Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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.

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 necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts Right About Now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's our weekly business news episode 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 Hansen? 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. 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? Oh, it's a beautiful week out. Honestly, it's nice. The weather's great. Sunny, windy, kind of quiet after Easter weekend. I think I read a report that Miami real estate was

cooling 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. Hey, if we're in a BS show, 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 real interest rates are high. That means you got a lot of supply out there and you get your choice and hey, you can always refine a couple of years. I mean,

I'm making, 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, this line that we got, I liked this, uh, this line that we got, uh, says, uh, China says it wants peace, but there's a lot like my ex-girlfriend. I got a lot of battles cars. It would say otherwise. Uh, I don't know who's blinking here. It doesn't really matter. Uh, 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 that was all the designer luxury brands being exposed that they're barking up the handbags like 1000% markups. Did you see that?

I did not see that. Let's go down that. This, I think, is relevant. So many people were talking about this over the weekend that amongst these tariff wars, all these manufacturers in China that manufacture Birkin handbags, Louis Vuitton, all these high-end luxury goods, were basically saying, hey, you can just buy direct from us. It's the same quality bag. Literally in the factory, they're showing the bags. They're saying you can buy it from us for 250 instead of Louis 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 in Italy.

Exactly. So I think I did see a lot of the, especially the female influencer world going kind of wild about it. And people feel like they've been duped for many years paying these outrageous prices, which. I mean, what did they mean, what did you think was going on? I know. Yeah. Come on. 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. Not say I,

I don't know. I don't know enough about the youngest, 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 was getting marked up like hell, then I don't know what to tell you, but I'm sure know what to tell you. But I'm sure there's a sub segment, the people that will. I do see I mean, 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, 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. 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 day, I didn't think we needed destabilization. I don't know that maybe we're getting, you know, more negotiation than we would have without it.

That's to be seen. But I don't think it does us 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, the good news. So and to own it. And I don't think he wants to own 5000 point drops on the stock market in a 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 raise 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's 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.

There have been a better time to be an entrepreneur, solopreneur, whatever, you know, it's all the tools are there. AI has enabled so many things like that you would have needed a team for three years ago. So it 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, like, I mean, the democratization of a lot of tasks that's taken place that would have taken specialized labor, especially 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 and 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 if 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, the grid in there, you know, 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 collar 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 Chatchie PT. Yeah. Trust. Will. Yeah. All of that. You know, you don't, 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 gonna need art, 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. Yep. Just proofread it and sign off on it. Sign off on it. Well, 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, that will there come a

day where there's an AI that's like, a law, law holding a law degree, like, when you think about it, like, you know, Ralph, your AI companion, he's a certified lawyer. Yeah, you can have your personalized 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 in every state so he can, he can his digital handwriting on you know, like he signed E-doc signing by Ralph the robot. I mean, I mean, look at dietitians 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 like anything that you get from chat, CPT, it can, it can become the human, you know, human-like version for distilling that to you. I mean, that, 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 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 re state 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 was happening and it didn't surprise me, but I guess I hadn't really gone there, you know, like five, five hours a day, I'd sit down and think about all these applications. Someone had, you know, how you within chat, GBT, you can create, you know, like five hours a day, I'd 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 your, it has memory, it can remember, and you start asking at certain prompts that are all about a certain subject. So you're kind of creating a, a project there about that one topic that lives within chat, GPT and a line item. one topic that lives within chat GPT 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, you know, 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 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 task. Because now, I mean, you know, these things can generate emails, they can, they can facilitate a lot of like digital work. And from emails to copy to image, creating images, generating images, generating video. And it, again, I'm using the example of an ad agency in the 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 they're working within the framework of that organization, how it normally worked. 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 this and it's just giving people the ability now.

And I think when I think about, I was just thinking, because when you create on chat UBT, you're kind of doing these independent tasks. You know, like, Hey, like, give me some good news articles to talk about today., 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 GPT's 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 clickbaity stuff, and you're creating the master,

your GPT's job is to create all these. This GPT'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. 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 desire 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, bono. So you can frame that however you want. Is that good news or bad news? I don't know. I think if you take advantage of it, 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 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 come up with some ideas. You just think more about thinking about AI. 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 the 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 thing. happening within his businesses right now. Right? You don't want that. 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, I think there's an endorphin, I think with politics, because it's so charged and so front and center. And 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, you know, 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 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 dead, you know, so I've learned that in business myself. I'm like, this, this takes no sense. Let's X. And I'm like, Whoa, okay. That had an impact. It didn't make the decision wrong, but maybe the timing was it. And I'm not saying that with everything that Elon did, because it's so diverse and things like that. But I think

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 gotta 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, 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 different. And I still have no interest in buying a Tesla. So I don't know. And I bet I didn't before. So, you know, just not my cup of tea, but it's a, have you seen any Teslas burning on fire? No, there's none of that down here. Some would probably get shot. So there's no crazies trying to keep Teslas down here. Yeah.

It's all friendly fire anyways. What's happening in the crypto market? It's the last two days it started 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.

Sentiments seem like positive. Yeah. And I think obviously with what's going on with the overall global economy, like, like we see with 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, so me, 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 a terrorist or anything, 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 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 when I bought low, headed back up. Just wait. Yes. I've kept it simple, Chris, you know, just one thing to keep up with right now. I can't do the 17, like variations. You don't need 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. Like I'm not a day trader, but 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, I can't, that's fun.

