Hobby Jobs: Scale the Process. Preserve the Promise + Conversation with Michael Osacky

Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of Hobby Jobs here on the Stacking Slabs Network. This is the show or the builder in the sports card industry, the individual who is working inside a business within the hobby an owner, an operator, an entrepreneur. All the people who are working in this space having a lot of fun doing this. We have an interview from the national that we will plug in at the end. Before I sat down to hit record, a press release came across the desk here that was covered by New York Times, New York Post, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, a lot of outlets. Card Vault by Tom Brady put out the announcement. They have a strategic investor group putting big money into that business. The investor group includes Redbird Capital founder Jerry Cardinal, Sean JZ Carter, Silver Lake Co CEO Egon Durbin, Entrada CEO Adam Edmonds addition founder Lee Fixel Raising Kane's founder and CEO Todd Graves, co owner of the Boston Celtics Wick Grossbeck Fenway Sports Group Principal Owner John Henry, Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry, New York Yankees Captain Aaron Judge, the Kraft Group Edmonton oilers captain Connor McDavid, Silver Lake Co CEO Greg Mondre, Tom Brady Manager Ben Ritz Creative Studio Shadow lion and UFC President and CEO Dana White Shout out to Chris and the Car Vault by Tom Brady Squad what an announcement. What is happening in this space that is not normal yet? Jay Z, Connor McDavid and some heavy hitters putting money into a growing, thriving business that's expanding throughout the country. That is what is happening right now in the sports card industry. As a fan of sports cards and as a fan of business, this lights me up inside. I think this type of capital, these individuals who are behind the capital in the infrastructure that is being built around sports cards is truly special. Maybe I will react to this in more depth in a further episode, but I felt like I had to mention that up front. Very exciting times as a participant in this space. Maybe even more exciting times as a builder in this space. Supporting collectors is expensive. It takes time to answer the question before a transaction happens. It takes patience to explain why a card may not be worth what someone hoped. It takes discipline to build checks into a process when moving faster would be easier. It takes humility to admit when something went wrong. And it takes real care to remember that the card moving through your system is not inventory to the person who owns it. It may represent money, may represent a memory. It may represent a family member who's no longer here. Most businesses say they support the customer. The real test is whether that support survives pressure. Does it survive that moment when the founder is no longer personally touching every part of the work. Because if the collector only receives care when the founder is involved, the business has not built collector support, it has built founder dependence. Today I'm going to talk about how we move beyond that. So welcome back to Hobby Jobs. If you're not already hit the follow button, Tell a damn friend. Run on over the Patreon Group for more new and exclusive content from Stacking Slabs. This episode expands on the latest edition of Hobby Jobs newsletter. Make sure you follow the link in the show notes. It's free and that edition was When Control Becomes the Constant in the newsletter I wrote about the tension, a lot of small business owners eventually reach the same control. That help us protect the business in the beginning can prevent the business from growing later. But I do not want to read that essay verbatim for you today. I want to take the idea one level deeper. The question is not simply how an operator gives up control. The more important question is how do you create more capacity without making the collector feel less supported? That is where we're going today. Later, I'm going to get into the episode or the conversation I had with Michael Osaki of Baseball in the Attic. Michael is the best of the best when it comes to appraisers in this space. I've had many conversations with him over the years on the Stacking Slabs network, specifically passion to profession. He's the lead appraiser for psa. He has spent years building a highly specialized business around judgment, objectivity, and trust. His work sits at an interesting intersection. He has to understand the object. He also has to understand the person holding it. That makes him the perfect operator for this conversation. Before we get there, let us start with the operator Note There is a dangerous way to think about customer support. It is the idea that support is something that happens after the real work. The product is the real work. The sale is the real work. The shipment is the real work. Then, if a customer has a problem, someone from Support steps in to clean it up. That model is incomplete in almost every industry. In the sports card industry, it's especially weak. Collectors are not buying ordinary replaceable products. They are sending cards away to be graded. They are trusting a consignment company with assets that may be worth thousands of dollars. They're buying cards they may have searched for for years. They're inheriting collections without knowing what they own. They're handing an appraiser like Michael an object connected to a father, a grandfather, a player, a season or or part of their identity. The emotional stakes and the financial stakes are often sitting in