0:00

launched this thing saying, all right, let's

0:02

aim for $10 ,000. We

0:04

hit our $10 ,000 goal in

0:06

seven minutes. And in the first

0:08

48 hours, we had $2 million. After

0:11

that is when the story

0:13

gets really interesting. Okay,

0:24

well, good. Sam, do you want me to kick it off? Yeah,

0:26

well, yeah, I do. First of all, Sean, how

0:29

did you guys even come in the same world? Craig.

0:31

So we invited Craig to

0:33

the event because Craig's one of my favorite people.

0:35

Even though he doesn't play basketball, we were like, Craig, you

0:37

got to be there. You're the exemption. You're

0:39

not the basketball guy, but we just want

0:41

you there for sure. And we told

0:44

him what it was. He got excited and he

0:46

goes, I have somebody who I think should come.

0:48

And we were like, OK, great. Who's the plus

0:50

one? And he was, I guess, how long have

0:52

you guys been friends? It's got to

0:54

be a decade now. It's so funny

0:56

because he called me up and he's

0:58

like, okay, I have the weirdest invitation

1:00

ever. It's a basketball event, but I'm

1:02

not going to be playing basketball. And

1:04

I was like, okay, that's as weird

1:06

as it gets. And then we started

1:08

talking and I'm so glad I went.

1:10

It was amazing. Yeah. That's actually

1:13

a big leap of faith for you because, you

1:15

know, we know Craig. So obviously, you know, there's

1:17

a personal connection there. What did he say that

1:19

made you get off the couch for that? I

1:21

mean, he didn't, he honestly didn't give me many

1:23

details, but, um, In

1:25

general, Craig is one of those people on this

1:27

list I have where if he says to try

1:29

something, I just try it and don't ask questions.

1:31

There's only like four people on that list, but

1:33

he's on there. So I'm so glad I did

1:35

it. Exactly. And ever

1:37

since we met you at that event, I was like,

1:39

okay, we have to have you on because you blew

1:41

us away. Just to give people

1:43

context. All right. So there's a room full

1:46

of people. Imagine 25, we tried to invite

1:48

the 25 most interesting, ambitious people that we

1:50

could find who also loved to play basketball

1:52

in this case. And the

1:54

room is like, I mean, it's basically like 30

1:57

% billionaire. And so there's a lot

1:59

of successful people in that room. And I would

2:01

say you blew us away the most. You gave this talk

2:03

that really kind of inspired us. And I would say you

2:05

blew us away for three reasons. Number one, your

2:08

business is like a giant dragon, but it

2:10

looks like a playful cute dragon. And

2:12

so, you know, people don't look at it

2:14

and think, wow, this is a juggernaut.

2:16

You have a board games

2:18

company. If anybody's ever seen the

2:20

games like Exploding Kittens, that's

2:22

your game. And not only is that your

2:24

game, you were telling us, we were like,

2:26

so like of the top games, like, you

2:28

know, is yours number one? And I don't

2:30

know if I want to paraphrase you exactly,

2:33

but you go, we have

2:35

number one, two, four and five of

2:37

the top five sold games in the

2:39

world. And I just thought that was

2:41

incredible. So you have this huge business,

2:43

but you have this artist spirit where

2:45

you're the nicest guy and you're creatively

2:47

driven. It didn't seem like you got

2:50

into this for the money. You

2:52

got into this to have fun and you gave

2:54

this talk at night, this little presentation, a little

2:56

10 minute presentation that blew us all away. So

2:58

that's why I wanted you to be here. You

3:00

can respond to that and then Sam, I want

3:02

to hear your impressions too before we jump in. Well,

3:06

first of all, even before, like I

3:08

would just love to say that is so

3:10

flattering. Like I showed up to that event. like

3:13

about as fish out of water as

3:15

it gets. And imposter syndrome, like, you

3:17

know, dripping out my ears. It was

3:19

just, this room is

3:21

filled with incredible people.

3:24

And Sean, I think it was

3:26

you. I think the very first

3:29

few minutes, I remember,

3:32

I asked you, like,

3:35

why are we here? Like, what is this

3:37

thing? And you had the best answer

3:39

ever. You said, Everyone in

3:41

this room is smarter than I am. I'm

3:43

going to spend the next three days learning

3:45

as much as I can. I hope you're

3:48

here for the same reasons. And I was

3:50

just like, holy crap, I have found my

3:52

tribe. Here's where I want to be. This

3:54

is so great. There was one moment when

3:56

I was with you in the sauna and

3:58

you asked me and maybe Austin Reed for

4:00

someone like that. You're like,

4:02

can I get your guys's opinion on something?

4:05

And you like express like, you know,

4:07

opinions on an investor conversation, something you're like,

4:09

can you just give me your take on

4:11

this? And we give you our opinions. And

4:13

you asked the question in a way where

4:15

I thought I was helping you. And then

4:17

I was like, how big is your business?

4:19

And then you said the numbers and my

4:21

reply was, why are

4:23

you asking me this question? Like you

4:25

are, you, it's so funny. You win the

4:27

award for most humble person because you're

4:29

acting like you are in this room of

4:31

big shots when like, Of all the

4:34

people there, you were the big shot. Are

4:36

you able to give any numbers, whatever

4:38

you're comfortable with, to give the audience a

4:40

sense of how big exploding kittens is?

4:42

Like if it's valuation, game sold, revenue, anything

4:44

you want. I have to

4:46

be a little careful because we have investors

4:48

who like to keep it under wraps. But

4:50

I'll tell you this. We sell,

4:53

we did this math.

4:55

This was so ridiculous. We

4:57

sell a game every

4:59

6 .4 seconds around the clock. Our

5:03

first, like we started our company

5:05

on Kickstarter. In 30 days,

5:07

we were trying to raise

5:10

$10 ,000, we raised almost

5:12

$9 million instead. Our first

5:14

print run was 700 ,000 units. And

5:16

that was mind blowing. Like

5:18

how the hell do you print

5:20

700 ,000 games? And for scale,

5:22

I'll tell you that is today, like

5:25

so such a tiny, print order for us.

5:28

Like I wouldn't even consider printing that

5:30

many because they'd sell out so fast it

5:32

wouldn't even be worth our while. One

5:34

of the coolest things was when you took

5:36

us, we went to Target and Walmart and

5:38

we were walking around the store and you

5:40

took us to the game's aisle of a

5:43

Target and you were just kind of breaking

5:45

it down. Like this shelf, a

5:47

shelf that I've walked by hundreds of times, don't

5:49

really pay much. You know, I don't even think

5:51

about it. I just either buy something or I

5:53

don't. I don't think about the business of the

5:55

shelf. And you talked about this sort of

5:57

like you know, this sort

5:59

of six foot space. And

6:02

it was like, this shelf is like, I

6:05

mean, I won't use your numbers, but I'll just give

6:07

a generic idea of like, this shelf

6:09

is like hundreds of millions of dollars. And every

6:11

inch of this shelf for target, the way

6:13

they think is like sales per square inch or

6:15

something like that. And you were describing how

6:17

that works. And then you were like, yeah,

6:20

you know, I'm trying to figure out our Walmart sales.

6:22

So I'm going to go work as a Walmart associate

6:24

for the next few weeks, just to get kind of

6:26

an underground look. And not like a

6:28

marketing stunt, you were like, no, I genuinely want

6:30

to know. And you said you were going

6:32

to do that right after our event. Did you

6:34

end up doing it? Yeah. And they postponed

6:36

it. This honestly, this tariff thing right now has

6:38

turned everything into quite turmoil, but it looks

6:40

like it's going to now be

6:42

scheduled for September. So I'll be going

6:45

to Arkansas to work at Walmart

6:47

for a bit. But the whole

6:49

reason, you're right, it's not a stunt. Like my

6:51

goal isn't like, hey, I want to tell

6:53

the world about this and get publicity. in

6:57

order to sell products at any retail location you

6:59

have to understand the customer and you have to

7:01

understand when they're walking into a space what are

7:03

they looking for and what turns them off and

7:05

what turns them on and if they pick up

7:07

a game and then put it back why did

7:09

they put it back and it's not so much

7:11

of it is contextual it's not necessarily the game

7:14

right it's not necessarily I looked at this game

7:16

and it wasn't for me it's I looked at

7:18

this game and then something else caught my eye

7:20

so I put this down and I picked it

7:22

up and and those are the stories I need

7:24

to hear in order to be as successful as

7:26

possible. And I just figured finally like the only way

7:28

I'm going to get this is by living there

7:30

and spending as long as it takes to talk to

7:32

people and figure out like why'd you put that

7:34

game down? Why'd you pick that one up? Why'd you

7:36

walk in here to begin with? And

7:38

yeah, I just think I have so much to

7:40

learn. I'm really excited to do it. How big is

7:43

the company in terms of employees and how old

7:45

is it? Company is we just

7:47

had our 10 -year anniversary.

7:49

So we just turned 10

7:51

we got about a hundred

7:53

employees a little less and

7:55

Yeah, we're based out of

7:58

Los Angeles although we've got

8:00

offices in Canada and in Europe and

8:02

kind of all over the place everywhere

8:04

We have a distribution center. We also

8:06

have an office. So give

8:08

us the origin story. So how do

8:10

you? How did you do this? Why

8:12

did you decide to create a board

8:14

game? And then how did you do

8:16

this Kickstarter that blew everybody's socks off?

8:18

You set out to raise 10K instead

8:20

you raised 9 million or something like

8:22

that. And then now it's this company

8:25

that's making, I

8:27

don't know exactly how much you're making, but you don't

8:29

have to confirm or deny. But I'll just put

8:31

it out there. I think you've built a billion dollar

8:33

games company and in a space that I think

8:35

most people, the cool part is most people

8:37

think you either are gonna choose something for the

8:39

money, I got to go do the

8:41

sweaty B2B, you know, business,

8:43

HR tech, whatever. Or I'm

8:45

going to have fun. I'm going to build something

8:47

cool that's fun, that won't give people delight and

8:50

joy. And you got both. You did

8:52

both. You did the fun thing and you ended up

8:54

with the money prize too. That's why I love

8:56

about your story. And so how the heck did this

8:58

happen? Can you just tell us the kind of

9:00

origins? Sure. Yeah. It's a bizarre story. I

9:03

used to work, I've been designing

9:05

games my whole life, but the most

9:07

notable place I worked was at

9:10

the Xbox. I was the chief design

9:12

officer there, building games for the

9:14

Xbox forever. And

9:16

I remember one day, so

9:18

one day my brother, he's got

9:20

two kids and I love them.

9:23

My niece and nephew, they're the

9:25

best and Zeke and Kiki. And

9:27

I walked over to their house.

