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

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Speaker 2 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 fuel on this fire?

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Speaker 1 What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. Hey, you know, we're getting back to business here.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I got introduced to Jason, our next guest, through a mutual friend. And we had a conversation that was supposed to be, you know, like five minutes, ended up being like 55 or two hours.

Speaker 1 I don't even know.

Speaker 1 Now I'm going to just call him a brother from another. He is Jason Koontz.
He is the founder and CEO of OTIA. I'm going to let him give that acronym and what it all means.

Speaker 1 He's just a sports card, past, present, future junkie. What's up, Jason?

Speaker 2 What's up, man? So happy to be with you today, Ryan.

Speaker 1 Hey, I appreciate it. I loved our convo a few weeks ago, and Darren Prince, a mutual friend, was like, you got to talk to Jason.
You got to go to the expert. I'm like, well, shit, we'll get him on.

Speaker 1 Get on the phone. 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 know.

Speaker 1 We're talking about our kids and traveling and sports cards and

Speaker 1 everything.

Speaker 1 Two hours, two hours later, yeah.

Speaker 1 Exactly, man. Uh, where's home?

Speaker 2 Michigan. We're just north.
I'm a big Michigan Wolverine fan, so we're about 10 minutes north of Ann Arbor here in Michigan. Go Blue.

Speaker 1 Go Blue, man. One Team International Agency, OTIA.
We're going to dig into it. Let's set the table on the past a little bit.
Jason's in the trading hobby,

Speaker 1 sports entertainment, a little bit of everything. Maybe tell us a little bit about OSHA

Speaker 1 and, you know, your legacy in the cards.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, this kind of started as a kid, you know, like most people when they're nine, 10 years old, they're collecting cards, they're going to their shop, you know, like I was pretty into business from a young age, you know, like nine, 10 years old, I'm going out and shoveling snow seven, eight hours a day, building up a couple hundred bucks.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And, you know, at the end of the day, kind of leaving with, you know, just a bunch of stories of, you know, opening packs all day and back at it the next day in the summer, mowing lawns in the winter, shoveling snow.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I mean, literally for the last 30-some years, this is kind of all I've done is sports cards, autographs, memorabilia.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 We'll get into it, but it's a lot different with card shops today. Like, they need to be much more on point and follow, you know, the pricing and everything.

Speaker 2 But so, yeah, for a first year or two, starting off, like, I'm stuck in these card shops, and there's not a lot of negotiating.

Speaker 2 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 flipping, the hustling.

Speaker 2 And I started doing this really young, like nine, ten, you know, 11 years old. And, you know, I haven't looked back since.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, from from starting off there to where we are today it's been uh pretty wild to see you know this grow over the past 30 years you bring up a great point and it's it kind of has some meta connotations and i don't mean like the company i just 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 god how big of dickheads were the card shop owners of the 80s i mean i i hate to sort of put everybody in the bucket but they everyone in my my town in south carolina were jerks you know like you go in there they like you said they're not they didn't negotiate they hold all the cards literally and they just all seemed like they didn't give two if you were there or not yeah 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 shop's probably a few hours away So, if you wanted to buy cards or products, no internet.

Speaker 2 I mean, early on for me, like, you know, like AOL message boards in 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you, 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.

Speaker 1 It was 87 cents today, it's 91 cents next month.

Speaker 1 Maybe. Yeah.
Wow.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And everyone's going off the Beckett.
And honestly, like, I haven't used a Beckett in 20 years.

Speaker 2 So that just shows if anybody's tuning in that, you know, collected cards as a kid, like, Beckett was like the Bible. You know, everybody went off a Beckett.

Speaker 2 And now, you know, everyone's got real-time pricing apps with all the technology that's come to life with the market. Yeah, Beckett is long gone as far as pricing goes.

Speaker 1 It opened it up, but it did change. I'm glad it forced the local trade, you know, trade shops or card shops to be

Speaker 1 more consumer-friendly. And we're blessed.

Speaker 1 We had the largest dealer here in South Carolina and upstate in Greenville, Maddie Rich, awesome guy, salt of the earth guy, and runs a beautiful shop that, you know, and takes care of his customers.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if he represents every single person. I'm sure you still have your

Speaker 1 some you like, some you don't, but it does, it has sort of leveled the playing field from between consumer and shop owner because everyone's, I've had it, we've we've been having these card shows like at my space here.

