The Board Game Billionaire: From a $10k Kickstarter to $100M/Year Business

0:00 We launched this thing saying, All right, let's let's aim for ten thousand dollars. We hit our ten thousand dollar goal in seven minutes. And in the first forty eight hours, we had two million dollars. After that. is when the story gets really interesting. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to

0:19 I'm putting my all in it like my day's all on the roadless travel never. Okay, well good. Uh Sam, do you want me to kick it off? Yeah. Wait, well, yeah, I do. First of all, Sean, how did you guys even come to the same world? Craig. So we invited Craig to the event. Because Craig's one of my favorite people, even though he doesn't play basketball, we're like Craig, you gotta be there. You're the the the exemption, you know, y y y you're not the basketball guy, but we just want you there. For sure.

0:43 We told him what it was. He got excited and he goes, I have somebody who I think should come. And we were like, Okay, great, who's the plus one? And He he was I guess you how long have you guys been friends? It's gotta be a decade now. It's so funny'cause he called me up and he's like, Okay, I have the weirdest invitation ever. It's a basketball event

1:02 But I'm not going to be playing basketball. And I was like Okay. Uh that's as weird as it gets. And then we started talking and I'm so glad I went. It was amazing. Yeah, that's actually a big leap of faith for you'cause you know, we know Craig, so obviously, you know, there's a personal connection there. What what did he say that made you get off the couch for that? It's uh random. He didn't he honestly didn't give me many details, but Um In general, Craig is one of those people on this list I have where if he says to try something, I just try it and don't ask questions. There's only like four people on that list, but he's on there. So I'm so glad I did it.

1:36 Exactly. Uh and ever since we met you at that event, I was like, Okay, we have to have you on because you blew us away. Just to give people context. All right, so there's a room full of people. Imagine twenty five we try to invite the twenty five most interesting Ambitious People that we could find. Also.

1:52 Love to play basketball in this case. And um the room is like I mean, it's basically like Thirty percent billionaire. And so there's a lot of successful people in that room. And I would say you blew us away the most. You gave this talk that really kind of inspired us. And I would say you blew us away for three reasons. Number one. Your business is a j like a giant dragon. But it's looks like a playful cute dragon. And so you don't people don't look at it and think, wow, this is a juggernaut. You have a board games company. If anybody's ever seen the the games like Exploding Kittens

2:22 That's your game. And Not only is that your game, you were telling us we were like, so like of the top games, like, you know, is yours number one? And you I don't know if I want to paraphrase you exactly, but you go We have number one. Two, four, and five of the top five sold games in the world. And I just thought that was incredible. So you have this huge business, but You have this artist spirit where you're

2:47 the nicest guy and you're creatively driven. It didn't seem like you got into this for the money. You got into this to have fun and you gave this talk. At night, this little presentation, a little ten minute presentation that blew us all away. So That's why I wanted you to be here. You can respond to that and then Sam, I want to hear your impressions too before we jump in. Uh

3:06 Well, first of all, e even before like I would just love to say th that is so flattering. Like I showed up to that event Like about as fish out of water as it gets. And imposter syndrome, like, you know, dripping out my ears. It was just This this room is filled with incredible people. And Um

3:26 Sean, I think it was you. I think I think the very first few minutes Um, I remember Uh I I I I asked I asked you like

3:35 Why are we here? Like what is this thing? And you're the Best answer ever. Everyone in this room is smarter than I am. I'm gonna spend the next three days learning as much as I can. I hope you're here for the same reasons. And I was just like

3:48 Holy crap. I have found my tribe. Here's where I want to be. This is so great. There was one moment when I was with you in the sauna. And you asked me and maybe Austin Ree for someone uh like that. Uh you're like Can I get your guys' opinion on something? And you like expressed like you know, opinions on an investor conversation, something you're like, can you just give me your take on this and we give you our opinions. And you asked the question in a way where

4:15 I thought I was helping you. And then I was like, How big is your business? And then you said the numbers Why are you asking me this question? Like you are you you it's so funny you win the award for most humble person because you're acting like you are in this room of big shots when like Of all the people there, you were the big shot. Are you able to give any numbers? Whatever you're comfortable with to give the audience a sense of how big exploding kittens is. Like if it's valuation, game sold, revenue, anything you want.

4:45 I I have to be A little careful'cause we have investors who who like to keep it under wraps. But I'll I'll tell you this. We sell we did this math. This was so ridiculous. We sell a game Every six point four seconds. Round the clock. And

5:03 Our first like we started our company on Kickstarter um in thirty days. We were trying to raise ten thousand dollars, we raised almost nine million instead. Our first Um Our first print run. was 700,000 units. And that was mind blowing. Like how the hell do you print seven hundred thousand games? And for scale, I'll tell you that is Today.

5:25 Like so such a tiny print order for us. Like I wouldn't even consider printing that many'cause they'd sell out so fast it wouldn't even be worth our while. One of the coolest things was when you took us we went to Target. And uh Walmart. And we were walking around the store and you took us to the games aisle of a target. And you were just kind of breaking it down, like this shelf.

5:47 A shelf that I've walked by hundreds of times. Don't really pay much you know, I don't even think about it. I just I either buy something or I don't. I don't think about the business of the shelf. And you talked about this sort of like You know, this sort of six foot Six foot uh space.

6:02 And It was like this shelf is like I I mean I won't use your numbers, but I'll just give it a generic idea of like This shelf is like hundreds of millions of dollars. And every inch of this shelf for Target, the way they think is like sales per square inch or something like that. And you were describing how that works. And then you were like Yeah, you know, I'm trying to figure out our Walmart sale. So I'm gonna go work as a Walmart associate for the next few weeks.

6:25 Just to get kind of an on the ground look. And not like a marketing stunt. You were like, No, I genuinely want to know. So And you said you were gonna do that right after our event. Did you end up doing it? Yeah. They postpone it. This honestly, this this tariff thing right now has turned everything into quite turmoil. Uh it looks like it's going to now be scheduled for September. So uh I'll be going to Arkansas to work at Walmart for a bit. Um but the whole reason it's you're right, it's not a stunt. Like my goal isn't like, hey, I wanna tell the world about this and and get publicity. Like

6:57 In order to sell products at any retail location, you have to understand the customer and you have to understand when they're walking into a space, what are they looking for? And what turns them off and what turns them on. And if they pick up a game and then put it back, why did they put it back? And it's not So much of it. is contextual. It's not necessarily the game, right? It's not necessarily I looked at this game and it wasn't for me. It's I looked at this game and then something else caught my eye. So I put this down and I picked it up. And and those are the stories I need to hear in order to be as successful as possible. And I just figured finally like the only way I'm gonna get this is by living there and spending as long as it takes to talk to people and figure out like, why'd you put that game down? Why'd you pick that one up? Why'd you walk in here to begin with? And uh yeah, I just think I have so much to learn. I'm really excited to do it.

7:42 How big is the company uh in terms of employees and how old is it? Company is we just had our 10 year anniversary, so we just turned 10. We got about a hundred employees, a little less. Um And um Yeah, we're we're based out of Los Angeles, although we've got offices uh in Canada and in Europe and kinda all over the place. Everywhere we have a distribution center, we also have an office.

8:08 So give us the origin story. So how do you How did you do this? Why did you why did you decide to create a board game? And then how did you do this Kickstarter that blew everybody's socks off? You and you set out to raise ten K instead you raised nine million or something like that. And then Now it's this company that's Making Yeah. I don't know exactly how much make it, but you don't have to confirm or deny.

8:30 But I'll just put it out there. I think you've built a billion dollar games company and in a space that I think most people The cool part is most people think you either are gonna choose something for the money I gotta go do the sweaty B to B You know, business, H R tech, whatever. Or I'm gonna have fun. I'm gonna build something cool that's fun that will give people delight and joy.

