Hobby Jobs: Stop Building for “The Hobby”

Foreign. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another edition of Hobby Jobs here on the Stacking Slabs Network. I hope this episode finds you well, whether you are a collector, a builder, someone working inside the hobby ecosystem. Appreciate you tuning in and listening to my thoughts on topics that I think are important for anyone who is participating in the sports card industry, especially those of us working in it or aspiring to work in this space. Fun week ahead. Lot going on first. I'll plug it right now. Passion to Profession the episode that will drop tomorrow, sponsored by my good friends at ebay, is one you're not going to want to miss. I talk with John Amendola of Mint Inc. And there is so much information that he shares around scaling a business, building a business, the passion it takes, the ebbs and flows. It is one of the better conversations you are going to find around building in this space. It drops tomorrow. I'll also plug the Columbus Card Fest Shout out to my friend Ryan Johnson and his team. Columbus Card Fest is happening this week. I will be in Columbus for a couple days to see this event in action. Make sure you go check it out if you are around. If you are hearing about it for the first time, which is probably impossible based on the promotion that Ryan is doing. Stop on by, come through, say what's up? Would love to see you there, but let's jump into it. Welcome back to Hobby Jobs. I want to start this episode with a phrase that sounds harmless but I think gets a lot of people in this industry in trouble. And I wrote about this in the newsletter this week and that phrase is I am building for the hobby. I think that sounds right. It sounds passionate, sounds like you care. But if I am being honest, it's usually too vague to be useful. Because the hobby is not just one customer. It's not one taste profile, not one budget, not one buyer behavior. It's not one level of knowledge. It's not one reason for showing up. And if you build for an abstraction, you usually end up building something generic. And that is the trap. So I want to spend. I want to expand on the idea behind this week's newsletter and talk about why some of the most important businesses in the sports card industry are not actually building for the hobby at all. They are building for trust, convenience, liquidity, discovery, fandom. They're building for experience. They are building for very specific people trying to solve very specific problems. And if you are a professional in this space or if you want to become one, I think that distinction matters a lot because I think it changes the way you build it changes what you notice. It can change where you look for opportunity. And honestly, it changes whether your business sounds like everyone else or whether it starts becoming something the market can actually remember. So that's where we're going today. We're going to spend time in a few places. First, I want to talk about the operator note and why building for the hobby is usually lazy thinking. Then I want to spend some time on the operator story and some lessons there. After that, I want to highlight some company patterns that I think people should be paying very close attention to. And we'll close it out and then get on out of here. So one of the biggest mistakes people make in niche industries is confusing audience size with audience clarity. They see, they say things like, I'm for collectors or I'm for the hobby or I'm for sports cards. Okay, but which collectors? Which hobby participant? Which kind of sports card customer? What are they afraid of? What do they care about? Where's the friction? And the operators who skip that work usually end up copying whatever looks popular on the surface. They copy the influencer with the biggest platform, the shop, the content format, the market language, the cadence, the visual style, and before long, they're building a business that might look like it belongs in the category, but it does not actually solve anything with unusual sharpness. That is where commoditization begins. What's interesting is the biggest platforms in the space are showing us the answer if we are paying attention. Ebay does not organize trading cards around one mushy definition of the hobby. It breaks the category into sports, collectible card games, non sports. And when ebay talks about what buyers they care about, it says they are looking for condition value and trust. That's more useful framing, not hobby love. Condition value, trust. That's operator language. That's customer language. That is what serious builders need to pay attention to. The same thing shows up in authentication. Ebay keeps expanding authentication infrastructure around trading cards because the real job is not to celebrate the hobby. The real job is to help buyers and sellers complete high value transactions with confidence. There is a lot of conversation around authentication. My cards take too long. I wish this didn't exist. But the ability to help buyers and sellers complete high value transactions with confidence often gets lost in the shuffle. That is why authenticity matters. That is why the vault matters. That is why friction reduction matters. Look at collectors. PSA is not just operating in a world where collectors want a number on a slab. They are building capacity, process standards and systems around massive flow submissions. They are grading Cards, tickets, comics, magazines, video games, packs, you name it. Think that this tells you something important. This tells you something deeper than all of the mainstream hobby headlines. The collector is no