Creating his own Breaks - The Booming Hobby Series w/ Jason Koonce

So that was my first big money making was just straight grading and after a few years the next level was how can we put feel on this fire. This is right about now with Ryan Alfred a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to right about now. Hey, you know, we're getting back to business here. We've been in the middle of our trading card extravaganza as I call it. It's opening the eyes and the ears to the world of the hobby. And I got introduced to Jason our next guest through a mutual friend. And we had a conversation that was supposed to be like five minutes into being like 55 or two hours. I don't even know. Now I'm going to just call him a brother from another. He is Jason Kuhn. He is a founder and CEO of OTIA. I'm going to let him give that acronym and what it all means. He just a sports card past present future junkie. What's up Jason? What's up, man? So happy to be with you today, Ryan. Hey, I appreciate it. I loved our convo a few weeks ago. And Darren Prince of mutual friends was like, you gotta talk to Jason. You gotta go to the expert. I'm like, well, shit, we'll get him on. You know, the founder like, we're just going to shoot the shit, talk about maybe what we could talk about. Next thing I know, I don't even, we're talking about our kids and traveling and sports cards and everything to our two hours later. Exactly, man. Where's home? Michigan. We're just not a big Michigan Wolverine fan. So we're about 10 minutes north of Ann Arbor here in Michigan. Go blue. Man, one team international agency OTIA. We're going to dig into it. Let's set the table in the past a little bit. Jason's in the in the trading hobby, sport entertainment, a little bit of everything. Maybe tell us a little bit about OSHA and, you know, your legacy in the cards. Well, I mean, this kind of started as a kid, you know, like most people when they're 9, 10 years old, they're collecting cards or going to their shop, you know, like I was pretty into business from a young age. You know, like 9, 10 years old, I'm going out shovel and snow. Seven, eight hours a day, building up a couple hundred bucks. So I had that part down in the making money. And then the unfortunate part was I would end up at the card shop, blowing all my money on packs. And, you know, at the end of the day, kind of leaving with, you know, just a bunch of stories of, you know, open packs all day. And back at it the next day. And in the summer, mall and lawns and the winter, shovel and snow. So, yeah, I mean, literally for the last 30 some years, this is kind of all I've done is sports cards, autographs, memorabilia. You know, the big thing kind of changed for me, especially at a very young age is, you know, 30 years ago when you went into a card shop, there wasn't the internet, there wasn't, you know, they kind of had you, they were under control. Like they set the prices, it was, it is what it is. It's a lot, we'll get into it, but it's a lot different with card shops today. It's going to be much more on point and falls, you know, the pricing and everything. So, yeah, for the first year or two, starting off like I'm stuck in these card shops and there's not a lot of negotiating. What really caught my eye was when I discovered card shows, when it was more of like the negotiating, the bulk deals, and going from table to table, the flippy and the hustling. And I started doing this really young like 9, 10, 11 years old. And, you know, I haven't looked back since. So, yeah, from starting off there to where we are today, it's been pretty wild to see, you know, this girl over the past 30 years. You bring up a great point and it's kind of some meta connotations and I don't mean like the company. And it's mean like the way the internet and information and knowledge has empowered so many industries and so many, so much change. Because I remember growing up and going to the guy, how big a dickheads were the card shop owners of the 80s. I mean, I hate to sort of put everybody in the bucket, but everyone in my town in South Carolina were jerks. You know, like you go in there, like you said, they're not, they didn't negotiate. They hold all the cards literally and it all seemed like they didn't give two shits if you were there or not. You can't, yeah, and that's basically it. It's like they had a monopoly. Like whatever prices they said is if you wanted it and you had nowhere else to go, it wasn't like you were, you know, the next card shops probably a few hours away. So, if you wanted to buy cards or no internet, I mean early on for me, like, you know, like AOL message boards and like 95, 96. I started to dabble on the internet, but it was like, you know, just so new compared to what we have today. And you know, trying to get a value on something. I remember going to the Beckett book, you know, page 78 going to find the value of my 87 tops, Cal Ripken. It was 87 cents today. It's 91 cents next month. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And everyone's going off the Beckett and honestly, like I haven't used the Beckett in 20 years. So that just shows if anybody's like tuning in that, you know, collect the cards as a kid, like the Beckett was like the Bible. Yeah. Everybody went off of Beckett and now, you know, everyone's got real time pricing apps with all the technology that's come to life with market. Beckett is long gone as far as pricing goes. It opened it up and it did change. I'm glad it forced the local trade, you know, trade shops or card shops to be, you know, more consumer friendly. Look, we're blessed. We had the largest deal here in South Carolina and upstate in Greenville, Maddie Rich. Awesome guy. Salt to the earth guy and runs a beautiful little shop that, you know, and takes care of his customers. And I don't know if he represents every single person. I'm sure you still have your, your some you like, some you don't, but it does. It does. It has sort of leveled the playing field from between consumer and shop owner because everyone's I've had. I mean, we've been having these car shows like at my space year, you know, we got 5,000 square feet. We've been doing little trade nights and stuff like that. And even my nine year old, you ain't getting nothing by my nine year old. Like he's over here. They're all walking around informed. They got their apps out. It's like everybody knows exactly what the cars are selling for the last 24 hours. Right. And that's what that's one of the cool things like the big advantage I had kind of in the 90s was like right now, like you said, everyone's got pricing dad in front of them. But really back then, you know, it was really like who had the best memory of what stuff was worth and real time. So you could, you know, you could you could buy a deal at one booth and walk, you know, walk 15 booths over and flip the deal and make money. It's just it's such a different world. I mean, it's literally. And another thing we'll talk about is in that, you know, mid mid 90s and this is kind of where I got lucky, you know, the internet coming into play. Grading. Grading is like just almost a mandatory now. And I remember being at shows in the mid 90s and the head guy at PSA, which is the main grading company at the time. It was a guy named Steve Rocky and he would come boot the booth and try to convince you on why you should grade your car to PSA. And you have a lot of these old time dealers that are like, fuck you. I don't need I don't need your opinion. I don't need you. And nobody really got it. Yeah. And I was this younger guy who just like, I was like, this is going to be big. And I just kind of bought in and I started grading it like 15 years old, really young and just eventually became one of PSAs. I was PSA's biggest submitter for several years, but timing. I mean, I worked my ass off, but like I have to put some of the, you know, the timing. It's like if I was coming big into the market, rate when grading was taken off, rate when the internet boom was taken off. Like this was the perfect storm for, for cards in that era for me. How was money made then for you and sort of, you know, the arms and legs that where you made money in the industry? You know, and maybe as the industry as a whole versus today. Yeah. So it's a massive difference. I mean, I've always shifted my business to kind of go with what's hot at the time. And you know, grading was so new, but the margins were so, and you know, they're still today. I mean, a perfect example will take, you know, Michael Jordan rookie card. You know, now today in an eight that's like a seven eight thousand our card and a nine that's 20,000 and an 10 that's 200,000. So the same multipliers, you know, took place in the late 90s. We weren't dealing with hired as high a dollar of figure cards, but the multipliers were there. So, you know, to buy cards ungraded and grade them, you know, you could tend to a hundred extra money. So it almost didn't matter. Like if you found stuff and had a good eye that was not graded and we're able to get a graded and high grade, we were working on like dream margins. Yeah. And it didn't even matter when you messed up because we made up all five other deals that did. Yeah. So, and I was just kind of born into like a gambling family, I guess. So I've always been a degenerate, but this was a way to like early on channel my degenerate gambliness into something that was like, heads, I win really big tails, I break even or lose a little bit. So I kind of just went all in and there wasn't a lot of competition. Like there was only a few people doing this, you know, it was so new. And now like you go to show 10,000 people, everyone's trying to find stuff to grade. And the reality