Hobby Jobs: When the Collection Becomes Capital Building + Hiring, and Serving Collectors Steve Sloan of Heystack

Foreign. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Hobby Jobs here on the Stacking Slabs Network. I am Brett. I am recording this episode in my hotel room at the Lowe's Hotel during the National. I have a lot of energy, a lot of excitement around the industry, especially after yesterday, and I want to bring some of that perspective here today. What does the national look like when you spend the entire day without trying to buy a card? That was my Thursday in Rosemont. I spent the entire day at the card ladder booth recording six conversations with people building different parts of of the sports card industry. Josh Johnson, CTO at Card ladder, Steve Sloan, CEO at Haystack, Chris McGill, CEO of Card Ladder Danny Moss, leader at Collect Talent Michael Osaki from Baseball in the Attic, and Noah Dock, the CFO at BCW Supply. Six conversations, six different perspectives, six different parts of the hobby infrastructure. We talked tech, we talked hiring, leadership capital, customer experience, career paths, the systems required to turn a good idea into an actual company. The cards were physically surrounding us. Showcases were filled with them. Collectors were negotiating for them. Money was changing hands all over the building. But the conversations happening at the card ladder booth were about everything required to make all of those moments possible. That's the industry side. At the national, it does not get nearly enough attention. Most people experience the national from the show Fleer They see the crowds, the cards, the athletes, the breakers, and the massive booth activations. But behind every one of those booths is an operating system. There are people making product decisions, managing inventory, building tech, hiring teams, creating content, solving customer problems, tracking margins, working through logistics, and making bets about where the industry is going next. The national is not only the biggest card show in the world. For one week, it becomes the central office of the sports card industry. You can learn about this business during one conversation in a hallway. More about it than one conversation in a hallway than you might learn through several months of zoom calls. That is why I want to spend why I wanted to spend Thursday talking to operators. And those conversations will become part of hobby jobs over the next several weeks. I do not want to simply publish interviews and move on. I want to pull lessons from them. I want to connect what one operator is experiencing with what another operator is building. I want to make the knowledge inside the industry more accessible to the people who want to work here. Today you're going to hear my conversation with Steve Sloan. Steve has spent roughly two decades inside the collectibles industry. His career has included Upper Deck collectors, serving as a president of PSA and now building Haystack. He has seen the hobby from inside established companies and from inside of a startup. That makes Steve an important person to learn from. But before we get to that conversation, I want to expand on this week's operator note because there is a decision many collectors turn operators eventually have to make. What happens when the collection stops being only a collection? What happens when it becomes capital? One of the most interesting dynamics in the sports card industry is that many of the people building businesses here start as collectors. They did not discover the market through a spreadsheet. They discovered it because they love cards. They understood the feeling of finding something they had been hunting for. They understand why the mail day mattered. They understand the anticipation of an auction ending. They understood why one card could mean more to a collector than its most recent comparable sale. The collector background has become an enormous operating advantage. It gives you empathy. It gives you category fluency. It helps you understand the emotional job that the product is doing. But it also creates tension because eventually the collector and the operator may want different things. The collector wants to hold the card. The operator sees what the card could fund. The collector sees the memory. The operator sees an editor, a new employee, an inventory, software equipment. Over the next month of Runway, that is when the collection can become capital. That is not unusual in entrepreneurship. The Small Business Administration describes bootstrapping as using your own financial resources to support a business. That can mean personal savings, retirement funds, or money from family and friends. In the sports card industry, personal resources may also include the collection someone spent years of building. That is simply our industry's version of self funding. Recent Federal Reserve research also shows why operators face these decisions. In 2026 survey of of employer firms, 56% of businesses seeking financing needed it for operating expenses, while 46% were pursuing expansion or a new opportunity. Only 42% of applicants received the full amount they wanted. The ambition may be there long before affordable capital is available, but I want to be very, very careful here. Selling something meaningful does not automatically make you a serious entrepreneur. Sacrifice is not a business strategy. There is temptation to romanticize the founder who sold everything, bet on the company, and refused to quit. That story sounds great after the company succeeds. It sounds much different when the money is gone and the business is still broken. The value is not in the sacrifice itself. The value is in what the sacrifice allows the business to build. If you are considering selling cards to fund your business, you should be able to draw a clear line from the card to the collector. The card becomes capital. The capital buys capability. The capability improves the business. The improvement creates a better collector experience. Maybe you sell a card to purchase equipment that improves the quality of every listing you make. Maybe it helps fund with shipping so the orders you