9:29

I was so excited to see

9:31

them and they were

9:33

playing Xbox when I walked in. And

9:35

I was like, hey, how's everybody doing? And

9:37

they didn't even look up, didn't

9:39

even acknowledge my existence. And to add

9:42

insult to injury, they were playing a game

9:44

that I designed. And I was

9:46

like, oh, I've broken

9:48

something so fundamental here. This

9:50

just feels wrong. And

9:53

within two weeks, I

9:55

resigned from Xbox and

9:57

thought, whatever

9:59

I do it has to

10:01

capture what I remember in my

10:03

childhood, right? Like when I think about playing

10:06

games, you know, other than the NES,

10:08

there really weren't any consoles at all. So

10:10

we were playing around a table and

10:12

we were cheating and kicking each other under

10:14

the table and throwing food and making

10:16

all those like alliances and betraying each other

10:18

and all this fun stuff. I don't

10:20

even remember what the games were. I remember

10:22

the relationships. And it's because

10:24

we looked each other in the

10:27

eye and we could lie right

10:29

to each other's faces or secretly

10:31

conspire to make my younger brother

10:33

lose. That was a favorite activity.

10:35

But I remember all these really

10:37

fun things that were, I think,

10:39

very formative for me. And so

10:41

when I resigned, I thought, I want to return

10:43

to that. And certainly the first

10:45

step is really simple. I'm just going to design

10:47

this very simple card game And

10:49

see, Kickstarter exists. I'll put this

10:51

thing up on Kickstarter. I'll try to

10:53

raise just a little tiny bit

10:56

of money. What's a little bit? Like

10:58

$10 ,000 you thought? $10 ,000. And

11:00

$10 ,000 wasn't an arbitrary number. I

11:02

called up a printer and I said,

11:04

look. I want to do this

11:06

thing. What's the minimum print run? And he said,

11:08

you got to print out, you know, I

11:10

think it was like 400 units. And I was

11:12

like, OK, well, how much does that cost?

11:14

And it came out to just about $10 ,000.

11:16

And I was like, cool, there we go. And

11:18

this was really all because of you felt

11:20

some type of guilt about your family being using

11:23

screens. Yeah, I felt like I was on

11:25

the wrong path. I felt like I was part of the

11:27

problem instead of part of the solution. Was that

11:29

a big thing? Like, were you getting wealthy from

11:31

that? I mean, the chief design officer sounds like

11:33

you're you're a big deal. If

11:35

you had asked me then, the answer would have

11:37

been yes. Now my scale is a

11:39

little bit different. And so when you

11:41

do this, you've never made a card

11:43

game before, right? There's not something you grew

11:45

up doing. You're a beginner at this

11:47

stage. Totally. Literally my first try. But the

11:49

stakes are so low, right? Like if

11:52

I'm just going to be making a few

11:54

hundred units, even if the thing is

11:56

totally broken, that's okay. People, you know,

11:58

they're going to pay 20 bucks for this thing. They

12:00

know this is my first time ever

12:02

trying this. Like this will be

12:04

easy. Right. And I showed the game

12:06

to a bunch of friends. And

12:08

one of those friends was Matthew Itman,

12:10

and he is the creator of

12:12

the oatmeal, the online comic. It's

12:15

like the funniest guy I know, and

12:17

he's like, he's the audience whisperer. Like

12:19

he knows how to command a crowd,

12:21

and he knows how to get their

12:23

attention, and he knows how to keep

12:25

them engaged, and just this incredible, brilliant

12:27

mind. And I showed him this game,

12:29

and he said, what's it called? And I

12:31

said, it's called Bomb Squad, because We

12:34

got a deck of cards, and there's a few bombs in

12:36

the deck, and those are the bad ones. We try to avoid

12:38

the bombs, and all you're trying to do is get through

12:40

the deck and not draw a bomb. And he

12:42

said a few things. He said, one, this

12:45

is the best game I've ever played. I would really,

12:47

really like to work on this with you. Will you

12:49

please let me work on this with you? And I

12:51

was like, yes, like hell yes.

12:53

If the oatmeal ever asks you

12:55

if you can work on a game

12:58

with you, your answer is yes.

13:00

Like, holy crap, what an opportunity. And

13:02

he said, cool. The second thing

13:04

is, We can't call it bomb squad

13:06

because it's too obvious. Like bombs are bad.

13:08

Of course, you're scared of the bomb. There's bombs

13:10

in the deck. You're scared of the bombs. It's

13:12

called bomb squad. Who cares? You're going to forget

13:14

that in five seconds. What if instead the thing that

13:16

you were most scared of were cute,

13:18

adorable, fuzzy little kittens and we'll call the

13:21

game exploding kittens instead? And

13:23

that's really the origin story. Like that

13:25

one simple conversation happened to meet

13:27

the right person at the right time

13:30

and we decided to collaborate on

13:32

this thing. And then we had

13:34

the discussion with the distributor. And he's like,

13:36

Matt said, we're going to do more than 400

13:38

units. And I was like, I don't know.

13:40

I don't know. This is totally risky. Neither of

13:42

us ever made a game before. And

13:44

so a friend of mine, a guy

13:46

named Dan Shapiro, he runs Glowforge. He gave

13:48

me this incredible advice. When

13:51

I was talking to him about what number

13:53

to set our Kickstarter campaign, he

13:55

said, look, when this campaign runs, you

13:57

have no control. Like there's going

13:59

to be store, hopefully stories written about

14:01

your campaign, but you don't control

14:03

any of them. They get to set

14:05

the narrative and you just sort

14:07

of hold on. But what you can

14:09

control are the stories that are

14:11

like tried to raise X instead raised

14:13

Y, hit their goal in X

14:15

minutes, right? All of these statistics data

14:17

driven stories, you control those by

14:20

setting that one number that you have

14:22

control over, setting that at the

14:24

appropriate place. And he was totally right.

14:26

And so we set it at 10 ,000

14:28

knowing this is probably a little low, but

14:30

it is the truthful minimum that we

14:32

need for our order minimum. And now we

14:34

can control those stories. Were any of

14:36

you guys like famous back then? I know

14:38

what the oatmeal is, but is that

14:40

like big enough where you're like, where

14:43

he's like, dude, I'll blow this up. Just

14:45

like, tell me when. It turns out the

14:47

answer is yes, but none of us really

14:49

knew it at the time. So like we

14:51

launched this thing saying, all right, let's

14:54

aim for $10 ,000. Because

14:56

of Matt, Matt made a single post

14:58

saying, hey oatmeal fans, for the first time ever, I

15:00

made a game, I'm really proud of it, I hope you

15:02

like it, here it is. And

15:04

we hit our $10 ,000 goal

15:06

in seven minutes. And

15:09

it's because of Matt, 100 % of

15:11

Matt, he made one post, hit

15:13

$10 ,000, and then within the first

15:15

12 hours, maybe it was closer to

15:17

24, it was 10 years ago,

15:19

we raised a million dollars. 100

15:22

% because of Matt. And in

15:24

the first 48 hours, we had $2 million,

15:26

100 % because of Matt. After

15:29

that is when the story gets

15:31

really interesting, because 48 hours in, all

15:34

the oatmeal fans that are gonna back this

15:36

thing have backed it, right? They've seen

15:38

this post, they know they're interested in this

15:40

thing, or they decide they're not interested

15:42

in this thing, and they've either purchased it

15:44

or not, and that's it. The

15:46

sales price on that is $2 million. Amazing.

15:51

We are off to the races. We can do

15:53

anything now. We've raised $2 million. And

15:55

Matt and I sat down and we're like,

15:57

okay, we now have a choice either. We

16:00

can say we have raised $2 million. That

16:02

is one of the most successful Kickstarter

16:04

campaigns in history in the games category.

16:07

And we can just kind of ride

16:09

this thing out knowing that we're not going

16:11

to raise much more than that. Maybe

16:14

we'll get to 2 .5 and we'll declare

16:16

that a huge victory or we can bet

16:18

it all. Like, what if we just

16:20

went absolutely crazy and deployed every marketing strategy

16:22

either of us have ever heard of? And

16:25

we shook hands and said, let's

16:27

do it. Like, let's try as big

16:29

and as bold as this thing

16:31

can possibly be. And on

16:33

Kickstarter, they've got these things called stretch

16:35

goals, right? We've made our game, but...

16:39

if we get, I don't know, we've

16:41

raised $10 ,000. If instead we raise $20

16:43

,000, everybody gets a free carrying case.

16:45

$50 ,000, we're gonna add 10 more cards

16:47

into the game. Stretch goals,

16:49

right? They're trying to motivate people to

16:51

back the project. I

16:54

sat down and I thought, this whole

16:56

thing is crowdfunding. And

16:59

all of those stretch goals, every

17:01

strategy I've read, every YouTube video I've

17:03

watched, everything is based on funding.

17:05

Like they ignore the crowd part and

17:07

they're just... leisure focus on funding, funding,

17:09

funding, funding. And I was like, I

17:11

think that's backwards. I think instead

17:13

we're going ignore the funding because we've already

17:16

got two million bucks. And let's just focus on

17:18

the crowd part. And

17:20

instead of doing traditional stretch goals, all of

17:22

our stretch goals were based on the crowd.

17:24

So we're like, look, we don't care about

17:26

money anymore. Don't give us any more money.

17:28

We don't want any more money. Nothing we

17:30

talk about from now on is going to

17:32

be about money because the funding doesn't matter.

17:34

Let's have a party and everyone is invited. So

17:37

we're like, look, we're going to do those same

17:39

things. We're also going to give you a carrying

17:41

case and 10 extra cards and all that fun

17:43

stuff. But it's not based on how much money

17:45

you give us. It's based on how much fun

17:47

you have. So show us a picture of 10

17:49

Batman's in a hot tub. Whatever

17:52

the hell that means show us a

17:54

picture of that or show us a picture

17:56

of a hundred people dressed up as

17:58

cats or show us the Craziest and most

18:00

interesting things you can come up with and every

18:02

time you do that We're gonna make the

18:04

game better and you're not gonna pay us more

18:07

We're just gonna make the game better because

18:09

this is fun and we've already raised enough money

18:11

Let's have a party and we did that

18:13

for the next 28 days and we watched our

18:15

numbers Just skyrocket I'm

18:17

gonna focus on the crowd part here right like

18:19

we had I don't know. Let's say we

18:21

had a thousand backers at that point. By

18:24

the end of this thing, we

18:27

had 219 ,000 backers for this campaign.

18:29

That is so far in first

18:31

place of any Kickstarter campaign in

18:33

history to date. It's been 10

18:35

years and no one's even come

18:37

close to that record. And it's

18:39

because we said the funding is completely

18:41

irrelevant. All that matters is the crowd. The

18:43

funding was a really nice side effect though. But

18:45

it was eight. in half million dollars that

18:47

you got, right? Well, yeah, there was that too.

