I will say right up front that this blog post is going to be all over the place. So, if you are in the market for a well-focused, pithy, punchy, and succinct read, well read no further! This aint your dad’s blog. Unless you happen to be one of my children, in which case it quite literally is. The one thing I’ll offer in terms of structure is that the first part of this post will be, generally speaking, “business updates”, and the second part will be “personal updates”. So, if you don’t care about TCG Machines, skip on ahead. And, if you don’t care about me, well, you should – I’m great!

Business Updates

Well, 2025. Here we are. Maybe the right place to start is to look back over the years we have been in business up until this point. Technically speaking, TCG Machines was incorporated in 2015, but it wasn’t until September 2016 that I took the leap into full-time machine development. That kicked-off my six years of unpaid labour – but I digress! I’ll summarize these years with the following selfie I took back in 2017:

In 2020, I launched a Beta Trial program featuring eight prototype PhyzBatch-9000s, delivered – often in the back seat of my 2007 Mazda 3 sedan – to a network of paying customers. Key word there is “paying”, as this ushered in the company’s first ever operating income. TCG Machines finished 2020 with a cool $4,000 in gross revenue. We did it, baby!

#PhyzBelt #BuckleUp #SeatBeltsSaveLives

The following year, in May 2021, TCG Machines commercially launched the PhyzBatch-9000, allowing customers to pre-order production units of the field-tested card sorters. 2021 was also the year that TCG Machines became a true “company”, as we brought on our first employee that January and ended the year with five full-time humans on staff. When we launched in May, we had a delivery estimate of September (depending on when you ordered, this equated to a wait time of between two and four months), which we believed was ample time to produce and ship the machines. Well, we were wrong, and spectacularly so!

Our first “problem” was the sheer volume of orders, which greatly exceeded our expectations. Secondly, there was that whole COVID-19 thing, which most of us have probably purged from our memories. Unbeknownst – what a word! – to us, we were about to embark upon a difficult and protracted battle through a global supply chain crisis resulting from that particularly pernicious pandemic. That was a stressful time. Every month, I was sending out “progress update” emails to our growing list of increasingly frustrated customers, in which I had to continuously explain why their machines’ delivery estimates were being extended – yet again! Despite this unpleasantness, there was also much excitement, as we had definitive proof that there was demand for our product! It was time for the business to move out of my basement and into a dedicated commercial space.

After some creative procurement efforts involving negotiations with black-market extortionists who had bought up the world’s supply of microchips, we finally managed to collect all the components required to build our trading card sorting machines. In the summer of 2022, we delivered our first production robots, with four units being shipped on June 22.

Those first four machines took a herculean effort on behalf of our small team and underscored the need to hire significantly more production staff if we were to stand a chance of getting ahead of our rather staggering backlog of orders. And staff-up we did! Over the course of July and August, we added eight more people to the team and expanded the amount of space we were leasing at the warehouse. Those were the days… Except not really, because a lot of that early production work was horrible! We had a heck of a time finding local metal fabricators and machine shops that could meet the high tolerances of our engineering drawings, so a huge portion of everyone’s time was spent sanding and filing tiny metal parts. Aluminum dust everywhere! We ended 2022 with a whopping 17 people on staff, albeit several of them were part-time.

2023 marked our company’s first full year in production and, with our much larger team, we were able to get our order backlog under control by year-end. The most patient (and least lucky) of our customers during those first couple years of production waited as long as 14 months from the day they ordered a PhyzBatch-9000 to the day they actually received it. Understandably, we lost a lot of customers because of this, but we also learned several valuable lessons. TCG Machines ended 2023 with 14 permanent, full-time employees on staff, and a lot more office and warehouse space.

