Follow-up for Ryan escaping the corporate world to play music.

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:02]Ah, hey guys. What's up? So, last week I made a video for my patron Ryan, who was recently laid off from his engineering job and is trying to not have to go back to the corporate world and wants to try to figure out what he can do instead if he can somehow find a way to make money, play music, or use that as part of his income and do some other work. Just basically how to not return to the corporate hellscape. And man, I understand. So, he answered some of the questions that I had in that first video from last week and kind of posed some new ones. And so, I'm going to go through those. Now, you know, one of the things I had asked him was how much TCG inventory he had accumulated and what it would turn into really financially, what would it turn into in terms of runway and cash. And he said that if he sold everything today at current market prices and he paid fees and shipping, he would get enough money to pay about 11 months of his uh expenses to live on, which is pretty good. I mean, that's a pretty nice amount. So, that's a uh nice cushion for when you decide to actually go make the leap and attempt to go make this other alternative lifestyle work out. Um, we we kind of got sidetracked a little bit because I had I had asked him if it was possible that he could slowly sell some of his inventory and you know just basically generate income from that for a while and he had asked some uh interim questions and I had answered those for him. But essentially, he he kind of asked, "How do card stores make money? If you know, if you can't uh if you can't buy boxes online and sell them online and make money, how are card stores and how are patron programs like Final Trade and Alpha Investments making money?" And I'll try to answer that one kind of quickly. Um, of course, card stores can sell at over market price, over MSRP, and people pay it because the product is right in front of them and they want it right now. Uh, so you know, card stores do really well with that.

[00:02:09]Also, card stores are buying at true wholesale prices, not any type of buyer club wholesale prices, quote unquote wholesale prices from those, not any other, you know, uh, giant liquidator prices like some of those sellers on eBay and a couple others I can think of.

[00:02:28]So, we're getting it at true wholesale, which is, you know, a bit cheaper, and then we're selling it into the market, even if it's to our patrons on Patreon.

[00:02:38]So, uh, as I've said in the past, when you go on TCG Player, most Magic Play boxes being sold on TCG Player are being sold at a loss. If they are currently available from distribution, then the ones you are seeing on TCG Player are being sold by card stores at a loss.

[00:02:57]either because they have to generate the cash or they're willing to take three, four, five, $10 a box uh loss in order to pad their numbers with distribution so that when it comes time to buy collector boxes and you're buying them at one/ird of their current market price, you can get a bigger allocation of those and you make up the money there. So, that's what a lot of those sellers are doing. And that's why it looks like you can't make money on there because you're you're only seeing part of it. You're seeing the part where some of those sellers on TCG player who are card stores and have distribution access are willing to sell in stock in stock at distribution in stock play boxes at a loss in order to pad the numbers. Okay? I don't do that because I have a patron program and I don't sell anything at a loss and I never have. I'm too stubborn for that for better or worse. When I put stuff up on the patron program like say Avatar play booster boxes, I think my price is five $8 over the market price right now. But it won't always be. At some point, the distributors will sell out and then before they get a reprint, the prices will start to rise on TCG Player and I will be the place where my patrons can get some boxes if they want them and they can still get them at reasonable prices. And so I've done that over the last several months with Edge of Eternities and Foundations and Tar and Bloomber and Duskorn. And as each of those has gone out of stock at uh distribution and the TCG player prices start to rise, I am a backs stop for my patrons to still get boxes at a reasonable price. But you have to have all those ways to do it. And so that's why Ryan, it appears that well, how can anyone be making money on this? Um I get to have those distribution prices because I pay somewhere around $2,500 a month as the overhead for rent and insurance and internet and security. and all the rest of the things that I have to have to have a physical brick and mortar store that cost me $2,500 a month. And so, uh, that's what I pay to then get those lower prices from distribution and on occasion get those really nice free money items like when Stricks Haven collector boxes came out and on the day I had to pay for them, I paid $25 to distribution and they were something like $460 at that point. And you know, I didn't sell them all right then. I still have a bunch of them and the price dipped down for a while and I actually bought some more in the secondary market and then the price has started to rise and I've sold a bunch through the card store and some other avenues. So, you know, you get those opportunities. Now, when it comes to Final Trade patron program and Alpha Investments, Ryan asked specifically, are they just making money off of the patron subscriptions and um selling older boxes that have appreciated in price? And again, the answer is no. You know, I I do make money off of the subscriptions and I do sell boxes that are older, but I also sell inventory that other people provide for me and I take a cut for letting them access my network and doing that. And then like I said, I can sell uh things like currently in print play boxes and I do run patron sales on other items that I get out of distribution currently like commander decks and you know other things uh uh sorcery TCG boxes and you know whatever else I can find that I think will make a good sale. I'll run it if there's a spread that I can collect on it. Even if it's only a few percentage points because if I'm buying it from distribution and I make 3% profit, well, who the hell cares? I'm holding the product for one or two days.

[00:06:49]So, if I could make 3% return for holding a product for two days and I could do that every two days all year long, I'd be the richest person in the universe. So, um, it's not just that you make money off of the subscription fees, you do make money off of the other avenues also, but a lot of those things are things that I've spent the last five years at Final Trade building. I built the Patreon network. I built the this uh I built the contacts with these other whales and investors. You know, eventually I was able to move into a card store. I grew the inventory so that I can have product aging and I can make money off of that. Okay, but back to some of the things more specific to Ryan's situation and less uh let's say questions that are less rhetorical. Um so he told me that he really doesn't have a way right now to make money off of music and that there is a somewhat long and complicated pipeline of the way you do that. you basically go start playing and you cultivate a following through social media and then you can do things like private events and uh you know sales directly to people who are your fans on social media and things like that and you know that sounds a lot like what I did with Final Trade because I looked out there and I said okay everybody in this TCG world you know they're fighting for scraps on TCG player while they pay 8 10 12% market fees and they pay a 2 and 12% transaction fee. And you know, they're having to deal with bad buyers on TCG Player. Even to the great extent that TCG player bans those people pretty well, uh there's still bad buyers on there sometimes. And I said, "Okay, what what are the reasons that most of these businesses in the TCG world struggle?"