is, especially when it comes to like vintage cards, you know, back then, high grade stuff was everywhere on, you know, that you could buy now. It's all dried up. It's all graded. So that was my first big money making was just straight grading. And after a few years, the next level was, okay, how can we put feel on this fire? And it was everybody's thought once the car was graded, like it is what it is. Like a nine, everybody saw a nine and a older and they just assume, okay, like that's a nine. They didn't realize the human element of this that, you know, on a Tuesday, the greater made a get may given it a nine. But now on Friday, he's in a better mood. It's off the weekend. It's close. Maybe it's a 10. So now I kind of took a different approach to like walking around these shows, looking at stuff that was already graded and like high grade. And I'm analyzing like all these nines in real time. And I'm accumulating just like massive quantities of nines that I thought were on the fence. You crack. So I'm like crack. I'm cracking it. And like Jordan, for example, like I've had a lot of 10 Jordans. But I mean, I've cracked out hundreds and hundreds of nines. So you have cards that are like right there on the bubble. They're like 9.7, 9.8. And you crack out 15 or 20 of those. You get 110, you know, you just, you kill it. So like I said, same time, like late 90s, there's three or four people doing that. Now there's 3000 people doing it. And that was really what kind of put me into a different level of financially like early on and the whole grading. Is that still doable today? Not. Yes and no. Like it's a crystal do it. But the multiplier is not as high probably. So you got to remember like if you come across like a Jordan rookie, unless it was in freshly discovered from a new collection. There's a good chance that things already been looked at 10 times. Like if it's a nice nine, there's a reason it's in a nine. People that like me and then everybody else in like the last 25 years, they've all looked at that card. And like, you know, like they're like, can this nine go to a 10 or like, so like the game's already been played. So there's just no inventory out there. So I would say it's, I guess it's there technically. But when you take the competition and also add in the fact that I mean, I don't do it anymore. Let's put that. So like the one about newer cars. Do you still have the Delta? I mean like in a resist. Here's the other thing is the grading fees. What I was grading cards in the late 90s, like I was paying like five, six bucks. And now if you go to grade a high dollar card with PSA, you might spend 10,000 because they're based enough of value now. So it's just all the fun has been taken out of the game is, you know, so I probably since 2017 haven't really, you know, I went from grading 25 to 50,000 cards a month from being PSA's biggest semifinal. For several years to maybe grade like 2000 cards a year now is if that. I mean, I'm looking at it a little bit that way, but also just having foam in my boys. So trying to find both I think we're finding the line. We have we're having more fun than making money. I'll say that so far. But I do see a clear path with what I do know in the people I know like Jason Coons that there could be money to be made. You know, so it's been there's okay with it. That's fine. It's more just it's a lot of work like at these shows, man, like holy shit with every kid and every person. Like you said, it's not like that I don't want anyone to be informed. So I can take advantage of someone that man it's it's almost exhausting the constant deal making like it's because everybody thinks they know exactly what something's worth. And they do, but I don't know when everybody's a pro. It's a little annoying. You know, it's different now. I mean, it was so easy for so like almost too easy to the point where when COVID hit, you know, everybody kind of had time to like call out their old cards and get back into it. I think a lot of smart people realized, you know, a lot of business minds like yourself. They all came in and they're like, this business is like it was so unprofessional. And, you know, and everybody saw these opportunities. So like within the last couple of years, you've seen so many apps come out. So many business check, you know, nothing changed from pre from 2019 back. Like it was basically the same. And now there's just so much innovation, which is it's good. But it's brought in a lot, a lot more smart people, a lot of business people that have come in, they've, you know, added fees to different stuff. Like you said, taking some of the fun away. But it's turning into it was already a real asset class. One of the major things for COVID was I've always been bullish and cards, probably 70% of my net worth is in cards in memorabilia. But there's always in the back of my mind, like, am