Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Trading Cards: The Fan Engagement Goldmine with Jeremy Aisenberg
Episode Date: May 27, 2025Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About... Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn this episode of Right About Now with Ryan Alford, Jeremy Aisenberg — founder of Talent Brand Labs and a seasoned veteran of the trading card industry — unpacks the evolution and cultural impact of trading cards. Ryan and Jeremy explore the hobby’s remarkable resurgence, the way collecting fuels sports fandom, and how digital media is reshaping the collector’s experience. Jeremy offers insightful personal stories, including his own journey into the world of collecting and his groundbreaking work with Sports Illustrated to launch a collectibles vertical. The episode captures the dynamic intersection of physical and digital collectibles and paints an exciting picture of the industry’s future.TAKEAWAYSThe growth and projected value of the trading card industry.The evolution of the trading card hobby and its transformation into a business.Personal experiences and journeys of collectors in the trading card space.The role of collecting in fostering sports fandom and community engagement.The impact of digital media and technology on the trading card industry.The significance of grading in enhancing trust within the collecting community.The emergence and potential of digital collectibles and NFTs.Innovative approaches to collecting, including online breaks and repacks.The competitive landscape of the trading card industry and its implications for innovation.The future of collecting and the importance of engaging younger fans.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Part of how we grow the hobby and bring more people into this as a way to make fans stickier
to their teams and the leagues and sports is collecting. When licenses were being held by
Upper Deck and Tops and FLIR and Donrus in the 90s, it sparked a lot of innovation. You think
about some of the great vintage insert sets of the late 90s and early 2000s are some of the most collectible cards on the planet.
Billions of dollars, millions of collectors, one booming industry. Trading cards aren't just back,
they're taking over. Projected to hit 52 billion by 2027, the hobby has evolved into a full blown business
with culture, cash, and clout all at the center.
From the vault to the back room,
we'll talk to the heavy hitters
right in the future of the hobby.
We feature Brian Ludden from LudX,
the fastest and most accurate trading card scanning app,
Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia
and creator of Vee Friends.
South Carolina card king, Mattie Rich,
one of South Carolina's largest retail store owners
and SI Collectibles contributor and sports executive,
Jeremy Eisenberg.
Plus some other surprise guests.
This isn't just about collecting,
it's about investing, scaling and ruling the hobby.
Right about now, we're making the hobby make sense,
massive dollars. Don't miss this incredible series. What's up guys? Welcome. Right About Now, we're making the hobby make sense. Massive dollars. Don't miss this incredible series.
What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about how to learn more
about business and get right. And you know, we could talk about last week, we could talk
about two years ago, but we want to make it topical for today. And you know, I can admit
when I'm doing guilty pleasure,
but I'm doing guilty pleasures that you need to know about
because this is part of our trading card series.
We had Brian Ludden from LudX on.
We've got one of the biggest collectors
in the Southeast that's coming on.
We've got some other big names
and that's why I went to Jeremy.
Jeremy Eisenberg, he is not only, you know, an OG trading card guy,
talent brand labs founder, and I think just a sports junkie. Is that what it is, Jeremy?
Yes, that's fair. Sports has been a big part of my life as long as I can remember.
Yeah, man. Octagon, any of our agency crowd will
know some name drops that will get in here.
We compared some more stories of agency life
a little bit before we got started, both kind of coming up
through that.
Jeremy, I did go through your background,
and Brian shared a little bit.
But I was like, you know, and I got
blessed to work on Verizon's some big names, we did some
sports sponsorship stuff, but it wasn't to say that my backgrounds in sports
brand marketing, all that would not be painting the, I'd say more wireless and
tech, but I read jurors and I go, who wouldn't grow up and go, I want, I want
to be that.
That's what I thought when I was reading through your kind of bylines
and everything you've done.
I've been lucky, man. That's all I can say. I didn't necessarily, it wasn't the plan.