longer showing up as one simple identity. The collector is moving around categories. The collector wants interconnected infrastructure. The collector wants a smoother operating experience. And if you are a business in this space, the that means your understanding of the customer has to be wider and deeper than it used to. In a few weeks or a month or whatever it is, I'll be going to Fanatics Fest. And Fanatics Fest is not a traditional card show. It is an entertainment layer wrapped around commerce and fandom. Think that matters? Because it means that companies shaping the next chapter are not asking how do we talk to the hobby? They are asking how do we create a better collector experience across multiple behaviors, categories and touch points. That is a completely different level of thinking. So when I say stop building for the hobby, what I really mean is this. Stop hiding behind a category label. Start doing the harder work of understanding the person in front of you. What do they want? What do they fear? What's broken? What's risky, what's moving too slow? Because if you answer those questions, you're you will build something meaningful. If you cannot answer those questions, there's a good chance you are producing surface level hobby content or surface level hobby commerce and hoping attention carries you farther than real usefulness will ever will. It won't. I think operators who matter in this space are usually doing one of three things very well. Reducing friction, increasing confidence, or their deepening connection. Sometimes the best do all three. And the tough part is a lot of businesses in this space think they have a marketing problem when what they really have is a customer definition problem. They think they need more reach. What they actually need is to sharpen clarity. They think they need more content. What they actually need is a better understanding of who the content is helping. They think they need to copy what is already working. What they actually need is to identify where they can become useful, unusually useful. And I think that is the shift. And if you are an aspiring professional listening to this, then this should completely change how you think about your own value. You don't need to know every card. You do not need to have the biggest collection. You do not need to act like you've been here forever. You need to understand customers. You need to understand systems. You need to understand trust. And you do need to understand where behavior is changing before everyone else starts posting about it. That is where the opportunity lives. Fun operator story to talk about and this was published on Passion Profession and it was a really good conversation. I still been thinking about it and let's move to that because I think this is where lessons start to get real. I kept thinking about my chat with Brian THZ sports cards. And the reason I kept thinking about Brian is because his path is such a clean example of what happens when someone stops trying to build the broadest possible game and starts winning in a more specific one. Brian did not stay planted in high end NBA cards just because that is where the spotlight was. He moved, he adjusted, he leaned into wrestling. Now, on the surface, that might sound like a category change, but I think it is deeper than that. It is really a customer understanding move. Because what Brian appears to have recognized is that undercover categories can create different types of opportunity. If you're willing to do the work, you have to understand the talent. You have to understand the culture. You have to understand the super collectors. You have to understand the behavior, have to understand how rare cards move. You have to understand how trust is built. And you have to understand why patience matters in a market that is still taking shape. That is not hobby tourism. That is category fluency. That is professional depth. And that is exactly why I think the lazy phrase of build for the hobby gets people into trouble. Because Brian's edge did not come from trying to serve everyone who likes cards. His edge came from getting close enough to a specific segment that he could become useful in ways others were not. That is how wedges form. That's how you build reputation. That is how businesses begin to separate. And maybe the most important part of the story is that it was not built on a magic moment. It was years of buying, selling, building relationships, years of learning what most people were never bothered, never bothered to learn. And I think that matters because a lot of people want the result without respecting the repetition. They want to be known. They want access, they want the deals. They want credibility. But they do not always, always want to process. They do not want the process that creates those things. The process is the point. And if I zoom out, this is why Brian's story travels beyond wrestling. He is teaching a broader hop operator lesson. The lesson is not go sell wrestling cards. The lesson is go where you can build real fluency. Go where your knowledge can become a service. Go where your relationships can actually compound. Go where the market still rewards people who care enough to get specific. That's true in wrestling. It's true in soccer, vintage Pokemon. It's true in content. It's true in everything. The people who build lasting Careers in this space are usually not the people who are trying to sound broadly relevant. They are the people who know Elaine so well that collectors trust them to translate it. And I think that word really matters. Translate. Because expertise by itself isn't enough. You have to convert