Speaker 1 You know, we've got 5,000 square feet. We've been doing little trade nights and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's like, everybody knows exactly what the cards are selling for the last 24 hours. Right?

Speaker 2 And 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 data in front of them.
But really, back then,

Speaker 2 you know, it was really like who had the best memory of what stuff was worth in real time.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's literally,

Speaker 2 and another thing we'll talk about is in the, you know, mid, mid-90s. And this is kind of where I got lucky, you know, the internet coming into play,

Speaker 2 grading. Grading is like

Speaker 2 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, uh, was a guy named Steve Rocky.

Speaker 2 And he would come booth to booth and try to convince you on why you should grade your cards with PSA.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I was this younger guy who just like,

Speaker 2 I was like, this is going to be big.

Speaker 2 And I just kind of bought in. And I started grading at like 15 years old, really young and just eventually became one of PSA's, I was PSA's biggest submitter for several years.
But

Speaker 2 timing, I mean, I worked my ass off, but like I have to put some of the, you know, the timing, you know, it's like if I was coming big into the market right when grading was taken off, right when the internet boom was taken off, like this was the perfect storm 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

Speaker 2 and maybe as the industry as a whole versus today yeah so it's a massive difference i mean i've always shaped shifted my business to kind of go with what's hot at the time and it you know grading was so new but the margins were so and you know they're still today i mean

Speaker 2 a perfect example we'll take a you know Michael Jordan rookie card. You know, now today, an eight, that's like a seven, $8,000 card, and a nine, that's $20,000, and in a 10, that's 200,000.

Speaker 2 So the same multipliers, you know, took place in the late 90s. We weren't dealing with higher, as high a dollar figure cards, but the multipliers were there.

Speaker 2 So to buy cards ungraded and grade them, you know, you could 10 to 100 extra money. So it almost didn't matter.

Speaker 2 Like if you found stuff and had a good eye that was not graded and were able to get it graded and high grade, we were working on like dream margins.

Speaker 2 And it didn't even matter when you messed up because

Speaker 1 five other deals that did.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so, and I was

Speaker 2 just kind of born into like a gambling family, I guess.

Speaker 2 So I've always been a degenerate, but this was a way to like early on channel my degenerate gamblingness into something that was like heads I win really big. tails I break even or lose a little bit.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And now like you go to a show, 10,000 people, everyone's trying to find stuff to grade.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So that was my first big money making was just straight grading. And after a few years, the next level was, okay,

Speaker 2 How can we put fuel on this fire? And it was everybody's thought once the card was graded, like it is what it is.

Speaker 2 Like a nine, everybody saw a nine in a holder and they just assumed, okay, like that's a nine.

Speaker 2 They didn't realize the human element of this that, you know, on a Tuesday, the grader made a gift may giving it a nine, but now on Friday, he's in a better mood. It's off the weekend.
It's close.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 them. So I'm like crap.
I'm cracking it.

Speaker 2 And like Jordan, for example, like I've hit 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.

Speaker 2 They're like 9.7, 9.8. And you crack out 15 or 20 of those, you get 110, you know, you just, you killed it.
So like I said, same time, like late 90s, there's three or four people doing that.

Speaker 2 Now there's 3,000 people doing that. And that was really what kind of put me into a different level of financially like early on.
And the whole grading.

Speaker 1 Is that still doable today?

Speaker 2 Yes and no.

Speaker 1 You can probably still do it, but the multiplier is not as high, probably.

Speaker 2 So you got to remember, like, if you come across like a Jordan rookie, unless it was freshly discovered from a new collection, there's a good chance that thing's already been looked at 10 times.

Speaker 2 Like, if it's a nice nine, there's a reason it's in a nine.

Speaker 2 People like me and then everybody else in like the last 25 years, they've all looked at that card and they're like, can this nine go to a 10?

Speaker 2 So like the game's already 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 i don't do it anymore let's put that so like but what about newer cards like do you still have the delta i mean like in a well so here's here's the other thing is the grading fees when 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 basing it off of value now.

Speaker 2 So it's just all the fun has been taken out of the game.