8:50 You got both. You did both. You did the fun thing and you ended up with the money prize too. That's what I love about your story. And so How the heck did this happen? Can you just tell us the kind of origins? Sure. Yeah. It's a bizarre story. So Um I used to work I I've been designing games my whole life, but the the most notable place I worked was at the Xbox. I was the Uh chief design officer there, building games for the Xbox for

9:14 Ever. Um And I remember one day so one day I uh my my brother, he's got two kids and I love them. My niece and nephew, they're the best. And uh Zeke and Kiki. And I I walked over to their house. I was so excited to see them. And

9:32 Um They were playing Xbox when I walked in. And I was like, hey, how's everybody doing? And they like didn't even look up, like didn't even acknowledge my existence. And to add insult to injury, they were playing a game that I designed. And I was like Oh I've broken something so fundamental here. Like this just feels wrong.

9:52 And Within two weeks. I resigned from Xbox and thought Whatever I do next, it has to capture what I remember.

10:03 In my childhood, right? Like when I think about playing games, you know, other than the NES, there really weren't any consoles at all. So we were playing around a table. And we were cheating and kicking each other under the table and throwing food and and making all those like alliances and and betraying each other and all this fun stuff. I don't even remember what the games were. I remember the relationships. And it's because we like looked each other in the eye and we and we like could lie right to each other's faces or, you know, secretly conspire to make, you know, my younger brother lose that was uh a favorite activity. But I remember all these really fun Things that were, I think, very formative for me. And so When I resigned, I thought I wanna return to that.

10:44 And certainly the first step is really simple. I'm just gonna design this very simple card game. And see like Kickstarter exists. I'll put this thing up on Kickstarter. I'll try to raise just a little tiny bit of money. What's a little bit? Like Ten thousand dollars, you thought? Ten thousand dollars. And ten thousand dollars wasn't an arbitrary number. I like I called up a printer and I said, look I wanna do this thing, what's the minimum print run? And he said, You gotta print out, you know, I think it was like four hundred units. And I was like, Okay, well how much does that cost? And it came out to just about ten thousand dollars and I was like, Cool, there we go. And this was really all because of you felt some type of guilt about your uh your family being using screens? Yeah, I felt like I was on the wrong path. I felt like I was part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Was that a big th like were you getting wealthy from that j I mean, chief design officer sounds like you're

11:33 Yeah. That's a big deal. If you had asked me then, the answer would have been yes. Uh now my scale is a little bit different. And and and so when you when you do this, you've never made a card game before, right? You've never something you grew up doing. You can use your scale, you're a beginner at this stage. Totally. Literally my first try. But the stakes are so low, right? Like if I'm just gonna be making a few hundred units, even if the thing is totally broken, that's okay. People, you know, they're gonna pay twenty bucks for this thing. They know this is my first time ever trying this. Like this will be easy. Right.

12:04 And um I showed the game. Uh to a bunch of friends. And one of those friends was Matthew Itman. And he is the creator of the oatmeal. Uh the online comic.

12:15 It's like the funniest guy I know and he's like He's the audience whisperer. Like he knows how to command a crowd and he knows how to get their attention and he knows how to keep them engaged and just This incredible brilliant mind. And I showed him this game. And he said, uh what's it called? And I said it's called Bomb Squad. Because

12:34 We got a deck of cards and there's a few bombs in the deck, and those are the bad ones. We try to avoid the bombs and all you're trying to do is get through the deck and not draw a bomb. And he said a few things. He said one, um This is the best game I've ever played. I would really, really like to work on this with you. Will you please let me work on this with you? And I was like Yes. Like hell yes. If if the O'Neal ever asks you if he can work on a game with you, your answer is yes. Like holy crap, what an opportunity. And he said, Cool. Um the second thing is

13:03 We can't Call it Bomb Squad. It's too obvious. Like bombs are bad. Of course you're scared of the bomb. There's bombs in the deck. You're scared of the bombs. It's called Bomb Squad. Who cares? You're gonna forget that in five seconds. What if instead The thing that you were most scared of were cute, adorable, fuzzy little kittens and we'll call the game exploding kittens instead. And

13:24 That's really the origin story. Like that one simple conversation. happened to meet the right person at the right time and we decided to collaborate on this thing. And then we have the discussion with the distributor, and he's like, Matt said, We're gonna make we're gonna do more than four hundred units. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know. Uh this is uh this is totally risky. Neither of us have ever made a game before. And so a friend of mine, a guy named Dan Shapiro, he runs Glowforge, he gave me this incredible advice. When I was talking to him about what number to set our Kickstarter campaign, he said look When this campaign runs

13:57 You had no control. Like there's gonna be stor hopefully stories written about your campaign, but you don't control Any of them. They get to set the narrative and you just sort of hold on. But what you can control Are the stories that are like tried to raise X instead raised Y hit their goal in X minutes, right? All of these statistidata driven stories.

14:19 You control those by setting that one number that you have control over, setting that at the appropriate place. And he was totally right. And so we set it at ten thousand, knowing this is probably a little low, but it is the truthful minimum that we need for our order minimum. And now we can control those stories. Were any of you guys like famous back then? Uh I know the I know what the oatmeal is, but is that like big enough where you're like Uh where he's like dude, I'll blow this up just like

14:45 Tell me when it it turns out the answer is yes, but none of us really knew it at the time. So like We launched this thing saying, All right, let's let's aim for ten thousand dollars. Because of Matt, Matt made a single post saying, Hey, Omeo fans, for the first time ever I made a game.

15:01 I'm really proud of it. I hope you like it. Here it is. And We hit our ten thousand dollar goal in seven minutes. And it's Because of Matt, а hundred percent of Matt. He made one post.

15:12 hit hit ten thousand dollars and then within the first twelve hours, maybe, maybe it was closer to twenty four, 10 years ago, uh we we raised a million dollars. A hundred percent because of Matt. And in the first forty eight hours we had two million dollars a hundred percent because of Matt. After that. Is when the story gets really interesting because

15:34 Forty eight hours in, all the oatmeal fans that are gonna back this thing have backed it. Right. They've seen his post. They know what uh they know they're interested in this thing, or they decide they're not interested in this thing and they've either purchased it or not. And that's it. The sales price on that is two million dollars. Amazing. Like We are off to the races. We can do anything now. We've raised two million dollars. And Matt and I sat down and we're like, Okay

15:57 We now have a choice. Either. We can say we have raised two million dollars. That is one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history in the games category. And we can just kinda ride this thing out, knowing that we're not gonna raise much more than that. Maybe we'll get to two point five and we'll declare that a huge victory.

16:15 Or We can bet it all. Like what if we just went absolutely crazy and deploy every marketing strategy either of us have ever heard of? And we shook hands and said Let's do it. Like let's let's try as as big and as bold as this thing can possibly be.

16:33 And on Kickstarter, they've got these things called stretch goals, right? We win our game. But If we get I don't know. We've raised$10,000. If instead we raise twenty thousand dollars, everybody gets a free carrying case. Fifty thousand dollars, we're gonna add ten more uh cards into the game.

16:48 Stretch goals, right? They're trying to motivate people to back the project. I sat down and I thought This whole thing is crowdfunding. And all of those stretch goals, every strategy I've read, every YouTube video I've watched, everything is based on funding. Like they ignore the crow part and they're just Like laser focus on funding, funding, funding, funding.

17:11 And I was like, I think that's backwards. I think instead we're gonna ignore the funding because we've already got two million bucks. And let's just focus on the crow part. And instead of doing traditional stretch goals, all of our stretch goals were based on the crowd. So we're like look. We don't care about money anymore. Don't give us any more money. We don't want any more money. Nothing we talk about from now on is gonna be about money because the funding doesn't matter. Let's have a party and everyone is invited.

17:37 So we're like, look, we're gonna do those same things. We're also gonna give you a carrying case and ten extra cards and all that fun stuff, but it's not based on how much money you give us. It's based on how much fun you have. So Show us a picture of Ten. Batman's in a hot tub.