I was getting a PhD in genetics and took a leave of absence and ended up working for
one of the most influential people in golf.
And that was a quick PhD in business.
And where that entrepreneurial first step has taken me in the last 20 years is someday
I'll write a book.
I pinch myself.
It's been an amazing journey.
You need to name that name though.
And our listeners that knows, if you even, golf and maybe not golf,
you'll recognize this name we talked before.
Might be one of the first influencers in golf, wasn't he?
David Ledbetter?
Yeah.
When I think about,
I was lucky enough to go work for a guy
who recognized that his opportunity
to leverage his influence and the attention
he was able to generate
across his own channels and through businesses
he owned and controlled.
He built an instructor certification business,
a brick and mortar academy business,
product licensing business, a product development business,
content distribution business,
and all before the introduction of social media.
And so I took that experience working for David distribution business and all before the introduction of social media.
And so I took that experience working for David and learning from him and
seeing how important it was to over deliver value.
I took all these great lessons and got to work over 18 years for
one of the largest agencies in the world and apply that personal branding to this
explosion of digital and social content
and democratization of distribution.
It's taking me in all sorts of exciting directions, some of which hopefully we'll get to chat
about.
Yeah, man.
I'm glad you brought up the democratization of content and distribution and that's what's so damn impressive about what
David did you know but is before you know even that time you know like I'm
talking about mad respect like he didn't even have the benefits that that like
there's no excuse for anyone now like if you've got if you've got the goods you
got the goods you gotta have the goods so You got to have the goods. So you do have to have that. But if you have that, nothing's in your way with the way social media and if you throw YouTube in there, it's social, but whatever content distribution.
And, and, you know, we can talk about wall gardens and all that stuff. Don't let that get in your way.
It's been fascinating for me, but I think especially for you, I'm sure Jeremy, that whole journey watching what's happened in this explosion of all these channels, TV,
online, social media, YouTube, now TikTok, Instagram, all these things with the people
and brands that you've worked with.
I'd love to dive down that little bit, to tell your story, because you kind of came up
through it all.
Yeah, I appreciate that perspective.
When I always felt like I was representing Challenger brands,
so to speak, because I wasn't representing the agency
that I work for, Octa, we had Michael Phelps,
we had Steph Curry, but I was representing coaches
and broadcasters in golf.
Now, where golf had this great advantage was
the people who distribute content related
to playing better golf have an outsized amount
of influence over their audience.
If someone is promising better scores, lower handicap,
more fun playing golf, They're basically promising them
a dopamine high. What I've said to a lot of big technologists is golf is this incredible test
kitchen for new innovative technology. When Microsoft was looking at how the augmented
reality world might come into play in business. They
used golf courses as the way to visualize and bring that to the business community through
a PGA Tour partnership. But you're able to use HoloLens and see how this holographic
type interface works. And it was a great example of where golf's influence and the pyramid of that influence is so powerful and
why I've been able to be...
Someone like Hank Haney was written up in Wall Street Journal in 2011 as the most authentic
user of Twitter in the world.
Not just the golf guy, but in the world because we were out there trying to find ways to showcase our content in as many channels as we could.
And whether that's through augmented reality
or whether that's through podcasts
or through OTT subscriptions,
Hank had a very significant eight million,
or excuse me,figure business, 10 million plus business a month doing online content
subscriptions because again, that insatiable appetite for game improvement is undying.
The premise has held true and guys like Gary Vee have been both friends and sort
of influences as well. The bottom line is you've got to put your message in as many
places as the potential audience might be. And the gatekeeping makes sense in certain
spots, but really ubiquitous omni-channel content distribution, authentically and organically, is the answer.
And then if you've got the goods, you can achieve a lot.
How did the trading card thing come?
I mean, where did that enter?
Obviously, and you'll talk about as a kid and stuff,
a lot of us have the kid stories,
but where did that intersection happen in the career?
