i just type in sports cards in my apple podcast and the basketball card podcast pop up and i would just listen to everything like adam i can remember just driving around town listening to you talk and i was like didn't know you but knew you were passionate about basketball cards so we're gonna talk about just your career in the hobby and a whole lot more but without further ado welcome man how are you dude it's so good to do this you and i haven't chatted in way too long but i'm really good i've been looking forward to talking to you all week and obviously you know i'll say the same thing a lot of your listeners do when they first join which is it's just awesome to see the growth of the stacking slabs network and all the things that you that you get that you're doing like it went from being a show to like so many shows and so many different things and i'm just really happy for you and all the success that you're having so thanks for having me on and glad to be a part of today's show and have this conversation with you the feeling is mutual and you have been building and doing a lot of different things and we're gonna talk about those things but i you know it's funny i was i was digging into just linkedin beforehand and i just loved your your headline how you identify yourself author podcaster real maker i talk about sports cards for a living and that was so awesome and i was like i i personally dude love being able to tell people what do you do for a living oh i talk about sports cards dude there's not many of us who like wear that on our sleeves so maybe just as we just jump off into this conversation like what's that like for you like like coming to that realization that like that's what you get to do dude it is like i i answer it like this people used to ask me when i was young like what do you wanna do for a living like what i do is so much cooler than what i thought i would be doing at this age right i always said i wanted to play in the nba which would have been amazing obviously and i obviously didn't do that but i'm forty three years old now and there's no forty three year olds left in the nba so what would be my outlook even if i did make it doing it into the nba i'd be like maybe like be able to be a coach or something like that but then i'd have to travel all the time instead i get to just like research cards and talk about them and yeah i'm like pinch me for sure because i i feel i'm and i say it with like a lot of gratitude like i feel so fortunate to be able to do what i do and at some point maybe the journey will end and i won't be able to do it anymore but i'm gonna do it as long as i can do it as long as it keeps you know working out for me i'm just gonna keep going because i i love it how do you feel i feel the same way how do you feel with just like this the the industry being in this position that the industry is in right now where it's like very much from like a a business perspective still forming like the infrastructure is still being put in place and but cards are selling for all time highs and you're just seeing stories of an outside capital and investment being put into this space we're seeing athletes involved and it's it is not the same hobby as when i was listening to adam on the basketball card podcast you know six years ago it's a it's a lot different like i find myself in this position where i'm like cheering for it all like i just wanted to continue to grow and expand and i want exciting opportunities to present it themselves to anyone who's passionate about working in this space but like like what what is your viewpoint in in just like the industry and what's happening right now i like how you just described how you feel about it and i would honestly love to hear more about how you feel about it but for me i feel like you i feel excited i feel like every time there's something big that's happening some like big movement in in in the market or in like you know the the technological the technological advances of the market or smart things that i see people doing and you know big funding all those things are always really exciting because it validates the initial sort of thoughts where we thought that this might go where what we thought this might become we sort of go back in time and a lot of it has born out to be true and so as things like that keep happening it's like wow this is great like this is exciting and i and i like it but at the same time i also realized that those things you know if we look back at our history of sports cards there's also there's things that happen along the way that are are clunky and difficult and and so within all the big things the cool things that happen there's also these other things that are difficult and and i don't know where we're going man i have no idea but i just feel like i'm here for the ride and excited for it and if it goes back down to where it was you know ten years ago i feel like i'll still be here just doing the same things and so it doesn't have a huge impact on what i do day to day in a lot of ways but in so many ways it does i don't know if that's a good answer at all but that's sort of inside my mind a little bit on that do what do you do you have any other thoughts though any other feelings about like is it crazy to you to see these companies sort of like expanding and having a need for all of the different services that they need how much money there is in it like how how do you feel about it my position has been there is what i have learned about being in this space and working in this space is that there is so many different flavors of hobby there's so many different ways to approach it and i'll tell you like eight out of the ten ways if there were ten ways eight out of the ten ways aren't for me