have leave on time. Maybe it helps you hire someone who can answer customer questions. Maybe it creates enough Runway to finish a product that removes friction for dealers and collectors. Maybe it funds informational content that teaches a new collector how to participate with confidence. That is productive sacrifice. But selling a card to fund a vague idea, cover an operating leak or delay a difficult decision is not conviction. It's avoidance. Before collection capital enters the business, I would ask four questions. First, what exact bottleneck will the money remove? Do not answer with growth. Growth is too vague. Will it increase listing capability? Improve fulfillment time? Create more inventory turns? Fund a specific hire? Launch a new product you've already validated? You need to know. Second, how does removing that bottleneck help the collector? If the only benefit is the company gets bigger, that's not enough. Bigger businesses can still create terrible collector experiences. The question is whether the investment makes the business more trustworthy, more useful, more accurate, or easier to use. Third, how will you know the investment work? Set the measurement before the money enters the business. If the investment is supposed to improve turnaround time, measure turnaround time. If it's supposed to increase listings, measure listing volume and sell through. If it's supposed to grow an audience, measure qualified subscribers and engagement, not impressions alone. Fourth, what is the stopping rule? Founders are very good at convincing themselves that one more investment will fix a problem. Decide in advance how much you are willing to put in, how long you will give it, and what evidence you need to continue. That's not lack of belief, that is responsible ownership. Supporting the collector requires a healthy business. A company with no margin cannot invest in service. A founder with no Runway cannot think long term. A team operating in constant crisis eventually passes that chaos to its customers. That is part of Collector First. That is easy to miss. Supporting collectors is not limited to being friendly on social media. It's not a slogan, it's an operating system. It starts by protecting the emotional reason the collector came to you. Research from Qualtrics XM Institute has found that emotion has a stronger effect on loyalty than effort or simply accomplishing a task. Customers who feel good about an experience are more likely to trust, recommend, forgive, and purchase more. That matters even more. In a category built around passion and identity, a collector does not experience a card purchase as a sterile transaction. They may have been searching for that card for years. It may complete a set. It might remind them of a parent. It may represent a game they attended or a player they watched as a kid. The business handling that transaction is temporarily responsible for something emotionally important. That does not mean every order needs a handwritten essay. It means that the business should avoid introducing unnecessary anxiety into the experience. Experience Accurate descriptions matter. Clear images matter. Communication matters. Reliable shipping matters. Thoughtful packaging matters. Fixing mistakes matter. The technical details become emotional because they either protect or threaten the collector's confidence. The next layer is reducing uncertainty the sports card industry has an enormous information problem. Collectors are expected to understand sets, parallels, print run condition, grading standards, auction formats, fees, shipping policies, and market values. When a business provides accurate information, it is not simply creating content. It is reducing the perceived risk of participating. The third layer layer is reducing effort. How easy is it to find the right card? How easy is it to understand the listing? How easy is it to ask the question? How easy is it to complete the transaction? How easy is it to resolve a problem? Qualtrics defines customer effort around how hard someone must work to make a purchase, complete a request, or resolve an issue. The basic principle is straightforward customers more likely to remain loyal. When a business is easier to use, less friction creates more room for the collector to enjoy the hobby. And finally, supporting the collector means designing for the second transaction. A bad operator asks how do we get this sale? A strong operator asks what needs to happen for the collector to trust us again? That changes your decisions. It changes which sellers you allow onto a platform. It changes how you describe inventory. It changes how aggressively you market. It changes whether you optimize for the short term spike or the long term relationship. The collector is downstream of every operating decision. They may never see the software fulfillment team product data. They may never see what the founder sold to finance the company. But eventually they'll feel the result. This brings me to this week's Operator story. Hopefully you got a chance to listen to the conversation I had with Bo Thompson from One Million Cubs on Passionate Profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay. This week, bo Thompson started 1 million cubs with a goal that sounded almost impossible. He wanted to trade 1 million non Cubs cards for 1 million Cubs cards. The project took 7 1/2 years. But the million cards were not the only outcome. The project created relationships, created trust. It taught Bo how to source, organize, list and sell inventory. It taught him how to communicate with other collectors. It gave him years of repetition inside the business before he depended on that business for his livelihood. I was at a dinner at the national in 2021 of sitting right across from Beautiful, and that dinner alone gave Bo the confidence to leave his job. He eventually built an operation with roughly 60,000 eBay listings and moved into selling through eBay Live six nights a week. What started as a collector mission became a real operating education. That is part of Bo's story I think is aspiring professionals need to really look at and study. Do not only study the moment when someone quits their