the same package. That means support cannot be separated from the product. Support is part of the product. The update is part of the product. The explanation is part of the product. The chain of custody is part of the product. The way a mistake is handled is part of the product. And the confidence a collector feels while waiting is a part of the product. This is where the control conversation gets real. When we're small, collector support often lives inside the founder. The founder knows the customers. The founder knows where every order stands. The founder remembers the unusual request. The founder recognizes the name in the inbox and understands the context without needing to look anything up. That closeness is an advantage. It is one of the reasons a small operator can create loyalty that a larger company struggles to match. But it's also fragile. If the founder gets sick, goes to a show, takes a vacation, or simply reaches their limit for the day, the support system can disappear with them. That is not because the founder doesn't care. It's often because the founder cares so much that they never translated their care into anything other than another person could use. The expectations are in their head. The history is in their memory. The quality standard is based on instinct. The escalation process is just ask me. The recovery plan is I'll fix it. That can work for the first 50 customers. It becomes dangerous at 500. The answer is not to care less. The answer is to turn the care into infrastructure. Here is what that looks like. If you care that the collector never wonders whether the package arrived, create an intake confirmation. If you care that a card does not get misplaced, create a verification step and document the chain of custody. If you care that the collector understands the delay, define when an update is sent and what it needs to explain. The standard cannot remain the feeling it has to become something that the business can repeat. Recent customer experience research from PwC illustrates the stakes. More than half of the consumers surveyed said they had stopped using or buying from a brand because of a bad experience with its product or service. Nearly a third pointed specifically to poor customer experience, whether online and in person. That is even a more useful finding for hobby operators. 49% of consumers said they would be likely to use Yu-Gi-Oh to track an order or delivery. But 86% said human interaction was moderately or very important to their experience with a brand. That distinction matters. People are not rejecting systems. They're rejecting systems used in the wrong place. Collectors do not need a founder to copy a tracking number into an email. They do need a knowledgeable person. When a high value package is missing. Collectors don't do not need a personal phone call every time a submission advances one step. They do need context when the timeline changes and they are deciding what to do next. Collectors may welcome a tool that answers where's my card? They are less likely to trust a tool with what does this card mean for my family's estate? That gives operators a useful dividing line. Automate certainty do not automate empathy Repetitive visibility Do not automate judgment, especially when the stakes are high. Use systems to make the basic promise consistent, then make it easy for a human to step in when the collector needs more than an answer. We can see the same logic in the infrastructure larger marketplaces are building. When ebay expanded its authenticity guarantee for trading cards, the promise was not merely that an expert would inspect a card. The process included a multi point inspection, proof tied to the card's authenticity, journey track delivery, and a Certified return process for eligible transactions. That is support designed into the transaction. It reduces the number of moments when the buyer or seller is forced to rely on blind trust. That is an important distinction. A business should absolutely work to become trustworthy. It should also build a process that gives the customer evidence. Trust us is not a system. Confirmation is a system, verification is a system, visibility is a system, documentation is a system, and escalation is certainly a system. There is still a human promise underneath it all. The systems simply make the promise easier for the collector to see. I think every hobby business should be able to make four basic promises to the collector. First, you will know what happens next. Second, you will be able to understand where your item or order stands. Third, you will receive enough context to understand the decisions that affect you. Fourth, when the situation becomes unusual, emotional, or has high stakes, you will be able to reach a person with knowledge and authority to help. Those promises sound simple. Delivering them consistently is real operational work. Collectors will tell you where your business is breaking. They may not use operator language. They will not always say your handoff between intake and fulfillment lacks a clear owner. They will say, nobody can tell me where my card is. They will not say your marketing created an expectation that your service level agreement could not support. They will say, you told me three weeks, it's been six. They will not say your product taxonomy is confusing to a new entrant. They will say, I do not understand what I'm buying. The operator's job is to hear the complaint and find the system based beneath it. One collector may be confused. Ten collectors asking the same question is a process problem. One delayed response