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Welcome to the Stacking Slabs, a podcast for sports cards collectors. There's been a tremendous amount of change to our Hobby over the last few years and the one constant has been the passion from the collecting community. Stacking Slabs is built by the collector and lives to tell stories for the collector.
what's going on everybody welcome back to another episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay today we are speaking with zach stanley the ceo of we the hobby i have not been able to go anywhere without we the hobby being front and center in my face this conversation is about scaling this conversation is about thinking differently this conversation is about what is happening in this space and how you build towards the future i really enjoyed it shout out ebay for sponsoring passionate profession and bringing these conversations around entrepreneurship and building operations and growing the hobby to all of you if you wanna show your support for stacking slabs hit the follow button tell a damn friend run on over to the patreon group it's zach stanley we the hobby coming at you alright we are back with another episode of passionate profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay this conversation is one i've been looking forward to all week i was just telling today's guest that been seeing his brand almost everywhere i go on the hobby internet which is not easy to do we're gonna talk about kinda the origin story of hobby scaling growing the business and doing it all in a space that we love but without further ado i am joined by zach stanley who's the ceo at we the hobby zach how's it going man i'm doing great brett you know it's i know we have some exciting things to talk about but it's a privilege to you know get to spend some time with you these are the types of things you know for me that getting to take a break from the insanity of the day to day and and talk some shop it's a nice reprieve let's let's start with like we were remarking on where we are from and where we kinda do our business in digging around and learning about you it seems like everywhere i went for about or looked about we the hobby and looked looked about for you information rochester was front and center and i know we're gonna be talking about essentially growing a business on the internet but i think it's really important to kinda understand our roots but i can tell that you are a proud resident of rochester new york it's it it feels to me like it's a part of your brand maybe talk about what that's like kind of with your roots planted in the city you're from building a business at the scale that you are right now yeah i don't think until i got out of rochester and and did a lot of different traveling for work that i fully understood how few people know where rochester is on the map and you know i just tell people it's up near buffalo in canada or or i say i'm from new york right and and then the the casual response is that they love new york and i'm like yeah it's great and that it just stops there but i you know i grew up in rochester i think you know i i like to to reference us relative to bristol a little bit in early days for espn in that like no one expected to be traveling to bristol right and now we've sort of created this this brand that that you know really is a media and entertainment brand in live shopping and collectibles and we have people that have moved here from all over the country to take advantage of you know the opportunity to be a part of what's going on and you know knowing that it's my hometown knowing that we you know we built it here we were we were the fastest growing company in rochester this past year for twenty twenty five so it it's just been it's been exciting to you know to plant the flag here and have and have so many people willing to willing to come to rochester and and support the boost that we've given the economy here and it's just yeah it's really exciting to to have grown up here and and to have substantiated such an exciting business i love the bristol comp obviously there's some dream big mindset mentality that you're projecting with kind of what you're building which i think is really cool and you've built this business from you know you and a couple people to you know you're you're hiring i've gone to your website you're it's scaling i think hundred hundred and fifty people you you mentioned you know entertainment and there's cards involved there's live shopping but when you think about the business that you're building like what are you actually building like how do you frame up we the hobby and and and kind of what you're up to with with the company i i like to say that we're kind of a a moments factory you know we we have this unique opportunity as a business that not you know every business has to have making someone's day really be the focus of of the brand right and that we wanna continue to elevate the experience and and give people a break from whatever they have going on you know and we see that in our chats every day we see it in content we see it in relationships and community and you know community is a huge piece here it's it's you know it's the biggest piece in that in that it's a second screen experience people are gathering together they're watching games on their couch and they're able to connect with people and talk about what's happening you know on the tv while they're ripping cards in in a way that you know they wouldn't necessarily be able to if if we didn't exist at least not in the same way and and and certainly other companies in the space and so that responsibility is how i view it of like you know as a ceo i tend to see the gaps a lot in what we can do better and and that's a huge focus of our day to day is how do we how do we fill the gaps and elevate that overall experience to make someone's day and that is that is something that gets me up every day and something that keeps me going experience i think is such a critical element of this next era of the hobby you're seeing