It's like gambling. But I don't know if those days are,'s go so this is coming back I think so this year I Can't tell you when but I know we need always comes back Yeah. Oh So, uh Instagram wants 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. Uh, it's just, you know, y'all got too slow. That's why I wouldn't start my own thing and made a lot more money but the But the reality is if you're not a creator didn't know very complex Software five you 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 cap cut slash China. Cap cuts 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 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. Played 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. 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. Cause I think they've got to have code in those videos that tells them it was created there, right? Yeah. I mean, I downloaded it last time. 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 cap cut. Right. 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 is affected by the algorithm any differently, essentially. Yeah, exactly. I bet it is to a degree, but you never know. But I did think it was pretty slick so far. I don't know if it's better.

It's obviously not where Capcom, CapCuts loaded with features. I don't think it's obviously better. It's not, it's obviously not where Capcom, Capcut's loaded with features. I don't think it's, it's obviously going to take time to get there, but first play around pretty good. And you know, it's, you know, we get, we, I bust about the walled gardens of all these companies kind of owning these spaces. But look, I mean, I, Instagram's done me right.

It's where I've grown 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. I'll 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, good follow him on threads and Instagram. He's looking good folks. The guy's working out hard. He's motivating me. I'm like, I did one more set of pushups this morning because of Chris. And progress and perfection.

Yeah, but you're looking good, man. because of Chris. Perfection. But you're looking good, man. Mean that the most heterosexual way possible. But yeah, threads is my daily kind of motivation stuff trying to get back into X to a little bit still get a lot of news there. Threads 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. The trolls are there. Yeah, more trolls for sure. Yeah. Threads is like the healthier version of X.

Yep. 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 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 tell you if it's left, if it's right or center gives you these percentages. And I was like using this first. So like, let me give you an example. 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 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, pull 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 spun each way. 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 gets framed differently and it's I think it's both education for people because you need to know I'm still amazed there are people that don't know they're being sort of Biased, you know, like like they don't the subtle nature with which news can push you one direction or the other Give them a shout out ground news calm 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 the 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. That's the tagline, Chris. Hey, none of that influencer stuff can't be, you know, biased influencing. We don't want that. We want the information. There is a difference between information and influence. So what did I learn about politics? That'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 is the championship again. I mean, I bring it up. We 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. Don't 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. Yeah. Run around. It's not like, 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.

Are you a wrestler? You're not a wrestling guy, I know. No, but I can appreciate it. I appreciate what they've built. Yeah, and all their numbers are up year over year. I thought that like at some point there'd be a decline in this. I really did. I'm kind of intrigued by the resurgence of it, to be honest with you. And I wonder if

it's a little bit of nostalgia. Do you think it's like guys our age getting their kids into it? I think it's the soap opera combined with, we have so few- Like reality TV with live entertainment. We have so few channels to sort of escape reality, like, and 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, cause they don't, it's not threatening to them. And whereas everything else, I mean, it's why live sports are 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 is an excuse male, should just women, a little ton of women, there's women wrestlers too. But like it, I think for men it's, it's the escape for a little bit. Have some fun. Right. I mean, how much entertainment fun really is there for middle age men anymore?

True. So when you think about it that way, maybe that's why, you know, it, but the scale and scope of, I know maybe we're missing out on it, Chris. And we need to get into it. I don't know. I miss 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 got another one today. We got the largest top stealer 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,

LudX. Ryan Ludden came on the founder of LudX. You scan the cards, you know the value. No more looking it up. Chris, when we grew up, we had to go find that Beckett, look up for those values. Like how much is this thing? And the magazine's three months old. You're going, oh, that 87 tops rookie. 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 card series. Like, okay, what are you talking about? 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 like all this stuff, man. Everybody's getting into Tom Brady talked about a card vault last, last week.

Tom Brady's not a dummy. Card vault by Tom Brady. So that series is coming up. It's gonna 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 have we filled up with this? You open those bags, so much trash. I'm like, fucking need to start incinerating it or something. The Mount of Cardboard, cardboard kingdom. But today is a big release for Dawn Russ Optic. Look, somebody's gonna be watching this Chris, and they're gonna know what this means.

This is the hottest box in retail right now. Dawn 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 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 cards. 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. I got to send you some. Let's pop this seal. Yes. See if we got any winners in there. Yeah, we got to see. All right. Hottest box in retail 2024, Don Russ optic. There's six packs here. I don't know if we're each one. You're chasing these cards called downtowns, Chris.

And speaking of fun, go to breakingrad.com, but they have these cards that are like downtowns. They should like the length. They're almost like art drawings of the 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, um, designed and the team may or may not have made a downtown of me that, uh, we might show. We'll show her eventually kind of fun.

The, um, yep. Optic by Donrush, 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 DM me like old friends that will 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're all had this chrome look to them Devon a 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 the 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. I'm going to go ahead and click on the 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 Luddix 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 Firemouth tight end for Steelers standing right 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 in a $35 box. It's crazy. The hit rate is really good. None of those that we hit were pretty good, but fun. You got a big release today actually.

So they'll be sold out in no time. Optic from Don Russ, the last, 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 releases on Friday. So football is sort of in the air 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 final words today, my friend? Everybody have a great weekend. Chris got to get you healed up, man. Chris has been under the weather.

He had the flu over the weekend. Struggling. We're having to send you some, uh, some matrix, uh, uh, pick you up. Men's products? I think so. Artists 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. Ryanisright.com, Find Highlight Clips, all the information and links, and we appreciate everyone. Ryan is right.com. Find highlight clips, all the information and links. And we appreciate you for listening. Chris Broby Hansen on Instagram, give him a follow, uh, get his motivational quotes on Twitter too, 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 why he did it. It's his brand. He owned the X anyway. Won't go down that path 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 before you could buy them. 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!