18:50

So, wait, give us an example. So, you

18:52

said 10 Batman and about, what were the other

18:54

things that you did to get the crowd

18:56

to do so? Yeah, we said, so one of

18:58

the characters in our game is called Taco

19:00

Cat, which is my favorite character, right? Taco Cat

19:02

is a palindrome, spell Taco Cat backwards, and

19:04

you've still got Taco Cat. So, we had this

19:06

adorable character and we said, look, we don't

19:08

actually know what Taco Cat is, but show us

19:10

25 pictures of real Taco Cats, and we'll

19:12

make the game better. What do you say

19:14

show us? Do you mean like post in

19:16

the comments section? Post, yeah. So was basically

19:18

just like an online message board that you

19:20

were using. And whatever social media platform you

19:22

wanted, we just said, you know, tag us

19:24

on it, and that's all we care about.

19:27

And so that was the virality. They were

19:29

posting an image that didn't make any sense

19:31

in the feed and they tag you guys.

19:33

That got people curious to go check you

19:35

out. What the hell is it? Why have

19:37

you stuffed your cat into a burrito? What

19:39

is happening here? And on and on those pictures

19:41

went. One, we had this veterinarian who

19:43

worked in an animal shelter and she showed

19:45

us, all she did was she had

19:47

a picture of her holding this adorable cat

19:49

and a piece of paper. And the

19:51

piece of paper showed that she had legally

19:53

changed the cat's name to Taco Cat,

19:56

for real. And we're like, all right, that's

19:58

about as real a Taco Cat as it

20:00

gets. So we gave credit for that one

20:02

as well. And it just, it went on

20:04

and on and on like that for 30

20:06

days. Every time we thought, here's a challenge

20:08

way too hard, they absolutely smashed them. And

20:10

then we would just, our challenge was every

20:12

day, how do we come up with five

20:14

new challenges that's going to keep everyone entertained?

20:19

New York City founders, if you've listened to

20:21

my first million before, you know, I've got

20:23

this company called Hampton and Hampton is a community

20:25

for founders and CEOs. A lot of the

20:27

stories and ideas that I get for this podcast,

20:29

I actually got it from people who I

20:31

met in Hampton. We have this big community of

20:33

a thousand plus people and it's amazing. But

20:35

the main part is this eight person core group

20:37

that becomes your board of advisors for your

20:39

life and for your business and it's life changing.

20:42

Now. to the folks in New

20:44

York City. I'm building a in real

20:46

life core group in New York City. And

20:48

so if you meet one of the

20:50

following criteria, your business either does three million

20:52

in revenue or you've raised three million

20:54

in funding or you've started and sold the

20:56

company for at least $10 million, then

20:58

you are eligible to apply. So go to

21:00

joinhampton.com and apply. I'm going to be

21:02

reviewing all of the applications myself. So put

21:04

that you heard about this on MFM.

21:06

So I know to give you a little

21:08

extra love. Now back to the show. You

21:13

have these little one -liners that are like,

21:15

what if instead of the funding, we focused

21:17

on the crowd? It's like this like

21:19

simple idea that then you, and then you

21:21

run with them. So it's like that.

21:23

If I was going to describe you, I'd

21:25

say he takes silly ideas very seriously. Take

21:28

a simple idea and take it seriously. I

21:30

think yours is take a silly idea and

21:32

take it seriously. You do that with your

21:34

games, you do that with your marketing campaigns,

21:36

and you did this when we were at

21:38

the event. We do this

21:40

thing where we put everybody on the hot seat

21:42

and let's say somebody's like a real estate

21:45

mogul We'll just instead of saying

21:47

hey tell us about your business. We'll

21:49

just say All right, so how do

21:51

you make a billion dollars in real estate? Well,

21:53

what's the secret and like in your case like

21:55

what's the secret? How do you make? hit game

21:57

after hit game after hit game. In a hits

21:59

business, that normally sounds like something that's just a game

22:01

of chance, but you're doing it again and again and

22:03

again. You must know something and you said a great

22:05

line. Can you describe your philosophy around

22:08

games? Because you said it in one liner

22:10

that just stuck with me. Yeah. Oh,

22:12

I love that you focused on this

22:14

one. So the line is, games should

22:16

not be entertaining. Games should make the

22:18

people you're playing with entertaining. And

22:20

that simple line, which is

22:22

a very silly line, like, I remember the

22:24

first time we pitched it to our

22:26

investors, we're like, we're not going to make

22:29

entertaining games. And they're like, never say

22:31

that again. Like never put that in any

22:33

piece of writing ever. And instead we

22:35

put it as the first, as the first

22:37

line on our webpage, because games should

22:39

not be entertaining. If you're making an entertaining

22:41

game, you're trying way too hard. And

22:43

it's you versus the audience, which means when

22:45

you're done entertaining them, they're going to

22:47

go away and never come back. If instead

22:49

your goal is I'm just making a

22:51

tool set. My tool set is

22:53

going to make the people that

22:55

you are playing with the entertainment

22:57

Suddenly you've got an engine suddenly every time

22:59

they play it's different suddenly they constantly want

23:01

to come back They want to play it

23:03

over and over again. They want to take

23:05

it to new friends house You make a

23:08

piece of cardboard right a deck of cards

23:10

You've turned that into a viral engine and

23:12

that's the secret to success in the board

23:14

game industry But that's sort of is like

23:16

going to the Met and seeing a Picasso

23:18

and being like Dude, it's just

23:20

like scribbly lines. Like this is unimpressive. You

23:23

dismissing it as just

23:25

a... It doesn't explain

23:27

why your company is potentially worth billions of

23:29

dollars and makes potentially hundreds of millions

23:31

of dollars a year in revenue. What

23:34

is actually happening? Because we've

23:36

had all these rich

23:38

and successful billionaires on the pod and

23:40

I'll meet them and I'm like,

23:42

oh, you're really nice. And then I

23:44

start thinking like, well, no, this

23:46

guy's a shark. Like you must be

23:48

a shark to be this successful.

23:51

So like... else are you not telling

23:53

us that has allowed this company

23:55

to become a potentially, allegedly, multi -billion

23:57

dollar company? Yeah. Well, one is

23:59

you have to do it consistently, which is

24:01

hard, right? But how do you tell

24:03

if your game is a toolset to

24:05

make people entertaining? And unless

24:07

you have the litmus test, right?

24:09

Unless you can quantify the data

24:11

that you're putting in those boxes, Like,

24:14

then it's just a theory.

24:16

And I remember we started

24:19

taking submissions from external inventors,

24:21

and I just eventually started

24:23

rubber stamping them with, here's

24:25

why we're rejecting you, because

24:27

you're trying too hard to be entertaining.

24:29

And it was incredible, like hundreds

24:31

of these submissions, and every game designer

24:33

was making the same mistake where they're

24:36

like, I am building an entertaining thing,

24:38

and I kept having to remind them

24:40

we're not buying entertaining things. And

24:42

eventually we found like one or two inventors

24:44

we could work with. And then I

24:46

had to design all the others, which is totally cool

24:48

because I know what I'm looking for. But

24:50

how do you test it? Like how

24:52

do I know that I'm hitting that mark way

24:54

before the thing hits the market? Because by then

24:56

we could have already screwed it up. So

24:59

I figured out one bit of quantifiable

25:01

data that lets me back up that claim.

25:03

When I say a game is not entertaining,

25:05

it makes the players entertaining, I can back

25:07

that up. And the way I can back

25:09

it up is In

25:11

our testing procedure, we

25:13

have this group of 400 families called

25:15

the kitty test pilots. And all we

25:17

do is we send them games all

25:19

day long and we ask for feedback. And

25:22

it used to be, we would send them this

25:24

crazy Google form. We're like, how long did you

25:26

play? How many players? How old are they? What

25:28

was your favorite part? What was the part you

25:30

hated? What part needs work? You know, on and

25:32

on and on, like 30, 40 questions. And

25:35

I realized like, Nobody's reading

25:37

these like I'm I don't even care

25:39

about what this is and by the

25:41

time I finish reading their answers to

25:43

this questionnaire I haven't actually learned anything

25:45

about whether or not this game has

25:47

made the players entertaining and so We

25:49

now send out a questionnaire

25:51

and it has one question on it

25:53

just one start to finish one question

25:56

and that question is do you want

25:58

to play again and I

26:00

have found that that question

26:02

is the most direct heat -seeking missile

26:04

to answer the question, have you

26:06

made the players entertaining? Because if a

26:08

game is entertaining, you have extracted

26:11

almost all the entertainment from it on

26:13

your first time through. But if

26:15

the players are entertaining, you want to

26:17

play again. And we only

26:19

now ship games where 100 %

26:21

of that question's answer is yes.

26:23

We get even a single no,

26:26

we dive into that person and

26:28

we watch the videos and we

26:30

figure out what happened there because They

26:32

should want to play again. And if

26:35

they don't, we've got something to fix.

26:37

I think the most successful people, Sean,

26:39

have you ever studied like

26:41

personality tests and like, oh,

26:43

and read about disagree agreeableness and

26:46

how the people who are

26:48

most successful rank very low

26:50

on agreeableness? Disagreeable is

26:52

a positive trait for founders. Yeah. Because like

26:54

the very simple example is you just are

26:56

on, you don't accept how things are done.

26:58

You disagree with that. Therefore you want

27:00

to go make your own. Oftentimes

27:03

people who rank

27:05

high on disagreeableness are

27:07

jerks. You

27:09

are not a jerk.

27:11

You are objectively a

27:13

sweet person. But

27:16

you seem like

27:18

you are hiding

27:20

this disagreeableness because

27:23

For example, you have incredibly high standards, or

27:25

you just made a survey where a lot

27:27

of staff might be like, well, we have

27:29

to ask 10 questions, but can't just ask

27:31

one question. But you're like, no, no, no,

27:33

you see, this makes sense for this reason. Do

27:36

people enjoy working with you? Because

27:39

I guess I'm fascinated on

27:41

how your ability to be disagreeable, but

27:43

also polite, and it seems very effective. It

27:46

depends on who you ask. I

27:48

think my team likes working with

27:50

me. At the very least,

27:52

very few people ever quit. But

27:55

if you were to ask our printers, if

27:58

you're to ask our distribution partners, I

28:01

think they hate working with me. Like,

28:03

despise it. And the reason is because

28:05

I am absolutely a perfectionist. Like, what

28:07

I do for a living is make

28:09

little boxes of joy. And if you

28:11

open a box and there's something obvious

28:13

wrong with it, or the card quality

28:15

is not where it should be, or

28:17

like, In Exploding Kittens,

28:20

you don't know which card is in

28:22

Exploding Kitten. It has to be a

28:24

surprise, right? And that means the backs

28:26

of every card have to be identical.

28:28

And if I can detect one degree

28:30

off in the Pantone registry of

28:32

this card versus this one, I'm

28:35

sending the entire... I don't care how many

28:37

millions are in that shipment. I'm sending every

28:39

single one of them back and I'm not

28:41

paying a penny and you are gonna reprint

28:43

them for me. So they hate me and

28:45

I get it, but... I

28:47

don't think the company would be where it is today

28:49

if I said, yeah, we'll just ship it that way and

28:51

the next run will be better. I

28:54

love that. You also have a

28:56

approach to marketing that I

28:58

think is very different than most founders.