you know experiences at shows like take fanatics fest for instance you're seeing experience being retold in from a hobby shop perspective and feel like moving into this new new era it's it's really all about the experience and i think a lot of the experience that we as collectors are getting right now is through kind of our mobile phones and through a new channel like live selling and live selling on you know multiple platforms i think in kind of digging in and learning about you through this print prep for this episode i i i understand you have a lot of conviction around live selling and it still feels although there's live sell multiple platforms there's a lot of different channels it it feels like live selling is still really in its infancy state where did this kind of conviction and belief you had around live selling early come from when i saw i mean you know obviously in the us a big a big mechanism or or driver into into the origin of live selling is is in collectibles right and so when i saw this for the first time it was it was in twenty twenty and it was you know it was fragmented it was fractionalized all over the place there were people on on facebook on instagram that they were then going on to youtube channels or their website or you know before you know before whatnot really started booming and we saw the other apps start to pop up you know like ebay live and obviously you know while this is happening there's there's a massive economy scaling in china of live shopping across all different categories and so this was sort of the you know just the formation or starting point in the us but very obvious that the wave of social media and the wave of connectivity and engagement was going to connect to how people consume and how people shop and in an in a era in which we are losing to an extent the ability to connect as much as we used to or not necessarily losing it but choosing not to right in in a physical presence that gap is there i think for people to connect in new ways and live shopping and and certainly specifically live shopping in the collectible space for sports fans in excess in whole new different ways that i think is part of the evolution of of social media to an extent you have a pretty unique background in other areas like you know fantasy sports gaming maybe share some perspective on like those career stops and experiences and how they kinda set the stage for you on building your company and maybe what those experiences taught you about how to interact and think about experiences for kind of the customers that come in and participate in we the hobby streams your shop and all the other things you're you're up to yeah i think you know owning a business is is and scaling a business is a very challenging thing and i started my first business when i was twenty four we managed to secure an investment within a couple years of of starting a business which like you said was in was in the fantasy sports and and sports gaming software space and we did all different projects i went you know i went to the uk i went to austria i went i went to all these different places talking about gaming and talking about fantasy and the growth of fantasy sports and it was it was a heartbreaking venture to an extent in which it it was really nine years of hills and valleys and seemingly every project ended up in a valley one way or another and and you know some of that was some of that was was where i was at at the time right in in terms of my own growth some of it was just a lot of it was just bad luck and you know you come out of that with some with some scars right and some war stories and you take that into the next thing and i think for for myself and for the team here i talk a lot about candor and i talk a lot about introspection and introspection for me has has been you know i think it's a an inherent obsession of my personality but it's it's also and critical to my evolution to say hey what am i what am i missing what can i learn from what just happened and what can i bring to the next phase and i think those those tumultuous nine years put me in a position to to look at this opportunity and say i i can take all of those things that i've learned i can take all that heartbreak and and process it in a way that allows me to be successful in this incredible opportunity that i saw back in twenty twenty i love this going back and i don't wanna open up the wounds too much for you but i think it's interesting that you kinda went all in on these other career ventures with that i sense maybe didn't quite go the way that you wanted them but through that you probably learned some really valuable experience on top of the introspection that you're talking about now i find that this movement we're seeing in the hobby that's unprecedented a lot of it is being driven by people who are building these companies who have not spent their entire career in the hobby but are coming from other industries and injecting some of those career experiences to kind of grow not only their business but in turn grow the hobby maybe share a little bit about like those existing career experiences and do you think you going through those maybe kinda hills and valleys has given you any sort of edge as you've kinda set foot in growing and scaling with the hobby well i do wanna make one thing abundantly clear brad i am a lifetime collector so i don't want that to get lost in the conversation here i grew up with my dad bringing me home packs of cards i had you know a jerry rice nineteen eighty six tops rookie i had multiple derek jeter rookies i was i had a huge collection growing up and and i think you know one of the things that i saw in this space was the opportunity to to really the only market opportunity to invest in athletes in a way right in sports cards and i started doing that in the two thousand tens pretty heavily seeing that you know if if a player won mvp mep or championship that their market inherently moved and you know i i was enamored with that and i think right now that is that is part of the fandom now right