Yeah, so I collected like everybody. I stopped collecting. I was born in the late 70s,
collected in the mid, late 80s, sort of put them all away in the early 90s and got into Nirvana
and Pearl Jam and went to college and got married and had kids and started a career.
Sounds familiar.
And then I woke up and I was 30 something and maybe my folks made me take more of the
cards home.
But probably right about the time I got to Octagon, 2006, 2007, I sort of saw cards lying
around the office and we started representing big stars and I'm thinking, I wouldn't mind
getting a basketball signed
by David Robinson.
And they started kind of, I'm in the sports marketing business at this point and I've
been on private jets with Hall of Fame athletes and mayors not to ask for autographs.
So it's sort of, it's this-
Hey, you might as well get the benefit.
You're there, right?
I have a great story and it just shows you what an amazing human this guy is. And everybody's
probably got a good one of these with Charles Barkley. But I was so talk about like a forced
gum kind of life. But I was very fortunate to get to become very good friends with Charles
when Hank Haney filmed the Haney project. I was on site for most of the production days over six months and
ended up being Charles' dinner date for quiet nights after a long day of filming.
Charles used to say when somebody would be coming up to the table, he'd be like, finally,
I said, you're so kind to these guys.
You never say no.
You're always chipper.
How do you do it? So you're so kind to these guys. You never say no. You're always chipper.
How do you do it?
And he goes, man, it's going to take me the same 15 seconds either way.
And this guy's going to go around for the rest of his life and say I was either a jerk
or I was a great guy.
And for me, it's the same amount of time to blow them off or to be nice.
And that just gives you a lot of respect for how hard it is for them to find peace and quiet
and the bigger the star, the harder that is.
I got to see that up close and personal.
But at the same time, collecting is such a fun aspect of being a fan.
So that itch got scratched again.
I might have mentioned this when we were chatting. Michael Rubin deserves all the credit in the world for his identifying collectors as the
best fans.
I really believe that this hobby is in its infancy from a growth perspective.
At Octagon, we did some really cool research into the hobby to illustrate that.
Part of how we grow the hobby and bring more people into this as a way to not
just grow the hobby, but to make fans stickier to their teams and the leagues and the sports
is collecting. It's clearly acknowledged now by, I was talking to the NHL about the opportunity
to engage young fans who are collecting. It's identified
now as one of the pillars. The growth trajectory for collecting in general is pretty exciting.
One of the things we'll talk about is what we've built in partnership with Sports Illustrated and
Authentic Brands Group and Minute Media, who are our partners in the Sports Illustrated and Authentic Brands Group and Minute Media, who are our partners
in the Sports Illustrated collectibles business.
Yeah.
Everybody's got their hands.
They know the collectibles realm and the trading cards.
They see the smart people are connecting the dots and building units around how you connect all these things together
and how you leverage it to keep fans being fans.
And I think the winners are going to, not that they'll necessarily be losers.
I don't know if there's any losers.
I won't go that far, but there's definitely going to be some big winners.
And it's hard not, it's had some rocky moments.
I think the fanatics and tops, there's been some stuff, but you can't deny that it feels
directionally right.
Is what is my observation.
And you know, they're opening the tent wider, right?
The fanatics fest, we went to the first fanatics fest.
It was awesome.
Couldn't have been a more fun, entertaining experience for casual sports fans.
There were plenty of areas that they were the first to recognize they can make improvements
on.
I'm excited for what they'll do in the event space.
I think healthy competition is good and Panini's not going anywhere and Upper Deck's not going
anywhere.
Did that deal need to happen though?
The Panini tops, did that deal need to happen though?
Would it have been better for the industry?
It's a great question.
I think it would be better for the industry to have more than one license.
I think competition is great.
I think when the licenses were being held by Upper Deck and Tops and Fleer and Donras
in the 90s, it sparked a lot of innovation. You think about some of the great old vintage, hold,
insert sets of the late 90s and early 2000s are some of the most collectible cards on
the planet. That's the pinnacle of Upper Decks, early work in memorabilia cards and autographs.