[00:08:37]And I said, "Well, uh they're under capitalized and they're fighting for scraps and they're paying these huge fees to TCG Player and eBay." And so I said, "What can I do to get around that?" Well, I can build out a patron program and then I do my sales through PayPal and there is no 8 10 12% market fee. Instead, there's zero market fee and you just have about a 3% transaction fee on PayPal. And so what that allowed me to do was then uh offer prices lower than my patrons will pay on TCG Player.

[00:09:10]So, they get product cheaper than they can get it on TCG Player. And I make more profit than I would selling it for the same price on TCG Player. I make more profit than I would if I sold it at the higher market prices on TCG Player.

[00:09:24]And so I've spent five years building that pipeline, starting the YouTube channel, posting to it regularly, building a a subscriber base there, converting them to patrons, building up my inventory, building up the ability to host sealed sales, uh building relationships with whales and and uh other investors and getting all those opportunities until eventually I had built enough that I could get into a store. And it looks like from what Ryan is saying, there's a similar kind of pipeline that happens with musicians that those opportunities to become dedicated songwriters, things like that.

[00:10:00]You can get there, but you have to build it up over time. And that essentially that hasn't happened yet for Ryan. He hasn't done that yet. And I suspect it's just he hasn't uh invested the time and you know the effort on a sustained basis that's necessary to do that. And then um as far as other things he could do to make money, he gives a a couple of suggestions based on his background as an electrical engineer and but kind of sums up that there's there's no real great obvious thing in his mind yet that he could make extra money off of. And so here is my advice, Ryan. My advice is try to find another engineering job. Try to find an engineering job that will get you those big engineering bucks, especially because in your early 30s still, you're in that part of your engineering career where your salary is going up very fast and you know, switching jobs a couple times, especially since unfortunately you were laid off, but the next job you land will probably have a 30 40% pay increase.

[00:11:07]That's just how engineering works. And so you I I know the long-term goal is to get out of the corporate hellscape, but you know, I set that same goal and it still took me five years of work. Five years of running Final Trade every day, during the workday, uh after work, in the evenings, on the weekends, making videos, doing the work, doing the research, talking to people, cultivating patrons, everything. It took five years for me to get from initially registering the business with the state of Texas until I was in the store here and was having enough success in the store that I knew I wouldn't have to go crawling back to the corporate world. So, it looks like you need to lay more of a foundation to prepare for that because the kind of transition you're trying to make is basically a very difficult one played on hard mode. you're trying to go from a um you know a a relatively uh reliable engineering career into the music business and maybe something else to make money on the side to support that with. And that's very difficult.

[00:12:18]That's a very difficult transition. And so I would say find another corporate engineering job. As much as that sucks, but you know you're probably making 120, 130, 150k off of that. and go do that for a couple of years while you're doing the other things on the side while you're laying the groundwork. Maybe you can figure out how to get in with some some clubs or some bars or restaurants, whatever that you can play music at.

[00:12:45]Maybe you can start the social media uh pipeline and start publishing things, publishing you playing at places, publishing whatever it is and start building that following. But to to somewhat be pushed out of the corporate world suddenly and then attempt to land from there and immediately transition into this alternate lifestyle that you did not have all of the groundwork prepared for is going to make it very very difficult and the odds of you failing at that are very high. And so go back and enjoy the big engineer salary, doing as little work as you can to not get fired, just enough to not get fired, and do that for a couple of years while in the background in earnest, you're laying in the groundwork for what the transition will actually look like a couple of years from now. And you know, the nice thing is, even if you decide, hey, uh, TCG Investing, I'm not going to buy a single another box because I need all the money for other things that I'm preparing with. Well, the nice thing is all that inventory you already have, that will pay 11 months of your bills right now. If you wait a couple years, it'll probably pay 24 months of all your bills. And so, you know, you will get the magnified benefit of that over time while you're also putting a money putting money away from your renewed salary and while you're getting all the groundwork for whatever it is you get into late and I know like trust me I have all the scars of a corporate engineering career and I know how terrible it can be and especially how terrible it is postco and from January of 2021 until the end of 2023. So for three whole years, I worked for an engineering manager who could best be described as an imbecile. He just he on the technical side, he was not talented at all. He did not understand the work that I did. And so he would make unrealistic demands and then he would get unhappy about things because he didn't understand what was going on. He was an absolute impasol and for three years he was the person that on the technical side of my career I reported directly to and it was absolutely soul draining. It was terrible. So I understand and I understand the desire to get out of it but you need to lay a longer runway. You need to lay more of a foundation to make that transition. And the nice thing is as you start to do that and as you start to explore these different paths of going down towards these different goals that you have in mind right now, things will come better in focus. You'll be more knowledgeable about where you're going and how to potentially get there and financially you will be uh better ready to actually go and make that jump at some point. But given right now that you're not sure what you could do in the meantime besides getting another engineering job and you don't have any of that foundational pipeline work done on building a musical presence online, building followers and the rest, I say go back and just find another engineering job that you can milk and just barely work at and spend your spare mental energy and time building your music pursuits to the side. So, send me any more follow-up questions. This does not have to be the end of the discussion, but send me more follow-up questions with with uh anything else you're concerned about with this or any other questions or clarifications or whatever else. And uh let me know what you think. Thanks to everyone who makes this content possible, especially my very generous supporters on Patreon.

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