may be a busy day. A backlog that returns every release week into a capacity problem is an issue. One employee making an unusual mistake may need coaching. Several employees making the same mistake means the standard was never clear. This is why supporting the collector is not soft work. It's diagnostic work. It shows you where trust is leaking out of the business. If you are operating a hobby business, I want you to run collector support stress tests. Take the service you provide and imagine the volume doubled the next month. Then ask Would collectors still know what happens next? Would they still receive accurate updates without chasing us? Would a new employee know which mistakes can't happen? Could we identify where an item was at every meaningful step? Would a difficult situation reach the right person quickly? And maybe the most ruthless question Would the collector feel supported or would they merely feel processed? If the answers depend on you personally catching everything, you have found the next part of the business that needs to be built. Not because your people are failing. Not because we need another piece of software. Because the promise you made to the collector has outgrown the way you currently deliver it. Growth should not force an operator to choose between capacity and care. But care will not survive growth by accident. It has to be designed. This brings me to the operator story. I shared some insight from my conversation with Dave DT Sports Cards that was on this week's episode of Passion and Profession on the main feed here on the Stacking Slabs Network. Dave opened his first card shop when he was 13 years old. Years later, the excitement around Steven Strasberg brought him back into the hobby. He moved into group breaking, began helping people submit autograph cards, and eventually built DT Sports Cards into a grading submission business. The part of Dave's story is not simply that the company grew, it is what the growth asked him to carry. At one point, Dave said DT Sports Cards was submitting roughly 1200 cards in a week while he was personally reviewing somewhere between 1500 and 2000. Stop and think about the responsibility inside those numbers. Every card has an owner. Every owner has an expectation. Some of those cards are replaceable. Some of them are not. Some were purchased last week. Some have been in a collection for decades. When Dave talks about attention to detail, he is not describing a personality trait for a LinkedIn bio. He's describing the reason collectors are willing to place their cards in his hands. That is why his resistance to letting go makes sense. If your reputation was built by personally catching mistakes, adding another set of hands can feel like adding another point of Fleer The lazy advice is to tell Dave to delegate. The better question is what has to be true before delegation protects the collector. Instead of putting the collector at greater risk, Dave's business points to three answers. The first is verification. Cards are checked when they arrive. They are checked as they move through the operation. One control supports the next. That matters because memory is not a control. Good intentions aren't a control. Saying you're a careful person isn't a control. A defined check performed at a defined moment by a person who understands what they're verifying, that is a control. The second answer is visibility. As the volume grew, Dave could not continue answering every order status question himself. He first created a shared tracking process. When that became difficult to manage and raise privacy concerns, he invested in customer accounts and order tracking through the DT Sports Cards website. He has continued looking for ways to automate information that previously required manual updates. That is not replacing a relationship with software. It is removing a reason the collector had to feel uncertain. The portal handles the repeatable questions so Dave's time could go towards the questions that actually need Dave. The third is escalation. No process eliminates every mistake. No employee will encounter only normal situations. The business has to define when the standard process stops and judgment begins. What requires a second review? What requires the founder? What requires immediate communication with the collector. This is where a lot of small businesses get Tribute They document the happy path. They do not document what happens when the path breaks. Then every exception returns to the founder and the founder remains the bottleneck. Even after hiring help, Dave was candid about reaching the maximum of what he could do himself. He also was candid about the financial weight of adding another person. His wife's optometry practice changed the family's risk calculation. A hire is not a motivational quote to him. It is a paycheck connected to his family's future. That is real. So is the risk of waiting. If Dave is the only person who can maintain the standard, growth becomes a threat to that standard. The solution is not finding someone who cares exactly like Dave. On day one, that person may not exist. The solution is making Dave's care teachable. His attention to detail becomes a checklist. His communication becomes the update standard. His experience becomes the escalation guide. This is how founder stop being the entire support system without lowering the level of support. The business does not ask a new person to read the founder's mind. It gives that person a clear promise to protect. There is a lesson here for anyone who wants to work in the sports card industry. You do not need