Still to this day, when I show some of the trading card innovation to people who've
been out of trading cards for a while, they're blown away by what's happened.
And the collectability and the tentacles into art and into serious game-use memorabilia
to museum quality pieces and investment funds
looking at this stuff through the lens of alternative asset classes. It's, you know,
not related to my background as a geneticist, but 35% of us are genetically predisposed
to want to collect stuff. Sort of a remnants of the human condition a little bit,
you know, like that fine line between collecting and hoarding.
I think the tide is rising on collecting because collecting is the ultimate, you know,
expression of fandom and, and fandom is one of those last safe spaces where we can all come together and cheer on
a team and not be angry at each other for something else.
Yeah, I know.
Everything is so polarizing.
It's like black and white.
But in sports, it feels like you can...
I mean, you're always rooting for one team or the other, but it just feels different than the shit that's out there that is just
maddening and polarizing.
I don't feel like fandom is polarizing.
It's just fandom.
Almost every Republican and Democrat in Boston can agree on the fact that they want the Red
Sox to kick the crap out of the Yankees.
Yeah, exactly.
They come together and where you can start to
bring people together, you can find opportunity. Sports has been that. Like I said, I've been so
fortunate to be able to be on the journey I've taken. This platform we built with Sports Illustrated,
in and this platform we built with Sports Illustrated, I chased the SI leadership for years. They are an iconic brand, not just in sports, but also in collecting. And the
thing that I observed through my years at Octagon, where I mentioned I did some consulting
work for TOPS, we identified that LAP Collectors were this huge universe of people coming with kids and
ready to rediscover the hobby.
I was able to help broker the deal between Gary Vaynerchuk and Tops to create a insert set within 2019 Top Series 2 around the best entrepreneurs in
baseball.
Gary was very adamant.
We proposed to Tops developing a collaboration with Gary around what they were doing, branded
sets, direct to consumer, custom branded sets.
They launched the first one with Bryce Harper, it was a big success.
They were looking at subjects to do the next one with and we said, well, maybe you should
take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk.
He's obsessed with cards and now could be a perfect opportunity.
They took it and put a really fun set together that unlocked Gary's universe to
the latest and greatest of modern sports cards. Lots happened since then in the hobby as well.
One of the things that was missing all through that journey long-winded here was a major
sports media platform that was paying attention to the hobby, and that's what we
were able to convince SI to move forward with.
Talk to me about what SI is doing.
When you think about the collectibles, it's so ironic.
Old Sports Illustrated magazine is one of the most collected things like, you know, for sports fans, especially like I've got, I'm not even,
I just the last six months have gotten back into collecting cards and I,
but I wouldn't consider myself like a lifelong collector,
but I am when I go, I've got like 10 or 20, you know,
sports illustrated that have whole bunch over the years and summer autographs
and Clem, I went to Clemson's.
I got some Dabo Sweeney and Deshaun Watson.
That meant more a few years ago, but we won't go down that road.
But anyway, it is what it is.
But it just fits.
So talk to me about what Sports Illustrated and you've been doing.
What is that division exactly?
Well, so when Sports Illustrated said,
yeah, we're into the idea of building a hobby vertical,
the first thing we did was built out a team
and we hired a, so I have two partners
in this collaboration with SI,
got in Chris Perrone, who
had previously been the general manager of SI at Arena Group
and was my partner in helping us to launch the idea initially.
And then come full circle, Minute Media
was interested in the opportunity
to do the same thing.
And we were able to launch si.com slash collectibles.
And why that's significant is that the si.com slash collectibles. And why that's significant is that the si.com domain
is one of the oldest and most trafficked on the internet
and has one of the highest domain authorities
on the internet, and sort of how Google ranks sites
and drives traffic.
So yeah.
What is it, 99?
It's really high.