like i i i i i they're just not for me but so good i understand that those things likely need to exist in order for more outside interest capital companies to take shape and so what i have found is that is really encouraging is that like there's people like you who like what you said if it went down i'd still be working in this space and like i believe you because when i first started to listen to you like it wasn't like this it was it was a whole different ballgame but you you were you know you would share your passion and talk about your why and i don't know man maybe that's like what where i wanted to go is just like you're you're a big time basketball card collector you've been doing this essentially your whole life from what i've gathered through our chats and listening to your content like what is it about cards that you are not only drawn to collect but build a career around at this point man that's a real soul searching question rhett i'm serious it is i i wanna say a few things about this so i didn't know that this would become a career i didn't i i had no idea and then as i did my real career stuff i realized that i would rather be doing cards and of course that's true though of course like cards are fun right and everybody would rather do cards than do accounting which is what i was doing i was doing really cool accounting i will say that i was accounting for funds one my last my last thing that i did was private equity and venture capital fund administration i was a controller at a at a bcp shop here in utah and it was it was really cool but like i still just didn't like it so it was like this job that like a lot of accountants would be like that's the coolest job ever and i was like yeah but like i don't wanna do it anymore i would rather write about cards and like make videos about cards and talk about cards and then this is a funny story i don't think i've ever told this story before i was at the national in gosh what was it like twenty eighteen maybe and i ran into these guys who were from australia and one them was a big scottie pippen card collector and he's like do you have any big cards with you and i was like yeah i do i've had a couple big pippen cards and he's like no way let me see them long story short and the next i he he's like would you sell them i was like i didn't bring them to sell but like you're here from australia you probably need these more than i do like you're the biggest scotty piven collector you probably want these more than me and i and i was like you you you should make an offer and so he made an offer and i was like i just i i think it needs to be more than that and so anyway i gave i gave him an offer i said just think about it till tomorrow i'm not gonna sell them to anybody else in the whole show no matter what they offer they're yours for this if you want it and he's like okay and so the next day he he was like i put paul knew the punch line here because i promise this will lead to work he goes he goes so i wanna do x and which is like five hundred dollars less than i'd asked for and i looked at him his name was matt i was like matt listen you're here from australia you're the biggest scottie pippen collector in the world you've never seen these particular cards before you're probably never gonna see them again let's talk about how rare they are let's talk about why they're significant to pippin the uniform that he's wearing the design of the card and i just walked through it and there was like a group of two or three people listening to me sort of do this like thirty second off the top of my head riff and one of the guys as i finished says wow he's like did you just come up with that right now and i was like what do you mean and he's like that was crazy i've never seen anybody do anything like that before and i was like i genuinely don't know what you're talking about and he's like the way you talked about that like i just know you love cards and so you know your question is like why i don't know why but i do know that when i was a kid my mom bought me packs of nineteen ninety hoops some days when i was good she'd pull one out of the glove box when we were driving somewhere and she'd let me open it and like those are some of my formative memories i i love cards i love the thrill of opening a pack i love putting together sets i love putting together deals i loved i used to love like negotiation i hate negotiation now more than just about anything in the whole world and i love what i learned from it along the way and it's always just been fun for me and i've never known i never felt like in my career like that i can go out and i can do some great thing like you know save the whales or like do some like great awesome thing to make the world better but i've always felt like in my card collecting i can be i can build friendships and and like sort i don't know this sounds super cheesy but sort of like make the world better and like being a fun card guy to be like to hang out with and like i worked at a card shop for seven years and i loved learning about it and i just have always loved it and so i just am always drawn to it and i don't know if i have a better answer than that it's not it's again it's not any it's not any great thing but i do like to think that as we educate in the right way and i like to think that i do that i like to try to do that at least i think it's a noble i think it's a noble good thing i think it is at least i'm trying to make it that so what i picked up on from your scottie pippen pitch was that you are someone who appreciates context you appreciate the story behind the card and sharing those stories with your audience this rang true with the birth i'm looking behind you and you've got all the basketball card fan fanatic