29:00

It was really inspiring to me when

29:02

I started to hear these stories. Can

29:04

you talk about some of the unconventional hustle

29:06

things? Because if I'm listening to this right

29:08

now, I'm like, okay, cool. So

29:10

he was like, had a sick

29:13

job at Xbox. He quit. first

29:15

game, first hit wonder, hit

29:17

exploding kittens, which is like the number one game in the world

29:19

for, I don't know how many years now. Oh,

29:21

his buddy happened to be the oatmeal guy, so

29:23

he had instant distribution. Must be nice, right?

29:25

I'll just be a YouTube comment guy for a

29:27

second. You know, it must be nice

29:30

to be, you know, to have connected powerful

29:32

friends. Oh, that's why I'm not successful, right? That's

29:34

I think where most people land and stuff

29:36

like that. What they don't know is that

29:38

first there's all this That person's not

29:40

just your friend. There's actually like luck

29:42

that you create along the way to create

29:44

those types of opportunities. So

29:47

either you could talk about that or you

29:50

could talk about some of the hustle tactics

29:52

you guys did, like the vending machine, like

29:54

the other stuff you guys have done that

29:56

where you were not just like handed the

29:58

keys to the castle, but you actually

30:00

like scraped your way there. Yeah.

30:03

Yeah. I mean, look, the company you've

30:05

just described is a company that

30:07

would disappear in... 8 months, right? Like, there's

30:09

no longevity to that at all. So,

30:11

once you have a hit game, which requires

30:13

a lot of luck, but also a

30:15

lot of skill, once you've

30:17

gotten that... Now the skill really has to kick in

30:19

because now you have to make sure that thing

30:22

doesn't disappear. Now you have to make sure your next

30:24

10 games are also successful. You need to make

30:26

sure your profit margin on each game is where it

30:28

should be. You need to make sure you build

30:30

a community on and on and on. So I'll give

30:32

you a few examples. And

30:34

all kind of marketing. Like once you

30:36

have a company, once you have any

30:38

degree of success, you have to be

30:40

able to double down on that and

30:43

get your audience to care passionately. We

30:46

used to go to this convention

30:48

in Seattle called PAX, Penny Arcade Expo,

30:51

and we're a tiny company. We got

30:53

no money for marketing, right? We've

30:55

had this one successful Kickstarter campaign. We

30:57

spent literally every penny actually producing

31:00

the product and building the company, and

31:02

now our bank account is empty,

31:04

and we show up to this thing,

31:06

and we've got like no ability

31:08

to get people's attention. And

31:10

advertising is expensive, and they literally rent out

31:12

like every square inch of the walls in

31:14

there. And so anything you want to do

31:17

costs money, which we don't have. So

31:19

I had this idea. And this convention is

31:21

to impress other game makers or vendors to carry

31:23

your game. Exactly. All

31:26

of the above, right? So you're

31:28

building a fan base, you're

31:30

building other relationships, you're trying

31:32

to get distribution, you're trying to get into

31:34

retail stores. The only thing we had

31:36

ever sold is a single product on Kickstarter

31:38

and now we got nothing left. By

31:40

the way, these exhibits, if you go

31:43

to one of these, you become an exhibitor, your

31:45

booth, like the big games, they're spending hundreds of

31:47

thousands of dollars just on the booth. And

31:49

you're like, you also sign up to

31:51

be a booth, but you're just a fold

31:53

out picnic table in section F over,

31:55

you know, past the bathrooms and you're just

31:57

sitting there hoping somebody walks by your

31:59

shitty table. And you're like, how am I

32:02

supposed to compete with that? It's like Michael Scott

32:04

in the job fair episode where he's like,

32:06

you literally just have a table and you're trying

32:08

to convince people to do the crew to

32:10

you. I got the crappy sign that I printed

32:12

on my little inkjet printer and that's in

32:14

the folding table and that's it. And

32:16

so the very first year, I was very proud of this. I

32:19

knew we had to have marketing space

32:21

and I couldn't find any that we could

32:23

afford. So I made... I

32:25

mean, these little kittens, I cut them

32:27

out. Little adorable cute little kittens with

32:29

our logo on it. And the kitten

32:31

was holding a bomb and it said

32:33

exploding kittens and there was a fuse.

32:35

And I secretly put one of those

32:37

inside every urinal in the convention center.

32:40

So you had to pee on them

32:42

to extinguish the bomb. And

32:44

it like mobs our booth.

32:46

Like everyone wanted to see who

32:48

made these things. So much

32:50

so that the organizers came to

32:53

us and they said, you can't

32:55

do this. And I was like, well, Show

32:57

me the part of my contract where it says

32:59

I can't do this. I understand you don't

33:01

want me to do this, but show me where

33:03

I can't. And they said, they said, all

33:05

right, well. We're not

33:07

going to prohibit you from doing this because

33:09

you're right. You found a space that

33:11

is just nowhere in our guidelines, but we'll

33:13

tell you this. Next year, we're going

33:15

to start charging for that space. So I

33:17

think I haven't checked because we haven't

33:19

been back to PAX, but I think they

33:22

now charge for urinal advertising space thanks

33:24

to this little stunt we've got. Do you want to

33:26

go get them out of there or are you

33:28

expecting me to did not extract a single one

33:30

of those. It's actually genius. The second years when

33:32

you did the vending machine thing, this vending machine

33:34

thing is insane. Yeah, okay. So the

33:36

vending machine was trying to solve the problem on

33:38

a more permanent basis because like I do this

33:40

urinal thing and they shut it down. And honestly,

33:42

it just wasn't big enough. Like that got us

33:44

a few hundred people every day. But how do

33:46

I get thousands? How do I get tens of

33:48

thousands of people every day? So

33:50

I looked at our little folding

33:52

table and thought, you know, people

33:55

come up to this thing and they give us money,

33:57

they give us 20 bucks, they get a box and

33:59

they walk away. And they have no memory of

34:01

that transaction because all that really is

34:03

is a vending machine. You go, you put

34:05

money in the vending machine, you push

34:07

a button, you get your soft drink and

34:09

you walk away. And you have no

34:11

lasting memory of the interaction you just had,

34:13

because there's nothing remarkable about it. So

34:15

I thought, all right, if we're going to

34:17

be a vending machine, what if we

34:20

were the world's coolest vending machine? Like the

34:22

most spectacular vending machine the world has

34:24

ever seen. And so I took

34:26

an old refrigerator box I had in my

34:28

garage, so this big eight foot tall

34:30

cardboard box, and we cut some

34:32

holes in it. And we built, we,

34:35

sorry, we covered it with fur and these giant

34:37

googly eyes. So it looked like a cat. We

34:39

built a eight foot tall fur covered cat. And

34:42

it had a, cut out a hole

34:44

for a screen where we could like put

34:46

a display and it had little buttons

34:48

and it had a little credit card reader.

34:50

It had everything a vending machine should

34:52

have. And the experience was you walk up

34:55

to this thing, you put in your

34:57

money, you push a button and a game

34:59

comes out. Very, very simple. We're not

35:01

talking anything Crazy expensive or

35:03

really anything that remarkable yet other than

35:05

Okay, it's fur covered. It looks

35:07

like a cat. That's kind of adorable Nobody's

35:09

ever seen a vending machine like this before

35:11

and that attracted a crowd But then we

35:14

had to push it over the top So

35:16

I put in an extra button and the

35:18

extra button said random item one dollar Way

35:20

cheaper than a game. What the hell does that mean? And

35:22

so enough people were willing to

35:24

try this experiment. What happens if I

35:26

put a dollar in this and push random

35:28

item? And so they'd put a dollar

35:30

in and push random and out comes a

35:32

pineapple from the vending machine or a

35:34

hot burrito or a bag of rocks or

35:36

a plumber's. And it's just you behind

35:38

it just sticking your hand out with a

35:40

pineapple or what? This was the thing.

35:43

This is what we didn't tell anybody. Everyone

35:45

assumed this is the world's most sophisticated

35:47

vending machine because it can deliver 2 ,000

35:49

different objects and people literally brought up

35:51

chairs and they built little bleachers around this thing

35:53

just to watch it for hour after hour

35:55

after hour to see what the hell is going

35:57

to come out of this thing. And basically

35:59

for the listener, it looks like just a box,

36:01

but the box backed up to like a curtain. And

36:04

behind the curtain, I would imagine you

36:06

had a whole team of people

36:08

like. So there's the punchline. Instead of

36:10

it being a vending machine, it

36:12

was just a vending machine costume. There

36:14

was no robotics in there. There's

36:16

no computers. There's nothing. There's eight of

36:18

us sweating our asses off for

36:20

10 hours a day backstage. And

36:22

every time someone pushes that random item

36:24

button, we are literally pulling a random

36:26

item and throwing it out the front

36:28

of the machine. We

36:31

had our line got so long that

36:33

it blocked our aisle. It blocked all

36:35

the other super expensive, you know, million

36:37

dollar booths. Nobody could walk up to

36:39

those anymore because our line was so

36:41

long. It went out the door. It

36:43

went out of the convention center. It

36:46

went down the street and the line

36:48

for a silly little fur covered vending

36:50

machine was longer than the line to

36:52

get into the convention itself. And

36:54

all of that's just because like we

36:56

had no money and we had to think

36:58

creatively about like, what does it mean?

37:00

to build a community around a transaction.

37:02

And that's what we came up with.

37:05

Sean, have you ever read about

37:07

Dr. Feynman? Richard Feynman?

37:09

Richard Feynman, yeah, sorry. Have you ever

37:11

read about him? Yeah, a little

37:13

bit. Why? What comes to mind

37:15

here? He would get super hands

37:17

-on with the problem and question

37:19

everything. And he would start at

37:21

the very foundation of that question

37:23

and basically not accept any truth before

37:25

him. He would have to question each one

37:27

in order to solve a problem. One

37:30

big example of this is he helped

37:32

create the atomic bomb. And so like they

37:34

like questioned all these like previously thought

37:36

rules that he broke. And

37:39

Alon kind of has

37:41

that same thing. And I admire this

37:43

because I work really hard to have

37:45

this, but I still don't have it

37:47

entirely. This doesn't come naturally to me

37:49

and I don't excel at it. But

37:51

I think that for everyone listening, this

37:53

skill set is really important, which is

37:55

how do you be really

37:57

creative in the framework you

38:00

question everything at the

38:02

very beginning and don't assume anything that

38:04

you've ever been told is true. Is that right?

38:06

Yeah. I think that's accurate.

38:08

And also never take no for an

38:10

answer. It makes no sense to

38:13

ever have someone shut you down for

38:15

any reason. So the

38:17

vending machine is a great example. It's

38:19

one of my favorites of...

38:21

So we install this thing in

38:23

a convention center and we're

38:25

handing out pineapples and watermelons and...