Yeah, that's guys. I'm sure it starts
with a nine. And so we just get traffic when we have interesting content. So our challenge was
just making, making content about the hobby that, that people would be interested in reading. And
we've, we've built a staff of now over 15 really dedicated, talented writers, all hardcore hobbyists that have expertise in different
verticals.
And we're publishing on average 10 pieces a day.
We're up to now over half a million unique readers a month, and up to 750,000 to a million
unique views a month, article views a month, which are good numbers
and we're only into our fourth or fifth month, but it gives us, it's the largest by a factor
of 10 among hobby content channels, just again, because of the nature of domain authority.
And so that's given us the opportunity to invest even further in original content.
We're developing series featuring collectors and really celebrating people's collections.
And we're going to give...
How about a dad and his four sons?
That sounds like a story or video or something.
You know what?
We'll email you after the call.
And especially if your collection is featured in Linux. Yes, exactly.
You can showcase that.
Yes, it is.
That's exactly what we're doing there.
Yeah.
We're doing fun things with the journey of collectibles from sort of discovery.
So think about sports collectible version of Antique Roadshow.
So we've got some fun ideas in the hopper for video and
you know a lot of things up our sleeve that we're excited about. Yeah it's super
smart Jeremy. It's like okay this just fits. There's sometimes you hear
something you're like okay I don't know about that this is just like it wasn't
already happening.
It was really surprising, man. Yeah. Yeah.
The very first sports illustrated had a whole, you know,
pullout of 1954 tops design in the issue,
the famous issue of Eddie Matthews, 1954.
So collecting is sort of in the, in the DNA of the brand. And, the brand and we all have heard or collect the
Sports Illustrator for Kids cards that are the first appearance of so many icons that
don't necessarily get a card in the traditional releases.
The hobby's done a great job of making cards for all these alternative sports athletes coming in from different directions.
And fortunately, they paid a lot of attention to women's sports. So a lot of the great legends
of women's sports have cards. Some of their only rookie cards or early appearances were in
SI for Kids, which is unfortunate, but at least they had cards thanks to Sports Illustrator,
which is part of SI's legacy.
Yeah.
I remember those.
I don't have any of those.
There's still some good ones.
As I understand it, Victor Webinyama's card from a year and a half ago or so is still
pretty pricey. For our audience that's either in maybe collectors
or hearing more about this industry, it's hard.
And Brian and I talked about this,
but just how big this industry is and just how popular.
And at the same time, it'll make your head spin
trying to get your head around every parallel.
Like everything else, like good grief.
It's like, I don't even know where to start with the actual cards themselves, but it's
fun.
Yeah, that's part of what SI is going to be doing here with content is celebrating collectors
and celebrating their individual collections and showcasing all the different ways that
collectors collect.
And that's a pretty broad spectrum
of embodiments of collections.
I personally collect vintage Red Sox guys.
So I collect Ted Williams and Carl Yastrowski.
And if you ask what are the cards I would never part with,
it's about a hundred give or take vintage Red Sox cards.
And the rest is sort of fun stuff that I like to own.
I've got some Roger Clemens rookies.
I mean, that was in my like come up time.
Like we're also when they got over printed a little bit.
So I don't know, but I think it's pretty good condition.
Condition now, right?
Yeah. We took good care of them. But also when they got over printed a little bit, I don't know, but they're in pretty good condition. Condition now, right? Yeah, yeah.
We took good care of them,
and that's another whole element that's,
there was a lot of resistance to grading
when I remember it first coming into the scene
in the early 90s,
when I was still an avid collector
without a driver's license.
But, it was sort of like, what is this third
party grading? But it's really, it's done. It serves such an
important role in the growth of collecting because of the trust
factor that it's it's injected into what was previously a
pretty challenging environment when it comes to trust. Yeah,
cards and collectibles.
Subjective condition grading.
It was really a big roadblock to the growth that's happened.
