Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - The AI Revolution - Cryptocurrency Trends - Trading Cards: A Billion Dollar Industry - The Impact of US-China Tariff

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

SUMMARYIn this episode of Weekly Business News, hosts Ryan Alford and Chris Hansen sit in for a wide-ranging conversation on today’s most pressing business trends. From the easing of U.S.-China tariff tensions to shifts in the Miami real estate scene, they dive into hot topics with sharp insights. They also tackle the rising costs of luxury goods, the evolving role of AI in the workforce, and the latest in crypto. Plus, they break down Instagram’s new app “Edits” and its challenge to CapCut’s dominance. With a blend of real talk and expert analysis, Ryan and Chris make complex issues not just understandable—but unmissable—for anyone looking to stay ahead in a fast-moving world.TAKEAWAYSCurrent state of U.S.-China tariff discussionsTrends in the Miami real estate marketPricing strategies of luxury brands and consumer perceptionsImpact of artificial intelligence on the job market and business operationsCreation and use of AI personas in businessRecent trends in the cryptocurrency marketMarket volatility and trading strategiesIntroduction of Instagram's new app "Edits" and its implications for content creationComparison of social media platforms, specifically Threads and X (formerly Twitter)Importance of critical evaluation of news reporting and media biasSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lowe's knows you've got a job to do, and we help get it done. With the My Lowe's Pro Rewards Program, eligible members save more, with volume discounts on qualifying orders, who are quote of $2,000 or more. Join for free today. Loz, we help you save. Offer can't be combined with any other discount contract and or special pricing. Exclusions, more terms, and restrictions apply.

Details at Lose.com slash terms. Subject to change. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, 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 next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys?

Welcome to Write About Now. It's our weekly business news episode here. Here on Friday, April 25th, we take the BS out of business, baby. Hey, it's business meets barstool. That's what you can call it. And we're not barstool. We don't need barstool. We've got the number one show on marketing.

Thanks to all of our loyal listeners. We appreciate you out there. Wherever, whenever, however you're listening, as we take all the bullshit out of what's happening out there, Chris. What's up, Chris Hanson? What's up, Brian Alfred? How are you, bro? I'm good, man.

Just ready to take the BS out of business. just ready to take it all out. You know, looking at our show notes, and it's kind of like a slow busy week, like for business news. It's like there's stuff happening, but it's not like there's 17 headlines. It's like it's kind of the same old, same old here.

We've got the U.S. and China tariff talk cooling off a little bit. The markets are up. crypto's up and hey, Elon's got to get back in the saddle over at Tesla, get that whole thing flipped around. He needs some, I don't know, CPR on that thing. What's happening in Miami this week? It's a beautiful week out, honestly. It's nice. The weather's great.

Sunny, windy. Kind of quiet after Easter weekend. I read a report that Miami real estate was cooling on. off. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know. I'm not in the game enough to know. Of course, if you ask any realtor, they'll tell you it's not. So hard to gauge. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know what I'm going to. Hey, if we're in a no BS show, you can't really talk about realtors. I mean, and I love them. I got some good friends in it. It's like, it's always good if you're a realtor. Oh, yeah. It's always a good time to buy.

Always a good time to buy. Really, interest rates are high. Hey, that means you got a lot of supply out there and you got your choice. Hey, you can always refine a couple of years. I mean, I don't even know what they say, but I can imagine that's it. So we're going to get into the headlines. I like this line that we got says, China says it wants peace, but there's a lot like my ex-girlfriend. I got a lot of battle scars that would say otherwise. I don't know who's blinking here. It doesn't really matter.

We've said this from the outset, Chris. We've said we don't need terror force. Like, okay, I get if it was the art of the deal and all that, but we don't need destabilization. There's no need for it. I think the one thing I liked, I know Trump is always going to shake things up, and I like that. I like shaking things up. But there's this fine line between shaking things up and unnecessary destabilization. and it felt like we teetered on the other side of it.

I don't know what you think. I think the most exciting thing of all of it was all the designer luxury brands being exposed that they're marking up the handbags like a thousand percent markups. Did you see that? I did not see that. Let's go down that. This was, this I think, is relevant. So many people were talking about this over the weekend that amongst these

terrafores, all these manufacturers in China that manufacture Burke and handbags Louis Vuitton, these high-end luxury goods, we're basically saying, hey, you can just buy direct from us. It's the same quality bag. Literally in the factory, and they're showing the bags, they're saying you can buy it from us for $2.50 instead of Lou Vuitton for $5,000. So in a way, it was kind of, I mean, I think this is a bigger thing of people, kind of the illusion of luxury. Because what these Italian handbags are doing, they're basically manufactured in China.

