My friend Jarrod Greer describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur,” and I have to admit that the title fits. Jarrod will trade on almost anything, and he regularly travels both locally and states away looking for people selling collections or even unique individual items that he can either resell or simply because it strikes his fancy. While we were recording the podcast, I was sitting directly across from one of his more recent acquisitions, a stuffed badger (Whom he promptly named Leonard) he had brought back from his latest buying trip. “I told them I hoped we could make some deals,” Jarrod laughed. “But regardless, that was going home with me.”

Jarrod’s journey started a long time ago, he says, when his parents would drive him to reptile shows so he could buy assorted reptiles and then sell them to buy more. “I never met a hobby that I didn’t try to turn into a business,” he said. “I always thought that if I could make money off what I enjoyed, then it would subsidize doing more of it. If someone would introduce me to remote control car racing today, I’d have a remote-control car business within six months,” he laughed. And given his track record, I’m sure it would be profitable.

Speaking of that track record, Jarrod and his wife Jaime own the popular Inner Geek stores in Ashland, Kentucky, and Huntington, West Virginia. They also own a sports card store called Pack Busters located not a block from the Inner Geek in Huntington. The Ashland store focuses on comics, and the Huntington store has a heavy focus on books, but both are available at both locations. And they both carry the collectibles that were part of Jarrod’s childhood - and everyone else’s because he likes anything cool and collectible.

“With comic books especially, having the stores has allowed me to see massive amounts of cool comic books I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to own in my life if I wasn’t in the business,” he said. But surprisingly, although he is passionate about collecting, he is less passionate about keeping those collectibles. “I don’t have to keep it,” he said with the thrill of the hunt creeping into his voice. “I just want to find it. With comic books specifically, I want to find this amazing issue of Spiderman that is really hard to come by; but once I have it in my hand, I have climbed that mountain. I’ve made that conquest, so now I can sell it and go on with my life.”

“It’s the challenge of finding cool stuff; that’s the comic book store for me.” And the thrill he gets is fueled by stocking the shelves of those stores. “I love crawling through people’s attics with a flashlight, and as you pan the light across the room, you catch on some boxes and go, “Oh my God, that’s the thing I’ve been looking for six years.” It’s a treasure hunt,” he said. “But once I have it in the van on the way home, it’s different. I guess I’m not a hoarder,” he laughed. “I just really like finding things.”

The roots of Jarrod Greer’s insanely popular comic and toy conventions in Lexington and Huntington can be traced back to his interest in reptiles – and not simply the fact that he once traded some snakes for a comic collection. “We were promoting reptile conventions across the state,” he said. “We wanted to do one in Lexington, and I reached out to the Lexington Convention Center. But for various reasons, they really didn’t want me to do a reptile show in the building at that time. And I told them that we should get to know each other and asked what kind of shows we could do there.”

The response he got was a question about what sort of things he was interested in. Greer said he replied that he liked comics and toys, and that was the beginning. “They said they didn’t have a comic con there, so we started one in Lexington just so we could get our foot in the door to do a reptile show. In the vein of you never ‘know what the future holds for you,’ six years later, I was out of the reptile business and was a full-time comic conven...