Rob Angel; Creator of Pictionary

Hey, good morning, evening, lunchtime afternoon, whenever he listened to this. But welcome back to another episode of the art of making things happen with me. Steve Sims got a buddy of mine. That’s going to be joining us this morning. The gentleman’s name is Rob angel. He’s actually the founder of Pictionary, one of the largest board games in the planet, along with trivial pursuit monopoly. He’s going to talk to you about, you know, why you went to prison. He’s going to be talking to you about how we went from waiting tables to launching a game in his apartment and why basically by getting someone else to do all the heavy lifting through franchising, he became happier and richer. So if you want to hear about all of these ways on how to scale, how to come up with an idea and how to actually just take action, what was going to give you the guided path? Enjoy the show. Hey, Rob, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, Steve.

God, it’s a pleasure. No one else would turn up. So you know, I had to call you we, first of all, probably got to give a big shout out to our buddy, Greg Reid for making the introduction. What has it been four years or something? I tried thinking about it, but it’s been quite a while. Isn’t it?

Yeah. I mean, I barely remember yesterday, let alone then, but I’d say about four years. Sure.

Yeah. It’s been about that. Cause since then you know, I got to know you, well, I got to know you, we, we shook hands, you know, said, hi, and then we’ve been in communication. I’ve got to know you over the years. And people are gonna understand a little bit more about you, but in the, in the four years, not only have we hung out with the secret knocks of Greg Reid’s fame, but we also went to prison together. Didn’t we?

Wait, we did go to prison, but it isn’t quite like it sounds. And that was enough for a group of inmates you always say, and it was just an amazing experience of learning for us and for them.

Well, I think that was really the turning point for me to really kind of get to see you because whenever people turn up and this is something for all entrepreneurs to be aware of, when we turn up at an event, we sometimes try to be the person that we want the other person to see. So it’s very hard at an entrepreneurial event, which is basically alphas. You know, when you’re talking to them to get to know who the person is, as everyone knows, what, if you don’t know, look it up. I take a group of entrepreneurs inside Kern level four prison where we speak to inmates that we now have renamed EIT is entrepreneurs in training and we go through skillsets so that when they do come out, they can have a productive, legal future. And we didn’t know each other well, but you actually grasp that.

And I’ll be honest with you, it took me by surprise when you were like, yeah, I want to come in and do that. And I really got to see you in an uncomfortable situation. No one wants to be in jail or prison. Certainly no one in a level four, which you’re not there because of parking tickets. You know, you really push yourself to, to embrace and to help those people inside within the defy ventures.

We all have these great ideas, but if we don't do anything with them, that's all they are is just an idea. Click To Tweet

So I’ve got to give a big shout out for defy and for you for doing that. And that’s where I really got to see the new man that I kinda wanted to learn a bit more about. But if anybody doesn’t know you, they certainly know where you bought to the planet. Pictionary. Now that’s gotta be Pictionary and Monopoly. I’ve got to think of probably two of the most famous games in the planet. Did Pictionary go worldwide?

Yeah, we launched in June of 1985 and within four years we were the biggest selling board game in the world. So we were in 60 countries by the time I sold it. So it was a pretty meteoric rise. I worked our butts off, but yeah, it went worldwide quickly.

Now, before Pictionary came along, because I can’t believe you were sitting there one day and said, Hey, I’m going to, I’m going to launch one of the most famous games in the planet before Pictionary came along. What were you thinking was going to be your future? You know, tell us about your background.

Yeah. I went to college and I was going to be my father. He was an executive, so I wanted to be just like him. He was my role model. And so I take these classes and I’m getting ready and all of a sudden, halfway through my second year he gets fired and everything. I knew, everything that I had planned for my life was now top appended. So I had to make a decision at this point. Who was it? What did I want to be? And I knew that I was not gonna let anybody else be in control of my life. I was going to be an entrepreneur. I was going to take care of myself. I was not gonna work for the man if you will. And that put me on the path to Pictionary that put me on the path to being my own boss.