job, study the years before it. Bo did not wake up one morning announce that he loved cards and immediately possessed a sustainable business. He built skills, inventory, relationship. He learned where demand existed. He learned what happened when sales stopped growing. He learned to adapt. He learned to gain attention. The preparation made the leap possible. Another important part of Beau's journey is learning to separate the collection from the business. Two things can coexist, but they cannot be managed as though they are the same. A collection is primarily organized around meaning. Inventory is primarily organized around movement. A collection can sit untouched for years and still be doing its job. Inventory that sits untouched for years may be starving the company. A collection can be irrational because personal meaning does not need margin to exist. Inventory needs a cost basis, sales strategy and expected return. If everything is sacred, the business cannot move. If nothing is sacred, the operator may lose the connection that brought them into the hobby in the first place. The goal is not to stop being a collector. The goal is to create boundaries. Know which cards are part of your identity. Know which cards are business assets, track them separately, store them separately, account for them separately, decide in advance when inventory gets discounted, moved or liquidated. And if you are going to sell your own personal collection. Define what the money's expected to accomplish when the card leaves both. Story is a reminder that passion can open the door, but operator discipline is what allows someone to stay. Gotta shout out a cool job here on hobbyjobs and the job I want to highlight is the head of trading cards for eBay Live. This is not simply a marketing position for someone who enjoys cards. It's effectively a GM role. The person will own business outcomes across supply, demand, content, trust and product innovation. They will be responsible for P and L and GMV targets. They will recruit and develop sellers. They will shape programming, they will influence product capabilities and they will be responsible for creating a buyer experience built around both confidence and fun. Ebay is explicitly looking for someone who understands marketplace economic seller behavior. In the trading card category, this role represents where careers in this hobby are going. Category. Knowledge alone isn't enough. Traditional business experience alone isn't enough. The opportunity belongs to people who can connect the two. You need to understand why collectors participate. You also need to understand P and L. You need to know what makes a compelling card content. You need to know whether the content creates repeatable business results. You need to build relationships with sellers. You need the standards to protect buyers. You need to move quickly. You also need to understand what can be damaged when a marketplace moves too quickly. If I were applying for this role, I would build my case around five things. A story that proves I have owned a meaningful business outcome, A clear understanding of how life commerce changes collector behavior, A point of view on seller quality and buyer trust. A programming thesis that goes beyond putting expensive cards on camera and a 90 day plan showing how I would learn before trying to rebuild everything. This is a senior role, but even if you are not qualified for it today, study the description. Job descriptions like this show how the industry values different skills. They become a roadmap. If you want to lead a category someday, start building evidence that you understand the collector, the seller and the economics connecting them. My guest today understands the intersection better than most. Steve Sloan spent 20 years working in collectibles. He worked in product development at Upper Deck. He held leadership roles at Collectors. He served as president of PSA during one of the most consequential periods in the company's history. Now he's the co founder and CEO of Haystack. Haystack builds infrastructure for the businesses selling cards. Its tool focus on image capturing, card recognition, structured data and listing automation. The company says more than 1 million cards have been listed through its platform. The Collector may never see the infrastructure, but they experience its outputs through better images, more accurate information and faster listings. That is why this conversation belongs inside today's episode. Supporting Collectors does not always happen at the point of sale. Sometimes it happens several layers behind the transaction. I sat down with Steve at the Card Letter booth during the national to talk about building inside this industry, what he has learned from this career and what the next generation of hobby professionals needs to understand. Let's run to the conversation right now. All right, we are back here. Excited for this conversation. I am joined today by Steve Sloan who is the CEO at Haystack. Steve, first time we're doing this in person. You are a longtime industry operator. How are you doing? What do you make of the national so far? I love the national every year coming here and the national this thus far has been incredibly busy for us over at Haystack at our booth and so just, you know, trying to soak in every minute like anyone else does, trying to carve some time out at the end of the show So I can actually maybe go walk some tables, do some buying. So, so how do you balance that? Obviously like you have worked with the biggest brands in this space. You're working in a startup, building the startup, you're working in cards. You are a collector. I'm finding as a business builder, my time is being pulled into the building side of it because it is my livelihood, it is what supports my family. There's fewer time for collecting, trying to find the cards. Like over the years, how have you balanced those two worlds? Try to just be opportunistic, you know, starting conversations with people at the booth asking what cards they've brought to our booth, for example, this, this week to scan in and put into our system. So just trying to be opportunistic. You know, you do have to give