I crazy having this type of money invested in this? And I was confident. When COVID hit like the confidence boost from me went from like 70 to 100% when if you ask me, what can tear down our business is if you took away sports, you know, off TV, basically everything that happened at the beginning, if you took all it away, I'm like, the card market's going to crash 99%. And there was like this six week gap where I guess not just cards, but the whole world was kind of limbo. And I was panicking, you know, I had a lot of money, but all on paper and inventory. And then I don't know where like you just see the market just like go like this and then just take off. And that for me was, it was good on multiple levels financially, but also just like the feeling of knowing, okay, like this has been cemented as a real asset class. And nothing's going to, I don't want to say nothing, but like this is, it is what it is. Like people, this is now, you know, watches gold coin. I mean, this is like a real asset, you know, and you see people shifting money out of the stock market into some of these massive like million dollar cards because they believe in sports cards more than they do the stock market or some of the other, you know, bullshit going around. So that's been really exciting for me to see just being in it from the very beginning to where we're at now. It's pretty awesome just to, you know, kind of can get confirmation that we're here to stay watching now. Because I'm, and this is me like with the kids and kind of looking at the industry, the YouTube factor. You've got these influencers and guys open in packs. Not talking about like selling and whatnot, come out just the opening packs on YouTube. You got King of cards, Kyle kind of building his little brand up. This is not unique to trading cards. This is the smart people in any industry who figured out, you know, the detention is money and you, hey, the internet is your oyster and the social media is your oyster. What's your take on all of that and the impact on the industry? So two things, one, to me personally, it's so wild to think that like going back to the early 2000s, we didn't have cameras at shows. We didn't have, we didn't have iPhones obviously, but like the thought of filming at a card show was so like it was in when people asked you what you did for a living. It was like, it was embarrassing to tell me about some sports cards. Usually they would hear sports cars and then you wouldn't correct them because like that pool. And so it's like, it's completely shifted and to, you know, people say, I can't believe you don't have content from the show is like, dude, we were not in a content world to begin with. And then on top of it, we didn't want people. No, you know, no transparency. No secret. You wouldn't let those trade secrets out. So the secrets and just like, you know, it's like, you're not going to pick up chicks telling, you know, telling people you buying slow baseball cards. So, you know, fast forward, fast forward 20 years, everybody's doing it. Now it's cool. So to me, that's just such a shift to see it go from like zero to 100 as far as a cool factor goes. So that's part one. The second part of your question is, well, I think about it and like all these guys, you know, a lot of these guys are newer too. They saw the, you know, there's a chance to make authors content. There's clickbait. You know, there's stuff. There's ways to make money through the content, obviously. So, you know, a lot of these guys, they're not experts. They've come into the hobby in 2018, 2017, 2019. So they don't know a lot. They know enough to kind of talk about it. So some of the information is just the blind leading the blind as far as like, these are new people talking about cards. With that being said, I think the guys that have good intentions gets good. It's all positive. The guys that are negative, like whatever, like, you know, it's clickbait, you know, it's whatever. I don't think that someone's, you know, if someone's new to the hobby, like that's their first experience. It's not good. So all the guys that are putting out good content. I think it's growing the hobby. I like seeing it. I know a lot of those guys, they're good, they're good people. So I think it's a net positive overall. I think it gets watered down a little bit when you got guys you don't know what the hell they're talking about. But I think the really big guys at least have an idea of the hobby and stuff. So it's just mind blowing to me. I'd rather watch some new guys video for 15 minutes just to kind of, I'm always trying to stay in the loop. Like even with the new guys that work for me, I'm always picking their brain because I don't keep up on them. There's so much new stuff coming out daily. Like it's crazy. You know, I know the vintage better than most some of the newer stuff. It's hard to keep up with. So I'm trying to sponge all this in. Yeah, it's different, especially coming up when you did. Like you said, it was just the last. Last thing you think of wanting to amplify is either by reputation or by giving your, I don't know, competitors. You're kind of behind the scenes. Speaking of crazy stories, so that like here's a perfect example. 