So what was the pivot, the fire that suddenly went, hang on. I’m going to invent a board game cause I’ve never met anyone in my life and I’ve met some interesting people. I’ve never met anyone that actually built a board game. What was the strive behind it or what was he the ignite behind it?

Well, I didn’t plan on making a board game either. It wasn’t like I woke up and go, you know, I think it’ll be a famous game at veteran. No, you know, most ideas and dreams. They don’t start with a big plan and I didn’t have one either. I moved in with three buddies after college and one of them one night said, Hey, do you want to play a game of charades on paper, sketch words out of the dictionary? And I said, sure, it sounds like fun. So the opportunity was to have fun, not to do business, but keep in mind, remember, I’d always been thinking about doing my own thing. So I was always open. I was going to be present. I was going to be aware when that opportunity arose. We’re playing the game three or four nights in a row. And I’m thinking this is fun. Maybe, maybe I can turn this into a board game. And again, Steve, keep in mind it wasn’t, I’m going to make a million bucks. It was, this is fun. Can I package this fund? And maybe somebody will buy it.

So what, you’re playing this with your buddies. What’s the stepping stone. How do you can like invent something and then try to sell it to a ballgame? You sold, you sold to Mattel in 2001. Wasn’t it?

It was 2001. So that was 17 years after I came up with the concept.

Yeah. So fill us in, in the middle stage.

How long do you have?

I have this idea. So now I’ve actually got to produce again. I’ve got to actually make it happen. And so I take the game and I’ve got to find some partners, right? I’m still just messing around with it. I don’t have a grand plan, but I’m taking it one step at a time. So I figure we’ll have the most simple of business plans, make games, sell games. Right? I didn’t overthink it. Everybody overthinks every step. So for me, I had to figure out the first easiest step because my mindset was terrible. Right. I was like, I can’t do it. I’m just a waiter. I don’t know what I’m doing. So this, this negative self-talk took over and I put it away, but I couldn’t put it away from my mind. Right. You all have these ideas.

We all have these great ideas, but if we don’t do anything with them, that’s all they are is just an idea. And so I figured out that I should break it down to the simplest easiest first step. I didn’t make a big plan. I didn’t say, okay, I’m going to do all these things. What’s the first step. And that was the word list. So I took what was right in front of me. I didn’t over think that either pad of paper, a pencil, a dictionary, that was my barrier to entry. It wasn’t that complicated. There was no barrier entry except for my brain one, the backyard open it up. And I wrote down the first word that made sense. And that was the word aardvark. I was looking at me. So I wrote down the word aardvark, but that was, that was it. But the beauty of that was not only that I got started, but it was the mind shift. Because in that moment I was no longer just a waiter. I told myself I was a game inventor. That’s all it took one word. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Next didn’t matter. I got all excited. I wrote aardvark. That’s all it took.

So you’ve got, so you said something that I want to kind of like triple back a little bit, you said I had to get some partners. Why did you have to get partners?

Cause I, I would like to say I’m the smartest guy, you know, because I know I’m the smartest guy. I know my strengths and I admit my weaknesses. I think that’s one of the biggest failures of entrepreneurial endeavors is because entrepreneurs think they can do it all. We can’t, I can’t do it all. And for me to think that I could to think that you can, it doesn’t work that way. So I knew my limitations and I had three criteria for getting partners. One, they had to have skill sets that I didn’t have. Okay. That’s I wasn’t an account. I needed somebody to run the business. I’m not a CEO. I admit that I like created marketing, needed the graphic artist to do the physical game. So I got those two people, but, but it’s easy to find those pieces. Let’s be honest. And right now you can find an account.

