Hobby Jobs: Why the Best Hobby Businesses Teach, Not Hype

Foreign. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to Hobby Jobs. This is the show about the people building the sports card industry, the roles that matter, the skills that compound, and the operating decisions that shape where the hobby goes next. I am recording this episode outside of Stacking Slabs hq. I am in the thick of it here in New York. There is smoke in the air. It does not feel very safe walking to and from the Javit Center. But it is Fanatics Fest and it has been quite the doozy. You know, going to this event, I always like to find time to go around and look at cards. That's fun. This one's a little bit different. It is my first time at Fanatics Fest. You know, my mentality and mindset was really like, let's go inside this insane event and start studying what you're saying. Start studying the intersection between sports, collectibles and culture. Let's see what this looks like in action. Let's see how these businesses are trying to optimize around this. And as I record this, I. I just have one day under my belt and I can assure you that there is a lot of thoughts wrestling around in my head and perhaps in the newsletter. Make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter. The Hobby Job substack link is in the show notes. It is free. Perhaps I'll get some of my thoughts out in that or potentially in next week's episode. But it's very fresh in my head and all I keep thinking about is the fact that the national is a couple weeks from now and how these two events are bringing so many people into events. So yeah, it's wild. I would, I would, I would recommend anybody to get out next year if you have never been and just check out Fanatics Fest and gather your perspective, gather your opinions. I will say I had a moment where I was just standing there and the American nightmare, Cody Rhodes just popped up doing his entrance out of nowhere and he was five feet from me. So that was kind of dope. So that's what this event does and there will be a lot that happens on the other side. But this week I want to spend time on a topic that sits underneath almost every modern hobby business, whether people realize it or not. And that topic is my favorite topic in this space. Content. More specifically, the difference between content built for entertainment and content built for information. And before I go any further, let me say this very, very clearly. This is not an anti entertainment episode. I love entertainment. I love to be entertained. The hobby absolutely needs energy. It needs personality. It needs moments, it needs clips, streams, shows, reactions, and all the things that make collecting feel alive. The entertainment focused content is by far and away the number one star of Fanatics Fest. You've got streamers, you've got breakers, you've got the big hits, all the clips. I just came back to my hotel room, I was exhausted, came back to my hotel room last night, popped up Instagram and it was just fed with entertainment content, which gets people motivated, gets people excited. And top says breaking has exploded in popularity over the last several years, which we've all felt with millions of people participating on social media and live video platforms and ebay. Live is literally built building real time collectible entertainment around other streaming services. You've got athletes interacting, community getting involved. And I think that stuff all matters because attention matters. But attention is not the same thing as trust. And in my opinion, as a creator who spends all of my time building content, I think one of the biggest opportunities in sports cards right now is for businesses to stop thinking about content only as a way to get noticed and start thinking about it in a way that makes customers smarter. Because once you make the customer smarter, everything changes. Your buyer understands what they're looking at, your seller understands why your process matters. Your audience starts coming to you for clarity instead of noise. Your candidate starts seeing the business as a serious business and your brand starts building authority. That does not disappear the second the algorithm stops being generous. That is the lane I want to talk about today. Not content as a spike. Content is infrastructure, not content as temporary hit. Content is something that compounds. And I think the distinction matters a lot if you're trying to build on the professional side of the sports card industry. If you look at where the hobby is at today, there's no question that entertainment has helped it grow. The chase is entertaining, the reveal is entertaining. Live breaks, trade nights, card show clips. Literally. The Fanatics Fest is producing card content that's entertainment and involves celebrity. You want to talk about making the algorithm happy? There you go. I think this isn't bad though. If anything, it helps the market feel accessible. It gives people an entry point. I think not everyone gets pulled into cards because they want to sit down for an hour with a guy like me talking about population reports, historical supply, category formation of the difference between scarcity and significance, or hell, even collector psychology. I, I, I come at these episodes and come at my content with the mindset of like. In order for you to enjoy this, you have to have a desire to seek out information regarding collective psychology and why we do the things that we do, that's my mindset. I think sometimes they get pulled in because something looked fun, fast and emotionally charged. And that is real because that is the part that is the modern hobby in a nutshell. But let's ask the operator question because that's what we do here on Hobby Jobs. What happens after the first moment of attention? This is where I think a lot of businesses in this space need to get more honest. Because if the only thing your content teaches the customer is to how to respond to excitement, then you're treating them to need more excitement. If the only thing your content teaches them is urgency, then you're training them to respond to urgency. If the only thing your content teaches them is hype, then you're building a relationship that is entirely dependent on momentum, which is not a good relationship. Momentum always cools off. This is why informational content matters so much. Informational content gives the audience context. It gives the lang. It gives them language. It helps them understand