additions which i i i can remember being at my old house before we even had kids and i have three daughters now and i can remember those coming out and just sitting there in peace and quiet on a saturday and just reading through everything and it was so awesome because not only did i get to hear someone talk about apparel or write about a parallel but i got to understand like the people behind some of these instagram accounts and it was something you kinda built from the ground up and maybe like i i think like we have these ideas in our head so often about things we want to build or should build and we just don't do it in this space but like that was something like you were very adamant on bringing to life and putting together and you did it so maybe like inter i know like you were making a salary to like probably support your family through the basketball card fanatic but you're probably generating some revenue and you're having fun doing it so maybe like talk about that experience with basketball card fanatic bringing it to life and just like how that all came to be well the coolest part is now people are selling them on ebay it's all for their home i've seen i've seen multiple issues suffer like forty dollars which makes me so happy i i that whole experience is just crazy to think about i i you know in preparation for this you sent me some questions and one of the questions that you asked was something like you know what what made you start thinking about it or something and i i don't even know i don't remember at this point i remember i remember there were people who were doing things at this point they were trying to like make cool things in the hobby like card ladder had just come out and you know they they were they were getting that launched and i was like man that's so cool i wanna do something big and i just i've never been it's really funny because like i went to business school i don't think i'm a dumb guy but like i've never really known how to like run a business or how to make any anything like big i've never been a big people mover i don't know how to like get people to do things i've never had like employees i just i just am more like a guy who can start things and just see what happens but like that doesn't mean that i'm good at like running a business anyway that's another story for another day so i was just like it'd be really cool if like the old section of beckett magazine that had all of the cool like written things if that existed today wonder if we could make something like that that wasn't a price guide but was all of the you know all of the qualitative stuff that people would like and i wonder if people would buy it and like i talked to doctor beckett about it and i talked to a few other people about it and he was like adam you could just try this and i was like yeah i could try this like people would like to write for this magazine right and what if what if like we just wrote it and what what if we like just send it out via pdf that would be so cool and so i did it once for free and i sent it out to all these people and i had a few people who wrote for it and it had like no design work or anything and then and then i had a friend message me and you know and i know you know him because you've interviewed him before black griffin cards on on instagram he messaged me he's like adam the worst thing about your magazine is the design that's never gonna do anything if you don't do this and i was like wow you're a pretty straightforward guy aren't you and he was right a basketball card fanatic wouldn't have made it five issues if it wasn't for kevin he he made the whole thing happen and so we we just he's he's like hey like let me help you with this let me do this let me do that and we sort of formed a partnership and then over the course of the next like four four plus years every month i don't know how we did this still every month we came up with a full legit magazine that was between thirty two and thirty six pages long with all of the design all of the editing all of the everything it was not some massive perf it wasn't beckett right although beckett had lots of mistakes in it too we had mistakes and we had other things that that weren't that made it not perfect but we had incredible interviews and super passionate articles and you know education that was really good we did a lot of really cool things but the most issues that we ever solved in any given month was five hundred issues we never sold more than that and so it's not like it's not like we made a ton of money we did have sponsors thankfully for cgc and who else pwcc and leland's and a few others like we had a few little sponsors here that sort of kept us and able to do it but then finally one day i sort of just like looked around and i was like man i am working so hard on something that five hundred people are seeing you know and a lot of those five hundred people are getting the magazine they're looking at the cover then they're putting it away you know not everybody was reading it every every month and i know know even as like good good subscribers like it's hard to like sit down and read a magazine and stuff so but i i loved it i loved the passion i i was really proud to do it because because it was not it was never gonna be some multimillion dollar thing it was just about fun and passion and like we made it last for over four years right we made it go and people people don't know this we spent more on on printing the printing the magazine than it cost to like subscribe to the magazine like we we did everything that we could to just try to make it fun for collectors that was possible because of this because of the sponsors obviously and yeah we made a little bit of money but for the most part dude it