I started my eBay account in 1998,
so I guess I was still dabbling in college
with buying and selling collectibles.
But the cards you would purchase in lots.
I thought I had it beat. I have mine's 2001 feedback. And 2001, my kids saw that when
we got back into we were selling and buying a few things on eBay. They're like, you know,
doing I mean, these my kids are, you know, four boys under the age of 15. And it's like, see in 2001,
so my eBay account was
hilarious. Yeah. It's a great date stamp. It's one of those fun, like, you know, what's your Uber rating? Yeah. Exactly.
I don't know if it just ages us or if it's definitely some,
some cred in the buying circles. Yeah.
Gary Vaynerchuk and I talk about the AOL chat rooms.
I used to buy and sell them there in 1992 and 93.
You know, 90, yeah, 92, 93.
I grew up in Northern Virginia where AOL was,
it was headquartered and they put,
they put a DVD in your mailbox every night back then.
I remember that. My parents got it. I was loading it on their computer. They put a DVD in your mailbox every night back then.
I remember that.
My parents got it.
I was loading it on their computer.
I remember it.
That noise.
That dial up, man.
Little did we know what was on the other end of that dial up line.
Exactly.
Where do you see the industry going and what's your thoughts on the NFTs and the digital
space?
You can't fight it. It's coming. What's your thoughts on the NFTs and the digital space?
I, you can't fight it, it's coming. I like to think it's an or, you know, like,
and not like, I don't know, make your choice, I mean,
but I'll let you hit on it.
Yeah, it's a complicated one.
And there's so many different directions to pull it into.
You know, I think that these digital worlds, digital communities, you know, I think that these, these digital worlds, digital communities,
you know, the success of platforms like Roblox and where that's going to be headed and, you
know, the, the worlds that can be built within these platforms, you know, I, I'm, I'm reluctant
to, to cast judgment on a lot of this tech that is just really being understood
how it can be used effectively.
I hate to...
Don't hate.
Gary's definitely an influence on me, but he made a big point with his NFT launch to bring real world tangible value to his buyers because he was certain
of one thing and that was that the journey of these things was going to be long and bumpy
and he wanted to make sure that there was value extended no matter what.
So look, I think that blockchains, I know enough about cybersecurity
to understand the value proposition of blockchain and why that's a new security protocol that
people like and can rely on and can provide things that security experts like, like chain
of custody kind of insight. But yeah, I'm hardly an expert on predicting what the commercial markets will look like.
I think, I come back to what is the evolution of the fan experience and how is it actually
impacting fans now and how will that change?
And there's a lot of real things.
There's ticketing uses, there's definitely collectability that's a legacy of what happened during the
explosion and it's starting to come back through some types of utility. I think it's early,
early days. I'm sure that people will start putting back puzzles that they were working
on with the interconnectivity of these worlds as they start getting traction.
There was a really interesting group in golf that was selling one of these distributed
network owned membership organizations and you were going to have access to a golf course
and I think they went out and bought a golf course.
But your ownership was embodied through the NFT. I'm excited to see where that goes and excited to see how I might be able to test it in some
of the work that I do.
Yeah.
I mean, I see the value that my kids put in digital things.
I mean, we've got the physical cards and I don't think it's replacing, like I said, I
don't think they're choosing one over the over the other, but I, I have been
surprised because I kind of panned when the whole metaverse and all that stuff was happening
during COVID, I panned all of it. And I don't want to say I was right, but I, I was right.
In that moment that that was a flash in the pan. It's not that I think it's coming one day. Like you can't fight, you know,
technology progress. But I think a lot of that stuff's crashed
and burned because it didn't really have a core solid core.
It was just kind of very glitzy in the moment. But but I do see
the value. Even in like Fortnite, what their character has on
and how much they'll spend for that.
And that that cache means something.
And it's so there's value even in digital assets
that the younger generation have, right?