17:52 Whatever the hell that means, show us a picture of that. Or show us a picture of a hundred people dressed up as cats. Or show us the craziest and most interesting things you can come up with. And every time you do that, we're gonna make the game better. And you're not gonna pay us more. We're just gonna make the game better because this is fun and we've already raised enough money. Let's have a party. And we did that for the next 28 days. And we watched our numbers. Just skyrocket.

18:17 I'm gonna focus on the crowd part here, right? Like we had I don't know, let's say we had a thousand backers at that point. By the end of this thing, we had two hundred and nineteen thousand backers for this campaign. That is so far in first place of any Kickstarter campaign in history. To date, it's been ten years and no one's even come close to that record. And it's Because we said

18:41 So Funding is completely irrelevant. All that matters is the crowd. The funding was a really nice side effect, though. But it was eight. And half million dollars that you got. Well yeah, there was that too. So wait, give us an example. So you said uh ten Batman and a bathtub. What were the other things that you did to get the crowd. Yeah, we said so one of the characters in our game is called Taco Cat, um, which is my favorite character, right? Taco Cat is a palindrome, spell Taco Cat backwards, and you've still got Taco Cat. So we had this adorable character and we said, look We don't actually know what Taco Cat is, but show us twenty five pictures of real taco cats and we'll make the game better. When you say show us, do you mean like post in the comment section? Yeah, post. It was basically just like uh an online message board that you were using. And whatever social media platform you wanted, we just said, you know, cop uh tag us on it, and that's all we care about.

19:27 And so that was the virality. They were posting a image that didn't make any sense in the feed and they tag you guys. That got people curious that to go check you out. Why have you stuffed your cat into a burrito? What is happening here? And on and on those pictures went. One, we had this um veterinarian who worked in an animal shelter, and she showed us all she did was she had a picture of her holding this adorable cat and a piece of paper. And the piece of paper showed that she had legally changed the cat's name to Taco Cat for real. And we're like All right, that's about as real a taco cat as it gets, so we gave credit for that one as well. And it just It went on and on and on like that for thirty days. Every time we thought, here's a challenge way too hard. Uh, they absolutely smash them. And then we would just our challenge was every day, how do we come up with five new challenges that's gonna keep everyone entertained?

20:16 You have these little one liners. That are like What if instead of the funding we focused on the crowd? It's like this like simple idea that then you And then you run with them. So it's like that if I was gonna d describe you, I'd say He takes silly ideas very seriously.

20:31 Take take a simple idea and take it seriously. I think yours is take a silly idea. And take it seriously. You do that with your games, you do that with your with your marketing campaigns. And you did this when we were at the event. We do this thing where we put everybody on the hot seat and let's say somebody's like A real estate mogul.

20:49 We'll just Instead of saying, Hey, t tell us about your business, we'll just say All right, so how do you make a billion dollars in real estate? Well what's the secret? And like in your case, like what's the secret? How do you make Hit game after hit game after hit game in a hits business that normally sounds like something that's uh just a game of chance, but you're doing it again and again and again. You must know something. And you said a great line.

21:10 Uh, can you can you describe your philosophy around games?'Cause you said it in a one liner that just stuck with me. Yeah, oh I love that you focused on this one. Um so the line is Uh games should not be entertaining. Game should make the people you're playing with entertaining. And that

21:25 Simple line. I I remember the first time we pitched it to our investors, we're like, g we're not going to make entertaining games. And they're like Never say that again. Like never put that in any piece of writing ever. And instead we put it as the first pa as the first line on our webpage because Games should not be entertaining. If you're making an entertaining game, you're trying way too hard and it's you versus the audience, which means when you're done entertaining them, they're gonna go away and never come back. If instead of

21:53 Your goal is I'm just making a tool set. My tool set is going to make the people that you are playing with the entertainment. Suddenly, you've got an engine. Suddenly, every time they play it's different. Suddenly they constantly want to come back. They want to play it over and over again. They want to take it to new friends' house. You make a piece of cardboard, right? A deck of cards, you've m turned that into a viral engine. And that's the secret to success in the board game industry. But that sort of is like going to the Met and seeing a Picasso and being like Dude, it's just like scribbly lines. Like this is unimpressive.

22:27 You dismissing it. As just a But It doesn't explain why your company's potentially worth billions of dollars and makes potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. What is actually happening because

22:40 We've had all these Rich and Successful billionaires on the pod and I'll meet them and I'm like, Oh, you're really nice and then I start thinking like Well no, this guy's a shark. Like you must be a shark to be this successful. So like

22:52 What else are you not tell what are you not telling us that that uh has allowed this company to become a potentially Allegedly multi-billion dollar company. Yeah. Well, one is you have to do it consistently, which is hard, right? But How do you tell if your game is a tool set to make people entertaining? And like unless you have the the litmus test, right, unless you can quantify the data that you're putting in those boxes. Like then it's just a theory. And I remember we started taking submissions from external inventors.

23:24 And um I just eventually started rubber stamping them with Here's why we're rejecting you. Because This you're trying too hard to be entertaining. It was incredible, like hundreds of these submissions, and every every game designer was making the same mistake where they're like

23:40 I am building an entertaining thing. And I kept having to remind them we're not buying entertaining things. And eventually we found like one or two inventors we could work with. Um, and then I had to design all the others, which is totally cool because I know what I'm looking for. But How do you test it? Like how do I know that I'm hitting that mark way before the thing hits the market? Because by then we could have already screwed it up.

24:02 So I figured out one bit of quantifiable data that lets me back up that claim. When I say a game is not entertaining, it makes the players entertaining, I can back that up. And the way I can back it up is In our testing procedure We we have um we have this this group of four hundred families called the Kitty Test Pilots. And all we do is we send them games all day long and we ask for feedback.

24:26 And it used to be we would send them this crazy Google form. We're like, How long did you play? How many players? How old are they? What was your favorite part? What was the part you hated? What part needs work? You know, on and on and on, like 30, 40 questions. And I realized like Nobody's reading these. Like I'm I'm I don't even care about what this isn't by the time I finish reading their answers to this questionnaire, I haven't actually learned anything about whether or not this game has made the players entertaining. And so Uh we now send out a questionnaire.

24:55 And it has one question on it. Just one. Start to finish. One question. And that question is. Do you want to play again? And I have found that that question Is the

25:07 most direct heat seeking missile to answer the question, have you made the players entertaining? Because if a game is entertaining, you have extracted almost all the entertainment from it on your first time tri through. But if the players are entertaining, you want to play again. And we only now ship games where a hundred percent of that question's answer is yes. we get even a single no, we dive into that person and we watch the videos and we figure out what happened there because They should want to play again.

25:38 And if they don't, we've got something to fix. I think the most successful people Sean, have you ever studied like personality Tests and like oh and read about disagree. Uh agreeableness and how

25:51 the people who are most successful rank very low on agreeableness. Disagreeable is a positive trait for founders. Yeah, because like the very simple example is you just are un you you don't accept how things are done, you disagree with that, therefore you want to go make your own. Mm-hmm. Oftentimes people who rank high on disagreeableness.

26:11 Are jerks. You Uh Alan, do not you are not a jerk. You are a objectively a sweet Person. But you seem like you are hiding this um

26:24 this uh disagreeableness because Uh like, for example, you have incredibly high standards, or you just made a survey where uh us if a a lot of staff might be like, Well, we have to ask ten questions, we can't just ask one question. But you're like, No, no. You see, this makes sense for this reason. Do people enjoy working with you um because Like

26:44 I guess I'm fascinated on how your ability to be disagreeable, but also polite. And it seems very effective. Um It depends on who you ask. So I think I think my team likes working with me. At at the very least, very few people ever quit. Um

26:59 But If you were to ask our printers, if you're ask our distribution partners, I think they hate working with me. Like despise it. And and the reason is because I am absolutely a perfectionist. Like what I do for a living is make little boxes of joy. And if you open a box and there's something obvious wrong with it, or the card quality is not where it should be, or like

27:21 The In exploding kittens. You don't know which card is an exploding kitten. It has to be a surprise, right? And and That means the backs of every card have to be identical. And if I can detect one degree off in the pan in the pantone registry of this card versus this one.