And then in Italy, they'll put on the hardware, right? they'll put on just the metal clamp that says made niddly exactly so i think uh i did see a lot of the especially the female influencer world going uh kind of wild about it and people feeling they've been duped for many years paying these outrageous prices which i mean what did they think what did you think was going on i know yeah come off you're buying the brand and i'll you know i'll believe it when I see it when the, you know, women stopped buying the luxury brand labels. Yeah, yeah. Not say, I don't know.

I don't know enough about the young generation, but it sure seems like there's, that gets passed on from generation to generation, the luxury appeal of certain brands. And in the exclusivity, scarcity, you know, if you didn't know, it's getting marked up like hell, then I don't know what to tell. you. But I'm sure there's a sub segment of people that will. I do see. I mean, is, is, is, is Trump blinking or was this part of the plan? Come on, man. This is Trump. It's all part of the plan. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's there's some theory that, you know, if you muck it up enough, then you can always say it was part of the plan or not, you know. I mean, as long as you're getting

the outcomes that we want, I guess you can say it was all part of the plan, right? I don't really care, like ultimately. I mean, I do. I mean, I care, but I don't, you know, that's why I just, at the end of the day, I didn't think we needed destabilization. I don't know that maybe we're getting

more negotiation than we would have without it. That's to be seen. But I don't think it does any good. I don't think we need. And I don't think Trump, like I told you, like Trump likes the good headlines. He wants, You know, I do think he wants what's best for himself. Yes, I can see that, but for America, you know.

And I think he likes the good news. So, and to own it. And I don't think he wants to own 5,000 point drops on the stock market in the day. You know, I don't think he wants that. I mean, nobody wants it, but I think he sees the bigger picture that you have to do this. The only other solution was literally just raised taxes on Americans. Right. So, yeah, well, we'll see where it all nets out, but it's just so amazing the swings on sentiment.

You know, it's like everything. You just got to zoom out, you know, because it already feels less painful than it was. Yeah. And I just think it goes back to what we said, though. Just ignore it and go in. Yeah. Never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, solopreneur, whatever. You know, it's all the tools.

tools are there. AI has enabled so many things that you would have needed a team for three years ago. So either run real lean or you can do a lot through AI automation and a lot of these tools that are out there. It's crazy. I mean, like, I mean, the democratization of a lot of tasks that's taken place that would have taken specialized labor, with, I think, white collar type jobs and information driven jobs. Like the internet democratized information in a way, Chris, like, you know, like access, you know, I didn't have to, you know, suddenly if you had to do that report, you didn't have to find an encyclopedia around the house. You know, like 30 years ago, the internet, you know, democratized information. Now we've democratized information in,

skill sets at a very high rate and just things that from coding websites to creating videos to generating ideas or research around concepts processing data and charts to give you insights stuff that you know 10 years ago I remember doing research reports where I'd call over these charts and I enjoyed it but now the machine, the artificial intelligence can do the legwork for you. You still have to distill it maybe to the key points and add the human dynamic to it. But it's just the speed with which these things are happening enabled. Like if anything, I think that's what we want to be the champion of is just the opportunity,

no matter what's happening with some of these headlines, the opportunities have never been greater with the tools that are at our hands. And it's also sort of made us all a little lazier. So it's like, hey, another opportunity because a lot of people just don't want to, I don't know, put the grid in there, you know, and get after it. That's the only thing that pains me. I mean, as I think of just computers growing up in general, right? It's like you get to a point where you're not as good as learning stuff on computers and like the younger people are. and that's where I think people need to be really active to try to learn some of this AI stuff like you said whether even if it's not for business just for your personal use I mean there's a ton of even me being sick I was using chat GPT over the weekend right just trying to like diagnose myself but to speak on kind of what you said I saw I can't remember if it was Tim Cook and Apple but essentially someone saying like in the next 10 years a lot of these white color jobs.

are going to be gone. And I know, for one, like, think of lawyers, right? Like, you can draw a contract up relatively quickly on chat GPT. Yeah. Trust will. Yeah, all of that. You know, you don't need a lawyer. Yeah.