Speaker 2 So I probably, since 2017, haven't really, you know, I went from grading 25 to 50,000 cards a month and being PSA's biggest submitter for several years to maybe grade like 2,000 cards a year now, if that.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm looking at it a little bit that way, but also just. having fun with my boys.
So trying to find both, I think we're finding the line.

Speaker 1 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 and the people I know, like Jason Koontz, that there could be money to be made.

Speaker 1 You know, so it's, but it's okay with it. That's fine.
It's more just

Speaker 1 it's a lot of work like at these shows, man. Like,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Man, it's almost exhausting the constant deal making like it's because everybody thinks they know exactly what something's worth and and they do but I don't know when everybody's a pro it's a little annoying, you know?

Speaker 2 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 pull out their old cards and get back into it.

Speaker 2 And 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.

Speaker 2 And, you know, and everybody saw these opportunities. So, like, within the last couple of years, we've seen so many apps come out, so many business changes.

Speaker 2 You know, nothing changed from 2019 back, like it was basically the same.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They've, you know, added fees to different stuff. And like you said, taken 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

Speaker 2 I've always been bullish on cards. Probably 70% of my net worth is in cards and memorabilia.
But there was always in the back of my mind, like, am I crazy having this type of money invested in this?

Speaker 2 And I was confident, but really when COVID hit, like the confidence boost for me went from like 70 to 100% when If you ask me what could tear down our business is if you took away sports, you know, off off TV, basically everything that happened in the beginning, if you took all that away, I'm like, the card market's going to crash 99%.

Speaker 2 And there was like this six-week gap where I guess not just cards, but the whole world was kind of in limbo.

Speaker 2 And I was panicking. You know, I had a lot of money, but all on paper and in inventory.
And then out of nowhere, like you just see the market just like go like this and then just take off.

Speaker 2 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 gonna I don't want to say nothing but like this is it is what it is like people this is now you know

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 So that's been really exciting for me to see just being in it from the very beginning to where we're at now is 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 opening packs not talking about like selling and whatnot talking about just the opening packs on youtube you got king of cards kyle kind of building his little brand up this This is not unique to trading cards.

Speaker 1 This is the smart people in any industry who figured out, you know, that attention is money and you, hey, the internet is your oyster and the social media is your oyster.

Speaker 1 What's your take on all of that and the impact on the industry?

Speaker 2 So two things. One, to me,

Speaker 2 personally,

Speaker 2 it's so wild to think that, like going back to the early 2000s, we didn't have cameras at shows.

Speaker 2 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 would like it was embarrassing to tell them you bought and sold sports cards yeah usually they would hear sports cars and then you wouldn't correct them because like that's cool

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 2 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 it's like dude, we were not in a content world to begin with.

Speaker 2 And then on top of it, we didn't want people

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 do that.

Speaker 1 You were letting those trade tickets out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like, well, the secrets and just like, you know, it's like, you're not going to pick up chicks telling, you know, telling people you buy and sell baseball cards. So, you know,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 The second part of your question is, what do I think about it? And like,

Speaker 2 all these guys, you know, a lot of these guys are newer, too. Like they saw the, you know, there's a chance to make, oh, there's content.
There's clickbait. You know, there's stuff.

Speaker 2 There's, 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 With that being said, I think the guys that have good intentions, it's good. It's all positive.
The guys that are negative, like whatever, like, you know, it's clickbait, you know, it's whatever.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's someone's, you know, if someone's new to the hobby, like that's their first experience, it's not good.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So I think it's a net positive overall. I think it gets watered down a little bit when you got guys who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I'd rather watch some new guys' video for 15 minutes just to kind of, I'm always trying to stay in the loop.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's different, especially coming up when you did. Like you said, it was just the last thing you'd think of wanting to amplify is

Speaker 1 either by reputation or by

Speaker 1 like giving your, I don't know, competitors

Speaker 1 you're kind of like behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 Speaking of crazy stories, so that like, here's a perfect example. 1986 for basketball, you know, like the holy grail of basketball, 80, you know, Jordan's rookie.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And the people that were selling them to us, or me and, you know, people people I was working with, is they thought we were just getting smoked. They felt bad.
They'd sell us these boxes.