27:38 I'm sending the entire I don't care how many millions are in that shipment. I'm sending every single one of them back and I'm not paying a penny and you are gonna reprint them for me. So they hate me. And I get it. But Also, I don't think the company would be where it is today if I said, Yeah, we'll we'll just ship it that way and the next run will be better. I love that. You also have a approach to marketing.

28:01 That I think is very different. than most founders. It was really inspiring to me when I started to hear these stories. Can you talk about Some of the unconventional hustle things. Cause if I'm listening to this right now, I'm like Okay, cool. So he was like had a cool j like a sick job at Xbox, he quit.

28:18 First game, first hit wonder, hit exploding kittens, which is like the number one game in the world for I don't know how many years now. Oh, his buddy happened to be the oatmeal guy, so he had instant distribution. Must be nice, right? I'll I'll just be YouTube comment guy for a second. Yo must be nice to be uh, you know, to have have connected, powerful friends. Oh, that's why I'm not successful. Right? That's I think where most people land with stuff like that. What they don't know is that first there's all this That that person's not just your friend. There's actually like luck that you create along the way to create uh uh those types of opportunities.

28:50 Um So y either you could talk about that or you could talk about some of the hustle tactics you guys did, like the vending machine, like the other stuff you guys have done that Where you We're not just like Handed.

29:02 The keys to the to the castle, but you actually like scraped your way there. Yeah, yeah. I mean look the company you've just described is a company that would disappear in Eight months, right? Like there's no longevity to that at all. So once you have a hit game, which Requires a lot of luck, but also a lot of skill.

29:21 Once you've gotten that Now the skill really has to kick in because now you have to make sure that thing doesn't disappear. Now you have to make sure your next 10 games are also successful. You need to make sure your profit margin on each game is where it should be. You need to make sure you build a community on and on and on. So I'll give you I'll give you a few examples. Um, and they're all they're all kind of marketing. Like once you have a company, once you have any degree of success. You have to be able to double down on that and get your audience to care passionately. So Um we used to go to this convention in Seattle called PAX, Penny Arcade Expo.

29:55 And um we're a tiny company. We got no money for marketing, right? We've had this one successful Kickstarter campaign. We spent l literally every penny actually producing the product and building the company, and now our bank account is empty. And we show up to this thing and We've got Like No ability to get people's attention. And advertising is expensive, and they literally rent out like every square inch of the walls in there. And so anything you want to do costs money, which we don't have.

30:23 So I had this idea. And this convention is to impress other game makers or vendors to carry your game. Exactly that. You're building a fan base, you're building other uh uh relationships, you're trying to get distribution, you're trying to get into retail stores. The only thing we had ever sold is a single product on Kickstarter, and now we got nothing left. By the way, people know do we do these Exhibits. If you go to one of these, you become an exhibitor. Your booth, like the big games, they're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just on the booth. And you're like you also sign up to be a booth, but you're just a fold out picnic table

30:57 In section F, over you know, past the bathrooms, and you're you're just sitting there hoping somebody walks by your shitty table. And you're like, how am I supposed to compete with that? It's like Michael Scott in the job fair episode where he's like you literally just have a table and you're trying to convince people to do the video. I got the crappy sign that I printed on my little on my little inkjet printer and that's in the folding table and and that's it. And so the very first year, I was very proud of this. Um, I knew we had to have marketing space and I couldn't find any that we could afford.

31:28 And so I made um I mean these little kittens, I cut them out, little adorable cute little kittens with our logo on it, and the kitten was holding a bomb. And it said exploding kittens and there was a fuse. And I secretly put one of those inside every urinal in the convention center. So you had to pee on them to extinguish the bomb.

31:48 Yeah. It like mobbed our booth. Like everyone wanted to see who made these things. So much so that um the organizers came to us and they said Uh y you can't do this. And I was like, Well Show me show me the part of my contract where it says I can't do this. I understand you don't want me to do this, but show me where I can't. And they said um they said, all right, well.

32:10 We're not gonna prohibit you from doing this, because you're right, you found a space that is just nowhere in our guidelines. Um, but we'll tell you this, next year we're gonna start charging for that space. So I think. I haven't checked because we haven't been back to PACs, but I think they now charge for urinal advertising space thanks to this little stunt we pull. Do you want to go get them out of there, or are you expecting me to not extract a single one of those? The second years when you did the vending machine thing because the vending machine thing is insane. Yeah, okay. So the vending machine was um trying to solve the problem on a more permanent basis. Cause like I do this urinal thing and they shut it down. And it honestly, it just wasn't big enough. Like that got us a few hundred people every day, but how do I get thousand how do I get tens of thousands of people every day? So I looked at our little folding table and thought

32:58 You know, people come up to this thing and they give us money, they give us twenty bucks, they get a box and they walk away. And they have no memory of that transaction because all that really is is a vending machine. Right? You go, you put money in the vending machine, you push a button, you get your your your soft drink and you walk away. And you have no lasting memory of the interaction you just had. Cause there's nothing remarkable about it. So I thought, all right, if we're gonna be a vending machine, what if we were the world's coolest vending machine? Like the most spectacular vending machine the world has ever seen. And so I took um an old refrigerator box I had in my garage, so this big eight foot tall

33:34 And we cut some holes in it. And we built Uh we sorry, we covered it with fur and these giant googly eyes. So it looked like a cat. We built a eight foot tall fur covered cat. And um it had a cut out a hole for a screen where we could like put a display and it had little buttons and it had a little uh credit card reader. It had everything a vending machine should have. And the experience was you walk up to this thing, you put in your money, you push a button, and a game comes out.

34:02 Very, very simple. We're not talking anything. crazy expensive or really anything that remarkable yet other than Okay, it's fur covered, it looks like a cat, that's kind of adorable. Nobody's ever seen a vending machine like this before, and that attracted a crowd. But then we had to push it over the top.

34:18 So I put in an extra button. And the extra button said random item one dollar. Way cheaper than a game. What the hell does that mean? And so Enough people were willing to try this experiment. What happens if I put a dollar in this and push random item? And so they'd put a dollar in and push random and out comes. A pineapple from the vending machine, or a hot burrito, or a bag of rocks, or a a plumber's And it's just you behind it just sticking your hand out with a pineapple or what this was the thing. This is what we didn't tell anybody. Everyone assumed this is the world's most sophisticated vending machine, because it can deliver two thousand different objects and people literally

34:54 Brought up chairs and they built little bleachers around this thing just to watch it for hour after hour after hour to see what the hell is gonna come out of this thing. And basically for the For the listener, it it looks like just a box, but the box backed up to like a curtain. And behind the curtain I would imagine you had a whole team of people like So so there's the punchline. Instead of it being a vending machine, it was just a vending machine costume. There was no robotics in there, there's no there's no computers, there's nothing. There's eight of us Sweating our asses off for 10 hours a day backstage. And every time someone pushes that random item button, we are literally pulling a random item and throwing it out the front of the machine.

35:34 And We had Our line got so long that it blocked our aisle. It blocked all the other super expensive, you know, million dollar booths. Uh nobody could walk up to those anymore because our line was so long. It went out the door, it went out of the convention center, it went down the street, and uh the line for a silly little fur covered vending machine was longer. than the line to get into the convention itself. And all of that's just because like we had no money and we had to think creatively about like what does it mean

36:04 To build a community around a transaction. And that's what we came up with. So have you ever read about Dr. Feynman? Richard Feynman? Richard Feynman, yeah, sorry. Uh about him? So Yeah, a little bit. Wha why what what comes to mind here? He would like get super hands on with a problem. And not and question everything. And he would start at the very foundation of that of that question and basically not accept any truth before him. He would have to like question each one in order to solve a problem and

36:34 Uh, one big example of this is he helped uh create the atomic bomb and so like they like questioned all these like previously thought rules that he broke. And Uh Alan kinda has that same thing. And I I admire this because I I work really hard to have this, but I don't I still don't have it entirely. It's not this doesn't come naturally to me and I don't excel at it. But I think that for everyone listening. This skill set is really important.