yourself breaks too. Like it's okay to go take a 15 minute walk around the Fleer I have to remind myself to do that, of course. But you know, just be opportunistic with your time. So Haystack, let's talk about it just from the perspective. I feel like you have done a great job of building with your team, the company's brand. I've seen it in more places and more spaces. Obviously it is a product that solves a massive problem for any individual that is trying to sell cards online. How long have you been at the Haystack build in like those different chapters. What does that look like for you in the business right now? Yu-Gi-Oh this is our third national, so this will be my three year anniversary coming up with the company here in October. So it's been a fun ride for sure. We've, we've really built some really powerful tools and connected those tools to a lot of important industry players here, which makes me feel really good about the work we were doing. I would say the, you know, it's all about maintaining our core engine, which is our recognition. The recognition powers everything. And for us, being a ton of everyone at the company is a card collector. We try to make the culture card first in that way. And I think that's really paid dividends for us because we're able to ideate and execute on applications of the card recognition pretty tight cycles. So for example, this year we're doing kiosks at our booth where you can walk up, have your cards image, they'll be recognized instantly by our Yu-Gi-Oh in the background and then those cards will be sent to a private network of dealers who can make offers on those cards. So it's a great way to connect buyers and sellers in A digital way. Especially with so many dealers across this Fleer it's nearly impossible to hit every table. But if you have a little tech on your side, you can get more things done. How do you think about your go to market and just like maybe those early stages of like, let's get one customer here, let's get two customers there, let's try to prove the value. Like how have you taken those early days of growth into kind of this chapter of haystack and building off of that? Yu-Gi-Oh we wanted to. Our strategy was to start by segments. And so within, you know, we have a really, I think a strong handle of how the industry is structured. And so we looked at consignment as an area of opportunity. And consignment sellers, you know, need powerful tools. They're, they're, they're all about throughput, getting cards in, getting cards listed, getting cards out to the buyers. And so we took a primary focus on the consignment segment and built tools that really helped one-of-one that segment. And as a result, you know, we now have a really solid foundation of clients and customers inside that segment. From there, you know, it's about taking what you've learned and what you've built and seeing how it applies to other verticals or other segments, I should say. And so for example, we bro, we've now built tools for breakers. We're building tools for retail stores. We're building tools for the classic dealer who has a standing inventory of cards. So it's been a really fun ride to, to focus on segments as we go and build compounding tools that help and connect, most importantly connect those segments together. So that's kind of the stage we're at right now is making those connections happen. What's your observations on the state of consignment? It feels like there's these existing legacy players who sell high volumes of cards. There's cross platform, like you've got ebay, sell consignment, you've got Fanatics consignment, you've got emerging players coming up. Like there seems like there's more and more consignment options. Obviously brand for consignors is Zebra important. Like you work with these people who run these companies. Like this has changed a lot just in the last two to three years. Like what's your analysis on just consignment? It's a very competitive space. Obviously you know, the things that clients are looking for is, you know, the right timing and exposure for their listings plus you know, obviously the highest auction prices realized for their items. So the companies that deliver those two things in tandem are the most successful. And a lot of times technology is behind that. But also relationships, you know, relationships with their buyer pool, their network of people who come into their, their platforms to make those purchases. So I think my take is, is really just simple. It's like, you know, those with the best relationships and the best advantages from a technological standpoint are probably going to be the ones that, that continue to do the best. How do you think about, or how does, how do you and your team think about product development and like getting feedback from your customers about how they're using Haystack and how do you incorporate kind of their feedback in your product roadmap? Constantly. I mean it's, it's whether it's a monthly call we have them with them or bi weekly calls that we have with them, emails. Slack channels are where we do slack integrations with their teams. It's a constant evaluation. Of course there's a balance. You know, you have to plan and be strategic with how you roll out iterations of the software. But you know, it all starts with the customer feedback. Hey, we're looking for this, can you deliver it? We'll evaluate it also in certain instances, see if it applies to other customers or if it's non recurring engineering, which means it's only for that client. So try to be very customer focused in that way and build tools that are going to keep our, our clients happy. Essentially. I want to talk about hiring, but before I do that, I want to understand your experience in your run at PSA and that experience and experience in the sports card industry. A big one. And then now you're building Haystack. How have those experiences been similar and how have they been different? Yu-Gi-Oh that's a good question. I think the similarity is the customer should be the primary focus in all instances in the customer experience. So psa, a couple examples would be obviously, you know, we had that massive backlog, that's what everyone remembers