what they're doing, not what they're just reacting to. And I put this in the newsletter this week but information creates staying power because it gives collectors confidence and confidence makes people more durable in the hobby. I think the idea gets even stronger when you look at what the biggest infrastructure players are actually building. Look at tops. Yes they public published excitement driven post around biggest polls held there was went back to the Instagram from last night. I saw my good friend Jameson Port City sports collectibles. I got a chance to stop by his booth at Fanatics Fest, talk with him for a moment about wrestling cards and then I come back and see that he sold millions of dollars to Mr. Wonderful and Shine. That is the perfect content that Topps publishes. They publish these things. They publish these moments. But Topps also on their ripped site have a how to collect section, a glossary and educational collector content. They are telling you in public that the collector education belongs next to collector excitement. PSA is saying send your cards in, not just saying send your cards in. They publish grading standards, pop reports, the visual tutorials. They're spending time reducing ambiguity because ambiguity creates friction and Friction kills trust. EBay's got a price guide they they want collectors to make more informed choices to access deeper context to understand the market better before buying and selling. That's not entertainment Card Ladder my good friends at Card Ladder just full of insight information regarding basically everything to do the industry's serious infrastructure players are moving towards information because information reduces bad decisions and increases confidence. So if you're running a hobby business and Your content strategy is still mostly post the hot thing and hope it moves. I think you're underestimating where the value really is. The value is helping your audience understand that isn't just my opinion. Outside the hobby, the business data points in the same direction. Edelman and LinkedIn found 73% of decision makers say thought leadership is more trustworthy way to access a company than standard marketing materials. They also found that high quality thought leadership increases receptiveness to outreach, increases the likelihood to getting into RFP conversations, can drive actual buying behavior and even create pricing power. In other words, if your content teaches, clarifies or guides the market does not supply, simply appreciate you more, it values you more. Now translate that back into sports cards. If you're a consignment business, teach sellers how to think about timing, grading, presentation, liquidity. If you are a breaker, teach your audience product structure, odds and why fun and smart are not always the same purchase. If you're a dealer, you can explain the categories you actually believe in and what could go wrong in them. Make the customer smarter, that is the content move that compounds and I'll go one step further. In an AI heavy content environment, informational content backed by actual experience becomes even more valuable. The Content Marketing Institute found that 43% of B2B marketers struggled to differentiate their content from competitors. Only only 17% rate AI generated content is excellent or very good and only 4% say that they have a high level of trust in AI output. So if everyone can produce more words faster then speed is not the moat. Real judgment is the moat. Experience is the moat. Process is the moat. Original interpretation is the moat. That is why I think hobby businesses should invest in informational content now. Not because it's trendy, not because it sounds smart, but because it is the one of the cleanest ways to build trust. In a market where trust actually decides everything. The next great sports card companies are not just going to be or have the best products or not just the most entertaining stream or most followers. They are going to be the companies that help people make better decisions. And the companies that help people make better decisions will keep them around longer. And that is the real game. This is why I want to talk about my good friend Mike at Leahi. Make sure you go check out our episode in Passionate Profession this week because Mike is not somebody making content in sports cards. He is an example of what happens when you use content to build capability in the audience. The newsletter framed Mike up this way. He is not simply handling out card calls, he is showing Work. He is building a framework. He is giving people a process, not just the answer. And when you look back on that conversation I had with Mike on passionate profession, the focus was around research, transparency, decision making and helping people think instead of just helping them react. That matters a lot in a hobby that often rewards speed. The fast take gets distributed, the bold prediction gets attention, the big sales screenshot gets reposted. But Mike's models seem to be built around something different. Slow enough to think, clear enough to explain, confident enough to show reasoning. That is very different content discipline. And I think that is why people trust him. Trust is built when somebody makes their process legible. And I think that's a critical point. If I only, if I only ever tell you what I bought, you can copy me. If I tell you why I bought what I ruled out, what I am comparing it to, what historical patterns am I looking at, what demand structure looks like, what risks I see and what I might be wrong about. Now, I'm not just giving you a pick, I'm giving you a framework. This is where informational content starts creating independent thinkers instead of dependent followers. And Mike's own business language reinforces that. On GridX exchange, he says the goal is to create as many long term winners as possible. And on his playbook pages he explicitly says he wants to begin with basics so everyone can start together and then move into a more nuanced thinking over time. He he even clarifies that his work is not investment advice, but open thinking about what information is relevant as the categories evolve. This is operator behavior, that is someone trying to form judgment in a market, not just extract attention from it. And I think there's a larger lesson here for the industry. The best content in sports cards should not create dependency, it should create capability. That's the line. If your audience becomes more dependent