36:58 Which is how do you How do you be really creative in the framework being you question everything at the very beginning. And don't assume anything that you've ever been told is true. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's accurate and and also never take no for an answer. Like it it's it makes no sense to ever have someone shut you down for any reason.

37:20 So the vending machine is a great Example. We so we we install this thing in a convention center and we're handing out pineapples and watermelons and and and ridiculous objects. And and we're putting googly eyes on them and giving them mohawks and all all kinds of fun stuff. And we got to a convention in Indianapolis and they said

37:41 Uh, you can't do this because we cannot let you ship. The produce Backstage to your to uh your your space on the convention floor. And I said, Why? And they said, because you've exceeded um what they called like a casual purchase and now you have to the only way that we can accept that much produce is to a registered grocer.

38:04 And you're not a registered grocer, so you can't do this anymore. And I I remember thinking like my whole team was like, Okay, well, here's a dead end. We need to think through like what objects can we do instead. And I got so frustrated. I was like You're you're just accepting a dead end here, and I don't think we need to. And it turns out

38:24 Um It's easy, trivial to become a registered grocer. I went to a website and you fill out a form and you pay like a hundred bucks. And today Exploding Kittens is a registered grocer in Indiana. You know where else we're a registered grocer? Fourteen other states, because it's that easy as well. And so every convention we go to, we can now accept the shipments backstage because Exploding Kittens is also a grocery store. I love that. We you know, when we were doing it our event, um Mr. Beast is there, Jimmy Donaldson and he

38:55 his production document. So like his training document for his team. Like an older one, but it had leaked online. And it's really fascinating to read this because Here you have a guy who wrote this probably when he was twenty two, twenty three, twenty four years old. Right. So it's kinda like he's an expert at twenty four. Um But he's a he is an expert in YouTube. He'd actually been doing it for over a decade. He's the most successful YouTuber on the planet. And he's like, I know how to make videos that people watch. And one of the things that he talks about in there, he goes

39:22 Push past the no. Just because you receive an initial no from somebody Absolutely does not mean that it's a no forever, that it's a no under any circumstance, that there's a no without then you have some caveats. And if you come back and you just say I asked you know, they said no. Uh that's not an acceptable answer in our in our org. Right. So he's like, you know, I wanted the pyramids for a video, the Egyptian pyramids.

39:46 And they were like His team told him no. And he goes, What do you mean, like Who told you no? Egypt told you no? Who'd you call? What did they say? Why'd they say no? Uh did you call the other guy? Who's the other guy? Give me the number. Let's call. Do they have kids? Let's FaceTime their kids. Let's see if that works. They're like, what are the different ways that we could do this?

40:04 Um It's basically out of it's a culturally unacceptable. At the company. Yeah. I I think I think that trait

40:12 More than anything is what I've seen in successful business owners. And I don't know if it can be taught. It's more just that like. When you hear the word no There are two possible reactions. One is Damn it. And the other is I didn't hear that properly. Let me dig deeper. And

40:30 It has to be instinctual. Like every time you hear the word no, you have to think, Okay, I didn't hear that properly. Let me dig deeper over and over and over again. I love that. Like it's not just being a jerk and saying, you know, just pushing just pushing on them, but being curious or being like clever or being playful and trying to figure out like if I had a Trillion dollars, maybe you'd say yes. Okay, so like let's just agree it's not physically impossible to do this. Right. Okay, once it's not physically impossible, that means now there is a way. Let's just see what that way might look like. It's so good. Maybe the better way to phrase it is when someone tells you no, instead of assuming that that's the answer, assume you ask the wrong question. Hey, Sean, we did this thing. Um, I was talking to David, the guy who hosts the podcast Founders the other day. And we did a show called The Anti Business Billionaires. And there's like a handful of people out there.

41:20 Uh who are these billionaires who They shockingly don't care about revenue and profit. And they're like very passionate about Whatever it is they're making. The guy who started Patagonia is one of them, where like he just doesn't seem like he cares about money, or the guy who started Dyson, James Dyson, uh he's another guy where he f oddly, he's obsessed with making vacuums.

41:38 Do you care at all about Revenue and profit. Or do you just see it as a like Do do you care about business? I I didn't originally. Now

41:49 Once I've figured out how to look at business as another game that can be one. I suddenly started caring passionately about business. Like I used to think All right, I don't actually wanna be CEO of this company. What I wanna be is lead designer, I'm gonna hire a CEO. And we tried that for a while. And what I realized is like

42:08 Everyone we hired into that spot was playing the game the wrong way. And I want to play instead. And so now I actually love strategy meetings. I love business meetings. I love when we go in and talk about the next ten years and or how we're going to solve this very particular problem about this convention or this next next game launch or this next partnership. Because That is such a fun game. And

42:31 I was like in high school. Um, I loved physics. Physics was my favorite topic until I realized um I need to switch to computer science. And the reason I needed to switch was because for physics Everything they were teaching us, the answer was in the back of the book. If you had a problem, you could just you could just flip to the back of the book. And um I realized that computer science was very different because computer science was like the cutting edge. Like there were no answers in the back of the book at all. You had to figure everything out as you go. And

43:02 That was really exciting for me. That was like a life changing moment when I was sixteen. That's what business is to me. They're Are no answers at the back of the book. And if you want to win this game, you've got to figure out what the rules are, invent your own where you need to, and get to that finish line before anybody else. Look at Sean's hands. And look at it. I just realized that whenever we do this, uh You got us. uh of attraction when you're talking about this I'm like ah this is beautiful. I mean just the way you're describing this, like there's no answers in the back of the book. Like, dude, that's inspiring. I I I love that shit. I love that stuff.

43:44 You I also think there's other things we can learn from you. So You know, I've learned from you on on the marketing side. And I y I maybe we'll just close the loop on the marketing idea, which is It's one thing to hear the idea of the vending machine and be like, Oh wow, that's a great idea. I'm interested in what is the mindset that creates that idea.

44:02 What are the questions that you ask? How do you brainstorm what are you doing differently that's leading you to crazy answers like that that actually work. So like I don't know if you can describe it or if this is like asking you know Steph Curry how to shoot a jump shot. He's like, I don't know, just kinda flick my wrist, it just goes in. Um, when actually a thousand little things are happening that he's not even attuned to. But like, you know, for example, you said something like

44:25 What if? And like I don't w what if questions are just like a great like A great tool in the tool belt for a creative thinker. Yeah. It it's very different than we should. Um it it just like the language changes everything. What are some other things you do when you brainstorm?

44:40 I Love parameters. I hate blue sky brainstorming. Like the idea that like hey, let's sit down and create a game. is the most terrifying experience in the world for me. Or let's let's sit down and brainstorm anything and we don't know what it is. So what are the parameters for the last handful of meetings that you've had? Yeah, so okay. Well let me let me back up and say like Y you asked about um marketing.

45:04 for a convention, right? I told you the story about the vending machine, but I also told you the parameters are baked into there. Like we didn't start by saying, What's the coolest experience we can have at a convention? Right. We started by saying this is a vending machine transaction. There's our parameters. What is the coolest vending machine experience we can craft? But you also said how do we get tens of thousands of people to come? Without

45:28 Instead of three hundred. Target. Unreasonable is Totally reasonable. Like it's fine to set your goals that high as long as You you understand the parameters of the problem. If I were to sit down and say, How do we get 10,000 people to come to our booth?

45:45 I'm gonna I'm not gonna get anywhere. I like I I just have no chance of success there. But if I sit down and say I am going to build a vending machine. That must attract ten thousand people. Now I'm running. Now I'm I'm busy for the next

45:57 Ten months building that thing because I know what that is. That's shockingly y a useful tip because I do the other thing, where I just say, How do I get How do I get the ten thousand How do I get ten thousand people to come? Yeah. Yeah. There are people who are great at it. Like, you know, you mentioned Mr. Beast, Jimmy, he is exceptional at that. Like if you were to tell him just like I I listened to your interview with him, right? And you're you're spitting out random nouns and he's coming up with incredible ideas.

