Welcome to the Manaverse Podcast
The Manaverse Podcast is where we explore what it takes to build a successful friendly local game store! Since 2015, I’ve been interviewing a wide variety of game store owners and industry professionals doing some really interesting things in the world of trading cards, minis, games, and more.
If you want to learn how some of the best game retailers in North America have built their businesses and local communities up from the ground floor, you’ve come to the right place!

MVP115: Running a Hands Off Game Store with Jason Garvin from Total Escape Games
Today we're talking with Jason Garvin. Jason is the manager of Total Escape Games, a premium retailer of tabletop games, carrying a vast array of role-playing games, card games, miniatures games, board games, and more in Broomfield Colorado. Jason is going to give us...

MVP114: Is the FLGS Business Model Dead?
Hey, welcome back to the Manaverse Podcast! I'm your host Tom Traplin and this is the podcast where we explore what it takes to build a successful friendly local game store. Before we jump into things, Q4 is coming and I'm looking for more game store owners to feature...

MVP113: The Secrets of Unplugged Gaming’s $14K Grand Opening Day
Jake Tanner is the owner Unplugged Gaming in Manlius New York. Jake came into the tabletop gaming business from a different angle than most of the game store owners that have been featured on the podcast. Before launching Unplugged Gaming, Jake, along with his...

MVP112: How to Generate Free Traffic From Google That Turns Into Customers and Sales For Your Game Store
For most game store owners, SEO is techno jargon. Something that only the biggest ecommerce businesses need to think about. I've also heard variations of the sentiment that it’s impossible to compete with the big players like BGG and Amazon in the search engines....

MVP111: BGE Tabletop and Dustin Staats on Launching a Game Store in 2022
The Future of BGE Tabletop Dustin is the owner and founder of Board Gaming with Education and BGE Tabletop. He has experience teaching English as a second language to a variety of age levels – from kindergarten to university. He also works in the field of education in...

MVP110: The Three Biggest Lessons of 2021 and a Look at 2022
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a great time celebrating the arrival of 2022. One of the things I like to do at the beginning of the year is to look back a bit and see what happened over the past 12 months and establish a bit of a theme for the coming year. So...

MVP109: The Most Important Pieces of Content Every Game Store Website Should Have
This is the second podcast in a series that I'm calling Launch Lessons, where I'll be breaking down the Six Pillars of Digital Marketing and show you just how powerful and important they are to your business's growth. If you haven't listened to the last episode on how...

MVP108: How Much Is Your Email List Worth?
In the spirit of giving value up front, this is the first podcast in a series that I'm calling Launch Lessons, where I'll be breaking down the Six Pillars of Digital Marketing and show you just how powerful and important they are to your business's growth. First up,...

MVP107: The Most Successful Game Stores Have Mastered Digital Marketing, Here’s How Your Store Can Do The Same
If you're a game store owner, you're ridiculously busy most of the time. You've got inventory to manage, events to organize, people to hire, and a million products to stay on top of. It's a lot to handle... and marketing your game store often becomes an afterthought....

MVP106: RPG Travel – How to Create The Ultimate Gaming Adventure
Today we are talking with Alex Thor and Jonathan Adams. Alex is the Director of Operations at RPG Travel and Jonathan is their resident gaming master. Both of these fine gentlemen were featured at the recent 2021 LGS Success Summit and today we are going to explore...