Posts mentioning community, IZZISCON, conventions, clubs, or tournaments.
Imported October 2, 2026. This is a static archive. Posts follow their LinkedIn activity order; publication dates appear only when verified.
Showing 1–20 of 87 posts
Some of the toughest men I know spend their Saturdays building tiny plastic robots. Izzi's Gym is a trading card and collectibles store in Sioux Falls. Somewhere along the way it also became a hangout for veterans. I didn't plan that. It j…
Read the post →A store event can lose money on the night and still earn its place on the calendar. It might help new players get started, give regulars a reason to return, or introduce customers to products they would otherwise never try. Those are reaso…
Read the post →Bandai capped our Gundam Card Game 1st Anniversary Event at 64 players. We filled all 64. Then a dozen more joined the waiting list. Think about that. A little over a year ago this game did not exist. Today, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, w…
Read the post →Question for the entrepreneurs out there. How do you stay grateful for the business you already have... while still waking up every day wanting more sales, more profit, more growth? Because I feel both. Same day. Same brain. I look at our…
Read the post →All three OP-17 pre-release events. Sold out. Every seat. Every flight. Full room, all weekend. Watching the One Piece community in Sioux Falls grow like this has been one of the best parts of the year. Now the honest part. We dropped from…
Read the post →10,000+ people showed up to our convention. Admission was $0. IZZISCON cost real money to run and I charged nothing to get in. Not for entry, not for any of kids activities. People in the industry told me I left a pile of money at the door…
Read the post →Asking LinkedIn for a favor, and owning the reason I need one. Back at GAMMA I sat down and played a demo of the Palworld Official Card Game. It's Bushiroad, it's built on an IP that already has a massive audience, and the demo caravan is…
Read the post →IZZISCON 2026 was UNREAL. 🎉 Over 10,000 kids and their families 🎟️ 100% FREE event 🃏 1 MILLION Pokémon cards given away 🛍️ 100+ vendors TOURNAMENTS: 🏆 Pokémon 🤖 Gundam 🏴☠️ One Piece 🎮 Fighting games ⚔️ Beyblade battles EXPLORE: 🕹…
Read the post →My first big event is in 5 days. 76,000 square feet at the Sioux Falls Convention Center. All of it free. All of it for kids. By the numbers, it should work: 2 Local TV interviews. 15,000 free tickets handed out. Tens of thousands of my ow…
Read the post →We had the local news stop by Izzi's Gym this week, and honestly, it left us a little speechless. Watching someone from the outside walk through our doors and just get what we are trying to build here meant the world to us. When we opened,…
Read the post →Exciting news for the Beyblade community! Izzy's Arena recently sent four officials to the North Star Beyblade Regionals, competing in both limited and ranked formats against 80 players each. It was an incredible experience, representing S…
Read the post →We've got some HUGE news to share with our amazing community 🎉 Izzi's Gym is officially a Topps Direct Partner and we honestly can't stop smiling about it. For a store that's barely been open a year, earning this status is a massive miles…
Read the post →Stord just raised $250M at a $3B valuation. Worth reading the founder's note. The line that stuck with me: "9 of the 10 largest US companies by revenue operate physical networks at scale. Physical foundations built with the right technolog…
Read the post →My brother and my mom are the real community builders at Izzi's. This week they ran something they invented called the Binder Showcase Contest. The rules are simple: they give you a prompt, and you have to use the cards in your binder to e…
Read the post →25+ kids showed up to Pony Club this week. They colored on our new Pony Coloring Pages. They traded cards with each other. They got their first Pony Passports. They ran a scavenger hunt through the store. This is what most retailers are mi…
Read the post →Discovery is the toy industry superpower. TikTok Shop has become the most powerful toy discovery engine on the planet, and the brands that understood that first are rewriting what success looks like in our industry. Not just the global gia…
Read the post →You want proof I've built a movement and not a card store? 11am yesterday: I made a joke post. "I'm a bad son. Forgot to get my mom a Mother's Day gift. If you're stopping by today, bring her something and sign my name on the card." 6 hour…
Read the post →The end of my print-on-demand career broke my heart. Now I think it was God clearing the path. For 14 years, I poured everything into building something that, in the end, wasn't mine to keep. The stress. The pain. The slow grind of fightin…
Read the post →My brother Nick Hamze just pulled off one of my favorite Tier4 moves yet. He emailed Kayou and asked if he could have the source art for the ER cards in their My Little Pony TCG. Not the characters — the locations. Sweet Apple Acres. The S…
Read the post →We have the BEST community in the world. Full stop. Here's what just happened. We've been hunting the Diamond ZR My Little Pony card for months. It's the chase card. The one that lets you enter a contest to have your own pony designed by A…
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