from the 2020, 29th or 2021 era. What we had tried to do in advance of that is to really showcase getting the submission process digitized. And it'd been in paper forms. I don't know if the old schoolers remember the carbon triplicates. I remember them, Yu-Gi-Oh So it was like getting, getting PSA off of that system and into a digital online submission center was about the customer experience and trying to make that the primary focus because we knew if you give the customer an easier way to submit, you're going to get the cards. And so I think looking to where PSA is today, I mean, with the investments they've made in the app experience and the submission experience and the pop lookups and everything you can do with pricing and offers, they. They value that very highly. And I think that's a big part of their success. And so with, with Haystack as well, we want to take that same approach. You know, we're, we're, as I mentioned earlier, we're kind of doing it by, by segments as we go. We haven't fully gone full consumer yet. We're more focused on B2B at this point, but we do build B2B2C tools which help our clients interact with their customers. And so, you know, I get fulfillment from that in terms of the, you know, that customer experience side of things. Do you feel like the. This is my observation. I feel like the B2B side of the sports card industry is such an untapped resource and it has so much potential and there's not a lot of people outside of businesses talking to businesses and wants and needs and how do we partner? How do, how can we work together? Like, I just feel like there's not enough conversation outside of those chats to publicly inspire someone to build a business and learn how to collaborate with other businesses in order to grow that business. Do you. I know you've been building in this space for a while, but do you feel like that potential that on the B2B side is, is still kind of untapped and has a lot of room to grow? I think it does. I mean, you have to look at the growth of the industry and the investments some of the bigger players are making that kind of pull up the, the overall industry as, as a, as a whole, I think it's all about where needs and capabilities intersect. And so if two businesses have complementary services or one has, from our perspective, we have a good handle on card cataloging and recognition. If we can find a business that has needs that intersect with our capabilities, then I think there's a fit. And so that doesn't just have to be in the tech element. It could be in customer acquisition more purely in, like, experiential marketing. You know, if you have a retail store, how can you partner with different companies to drive more foot traffic? That's, that's what I mean by that. It's just about businesses understanding the capabilities of their peers and having those conversations. How important has your experience been previously working in the sports card industry to being the leader of the business? At Haystack, I don't know how I could do it well without the experience over the years, to be honest. Like, it's trading cards. Like any industry, if I wanted to switch industries and get into plumbing or get into medical devices, like, I would have to be starting from scratch. And I think there has to be a certain level of understanding of the space to really excel. And it takes time. So, you know, I would invite people coming into the space. It's okay to start from zero and work your way up. Build the relationships, talk to people, learn, be a sponge and talk to as many people as you can to get a baseline understanding that you can build upon. But it is critical. I mean, it's like any area of expertise, you have to have that foundation. Relationships. Obviously you have a lot of them in your previous life working at psa, probably with people you worked with, and then obviously other businesses you worked with. How do you take advantage of those relationships? Especially when, like, rewind the tape to three years ago when people are like, hey, Stack, what's that? Like, how do you take advantage of those relationships? Outreach. I mean, it's. Hey, check in. This is what I'm doing now. I mean, I'm an introvert by nature. Like, I'm. I don't excel in the busy trade show Fleer I'm a little bit more, you know, just a quiet person, private in certain ways. But I love the people that I've been able to work with over the years. And I mean that truly. Like, there's so many good people in this space that it's easy to reach out and say, hey, this is what we're doing. Is there any way that we can help you? For me, personally, it takes a little courage and effort to do that. Just because I'm more like, you know, you let the intrusive thoughts come in sometimes and you doubt if you could provide value to people. But you have to overcome that. You have to have those conversations. And, you know, more times than not, people are willing to listen and hear what you have going on. I want to talk about the outreach side because anybody building in this space or who wants to build in this space has to reach out to somebody at some point for something. And oftentimes I've sat there, Steve, where I'm like, I got an email drafted and I'm reading over it a million times. I'm like, I can't believe I'm gonna send this. And then there's just like this nervous energy where it's like, they're either not Gonna respond, They're gonna say no. Or they might say yes. Let's talk. Like, I don't know, like, it takes some reps and sets, but, like, how do you get over the hump to make just that outreach feel normal? Or is it always kind of uncomfortable in some way, shape or form? I think it always depends on the dynamic of the relationship you have with the person, how well you know them. One thing I've tried to do throughout my years is find ways that I can add value to their business, to their, you know, situation. And so I try to research, you know, areas, maybe they. They've mentioned publicly that they're trying to do or achieve goals, are trying to reach and find ways, and try to look at it through the lens of Haystack. How can Haystack help this business? And then just try to lead with value. Hey, I see you're