is is owning owning a piece of of what what could happen on the field and and that player's popularity which is such a cool thing because it's like it's like fantasy sports supercharged right and that you have the arts you have the asset you have the market you have the on field performance and it all comes together to to create this awesome communal experience as well for me you know the the heartbreak and the challenges you know i can remember those moments and i i i can remember you know i can remember a moment where i thought i was closing this this massive deal in in the gaming space and i won't i won't get into it but i thought at the time that it was it was the biggest thing that could happen for our company and i got a phone call that it was being that that the partner was pulling out of the deal and i remember you know taking a shower after i got off the call to get ready for my day and just breaking down in the shower because i had fought so hard to to get to that point and it was all up in flames and so i think what we've seen a bit unique to this space it certainly happens everywhere but what we've seen a bit unique to this space is is you sort of have hustlers come into this space very early on and that's sort of how i designate them and that they there was an opportunity to make money right and they were savvy in social media and content and they came in and they and they took advantage of of an opportunity to you know flip products and and get visibility through through their social channels and you know more power to them they they accomplished that but i i think that what was lost in that a little bit is the long game for sure that that was absent i think for a lot of people and that you know the the idea of a quick buck sometimes stood at the forefront of well what is what is the longer term opportunity here and you know in many cases in that situation if you haven't run a business then you may you may see that and not be able to execute on it efficiently anyways or that may present a lot of challenges to be able to get to that level but i think the main thing was that when you don't have those sorts of experiences where you've lost and lost big multiple times then you don't really have the perspective on the opportunity and the moment in time versus you know a golden boy phenomenon to an extent in your in your own head right that that sort of a god's gift perspective right and and if you don't have those lessons it makes it more challenging to have the perspective of like we are really lucky to be here and to have a chance to participate in this and in doing so we wanna do everything we can to take advantage of that opportunity because the window will close and i mean we've we've seen it to an extent in our space right like the window isn't the same as it was not in retail not in braking it's vastly different than it was a few years ago and and execution in that in that time frame has has been critical for the success of our company i love how you put your hand up and you said you know i'm a collector i collected as a kid and i'm sure that influences or has influenced the build of your business in a specific way you also mentioned like outsiders coming in who might not have been collectors but are really good in content and just trying to make a buck and a lot of people were able to execute that way but not maybe not make it make that type of business sustainable how how important do you think it's been for you your people and the business to come from a place of like we're collectors we this is a genuine love and appreciation for this space and we are not just here to make money obviously you're trying to every business is trying to but you're here to you know deliver experiences and kinda make this hobby better like how important has like you that being a genuine collector i'm sure the people you're hiring are a collector how important has that been to kind of the the early success of we the hobby i mean you're you're not a collector until you are right and and i think one of the cool things that has happened and and certainly buoyed by the things that fanatics has has done in in helping grow the space on the marketing and content side is you know when we were kids doing this stuff like it it was cool within our our cohort within our group right and our friends but like the parents were like that's going on over there right and so now obviously you have this nostalgic component of you know people in my age group or or you know within ten years on either side that grew up on cards are are now you know in a position of disposable income and they can get involved in what's you know what's going on and and they're bringing their kids into it and and all of that stuff and i i think what we've talked about and i've said many many times is one of our main roles in the space is to bring cards under the umbrella of being a sports fan and alongside fantasy alongside sports betting alongside whatever whatever anyone engages with as as a fan going to games going to events buying merchandise whatever it may be all of those things are part of the fan ecosystem right and and cards i think are are the coolest one out of out of all of them in in that it's it's community it's an asset it's a market it's an experience it's art it's all these different things and you know the the hobby is cool now and the and that's a cultural movement right and so you can talk about live shopping and and the role that live shopping has played and will play and and i you know hundred percent agree with you as you said like we may be in the second inning of of this collectibles experience i think we might be in the on deck circle of live shopping at at this point and it for me with our team that's the wave that we've seen is that is that all of a sudden you're in this on a daily basis and you see the cards get hit and you see them come through you know packing and you see the live streams and the content and all the things that we're producing and you're a part of it and so suddenly you know your perspective