38:28

objects. And we're putting googly eyes on

38:30

them and giving them mohawks and all

38:32

kinds of fun stuff. And we got

38:34

to a convention in Indianapolis and they

38:36

said, you can't do this

38:39

because we cannot let you

38:41

ship the produce backstage to

38:43

your space on the convention floor.

38:45

And I said, why? And

38:47

they said, because you've exceeded what

38:49

they called like a casual

38:51

purchase. And now you have to,

38:53

the only way that we

38:55

can accept that much produce is

38:57

to a registered grocer. And

39:00

you're not a registered grocer, so you can't do this

39:02

anymore. And I remember thinking like,

39:05

my whole team was like, okay,

39:07

well, here's a dead end. We need

39:09

to think through like, what objects

39:11

can we do instead? And

39:13

I got so frustrated, I was like, You're

39:15

you're just accepting the dead end here, and

39:17

I don't think we need to and it

39:20

turns out It's easy Trivial

39:22

to become a registered grocer I went

39:24

to a website and you fill out

39:26

a form you pay like a hundred

39:28

bucks and today Exploding kittens is a

39:30

registered grocer in Indiana You know where

39:32

else we're registered grocer 14 other states

39:34

because it's that easy as well And

39:36

so every convention we go to we

39:39

can now accept the shipments backstage because

39:41

exploding kittens is also a grocery store

39:45

I love that. You know, when

39:47

we were doing our event, Mr. Beast

39:49

is there, Jimmy Donaldson and his

39:51

production document. So like his training document

39:53

for his team, like an older

39:55

one, but had leaked online. And

39:57

it's really fascinating to read this because

39:59

here you have a guy who wrote this probably

40:01

when he was 22, 23, 24 years old, right?

40:04

So it's kind of like he's an expert at 24.

40:07

But he is an expert in YouTube. He'd actually

40:09

been doing it for over a decade. He's the

40:11

most successful YouTuber on the planet. And

40:14

he's like, I know how to make videos that people

40:16

watch. And one of the things that he talks about

40:18

in there, he goes, push past the no. Just

40:20

because you receive an initial no from

40:22

somebody, absolutely does not mean that it's a

40:24

no forever, that it's a no under

40:26

any circumstance, that there's a no without some

40:28

caveats. And if you come back and

40:31

you just say, I asked, you

40:33

know, they said no. that's

40:35

not an acceptable answer in our org, right?

40:37

So he's like, you know, I wanted the

40:39

pyramids for a video, the Egyptian pyramids. And

40:41

they were like, his team told him no.

40:43

And he goes, what you mean? Like, who

40:45

told you no? Egypt told you no? Who'd

40:47

you call? What did they say? Why'd they say

40:49

no? Did you call the other guy?

40:51

Who's the other guy? Give me the number. Let's call

40:53

them. Do they have kids? Let's FaceTime their kids. Let's

40:55

see if that works. They're like, what are the different

40:57

ways that we could do this just to accept an

40:59

initial no? It's basically

41:01

out of, it was a culturally unacceptable. at

41:04

the company. Yeah. I

41:06

think that trait

41:09

more than anything is what I've seen

41:11

in successful business owners. And

41:13

I don't know if it can be taught. It's

41:15

more just that when you hear

41:17

the word no, there are two

41:19

possible reactions. One is, damn

41:21

it. And the other is, I

41:23

didn't hear that properly. Let me dig

41:25

deeper. It has to be

41:27

instinctual. Like every time you hear the word

41:29

no, you have to think, okay, I didn't

41:31

hear that properly. Let me dig deeper over

41:33

and over and over again. I love that.

41:35

Like it's not just being a jerk and

41:38

saying, you know, just pushing, just pushing on

41:40

them, but being curious or being like clever

41:42

or being playful and trying to figure out

41:44

like if I had a trillion dollars, maybe

41:46

you'd say yes. Okay. So like, let's just

41:48

agree. It's not physically impossible to do this.

41:50

Right. Okay. Once it's not physically impossible, that

41:52

means now there is a way. Let's just see

41:54

what that way might look like. It's so.

41:56

Maybe the better way to phrase it is, when

41:58

someone tells you no, instead of assuming that that's

42:00

the answer, assume you ask the wrong

42:02

question. Hey, Sean, we did this

42:04

thing. I was talking to David, the guy

42:06

who hosted the podcast founders the other day. And

42:09

we did a show called

42:11

The Anti -Business Billionaires. And

42:13

there's like a handful of people out

42:15

there who are these

42:17

billionaires who they shockingly don't care

42:20

about revenue and profit. And they're

42:22

like very passionate about whatever it

42:24

is they're making. The guy who started Patagonia

42:26

is one of them, where he just doesn't seem like

42:28

he cares about money, or the guy who started Dyson,

42:30

James Dyson. He's another guy,

42:32

where oddly he's obsessed with making

42:34

vacuums. Do you care at all

42:36

about revenue and profit, or

42:38

do you just see it as a...

42:40

Do you care about business? I didn't

42:43

originally. Now, once

42:45

I figured out how to look

42:47

at businesses, another game that can

42:49

be won, I suddenly started caring

42:51

passionately about business. I used to

42:53

think, All right. I don't actually want to be

42:55

CEO of this company. What I want to be is

42:57

lead designer. I'm going to hire a CEO. And

43:00

we tried that for a while. And

43:02

what I realized is like, everyone

43:04

we hired into that spot was playing the

43:06

game the wrong way. And I

43:08

want to play instead. And so now

43:10

I actually love strategy meetings. I love business

43:13

meetings. I love when we go in

43:15

and talk about the next 10 years and

43:17

or how we're going to solve this

43:19

very particular problem about this convention or this

43:21

next game launch or this next partnership

43:23

because That is such a

43:25

fun game. In

43:27

high school, I

43:30

loved physics. Physics was my favorite

43:32

topic until I realized I need to

43:34

switch to computer science. The reason

43:36

I needed to switch was because for

43:39

physics, everything they were teaching us, the

43:41

answer was in the back of the book. If you

43:43

had a problem, you could just flip to the back of

43:45

the book. And

43:47

I realized that computer science was very

43:49

different because computer science was like the

43:51

cutting edge. Like there were no answers

43:53

in the back of the book at

43:55

all. You had to figure everything out

43:57

as you go. And that was really

43:59

exciting for me. That was like a life

44:01

changing moment when I was 16. That's

44:04

what business is to me. There are no

44:06

answers at the back of the book.

44:08

And if you want to win this game,

44:10

you've got to figure out what the

44:12

rules are, invent your own where you need

44:15

to and get to that finish line

44:17

before anybody else. Look at Sean's hands. And

44:19

I just realized that whenever we do

44:21

this, you got us. You're

44:24

talking to a girl that puts

44:26

her hair behind her ear. There's

44:28

some indicator of like, of attraction.

44:30

When you're talking about this, I'm

44:32

like, ah, this is beautiful. I

44:34

mean, just the way you're describing this, like there's no

44:36

answers in the back of the book. Like, dude, that's inspiring.

44:38

I love that. I love that stuff. I

44:41

also think there's other things we can learn from you.

44:43

So. I've learned from

44:45

you on the marketing side and maybe we'll

44:47

just close the loop on the marketing

44:49

idea, which is it's one thing to hear

44:51

the idea of the vending machine and

44:53

be like, oh, wow, that's a great idea.

44:55

I'm interested in what is the mindset

44:57

that creates that idea? What are the questions

44:59

that you ask? How do you brainstorm? What

45:02

are you doing differently that's leading

45:04

you to crazy answers like that that

45:06

actually work? So like, I

45:08

don't know if you can describe it or if this is

45:10

like, asking, you know, Steph Curry had to shoot a

45:12

jump shot. He's like, I don't know, I just kind of

45:15

flick my wrist. It just goes in when actually a

45:17

thousand little things are happening that he's not even attuned to.

45:19

But like, you know, for example, you said something like, what

45:22

if? And like, I know what,

45:24

what if questions are just like a great,

45:26

like a great tool in the tool belt for a

45:28

creative thinker. It's very different

45:30

than we should. It's just

45:32

like the language changes everything. What are some other things

45:35

you do when you brainstorm? I

45:37

love parameters. I hate blue sky brainstorming.

45:39

Like the idea that like, hey, let's

45:41

sit down and create a game is

45:43

the most terrifying experience in the world

45:45

for me. Or let's sit down and

45:47

brainstorm anything and we don't know what

45:49

it is. So what are the parameters

45:52

for the last handful of meetings that

45:54

you've had? Yeah, so okay, let me

45:56

back up and say like, you

45:58

asked about marketing for

46:00

a convention, right? I

46:02

told you the story about the vending machine,

46:04

but I also told you the parameters are

46:07

baked into there. We didn't start by saying,

46:09

what's the coolest experience we can have at

46:11

a convention? We started by

46:13

saying, this is a vending

46:15

machine transaction. There's our parameters.

46:17

What is the coolest vending machine experience

46:19

we can craft? We also said, how

46:21

do we get tens of thousands of

46:23

people to come without spending money? Instead

46:25

of 300, a sort of an unreasonable

46:28

target. Unreasonable is totally reasonable. It's

46:30

fine to set your goals that high

46:32

as long as you understand the parameters

46:34

of the problem. If I were to

46:36

sit down and say, how do we

46:38

get 10 ,000 people to come to

46:40

our booth? I'm not going to get

46:42

anywhere. I just have no

46:44

chance of success there. But if I

46:46

sit down and say, I am going

46:48

to build a vending machine that must

46:50

attract 10 ,000 people, now I'm running. Now

46:52

I'm busy for the next 10 months

46:54

building that thing because I know what

46:56

that is. That's shockingly a useful tip because

46:58

I do the other thing, right? Just say, how do

47:00

I get this? How do I get the 10 ,000? How

47:02

do I get 10 ,000 people to come? Yeah.

47:05

Yeah. No, I, I, there are people who

47:07

are great at it. Like, you know,

47:09

you mentioned Mr. Beast, Jimmy, he is

47:11

exceptional at that. Like if you were

47:14

to tell him just like, I listened

47:16

to your interview with him, right? And

47:18

you're, you're spitting out random nouns and

47:20

he's coming up with incredible ideas. He

47:23

is exceptionally talented at that thing. I

47:25

suck at it I need to know

47:27

exactly the shape of the box and

47:29

I will build you the coolest contents

47:31

for that box in history But unless

47:33

I understand what that box is capable

47:35

of holding I just I have no

47:37

chance of success So it sounds like

47:40

one way to put it is creativity loves

47:42

constraints and you use the constraint you

47:44

start with the constraint rather than starting

47:46

with the just the desired

47:48

outcome. The desired outcome is there, it's

47:50

part of the goal, it's the

47:52

parameters, but you actually start with a

47:54

constraint in order to get yourself

47:56

to think a little bit differently. Do

47:58

you have any other examples of this

48:00

constraint style of thinking? We're

48:03

asked to build a board game

48:05

for a few different NFL

48:07

teams. And what does that mean?