46:26 He is exceptionally talented at that thing. I suck at it. I need to know exactly the shape of the box, and I will build you the coolest contents for that box in history. But unless I understand what that box is capable of holding, I I just I have no chance of success. So it sounds like one way to put it is Creativity loves constraints and you use the constraint. You start with the constraint rather than starting with the Just the desired outcome. Right. The desired outcome is there. It's part of the it's part of the the the the the goal. It's the parameters.

46:57 But you you actually start with a constraint in order to to get yourself to think a little bit differently. Do you have any other examples of kind of like c this constraint style of thinking? We're asked to build a board game. Uh for A few different NFL teams. And what does that mean? How do you get an NFL audience to play with a board game?

47:17 And um If you were to just Leave it there. You kinda don't have a chance. You're basically saying build a good game. Go.

47:26 And Uh uh me, personally, I'm gonna suck at that task. But What we started to do was you're like the best in the world at doing this. Just no chance of success. I promise you, zero chance of success. So instead, we sat down and we said, Okay, what is football? Like what are the best moments?

47:45 And um I started writing this list. And my list was Um The the magical moment

47:53 where a player catches the ball against all odds. Everyone's covering them. It's impossible. It's impossible. Somehow it was a perfect throw, a perfect catch, and off they went to score. And We I personally really focused on that. Do do do you even care about football? Uh football matters very little to me, but only because Um it is very hard for me to watch people having fun without wanting to do that same thing myself. That's pretty funny. But the reason I'm asking is because this is your perspective as a total outsider, where you just you just created the rules. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's watching other people, right? Like my family is obsessed with it. So I watch them watch football and I'm like, Oh, that moment there. Okay, that moment there. And

48:36 And so we eventually built this game. It's called Catchables. And all it is, we made these cute little foam figures. Um, and we had an increasing series of challenges defined by the other players, because the other players have to provide the entertainment, where you have to throw an object This little character in the air and just catch it. So simple. Throw it, catch it, really easy. But now players are gonna start throwing cards at you. You have to do it blindfolded. You have to spin around before you catch it. You can only use one hand, you can only use two fingers. You have and and like what if I give you ten of those cards at the same time? Now that very simple throw and catch has become really, really entertaining. For everyone to watch, you defy the odds, and at the last moment. Pull it off. Despite

49:14 Everyone's expectation and the crowd goes right. This sounds so trivial. This is actually pretty groundbreaking. So let's give a very um uh a specific example that's not related to you. Uh so Sean has a uh Sean works in the e commerce industry. Let's just say that Sean sells uh shoes. Sean owns a shoe company and let's say growth has stagnated. Uh and they and he comes to a meeting and he goes, I we need to we need a our company needs to improve. We we have to be better. What would like be interesting constraints uh in order to um make Sean's company better. Make the meeting productive.

49:47 Yeah. what you would want to do with a shoe company. I've never worked in shoes before, so bear with me. But I will I anything you throw at me, I'm gonna try to tie it back to a community. I'm gonna try to tie it back to how do I, by wearing these things, form more lasting, reasonable, exciting connections with other people. So

50:06 Um What if? You started printing out Beautiful, incredible shoes that you'd be proud to wear. You'd love every single shoe that you make. But everyone has

50:18 Um half a secret message on it. And somebody else has the other half of that. Get your shoe next to them to read it. Right. Like suddenly you have a reason to go not only tell your friends to buy some or buy more yourself, but suddenly uh you have a reason to go seek them out in the world. You're walking through a crowded airport and you see someone with those shoes, walk right over to them, put your foot next to theirs, right?

50:40 Yeah, exactly. Right. So now There's a very low percentage hit there. And so you'd have to probably redesign it to have a much higher percentage hit. And that's very achievable. But again, the first thing I'm gonna do is define a constraint and say, A successful shoe equals a reason to look for more of those shoes out in the world because then more of those shoes are gonna sell. That's pretty great. Wow. Just yesterday I was with my wife and we're walking out somewhere and this woman had a little Trader Joe's bag and she goes, Hey, sorry to bother you, but Is that that bag that everyone's going crazy about online? And I'm in my mind, I'm like, people are going crazy about Trader Joe's bags nowadays. Like what?

51:17 What's going on? And um I guess there's a little I guess there's a certain design of a Trader Joe's bag And it's not even like limited edition or luxury. I I don't know what the full story is. But you're It kind of highlighted to me, it's like, man, you could take any moment. It's like the moments in between the moments. And if you if you do something interesting there, you give people a reason

51:36 to feel special, a reason to connect, a reason to collect, a reason to to to g to do one of those things. It's like damn, how much wasted surface area is there in my businesses? Well we're not Just Just by applying creativity, we create magic. We create it's alchemy, right? We create value for people.

51:55 If we just were a little more intentional. versus Just going on autopilot. And I think ninety nine percent of the time I'm just on autopilot in my businesses. I totally get it. And and I've been I've been there as well. Can can I tell you a story about I'm I'm so proud of a particular solve for that problem. Okay, go So my daughter

52:13 Uh exploding kittens is not the number one selling game in the world. It's number two best selling game in the world. Number one is a game called Hurry Up Chicken Bite. Hurry up, chicken bite. Um I I designed with my daughter.

52:25 And she when she turned four, I was so excited'cause you know, most of the games are like ages four and up. And when she turned four, we went out and we bought all the games, right? We got Candyland and we got Zingo, the all the games. And took him home and we started playing and I immediately noticed a problem, which was I am having a miserable time. She's happy. She's playing with her dad. She's getting to see bright flashy colors. Like all the stuff is designed for kids. But I am bored out of my mind. And what the results in is when we're done playing the game, uh one, I've let her win, because I gotta let her win because if I try at all, I'm going to crush this poor four year old. And two is when we're done, she says, Hey daddy, can we play again? And all I'm thinking is Oh God, no. Like I am so miserable. The last I I did it. I did my time. We played the game.

53:13 I'm gonna go do some go do something fun now. And I I remember having that reaction. And it must have shown on my face. And my daughter said, What's wrong? And I said, I

53:24 I think this game is broken. And she said. Something brilliant. she said. Let's fix it.

53:31 And Like fireworks started going off in my head'cause I was like Yeah, let's fix it. Like why are we not fixing this? And Um

53:41 I spent the next month My daughter just started drawing pictures, like all the fun games, everything fun that she wanted in a game. And I started writing this list of what success looks like. And for me it was My daughter has to beat me without me letting her win.

53:58 And I have to look forward to playing again. There. The game cannot be luck based. I have to watch my daughter get better at this game every time we play. I have to feel like she's learning something, and there cannot be any losers. She can win.

54:12 But they're but nobody can lose. So those are your constraints. Those were my five. And by the way, did you start with just things you hated? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm saying this like oh overnight I came up with these five things, but the list was like twenty five things long and I narrowed it down to those five, which were the most important. I'm writing this book on creativity right now and Jerry Seinfeld has this great quote, he says Irritation is is what causes innovation. He's basic he created comedians and cars getting coffee because he just hated going he was so sick of going on late night talk shows and doing the same thing every time. He's like All right, a talk show that has none of those things. In fact, my irritation is gonna be my source of innovation. Sounds like for you.

54:48 All of those things you talked about were sources of personal irritation for you. Every one of them. For sure. Everyone there were the things that everybody was doing wrong and was the industry standard. Nobody had raised their hand and said This is broken. Like This is not fun for half the players who play this game, that half being the adults. Did you know that you're not going to be able to present buying them? Well, did you present those five things to your daughter or did you the one you were the one who well what I what I'm trying to get at is can you present those five things to people at your company and they be just as creative and effective like could they make hit games

55:22 Like is this a is this a transfor transferable skill, a teachable skill. Absolutely, yes. I as long again, it's not You're not teaching Problem solving.