And so, we sallied forth into 2024! This was a very big year for TCG Machines, and it’s where we really started to set the stage for some serious growth. Some notable highlights at the beginning of the year were our attendance at the 2024 GAMA Expo in March, followed by the CETAC-West Entrepreneur to CEO Workshop which Dan and I attended in April. The CETAC workshop was a seminal event for us, as we were exposed to dozens of real business luminaries who, very graciously, gave up their time to impart actionable wisdom on us nascent executives. Some of the key takeaways from that event were the immediate implementation of a weekly virtual “coffee roulette” (we randomly divide the whole company into pairs, and each pair takes 20 minutes to catch up and discuss non-work related topics) and the ritualization of a monthly in-person company fun/games/team-building day. I think our corporate culture has always been exceptional, but institutionalizing those two recurring events has helped to minimize the social barriers that inevitably erect themselves in any organization – plus it gives us all something to look forward to! If you run a company that includes remote team members, I cannot recommend these practices highly enough.

With our corporate culture in excellent shape, we were ready to face a big challenge: the complete overhaul of our pricing and business model! Up until September of 2024, we had only ever rented our machines under equipment operating lease agreements. While this served us well to start, we knew there were a good number of potential customers in the market that would only order a PhyzBatch if they could purchase and own it outright. This knowledge, coupled with a desire to mitigate our growing liability of security deposits, plus an expectation of slowing down orders as we were beginning to run out of stock, was the impetus for us to radically change our product offering. “How radically?” you ask. Well, we changed our rental price from $650 [USD] per month (on 12-month terms) to $1,350 [USD] per month (on three-month terms). “WHAT,” you righteously scream, foaming at the mouth and riding your electric bicycle without a helmet on, “Increasing your price by over 200% – you capitalist trolls, you corporate fiends!” Well, hold your horses! We also offered an outright purchase model of $29,500 [USD]. A blank stare from you, “… yeah, I’m not seeing the light here,” you say. OK, and we offered a rent-to-own option on flexible, multi-year terms, such that the monthly cost to acquire a machine could be as low as (or even lower than) the old rental model pricing. “Hmmm, I suppose that’s reasonable then,” you muse. Well, be more patient next time and let me finish saying all the things! Jeez. And wear a helmet, would you? You maniac.

So, we did all that, and then we held our breath to see what would happen, anticipating a precipitous drop-off in order volumes. And? Not so much. In fact, order volumes didn’t fluctuate at all, they just remained high and steady. Well, that was a rather flummoxing result. I mean, we didn’t complain, it was just surprising. We finished the year strong, with 15 people on the team. Oh, and Dan made us this kick-ass desk!

Now here we are, already several months into 2025, and things have really started to get wild. Following a bumper 2024, we find ourselves embroiled in an international trade war with Donald Trump announcing (on-again, off-again) tariffs on all foreign goods entering the United States. Oof. As a substantial portion of our customer base is in the US, you’d think that this – in combination with a potential global recession – would cool things down in terms of sales, right? Well, reality has been the opposite. Instead of sales tapering off, they have absolutely exploded this year, and our backlog of orders has grown commensurately. So, we’re staffing up again! Already we’ve hired on four new people in the past six weeks, and we’re actively recruiting for more.

“Well hold on a minute,” you may be saying, “How is this any different from when you staffed-up in 2022?” Fair point, dear reader; I will attempt to differentiate between the two scenarios. In 2022, we were fulfilling a backlog that had accumulated over 14 months in advance of our ability to produce and deliver machines. Fast forward to 2025, and we have ample capacity to produce and deliver machines to match the order volumes we have historically realized, but the order volumes we are seeing this year are far higher than our historical trends. Just look at this wall of shipping crates!

Are there machines in those boxes? Well, no, because we ship the boxes that have machines in them. But still, it’s a wonder to behold!

So, what changed? Why this sudden bonanza? I mean, there’s a million factors to consider in a global marketplace, but the two I would highlight are: (1) the quality of our product; and (2) achieving a critical mass of satisfied customers. In terms of the PhyzBatch-9000, we have been in a constant state of product improvement since the first prototype began active service back in 2018. That’s eight years of hard-won field experience which we have leveraged into product improvements, meaning our robots are pretty damn good at what they do (not to say that we’re done making improvements; we’re never done). To the second point, we now have hundreds of active machines that are helping people run profitable businesses, and those people speak to their friends and colleagues about their success. There is no better salesperson than a happy customer giving a direct referral from their lived experience. With the exception of our annual attendance at the GAMA Expo and the Calgary Expo, we have not spent a red cent on marketing or advertising since 2023. That is fairly incredible. And, in spite of this fact, we continue to double our business every year. Hot damn.