was just it was one of the coolest things that i've ever done i'm glad you asked me about it because people don't ask me about it anymore even though i've got the the issues sitting behind me people don't really ask me about it anymore but brett it was dude it was so much fun thank you for asking me about i loved it i used to like message it was a great networking tool for me because i'd read someone's article and i'd message the the collector and be like this was so awesome thankful and i'd build relationships off of it and maybe like i think putting work out into the world it's a it's a form of building reputation like do you do you think like do you think basketball card fanatic like how important was it to you getting your reputation out there and like do you think you'd be doing what you're doing right now if it wasn't for something like basketball card fanatic gosh this is a good question i don't think i would have been able to do it i my at one point we hired an editor his name is remington he was a friend of mine from like from like the world of accounting and he goes adam i'm gonna tell you why you're running basketball card fanatic right now like why because i because i he he could tell i was having fun but he could tell i didn't really know what i was doing and he goes you're running it because you wanna get a full time job in the space and you want to be able to have your career be in cards and you wanna show your family that you wanna show your kids that they can do what they want that they don't have to go out and just do the big job with a fancy name and you know make all the big money you can go do what you wanna do and so that's what you wanna show your kids and that's what the purpose of basketball card fanatic is and then along the way you know i had an offer to go work for pwcc and i was like wow that so to answer your question that happened directly because of bcf and your point you couldn't be any any better you couldn't be any more spot on about this the the the best part of bcf the best part was that every month we had this big interview and we had you know three or four community articles that were written or maybe like one or two community articles as we as we got later in in bcf's history and i would ask people i would be like i'd like message people like i'd message somebody like nat turner and i'd be like hey nat you don't know me but i have this magazine that i'm running and can i talk to you and he'd be like sure and i was like okay that's crazy i can't believe matt turner just said yes and i did that with everybody like i just asked everybody and all but like one or two people were always like yeah i'd love to be your big interview and a lot of times was people that like never got interviewed and so you got you get to hear about like things that made them tick and you know because you've interviewed as much as many people in the space as anybody has like when you when you sit down with somebody and you like get into like really what makes them tick like it connects you in a way that's pretty cool and so after four years right i had like all these people who i had connected with in a real way in a meaningful way and they loved like getting there's something different i have to say about this when you get a paper like interview with like a transcript of like this is what we talked about with images and stuff it's pretty cool like they i think people were pretty they they felt pretty neat to be like in a magazine even though it's not nearly as cool as like an interview you know like this type of interview it's not as informative it felt it felt like official it felt like like a publication it just it felt really cool i think for a lot of people oh that's awesome i i go back and think about that publication and they have a lot of very fond memories and that is i think the mark of really good work when peep when it comes up and people think about it and it makes them feel good i think you gave the reasons why like you know it eventually sunset the publication and you're kind of in this mode after that right where you you're working your job which was the coolest accounting job that any accountant could have i'm the son of an accountant so i understand the game a little bit but you have this desire too to like you know i would imagine continue to pursue this path and working and supporting hobby businesses or bringing in supplemental income like how did you navigate like that from like maybe a time perspective of like my primary source of income is is paying me it's supporting my family but i'm also like have these side things going on like how how did you end up navigating that especially from a father who's got you know kids and you've only got so much time like how did you manage that i navigated it poorly like i often do i i often get imbalanced i'll bet you're the same way i'll bet you're the same way like i bet a lot of us are the same way maybe a little bit obsessive maybe a little bit a little bit adhd may you know but i think a lot of us have some of those tendencies i know i do my wife all the time is like adam you have these things you need to be less obsessive she tries to keep me you know maybe more balanced but i don't always do a very good job of that so anyway to answer your question though i so i was at i was doing private equity i started the magazine and then i took that job at pwcc and part of the stipulation for taking the job at pwcc is i still needed to be able to make the content and then i or make the make make the magazine and i made the magazine all the way through my time at pwcc and then at pwcc things went crazy because the world changed on us for sports cards like it has many times in the past a lot of us got laid off and i was one