55:33 You're teaching Problem identification. And then creative people will be able to solve those problems. But if you try to solve if you try to teach how to be creative, you never get anywhere. All you're really teaching is. how to identify a problem, how to know what success looks like, and then you just hire creative people to work within those constraints. But then do you as the leader define if you have a hit? Yes.

55:57 Well, Curry up chicken butt's an easy way is an easy definition because again, as soon as it went out to testing party, this was one of those games where when we sent it out to testing, not only was it a hundred percent yes, I wanna play again, nobody sent the games back. This is a huge problem for us. Like we send them out, we want you to send them back so we can tweak them and then send them back out again. Nobody would send that game back to us. It was ridiculous. We lost so many copies of that game. So bridge the gap there. So because I I play this game. I play it literally with my daughter, who's five. I bought it after we met and I was like, Purry up chicken, but we play it at home with my s my son and my daughter.

56:31 It's a great time. But I've seen the end output and now you've described your initial conditions. Is there anything else interesting in how you kind of figure it out how you bridge that gap? So we go through tons and tons and tons of versions, and I sit with my daughter. I'm like, look I I want I know We want a game. And she's like, I wanna run around. Cool. That's gonna be part of the game. Running around. I wanna act silly. Cool, that's gonna be part of the game, acting silly.

56:56 And then the back of my mind, I'm like, I need tension, right? Like a game without any form of tension is a broken game because you need something to push you forward. In most games, it's competition with the other players, but here that's not gonna be present. So I need something else to insert the tension, the the pulse of the game. Uh and we did that with an electric timer, right? It's essentially a hot pot the way the game works is it's hot potato. Uh you've got this adorable cute little chicken that clucks and eventually screams, and you pass the chicken around, and if you're holding the chicken when it screams, uh You have lost a point and everybody else proceeds. Um But the tricky part it it actually works where the person before you wins the whole game. Again, no users only winners. Are you like Pixar where you have like your five or eight trustworthy people in a room and you're just banging this out? Absolutely, yes. And how long are the meetings and how many meetings were there between

57:46 Uh idea. to iteration one to final inter iteration. Okay, so we sit down. We'll meet for like two hours. And we'll just Mm.

57:54 Discuss. parameters, what success looks like, let's brainstorm in that space. And we'll usually come up with like I don't know, let's say five or six interesting things to explore. Then everybody goes off and does their own thing. Everyone's got an assignment. play with this one and we're gonna come back and we're gonna try all these games. And um in this case we actually had like

58:15 I don't know, fifteen or sixteen different ideas that we were playing around with. And they all sucked. Like they all everything fell apart in one regard or another, except for this one. That's not true, except for four games. Four games made it out the door. Um two were almost immediate failures. Um, and two of them

58:33 Uh one was Hurry Up Chicken Button and the other is called the Best Worst Ice Cream, which is like I think it's ranked number eight in the world right now. So it's up there. Uh I only look at the top five'cause that's the scoreboard I like to keep, but it's doing great. And uh uh could this uh could this apply, let's say I owned uh a B2B SaaS software. Could could I use this process in my company? I'm tempted to say yes. I look uh

58:58 I don't know definitively the answer. But I believe that the best ideas come out of constraint and defining success. And I can't imagine there'd be many Creative based endeavors. that would not benefit from that approach. You just did a game with Tim Ferris and I think he uh

59:17 Was a part of creating it. I'm just curious, like What was that like and What were the main things you taught Tim? And then did Tim teach you anything or did you sort of uh modify any of your process because Tim's just such an interesting guy that maybe he he could bring a little bit of a different different approach to what you were doing. Yeah. So I went on Tim's podcast.

59:37 uh like two years ago. He just wanted to know, what's the game industry like? Like what are you what is it that you would do for a living? And so we talked for a while and at the end of it, after we finished recording, he said I've always wanted to make a game. Can we talk about making a game? And I was like, absolutely. It's like when Matt asks you if he can be your partner. The answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes. Let's do it. And so we started talking and he is obsessed with uh one of my games called um

1:00:03 Poetry for Neanderthal's. And it's a really simple, really fun game. It's in the top five. Um, and uh he just loves, loves, loves that game. He plays it with all his friends, he plays it all the time. He's constantly sending me pictures of him playing that game with his group of friends, and he keeps saying, like, I need a game at least this good. And so The first few meetings were me just going over to his place with suitcases full of games, like all my favorites, but they all tried to scratch that same itch. Like I know what's great about poetry for Neanderthal's. There's a creativity component, it's heavily players entertaining other players, and it's fast, funny. Uh, you can learn it in one minute and you play it in 10 minutes, right? Like I I knew I knew that was his version of what success looks like.

1:00:47 And so Uh, we started playing a bunch of games like that and we started honing in on what the process what things he liked the most, what games he liked the most, which ones he didn't. And it fast became clear Okay. None of these are right. Like not a single I must have shown him a hundred different games, and the answer was yeah, none of these.

1:01:06 At one point we were on this walk, we'd been walking for like six hours. And at one point I was like, Okay. Let's start as basic as it gets. What if we started with rock, paper, scissors? Tim happens to like rock, paper, scissors, and I was like, Okay, rock, paper, scissors is actually no fun at all until you play it a bunch of times.

1:01:25 Playing Rock, Paper, Scissors once is stupid, but playing it again, now we're playing a game because now I'm thinking, what did he do last time? What am I gonna do this time? But he knows that I know that he knows that I know, right? Like all that stuff starts to kick in at game two, and it's not present at all in game number one. So I was like what if we start there, really, really basic. And instead of three activities, rock, paper, scissors, what if we had twenty five? And what if there is a hierarchy between all of those things and what if we're all playing at the exact same time? And we just started with crazy statements like that. Like

1:01:57 I don't know what that game is. I don't know how those things make sense. But his eyes lit up and my eyes up and it was like something. Okay, what if also we made it rhythm based and we ran to the house and we just started scribbling on cards as fast as we could. My buddy uh Ken Gruel was there too, who's an incredibly talented designer. And between the three of us, we just started cracking cards as fast as we could. And the first version of the game, of course, sucked, but it was at least something. It was at least like, hey We are playing a game where every single person playing this game has a task. You have to do this symbol. You have to do a peace sign. You have to pretend you're a ball a ballerina and you have one second to do the right thing. And we started playing around with

1:02:40 All right, that's a little too easy. What if we made that harder? What if we had to switch roles? What if every role had a color and now we have to skip all the red ones? What if we had to go twice as fast? What if we had to whisper? What if we had to shout? What if, what if, what if, what if? And we started writing all these cards fast and furious. Until we eventually got to this thing where We had been playing for like four hours. And I looked around the room and I was like, Okay, anybody want to play again? And both of them were like, Hell yes. And so

1:03:06 We kept doing that. And Uh, then we started to invite other friends over and they started playing and we said, Do you want to play again? And they said yes. And so we we just kept doing this thing, rinse and repeat, remove a card, write a new card. I use these blank cards. Where I can create them super fast. I buy these like by the truckload on the side. Well, you did that when we were uh at uh Sean's event. You basically you were literally on your hands and needs, like dealing out cards. And then you were like You know, I don't like this one and you pulled out like a blank card and you had a pen and you like throw new rules. I live and breathe those cards. Because you know what's beautiful about those cards?

1:03:41 They're not just cards. Like obviously you can use them to make any game you want, but like let's say you need um a six sided die. Right, and you don't have a six sided die. You've got six cards, right? One, two, three, four, five, six on the cards and shuffle them up and draw one. Now you got a six sided die, right? Like if you need a board, you can make it out of a grid of cards. If when you need a spinner, you can make that out of cards. Like I I walk around, my backpack is so much heavier than it should be because it's loaded with blank cards. 'Cause I never know when the next idea's coming. You have this quite great quote. You said I took a week long skydiving course and at the end of it I asked the instructor Do you ever get bored of this?

