Hobby Jobs: Your Business Can't Outgrow You

Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of Hobby Jobs here on the Stacking Slabs Network. I'm Brett. I'm the builder of the Stacking Slabs Network. This spot in the weekly content calendar has become one of my favorites. It's an opportunity for me to share some perspective on what I'm building and working on and observations I'm making from across the sports card industry. I want to start this episode by saying something as clearly as I can. The sports card hobby has plenty of businesses. What it still does not have enough of is career infrastructure. Too much of the real knowledge in the space still lives in private conversations, late night dms, convention floor talk, isolated and operator circles. That was the gap behind Hobby Jobs from the beginning. Open roles, operator lessons, company case studies, hiring insight, and better view on where the hobby is actually going. And that is what today's episode is about. Not hobby theater, not vague motivation, not follow your passion fluff. This is about problem. The problem I think a lot of people in sports cards can feel, but not enough people say it out loud. A business can grow faster than the founder grows with it. And when that happens, the business does not actually scale. It becomes heavier, it becomes noisier, it becomes dependent on just one person. This is something I feel deeply right now as I'm building Stacking slabs, and that's why I wanted to share it. That was the theme of the latest edition of hobby jobs number 15 the business can't outgrow the founder and today I want to use the audio format to take the idea deeper than I think the newsletter could. Most people in sports cards still talk about growth like it is something you see from the outside. More sales, more inventory, more followers, tables, shows, staff, content attention ensure those things matter. They're visible, they make a business look like it's moving. But at some point growth stops being mostly external and starts being becoming internal. Can you communicate clearly when pressure rises? Can you make decisions without letting emotion run the room? Can you build systems? Can you delegate? Can you train people? Can you create standards that live outside of your own head? Can you stop being the answer to every question? Because if the answer is no, then the business is not really growing up. It's just accumulating more complexity around the same bottleneck. And I think that matters more right now than people realize because the hobby itself is becoming more operationally demanding. Look at all of the category leaders across the board. We've seen the stories of psa, their expansion, all the cards shutting down certain levels, trying to build and develop ways that they can continue to scale, opening up internationally. Hopefully there's a conversation coming out on that here on the Stacking slabs network soon. EBay launch of eBay Live in Canada this year. EBay's Year in Collectibles report also said marketplace demand in 2025 reflected everything from athletic performances to trading card drops and life shopping behavior. It just goes on and on and I keep bringing this up each and every episode Signals because the hobby is becoming a systems business. It is becoming a trust business at scale. It's becoming a logistics business, content, technology, convenience, live commerce and partnerships. And when the industry starts moving in that direction, founder dependence gets exposed fast. If every important motion still depends on the founder's energy, speed, taste, personal attention, you don't have a company yet. You have a hard working center of gravity. That might be enough at the beginning. In fact, it's usually enough in the beginning. Founders and sports cards do the things that need to be done. Pack orders, answer DMs, buy cards, price, inventory, setup. It shows, post content. The operator Energy is real. It matters. The problem is the exact traits that help you start often become the traits that limit your ability to scale. This is something I am battling every day at Stacking Slabs. The ability to do everything yourself becomes the inability to let go. The habit of solving every issue becomes the reason every issue still flows back to you. The instinct to move fast becomes a habit of reacting instead of leading. You do not notice it at first because the motion feels like progress. But motion and scale aren't the same thing, and that's important. And if you aren't careful, you build a business that keeps getting bigger while leadership never really evolves. This is not hobby logic either. Harvard Business School's Julia Austin writes that companies get around 75 to 100 employees. Leaders confront a hard reality. It's time to let go. It becomes impossible to stay plugged into everything. And if founders do not empower leaders beneath them, the ride gets rough and confidence in the founder's ability to operate at scale can drop. McKinsey makes a similar point, arguing that growing companies need stable guardrails, clear ways of working a talent engine, and leadership capabilities at scale. MIT's startup scaling guidance says premature scaling burns cash and that growth has to become predictable and measurable. Now I get it. Sports cards are different in one major way. The industry is built on proximity. Collectors want to know the people behind the brand. They want to shake the hand. They want a message back. They want the owner to remember their name. They want the breaker to know the team that they collect. They want the shop to feel personal. That's not a bug. That is part of what makes this category special. But once a business starts to grow, a harder question shows up. Can you build something that still feels personal when you are no longer personally involved at every interaction? That's the test. And that is why I want to spend the second part of this episode talking about what I learned from John Amendola of Minting, because I think his story really is perfect for this topic. When I wrote about John and Hobby Jobs, the reason I wanted to feature him was why? Just talked with him and he has a lot of energy and he motivated me. But it was because it wasn't because I wanted to say look here, look at Min Inc. They're growing fast. They're becoming a major player. The biggest brand in Canada. I think that's Surface Level Reid. I think the more interesting read is what did the growth require from him? Mint Inc. Started with the classic operator story. John saw the pandemic