changes from from what you might have came for which you may have come in as just a sports fan one of the big things for us has been you know let's hire smart people that are going to elevate the hobby most of whom have have a high passion for sports and you can come in and learn the hobby but if you you know if you're in analytics you can't love the hobby and suddenly be good at analytics right so i i think i think you know that methodology has been so important for us to to hire really good people and build a really strong brand that that the result is that those fans become become collectors the you you know your build is kind of classic entrepreneurial story of you know starting in a bedroom and you know with big ideas and big dreams and then you know you blink and then all of a sudden you have you know a hundred plus people you've got this global operation and i know maybe on the surface people outside looking in it feels like oh this is a overnight success story like this company's killing it but i'm sure you know in the sauce this there's a lot of blood sweat and tears that went into you growing and scaling with the hobby at the level that it is today maybe share with the listeners like what what were those inflection points like what were those moments where you realized that this was kind of this was more than just maybe your original idea but this the the opportunity you had at hand was something truly special yeah and i think that goes back a little bit to to recognizing the moment right and and you know what what would steve jobs have been doing if if he had ideas ten years later he probably would have been doing something really cool in another space right with a different company in a different industry perhaps but he wouldn't have been in the moment of time to start apple and and you know certainly not comparing myself to that but but this is you know the the growth of the hobby into a cultural phenomenon that is consumed by sports fans globally is a moment in time and and the there's been many people that have jumped in in to ride that wave and have have capitalized on it and companies and teams but if you if you don't recognize that window then like i i view this like and and try to to echo this to our team is that you know we just get this this moment in time to participate in this amazing thing and be a part of it and like i'm a like yes i may have started it but i'm a part of it and it's a it's a team it's a huge group of people working their asses off every day to create something special and in you know thirty years or whenever you know twenty years forty years we're gonna look back and say man we were a part of that thing when that happened and recognizing that is so important in in driving toward it in in saying this is this is sort of my mark right and and to take advantage of it and and that makes you certainly the losses right the the previous heartaches and and challenges give you a bit of a bit of positive fear and that you don't wanna go back there right you'll do anything if it's to go back to that but at the same time when you start to get momentum as a business and you see that the work that is being because a lot of people put in a lot of work and and blood sweat and tears like you said into many different things that they're passionate about or or that they start and it doesn't end up here and and a lot of times that is the moment it's not it's not the person sometimes it's the person or the group or what you know what you had when like maybe i could have executed better in the fantasy space if i was you know mentally foundationally where i am now right but this is this is such a unique thing to be a part of and to be able to carry that responsibility of enhancing experience for so many people on a daily basis that that makes you push it inherently makes you push and and i think that that's a culture at we the hobby is is that we we recognize what we're doing for people and what we mean to their daily experience and the human experience and that's you know that's worth sweating for i love the culture call out culture's really important having values is really important what's hard i think is when you are growing at the rate you're growing you're bringing in new people they're all over the world they're all trying to push forward it's it gets really challenging to maintain that culture not only you know in your central location but abroad like how have you as the ceo of the business thought about culture and culture as you're scaling whether it's through your internal communication strategy it's whatever it is like your hiring processes like how do you make sure that everyone you bring in understands what we the hobby stands for and carries that out as the company probably continues to be more ambitious each and every day yeah culture for us has been has been an evolution you know like looking back on the early days of the company and and what i what i thought culture was then or what i you know the the perspective that i had then it's that that evolves and an evolution is is a necessary part of of growth right and that you have to you have to accommodate and and and push forward the messaging to a much larger group and work i think across departments across leadership across management to emphasize some of the messaging you know that we've talked about which is which is that we could be anywhere doing anything and and instead we're working together on in this in this exciting space that that connects so many of us as fans and and connects people in the community and you know people here are actively connecting with the people in the community they're going to live events we spend a lot of resource and time and money in marketing on live events because we believe we believe so significantly in in the connectivity and the engagements that live events can bring if executed properly but it is you know it's a bit of a protect the shields you know type philosophy not to go you know not to go all roger goodell but i think this is the the good thing about culture when you