48:09

How do you get an NFL audience to

48:11

play with a board game? And

48:14

if you were to just leave

48:16

it there, you kind of

48:18

don't have a chance. You're basically saying, build

48:20

a good game, go. And

48:23

me personally, I'm going

48:25

to suck at that task. But

48:27

what we started to do was - And you're

48:29

like the best in the world at doing this.

48:31

Yeah. So if you're going to suck at it,

48:33

we're all going to suck at that. no chance

48:35

of success. I promise you, zero chance of success.

48:37

So instead, we sat down and we said, okay,

48:39

what is football? Like what are the best moments? And

48:42

I started writing

48:44

this list and my

48:46

list was the magical

48:48

moment where a player catches

48:50

the ball against all odds.

48:52

Everyone's covering them. It's impossible.

48:54

It's impossible. Somehow it was

48:56

a perfect throw, a perfect

48:58

catch and off they went

49:00

to score. And I personally really

49:03

focused on that. Do you even

49:05

care about football? Football matters very

49:07

little to me, but only because It

49:09

is very hard for me to watch

49:11

people having fun without wanting to do

49:13

that same thing myself. Well, that's pretty

49:16

funny. But the reason I'm asking is

49:18

because this is your perspective as a

49:20

total outsider where you just created the

49:22

rules. Yeah, yeah,

49:24

yeah. It's watching other people, right? Like my

49:26

family is obsessed with it. So I watch

49:28

them watch football and I'm like, oh, that

49:30

moment there. Okay, that moment there. And

49:32

so we eventually built this game, it's called Catchables.

49:34

And all it is, we made these cute little

49:36

foam figures, and we had an increasing series of

49:38

challenges defined by the other players, because the other

49:40

players have to provide the entertainment, where you have

49:42

to throw an object this little character in the

49:45

air and just catch it. So simple. Throw it.

49:47

Catch it. Really easy. But now players are going

49:49

to start throwing cards at you. You have to

49:51

do a blindfolded. You have to spin around before

49:53

you catch it. You can only use one hand.

49:55

You can only use two fingers. And like, what

49:57

if I give you 10 of those cards at

49:59

the same time? Now that very simple

50:01

throw and catch has become really,

50:03

really entertaining for everyone to watch you

50:06

defy the odds. And at the

50:08

last moment, pull it off despite... expectation

50:10

and the crowd goes wild. This

50:12

sounds so trivial. This is actually pretty

50:14

groundbreaking. So let's give a very

50:16

specific example that's not related to you.

50:19

So Sean works in the e

50:22

-commerce industry. Let's just say that

50:24

Sean sells shoes. Sean owns

50:26

a shoe company and let's say

50:28

growth has stagnated and he comes

50:30

to a meeting and he goes, our

50:33

company needs to improve. We

50:35

have to be better. What would

50:37

be interesting constraints in order to make

50:40

Sean's company better and make the meeting productive.

50:43

Yeah. What you'd want to do with

50:45

a shoe company, I've never worked in shoes before, so

50:47

bear with me. But I will,

50:50

anything you throw at me, I'm gonna

50:52

try to tie it back to a

50:54

community. I'm gonna try to tie it

50:56

back to how do I, by wearing

50:58

these things, form more lasting, reasonable, exciting

51:00

connections with other people. So

51:02

what if

51:04

you started printing out beautiful,

51:07

incredible shoes that you'd be proud to

51:09

wear. You'd love every single shoe that

51:11

you make, but everyone has

51:13

half a secret message

51:15

on it. And somebody else has

51:17

the other half of that. Get your

51:19

shoe next to them to read it, right? Like

51:21

suddenly you have a reason to go not

51:23

only tell your friends to buy some or buy

51:25

more yourself, but suddenly you have a reason

51:27

to go seek them out in the world. You're

51:29

walking through a crowded airport and you see

51:32

someone with those shoes, walk right over them, put

51:34

your foot next to theirs. Let's check if

51:36

we're the match. Yeah, exactly. There's

51:39

a very low percentage hit there, and so

51:41

you'd have to probably redesign it to

51:44

have a much higher percentage hit, and that's

51:46

very achievable. But again, the

51:48

first thing I'm going to do is define

51:50

a constraint and say, a successful shoe equals

51:52

a reason to look for more of those

51:54

shoes out in the world because then more

51:57

of those shoes are going to sell. That's

51:59

pretty great. Wow. Just yesterday, I was with my

52:01

wife and we're walking out somewhere and this woman

52:03

had a little Trader Joe's bag and she goes, hey,

52:05

sorry to bother you, but is that that

52:07

bag that everyone's going crazy about online? In

52:09

my mind, I'm like, people are going crazy about

52:11

Trader Joe's bags nowadays. What's

52:13

going on? I guess there's

52:15

a certain design of a Trader

52:17

Joe's bag. And it's not even like

52:19

limited edition or luxury. I don't know what the

52:21

full story is, but it kind of highlighted

52:23

to me, it's like, man, you could take any

52:26

moment. It's like the moments

52:28

in between the moments. And if you

52:30

do something interesting there, you give

52:32

people a reason to feel special, a

52:34

reason to connect, a reason to

52:36

collect, a reason to do one of

52:38

those things. It's like, damn,

52:40

how much wasted surface area is there

52:42

in my businesses where we're not. just

52:44

by applying creativity, we create magic.

52:46

We create, it's alchemy, right? We create

52:48

value for people if we just

52:50

were a little more intentional versus just

52:53

going on autopilot. And I think

52:55

99 % the time I'm just on

52:57

autopilot in my businesses. I totally get

52:59

it. And I've been there as

53:01

well. Can I tell you a story

53:03

about, I'm so proud of

53:05

Particular Solve for that problem. So

53:08

my daughter, Exploding Kittens is not

53:11

the number one selling game in the world. It's the number

53:13

two best selling game in the world. Number one is a game

53:15

called Hurry Up Chicken Butt. Hurry Up

53:17

Chicken Butt, I

53:19

designed with my daughter. And

53:22

when she turned four, I was so excited,

53:24

because most of the games are like ages four

53:26

and up. And when she turned four, we

53:28

went out and we bought all the games, right?

53:30

We got Candyland and we got Zingo, all

53:32

the games and took them home and we started

53:34

playing and I immediately noticed a problem, which

53:37

was, I am having

53:39

a miserable time. She's happy, she's playing

53:41

with her dad, she's getting to see

53:43

bright flashy colors like all the stuff

53:45

is designed for kids. but I am

53:47

bored out of my mind. And what

53:49

the results in is when we're done

53:51

playing the game, one, I've let her

53:53

win, because I got to let her

53:55

win, because if I try at all,

53:57

I'm going to crush this poor four -year

53:59

-old. And two is when we're done, she

54:01

says, hey, Daddy, can we play again? And

54:03

all I'm thinking is, oh, God, no, I

54:05

am so miserable. I did it. I did

54:07

my time. We played the game. I'm

54:10

going to go do something fun now. And

54:12

I remember having that reaction.

54:14

and it must have shown on

54:16

my face. And my daughter said, what's

54:18

wrong? And I said, I think this

54:21

game is broken. And she

54:23

said, something brilliant. She said,

54:25

let's fix it. And

54:28

like fireworks started going off in my

54:30

head because I was like, yeah,

54:33

let's fix it. Like, why are

54:35

we not fixing this? And I

54:37

spent the next month, we

54:40

split the work. My daughter started drawing pictures,

54:42

like all the fun games, everything fun that

54:44

she wanted in a game. And I started

54:46

writing this list of what success looks like. And

54:49

for me, it was my daughter has

54:51

to beat me without me letting her

54:53

win. And I have to

54:55

look forward to playing again. The

54:58

game cannot be luck based. I

55:00

have to watch my daughter get better at

55:02

this game every time we play. I have to

55:04

feel like she's learning something and there cannot

55:06

be any losers. She can win. but

55:09

nobody can lose. So those are your constraints.

55:11

Those are my five. And by

55:13

the way, did you start with just things you

55:15

hated? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I'm saying this like,

55:17

oh, overnight I came up with these five things,

55:19

but the list was like 25 things long. And I

55:21

narrowed it down to those five, which were the

55:23

most important. I'm writing this book on creativity right now.

55:25

And Jerry Seinfeld has this great quote. He says, irritation

55:28

is what causes innovation. And he's based, he created

55:30

comedians and cars getting coffee because he just hated

55:33

going, he was so sick of going on late

55:35

night talk shows and doing the same thing every

55:37

time. He's like, All right, a talk show

55:39

that has none of those things. In fact, my irritation is

55:41

going to be my source of innovation. It sounds like

55:43

for you, all of those things you

55:45

talked about were sources of personal irritation for

55:47

you. Every one of them, for sure. There

55:49

were the things that everybody was doing wrong

55:51

and was the industry standard. Nobody had raised

55:53

their hand and said, this

55:55

is broken. Like, this is not fun

55:57

for half the players who this game,

56:00

that half being the adults. Did you

56:02

present those five things to your daughter

56:04

or did you? No, she didn't care

56:06

about those things. So you were the

56:08

one. What I'm trying to get at

56:10

is, can you present those five things

56:13

to people at your company and they

56:15

be just as creative in effect? Like,

56:17

could they make hit games? Like,

56:19

is this a transferable skill,

56:21

a teachable skill? Absolutely,

56:23

yes. Again,

56:26

you're not teaching

56:28

problem solving. You're teaching

56:30

problem identification. And

56:32

then creative people will be able to solve

56:34

those problems. But if you try to solve,

56:36

if you try to teach how to be

56:38

creative, you never get anywhere. All you're really

56:41

teaching is how to identify a problem, how

56:43

to know what success looks like, and then

56:45

you just hire creative people to work within

56:47

those constraints. But then do you, as the

56:49

leader, define if you have a hit? Yes.

56:52

Well, Well, hurry up

56:54

chicken butts an easy way is an easy definition

56:56

because again as soon as it went out to

56:58

testing party This was one of those games where

57:00

when we send it out to testing not only

57:02

was it a hundred percent? Yes, I want to

57:04

play again Nobody sent the games back. This is

57:07

a huge problem for us like we send them

57:09

out We want you to send them back so

57:11

we can tweak them and then send them back

57:13

out again Nobody would send that game back to

57:15

us It was ridiculous. We lost so many copies

57:17

of that game. So, bridge the gap there, because

57:19

I play this game. I play it literally with

57:21

my daughter, who's five. I bought it after we

57:23

met, and I was a career chicken butt, and we played at

57:25

home with my son and my daughter. It's a

57:27

great time, but I've seen the end output,

57:29

and now you've described your initial conditions. Is there

57:31

anything else interesting in how you kind of figured

57:33

out how you bridge that gap? So,

57:35

we go through tons and tons and tons of

57:37

versions, and I sit with my daughter. I'm like,

57:39

look, I want, I

57:42

know We want a game and

57:44

she's like, I want to run around. Cool.

57:46

That's going to be part of the game

57:48

running around. I want to act silly. Cool.