It's part of youth culture now for sure
is some digital expression,
what they're sharing on
their social channels, on their TikToks, and who they're interacting with, and that community
of influence that they've embraced in their content consumption patterns, where they're
going for content and who they're going to for expertise.
Yeah, I think that continues to evolve
and I think there's a big place for digital stuff
in the future of our population.
I think smart companies and smart creators
are going to find ways.
But I'll tell you what, there's nothing like the thrill of opening that physical pack.
And you know holding the cards, I mean you call me old school,
but you know and now how beautiful the cards are and the designs and all that.
That's a hard experience to replace. I don't know that it has to replace it. I think it's you know again and
not or you know in that regard, you still open packs.
Are you following what they're doing with sort of this, these real world repacks that
you open online? I'm not sure if it's Arena Group or one of the Arena Club. Oh yeah, like literally. I mean, the breaks and whatnot, all that. Yeah. I mean,
we have our own whatnot channel. We've sold 500 items already. We're in it, man. We are in it.
That's why Brian's sending me the Lodex crew here. We can't get our whatnot sponsored by Lodex or something. That's why we get ESI involved.
The Rad Collective, that's us.
The Rad Rips, Rad Collective, and I own BreakingRad.com.
Are you kidding me?
We need to talk.
We are working on a really cool breaking content initiative with one of the biggest companies
in the world.
And we should talk about what we can do.
Yeah, man. That'd be fun. It's a fun industry.
And it's, look, it's probably my sons and I, I'm an
entrepreneur at all these companies and my kids know I do podcasting.
I have some influence online and all that, but they haven't really cared.
But once we got it, I'm teaching them business through the sports cards now. influence online and all that.
I'm teaching them business through the sports cards now.
We got our own Shopify site that I've built and showed them how to build and like Ecom and social
and whatnot.
It's like giving me an avenue to teach them things that I would have liked to teach them through what I do every day, but it's meeting them on a grounds that
they like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My buddies at Big Night Entertainment Group started Card Vault a few years ago.
It was a fun side project during the pandemic.
They had all these nightclubs and bars that were shut down and they figured they could entertain people by doing breaks on these stages. They
built a business and lo and behold, they're now partners with Tom Brady and scaling Card
Vault by Tom Brady all over the country. That'll bring so many new collectors to the game who will see that name and the
way that they're merchandising the hobby.
And next thing you know, we've got a new collector going on their own fun journey and embodying
their passion for their sport.
So it's a really exciting time.
A lot of big companies, private equity, venture capital are putting resources into the space.
I think it will continue.
It's one of the true ubiquitous passions that's enjoyed globally.
It really truly is a global hobby.
The MBA is collected in just about every corner of the connected world.
So, it's exciting stuff.
Jeremy, where can everybody keep up with what you're doing
with Sports Illustrated and you in general?
Yeah, on Instagram, I'm J-A-I-S-E-N-B-E-R-G
at jasonberg.
At Talent Brand Labs, www.talentbrandlabs.com. And just keep an eye on si.com slash collectibles
for all sorts of fun new content.
I love it, man. Made a lot of sense. They were smart to listen to you and the rest of
your team that was kind of pushing this. So it makes a lot of sense and can't wait to
kind of keep up with the content that you
guys are doing. And Hey, maybe, maybe the Rad Collective fits in there somewhere.
I think we should talk about that. Have your people call my people.
I think I know. We'll exchange numbers.
Hey guys, you know, to find us, Ryan is right.com.
We'll find the highlight clips, the links to all of Jeremy's social,
his website, uh, you know, brands, sponsorship partnerships. Hey, you know, to call, you
call Jeremy and look, go check out sports illustrated, new collect backslash collectibles,
si.com backslash collectibles. Hey, it just fits, man. That's, that is where it is. It
fits. And I love seeing what everything's happening in the industry
as part of our trading card series, the business you need to know.
Hey, find me at Ryan Allford on Instagram.
Thank you for making us number one. See you next time. Right about now.