start to get it right and and i'm not saying that we have it all right all the time but i do feel that we've we've grown our culture for the better incrementally you know every month every year and you start to get people rowing in the same direction and making that happen across departments is hard right because you need the right management focused on that and that needs to come down from leadership and filter into all areas of the company but the more people that you have rowing in that direction and and feeling that sense of duty and responsibility to the community the easier it is to identify when that's not the case with someone and and you start to get into situations where the people within those teams are identifying when there's an issue without management or leadership having to because they want to make sure that they have that positive continuity of the mission and you know you you attempt to work with those people obviously and get them to a place where they're they're bought into what's going on but ultimately what happens to so many companies and small businesses is is you don't do anything about those things and you let them fester or you don't identify them or you don't put people in a position where they feel comfortable talking about it etcetera and so it ends up you know it ends up becoming cancerous within the organization and i think lack of proactivity is is a huge piece of that if if you don't you can identify the standard if you don't have a group that wants to uphold the standard or you do have a group that wants to uphold the standard but you don't support them in upholding it then you have a problem i love that perspective maybe going back to the entertainment side and the manufacturing moments comment you made you're yeah the cards are the the basis like you're you're selling cards but the the way you're going about it is a lot different than i remember when i was growing up going to mall shows and kinda getting the confidence to go up to the old guy behind the showcase you know selling cards like it's a it's a whole different world and it's companies like with a hobby that's changing that perspective i think this kind of narrative and conversation around entertainment and entertainment and the hobby and and it just being talked about is it's it's newer collectors are starting to connect the dots on what that actually means but then i also think you have another side of maybe the ex old existing guard that doesn't quite understand or they don't wanna understand how entertainment plays a factor in this collecting space that they've been in for you know twenty thirty years when you think about just like entertainment and entertainment as kind of the the avenue to engage your customers like like how do you think about that not only as the ceo but just like how does how does that come through with all of the people who are extensions of we the hobby that are facing kind of the customer like how how are you kinda thinking about the entertainment side you know for us it's it's at the core of everything we do like we view ourselves as entertainers we you know we call our quote breakers on air personalities you know they are they are the you know they are the face of of the brands when they're live and when we talk about we the hobby you know i i want people to talk about we the hobby as as an experience as you know i love your streams i love coming in i love the community i love the shows i love you know and and entertainment is at the foundation of that that's what our responsibility is is is you know we talked about making people's day like how do we make people's day we give them a break by entertaining them and so that standard you know going back to the beginning when we when we launched our our first show in a in a studio that was actually a closet in our old shop it was all about that i mean to me that was the low hanging fruit that i saw in the business which was that i for some reason and it still exists today in an unbelievably bountiful form somehow is this idea that we should talk to customers in in a way that isn't solely focused on on enjoyment or or that like if we're running auctions and we're not getting the numbers that we want on a stream that we're suddenly going to flip a switch and and blame them you know for for the fact that we're not making money despite the fact that they are actually spending their hard earned money it's just not the number that you know that these breakers want that is to me i i was observing that back in in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one and and saying i the fact that i can come into this space and stand out from my competition because i'm not making customers feel bad like that's crazy to me right it it was insane but but that is you know that is the core of of who we are is to elevate you know well beyond that low threshold and you know we have people come in that that you know they've been in in been to iraq right or they have cancer or they you know they just found out you know something something terrible about a family member or a pet or what whatever it may be like they they are counting on us to to give them that break in their day and and give them excitement and so entertainment excitement energy i i still to a fault spend a little bit too much time checking in on our streams at night you know i'm fortunate to have a wife a partner that that tolerates me as much as she possibly can and and and she's still you know falling asleep and i'm i'm checking out what's going on but i it's gotten easier like we talked about because of that that rowing right and and that the standard of care within the company and within our entertainment team has reached a level where they're identifying when someone else isn't reaching that standard and so as time goes on i've been able to watch and listen less and less and maybe just occasionally jump in and watch for a little bit because i know that that standard is being taken care of by everyone here and that it's it's viewed as as a special duty to be able to