hobby shift happening in real time. He turned his boardroom from his previous business into a story went live. He sold what was on the table. He leaned into streaming early. He created momentum before a lot of people even understood where the opportunity was going. That is the part people like to celebrate because they should. Seeing opportunity early matters. Moving decisively matters. Going first matters. But the harder part comes later because what happens when the business gets more complicated than one person can physically carry? That's what happened at Mid Inc. I wrote about how the company grew into a larger operating environment spanning live streaming, e comic, physical retail, grading, consignment, buying events and community. I also wrote that the business went from small team to dozens of employees. That alone changes the job. Mint Inc. S own public materials now describe the company as more than just a traditional card shop. The business says it connects collectors through retail experiences, live shopping, E com events, content and community driven engagement. It also says expansion is underway well beyond Ontario. You heard this in my conversation with John. He was talking about Vancouver, he was talking about Calgary. A lot of different locations and I think there's another layer to add. You have Canada Basketball announced a multi year partnership with Mint Inc. This month, naming the company its official hobby Experience brick and mortar store partner. That's cool. That's big. Mint Inc. S own site frames that relationship as official hobby and trading card partnership through 2028. Either way, the point is obviously when you move from enthusiast brand to national partnership territory, the business has crossed into a different league operationally. That is why the most important part of John's story is not the expansion itself. It is the founder evolution behind the expansion. In the spotlight. I wrote that John talked about learning to think more before he speaks, checking his ego and the therapy he is taking, which is a game changer. That matters because it reframes personal growth as business input. It is not soft, it is not extra. It is part of the build. And I want to hammer that home for anyone who listens, who owns a shop, runs a breaking business, leads a marketplace team, manages consignment, or wants to build the next meaningful company in sports cards. Your communication style enters the business. Your emotional control enters the business. Your ego enters the business. Your discipline enters the business. Your patience enters the business. Your lack of system enters the business too. If you are unclear, your team feels it. If you're reactive, your customers eventually feel it. If every decision still has to come through you, your business feels it. That is why I think the strongest line in the mending spotlight is the idea that the business changed because John changed. And that gets to something I think founders in this hobby need to hear with a little more force. Early success can lie to you. If you're charismatic, quick, knowledgeable and willing to outwork everyone, you can build enough momentum to convince yourself that the way you started is also the way you should keep operating. But that is where founders get trapped. Because early stage survival often rewards intensity, later scales, later stage scale rewards clarity. Early stage survival rewards availability, later stage scale reward structure. Early stage survival rewards personal heroics, later stage scale rewards repeatable standards. Those aren't the same thing. And if you do not make that transition, the company stalls right around the point where it should be opening up. So here's a ruthless version. If you still need to approve every price message, vendor move, every shipment, fix every content draft, every hiring conversation, every customer issue, you're not leading a growing company. You're holding it hostage with your own competence. I know that's harsh, but a lot of founder ceilings do not look like failure. They look like usefulness. And that is exactly why they're hard to stop. Let me flip this around and maybe make it a little more practical. Ask yourself three questions. What part of the business still depends on you too much? What decisions do people keep coming to you for that they should be able to make without you? And what are you doing if you are the best person versus the one that still have not let go? Those questions, I think, are close cousins to the founder capacity audit that I put in this week's issue. They are powerful because they do not let you hide behind effort. They force you to separate value creation from bottleneck creation. And before I move on to some of the job highlights, I want to call one more thing out. I do not think the lesson here is be less involved. That's too simplistic. Founder involvement is often the edge. In the early days you are closer to the customer, inventory, community, friction, all the things. The issue is not closeness. The issue is dependency. If the value only exists because you personally touched every part of it, the business is fragile. If the standard exists clearly enough that people else can uphold it, then the company is starting to become real. That is the transition not from caring to not caring, from carrying it alone to building something other people can carry. Well, now let's get to the hobby jobs portion because this is where I think the episode becomes a useful tool for anyone who is looking for a job here in the sports card industry. Every role that I see across the industry is a signal, not just a job, but it gives you some insights on what the industry wants and what the industry is hiring. We're going back to Mint Inc. Social Media Coordinator and the reason I like this one is because people who are not paying attention will look at it and think okay, social media job, content job. Probably just posting. That's not what it is. Mint Inc. S career page says the role includes content execution, community engagement, day to day posting content capture, basic video editing, support for promotion events, short form content, responses to DMs. In other words, the person is helping translate the activity inside the company into visible momentum outside the company. If you are an aspiring professional listening to this, that should reset how you think. Content inside the hobby is not just a small task anymore and I can attest to that. It's not decoration. It's not. We'll post this when we have