1986 for basketball, you know, like the Holy Grail of basketball, you know, Jordan's rookie. In the early 2000s, boxes of that were about 12 to 15,000 and now they're like 150,000. We were buying those and cracking them. And the people that were selling them to us or me and, you know, people I was working with is they thought we were just getting smoked. They felt bad. They sell us these boxes. We were open in them and they kind of felt like we were just these young guys getting screwed. They didn't realize how clean. 86th floor basketball came out of the packs and we were grading this stuff and making a fortune. And we just played, we just played the dumb roll for like two or three years of like, yeah, I just really like open in this product. But like a box that I paid 12,000 for, like worst case scenario, the ROI was about seven grand. A good box ROI was about 200 grand. Holy shit. So like, and I open three or four hundred boxes of 86th floor basketball and nobody would pay more. So like they would buy them and we would just, you know, some of the David Adams car world baseball car. All these guys would sell us. They'd get 86th floor basketball. It's all to us. We would kind of show the image of like, hey, we're these dumb guys cracking 86th floor basketball. And, you know, Jordan wasn't even the most expensive car in the set. A lot of people were building sets and some of these commons were like 10 or 15,000 in a PSA 10. You could get one common and high grade and it would cover the entire box. Geez. Crazy. What you're saying is you guys are taking some collection of cards and repacking them into, you know, four, eight, 12, 20, whatever it is into a different rebranded name. And you have a higher percent chance of ROI than you did maybe from manufacturer and maybe even a larger hit rate or something. You know, like put the better cards. I'm trying to sort phrase that. Exactly. And liquidity. I mean, like, so generally, like, let's just say that the repack is, you know, each repack is one graded card. And, you know, like, let's say the repack costs two hundred dollars. And you know, like, over the, over the span of the repack, like the lowest card in there's going to be forty, which you have to have. $40 cards in there because in that same repack, you want to put cards in there that are, you know, a thousand, fifteen hundred. So, but you're, you're pulling something that's instantly liquidity, you know, or there's instant liquidity versus out of a traditional pack. You know, half ninety nine percent of the cards are all commons that are just going to get chucked. And then let's just say you do pull a good card. Then it needs to go out for grading. There's the waiting repacks are quicker. There's generally like a floor and a ceiling. So you kind of know, like, what's my minimum? What's my law? You know, what's my max? The only thing with traditional packs is you do have that lottery ticket, which has kind of been the game the last couple of years. You know, like every, every so often they're going to have a, you know, I'm sure you saw the Paul Schien's card, you know, debut. So for 1.3 million. Yeah. Like that's one person that hits that. Yeah. So for one person that hits that like million dollar lottery ticket, there's all the other stuff that just, you know. Yeah, you only hear the good news. You only hear the good news. That's the stuff that doesn't get talked about. So I just think that and you do see it. Like the repack is just getting a lot more money. A lot of these guys would like to spend money on high dollar. They still open some packs like I still open packs for me. It's just pure entertainment though. Like if I, me and my son, me and my kids sit down and we open a box. There are a couple boxes and spend a thousand bucks. I'm not planning to get any of that money back. I'm just like entertainment, donation, having fun. And, you know, give them the cards and let them do it. So I think when you go in with that mindset, it's okay. Because it's the same as, you know, going to a sporting event or going to whatever your. Yeah. But the problem is you've got people that they don't look at as entertainment. They're looking at as like making money, opening packs and during a long haul. That's just not going to be sustainable. No, don't, don't do that. Go buy singles and resell them or put them in your collection. But no, I do the same thing with my kids. We open, I mean, three nights a week, you know, but I'm looking at it. Purely is time with my kids where