uphold i think what's fascinating about a entertainment business like we the hobby is the individuals who are front and center obviously are an extension of the brand but in a lot of instances they're building up a customer base they're building up a reputation for themselves and there's so many options right like you can get on any of these apps get on ebay live and you can pick you know whatever company whatever breaker you want but what i'm observing as i'm studying this space is that the individuals who are breaking at businesses like we the hobby and the most successful ones have this ability to build their personal brand and reputation in a way where customers keep coming back because yeah they they wanna hit big cards but they know what they're getting and they're building a relationship and it's two way right it's the breaker is engaging and having conversation and recognizing the individual who keeps coming back and there's rapport being built and that's just good business and i find that as i'm observing like this is interesting to me because when this started it felt very very transactional across the board and now i'm observing the the the the best breakers or how i would view maybe an enterprise sales rep at in another industry who keeps getting deals like it there's there's there's a method to the madness and it's usually it's the fundamentals they're just treating people well and they're recognizing but like how do you how do you think about that on the individual breaker side and like how do you coach on that is it look at look at this individual who's really successful for us and look at what they're doing do what they're doing but make it your own like how do you may maybe show and tell internally to like make sure someone who's crushing it is a good example that perhaps new employees who are coming in can turn to and follow that part's pretty easy you know and and that you have people come in or or really like when people first start interviewing right the one of the first questions we ask is have you watched any of the streams and if they haven't you better jump in and see what's going on right but we point them to certain streams in particular that we think certainly within you know maybe their interest of of sports that they know etcetera but that we want them to look at and and understand who we are and you know we are i think easily the the most diverse group of characters in the space you know that is that has been very purposeful it's it's in the name you know that that we the hobby was was identified as as a as a name as and starting a brand to be communal and to be an umbrella that anyone was welcome under and you know we we decided to go against you know profanity we decided to go against a lot of different things to to cast the widest net possible and and let families in and and be a part of you know the community certainly well well adopting a standard of of entertainments that anyone would find entertaining right but i think under that umbrella you have all these different personalities that that drive different audiences right and and certain people you know on our basketball channel will like one breaker more than the whatever whatever channel it may be the the personas that they link themselves to could be for all different types of reasons that they they gravitate to that individual or those or those two individuals that are you know on that show having two people per stream was was a big focus of ours from the outset and that we wanted to have banter and back and forth and have this show environment with you know with ongoing entertainment and discussion with the chat which i think certainly can be successful in in single chair formats but it's more challenging right and and i think having that extra person there to to bounce stuff off of and go back and forth on when big hits happen and get excited about things like that's that is a value add and we've spent money to ensure that that value add is is of a very high standard but ultimately we we the hobby for people that have come to it been an opportunity to grow their brand under the brand right and and they get content opportunities they get podcast opportunities they get live event opportunities they get to do all of these different things while also being able to be creative and talk creatively about their you know their thoughts on the sports landscape and and what's going on in games in ways that they wouldn't get to anywhere else and and we identified pretty early on that what was happening to old media was an opportunity for us to say hey there are homes there are other homes out there for people that want to you know they started in journalism communication school and now they're they're you know they're headed to to do monotonous newscast in some random town that they've never heard of right and and they're in they're boxed in they they don't have the creative latitude to express themselves and we the hobby is has been that opportunity for them and there's you know as i said there's such a unique cast of characters here but they're all thematically marching to the same beat which is that it's about quality and community and it's about about continuing to raise the bar of of what you know what the collecting experience is i i just continue to hear you say like diversity cast of characters which i think is great i think a lot of companies kind of hire and bring in the same type of profile and it it just of individual and it just kinda gets watered down but it to me the most successful companies are all it's kinda like the the shoe dogs the phil knight approach to building nike it's like bring all these various diverse backgrounds and watch cool stuff happen you you mentioned the element of like you know sharing perspective on sports and i think inevitably like the the hobby is always just it's driven on hype it's always been i've been collecting my entire life and it's always been that way how how do you think about you know being in a room someone you're as an on air personality running a break and