to be the world's foremost card expert to create value for a hobby. Business you just need professional skills. The hobby needs them. And for the operator listening, here's the challenge. Choose one part of your collector experience that currently depends on you. Do not begin with your most important relationship or your most subjective judgment. Begin with one repeatable promise. Maybe it's intake. Maybe it's communicating status. Maybe it's reviewing the listing before it goes live. Maybe it's following up on an issue. Write it down and why it matters. Write down the steps. Write down what good looks like. Write down the mistakes that cannot happen. Write down when another person should stop and ask for help. Then test whether the standard can survive without your hands on every step. That is not giving up on the collector. That is building a business capable of supporting more of them. This week's Hobby job highlight is an assistant manager role featured in the newsletter from Dave and Adams. The job listings move quickly, so check the newsletter for current applications, link and availability. I chose this role because it is easy to underestimate what happens on the Fleer of a hobby shop. We can describe the job in operational terms. You support the team, manage the inventory, maintain the store, solve the problems, help execute the standards for the business and all that matters. But the person in the role is also standing at one of the most important entry points in collecting. A customer may walk in knowing exactly what they want. Another may be returning after 20 years away. Another may be a parent trying to understand what their child wants. Might be a young collector who doesn't know anything. The difference between a transaction and a relationship can be a great conversation. The right assistant manager helps the store make that conversation repeatable across the team. They make sure product knowledge does not become intimidation. They make sure busy release days do not erase patience. They make sure an upset customer is heard before the policy is repeated. They help new employees understand that the goal is not simply to move inventory. The goal is to help people leave with more confidence in collecting than when they had walked in the door. That is collector support. It's also business development. A well supported collector comes back. They bring a friend. They trust the recommendation. They ask the next question. They become part of the store's community. For somebody trying to enter the sports card industry, this type of role can create an unusually strong education. You learn products, operations, inventory. You learn how collectors make decisions. More importantly, you learn how trust is earned one interaction at a time. If that fits the way you'd like to build your career, visit the latest edition of Hobby Jobs with a review of the role. Before we get into my conversation with Michael Osaki, if this episode is useful to you. Subscribe to the newsletter Tell your damn friends in the industry or people who want to build in the industry about this show and hobby jobs Every week share an operator note, story, resource and open jobs that I think are cool. We're building a place for current operators to get better and for aspiring professionals to understand how they can contribute. Now let us get to the conversation at the National. Michael Osaki has built Baseball in the Attic around a deliberately personal model. He personally handles the appraisal process. His business emphasizes independent judgment, careful research and clear communication. Michael has been doing this for decades. He does not buy, sell or consign the items he appraises, which removes the conflict that would compromise the collector's confidence. In his evaluation. The model gives us an important counterweight to the growth conversation. Not every business needs to become large. Not every founder should remove themselves from the work. Sometimes founders judgment is the product operating challenge is knowing which parts require the judgment and which parts can be supported by better systems, clearer processes and other people. In this conversation, Michael and I talk about taking the risk to work for himself, building consistency over many years, treating expertise as a craft, maintaining relationships with clients, sending handwritten thank you notes, finding a niche and why people entering the hobby should not lead with money. Listen closely to the way Michael describes his clients. He does not speak about them as leads moving through a pipeline. He speaks about becoming part of their lives. That is what supporting the collector can look like when it becomes the foundation of the business. Here's my conversation with Michael Osaki recorded live at the national at the card ladder booth. We are back with hobby Jobs. I've got a individual who has been working a hobby job for a very, very long time build his own business. He's been on a lot of different stacking slab shows over the years, but we're having a conversation in his hometown at the National. I'm joined by Michael Osaki. Michael, welcome. How are you doing man? Happy National. Thank you. Happy national to you too. I am excited to be here. The lines are out the door this morning. Everyone is just running around like it's just, it's unbelievable. Just the energy is awesome when you're at a show like this. And maybe, well, for anyone who's unfamiliar with you, you're an appraiser. You're a lead appraiser for psa. You have your own business. You've been working. How many years have you been working