Speaker 2 We were opening them, and they kind of felt like we were just these young guys getting screwed.

Speaker 2 They didn't realize how clean 86-foot basketball came out of the packs, and we were grading this stuff and making a fortune.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we just played the dumb role for like two or three years of like, yeah, I just really like opening this product.

Speaker 2 But like a box that I paid $12,000 for, oh, like worst-case scenario, the ROI was about $7,000. A good box ROI was about 200 grand.

Speaker 1 Holy shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, like, and I, I opened three or four hundred boxes of 86-foot basketball, and nobody would pay more.

Speaker 2 So, like, they would buy them, and we would just, you know, so some of the David Adams Car World baseball car, all these guys would sell us. They'd get 86-foot basketball.
They'd sell it to us.

Speaker 2 We would kind of show the image of like, hey, we're these dumb guys cracking 86-foot basketball. And, you know, Jordan wasn't even the most expensive card in the set.

Speaker 2 Like, 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 in high grade, and it would cover the entire box.

Speaker 1 Geez, crazy.

Speaker 1 What you're saying is you guys are taking some collection of cards and repacking them into, you know, four, eight, twelve, twenty, 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 with the better cards.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to short phrase that, but is that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, and liquidity.
I mean, like, so generally, like, let's just say the repack is, you know, each repack is one graded card.

Speaker 2 And, you know, like, let's say the repack costs $200 and you know, like

Speaker 2 over the span of the repack, like, the, the lowest card in there is going to be 40, 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, know, $1,1500.

Speaker 2 So, but you're pulling something that's instantly liquid, you know, or there's instant liquidity versus out of a traditional pack, you know, half 99% of the cards are all commons that are just going to get chucked.

Speaker 2 And then, let's just say you do pull a good card, then it needs to go off for grading. There's the weighting.
Repacks are quicker. There's generally like a floor and a ceiling.

Speaker 2 So you, you kind of know, like, what's my minimum? What's my lot, you know, what's my max.

Speaker 2 The only thing with traditional packs is you do have that lottery ticket, which has kind kind of been the the game the last couple years you know like every every so often they're gonna have a you know I'm sure you saw the Paul Skeens card you know debut sold 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

Speaker 2 yeah you only hear the good news that's stuff 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 like a lot of these guys that like to spend money on high dollar, they still open some packs.

Speaker 2 Like I still open packs. For me, it's just pure entertainment, though.

Speaker 2 Like if I, me and my son, me and my kids sit down and we open a box or a couple boxes and spend a thousand bucks, I'm not planning to get any of that money back.

Speaker 2 Like I'm just like entertainment, donation, having fun,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 going to a sporting event or going to whatever.

Speaker 2 so but the problem is you got people that they don't look at it as entertainment, they're looking at it as like making money opening packs and during a long haul that's just not going to be sustainable.

Speaker 1 No, don't don't do that. Go buy singles and resell them or put them in your collection.
But

Speaker 1 don't don't, 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 as time with my kids where they actually want to hang out with me.

Speaker 1 And we have fun and it's a surprise and delight moment if if we get something great. And if we don't,

Speaker 1 I'm not,

Speaker 1 you know, forfeiting their future. You know, like, it's like,

Speaker 1 it's like, ah, it'd have been nice to have gotten something out of that, but

Speaker 1 I had fun either way. And

Speaker 1 that's part of why I'm doing this series is to remind people, this is a lot of fun. It has a lot of great attributes for

Speaker 1 fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, whoever's into it. It doesn't matter because there's a trading card and a hobby you know variation for everyone

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 at the same time it is an asset class

Speaker 1 now and 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 whatnot more than than anything else.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm assuming.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It was before COVID, by the way. I was at a FedEx event.
People looked at me sideways and I'm like, you just wait. Sure enough, it's a fascinating part of the industry.

Speaker 1 This industry, other industries. Where do you, what say you about live shopping?

Speaker 2 Well, I wish I would have met you five years ago because I was on the initial call with Grant, the guy who started Whatnot, and I still have the email that I look at like once a month because it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 Basically saying, Hey, I got this idea for a live selling platform called Whatnot. I want to talk to you, like, you know, investor.