And, you know, I guess those divorce court lawyers will still be in business. But that's about it. Well, as long as people are going to have heard you're going to need those guys. But when it gets down to just, like, knowledge of the law, and contract writing. Oh, see ya. I mean, that's already here. Go give the chat.

You decent prompts and maybe get it run by. Like, you're going to get like a lesser version, like someone that can glance over it versus writing the whole thing. It's like all those hours they could charge for, you know, their time just goes down to like one. Instead of like 12 hours to do something, it's one hour.

Yeah. Just like. You didn't sign off on it. Sign off on it. I mean, will it become a day? I saw this was really interesting. Like, I think AI is, you know, this is a relevant topic. But like, will there come a day where there's an AI that's like a law, holding a law degree?

Like, when you think about it, like, you know, Ralph, your AI companion, he's a certified lawyer. Yeah. Yeah, you're going to have your personalized, like, robot that's like your personalized chef slash lawyer slash accountant slash bodyguard. And he, yeah, and he's certified. I mean, he's got all the knowledge in the world. He's just because he knows everything the internet knows and that all the information that's out there. He can, from any state. So he's certified to every state.

So he can, he can, his digital hand writing on, you know, like e sign, edoc signing by Ralph the robot. I mean. I mean, look at dietitian. and personal trainers. Like, I don't need that now. Yeah, because you could literally program an AI, like talking person with the knowledge of, of like, anything that you get from chat TVT, it could become the human, you know, human-like version for distilling that to you.

I mean, that, those pieces of salt, I mean, that's already kind of there. I'm not saying it's perfect yet, but like, you can totally totally. create an AI avatar that's a human-looking person on screen and make it say anything. So if you feed that knowledge base of what the prompts you're asking, chat GPT or whatever it might be, it could then restate that so that it's, you know, again, in that human form on screen. It's fascinating, man. And I'll say this, I saw this this was happening.

And it didn't surprise me, but I guess I hadn't really. gone there, you know, like if I had enough hours a dad, sit down and think about all these applications. Someone had, you know how you, within chat, GBT, you can create, you know, like projects, like you're, it has memory, you can remember, and you start asking at certain prompts that are all about a certain subject. So you're kind of creating a project there about that one topic that lives within chat GPD and a line item. Well, and it's almost like each one of those is its own potential persona in a way, depending on what you direct it. And what this person was doing was creating an org chart, an organization of the AI avatars of each one and giving them duties

essentially. So like, you know, let's use an ad agency, for example, since that's my industry that I came up in. It had Ralph AI, the creative director, and it gave it very specific prompts of what its persona is, what its job was. And then it had Timmy, the accountant, Ralph in strategy and, you know, gene in account management. And so it was creating an org chart and these different personas and then feeding it work so that each one of those kind of did their own tab. because now, I mean, you know, these things can generate emails. They can facilitate a lot of like digital work. And from emails to copy to image, creating images, generating images, generating video. And again, I'm using the example of an ad agency in the structure within an ad agency of the departments.

But it was fascinating how that was because then they're kind of they're working within the framework of that. organization, how it would normally work. And each one of them have a specific task. And they're informing each other to maximize optimism. I was like, whoa. Okay. Now I see. I mean, does that blow your mind or what?

Like, I mean, it makes sense that you hear it and you see it, but I couldn't unsee it. It's kind of crazy. You're building a whole team of just automated robots, which I feel like major companies have been doing, and it's just giving people the ability now. Mm-hmm. And I think, when I think about, I was just thinking,

because when you create on chat, GBT, you're kind of doing these independent tasks. You know, like, hey, like, give me some good news articles to talk about today. Hey, how do you make these compelling? Whatever. But if you literally created the personas of each one, as different sort of, we'll call them GPTs,

that's, okay, your job is to continually farm the internet for the most compelling and engaging topics based on the history of click data, you know, click baity stuff. And you're creating the master. Your GPT's job is to create all these. This GTP's job is to pick the best ones and create the hooks. then this one, yours is to add some imagery and video to go with those for social media posts. Then your job is to create the newsletter and your job is to send the emails out to the list and to post it to social. It's there's your team. I mean, but that's what this stuff is enabling.

And the only thing sort of in the way right now is the education and design. for everyone to take advantage of it or to use it. I mean, because it's there. It's not perfect. I'm not saying it can replace anything, but all of that's sort of there. And I don't think everyone is wrapping their head around both the opportunity and the potential threat of what that means.