You can find a graphic artist. So that’s not that difficult to, they had to share my vision. They had to love pictures. They had to get excited about Pictionary. They had to share the vision of what we were going to try to create. And the passion that I have, and that kind of gets them in gender to me. But the third for me, and the most important is that we had a shared sense of values. It’s completely intangible. You can’t put your finger on it. It’s an innate feeling. It’s an intuition said, this is a good guy. This is somebody that I can trust. This is, these are partners. They’re going to have my back. That’s why I got to partners with these guys. Not because of their skillsets. It’s because they were the right guy and the right guys at the right time. Did you go through all this?

Did you look at other people before settling on these, or were these the first ones you met and you went, yeah, they work?

The graphic artist. Gary was the first, but I asked another gentleman to join me, buddy of mine, who I thought would come and he decided to join. And then about two weeks later, he could, for his own reasons, he stopped. And instead of getting really upset about it, I thought, okay, he wasn’t the right guy. He didn’t share my vision. So it was like, he’s got a job. He knows what he wants to do. I’ll just wait for the next guy. The universe will provide the right guy. And he did.

So did you invite, invent the game on a Tuesday and sell it for millions on the Thursday?

Not quite right. That would have been nice. Very nice. Very nice. But no, we, we have this idea for the game. Now I’ve got the partners. Now we have to produce a thousand games. There’s no major game company at the time. It’s just going to, here’s a nice idea. We’ll take it. Give you money. We had to prove the product. It’s like any product we had to make sure that people would buy it. So we physically put together on a $35,000 investment, the first thousand games in my apartment by hand, we had nine different companies supplied with parts back then there was no internet. So we couldn’t just look up how to do a game. I found box makers, paper makers, printers. I found pencil makers, nine different companies, supplying us with parts, all shipped to my apartment. And we hand assembled every one of those thousand games. So not only did we have it as a Gainesville, our fingerprints literally are on every one of those games. I mean, it was exciting. I mean, you’re holding in your hand and you’re going, I did this. I mean, that was that. But I say celebrate the small victories. I mean, we’re dancing around, we’re holding it up. Like, you know, it’s it’s whatever. It was crazy. Cool to see something physical that I had created in my hands. That was an amazing feeling.

So then the next thing, you build a proof of concept. You had, she had a working game. The next step is obviously find someone who buys it. How did you operate in the distribution?

My certainly philosophy distribution philosophy was a little different than most mine was. If you sold anything, you might as well as selling Pictionary. Cause back then they sold a toy stores and they sold in the big box store toys R us target. We didn’t have access to that. So we had to get creative. I had to figure out new ways, new places to sell the game. I was terrified. I mean, I’d never sold a game before, but I was passionate about the product and passionate about what we did. So I literally put it under my arm, walked down the street, Steve, see a storefront and I’d walk in and I tried to sell it. One of my first sales call was to a bookstore universe, university bookstore. And I’m going, what am I doing here? I don’t know what I’m doing. They don’t sell games.

They don’t sell anything by games, but I pushed and I pushed and I got that first sale of six games. But as I’m walking through the store, I’m seeing cups. I’m seeing mugs. T-Shirts sweatshirts, flux. I’m thinking, this is, this is interesting to me. If they’ll take a game, everybody should be taking a game. I sold a real estate company. Right. I walked in. I said, you know family values. If they’re looking at the house, they might as well have a game on the counter. The guy took six. I got took, say, we’re going to say, cause we were, we were scrupulous. I mean, we would take the game, literally open it up at a bar and start playing. What are you doing? Oh, we’re just happy playing this new game that I invented. And people go, Oh really? They sit down, we get the pencil in their hand and they’d start playing and they’d love it. So we were doing anything and everything to get that pencil. People’s hands. That was our trigger for a sec.

So how do you get the now again, people need to be aware of the fact that this was, this was pre internet. This was pre, you know, Instagram and Facebook and all the things are really have given us a ton of shortcuts today. You can invent sign tomorrow and or yesterday and have a brilliant website by tomorrow, but you didn’t have the ability for that. So you had to then scale by word of mouth and demand. How did you get people talking about it? Because I, I would go as far as to say that I don’t know anyone that hasn’t heard of them. They may not apply there, but they certainly know the name Pictionary. So how did you get the scaling?