for yourself? So 15 years working for myself and the last six years. So PSA partnered with my company six years ago, when you're at a show like this, like, obviously, like you're set up, you're trying to make contacts, you're trying to get leads on materials. Like, how important is like the in person people coming to you as opposed to you getting on an airplane and going to other people? Because you spend a lot of time on the road. Yu-Gi-Oh So for me, being at the national is awesome because like you said, I can have people come to me and not just people who have items for me to appraise. It's just other meetings, people who want to talk to me. Because what would happen is before I hit a booth, I'd be running around like a crazy person. You know, I. At 1:00pm Booth 20, 200 at 2:00pm Booth 6, whatever. And I was going back and forth and back and forth and sweating and it was just. It's so stressful. Now everybody just comes to my booth and makes my life a lot easier. So you started your business during a period of time where collectibles and cards and items have always been interesting to different groups of people. But I would imagine the space wasn't like the spaces now where there's like, exuberance, mainstream conversations, news articles, coverage. Like, it's crazy. But you decided to like, go all in during this time where it's not what it is today. Like, how did you make the decision that, you know what, I'm going to take this risk and I'm going to do this because not only do I believe in collectibles, but I believe in myself. It was a risk for sure. And also kind of scary to think, like, oh my God, I'm going to work for myself. I'm going to not get a paycheck every two weeks. Like, what if a paycheck doesn't? Like, what will happen? But I've always had good confidence in myself. I've also always had like a good gut instinct and feel, not just in terms of business, but like people in general. And I thought, like, eventually, I don't know how many years this market will blow up. Now we had Covid, which I never predicted, obviously, but that is what changed our lives. But also the hobby forever. Obviously. We've been through the charts and looking at what's the up, the highs and lows of COVID but ultimately, like, I look at it as a period where all of us got the opportunity to take some stock and inventory and our own connection with collectibles. We collected cards as kids, we bought jerseys as kids, we bought autographs as kids. And you know, it's the same story. I've done a million of these podcasts where people find girls, they're busy with school and they get away from collectibles. But like, this moment in time where it's like, frozen in Covid, people are like, oh, wait, what's happening with cards? And oh, wait, I have stuff in my parents attic. Like, let me go check this out. Like, I know it's viewed mostly from like a doom perspective because stuff went down afterwards, but how important do you think the COVID time period was to collectors? It changed everything forever. Not just in terms of value, but how the market is now perceived. Meaning pre Covid. Here, I'll give you a real life example. Pre Covid. When I told somebody who asked me what I do for a living, which is the same answer I'll give them today, which is, I'm a sports appraiser. In 2018, when I said I'm a sports appraiser, they would look at me and say, oh, that's so sad. You must live in your mom's basement. And now when I tell them you're a rock star, I want to take you on my yacht to the south of France. We're going to introduce you the Prime Minister of Turkey. So it's just if everything is different, not just in terms of value, but perception as well, what do you think are the reasons that collectibles, I keep saying collectibles have become cool? Like, the younger generation wants to be involved, the older generation wants to be involved. People want to leave their corporate jobs and work in this space. Like, what do you think the main reasons are that we've gotten to this point? It's cool. It is cool. It's cool to collect, it's cool to talk about it, it's cool to share what you have. We still have a very strong art market, right? But that, generally speaking, skews older. That's an older demographic. The younger generation in the 20s and 30s, to be honest, to my knowledge, are not buying art. They're not buying a Basquiat. They're not buying a Renoir. They're buying a Shohei Ohtani Refractor. They're buying something in this room right here today. So that's. That's changed. I think just in general, the opportunities to do anything in this space have changed. The opportunities to collect certain things have changed. You are an individual that, like, gets the opportunity to. When people say, oh, it's probably tucked away in someone's attic or in someone's basement, like, you are the guy who gets to go, like, check that out. Because people find you, they read an article you're in, they listen to a podcast like this and like, oh, let's call Michael. Like, does that part of the job, that mystery component, does that ever get old to you? No, that is the best part of my job. This is like the thrill of the hunt, right? I never know every day when I wake up who's going to call me, who's going to email me or what I'm going to see. Like, I know, let's say next week I have to be in Pennsylvania and I kind of know what I'm going to see, but not really. Sometimes the family will pull something out of a drawer. I'm like, Yu-Gi-Oh what is that? Now that's interesting. The financial side is something you've mentioned that I think is really important, especially I seem