Bono, bono, bono. So you can frame that however you want. good news or bad news? I don't know. I think if you take advantage of it's good news. The good news is, man, you can move quick, nimble as hell. But you just got to have the idea, the core idea. Okay, how can you leverage that? And that's what you've got to think about as a business owner. Think about your business today, what you do. And what I just described, how could you leverage that to be more efficient, to move faster to serve your customers better? I bet you'll come up with some ideas. You need to think more about thinking about AI.

I don't sleep on this. I think I pan the hell out of the Metaverse. We'll play that tape. I knew that shit was a flash in the pan while we were going through COVID. It wasn't ready yet. It'll be here one day. I'm not panning this. This is real leverage and real threat.

Proceed accordingly. Good thing. Elon Musk is getting back in the saddle a little bit. I think he's, you know, getting out of the doge and getting back into the e-car business and getting that in a line. I don't think, even for Elon, I mean, I guess if anybody's Teflon a little bit, like the world's richest man is, like he's only going to tank so much, I think. but once again, I just think there's a, I don't think if he's being honest, he quite wants the unsettled nature of what's happening

within his businesses right now, right? You don't want that. No, he's been a little, I think he's just been wrapped up with the administration. More focused on politics and the business, but it seems like. I think there's a, it's an, I think there's an endorphin.

I think with politics, because it's so charged and so front and center. And look, I mean, Elon's in the news no matter what he does. But I can see like the rush that these politicians get from all that. And I think Elon's trying to cut money. He's feeling empowered. Hey, Donald gave him a big, you know, role, you know, to do. And he's trying to do what he thinks is best.

And he sees like these clear opportunities. But I think he didn't, he probably underestimated it. sort of the blowback a little bit. Like sometimes, and you'll learn this, like I've learned this as an entrepreneur, something that seems so clear to me, like an inefficiency or something like that, there's the unintended consequences sometimes of decisions that you make. It doesn't make it the wrong decision, but it doesn't always mean that it was right at the right time or that there weren't

other steps that had to be taken to get there. Because sometimes you can't, even if it makes sense to blow up the foundation, you don't need the building to fall over. Unless you're, you know. So I've learned that in business myself. I'm like, this, this takes no sense. X. And I'm like, whoa, okay.

That had an impact that wasn't, didn't make the decision wrong, but maybe the timing wasn't. And I'm not saying that with everything that Elon did because it's so diverse and things like that. But I think at the end of the day, you got to get back in the saddle. I don't know how the hell he'd run companies.

He's running two or three of the largest companies in the world, you know, are like structurally and by value. And trying to save the government efficiency. I mean, and he plays video games all night, supposedly. I think he might be a robot. I think he implanted one of those chips, Chris. He's something. He's different. And I still have no interest in buying a Tesla.

I don't know. But I didn't before this. So, you know, it's just not my cup of tea. But it's a, have you seen any Tesla's burning on fire? No, there's none of that down here. Someone would probably get shot. So there's no crazy he's trying to keep Tesla's down here. Yeah.

It's all friendly fire anyways. What's happening in the crypto market? It's the last two days. to go back up again. I mean, I can't give you an exact reason why. It was probably tied to the general market, obviously. But yeah, Bitcoin's back up over 90,000 again. So that's a positive sign. So good time to buy. Sentiment seem like positive. Yeah. And I think, obviously with what's going on with the overall global economy, like, like we see the tariffs, right? We see some positive movement happening. So

just positive signals throughout the entire market is getting some relief to everybody. All back to the sentiment. How do you feel? What, you know, somebody. But at the same time, but when you look at what's happening, this is what, you know, you and I've talked about this, Chris, like you've got a president who supports crypto and deregulation of currency in a way. And so it should be headed north.

But like, you know, everybody. with the terrace and everything and naturally i get it like the unsettled nature of it but when you look at the underlying direction and the fact that more and more like i don't know retail day traders are you know in crypto and promoting it all the other signals are positive it's just been sort of this air of like unnatural uneasiness that drove it down. That's why I bought that XRP baby. Hey, bought low.

Head it back up. Right. Just wait. Yes. I've kept it simple, Chris. Just one thing to keep up with right now. I can't do the 17, like, variations. And I mean, I loved it when it was kind of a little more volatile.