57:50

That's going to be part of the game

57:52

acting silly. And then the back in my

57:54

mind, I'm like, I need tension, right? Like

57:56

a game without any form of tension is

57:58

a broken game because you need something to

58:00

push you forward. In most games, it's competition

58:02

with the other players, but here that's

58:04

not going to be present. So I need

58:06

something else to insert the tension, the

58:08

pulse of the game. And we did that

58:11

with an electric timer, right? It's essentially

58:13

the way the game works. It's hot potato.

58:15

You've got this adorable cute little chicken that

58:17

clocks and eventually screams and you pass

58:19

the chicken around. And if you're holding the

58:22

chicken when it screams, you have lost

58:24

a point and everybody else proceeds. But

58:26

the tricky part, it actually works

58:28

where the person before you wins the

58:30

whole game. Again, no losers, only winners.

58:32

Are you like Pixar where you have

58:34

like your five or eight trustworthy people

58:36

in a room and you're just banging

58:38

this out? Absolutely, yes. And how long

58:41

are the meetings and how many meetings

58:43

were there between idea to iteration one

58:45

to final iteration? Okay, so

58:47

we sit down, we'll meet for like

58:49

two hours and we'll just discuss parameters,

58:51

what success looks like, let's brainstorm

58:53

in that space. And we'll usually come

58:55

up with like, I

58:57

don't know, let's say five or six interesting

58:59

things to explore, then everybody goes off and

59:01

does their own thing. Everyone's got an assignment.

59:03

play with this one, and we're gonna come

59:05

back and we're gonna try all these games. And

59:08

in this case, we actually had

59:10

like, I don't know, 15 or 16

59:12

different ideas that we were playing around with, and

59:15

they all sucked. Like they all, everything fell

59:17

apart in one regard or another, except

59:19

for this one. That's not true, except for

59:21

four games. Four games made it out

59:23

the door. Two were

59:25

almost immediate failures, and

59:27

two of them... was hurry up chicken butt and

59:30

the other is called the best worst ice cream,

59:32

which is like, I think it's ranked number eight

59:34

in the world right now. So it's up there.

59:36

I only look at the top five because that's

59:38

the scoreboard I like to keep, but it's

59:40

doing great. Could

59:43

this apply? Let's say

59:45

I owned a B2B SaaS

59:47

software. Could I use

59:49

this process in my company? I'm

59:52

tempted to say yes. I

59:54

don't know definitively the answer,

59:56

but I believe that the best

59:58

ideas come out of constraint and

1:00:00

defining success. And I

1:00:02

can't imagine there'd be

1:00:04

many creative -based endeavors

1:00:07

that would not benefit from that

1:00:09

approach. You just did a

1:00:11

game with Tim Ferriss, and I think he

1:00:13

was a part of creating it. I'm just

1:00:15

curious, what was

1:00:17

that like? What were

1:00:19

the main things you taught Tim? And then

1:00:21

did Tim teach you anything? Or did you

1:00:23

sort of modify any of your process? Because

1:00:25

Tim is such an interesting guy that maybe

1:00:27

he could bring a little bit of a

1:00:29

different approach to what you were doing. Yeah.

1:00:32

So I went on Tim's podcast like two years

1:00:34

ago. He just wanted to know what's the game

1:00:36

industry like? What is it that you

1:00:38

would do for a living? And so we talked

1:00:40

for a while and at the end of it,

1:00:42

after we finished recording, he said, I've always wanted

1:00:44

to make a game. Can we talk

1:00:46

about making a game? And I was

1:00:48

like, absolutely. That's like when Matt asks

1:00:50

you if he can be your partner.

1:00:52

The answer is yes. Right. Yes. Yes.

1:00:54

Yes. Let's do it. And so we

1:00:56

started talking and he is obsessed with

1:00:58

one of my games called poetry for

1:01:01

Neanderthals. And it's a really simple, really

1:01:03

fun game. in the top

1:01:05

five. And he just loves,

1:01:07

loves, loves that game. He plays it with

1:01:09

all his friends. He plays it all the time.

1:01:11

He's constantly sending me pictures of him playing

1:01:13

that game with his group of friends. And he

1:01:15

keeps saying like, I need a game at

1:01:17

least this good. And The first

1:01:19

few meetings were me just going

1:01:21

over to his place with suitcases full

1:01:23

of games, like all my favorites,

1:01:26

but they all tried to scratch that

1:01:28

same itch. Like, I know what's

1:01:30

great about poetry for Neanderthals. There's a

1:01:32

creativity component, it's heavily players entertaining

1:01:34

other players, and it's fast, funny. You

1:01:36

can learn it in one minute and

1:01:38

you play it in 10 minutes, right?

1:01:40

Like, I knew, I knew that was

1:01:42

his version of what success looks like.

1:01:44

And so we started playing a bunch

1:01:46

of games like that. And we started

1:01:48

honing in on what things he liked the

1:01:50

most, what games he liked the most, which ones

1:01:53

he didn't. And it fast became clear, okay,

1:01:56

none of these are right. Like not a single,

1:01:58

I must have shown him a hundred different games. the

1:02:00

answer was, yeah, none of these. At

1:02:02

one point we were on this walk, we'd

1:02:04

been walking for like six hours. And

1:02:07

at one point I was like, okay,

1:02:09

let's start as basic as it gets.

1:02:11

What if we started with Rock Paper

1:02:13

Scissors? Tim happens to like Rock

1:02:15

Paper Scissors and I was like, okay, Rock Paper

1:02:17

Scissors is actually no fun at all until you

1:02:19

play it a bunch of times. Playing Rock Paper

1:02:21

Scissors once is stupid, but playing it again, now

1:02:23

we're playing a game because now I'm thinking, what

1:02:25

did he do last time? What am I gonna

1:02:27

do this time? But he knows that I know

1:02:29

that he knows that I know, right? Like all

1:02:31

that stuff starts to kick in at game two

1:02:33

and it's not present at all in game number

1:02:35

one. So I was like, what if we

1:02:37

start there? Really, really basic. And

1:02:40

instead of three activities, rock, paper,

1:02:42

scissors, what if we had 25? And

1:02:45

what if there was a hierarchy between all

1:02:47

of those things? And what if we're all

1:02:49

playing at the exact same time? And we

1:02:51

just started with crazy statements like that. I

1:02:53

don't know what that game is. I don't know how

1:02:55

those things make sense. But his eyes lit up, and my

1:02:57

eyes lit up, and it was like, something? Okay,

1:03:00

what if also we made it rhythm -based,

1:03:02

and we ran to the house, and

1:03:04

we just started scribbling on cards, fast as

1:03:06

we could. My buddy, Ken Grewl, was there

1:03:08

too. was an incredibly talented designer. And

1:03:10

between the three of us, we just

1:03:12

started crafting cards as fast as we

1:03:14

could. And the first version of the

1:03:16

game, of course, sucked. But it was

1:03:18

at least something. It was at least

1:03:20

like, hey, We are playing

1:03:22

a game where every single person playing

1:03:24

this game has a task. You have

1:03:26

to do this symbol. You have to

1:03:28

do a peace sign. You have to

1:03:30

pretend you're a ballerina and you have

1:03:32

one second to do the right thing. And

1:03:35

we started playing around with, all right, that's

1:03:37

a little too easy. What if we made

1:03:39

that harder? What if we had to switch roles? What if every

1:03:41

role had a color and now we have to skip all

1:03:43

the red ones? What if we had to go twice as fast?

1:03:45

What if we had to whisper? What if we had to

1:03:47

shout? What if, what if, what if, what if? And we started

1:03:49

writing all these cards fast and furious. until

1:03:51

we eventually got to this

1:03:53

thing where we had been playing for like

1:03:56

four hours. And I looked around the room and

1:03:58

I was like, okay, anybody want to play again? And

1:04:00

both of them were like, hell yes. And

1:04:02

so we kept doing that. And then we started

1:04:04

to invite other friends over and they started

1:04:06

playing and we said, do you want to

1:04:08

play again? And they said, yes. And so

1:04:10

we just kept doing this thing, rinse and repeat,

1:04:12

remove a card, write a new card. I

1:04:14

use these blank cards. where

1:04:16

I can create them super fast. I buy these

1:04:18

like by the truckload on Amazon. did that

1:04:21

when we were at Sean's event. You basically, you

1:04:23

were literally on your hands and needs like

1:04:25

dealing out cards. That's right. then you were

1:04:27

like, you know, I don't like this one. And

1:04:29

you pull that like a blank card and

1:04:31

you had a pen and you like wrote new

1:04:33

rules. I live and breathe those cards because

1:04:35

you know, it's beautiful without those cards. They're not

1:04:37

just cards. Like obviously you can use them

1:04:40

to make any game you want. But like, let's

1:04:42

say you need a six -sided die. right? And

1:04:44

you don't have a six -sided die. You've got

1:04:46

six cards, right? One, two, three, four, five, six on

1:04:48

the cards and shuffle them up and draw one.

1:04:50

Now you got a six -sided die, right? Like if

1:04:52

you need a board, you can make it out of

1:04:54

a grid of cards. If you need a spinner,

1:04:56

you can make that out of cards. Like I walk

1:04:58

around, my backpack is so much heavier than it

1:05:00

should be because it's loaded with blank cards because I

1:05:02

never know when the next idea is coming. You

1:05:05

have this quite great quote. You said, I took a week

1:05:07

-long skydiving course and at the end of it, I asked

1:05:09

the instructor, do you ever get bored of this? And

1:05:11

the guy said, Do you ever get bored

1:05:13

of having sex?" And I thought, that's exactly

1:05:15

it. This is how I feel about

1:05:17

games. That's how I feel about

1:05:19

this job. It's not the thing with

1:05:21

an expiration. It's a little dopamine factory for me

1:05:23

and the people who get to have these

1:05:25

experiences. I don't know how you can get

1:05:27

bored of that and it's just eternal. So

1:05:29

that was a quote that you had and

1:05:32

I read that. It's like, I want to

1:05:34

feel that way about just anything in my life. I

1:05:36

know, right? I know. Like, you know, like you see

1:05:38

kids playing with bubbles, and you're like, I wish I

1:05:40

felt any way about this kid, how this feels about

1:05:42

bubbles. And I see this, and I'm like, Elon's,

1:05:45

he's got the answer. This guy

1:05:47

has, this is the answer to

1:05:49

life. Go ahead. I was at

1:05:52

an airport, and our flight had

1:05:54

just been canceled. It was so terrible

1:05:56

because everyone was miserable. Last flight out,

1:05:58

they're starting to hand out hotels, but

1:06:00

they're like, hey, the flight might come

1:06:02

back, so everyone's got to stay in the

1:06:04

terminal for hours and hours and hours.

1:06:06

And every hour, they delayed us again, and

1:06:08

it was awful. And everyone is miserable.