In 2025, our fleet of machines have sorted 20 million or more cards each month, every month. That’s 40 tons of cards processed each month, and 160 tons so far this year. Ludicrous. Clearly, people are using the robots for their intended purpose, and nothing could make me happier. However, we now have a new challenge, and one that is not engineering or product-based. The new challenge is how to scale from here while maintaining all of the positive factors which have made us successful. Given our current trajectory, it is not unreasonable to believe that we may end this year with as many as 30 people in our company. That’s a lot of people! Personally, I have no direct prior experience leading or growing a business, and, while Dan and I are both excellent engineers (apologies for the self promotion), this is very much new territory for us. Luckily, we have tapped into an incredible community of mentors which exists here in Alberta, and I want to give a very sincere shout out and thank you to the advisers and programs we are lucky to count on.

First and foremost, I need to acknowledge our Industrial Technology Adviser, Peter Basnak, as he has been a consistent pillar of support and wisdom since we first engaged with IRAP back in 2016. Likewise, our Technology Development Adviser, Stephan Zuberec with Alberta Innovates, has provided us with his expert guidance and brokered some critical connections for us as we have grown. The funding and programs we have accessed through those two organizations (IRAP and Alberta Innovates) have been essential to our success – they have my immeasurable gratitude.

Back at last year’s CETAC workshop, Dan and I were incredibly fortunate to cross paths with Kristy and Mike Dixon, who have generously acted as advisers to us since then. Currently, they are in Nepal at the beginning of a multi-month traverse over the Great Himilayan Trail, the world’s highest thru-hike! Mike and Kristy are amazing individuals, and I am really hoping that they do not die on their crazy (but also crazy-awesome) journey. Mike also introduced us to Brian McClure, Founder; President & CEO of Innovate Canmore. We are now very lucky to include Brian and his wealth of experience and wisdom among those who are advising our path forward. Funny how networks work like that.

Speaking of network connections, last autumn Stephan Z made us aware of a program called VMSA, the Venture Mentoring Service of Alberta which I promptly enrolled myself in. The program is simple in nature: there is a pool of mentors (composed of experienced business leaders) who volunteer their time to advise a pool of mentees (composed of less experienced entrepreneurs). Each mentee has a team of three mentors assigned to them, and the groups meet once every 4-6 weeks. I really don’t have the proper words to say how important VMSA has been for me, and I’m only three meetings in! Actually, I should be writing our next meeting agenda right now, but here I am, blogging away like an idiot. Anyway, I got saddled up with an absolute rockstar team comprised of Jill Viccars, Pierre Doyon, and Brad Zumwalt. These three people have been phenomenally instructive, and I very much look forward to each opportunity I get to speak with them.

I suppose all of this is to say that it takes a village to do something as complicated as bringing a complex product to market. It takes another village to skillfully navigate the growth of a company into a global market. We are most fortunate to have such prodigious villages here in Calgary and in Alberta, and I am extremely grateful to the people around us who have helped to make our success a reality.

Let’s see if I can dovetail this back into our business’s scale-up journey. Ah yes, in my most recent VMSA meeting, my mentors likened me to the proverbial dog chasing a car, who, having now caught the car, is wondering what the heck to do next. Well, instead of pausing awkwardly with a bewildered look on my face and then being struck by the next car coming along, I intend to be the dog that gets into the car, subdues the driver, and then starts racing down the road to find out exactly how far this metaphor can be extended! To that end, I was struggling this year regarding how to set and then communicate the intentions of our business to our team. Brad Z (mentioned above), gave me a wonderfully instructive set of guidelines which he used as central tenets for his own businesses. Five simple layers that form the core principles and guidance system for the whole company: (1) values; (2) purpose; (3) 12-month goals; (4) three-year mission; and (5) 10-year vision.