Like, I like. those swings because that's how you make the money. I'm not a day trader. I was kind of a half week trader. Hey, if I could put in five grand and turn it into 15 over three days watching people like go crazy. That's fun. It's like gambling.

But I don't know if those days are, those days are those days coming back? I think so. This year, I can't tell you when. I know. It always comes back. Yeah. Oh, so Instagram lost a new app this week called Edits to compete with Cap Cut. I did play around with it, Chris, before this. And let's just say back to what I'm saying about the democratization of media. Like, I'm come up in the agency business and am a hybrid strategy creative account guy. And all you agency people out there rolling your eyes, yeah, they exist. It's just, you know, y'all got. got too slow. That's why I went to start my own thing and made a lot more money. But the reality is, if you're not a creator, didn't know very complex software, even five, three, five years, two to five years ago, let's say that, then you're relying on someone else to do it.

But I'll say, you know, bite dance slash Capcut slash China, cap cut, cap cut is pretty easy to use. and very powerful with what the average person can do with video. And so you've had this democratization of it. And now Instagram clearly sees that as a bit of a threat. And they've come out with edits. I have played around with it. Pretty slick. It's got some AI features with animating pictures and stuff.

Play with it right before this. It's pretty cool. So what's the impact on business? Hey, look, get more content out there. I mean, anyone could be a creator now. Like, and everybody needs to be. posting what you're up to in social media and creating awareness for what you're doing. But I liked it.

I don't know if you've played with it, Chris, but clearly probably a good way to also spike the algorithm for your accounts because I think they've got to have code in those videos. It tells them it was created there, right? Yeah. I mean, I downloaded it last night and it said something, how it tracks your analytics and whatnot. So I'd imagine there's some little, there's got to be some way they're going to try to motivate people to use that instead of Capcut.

Yeah. So I'm going to mess around with it over the next couple of days. We'll try to throw something up, see if it, see if it is affected by the algorithm any differently, essentially. Yeah, exactly. I bet it will. I bet it is to a degree. But you never know. But I did think it was, it's pretty slick so far. I don't know if it's better. It's not, it's obviously not where Capcom. CapCut's loaded with features. I don't think it's obviously going to take time to get there. But first play around pretty good. And, you know, I bust about the walled gardens of all these companies kind of owning these spaces.

But look, I mean, Instagram's done me right. It's where I've grown in my biggest audience. Definitely done a lot of business there. So I still can't quite get like my head around threads other than, you know, a lot of motivational stuff. You know, it's kind of my, it's like my daily business devotional. Oh, get on threads. And Chris has always got something thoughtful to say. I'm like, huh, it's one way to think about it.

And, you know, Chris Burby Hanson could follow him on threads and Instagram. He's looking good, folks. Guys working out hard. I'm, he's motivated me. I'm like, I did one more set of push-ups this morning because of Chris. Progress and perfection. Yeah. But you're looking good.

man. Appreciate it. I mean that in the most heterosexual way possible. Of course. But, yeah, Threads is my daily kind of motivation stuff. Trying to get back in X too a little bit. Still get a lot of news there. Thread still feels like the motivational quote space where X is more news content.

That sounds fair? Threads is a little bit more positive. X is a little bit more gritty. Yeah. A little bit more news. The trolls. Yeah. The trolls are there.

For sure. Yeah. Threads is like the healthier version of X. Yep. The, I do think it's a good time to point out. You're talking about news. And,

you know, depending on the news outlet, you can get it. Look, it's all biased. It seems like right, left, or whatever.

It's a mess. Every headline can be spun way where, one way or another. And that's why I've actually, been using for our show, Chris, ground news. It's not just an aggregator. It actually tells you where the spin is happening. It will say if it's left, if it's right or center, it gives you these percentages. And I was like using this first. So like, let me give you an example. So this recent story, Trump announced he's going to reduce the 145% tariffs on Chinese goods.

We talked about that earlier. Sounds straightforward. Right? It says, but tending on, but, excuse me, my grammar is terrible, depending on where it came from, it gets spin and manipulated. So like, look at this. Like literally, one can say, pulled together 186 articles on that same story. Some outlets painted it as a strategic move, others as a sign of weakness. the bias distribution was 36% left, 32% center, and 32% right. It's fascinating to see how the same facts get Spunish away. Anyway, we talk about taking the BS out of business. Ground News was like the perfect partner for us in looking at the news concepts

and how they're little, take one quote, and it gets framed differently. And I think it's both education for people because you need to know, I'm still amazed the number of people that don't know that being sort of biased. You know, like they don't, the subtle nature with which news can push you one direction of the other. Give them a shout out. GroundNews.com. Subscribe. I've subscribed.