sharing their perspective sharing their opinion on like what they see with a specific player or a specific product and giving them the runway to talk about how they feel and what they believe but also making sure that you know trust is not compromised with any of those existing customers or new customers like how do you think about just like this element of hype and especially in this fast paced format in maintaining kind of the the the brand reputation that you've been that you've established with be the hobby like how do you give your people the runway to do their thing but also make sure it doesn't compromise kind of the the reputation you're building it's identified pretty quickly if we have an issue you know and again i think i think the people that we have on stream really across the board right are really doing the same types of things it is about high energy you know we we are certainly an excitable bunch inherently that's i think that's that's part of of what puts people in the seats right is is is you know you watch a basketball game on tv you turn it off it's a twenty point game right like it's it is about excitement that's part of that's part of the live shopping landscape a critical part of it i think is is that's part of entertainment but also you know we we are we are students of of the hobby you know hopefully hopefully most of us are getting to a professor level that's what we're striving for and you certainly have new people come in that you've gotta bring it to speed in their learning and and and doing their own studying and you're sending them checklists and sell sheets and you're getting them acquainted with everything that they're gonna be opening and giving them those resources and talking about stuff and so that they come in and and talk about the products like our you know our experience in in general is is i think a lot less lot less gamified than a lot of other experiences not to say that you know we don't have elements of that that i think offer a level of entertainment within the live shopping experience when it comes to cards but but there's a difference between gamifying transparently and gamifying to to get a significant edge through you know through a deceptive practice right and and for us like checklist releases and and we're you know we're in the stream scrolling through on a tablet talking about what's in the product and and how many times you know a player in a in a pyp has has an occurrence within the set and what they have and how many times they sign and all these different things and so like that education i think that education elevates sales right and and the fact that people can come in and learn more about the product and learn why they might be interested in a certain team or player that can be done both in in fun and creative ways to sell but it's also done with a backbone of transparency about hey this is this is what the product is and the product sort of speaks for itself if you're running relatively standard break formats and and so our opportunity to have new people come into the stream and ask questions and you know know our shit about about what's going on that's a huge value add that i think we wanna continue to cultivate as we grow to ensure that like we're on the front lines of of not just delivering the experience to people but also delivering the product to people in a packaged way that is highly consumable maybe moving towards kind of the future and where your head's at right now obviously like a a thread that's been woven throughout this conversation is media and entertainment that is something that i can tell you and we the hobby is certainly focused on but i'm curious like what's next like what what is what are you planning for in two twenty twenty six and beyond what are you thinking about right now like what's important to you as the leader of this business and not staying stagnant but maybe taking what you're building to the next level in service of the people that are buying from you i think that last point's probably the most important one that i wanna discuss which is which is you know i brought this up i think early in our conversation part of my part of my curse as as a ceo and and founder is is that the winds sometimes feel very brief and the the gaps sometimes feel very wide and we had we have a a annual summit that we do at we the hobby where we get everybody together and talk about you know what the future holds and and what our key objectives are coming into the new year and this year it was a lot about scalability and and it was about how do we create systems and processes and automations within our ecosystem that enable scalability and by enabling scalability you are enabling a seamless customer experience if it's done the right way and so you know for the last few years we have we have pushed and pushed and pushed blood sweat and tears like you said to get this to where it is and now i think in order to satisfy properly satisfy such such a large group of customers we need to check those boxes and ensuring that everything is a process and everything is optimized as much as possible and you know what happens if you do those things while you lower shipping times while you're you're able to add additional service layerings to to everything that you're doing and offering within the business but for us the investment in content and entertainment has been so significant as i said earlier and the opportunities to to hit home runs at at major live events where we choose to focus more on the engagements and the entertainment than the sales moment in time very purposefully is is everywhere and you know this new this new project that we're going to be doing with ebay live is is that's a big part of it right is how can we elevate the experience at live events with people that are there at live events with people that are watching on stream to create uniquely immersive experiences and and that is that is something that i think we've positioned ourselves foundationally to be able to execute on we've done it already several times we you