of those people who got laid off and it was this terrible moment for me because i was like gosh i left this great accounting job so that i could pursue my card thing and this is the end of it and then right after they laid me off i got a call from the content team at pwcc and they were like listen we know you might not be up for this but if you are up for it we would like you to still continue to make content for us just as a part time thing and i was like okay and i said can i do the same thing for other places at the same time and they said yes and that was really like the most important moment for me in my career because what it enabled me to do is not just make content for one entity but for all of the different places out there and and that was a really tricky place to navigate for a little while you can imagine like it's crazy and then in retrospect i still don't know how i i don't know how it how it happened i don't i'm gonna say like here's what i did here's what i i think i just got really lucky like in so many spots i think it was lucky that i got laid off when i did but i was make i was doing the magazine at the same time too and so for like the next i don't know like the next year or two it feels like i still was making the magazine while i was also making content for all these different places and then just somewhere along the way like i was like i can't do the magazine anymore i've got too much stuff going on and i'd see my like my average reel was being seen by like forty fifty thousand people and then my magazine was being like bought by like four hundred people and i was like what am i doing here like i can't i can't keep doing that because it's costing me all of this other stuff mhmm and i realized like i'm only one person i can't and i and again i've never known how to use like employees or anything like that so i just i don't know man i still have no idea what i'm doing brett like i have no clue what i'm doing today i have no idea like but but i do know that i had to stop and that was a good thing for me to do because my wife would tell you this too like i'm just really bad at making sure i always put first things first but i really do try and i think i've got the right perspective i just fail at it pretty much like i've really failed at it a lot i've like we've been married for almost twenty years and i failed a good percentage that time but i think as i'm getting older i think i'm getting better and i'm always trying to do that but i it's always like in my heart right like i wanna be spending the right amount of time with my family and i do i've done things like i've always walked my kids to school i've always read my kids' books before before before they go to bed i've always done those types of things to try to be balanced but i really struggle at it man i feel like it's a lifelong battle for guys like us we're we're we're constantly going to be trying to find the balance and probably failing at it it never stops because the hobby never stops and our interest around cards and especially if you're creating around cards like the the opportunities are endless and i often say if i didn't have a family i would i would literally be working day in and day out you referenced like it's remarkable thinking about it from that context like four hundred subscribers of basketball card fanatic to you're creating you know a ninety second reel that's getting seen by forty thousand people and like you have really built your brand around these stories and these reels and yeah at the end of it like you're pointing people to this card being available for at auction but like you are taking the time to share narrative and context which is i don't know if anyone's told you this but i'm so fascinated by the fact that like in this attention economy in the short form mode where everyone's like just doom scrolling like you have somehow found a way to slow even that form of content down to a story and a snack size bite that gives you the picture that you need and i'm i'm curious on like i wanna talk about that like you you're a re you're self identified real maker and it's it's a growing space in this hobby but like you're really the first person i can remember like being very consistent with doing it and it's around specific cards and it's you know we all have these auctions that go on all the time and monster cards but we don't slow down and tell the story of these cards and of of course like with your show cross hobby and the reels like you're you're doing that you're telling the story but i'd love to know like how this started like how did you get good at this like when did this begin because i imagine like this is a key piece of like you being able to do this full time one of the last things i did at pwcc before i left was i took my first shot at one of these and it was before i even knew that anybody was being laid off or anything so there was a card that was at auction it was like a it was a twenty twelve prism silver or something and i was like you know what i don't think people realize how much rarer twenty twelve silvers are than these other years i wonder if i could graphically do that and so i asked an i asked you one of your friends nick from the wharf was like how do you make these real things because nick was making some of them for some of his clients when he was at pwcc and he's like well here's some software you that i've used and here's some other software that i've used and i was like that's it and he's like yeah just go try to do this and that and i was like alright let's just see what happens and so i so i tried to put this thing together and i and i finished it and brandon who's the head of content at pwcc he's like adam this is actually pretty good like and i think he