Speaker 1 So I had a chance at like, you know, pre- Oh, Jason, I wish I had known you, man. I would have, if you'd have gotten that call, I would have gone in with you.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I just, I just, I was still like, I think if I was younger, I would have understood it more at the time.

Speaker 2 My question to him was, I said, I go, so you want to run a 30-second auction at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday? And I said, yeah. And I said, just that saw, that was ridiculous to me.

Speaker 2 But I didn't really process it the way now, obviously, and I'm one of their, I think their number two seller on the entire platform.

Speaker 2 But at the time, if I would have stopped and thought, like, you know, even on eBay, all the bidding.

Speaker 2 is in the last few hours and even sniping the last second, like the first six days of a seven-day eBay auction is irrelevant. So this was just like, I mean, I've had plenty of hits.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 anti or bearish on, just not bearish. I didn't understand live streaming.
And now I think we're still really early. I think live streaming is like.

Speaker 2 the fourth or fifth biggest thing in my lifetime to come about like the internet crypto you know bitcoin you know just like social media, live live shopping.

Speaker 2 Like to me, live shopping is like the third or fourth biggest thing where people are going to get really wealthy.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Either they're going to be pushing stuff through other platforms or they're just going to create their own.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 I'm very bullish on live shopping. It's, and it's still early.
I mean, I still think is as far as it is, like 95% of people still don't know anything about live live shopping.

Speaker 1 So yeah, I think the,

Speaker 1 you know, trading cards and the hobby is, well,

Speaker 1 a lot further down that like conversion path, you know, for their, I don't know, target audience. But it's going to meet this professionalism that you talked about earlier.
That's where I see it.

Speaker 1 That's where I kind of have my brain thinking is like,

Speaker 1 as the business as a whole, where I think about, okay, well, if Brian Alford's 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 with the bathwater.

Speaker 1 So it's not that it has to be overcomplicated or too sophisticated, but I do think there's rooms and dials to be turned with all of that experience.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's huge. We have seven studios that we've built out and we're constantly making them better.

Speaker 2 But like a lot of the people live selling, like, they're still live streaming, like, out of their garage. Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think live streamers are going to become famous, like personalities, and you know, people are going to hire them. And

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 1 Don. I've got some videos that we put, that I've am actually having cut up right now that are more spoof stuff

Speaker 1 for our

Speaker 1 the breaking rad Instagram channel.

Speaker 1 But it's but it is that though, but

Speaker 1 he was great, but it's like

Speaker 1 he's in the video. He's like, if you don't buy this,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He was the greatest salesman of all time.

Speaker 2 he was amazing and so that was the part we i mean we could talk for 10 hours so i we did i did a i did a ton of selling on the 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 dom was hilarious but the tv days were were wild man like

Speaker 1 you'll walk into that bar and they'd be like there's rick he knows how to make a decision he goes all in

Speaker 2 If you miss out on this, you're not going to.

Speaker 1 If you miss out on this, you're not going to be able to look yourself in the mirror tomorrow.

Speaker 1 And I was watching going,

Speaker 1 I don't want to miss out. And then I'm like, oh, shit.
I'm like, I was like, he was awesome. He was so good at it.
But

Speaker 1 I'm learning from him. Getting serious over there with my kids.

Speaker 2 They would do like limit five per caller. And then you'd have people calling in and like have their mom calling for them.
And

Speaker 2 can we order, you know, just have them ship to the same address, but but it's a different person trying to get more, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. FOMO, man.
That's what it is. Fear of missing out.
That's what live shopping is, though. It's like every great marketing characteristic, like built into one.

Speaker 1 You've got the last 10 seconds. So FOMO.

Speaker 1 You're racing against the clock. You don't want to miss out.

Speaker 1 It's just

Speaker 1 everything kind of coming together.

Speaker 2 The thrill of getting the deal. I mean, when we watch and stuff, like I said, like sometimes stuff goes over market.

Speaker 1 Yeah, stuff goes over over market a lot of times stuff goes under market so like there there are plenty of 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 gonna come back and keep buying like crazy um you know that's arbitrage today that's the arbitrage today because i get in there and i've done both you know like i i tend to not be the guy that goes over just to win but like sometimes i've got a wrong number on a card because there's so many damn cards i'm like oh that's probably twenty dollars over market or you know.