Right. I love when people are apologetic and they say, Rob, I’m sorry. I’ve never bought Pictionary before I go. I look at that as an op a marketing opportunity. That’s that’s fine. No, we, we became very popular, very fast, but again, bottom line Pictionary is a fun game. It’s not an overly complicated game. You open it up on the holiday and you start playing and it’s inclusive and there’s no barriers to playing no matter what, your age or your drawing skill. So it had this universal appeal, but we had to get the pencil in people’s hands for them to play it. Once they did, they wanted to play the game. They wanted to buy the game. Now the big turning point, the big pivot for us was I’m standing at the bottom of the escalator at Nordstrom. They don’t sell games, but I managed to sell them 12 games, but I promised them I would stand at the bottom of the escalator for hours on end and sell those games personally.

I know my strengths and I admit my weaknesses. I think that's one of the biggest failures of entrepreneurial endeavors is because entrepreneurs think they can do it all. Click To Tweet

And there I was 12 hours a day pencil in my hand, come on, play my game, come on. You know, trying to control the people. But I sold three games, 12 hours. I’m thinking, well, that’s good. I need to figure out how to sell more. And that’s when it dawned on me. Pictionary is not a drawing game. It’s a guessing game. People are okay with guessing. They’re not okay with drawing. So when they come down the escalator, instead of throwing a pencil in their hand, I throw them a pad of paper with a picture of a catalog and they’d go, I go, what’s that? And they started to go to category. No, got to look kind of like what? I would never let them get it right off the bat, but they would guess they’d read, engage. Then they would come over. Then not put the pencil in their hand.

So we just figured out the best way to market it and who our audience was. And it took us a while to get there. I mean, we didn’t know it right off the bat. We had to do a trial and error and that was the turning point. So that first year we sold a thousand games and then we ordered 10,000 more, which was another giant ordeal. But we sold 8,600 games out of my apartment that first year, unfortunately we went from $22 a game. The physical first thousand games cost is 22 bucks. Each part cost. We sold them for 15. So we lost seven bucks a game, but the market was trivial pursuit. So we had to compete with them. But then we sold 8,600 games that second, excuse me, that first year. And that’s when things started to get a little crazy.

So you’ve identified in this and I want to break it down. Find him as noticed. You didn’t sell where you should. So you had a game, but you didn’t go to game stores. You went to department stores, you went to book shops, you identified other marketplaces. That’s a very valuable thing because we’re going to come to your book soon as well. You identified how to market in a different environment. Were you, were you nervous about doing this? Cause the obvious one is the one that you identified that, you know, you’ve got a game, you sell it in toys R us, you sell it in a game store, but you didn’t. You went to a department store, you went to a bookstore. Were you nervous about trying this route?

No, it was, it was what we had to do and it wasn’t life and death. Right? We go to account. They say, no, okay. We go to the next account. This wasn’t that hard. We overthink, we over complicate everything, everything. I mean, how many times have you just stood there? Poised with fear, not being able to take a step, but knowing that when you take that step, nothing really changes. Nothing bad happens, but y’all were thinking it. I do that all the time. I still do it all the time and I just have to remind myself it’s okay if they say no, cause there’ll be somebody else to sell. There was somebody else to talk to. It’s like, it’s like, there’s the analogy of the spider when you see his web, right? It’s all intuition. It’s all not overthinking. Spider gets there and the wind catches it and it goes off and Atlanta Warner ties off its web and then it jumps again. And then he ties it off again. He has no idea what the web is going to look like. He just knows he wants to eat. That’s his intuition. That’s what he knows. And then he starts building the framework from there. So quit worrying about all that. He does worry about the little details. He worries about the big picture. He starts getting it in there. So when I was doing it, absolutely no fear after the first couple of fears, full types of actually trying to sell it. But then I realized it’s okay. I’ll be okay.