1:06:10

Everyone is miserable, and they're frowning, and they're

1:06:13

grumpy, and they're screaming at the port

1:06:15

gate agent, and it's awful, except... this group

1:06:17

of six kids sitting in the corner

1:06:19

giggling and laughing. And I could not help

1:06:21

myself. I had to walk up and

1:06:23

see what they were doing. And of course

1:06:25

they're playing Exploding Kittens. And I remember

1:06:27

thinking like, this is

1:06:29

it. Like this, all the chemicals going through

1:06:31

my body right now, like this is

1:06:33

why I have this job. This is the

1:06:35

greatest feeling in the world. And I

1:06:37

just want to keep delivering this every opportunity

1:06:40

I have. That's

1:06:42

so good. I was gonna say, you

1:06:44

know, my, I have these kind of people

1:06:46

I admire for different reasons. So it's like,

1:06:48

know, you can admire a great athlete for

1:06:50

how they, how disciplined they are, how they

1:06:52

train the body, how they just, they just

1:06:54

never give up, right? Or you can admire

1:06:56

Elon for, you know, thinking big and sort

1:06:58

of defying the odds and really going all

1:07:00

in on his bets and being like, you

1:07:02

know what? I need to have that all

1:07:04

in mode. And you're to me on this,

1:07:06

like, on that very short

1:07:09

list of people because you build

1:07:11

things for the joy and from a

1:07:14

place of joy. You're like a more pure

1:07:16

artist, I think, as your career. I

1:07:18

see you as, know, you're not like a CEO who's

1:07:20

got a ballpoint pen. You're an artist with a brush. And

1:07:23

then the second part of

1:07:25

it is like the limitless thinking

1:07:27

in terms of there's kind of nothing out

1:07:29

of bounds. Like, yeah, okay, I can register myself

1:07:31

as a grocer or we can create this

1:07:33

vending machine that what if it distributed any item,

1:07:35

right? Like I would be scared to go

1:07:37

there. because how and what if, what if things

1:07:40

go wrong? And I think you just think

1:07:42

about things a little bit differently. That inspires me.

1:07:44

And then the last bit is like the

1:07:46

simplicity, like figuring out when you

1:07:48

look at something like, oh, the game

1:07:50

is fun, not because the game itself

1:07:52

is fun, because it makes the players

1:07:54

fun. It's like, oh, that explains charades

1:07:56

and Pictionary and all the games I

1:07:58

grew up playing thousands of times and not

1:08:00

just once or twice. It's because of

1:08:02

that core insight or, you know,

1:08:04

instead of doing focus groups and surveys, you're like,

1:08:06

One question, you want to play the game again,

1:08:09

that simplicity. So to me,

1:08:11

those are the three big things that you

1:08:13

do that I'm like, if I can get

1:08:15

10 % of

1:08:17

what you're doing there, I level up if

1:08:19

I do that. I love to

1:08:21

hear that. But I'll also say

1:08:23

it doesn't just have to apply to games. I

1:08:26

remember during COVID,

1:08:29

all of our plants shut down.

1:08:31

And once stuff comes in

1:08:33

from China, it goes into these

1:08:35

giant warehouses and it has

1:08:37

to be unboxed and then repackaged

1:08:39

with all the correct labeling

1:08:41

and then off it goes to

1:08:44

all the retailers. And

1:08:46

during COVID, no one could go

1:08:48

into those facilities. Like they just

1:08:50

wouldn't allow anybody in and that was going to

1:08:52

tank our business. there's

1:08:54

no way for us to survive

1:08:56

zero sales for, you know, six

1:08:58

or 12 or two years, right?

1:09:01

Like no way to do it.

1:09:03

And so most games companies shut

1:09:05

down for at least a little

1:09:07

while there. And I remember thinking

1:09:09

like there, this is a no.

1:09:11

Like this, absolutely people are telling me

1:09:13

no. So to use the earlier

1:09:15

quote, like, so I must be asking

1:09:17

the wrong question. And instead of calling these

1:09:19

warehouse owners over and over again, saying,

1:09:21

when are you opening your doors? When are

1:09:23

you opening your doors? I finally asked

1:09:25

a different question. It was, what

1:09:28

are you doing with your parking lots? And

1:09:30

the answer was nothing, because nobody's

1:09:32

at work, so our parking lots

1:09:34

are empty. And was like, cool,

1:09:36

can I park three 18 -wheeler trucks in

1:09:38

your parking lot? And they said, sure,

1:09:41

why not? And so I brought the

1:09:43

games over in these 18 -wheeler trucks

1:09:45

and I had one person per truck

1:09:47

go inside and repackage our games because

1:09:49

all I needed was the space. It

1:09:51

occurred to me, I didn't need the

1:09:53

warehouse, I just need the square footage.

1:09:55

And they've got that in their parking

1:09:57

lot and there's no restrictions there. There's

1:09:59

only restrictions inside the facility. And the

1:10:01

reason I bring that up is

1:10:03

because that's just a game,

1:10:05

right? Like that's just somebody saying, here's

1:10:07

a roadblock. Everybody else is saying,

1:10:10

ah, a roadblock. I can't get through

1:10:12

this roadblock. It's time to shut

1:10:14

down my business. When the reality is,

1:10:16

just ask a different question. There's a different

1:10:18

way through this roadblock if you're willing to

1:10:21

play the game. I used to have this

1:10:23

high school cross -country coach that was like, I'm going

1:10:25

to teach you all about running and everything, but

1:10:27

I'm really trying to teach you about this other

1:10:29

pastime that we have called life. And

1:10:32

that's sort of how I feel about

1:10:34

you and this podcast is you came

1:10:36

to talk a little bit about business,

1:10:38

a little bit about creativity, but

1:10:41

we're really learning like a good way

1:10:43

to live. That makes

1:10:45

me so happy. To be

1:10:47

passionate, to be passionate about what

1:10:49

we, about certain things we're doing, to find

1:10:52

the positive, to look positively and things

1:10:54

that could potentially be negative and to solve

1:10:56

problems in creative ways. You're

1:10:58

awesome. We appreciate you. Thank you so much

1:11:00

for saying that. Hey, where should people follow

1:11:02

you? Because I'm following you on TikTok, where

1:11:04

you're doing like, it's amazing. I

1:11:06

don't understand. Have you seen his TikToks? No,

1:11:08

I'm not 12, so I don't use TikTok. Well,

1:11:11

you should, because I need

1:11:13

to live more like him and

1:11:15

be positive thinking. Here's what's

1:11:17

happening. Basically, the world's

1:11:19

best game designer is on TikTok, teaching

1:11:22

people how to design games, little

1:11:24

simple tricks and tips in like 30

1:11:26

-second nuggets, and it'll get

1:11:28

like... views, because TikTok's algorithm doesn't know

1:11:30

yet who they're messing with. And

1:11:32

I can't believe it's like, you

1:11:35

couldn't pay. I could not pay you

1:11:37

for this type of information. Dude, you

1:11:39

only have 170 followers. I

1:11:42

just started doing this. Here's what I

1:11:44

realized. I teach these

1:11:46

classes at my company. Once

1:11:48

a week and we will tackle whatever topic. Here's

1:11:50

how we write instructions. Here's what we put on

1:11:52

the front of the box. Here's what we put

1:11:54

on the back of the box Here's game design

1:11:56

like all over and over and over again, and

1:11:58

we don't record any of them and I kind

1:12:00

of realized like hi This is all

1:12:02

gonna just disappear like nobody's recording it. I

1:12:04

have no motivation to record it So

1:12:06

I hired a social media team and all

1:12:09

they are they it's like it's like

1:12:11

hiring a trainer at a gym They come

1:12:13

over once a week and they force

1:12:15

me to have a camera on me and

1:12:17

give the same class that I gave

1:12:19

at the company just for free online. And

1:12:22

so we've been recording them and posting them.

1:12:24

And it's, yeah, like you said, nobody knows

1:12:26

they're there yet, but if you've ever wanted

1:12:28

to learn how to make a game, or

1:12:30

more importantly, how to apply those lessons to

1:12:32

anything in the whole wide world, because it's

1:12:34

all applicable, I'm gonna just keep

1:12:36

posting these things. Are you gonna

1:12:38

give your team some constraint? Like, you

1:12:42

know, without any money, and only

1:12:44

teaching creativity lessons. Without making

1:12:46

me dance on TikTok. Yeah,

1:12:48

like get this to 500 ,000 views per

1:12:50

video. Yeah, I should absolutely do that. Is

1:12:52

that what the constraints would be? Basically,

1:12:55

that's what the concerns would be. It

1:12:57

would be how to stay true

1:12:59

to what I want to deliver

1:13:01

without dancing. But yeah,

1:13:03

how to increase the viewership on this. And

1:13:05

to be fair, nobody has been tasked with

1:13:08

that yet. My goal for the last, I

1:13:10

don't know, it's been probably like two months

1:13:12

has just been, let me just create the

1:13:14

content, put it in a place, and then

1:13:16

once it's there, then it's probably worth promoting

1:13:18

because now there's enough there to make it

1:13:20

worthwhile. You're

1:13:23

badass. You're awesome. You got the

1:13:25

googly eyes from us. All

1:13:28

right, shout out. Where should people follow you?

1:13:30

Just shout out your handles. Yeah, if

1:13:32

you just search for the kind of hub of

1:13:34

everything is just Ilan Lee on YouTube. That's where

1:13:36

I'm putting the long form stuff. And then

1:13:38

from there, it links out to all of the

1:13:40

TikToks and Instagrams and everything else where you can

1:13:42

find it in shorter form. Awesome. Thanks

1:13:44

for coming on, dude. It's such a

1:13:47

pleasure. Thanks for having me. And yeah,

1:13:49

just a huge fan. I'm so, so grateful.

1:13:51

that you wanted to chat with me.

1:13:53

What a thrill. Of course. By

1:13:55

the way, look at how many games are behind

1:13:57

them, just within site right there. Isn't

1:14:00

that ridiculous? Yeah, that's one of two shelves.

1:14:02

There's another one over there that's equally

1:14:04

packed. We've got 90

1:14:06

games now. We have 60

1:14:08

games, but 90 total because

1:14:10

there's like weird expansions and

1:14:12

variations and stuff. Yeah,

1:14:15

it's stupid. It doesn't

1:14:17

make any sense to me anymore. All

1:14:21

right,

1:14:23

thank you,

1:14:25

man.

1:14:27

That's it.

1:14:29

That's

1:14:31

a pod

1:14:33

Hey Sean

1:14:37

here, I want to take a minute to tell you

1:14:39

a David Ogilvy story one of the great ad

1:14:41

men he said remember The consumer is not a moron,

1:14:43

she's your wife. You wouldn't lie

1:14:45

to your own wife, so don't lie to mine.

1:14:47

And I love that. You guys, you're my family, you're like

1:14:49

my wife, and I won't lie to you either, so

1:14:51

I'll tell you the truth. For every company

1:14:53

I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury

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for all of them. So I'm proud to partner

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with Mercury because I use it for all of

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remember, Mercury is a financial technology company,

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1:15:27

the episode.