on you every time they consume your content, then maybe you are building a personality machine. If your audience becomes more capable every time they consume your content, then maybe you are building infrastructure. That is the distinction I keep coming back to. The best informational content does not leave the audience saying tell me what the next play is. It leaves the audience saying I think more clearly now, that is a totally different outcome and it is far more valuable for the long term health of this hobby. Another thing I like about Mike as a case study is that he is working formula one, which is exactly the kind of category where informational content can disproportionately matter. And I think this is correct because categories do not mature just because the product exists. Categories mature when language exists, when a category is young, misunderstood niche. Informational content does some of the foundational work that the market hasn't fully developed yet. It creates reference points. It names the key sets. It explains what is structurally important. It gives people confidence to participate without feeling like they're blindly walking into someone else's conviction. That is one reason his F1 playbook matters. He is not just saying F1 is interesting. He is trying to explain why the situation is rare, why the certain sets matter, how prior hobby patterns map onto this category, and how someone should orient themselves to a market that still looks unfamiliar to a lot of sports card people. That is category building work. And I think more businesses in this hobby need to realize that is the kind of work. It is not charity. It's a competitive advantage. Because if you are a person who helps people understand a category, process or service or a market better, then you have a reference point. You become the place they come back to. You become the account they save. You become the episode they replay. That is exactly why broader thought leadership research is so relevant here. High quality educational content does not just generate awareness, it increases receptiveness. It strengthens perceived competence. It can move people into actual buying relationships. The hobby should stop treating education like the soft side of content and start treating it like one of the hardest forms of commercial leverage available. There's also a responsibility piece here. If you have an influence in the hobby, and especially if you can move attention quickly, then the standard should not be can I make this go viral? The standard should be am I helping people think better? That means slowing down. It means naming uncertainty. It means showing your evidence. It means telling people what could go wrong. That means resisting the temptation to speak with total certainty when total certainty is not available. And ironically, that kind of restraint often builds more trust than volume ever could. So when I look at Mike Spotlight, the takeaway for me is not be more educational in some generic sense. The real takeaway is this. Show the work, share the framework, teach the audience how to think, make long term winners, not short term dependents. That is content that has a chance to outlast the feed cycle. And that is the kind of content more sports card companies should be building if they actually want durable trust Hobby Jobs Time let's shift the role. Let's shift the role and highlight this week's edition. The job that I noticed that stands out is the corporate council, commercial and legal operations at comc. And I think it's the perfect example of why hobby jobs exist. Because from the outside, a Lot of people still look at sports cards and mostly see product transactions and content. They see cards, shows, streams, marketplace listings. What they do not immediately see are the same systems required to make cards that trustworthy at scale. As cards move through marketplaces, consignments, platforms, seller policies, privacy standards, employee issues, legal and commercial operations stop being hidden in some back office function and they start being a trust layer of the business and it lines up with what the broader market is doing. EBay and PSA have been explicit that their partnership is about streamlining, building, selling, grading, storage, increasing trust and reducing friction. PSA itself positioned its label standards, tutorials, data tools as part of a broader confidence system. So when I see a legal and commercial operations role at a company like comc, I do not see boring corporate job inside a hobby company. I see infrastructure work and I see visibility operating in operating logic that makes visible customer experience possible. For anyone listening who wants to work in the industry, this is the lesson. The sports card business is getting more sophisticated. Whether the content layer reflects this or not, the real opportunities are not only in front facing creator roles. They're the legal, operations, product, data, trust and risk management. They're in customer systems. They are in all the jobs that make people make scale possible. If you want a professional hobby industry, then those roles are not side notes. They are the backbone. And one of the smartest things hobbyjob is doing is making the backbone visible. Entertainment matters. Keep it. But if you are building a sports card business and you want something that lasts, invest harder in informational content. Invest in content that explains. Invest in content that shows the customer down in a good way. Invest in content that builds language, frameworks, trust and better decision making. Because the businesses that win long term are not just going to capture attention, they're going to deserve confidence. They are. And confidence is earned when you consistently help people understand what is going on. If that is the kind of sports card industry you want to build, then sign up for Hobby Jobs. I got a newsletter. I talk about it every week. I get up here on this podcast Tell a damn friend. Every week is focused around people skills, role systems and operating decisions shaping the future. If you run a business, want to work in the industry, or simply want a clear view of where the professional side of the sports card is headed, this is for you. This is the signal here. Not noise. It is not hype. It is operator context. And the more of that the hobby has, the healthier it will get. Appreciate you listening. I'll see you next time on Hobby Jobs. Happy building. Talk to you soon.