was surprised because like we'd not tried anything like that before he's like this is pretty good and so we posted it and like it got like it got like eighteen thousand views like the first couple days and i was like this is cool like we did really good here and then i was like i wonder if i could tell a story about and i did a story about like about like do you remember the the uncle jimmy baseball card find it was like all the autograph babe ruth cards there's one of those cards at auction and i was like that's a really cool story i wanna tell that and the the the pwcc team was like we need to tell stories about these three cards and i was like okay but like this story right here is really good we should tell this story because people are gonna love this and so they were like okay do these three and then do this one i was like cool so i did it and it was the first thing that we'd ever had blown up on tiktok like literally the it was like the second reel i'd ever done and it got like mill like a million views on tiktok and we'd never gotten anything with like over a thousand views fifteen hundred views or something like that and it was like i think i'm good at this like i think i know how to do this i think i get why and this again this is like if i have if i if i have to say like here's what the thing is that was like my superpower it was that and this goes back to the scottie pippen story like i've always understood because i love cards like what stories are that are really fun for collectors and so where a lot of people try to come into the real space sort of being like hey know how to make content let me see if i can tell tell a story i'm like the opposite like i know the stories i can see a card and know it in like two seconds or sometimes it takes some research to understand like what what might be cool in fact i had a neat story that i came across yesterday as i was as i was researching but like i take that and then figure out like how to how to tell the story and technically i am not very good at that but i do think that the the story itself is the more important part that people care about and i've really tried to like double down on that and and i feel like that's worked i feel like it's worked but it doesn't always there's times where i'm like this story is amazing like i did one on a check signed by or not a check a business card signed by babe ruth it was like my favorite reel i'd ever done i took hours i seriously spent like twenty something hours on this this reel brett like twenty something hours on a on a one minute reel and something like eight thousand people watched it so you know i don't i don't really know what i'm doing but some sometimes sometimes things work out the way that i think they will and sometimes sometimes they don't when when did you realize that that format could be something that you could be working on and could support your family and i guess what i'm i'm interested in like when did you realize like that was sustainable enough for it to be something that you prioritized your time and not and and and using that as a product to then go to other businesses and say i i can do this for you too like how how did that all take shape probably when brandon was like hey don't don't leave us totally we need you to continue to do these these are really good pieces of content you're doing and i was like oh cool like i can make a good portion of what i need to make from this small amount from pwcc and then if i could just do this for a few other people so i looked at my wife and i was like hey we don't have health insurance anymore how do we do this so she went back to work for a little while and then i did this other stuff and you know like she's a nurse and so it sort of it made sense it was good timing for that too but then as the months went by i was like man like there's there's some real demand for this and i'm just gonna keep doing it i'm gonna keep trying to try to do these thing for things for people and most of the places that i did it for were like after we did it once they were like hey can we do that again and so i just kept trying to kept trying to do it and honestly brett like i've had a lot of people since since then ask me like hey what's next for you and i've had a couple clients who were like or not clients but a couple people who are big collectors who are like hey can i give you funding so you can create a business around this i'd like you to show other people how to do this i'd like for you to create this like thing and i don't know how to do any of that i have no idea i have no clue what i know is that i like i love it like when we finish today i'm gonna go i'm gonna go tell another story about a card that that's coming up at the fanatics premier and it's i'm gonna i'm gonna post it tonight and i'm like excited to write it i'm excited to record it the whole thing will probably take me five four five hours to do the whole thing from beginning to end maybe more maybe a little bit less but like i realized you know that that that was something that other people wanted and i've just tried to just tried to do it in ways that are helpful for people and you know i like sometimes people will message me they'll say hey can you do this for me and sometimes it's like it's not a good story and i don't like it and so i just don't do it that happens that happens kind of a lot but if there's a story and i think like this is one of the things that i ask this is gonna sound a little bit altruistic but it's true i try to ask like could this story influence somebody who's like outside the hobby outside our hobby community to go oh you know what that's pretty cool like i like that i wanna go learn about it i like to think and i don't know if this is true because