know we launched the topps flagship release at the nba store we're you know we're doing events at psa we're doing you know we're all over the place in terms of our remote studio setup and the things that we're doing to to bring the experience of we the hobby into into live environments and i think we're seeing tremendous growth with with our podcast we're seeing tremendous growth on on our social channels our podcast is the hobby never sleeps and you know i think what we've seen as a company is that the the stronger we fortify that foundation you're building a trust with the with the community right that that things are going to go the right way and if something ever goes wrong in the process that they're going to get solved because we deeply care about our customers and we deeply care about the community and so when you start to look at other categories and you start to look at opportunities in tcg and singles and all these different formats that we have on our radar and other sports of course you wanna make sure that you're able to continue not just delivering but elevating the experience that we the hobby has come to be known for as you grow i love the investment in content and being so focused on content obviously i'm biased as a content guy but i think for so long and i think businesses in this space are trying to play catch up right now for so long individuals are are owners operators are saying okay if if i invest in this podcast or this youtube channel like what is the roi when am i gonna start you know getting money from this and it's just it's setting the stage it's playing the long game it's building reputation and my observations even before we spoke like i knew you were a content business focused in on playing the long game building and developing trust through multiple channels so it's been really fun to get that story and to hear kinda your confidence in your team in building out a content strategy that's not only servicing kind of the the current group of people in the wethehobby ecosystem but likely grabbing ahold of new people we've got time for about one more but i i wanted to kinda get you hit you with the the ceo vision question to close us out maybe when you think about this business with a hobby and you think about looking down the road looking at the road map maybe five ten years from now what do you want what do you want to have changed in this space in this ecosystem in this hobby for what your company has done i think you know i i had this question early on that is is it's a classic investment you know private equity question which is which is what's the exit strategy right and and that comes up and it has come up in conversations over over you know the the past few years and all i told them and continue to tell them when i'm asked is i i just wanna build something great you know i i'm lost in in i'm lost in the fun and and excitement of continuing to add experience and functional layers to this business and make it a better experience for people and i think that you know the the the standard that we want to continue to set and and the degree to which we push innovation in in terms of products and streams and production and features and content etcetera it's it's evolution right and i think we the communal we within the hobby as as leaders need to take very seriously the duty of care you know in terms of trust and transparency and and taking care of the customer when there are issues and and i think that evolution is is starting to happen i think that the hobby in terms of live selling was so fragmented for so long and it existed in so many different places and now the majority of it is existing on the platforms and the platforms have you know cross teams and and code standards and and all those things right which are evolving and they're continuing to layer those into into how they operate but i think that that that is giving customers an increased safety net that that they've needed i think for some time in this space and the professionalization of the space is is just so important for safety and for the customer experience in general and you know i i am proud that that we the hobby has looked at community and relationship building that way within the space and i think that is becoming the standard and the demand of the customer is that level of quality and that's going to continue to get stronger and i think it's gonna sort of happen on its own because that that momentum is there and you know i i think that for me it's it's not just with the hobby it's everybody creating really strong customer experiences because that's what they deserve the hobby never sleeps check out the pod zach this was a ton of fun appreciate you coming on talking about your build scaling the business and everything in between looking forward to maybe doing this again down the road i'd love to brett you know i appreciate you having me on we're we're gonna be kicking things off on ebay live next week we're bringing a card shop concept to ebay live which is basically the the the card shop in the sky for for every collector with over five hundred items in the store from all different years all different sports for personal reps and and you know i know we have a lot of people that don't have a car shop near them or car shops are sold out of stuff and we're excited to to bring this unique experience to ebay live where you can you can pop in and and pick from anything that you can possibly think of to to have personally rep for you always innovating looking forward to checking that out thank you everyone for listening looking forward to doing this again down the road thanks a lot zach thanks a lot brad have a good weekend what a fun conversation love the mindset and mentality of going all in on a business growing it scaling it and continuing to dream big shout out wethehobby shout out zach stanley and shout out ebay for putting these conversations on thank you so much for supporting stacking slabs and passionate profession we will be back with another one next week take care we'll talk to you soon