So you, you went from, you went from waiting tables coming up with this concept. One when you guys were just chilling playing within a bar, selling it in a strange environments that were, were, were different to what the product was. Identifying markets, changing the direction. I liked the pivot from it. Wasn’t a drawing game. Cause that’s be serious. You ask a lot of people to draw and it’s like asking them to do any kind of talent. People get intimidated. You know, I can’t draw, I can’t do that. You know, but you turned it from a drawing game into a guessing game, which took the, the fear out of it. That all happened over what was it like eight, 18 years or something that this, this took before the Mattel came in?

Yeah, there was an even bigger decision that we had to make. When we sold 8,600 games and then we ordered more, but all of a sudden, after less than a year, we became so popular. So big. We could not fund our own growth, typical startup situation. We just couldn’t up with demand. Other games were coming on. The market place. Competition was heating up for us to compete. We had to make a decision and that was to license. We couldn’t borrow the tens millions of dollars to get the product to where it was. So we had this meeting with worlds of wonder. They are the Teddy Ruxpin people. And this was probably, I didn’t realize it at the time, the biggest decision to change the course of my life, of the 20 decisions that changed the course of my life. We sit in the meeting and here I am at 26 years old, I’m making $500 a month. I’m driving a 10 year old car. And the president of this huge company looks at me and he looks me in the eyes and says, Rob, do you want a game company? Or do you want to make money?

I was kind of a little taken aback because I thought the two were one of the same. I have a big game company. I make a lot of money. He went on to explain that if we licensed giving him the rights to manufacture, just distribute market and sell that’s his cost, we get a royalty based on number of games sold. Just gives us a check for each game salt. The biggest issue was we didn’t have all that expense. It’s not what you make. You taught us. It’s what you keep. So instead of having the infrastructure, we got to keep all the money. We sold 38 million games because of that conversation with two employees, biggest game company in the world, nobody had more sales, two employees. We let somebody else do all the heavy lifting. And that changed my mindset. That changed everything. Keep in mind, we did not give up control. This was not a situation of signing a contract walking away and hopefully they’ll succeed. We stayed involved. We stayed very involved.

So that that’s something we were talking with, Jay Abraham at one of our on one of our AMA’s on the speakeasy Facebook page. And he was talking about OPR other people’s relationships. Now there’s a massive point that I want to amplify in there. It’s not what you make is what you keep. And I’ve had, I’ve had years where I’ve made millions and I’ve gone. Whoa, that’s fantastic. And then you realize your costs and your growth and your expenditure. You never made a lot. So you need to always look at what you get more than what you make. And you put it quite lightly there that you were getting paid X, but carry no liability of actually production. And that must’ve been a great relaxing moment for you because all of a sudden the, the, the, the liability one that wasn’t there for you,

It wasn’t there. And it was liberating. I didn’t have to worry about production issues. I didn’t have to worry about finances. I didn’t have to worry about all these moving parts. So me and my partners, what we worried about is how can we leverage Pictionary? What are we worried about is how do we be entrepreneurs and make more money at what can we do to have more fun? It wasn’t all the nitty gritty. And I don’t know if we would’ve made any more money had we done it, the normal route, but for us licensing and staying involved, I want to say that over and over, we never gave up control. They couldn’t touch the packaging without a written approval because our financial futures are based on their efforts. We wanted their efforts to be pure. One of the efforts to be true and not mess with our future.