it's hard to measure but i like to think that what i'm doing is not just for our ecosystem it's for people who are outside our ecosystem to sort of learn about what we're doing and so in that way i hope i'm part of the growth that we're that we're seeing i don't know if i am though i have no clue i have no way to measure that and that's one thing that's tough tough about marketing today is so much marketing is measurable but what i do nobody really knows whether it's met whether it's it's it's good or not what i can say and i can say this definitively is i have never paid for followers or like views i've never boosted it i've never done any of those things not once and i do get the sense that some there's some bigger accounts out there probably have done a lot of that stuff and like i don't know that though i don't know that to be clear i i really don't i just i want to make stories that will appeal to broadly to even sports collectors and i think it's resonated with some people but other people though you know a lot a lot of people are still bothered by it some people will get to the end and you were nice about how you said it but some people will get to the end of a reel and they'll be like oh this was just an ad i hate that you did this ad and you made it tricky and i'm like man i'm not trying to trick anybody i'm just trying to tell some do something that you're gonna like sorry that it was an ad i guess you know do you you find that one of the things when i went off on my own was concerned about was this perception around working with hobby businesses like ebay and how people would think about me as an individual because i built all this content basically for free it cost me money like i would pay someone to help it make sound good and i wasn't making a dime and then went off on my own and partnered with companies like ebay and you know have made this a business and sustainable career for myself but you it wasn't without trepidation on my side like is has that ever been like the hobby's so judgmental at times but there's also like this desire for people to be entrepreneurs like on the dealer side and hobby shops but like as a content creator in this space it's also new like was was that a has that ever been a concern for you and like how to navigate it especially since you built like your platform in a in an organic way yeah you you and i live the same life in this way like one hundred percent like i and i and i'm like this is a character flaw but i'm way too much of a people pleaser i hate it when people are upset with the things that i'm doing or whatever like i don't it's not a good thing it genuinely is not a good thing that i care as much i do about what other people think so i often allow myself to think when i'm making a decision like what would so and so say some so and so who's like a critic you know and i've tried to just like do that less right i've tried to like not think about the critics or the haters as much you know especially as the content has been more and more viewed i feel like that's important you have to realize that every and i and i know that this what i'm about to say is true but i still struggle with it every great every great thing that people have tried to do has been really like picked apart and and people have received great deals of criticism for them but you have to you have to follow and do the thing that you think is right and and and good and you have to just live with the results you have to use the best you use your brain to make the very best decisions you can and realize that some people are gonna hate you and like and that's that has been a real struggle for me but then on the other side of it you know when i make a when i make an episode these days of across the hobby i look at it afterwards the average one of those videos these days gets about five hundred hours of watch time and it's not unbelievable like a lot of shows do so much more than that but like i'm literally providing five hundred hours of free entertainment and like some people are gonna be super critical about it the vast majority of those people are not they're thrilled to be able to just do their free stuff some people don't appreciate it i'm sure but like some people really do and so that brings me joy you know knowing that like there's people who are like thank you for doing this thank you for sharing what you know thank you for sharing your experiences i love to hear your perspective and so you know there are always gonna be the haters but then on the other side of it i think there are people and dude this isn't a word for you too there are people who are really grateful you know for what you do brett they they're grateful for the shows that you put together and you might get stuck sometimes on that person who leaves you sort of a thorny message but just let just let them go be miserable because they probably will be and hopefully they they they get better at some point hopefully you can help them be better but you can't worry too much about them what what what's your evaluation of like the current content landscape and the hobby and like your place in it like i mentioned when i mean there was kyle wax museum you house of jordan i mean when i first there cardboard chronicle there wasn't a lot and now it's you've got people like talked to jeremy last week or a couple weeks ago he's building a business around content you're building a business around content like there's so much opportunity to do it although i will say it's not like you can just say i'm gonna do this this day like my advice to anyone would be like you gotta build your brand and you gotta make the right connections in order to be able to do this like it's doesn't just happen overnight but like i would love your