they actually want to hang out with me. And we have fun and it's a surprise and delight moment if we get something great. And if we don't, I'm not, you know, forfeiting their future. You know, it's like, it's like even nice to have gotten something out of that. But I had fun either way. And that's part of, you know, why I'm doing this series is to remind people this is a lot of fun. It has a lot of great attributes for, you know, father, son, mother's, dollars, whoever's into it doesn't matter because there's a trading card and a hobby, you know, variation for everyone. But at the same time, it is an asset class. And now it needs to be, I don't know, put on the pedestal that it's earned through a lot of the, you know, time that you've put in, Jason, I mean, you know, being one of the pioneers and people that have been through it all, you know, it sort of deserves its moment in time. You know, you guys are selling on what not more than anything else. That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm assuming. This technology and live selling thing, you know, being in marketing and business. I've been preaching that for about seven years and telling people that it was coming. It was before COVID, by the way. But if FedEx events, people looked at me sideways and I'm like, you just wait. Sure enough, it's a fascinating part of the industry. This industry, other industries, where do you, what, what say you about live shopping? Well, I wish I would have met you five years ago because I was on the initial call with Grant. The guy started what not. And he, he, I still have the email that I look at like once a month because it's ridiculous. And basically saying, hey, I got this idea for a live selling platform called what not. I want to talk to you like, you know, investor. So I had a chance at like, you know, pre all Jason, I wish I had known you, man. I would have, if you had that call, I would have gone with you. I just, I was still like, I think if I was younger, I would have understood it more at the time. And the question to him was I say, I go, so you want to run a 30 second auction at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday. And they said, yeah. And I said just that saw that was ridiculous to me. But I didn't really process it the way now. Obviously, and I'm one of the, I think their number two seller on the entire platform. But at the time, if I would have stopped and fought like, you know, even on eBay, all the bidding is in the last few hours and even sniping the last second. Like the first six days of a of seven to eBay auction is irrelevant. So this was just like, I mean, I've had plenty of hits. I've had plenty of misses. This was a miss for me. So it's just kind of funny now looking back when I was just so anti or bearish on just not not bearish. I didn't understand live streaming. And now I think we're still really early. I think live streaming is like the fourth or fifth biggest thing in my lifetime to come about. Like the internet, crypto, you know, Bitcoin, you know, it's like social media, live, live shopping. Like to me, live shopping is like the third or fourth biggest thing where people are going to get really wealthy. And in the next couple of years, AI, obviously. But like, you're going to see everybody like Walmart, Costco, like they're all going to have lives. Either they're going to be pushing stuff through other platforms or they're just going to create their own. Yeah. I'm very bullish on live shopping. And it's still early. I mean, I still think as far as it is, like 95% of people still don't know anything about live shopping. So. Yeah. I think the trading card and the hobby is, well, a lot further down that like conversion path, you know, further on a target audience. But it, it's going to meet this professionalism that you talked about earlier. That's where I see it. That's where I'm, I kind of have my brain thinking is like, yeah, as the business is a whole where I think about, okay, well, Ryan R. Or offer is going to get in on this thing. It's going to be in this professionalism marketing content. But there's a delivery with the live shopping, which you don't want to throw the baby out of the bathwater. So it's not that it has to be over complicated or too sophisticated. But I do think there's rooms and dials to be turned with all of that experience. Oh, it's here. We have seven studios that we've built out and we're constantly making them better. But like a lot of the people live sound like they're still live streaming like out of their garage. Yeah. You know, like, so we have, we're kind of a little bit ahead of that. But we also, you know, we don't, we have, it's really hard to find good live streamers. I mean, I think live streamers are going to become famous. Like personalities and, you know, people are going to hire them. And because if you can sell, you're