trying to do X, we provide Y could equal Z, you know, in terms of the. The. The outcomes that we're trying to drive for them. I was just having a conversation with Josh Johnson about two things, and they were. We both said they were underrated. Number one is just, like, consistency, like, just being consistent, showing up each and every day, doing what you say you're going to do. And the other thing is what you touched on, but it's like reciprocity, where it's like, so many individuals in this space, like, come to you asking for something first. But, like, if you turn it a little bit and you say, okay, I'm going to add value, and this is how I'm going to add value, by doing a little homework, doing some research, understanding the position or the problem that the person you eventually want something from has. But, like, it takes time to understand that. Like, and that's something I don't think you're going to. Someone's going to listen to on a podcast and be like, I'm going to implement this. But I don't know, over the years, like, how have you found, like, consistency and reciprocity been able. You'd have been able to take advantage of those things. I mean, consistency is. It's one of those things that it feel in the moment, it feels like butting your head up against the wall if you're not getting the response you're looking for or the outcomes you're looking for. But there is a breakthrough moment, and it's like that. I don't know if you know that meme with the guy who's like, underground tunneling. Yes. And he turns around, like, the Things, it's like, that's a perfect example. Like, the sales cycle is longer with businesses and this is something that, you know, I've learned over the years. It's like the persistent. I'll use the word persistence. You can use the word consistency, but persistence is, is, is important to, to developing the relationships. Continuing to. That first email is most likely not going to land any deal. Like, it's, it's meeting them at this show in person. It's, it's, it's visiting their place of business. It's things like that that really help build relationships. I love that you called out that. Working with businesses just takes longer. Someone could reach out to you and they could be so hot and heavy and excited and you could have the perfect proposal. You've got the perfect discovery meeting, you've got it all buttoned up and you send it over to them and then you hear nothing and you're like, we all scrambled as a team to put this together. Because the ACV on the other side of this is insane. Like, this could be monumental for our business. And now they don't want to respond. Like, anybody who's building in this space has gone through that before. Like, how do you, how do you get to an answer? Or how do you work with your team to say, this isn't like our fault, we've done everything, it's just a nature of B2B sales. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a good question. I mean, I think again, every situation is slightly different. You know, you're looking internally at who's the key decision maker. You're looking at what is the priority for that company at the moment, what is their strategy and how long is it going to take them to execute that strategy? Because oftentimes, especially in the bigger businesses, they have their product roadmaps, they have their initiatives for a year, and they're not going to be able to even give you the time of day until they've got some headspace to clear it off of developing and executing those things. So, you know, for me, again, I hate, I hate the answer. That it's unique to each instance, I guess, to the broader application is just understanding where that business is, understanding and talking to the people who are the key decision makers and getting to those decision makers and building internal support for the concepts that you're trying to deliver to them. Because it should be adding value. Like, you should give up if you're not adding value. If you, if you get to the point, you're like, you know, this isn't something do you find in this space that companies have, the more have the ability, if you are offering them something that they need, that they can include it in their budget and sign a PO and make that happen. Or is it more like we have to wait for them their budgeting cycle, which we're having this conversation in July, but they might not be able to, you know, buy from us until December. Like do you find it's more structured or it's more like opportunistic? Depends on the business size. I would say. The larger the business, the more structured it tends to be. Yu-Gi-Oh And, and so there will be a whole department that has to get involved in order to, to help you with that execution and you'll have to talk to multiple departments. And so you're kind of navigating between, you know, business functions within a larger org, but the smaller ones, I mean it's really about just getting the key decision maker and understanding having them understand your value. And then, you know, here's actually one that's pretty underrated now that I'm talking this through is the actual operators who are going to be using your solutions are Zebra critical as well. Like so the people that, whose lives is actually going to make better on the day to day. So if there's a structure where it's like a boss, you know, you know, operators and it's a pretty flat organization, like it's really helpful to try to get in with the operators who are actually using the solutions on a day to day because they'll be your advocates internally. How do you do that without going over the head of the, your point of contact? Is there a way to do that that is like strategic and gets maybe the decision maker and the champion or the end user on the same page? Yu-Gi-Oh you're right. You can go bottoms up or top down in terms of that. You know, obviously if you go top down, you're looking for that implied permission to talk to the person and show them the demo and get them interested in how it works. If you're going bottoms up, it's, it's probably more about the value that it can bring to the organization. Hey, I can, I can turn myself into three employees if I had this solution from a tech