Speaker 1 But that's arbitrage getting there and stealing some, you know, $100 cards for $40.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And if you do know the market and something's selling for 80%, like,

Speaker 2 you know, and he's spending a lot of money. And I mean, we do that too.
I go in there and pick stuff off.

Speaker 2 Sometimes the collector of me comes out and then I end up overpaying for some stuff that I just want for my personal. But that's kind of the fun in it.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, when am I going to see this again? But there's a, yeah, there's, there's definitely just a ton of money to be made.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like, just put a lot of hours and understanding everything before you,

Speaker 2 you know, go big.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like I'm way down it right now, like just observing, watching, and

Speaker 1 curious, don't know it all, learning 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.

Speaker 1 It's not immediate $12,000 to $200,000 boxes like it used to be.

Speaker 1 like anything else he who goes the furthest often wins

Speaker 1 jason where's it all headed for you brother i mean you're relaxing you know, got great people working for you, you're taking care of them, they're taking care of you.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, this where my kids are all, I'm like, yeah, I think our kids are in a similar age, you know, I'm like

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I enjoy this. Like I enjoy business.
So yeah, when I try, like, I don't know about you, when I go on vacation, after day three, I'm jonesing to get home. It really takes, it's hard.

Speaker 2 So I see me doing this forever.

Speaker 2 I'll keep shifting with it. And I think, you know, talking 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And it's like, they think this happened in the last year or two.

Speaker 2 Not the case at all. And it's, 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.

Speaker 2 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 gonna be doing this for a while keep keep growing obviously if you're not growing it's not fun it's it's it's exciting to to watch i i love you know playing the next three to six months out and then i email it to myself

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And it's like, holy shit, like, not only did we hit that goal,

Speaker 2 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.
And this year we're going to surpass that, hopefully by a decent amount.

Speaker 2 But that was something that seemed crazy.

Speaker 2 And now we're there. So it's like, now I got to set new goals and keep, keep moving.
I think people that are wired in this weird sickness entrepreneur that we all have,

Speaker 2 you're always moving the goalpost.

Speaker 2 And for better or worse, it's a blessing and a curse, I think, because I think there's some people that get to the goalpost and they're happy and they can just chill.

Speaker 2 I think someone like, you know, who's really dialed in, they get to the goal. They enjoy it for about 10 minutes and they say, okay, let's move that goalpost back again and see what else we can do.

Speaker 2 So that's kind of where I'm at right now. Just I'm trying to enjoy life a little more and work a little less.
But like I said, even less for me is still

Speaker 2 a lot of damn hours.

Speaker 1 They say the journey is everything now. And I think, yeah, the longer I do what I do,

Speaker 1 it proves to be true. And it's in 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.

Speaker 1 You might get the Jaden Daniels best card ever auto.

Speaker 1 10 minutes later, it's what's next?

Speaker 1 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, it's that the journey, the excitement of, oh, you know, building up to wanting that card or wanting that goal in business or all those things.

Speaker 1 I think the true,

Speaker 1 the truly motivated are just looking for the next journey and the next challenge.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 2 100%.

Speaker 1 Hey, man, where can everybody keep up with everything you guys are doing? Where to find you, the company, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so the website's just four letters, OTA.com on social media, OTIA Sports, on Whatnot,

Speaker 2 OTA Rips. Yeah, I mean, those are, it's pretty much all under one umbrella.
If you Google the OTIA Sports or OTIA,

Speaker 2 you'll find us and you'll join some of our live streams, you know. and enjoy the shows and have fun and

Speaker 2 bid responsibly.

Speaker 1 Yes. Got to put that disclaimer on there.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Ryan, thank you so much for having me on. It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 Hey, guys, you know what to find us, RyanisRight.com. Hey, we're number one for a reason.
It's because you're here. Go check us out on YouTube.
We've got a fast-growing page over there.

Speaker 1 Watch all the content. You'll find links to all of Jason's stuff, O-T-I-A, RIPS, all the stuff they're doing over on Whatnot, and on the website.

Speaker 1 We appreciate Jason for coming on, and we appreciate you. We'll see you next time.
All right, about now.

Speaker 3 This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening.

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