going to be, you know, it's like the late 90s, you know, sports cards on TV. The shop at home days. Oh, my God. I don't know if you know the, you know, what's it they've done. I've got some videos that we put that I've, uh, I'm actually having cut up right now that are more spoof stuff. But, uh, for our, uh, the breaking rad, uh, Instagram channel. But it's, but it is that though. But he's, he was great. But it's like, yeah. Do you see the video? He's like, if you don't buy this, you're, how are you going to wake up in the morning? The next day, you're not even going to be able to look in the mirror. He's like, he was the greatest salesman of all time. He was amazing. So that was the part we, I mean, we could talk for 10 hours. So I did, I did a ton of selling on the main two guys that were selling on TV. I, I was providing them with a ton of inventory. And they were buying with reckless, you know, because they were selling on TV and killing it. But so yeah, down was hilarious. But the few days were, were wild family. You're walking to that bar. They're like, there's Rick. He knows how to make a decision. He goes all in. Yeah. If you miss out on this, you're not going to. If you miss out on yourself in the mirror tomorrow. I was like, and I was like, what's it going? I don't want to miss out. No, I'm like, oh shit. I'm like, I was like, he was awesome. He was so good at it. But I, I'm learning from him. Get serious over there with my kids. They would do it. They would do like limit five per caller. And then like, you'd have people calling in and like, have their mom calling for him. Yeah. Oh my god. Hey, can we, can we order, you know, just, but have him shipped to the same address. But it's a different person trying to get more, you know. Yeah, exactly. Phoma, man. That's what it is. Fear missing out. That's what live shop in Isto. It's like every great marketing characteristic, like built into one. You've got the last 10 seconds. So Phomo, you got your racing against the clock. You don't want to miss out. It's just everything kind of coming together. And the thrill of getting the deal. I mean, when we watch and stuff, like I said, like sometimes, like, stuff goes over market. Yes, stuff goes over market. A lot of times stuff goes under market. So like, there are plenty times where I see you. I'm like, holy shit. Like that was a hundred dollar card that just sold for 40 bucks. Like that guy's, you know, which is good. Like that guy's going to come back and keep buying like crazy. That's the arbitrage today. That's the arbitrage today because I get in there. And I've done both, you know, like I tend to not be the guy that goes over just to win. But like sometimes I've got a wrong number on the card because there's so many damn cards. I'm like, ah, that's probably $20 over marketer. But that's the arbitrage. Getting there and stealing some, you know, our cars for 40. Knowing the market. I mean, this is, this is where in real time, when you're running a 30 second auction, you need to make those gut calls. And if you do know the market and something selling for 80%, like, you know, and he's spending a lot of money. And I mean, a lot, we do that too. I go in there and pick stuff off. Sometimes the collector and me comes out and then I end up overpaying for some stuff that I just want for my person. But that's kind of the fun in it. Like, you know, when am I going to see this again? But there's a, yeah, there's definitely just a ton of money to be made. You just have to just spend the time and just get educated and really, you know, don't jump all in and just, you know, spend a ton of money. Like, just put a lot of hours in understanding everything before you, you know, go, go big. Yeah. And that's sort of my superpower. Like, I'm the most curious person on the planet. I go down the rabbit hole. Like, and I'm down the rabbit hole in this business. Like, I'm way down it right now. Like, just observing, watching and curious. Don't know it all. Learn it from guys like you watching the market and stuff like that. Because there is stuff to be made. It's just like anything else though. It's not immediate $12,000 to $200,000 boxes. Like, it used to be, but like anything else, he who goes the furthest often wins. Jason, where's all headed for you, brother? I mean, you're relaxing. You got great people working for you. You're taking care of them. They're taking care of you. When Jason looks down the road and goes, man, you know, you're taking care of your kids, your family. I mean, like, where are we headed with all this? Yeah, I mean, this, where my kids are all, I'm like, yeah, I think our kids are in the similar age. You know, I'm like 10, 10, 8, 7, 6. So it's like, I am trying to pull back a little bit, you know? Like, and when I say pull back a little bit, it's like going from 80 hours a week to, you know, 50 hours