And that was the turning point. We wound up doing a different deal with a different company and a quicker side. We had a license agreement, Milton at the biggest Morgan company in the world, biggest royalty rate they’d ever given anybody. And they sent us the contract. Marketing guarantees all the money. The one thing they wouldn’t put in writing was they wouldn’t touch the packaging without a written approval. That was it. We said, no. All he did was sat in that paper. 26 years old. I said, no, because it wasn’t aligned with our values. It certainly wasn’t aligned with taking care of picturing our, our prime directive like star Trek was we take care of Pictionary and it will take care of us. You have to take care of your product. You have to take care of yourself. You have to treat it like a human, because when you do then, you know, what’s best for it. And you’ll know what’s best for you in conjunction with it. And you can’t lose sight of that ever. Don’t go for the quick buck, don’t go for the money until you have that established and keep control. That’s why I’m sitting here today. Not because of a superior product, not because of the pivots, because I kept control of my future.

So you were very focused and, and that, that age understood the the benefit of brand integrity. And you wanted to make sure the continuity was strong. And as you say, you didn’t want someone else dictate in how it was going to become. You wanted to, you wanted to retain while you had grown what you had founded.

Absolutely true. 100%. We turned down deals all the time. If it wasn’t aligned with our values, if it wasn’t aligned with how we can make money without causing ourselves, and you had to keep control and we wound up eventually with a bigger, better deal and kept all our controls.

Now you sold to Mattel in 2001. Is that correct?

 We did. After 17 years.

Right. do you still get anything out of Pictionary?

No, they were very generous in their offer. So we walked away.

That’s fair enough. Okay. So now that you know that that happens both sides, some people take a loyalty, some people take fun and, and you know, that’s, that’s perfectly acceptable there, but we’ve seen from 2001 up to where we are now in 2020. And you decided now to actually write a book on this. So why the delay, I would have thought that, you know, 2001, you just to start scribbling your book, like, you know, July is you’re counting the beans, as you seen on the, on the beach, carry your beans on the beach.

I like that when I sold the company, what I said earlier about is not what you make is what you keep. And my goal in life was freedom. So when I made all that money, I kept the money, not just in the business, but personally, so I could have the freedom to do what I want to do. It nourishes me. And when I sold the business, unlike a lot of my friends who got into new businesses and most of them fail, I did what nourish me was raise my kids, doing nonprofits, mentoring people, enjoying my life, traveling, raising my family, all of those things for 15 years, I didn’t need to write a book. I was super happy, but seven years ago, kids decided they were getting older. Didn’t want to come home anymore. I love. All right, that’s cool. And so I started this process on the book and it started this spiritual journey of personal growth to be more heart-centered rather than flailing around a little bit. And it’s been an amazing journey. But during that process, I thought it’s time to get my story out. It’s time to share. Game-Changers what the book is, my inspirational journey and all the good, the bad with everybody. And as many people that I can, as I can just to hopefully inspire people, to follow their dreams and their vision, or just get started. Is that the fundamental of the book just to get started? Yeah, it really is. I call it finding your aardvark. It’s its picture. I started, as I said with starting with one simple word, I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a goal.

I didn’t have a dream to be honest with you, but I had a start. That’s a difference between entrepreneurs and big ideas. I’ve got a big idea. Well, if you don’t take a step towards it, it doesn’t mean anything. Right? So I said, what I suggest is if you have an idea of big or small, doesn’t matter, that’s okay. Hold onto that idiot to take the easiest first task that you can. Don’t break it down into a hundred tasks. Okay? Here’s something simple and easy. I’m going to do this. Two, three, change your mindset. Tell yourself you’re an inventor. Tell yourself your creator. Tell yourself you’re a businessman, whatever it is. Just change your mindset. When you take that step in three, just jump. Just do it. Don’t overthink it. This is the heat. This is the hardest part. It’s like bungee jumping, standing at the precipice.