I actually found them before we started partnering with them and had been using them because I like to know. Sometimes you don't know the spin is happening. And they're calling it out and they're putting their percentages on it. It's really cool. Good way to see the news and to take the BS out. We appreciate them. Groundnews.com. Be informed, not influenced.

Ha ha. That's the tagline, Chris. Hey, none of that influence or stuff. Can't be biased influencing. We don't want that. We want the information. There is a difference in information and influence. I learned about politics.

It's all politics is, right? It's all influence. The original influencers is your senators in Congress. Any other thoughts? I mean, I saw the news about WrestleMania. I can't believe how big wrestling still is. WrestleMania just happened this past weekend at two nights. John Cena's the championship again.

I mean, I bring it up. We've got the championship belt right here. I guess, you know. He doesn't have this belt, John. Come get this from me. I'll power slam you. I'm just kidding, John. They'll beat me up.

But I could power slam him. I mean, we come up with a good skit, you know? Like, I mean, it's all entertainment. But those guys are these, like, I respect them. They're some of the best athletes in the world to run around. It's not like it used to be Chris. Like, when I grew up, these guys were drinking beer, like, before they came out. Like, they were big guys.

And they bleed everywhere, real, like, but half drunk, half in shape, dusty roads. Oh, man, not anymore. These guys are beasts. You're not a wrestling guy, I know. No, but I can appreciate it. I appreciate what they built. Yeah. And all their numbers are up year over year.

I thought, like, at some point, there'd be a decline in this. I really did. Because I'm kind of like intrigued by the resurgence of it, to be honest with you. And I wonder if it's a little bit of like nostalgia. Do you think it's like guys our age, like kind of like getting their kids into it? I think it's the soap opera combined with We have reality TV We have live entertainment

We have so few channels to sort of escape reality Like in everything's so serious And even though these, you know, like rivals Can seem serious to in our world, they're not, you know, In the world of the fan, they're just fun, you know, Because they don't, it's not threatening to them. And whereas everything else, I mean, it's why live sports are they're up because we don't want the spin of bullshit news like we've talked about a hundred

times and everything's so serious and everything's so woke so I can go to wrestling as an excuse male I'm sure there's a ton of women there's women wrestlers too but like I think for men it's escape for a little bit have some fun right I mean how much entertainment fun really is there for middle-aged men anymore true so when you think about it that way Maybe that's why, you know. But the scale and scope. I know. Maybe we're missing out on it, Chris.

Maybe we need to get into it, I don't know. I mean, it's popular, man. Shit, I bet you our numbers will go up if we started having a wrestling segment. I'm just not going to go there. We've got the trading card segment, which we're about to get to. Because we have the trading card series that's launching. We've done three interviews. We've got another one today.

We got the largest top stealer and retail. and retailer in South Carolina coming on today. We got the, we got all, hey, if you're going to talk about an industry, you got to go to all. You got to go from manufacturer to distributor to retailer. We got all three levels. And then we got the apps, LuddX. Ryan Luddn came on, the founder of Loddx. You scan the cards, you know the value.

No more looking at it up. Chris, when we grew up, we had to go find that Beckett, look up for those value. Like, how much is this thing? And the magazine's three months old. You're going, oh, that 87 tops, Ricky. Oh, it's $3. It went up 40 cents. No, app out, scan that thing.

Brian was awesome. He's going to lead off the first of the trading cards series. Like, okay, what are you talking? Look, this is a business show. Trading cards is a billion-dollar industry. It's only going up and talked with, good friend Jeremy, at Sports Illustrated, collectibles,

and all this stuff, man. Everybody's getting into Tom Brady. We talked about a card vault last week. Tom Brady's not a dummy. Card vault by Tom Brady. So that series is coming up. It's going to be a six-part series, six guests, big hitters in the industry,

talking about it and why you shouldn't get to know about it. I'm excited about it. The interviews have been raw, real, and fun. It's supposed to be fun. It's a hobby. Back to like, hey, let's lighten things up a bit. But it's also serious money, man. I'm telling you. I pulled that Josh Allen gold downtown $5,000 card out of a $15 pack. That's serious money. Now, we won't say how much I've spent all over and above that, but yeah. I mean, you see the trash can, man. I'm like, how many landfills if we filled up with this.