a week. I enjoy this. Like, I enjoy business. So yeah, when I try it, like, I don't know about you and I go on vacation. After day three, I'm Jones and to get home. It really takes it. It's hard. So I see me doing this forever. It'll keep shifting with it. And I think, you know, talk with a lot of these younger guys and just molding. I've always done that. But I just love it so much that it doesn't feel like work. And so yeah, I think we're going to be doing this for a while, man. It's just, I'm blessed to be in a spot where I have good managers underneath me. So when I do want to, you know, I'm like, hey, today's, I got kids sporting, you know, I got soccer games. I got basketball, like, I'm not doing anything right now. I'm going to go do that. So that's, I do feel like I set myself up for that, you know, the 15 years leading up to where we're at today. I do get a lot of hate when people they think like they see where I'm at now. And it's like they think this happened in the last year or two, not the case at all. And it's, you know, and it's just the world we live in today. You know, everybody wants, you know, money overnight. And it's just, it's not the reality. And, you know, even, like, even in the middle, like going, going broke in the middle of this, like, you know, really, really learned to put me in a different mindset. So yeah, I mean, I'm going to be doing this for a while. Keep, keep growing. Obviously, if you're not growing, it's not fun. It's exciting to watch. I love, you know, planning the next three to six months out. And then I email it to myself. And then six months, you know, like, kind of seeing how far we made it if we surpassed it. And a lot of times, like, and I keep all these emails. And I'm just like, I'm looking back at goals from like 2022. And it's like, holy shit, like, not only did we hit that goal. You know, it's like, like, 100 million in sales in a year was like a big deal for us. And like, and we hit that in this year, we're going to surpass that, hopefully by a decent amount. But that was something that seemed crazy. And now we're there. So it's like, now I got to set new goals and keep moving. I think people that are wired in this weird sickness entrepreneur that we all have. You're always, you're always moving the goal post. Yeah. And for, for better or worse, it's, it's a blessing and a curse, I think, because I think there's some people they get to the goal post and they're happy and they can just chill. I think someone like, you know, who's really dialed in, they, they get to the goal. They enjoy it for about 10 minutes. And they say, okay, let's move that goal post back again and see, uh, see what else we can do. So that's kind of our matter right now. Just, uh, I'm trying to enjoy life a little more and, and work a little less. But like I said, even, even less for me is still a lot of damn hours. They say the journey is everything now. And I think, yeah, the longer I do what I do, it proves to be true. And it's an almost everything because even like you said, like, my kids get excited about opening a box. We get excited. And you open the packs and you get it. You might get the Jaden Daniels best card ever auto. 10 minutes later, it's what's next, you know, like, and it's not because they can't get enough. But it's just, it's more, I look at it more like you said is that the journey, the excitement of, you know, building up to wanting that card or wanting that goal in business or all those things. I think the true, the truly motivated are just looking for the next journey and the next challenge. 100%, 100%. Hey, man, working here by keep up with everything you guys are doing, where to find you, the company, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, so the website's just four letters OTA.com on social media, OTA sports on whatnot, OTA rips. Yeah, I mean, those are, it's pretty much all under one umbrella. If you Google the OTA sports or OTA, you'll find us and you'll join some of our live streams, you know, and enjoy the shows and have fun and bid responsibly. Yes, got to put that display around there. Jason, really appreciate you for coming on the show and it's been great. I consider you a friend now and look forward to future opportunities. Ryan, thank you so much for having me on it. Hey, guys, you need to find us. Ryan is right.com. Hey, remember one for a reason is because you're here. Go check us out on YouTube. We've got a fast growing page over there. Watch all the content. You'll find links to all of Jason stuff, OTA rips, all the stuff they're doing over on whatnot and on the website. We appreciate Jason for coming on and we appreciate you. We'll see you next time. All right, about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alfred, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. 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