to connect with other entrepreneurs in this space who are doing similar adjacent stuff where you said, you know, it's like, I'm not getting a paycheck every two weeks. And it's. That's a big change. And that was a shift for me to realize, like, you know, that reoccurring revenue that's coming in, like, that comfortable paycheck, it's no longer there, but, like, I'm working every day to get the deals where I can get some money in and then go find the next one. Like, how did you get comfortable with that mindset of, like, I'm not getting a paycheck every two weeks, but it's on me as the business owner and operator to go find the opportunity or have the opportunity to come to me, and that's when I'm going to be making money. Well, first off, I'm really glad that we have you in the hobby. I know you have a family and, you know, it's not easy to quit your day job, but you made that switch. I know it probably wasn't very easy to do, but you did it. And here we are today talking. But I'll answer your question. I appreciate that. Yu-Gi-Oh So the thing is, if you work hard and, and you're smart about how you work, there's only 24 hours in the day and we have to sleep, we gotta eat, we gotta shower, we gotta do things. I like to plan out my day and, like, set goals. This way you're not like, withering, you know, and the day goes by and it's already midnight. If you set goals and write them on paper, I think they're more likely to come true and. Or Happen. What about consistency? I feel like you're a very consistent guy. I. Ever since we've connected, I've watched you and the way you work and think about it too. It's like, man, there was probably nobody talking about working in collectibles 15 years ago. Now we're here at the national talking about working in collectibles. You have kind of found yourself or you are a self starter and you've remained consistent and learning and mastering kind of your craft. Like, where does that consistency come from? Probably the way I was raised, we didn't really have much money growing up. And, you know, I worked at a very young, very young age. I had a strong work ethic. You know, might be a story for another time, but I grew up in the state of Illinois, and legally, if you want to work in the state of Illinois, you can be 15 with a worker's permit. Well, I got hired somewhere when I was 14, which is illegal, but I was such a good employee that six months after I was hired, the state of Illinois fined the restaurant where I was working a lot of money. The general manager comes to me and says, michael, we just got fined a lot of money, but we knew how old you were. You told us you're honest and we're going to keep you. That's how good of a worker you are. And so from then on, I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh people respect the hard work I'm doing. People are noticing if you put your nose to the grind. So it doesn't matter if you're cleaning bathrooms in Taco Bell or, you know, filming content like we are today, you got to be kind, you got to be humble, and you got to work hard. Those, like, intangible things that you mentioned, just treating people well, being kind, working hard, feel like they're not necessarily sexy and no one wants to talk about them. But those are the essential things that ingredients, I think, to building a. Any successful business you have turn your business into you being the guy who's got this craft. And this craft is this skill of being able to appraise specific items that maybe have never been seen before. And people trust you with that, and people trust what you say and the value. Like, do you think about your work as a craft, as a skill, as an art that just you have worked to refine over years. So, yes, but I also see it on a different level, so. And a lot of times I'm now part of these people's families. I call them for their birthdays or vice versa. They invite me for Thanksgiving last Year I had a client in New York City invited me for Thanksgiving dinner. They rent this big room in a hotel overlooking the Macy's Day Parade. And I told them no, I have a family of my own. Right. And so that to me is really important. Yes, I sign, I appraise, and I assign values, but I'm like, integrated in these people's lives on a fairly regular basis. And that means something to me. How do you maintain and manage those relationships? Salesforce. No, I'm kidding. So I do that. I have a really good memory, thank God. And sometimes I'll just like wake up and I'll be like, oh, it's, it's Angela's birthday today or tomorrow, right. And I'll just reach out and they appreciate it. Some of these clients I've had for 10, 12 years that maybe I only see every four or five years, but maybe every three, four, six months, I make sure to have a touch point. I'm not asking you to do this, but I want to put this as an example of your brand to me based on the volume of conversations I have with people in this space regularly. I know that if we are having a conversation like this, you at some point will always follow up with some sort of thank you note, like, thank you for the opportunity. And it's amazing how simple that is, but how memorable is it is. And also how it's so unique. And I think about that all the time when I get a thank you. Like, ultimately, like, we're having a conversation, we're offering my platform to like, share your story and like, that's my job. But like, and no thank you is required. But like, that, like, the kindness stands out. And it's. To me, I always find it interesting. It's like, Yu-Gi-Oh this is, this is meaningful to me. Like, I wish more people do it. And