Well, we already had our company values ready to go from the 2024 CETAC workshop, which are: Transparency, Accountability, and Kaizen (from the Japanese which translates to “continuous improvement”). Blam! Layer one done. Next, Dan and I workshopped our company purpose, and landed on, “We build tools to help people run profitable trading card businesses.” I think that quite accurately reflects what we are trying to do. And now, much to everyone’s annoyance, I mercilessly harp on these core principles on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis. “But wait,” you say, “What of your 12-month goals, three-year mission, and 10-year vision?” Well, I’m not just going to tip my hand as to our entire business strategy. Nice try, though. And stop reading my blog posts, TCGplayer! Regardless, as we scale, so long as we have our values and purpose well articulated and understood by our team, our chances of continued success are very good indeed.

As a final point of interest on the business update front, we applied for patent protection of novel aspects of our card sorter waaaaaaay back in May 2020. As of last week, we received a Notice of Allowance from the US Patent Office that found all 38 claims of our mega-patent to be patentable. This is stupendous news. Yes, it took a very, very long time to get to this approval, but the fact that literally no objections were raised on such a large patent is rather spectacular. As an example of what I consider to be a more typical patent office interaction, last year the European Patent Office rejected all but two of our 38 claims on the grounds that they “only serve business purposes”. My patent lawyer had never seen a rejection raised on these grounds before. And really, it makes no sense. Patents exist to protect an inventor’s rights to exploit their inventions for a limited period of time, which almost by definition, would be for business purposes. Anyway, the EPO’s office action displayed a jaw-dropping lack of understanding as to the nature of our application, which just means we now have to contest their findings, and the lawyers and patent offices make a bunch of money as they happily (and expensively) quibble back-and-forth. Sigh. So, the USPO’s findings were actually a breath of fresh air. Patented status imminent – hooray!

Perhaps that wasn’t the final point, as I feel the need to acknowledge the hard work of the people that make up our team here at TCG Machines. It’s on their backs that our growth and success have been made possible. We have an incredible team of very talented, very good looking people, and I am humbled and grateful that I get to spend my working hours with such a wonderful group 😊

Personal Updates

Right, me. Who am I anyway, and what the heck am I doing with my life? Well, when I’m not doing my best to facilitate all of the above-mentioned business stuff, I’m generally at home with my wife and our two young kids (aged three and six). Children are rather all-consuming on the leisure time front, so there’s not a whole lot of extracurriculars on the go. That said, I did get together with my buddies last month to do a Magic draft of the intentionally ridiculous Unfinitiy set, which was a lot of fun (we did the same thing for our company games day the following week). And this month I made it out to the most recent rum-rena / drink-and-draft event with my other group of Magic-playing friends for the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm. So, I guess I’m averaging about once a month in terms of playing cards. Not great, but not terrible. Oooh, and my Magic Arena buddies outfitted me with a jersey, so I am now officially part of the crew, and a bonified nerd (as if I wasn’t already).

Ah yes, and marathon training. That is still very much a thing that I am doing. Considering my time commitments, I’d say it’s going pretty well! In order to find the time to run, I often have to get up very early, but it can be nice running in the early hours with no one else around. On one of my ~5:00 AM runs by the Glenmore Reservoir, near where I live, I got hooted at! I looked all around and then saw the silhouette of an owl in the top of a tree I was running by. A few minutes later, a big coyote ran across the path in front of me. Those kind of happenings are quite enjoyable. I am also grateful that we (generally speaking) do not have any large predatory animals within city limits :p I’ll be running in the Calgary Half Marathon on May 25th, so that’ll be the first real test of how my training is going. Often coupled with my running, I am also still learning German, with hopes that I’ll be able to converse relatively fluently by October.

To end off, I want to acknowledge the life and memory of Rod Nagy, a close family friend who passed away this last December. Rod was a character, and I greatly appreciated his personality and the stories from his days of military service in the Canadian Air Force. Most of all, I appreciated how much he loved our kids and was such a wonderful grandfather figure to them. Rod was one of TCG Machines’ earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, and he invested $10,000 of his own money into the company at a point in time when that represented a huge sum – his contribution and confidence in me helped to get things off the ground. Rod was also one of my few die-hard blog readers, so it seems appropriate to honour him here. The audience for this post is now much diminished. Thank you for all you did for me and my family; we miss you terribly.