You open those bags and so much trash. I'm like, it's like I need to start incinerating it or something. The amount of cardboard, cardboard kingdom. But today is a big release for Don Russ Optic. Look, somebody's going to be watching this, Chris, and they're going to know what this means. This is the hottest box in retail right now. Don Russ Optic.

Chris, let me tell you, these boxes came out at like 30 bucks. they're going for 100 now, like a week later, and you can't buy them. There's all these bots that if they come available online on like Target, they buy them before they even hit the market. It's the craziest thing because I'll get these updates because I have like notifications set up or whatever. And literally it's like grown men in the store fighting for boxes of cars. That's an entertainment show right there.

I got to send you some. Let's pop this seal. Yes. See if we got any winners in there. Yeah, we've got to see. All right. Hottest box in retail, 24,

Don Russ, Optic. There's six packs in here. I don't know for each one. You're chasing these cards called downtowns, Chris. And speaking of fun, go to breaking your ad.com,

but they have these cards that are like downtowns. They should like the length. They're almost like art drawings at the point. players with like a background that's in the city that they play in. And it's almost cartoon-esque to a degree. It's like artsy.

Cartoon's probably not the right way to say that, but designed. And the team may or may not have made it downtown of me that we might show them. We'll show it here eventually. It's kind of fun. Yep. Optic by Don Russ, the hottest box in retail. We're opening it here. If you send me a DM, I might send you a card.

Say, I want the optics. Hashtag optic. The amount of people that have DMed me, like old friends, listen or watch the show or brought it up going, like, it's crazy how many people are into trading cards. So these are pretty cool. They've got, they all have this chrome look to them. Davani Chan.

Then they have these silvers. That's kind of like your good card in the packs. There's only four cards. So fun open. You're looking for those downtowns or like these with some of the good rookies. This guy's pretty good. But he played it under Dame. Two rookie cards.

We'll have a couple more here just so you see. You got to watch a YouTube video, though, guys. YouTube's where this gets interesting. So you can actually see the variations on these cards. Jalen Polk. You're really hoping for Michael Pratt. You're hoping here for like a Drake May. My kids now know every single one of these players.

And, you know, I will say this is where like you get the Ludix app. You click on the image of the card. It brings it right up. We're going to talk more about that on the trading card series. I'll do one more here. See if we can pull like a downtown or something. Oh, I thought it was one. It has a yellow border.

Pat Firemuth tied in for Steelers, Staling Wright, Rookie. So these are fun to open. You get a lot of variation with holographic look. Hottest box in retail. Chris, we opened a box with my kids the other night. 35 is what we paid. We actually paid retail. And we had $1,000 of value in cards and a $35 box. It's crazy. The hit rate is really good. None of those that we hit were pretty good. But fun. We got a big release today, actually. So they'll be sold out in no time. optic from Don Russ one of the last sets of football coming out

the rest of this year. You got the draft on Thursday. It would have already happened the night. So you'll be hearing this. You already know who got drafted in the order because we record on Wednesdays and then it releases on Friday. So football is

sort of in the year when draft starts. So we'll see. You still got four more months though. It's like the driest month, you know, waiting for football to start. Chris, any final words today, my friend? Everybody, have a great weekend. Chris, got to get you healed up, man.

Chris's been under the weather. He had the flu over the weekend. Struggling. I'm going to send you some Matrix, uh, pick you ups. Is that the men's products? I think so.

Art is good for the flu. Whatever works. Hopefully you've been using that stuff. I haven't tapped in yet. I know. Oh, we appreciate everyone. Ryan is right.com. Find highlight clips.

All the information and links. And we appreciate you for listening. Chris Broby Hanson on Instagram, give him a follow, get his motivational quotes on Twitter to, I mean, or not Twitter, threads.

They should never change the name. It's like, People still call it tweets, they still call it Twitter. I get it why he did it. It's his brand. He owns the X. Anyway, won't go down that. That too far.

I'm at Ryan Alford. You can find me on Instagram as well. Chris and I both have those blue checks right next to our name. We had them for you. We'll see you next time. We're right about now. 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. Thanks for listening. Thank you.