that's just feel like shows representation of your character, how you build your business. But like, do you understand, like, the impact of doing something like that in a space like this where it's oftentimes so transactional? Well, first off, let me say this. There's nothing wrong with sending somebody an email, faking them for something. It's better than not doing that. Right? And we have claimed that. But yes, I try and send, you know, formal written letters. I don't see it as an impact or what I'm doing. It's just, again, maybe it's how I was raised. That's what I'm used to. In general, if you think about it, all of us here in this Room get very little physical mail. And what we get is there bills or spam. Right. We don't get anything. So when you get a letter in the mail, that's not a bill, that's not a spam. For somebody that did something to you, that's nice. It's, I think it's always well received. Yu-Gi-Oh that's good feedback. And anyone listening who's involved in this space building relationships, you should take note because there's impact. I want to get your perspective on just this market and this industry and what you're seeing just in terms of like the growth and the hiring and anything, any way you want to take it. Like obviously it looks a lot different than it, it did probably 15 years ago to you, but like what's standing out to you? I think a lot of people have new and fresh ideas that maybe want to do start a startup, a brand new company. There's nothing wrong with that. Especially now as we sit here at the national in 2026. There's a lot of capital floating around. The stock market's at almost record high and people feel very comfortable. The unemployment rate is pretty low. It's in the fours still. And it might not be difficult to raise money or find money for an idea in this hobby in this market because again, there's so many eyeballs on it. But there's also nothing wrong with getting hired working for an auction house or a dealer or whatever. For me, the big thing is if you have a passion, if you enjoy being at the national, you enjoy what you saw. Fanatics fest. That's wonderful. Figure out a way that you can get your foot in the door doing something. It doesn't have to be glamorous. It can be writing auction descriptions, it can be, I don't know, story in the mail for a dealer. But get your foot in the door and I think you'll be well rewarded in two or three years because the market is just going to, I shouldn't say explode, but keeps going higher and higher and higher. And you know, we have a lot of, you know, smart life. Look at Fanatics and psa. The people who run these organizations are very smart and they're not doing that to lose money. Right. And so it's only growth. This is a high growth market. Look at ebay for ebay for a while was a very profitable but mature company. Now it's a profitable growth company and the multiple has reflected that. How does it make you feel seeing what's happening now with the industry, with the growth, with the Record sales with more unique items surfacing. How does that make you feel? Seeing it and being an observer based on you taking the bet on yourself and the chance 15 years ago, like, how do you think about that? So I love seeing all this, but sometimes I feel a little, I shouldn't say sad, but concerned because a lot of people are here to make money and that's not the way that I got started. I got started because I liked it and I had a passion. So we have a lot of new hobby entrants who are just trying to flip or make money or whatever it is, who in three or four or five years might not be here. So that's concerning. Another concern of mine is, you know, gambling. Not just here in this market, but overall in the world. That's a concern of mine. But overall I'm happy, I'm elated, I smile when I walk through these aisles. I see all these people. But I think the biggest thing for me is compared to Pre Covid is the amount of young children that I see here, which is wonderful because they're gonna help this. Again, I say hobby grow. 10, 15, 20 years from now. We need these youngsters to have a passion here and figure out after high school, after college, how they can start working here. And so that makes me happy because pre Covid, we didn't really see too many of those. How do you feel about like the marketing to that younger generation now? Like, do you feel like, I mean, when we were growing up, to us it was like, I don't know, you, you saw like the Becketts came through, you went to the mall show, you went to the hobby shop, you sat there and you talked about building out your sets, collecting the cards, finding the key rookie, and that was it. And you build your Pandora and kind of move on for the next release. And I'm not saying it was a simpler time. Now, back to the gambling, there's a lot of that being thrown at the younger generation. Like, it feels to me that it's less about building the collection and more about making the flip. I'm a fan of there being a lot of different ways to work in this hobby. It's very diverse and I think we need that diversity to grow. But do you feel like we're maybe a little over indexed on the making money, especially from when it's pointed directly at the younger generation? Yes, we are definitely over indexed at people who are here to make money. I understand it though. You know, in life you need to make money. You have rent, you have a Mortgage, you have food, you want to go to a great America, you want you. So you need money. But I think too often people see this, what we're doing is a money making operation. And for me, you