opinion on that like we have people making great money to support their family by talking about cards right now like do you like what is your evaluation of just like the ecosystem of content and just the opportunities in the industry right now remember early in earlier in the episode when you said like eight out of ten people are what do you how do you say it something like eight out of ten people are doing things that i just don't really appeal to me at all yep i feel the same way like most of the things that are out there in terms of every l every element of the hobby it's almost like we're we're not even the same we're not even in the same hobby you know what i mean yep like i was at i was at this was a couple months ago was at church and this guy was like so you're in a basketball card son i'm like yeah i'm in a basketball cards and he's like he's like cool he's like my dad is in the is in the basketball cards and i was like oh cool he's like you work you work in the hobby do are you a breaker and i was like no like no i'm not a breaker and i was like no not that there's anything not that there's anything wrong with that there's nothing wrong with being a breaker but no i'm not a breaker like no i wouldn't i would not wanna be a breaker what i do is like so much i i got like defensive was like what the hey adam take a step back like he he's he's he's evaluating what you're saying from his lens right and that's that's the answer to your question brett like i i don't understand what a lot of people are doing or how they're doing it i'm very much in my lane and loving what i do and i'm like i said i'm just gonna do it for as long as i can but i think it's cool that other people can and i think that it all works together in an ecosystem that i just don't generally understand i understand my part of it and i think i'm just gonna sort of be content with that but the older that i get the more that i realize i don't understand the whole picture about a lot of things you know yeah i think adam you know we're both a couple of guys in their our forties trying to tell stories and about cards and the world is we're we're we're gonna be the ones pointing up at the clouds yelling here pretty soon we're right we're right my kids are like my kids are like what's gonna happen with jobs and ai dad and i'm like i have no idea i hope i can keep doing what i'm doing until you guys are old enough to figure that out but like i don't know what's going on totally i know we're up on time but i want just one more question before i let you get out of here i i'm curious like you have done a lot podcast you've worked for a business in the hobby you're you've done magazine you've done reels working independently like you've spent a lot of time creating in this space meeting people connecting learning about cards like has how has any of this like working professionally in this space how has this changed your view on collecting or what you collect or has it has it not changed anything at all i i don't know that it's really changed very much it's the companies are pretty much what i think i i i always sort of expected they were i think most of the people who everybody who i've worked with is so good like they're all good and people are like this grading company is this way and i'm like i i don't think you're right about that like i think they're good i think they're just trying to build a business i don't know anybody in the hobby where i'm like that's a like i i guess i shouldn't say that like there's people who do bad things right they trim cards and they steal and they shill they do all these bad things and we hear about those things from time to time and we let those things become the whole story but for the most part i just i think you know the bad stuff is pretty limited i worry about gambling i worry about gambling a lot you know i i think i think that that the line between collecting and gambling can be pretty thin i wrote an article once for for bcf that was called i don't remember what it was called it was basically it was about two guys that i saw when i worked at house of cards in salt lake who really like lost everything because of cards and i worry that we will not focus on those things as much as we ought to because frankly if we can get if we can get some of that stuff out if we can understand sort of the dangers of breaking and the dangers of even buying you know singles and stuff there's a lot of danger in out there if we can understand those things and make make people aware of that i think that's a good thing and i think we should talk about those things a lot but no i i am you know i think that that the kabi community is an awesome place to be and being able to work in it the way that i have has been really fun and i never dreamt i mean i like i never dreamt a few months ago i got to serve i didn't actually end up getting to go to trial but i got to serve as an expert witness for a multimillion dollar card case i like i've gotten to work with most like a lot of the big companies i've gotten to tell stories about thirteen million dollar cards i've got i'm like i just can't believe some of the cool things that like it's opened me up to and i'm really grateful for it and i just don't have anything but positive things to say it's been an awesome journey and i i hope i hope that it just keeps going and i'm here in twenty years it's still doing something similar to what i'm doing right now you and i both you can follow him at the real twenty seven guy across the hobby on the youtube adam always great catching up appreciate all of the insight and passion you brought to the conversation looking forward to doing this again down the road keep crushing it man you are you are killing it keep doing your thing