1:04:14 And the guy said. Do you ever get bored of having sex? And I thought That's exactly it. This is how I feel about games. That's how I feel about this job. It's not the thing

1:04:24 uh with an expiration. It's a little dopamine factory for me and the people who get to have these experiences. I don't know how you can get bored of that. And it's just eternal. You s so th that was a quote that you had and I read that It's like I wanna feel that way about just anything in my life. I know, right? I know You know, like you see kids play with bubbles and you're like

1:04:43 I wish I felt anyway about this kid, how this feels about bubbles. And I see this and I'm like Elon's the bubbles. He's got the answer. This guy has this is the answer to life. Go ahead. I was at I was at a an airport and um our flight had just been canceled. It was so terrible because everyone was miserable. Last flight out. They're starting to hand out hotels, but they're but they're like, Hey, the flight might come back, so everyone's gotta stay in the terminal for hours and hours and hours. And every hour they delayed us again and it was awful. And everyone is miserable. Everyone is miserable and they're frowning and they're grumpy and they're screaming at the poor gate agent, and it's awful. Except For this group.

1:05:21 Of six kids sitting in the corner, giggling and laughing. And I Could not help myself. I had to walk up and see what they were doing. And of course they're playing exploding kittens. And I remember thinking like This is it. Like this the all the chemicals going through my body right now, like this is why I have this job. This is the greatest feeling in the world and I just want to keep delivering this every opportunity I have. That's so good.

1:05:47 I was gonna say y you know, my um I have these Kind of. people I admire for different reasons. So it's like, you know, you can admire Uh a a great athlete for how they how disciplined they are, how they train the body, how they just they just never give up, right? Or you can admire Elon for, you know, thinking big and sort of defying the odds and and and really b going all in on his bets and being like, you know what, I I need to have that all in mode.

1:06:09 And you're to me on this like On that very short list of people Because you Build things. For the joy and from a po like a from a place of joy. Like a more pure artist, I think is your career.

1:06:22 Um, I see you as saying you're not like a CEO who's got a ballpoint pen, you're an artist with a brush. And then And then the second part of it is like the limitless thinking in terms of There's kinda nothing out of bounds. Like, yeah, okay, I can register myself as a grocer. Or we can We could create this vending machine that what if it distributed any item? Right. Like I would be scared to go there.

1:06:42 Because how and what if Little things go wrong. And I think you just think about things a little bit differently. That inspires me. Um and then the last bit is like the simplicity, like figuring out When you look at something like oh the game is fun, not because The game itself is fun because it makes the players fun. It's like oh that explains charades and pictionary and all the games I grew up.

1:07:02 Playing. Thousands of times and not just once or twice. Yep. It's because of that core insight. You know, instead of doing focus groups and surveys, you're like, one question, you want to play the game again. That that simplicity. So like to me, those are the three big things that you do that I'm like I w if I can get

1:07:19 Yeah, ten percent of what you're doing there, I level up if I do that. I love to hear that. And but I'll also say it doesn't just have to apply to games. Like We um I remember during Covid.

1:07:33 All of our plants shut down. And w once once we once stuff comes in. uh from China, we have to we it goes into these giant warehouses and it has to be unboxed and then repackaged with all the correct labeling and then off it goes to all the retailers. And during Covid, no one could go into those facilities. Like They just wouldn't allow anybody in. And that was gonna tank our business. We were There is no way for us to survive zero sales for, you know, six or twelve or two years, right? Like no way to do it.

1:08:05 And so Uh most games companies shut down for at least a little while there. And I remember thinking like They're This is a no.

1:08:15 Like this absolutely people are telling me no. So You know, to use the earlier like, so I must be asking the wrong question. And instead of calling these warehouse owners over and over again saying, When are you opening your doors? When are you opening your doors? I finally asked a different question. It was What are you doing with your parking lots?

1:08:34 And the answer was nothing. because nobody's at work, so our parking lots are empty. And I was like cool. Can I park? Three. eighteen wheeler trucks in your parking lot.

1:08:44 And they said, sure, why not? And so I brought the games over in these eighteen wheeler trucks. And I had one person per truck go inside and repackage our games because All I needed was the space. It occurred to me I didn't need the warehouse. I just need the square footage. And they've got that in their parking lot, and there's no restrictions there. There's only restrictions inside the facility. And

1:09:06 The reason I bring that up is'cause That's Just a game. Right, like that's just somebody saying here's a roadblock. Everybody else is saying, ah, a roadblock. I can't get through this roadblock. It's time to shut down my business. When the reality is

1:09:20 Just ask a different question. There's a different way through this roadblock if you're willing to play the game. I used to have this high school cross country coach that was like, I'm gonna teach you all about running and everything. But I'm really trying to teach you about this other pastime that we have called life. Uh and that's sort of how I feel about you in this podcast is you came to talk a little bit about business, a little bit about creativity.

1:09:45 But we're really learning like A good way to live. Uh you know. That makes me so happy. Yes to be passionate to um be passionate about what we what uh about certain things we're doing, to find uh the posit to to to look positively in things that could t potentially be negative and to solve problems in creative ways. Uh

1:10:02 You're awesome. We appreciate you. Oh, thanks for coming on. Hey, where should people follow you? Cause I'm following you on TikTok where you're doing like It's amazing. I don't understand. Have you seen his TikToks? No, I'm not twelve, so I don't use TikTok. This is uh Well you should because the idea to live more like him and be positive thinking. It'd be like the world's best game designer is on TikTok teaching people how to design games, little simple tricks and tips.

1:10:29 In like thirty second nuggets. And it'll get like Two views'cause TikTok's algorithm doesn't know yet who they're who they're messing with. And I can't believe it's like You couldn't you couldn't pay. I could not pay you for this type of information. Did you forget their followers.

1:10:49 I teach these classes at my company. uh once a week. And we we'll we'll tackle whatever topic. Here's how we write instructions, here's what we put on the front of the box, here's what we put on the back of the box, here's game design. Like oh all over and over and over again. And we don't record Any of them. And I kinda realized like I

1:11:06 This is all gonna just disappear. Like nobody's recording it. I have no motivation to record it. So I hired a social media team and all they are they it's like it's like hiring a trainer at a gym. They come over once a week and they f Force me. To have a camera on me and give the same class that I gave at the company just for free online. And so we've been recording them and posting them and the it's uh yeah, like you said, nobody knows they're there yet, but if you've ever wanted to learn how to make a game, or more importantly, how to apply those lessons to anything in the whole wide world because it's all applicable. Uh I'm gonna just keep posting these things because Subconstraint like um

1:11:45 You know, without any money. And only teaching creativity lessons figure out. Without making me dance on TikTok. Yeah. Like get this to five hundred thousand views per video. Yeah. I should absolutely do that. I should have a Is that what the contraits would be? Uh that basically that's what the concerns would be. It would be yeah, it would be how to stay like true to what I want to deliver, right, without dancing. Um but yeah, how to how to increase the viewership on this. And to be fair, nobody has been tasked with that yet. My my goal for the last like, I don't know, it's been probably like two months. has just been let me just create the content, put it in a place. And then once it's there, then it's probably worth promoting'cause now there's enough there to make it worthwhile.

1:12:26 You're up you're you're badass. You're awesome. You got the you got the googly eyes from us. Uh where where where should people follow you? Just shout out your handles. Uh yeah, if you just search for the the the kind of hub of everything is just Ilan Lee on YouTube. That's where I'm putting the long form stuff and then from there it links out to all of the the TikToks and Instagrams and everything else that where it's you can find it in shorter form. Awesome. Thanks for coming on, dude. It's such a pleasure. Thanks for having me. And um yeah, just a huge fan. I'm so so grateful. Uh that you that you wanted to chat with me. What a what a thrill.

1:12:59 Of course. By the way, look at how many games are behind'em, just within just within sight right there. Isn't that ridiculous? Yeah, that's that's one of two shelves. There's another one over there that's equally packed. Um we've got Ninety games now? Sixty sorry. We have sixty games, but ninety total because there's like weird expansions and variations and stuff. Um Yeah, it's Stupid. It's just I I it doesn't make any sense to me anymore.

1:13:24 All right, thank you, ma'am. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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