should never lead with, I'm going to make money, I'm going to come to the national, I'm going to start ebay, live selling, I'm going to make money. That's very short term for me. If the long term success here again is doing things the right way, working hard, making the right connections, you should never lead with money first. What do you think? If you had to attribute it to your success and your sustainability over the years, what are the things you would point to? And this isn't like a you telling other people this is what you have to do. This is more like this is what has made you successful and being able to endure the ebbs and flows of the market. Like, what would you point to just based on your career? One big thing I think is try and find a mentor or, you know, someone who maybe once a month or once a quarter will give you 30 minutes or 60 minutes, because that's a good guide and can point you in the right direction, especially if you're young, let's say you're a teenager, in your 20s. So that's important for sure. Also need to just, like in any job or any industry, figure out if there's like a problem or something that needs to be fixed or should be fixed and try and fix it. You know, there's a lot of companies here who make a lot of money, but they're not perfect, maybe in terms of operations or logistics or auction descriptions, whatever it is. And so if you could kind of figure out your way in, Like, I operate in a very niche market. Everybody here is buying, selling, trading, dealing. I have none of that in my booth. And some people walk by my booth and don't understand what the heck I'm doing here. And, but you know, my niche now is, is widely received and well regarded. So the people who are listening to this podcast try and figure out something similar, a niche in this hobby that people need. As I know you got a booth to go back to, but as we close this out, you got a great story. You, out of all the people building businesses in this space, I would consider you an OG because you've been doing it for longer than anyone else I've met. What advice do you have for the individual who's listening, who's got an idea, got some business concept and is just trying to go all in to build that and then work full time for themself. Don't be afraid, go do it and talk to people about your idea. Don't be afraid of people trying to steal your idea. That's how ideas are not let out. Some people are afraid people are going to steal your idea. Talk to people who you trust or that you have friends that trust and go do it. Because the last thing you want is 15, 20 years from now have somebody else with that idea. Or even worse, that idea never came to fruition because you were too scared to talk to somebody about it. Michael Osaki Baseball in the Attic Michael always good to catching up the part of the conversation I keep returning to is Michael's description of becoming part of his client's family. He may see someone only once every four or five years, but he stays in touch. He remembers a birthday. He sends a handwritten thank you. He follows up without turning every interaction into an ask. None of that is complicated. Very little of it is scalable in the way the word is normally used. But it's memorable. And in a market where so many relationships can feel transactional, memorable, care becomes a competitive advantage. Michael also gives us an important qualification to the message of the episode. Growth does not always mean building the largest possible company. Michael's personal involvement is part of the value of Baseball in the Attic. The collector is hiring the judgment. The family is trusting his objectivity. The signature on the appraisal is his. If he removed himself from that work only to chase more volume, the business could become larger while the product becomes weaker. That would not be growth, it would be dilution. The goal is not to eliminate the founder. The goal is to protect the founder's highest value contribution from all the work that does not require it. For Michael, the highest value contribution is judgment, context and the human relationship surrounding an important object. For Dave, a DT sports card, it may be standards, exceptions, decisions required to protect collectors cards while the repeatable updates and checks become stronger systems. For you, it may be something different, but the operator principle is the same. Scale the process, preserve the promise. Use tech to create certainty. Use people to provide judgment. Turn that care into a standard another person can understand and never become so efficient at moving the item that you forget the person who trusted you with it. The businesses that one-of-one in this industry will not merely help collectors buy, sell grade, store value protect cards. They will help collectors feel informed while they do it. They will help collectors feel confident while they do it. They will help collectors feel like the object matters because the person behind it matters. That's the standard. The next stage of the business depends on whether the standard can survive the founder. Thank you for listening to hobby jobs. I appreciate all of the support. If you are a business in the sports card industry and you are looking to build better, be more efficient, get more exposure. Reach out to me. Easy to find stacking slabs across all the social channels. Stackingslabs gmail.com if you want more conversations and operating lessons from the people building the sports card industry, make sure you subscribe to the newsletter. I'll be back next week. Happy building. Talk to you soon.