perspective to apply to my workflows. And so that would then get the attention of the owners who's always looking to maximize every dollar, improve margins, things of that nature. How many people do you have at Haystack right now? So we're growing and we are hiring. So if you don't put the Word out on that we're hiring in our database and card cataloging team for both TCG and sports. And then we are also hiring on our customer service side of things as well as and sales. So keep that in mind for any listeners out there. But right now we're still a very lean startup. You know, we're, we're north of 10 people at this point. We have some contracted employees as well. One unique thing about Haystack is we have a headquarters in Detroit for our hardware manufacturing and we have employees that work out of that office. But the rest of the staff is remote at this point. We work all across the time zones in the United States so you can get a hold of us hopefully early morning or late evening depending on where you are in the US or Canada for those sales roles in the CS roles. Like what's most important for you as someone who's bringing on new team members. We talked about this last time we talked. It's like this in this conversation keeps coming up with other people. It's like hobby domain expertise or outside experience to fit the role blend of both. Like how are you evaluating those two things? Because we're a startup, we don't have a fully built out HR department that can go through more the extensive training that might be required for people who are coming in fresh to the industry. So that's why I mentioned earlier we prefer people who understand cards. So there's a shorter cycle of getting people up to speed. So our preference is highly intelligent and highly capable and achieved people. People have accomplish things in on their resume. You know, it doesn't have to be a long resume but accomplishments within a short time, amount of time is just as valuable as accomplishments over a career. If you're into cards, you've got a key understanding of cards. And then of course we look for intelligence. Just people who can be problem solvers, who are not necessarily permission seekers but they're more begging for forgiveness. And I'd say that just because we got we want to go fast. And so I'd rather you make a mistake on the job that we can review and learn from versus constantly asking for permission on new things coming up. Do you think there's a rise in people wanting to work in the sports card industry? I think so. I mean I think it's become more established with the larger brands coming in and putting a lot of money into the space. It has more of a. It's not just cards. I'm using air quotes for the listeners here. It's not just cards. It's more technology, it's more customer experience. It's. It's all these things. So I think that the industry has matured so much over the last 10 years that, yes, for sure. How do you think about, like, just the tech side and the tech infrastructure in the hobby? Obviously, you're a company that's contributing to that, but it seems like it's growing up quite a bit. Like three, four years ago at the National, I'm not sure we'd be having a conversation about hobby tech, but here we are. Like, how has that changed? I think it's led mostly by Yu-Gi-Oh Claude, you know, the ability to Vibe code, which is. Which is cool. I think, you know, it's been a lot easier in the most recent year or even months to be able to create your idea from scratch with the tools available to people through Yu-Gi-Oh So we see a lot of people coming to us who are Vibe coders, asking for access to our APIs for data and things of that nature, and we evaluate them. And I think what I look at is more. Less the product, but the person behind the product. And, like, so it's almost like a hiring opportunity. It's like, oh, so you've got a strong knowledge of cards, you build something that you think will solve a problem inside the space, and you've taken the initiative to try to build something yourself. Like, hey, you want to come work for Haystack? Let's talk. You know, that sort of thing. So I want to maybe, like, round this out by talking about, like, you bringing in people, the team growing, you're leading the business. How do you. When you're hiring new people, obviously that should mean less work for you. I'm sure there was a time maybe there's more work in a different way, but less, like, functional responsibility. There's. I'm sure there's a time where you felt like you needed to do every function, every role, like, all the time, and then you start bringing in people and you offload responsibility. Like, have you gotten good at that at this stage of not feeling like you need to be involved in every function and every decision, or, like, how do you work that out? Especially since you're leading the business and there's so much work to do all the time? That's a really good question, Brett. It's like. That's like a loaded question, too. I'm sure my staff would give a very different answer, because I do like to be involved. Like, it's for better or worse, you know, I. I would say, you know, I Don't have. I would never say I have any level of expertise. I just have a level of experience that has informed me over the years on, on when to get involved and when to back off. I would say as you know, a business leader, there's no greater gift than a strong hire because it just takes responsibility off your plate. It gives you a sense of confidence that you can execute. And so that for me, I would say the more I'm involved probably means I need to train up and be a better leader in terms of my expectations and then let my people go do their thing. And if I'm more involved, it's probably because I'm, I'm paradoxically maybe a little too spread too thin and I'm, I'm, I'm getting into weeds and in places maybe I really shouldn't. So. Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know if I answered your question, but it's like that's, that's kind of where my head is. Yu-Gi-Oh no, I get it. And I'm. You said a good hire. You talk about that what make like what for you makes a good hire. Like you can even through the evaluation process, like even when you think this person is perfect. Like once game day starts, you don't know until they, they're on the field and they, they start playing. So like for you, like what are the qualities of someone and it could be haystacking be previous experience but like what makes someone a good hire to you? It's internal growth of responsibilities. So and, and that will hit a limit at some point and you'll have to hire again against it. But like someone who can take on more than what's asked of them inside of a startup is so, so important and it just gives the business a lift under its wings. You know, the ability to, to apply either a personal expertise or a personal experience to the business where it hadn't been able to explore that, that, that type of thing before is huge. So I'd say, you know, it's almost like the, the draft analogy. Like NFL gets a guy gets drafted in the fourth round but he's a starter in his first season, like that gives such a lift to the overall organization in terms of value. If I were to hire someone at a lower level and then they come in and prove themselves to be a first round pick, I'm winning as an organization and so is that person because their, their career is taking a, they're going to get a high, paid a higher amount and all those things. So it's really hard, especially during the interview process to like tell someone, Yu-Gi-Oh we're hiring you for this role, but like, we'd like for you to explore how we can get good at these other three roles because you want the focus especially out of the gates. But like, you find that people like jump into a business are very, very excited and they're very hungry by the growth and the opportunity. They dominate their role and then they start exploring other spaces of the business and then contribute like, I don't know, like, I call it a different breed. There's a different breed of person who like, has to like wake up every morning and walk into a startup that's completely full of uncertainty and thrive. Yu-Gi-Oh Is there anything you ask people during like the interview process to make sure that they're at least they're a fit to be able to survive in the chaos that is a saurup. Yu-Gi-Oh it's a great question. I mean, I wish I had like a one specific like interview question that would like unlock the whole psychology of who, who works well inside of a startup. But the reality is like, if you want to come to work, you want to do that same thing every day, you don't want to be bothered with, you know, variety, then a startup isn't really for you. I mean, you're going to be asked to be flexible in ways that you wouldn't be in a standard corporate culture where there's layers and quote, unquote, the ability to hide. I'll just say that like, you can't hide at a startup. Like, if you fall below the. The performance of the team, not only are is your work product going to suffer, but your, your coworkers are going to make notice and they're going to say something to the boss. So everyone has to be cranking back on that, that oar that rowing as hard as they can in the same direction. I sorry for the cheesy analogies, but like, you know what I mean. Yu-Gi-Oh You can't fall behind. And you know, in terms of your question, I don't have a specific question I would ask people. I just try to probe and get to know their psychology a little bit. As we close this out, what's next for Haystack? What's on your mind right now? Like being at this event, obviously you're trying to have good conversations. What's next? Yu-Gi-Oh it's a great question. We're doing a lot more in the retail space and so we're rolling out kiosks across the country where people can come into their lcs and image their cards. Those LCS is then can make offers on those cards to purchase them. So if you're looking to sell cards from your collection, you know you could walk in your LCS and have a really structured way to do so. If you can't end up making a deal on that card with the lcs, Haystack makes it really easy to list those cards then to ebay or other platforms. So I would definitely say check us out at the LCS level. Steve Sloan, CEO at Haystack. Really appreciate the time. No thank you Brett. It's always good catching up with Steve. He's got so much experience and insight. I love what he's doing at Haystack. I think they're building something really cool that anyone who is selling cards online across platforms should consider. If you are building a business in the sports card industry, I want you to consider one question this week. Where is your internal friction becoming the collector's problem? Maybe it's inaccurate listings, maybe it's slow shipping, maybe it's inconsistent communication. Maybe it's lack of educational content. Maybe it's inventory that you can't process quick enough. Maybe your team is spending too much time reacting that no one is improving the system. Find that point of friction and work backwards. What capability would remove it? What would that capability cost and what evidence would prove the investment worked? That is more useful way to think about growth. The goal is not simply to become a bigger hobby business. The goal is to become a better business for the collector. The conversations I recorded at the national will continue to appear here on Hobby Jobs. Over the next several weeks we're going to learn directly from the people building tech marketplaces, products, services and the teams behind this industry. This is what hobbyjobs does and this is why hobbyjobs exists. I will continue to put out the newsletter every Tuesday. If you are not signed up for the newsletter, do it. It's free link is in the show notes. You're going to get an operator note story, some resources and open roles across the industry. Hobby Jobs is where the sports card industry goes to work. If you are a business in the sports card industry and you can benefit for getting involved in Hobby Jobs. Whether it is promotion, whether it's getting your roles listed, whether it's building a creative idea with me, let's talk. You can find me at Stacking slabs across all the social platforms or email me@StackingsLabs gmail.com I appreciate you listening. Let's take look a talk again next weekend.