time. For a business built on trust, fandom Community content is part of the customer acquisition, brand retention, event amplification and relationship maintenance. That means content is an operating function and if you know how to capture energy, package it clearly and keep the brand in rhythm when with its own audience, you are a super valuable resource because not a lot of people can do it. The second category I want to talk about is leverage roles. The newsletter highlighted a chief of Staff opening at Rare Candy and while Rare Candy is a trading card business built on TCGs, not sports cards specifically, the lesson still transfers Rare Candy publicly positions itself as a platform where collectors scan cards, track collection, shop and connect with community its current operational roles. Talk about AI powered scanning collection tools marketplace workflows fulfillment infrastructure and 10x revenue growth over the last six months. That's what rapid complexity looks like. When a company gets to the point that the most important hires are often not flashy ones. They are people who create operating rhythm. The people who remove friction, the people who make the founder's attention go further. The people who turn a fast moving business into a business that can actually absorb its own growth. This is why I keep coming back to the same principle. If you want a career in sports card, stop asking what part of the hobby do I love? And ask what part of the businesses do I strength? Because the market will keep rewarding people who solve operational problems. This is very, very important. The third example in the issue was from Davin Adams in a breaker role and I think this one forces people to update the picture of what legitimate hobby job looks like. David Adams Career Jobs page lists sports card breaker and on air personality role in Manhattan and David Adams own hiring event materials spell out what they're evaluating for when they recruit breakers. The ability to open products live, show skill and knowledge, multitask and engage a live audience. That is not novelty, that is commerce role. It's sales. It's customer entertainment, live conversion, trust building performance under pressure. It is knowing how to hold attention while still carrying product knowledge and community energy. And if you can do that well, you are building a real commercial skill inside the hobby. So here is the pattern across these jobs. Mint Inc. Tells you their increasing demand for content and community operators who can help a brand scale without losing the feel. Rare candy tells you fast moving category Businesses need leverage, process, fulfillment, analytics and operating structure. David Adams tells you live commerce and on air performance are no longer fringe activities and they are formalized business functions. If you're trying to break in, study that pattern. Do not just memorize players and products. Learn workflows, customer communication, fulfillment content systems, live selling operations. Learn what the business actually needs once it gets beyond one person doing everything. And that takes me back to why hobby jobs exist in the first place. The opportunity in sports cards is real. I've been writing about that since episode one. I also have been putting a road roadmap or I've also been thinking a lot about the roadmap. Even though it's still unclear, I think it's true. A lot of people want into this category. They want to work at the big businesses. They want to work at the places that are crushing it. Some want to build some things themselves. They want to build companies. But wanting is not enough. You need a signal. You need Better pattern recognition. You need a feel for what real operators value. You need to understand what these businesses protect, what they hire for, and where the category is headed next. That is the lane I think Hobby Jobs can own. Not generic job listings, not surface level inspiration, but real operating view from the sports card industry. A place where people can learn how businesses in this category actually work, what they need, where their bottlenecks, where the next roles are coming from and what kinds of people get trusted. And what founder and team evolution really looks like when something moves from hobby business to real company. So I'll close out this episode by bringing it back to an original line. The business can't outgrow the founder. That does not mean the founder has to become perfect. It means the founder has to become more useful in a different way. Less reactive, more clear, less central to every task, more responsible for the environment, less obsessed with the hero, more committed to building standards other people can execute. And if you aren't the founder, the lesson still applies. Because the best operators in the business are the people who can help a company reduce fragility. People can create consistency. People can hold a standard, people who can solve the same problem more than once because they know how to turn it into a process. People who make the business stronger even when the loudest person in the room is not there or available. That's what pros do and that's where the industry is going. This kind of conversation is useful to you. Sign up for Hobby Jobs Link is in the show Notes. Drop new editions every Tuesday. There are 15 editions out there and the mission from the beginning has been clear. Bring career infrastructure into a space where too much important knowledge still lives in silos. If you're hiring, use it. If you want to work in the industry, study it. If you are already operating inside the category, use it to sharpen how you think about where the market is going and the kinds of people they're going to reward next. And if this episode hit a nerve, it probably needed to. Because a lot of businesses and sports cards are star for opportunity. They're not star for leadership capacity required. They are star for the leadership capacity required to handle the opportunity already sitting in front of them. That's the work. That's the shift. And that is exactly the kind of thing we are going to keep talking about here. If you are a business in this space who is thinking about hiring, thinking about building more companies, Career Infrastructure has been enjoying this series. Please reach out. I'd love to hear from you at Stacking slabs across all social channels you can email me at stacking slabs gmail.com. really appreciate you all being here. Happy building. Happy collecting. Take care. Talk to you soon.