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00:02 - Dylan, it's fabulous to be here with you today.
00:05 Thank you so much.
00:06 - Yeah, thank you.
00:06 - So let's start at the very beginning.
00:09 How did you get so into gaming?
00:11 - Yeah, it's a funny story.
00:12 I mean, obviously Fortnite kind of came out,
00:15 took over like the world by storm
00:16 and all of my friends in college,
00:18 we all started just like playing and really got into it.
00:21 I graduated, became a nurse.
00:22 I was first in the trauma ICU.
00:24 And then when COVID came around,
00:25 I was switched into the COVID ICU.
00:28 I started to get like a little bit burnout
00:30 after like six, seven months of that.
00:31 I had been doing Fortnite on the side
00:33 just as a little hobby kind of thing.
00:36 It really kind of transitioned though,
00:38 from like gaming and like the gamer sense
00:40 to like more of the like creating sense
00:43 when they released their like creative platform in 2018.
00:47 And that's where I kind of like picked up
00:48 doing more of the creative and development side of things
00:51 'cause it's more interesting to me.
00:52 And it was very simple at the time.
00:53 So I was able to like kind of pick things up slowly
00:55 and teach myself how to make a game.
00:58 A legendary YouTube gamer named Ali A,
01:02 he messaged me and he was like, "Hey, like your stuff,
01:04 would you help me develop games?"
01:07 So that was kind of like the signal
01:08 that I needed to like fully jump into this.
01:11 And after about three, four months
01:14 of just doing it full time,
01:15 I started to like be able to identify
01:17 like where players would wanna play.
01:19 And it led me to wanna create like something bigger.
01:23 And that's kind of how it led to me forming a company
01:26 and trying to grow that way.
01:28 - So now talk to me about your new company
01:31 and what you're doing.
01:32 - Yeah, so it's called Good Gamers.
01:34 The idea behind it is like,
01:36 we wanted to approach the development side of games
01:39 from like a more of like a marketing
01:42 and organization focused.
01:44 So we have Good Gamers and those are our marketing
01:47 and influencers and content creators.
01:49 And we bring them into the team
01:50 because they are the people who can reach a lot of people.
01:53 But then on the backend, we have, you know,
01:55 people like me and a couple others that I've brought on
01:57 who developed the good games.
01:59 - I wanna get a sense of the scale of your business.
02:03 Are you able to talk to me about users or customers
02:05 or anything of that sort?
02:06 - Yeah, since we can't sell anything,
02:08 we don't have customers yet, but we have plenty of users.
02:11 The game Go Goated, that one reaches between 800,000
02:15 and a million players every day
02:17 and has over 750 million plays total.
02:21 And then for our team, we launched like six
02:23 or seven months ago and we already have,
02:25 I think four games that are totaling
02:27 over 500,000 players a day.
02:29 So we've reached over a hundred million unique players
02:33 since I started in 20, like early 2020.
02:37 - And you've taken on no outside funding, correct?
02:40 - Not yet, no.
02:41 - How has that been then building a business,
02:44 just bootstrapping it?
02:45 - Yeah, it's been interesting.
02:47 I mean, I'm very blessed to have the game
02:50 that I have, Go Goated, and that one has hovered,
02:53 you know, as one of the top games for a while.
02:55 And so it has been able to fund like these ideas
02:59 that I've wanted to kind of implement
03:01 and just I'm lucky to be able to do that
03:03 with, you know, what I have.
03:05 - Now, some of the things I hear from the older generation
03:08 is it doesn't quite understand, you know,
03:10 the gaming space is that, you know, this is just a hobby.
03:14 This is not a career.
03:16 And I'm sure you've probably heard that
03:18 from a lot of people in your life.
03:19 How have you dealt with that?
03:21 And do you have any advice for people
03:23 in the gaming industry who are dealing with that?
03:25 - That's a good question.
03:26 I mean, it is a hobby for a lot of people,
03:28 but I think just like with so many hobbies,
03:31 like if you are passionate about something
03:34 and you are, you know, a little bit savvy,
03:37 like you can turn a hobby or a passion or whatever
03:40 into a business for yourself.
03:42 So, I mean, my answer to that would be like,
03:44 this space has hundreds of millions of people playing,
03:47 like every year, every day, millions and millions of players
03:50 and it's constantly growing.
03:51 So it can be more than a hobby if you want it to be.
03:54 - Yeah.
03:54 And last one for you,
03:55 it's really hard to go from just being a nurse
03:58 to then taking the dive into entrepreneurship.
04:01 What advice would you have for people
04:02 facing similar situations?
04:04 - There's a point that you get to where you're like,
04:06 I think this is the right thing to do.
04:07 This is something that I believe in.
04:09 And you're kind of like fear,
04:11 your fear of the unknown is like holding you back.
04:13 So it kind of is just like that point
04:16 where I'm gonna commit to something
04:17 and I'm not gonna look back.
04:19 And for me, that was when I decided
04:22 I'm not gonna renew my nursing license.
04:24 I'm gonna just commit to what I'm doing
04:26 and I'm gonna give it my all.
04:28 Just like be confident in yourself
04:30 and then you just have to take that leap of faith
04:31 and commit to it.
04:33 And good things can come from that.
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