expertise into confidence for somebody else. You have to help them understand what matters. You have to reduce their uncertainty. You have to help them navigate the category with better judgment. You have to make them feel like they are in capable hands. That is where professional value is created. And one more thing here, because I think it's worth saying there is a temptation in this hobby to chase the category that looks the hottest. But some of the best opportunities are not in the hottest category. They are in the category where you can go see farther than everyone else. And that's a big difference. The hottest category gets attention and noise. The cleanest categories fit gives you edge Brian's story is a reminder that smart operators do not just ask where's the attention? They ask where's where can my understanding become leveraged? And I think that's a much better question for the hobby jobs highlight this week, I do not want to point to just one job title. I want to point to a company pattern. And that company pattern is this. The future of sports cards work looks increasingly hybrid. Retail plus Media Authentication plus Commerce Events plus Content Category Expertise plus Customer expectations Community plus Technology Think Card Vault is one of the best live examples of this pattern right now. When you look at what they're building, it's not just stores. It's stores in multiple cities. It is sports cards and Pokemon and entertainment and combat categories. It's grading partnerships, live breaks, it's ebay, live fanatics live it's events. It's a broader collector experience that should tell aspiring professionals something very important. The jobs worth watching are not going to look like a sports card expert. A lot of valuable roles in this industry are going to sit at intersection, store experience, community management, retail operations, live commerce, event activation, merchandising authentication support, collector education, content production, partnerships, regional growth. In other words, the people who win in the next era may not be the people with the loudest hobby voice. They may be the people who can operate across touch points. That is exactly why I keep coming back to the phrase hobby fluency. Fluency is not just trivia. It's not just knowing who the rookie is or what the pop count is or what the last comp is. Real fluency means you understand how customers move through the system. What gets them excited, what gets them to hesitate, what makes them trust what makes them stay. What makes them come back with a friend. If I were trying to break into this industry right now, I would be asking myself a completely different question than most people. I would ask what company? I would not ask what company would be cool to work for. I would ask what customer behavior do I understand well enough to improve? That is the better question. Because once you can answer that, you can stop. You stop sounding like a fan begging for a role and start sounding like an operator who can create value. And that is where serious companies are paying attention to. So this week's Hobby Jobs highlight is a broader signal. Pay attention to businesses that are expanding across format, geography, category, and customer experience. Those are the businesses revealing where the labor market is headed. Those are the businesses that can help you translate transferable skills into hobby opportunity. Maybe you come from retail. Maybe you come from SaaS. Maybe you come from events. Maybe you come from marketplace operations. Perhaps you come from hospitality. Maybe you come from content, community or paid media. If you can connect that professional skill set to real collector behavior, you are not on the outside of the industry. You're closer than you really think. This has been a fun episode. Episode. I'm enjoying delivering these Hobby Jobs episodes. Hopefully you are finding them valuable. Hobby Jobs exist for a very specific reason. The sports card industry is growing. And when industries grow up, they need more than product hype. They need operators. They need leaders. They need system thinkers. They need people who know how to build trust. They need people who can translate customer behavior into better businesses. They need people who can see around the corners. That is what I want Hobby Jobs to become. Not just another newsletter. Not just another podcast. A resource, a signal source. A place where people working in this industry or trying to work in this industry can get sharper every single week. If that is what you care about. Sign up for Hobby Jobs, the newsletter, or keep listening to the damn show here on the Stacking Slabs Network each and every week. Because every week I'm trying to do the exact same thing. Pull fragmented lessons out of private conversations, operator experiences, hiring patterns, or market shifts and bring them to the open. Less hobby noise, more operator clarity. Less generic. Talk about the hobby, more direct. Talk about what customers need, what companies are building, and where professionals can create real value. That is the mission here. And if that resonates, tell someone who is building. Tell them about hobby jobs. Tell the shop owner. Tell the aspiring breaker. Tell the marketplace operator. Tell the creator who wants to become a business. Tell the person sitting in tech or sales or marketing who keeps wondering if there is a path into sports cards. There is, and that time is now. But it is a lot easier to find when you stop romanticizing the hobby and start understanding the work. I really appreciate you be here being here. Keep building. Happy collecting. Talk soon.