And you’re looking down, you’re going to look crap. I can’t do this. As you can, guess what? You’re tied to a rope. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s going to be scary as hell, but you’ve taken that step off the edge of the jump and you bounce it up and down. If you don’t want to do it again, don’t do it again. But if you do then another step and another step, so just keep celebrating those small victories, keep plugging forward and tell your intuition or somebody else tells you it’s time to turn around. That’s okay, too. It’s okay to turn it around, but you got to get started. And that’s the premise of the book. I’m I’m an example of it. Spanx, Sara Blakely, all big entrepreneurs. We just got started. That’s the only thing that separates us from you. What’s the name of the book? Game changer. Yeah,

Exactly. We’re going to put a letter link in there. Did you find it was disturbing or clarifying when you wrote the book? You know, like I wrote a book, I know a lot of other people have written books and while you’re writing the book to get your message out, there’s a lot of aha moments that come when you actually repeating your story. Did you find it quite a journey of self discovery?

Oh my goodness. Yes. I made, when I started, it was just going to be okay. And here’s what we did and here’s how it happened. But the more I got into it, I realized there’s so many dots were connected. I realized maybe I acted a different way because of this. And then this story that I forgot about effected this story, nothing is in a bubble. The simplest of silly stories can affect your life and affected my life time and time again. So as I’m writing the book, Oh my goodness. It was like that, that really happened. And I really think that way. And then 10 pages later, it was, Oh yeah, I see why he did that now. And it’s really exciting. It’s like therapy. I hate the word, but it is. It’s like therapy. I mean, I’m just here. It is. The book’s been up for a month or less. I’m still having revelations of my life with Pictionary and just who I am as a person. It’s been amazing. I so pleased and so happy that this has all happened.

Now you can often look when you write in the book and everything’s out there on black and white and you suddenly look at some of those bad decisions, those dark chapters, those dark moments, those failures, and you suddenly go, what? Hang on a minute. If that hadn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have gone into that chapter. And so quite often you can see there’s some of those really dark times with nothing more than instigators, a way you needed to be give us. One of those moments way was like, Oh shit, until you read the book and you went, ah, actually that was, that was a pivot. So give us one of those dark moments

Early on. When we were going to have the launch for the game, this is 1985, 10 days before the launch, our printer tells me he can’t give us the thousand cards for the game. So there’s a thousand games, 500 cards per game. He can’t sort them for me. And so we’ve got six days to sort these by ourselves. Now keep in mind, you’re talking a thousand games, you’re talking 969,652 decks of playing cards thrown in the middle of a pile. You have to restart those into the IndyCar packs. That was the job that we had to do. And when it happened, it was the, yeah, exactly. The end of the world, we can’t get it done. We’re going to fail the bit. We can’t get the launch happening when we want it to. But guess what, what we wound up doing was we got creative.

We figured out how to do the cards and 16 hours a day. For six days, we set up tables around my apartment. We put shoe boxes from Nordstrom. Again, you never know the connections and you know, what’s going to happen in the future. And we hand sorted half a million game cards. But what it wound up doing was three things. As silver lining, as you say, you don’t know what’s going to happen is one. We realized we were creative. We get something done too. We realized as a group, we can accomplish anything. My two partners and I, no matter what happens, we can figure it out and we can accomplish anything that we need to. And three, we bonded like never before we had this common enemy that we had to overcome and we did it together and we had each other’s back. And from that moment on, we knew we could trust each other. We knew the partnership was right. Everything solidified in that moment of absolute despair at being pissed off. But because of that, I think that propelled us into greatness.

Oh, that’s fantastic, man. So the book’s only been out about a month. Where’s the best place to get it, just to jump on Amazon or is a website to go to?

You can find it a Robangel.com, but Amazon game-changer Pictionary game changer, Rob. And it’s just, it’s a fun read. You’ll learn a lot. You’ll see a lot of what happened to like Pictionary and you’ll like it but there’s a lot of lessons in this book. Good and bad what to do and certainly what not to do.

Good. Good. Well, as I say I’ve not played your game but I’ve been very proud to get to know you. And so I can see that there’s a, you know, we’ve spoken before and I’ve enjoyed your wisdoms and your antidotes. And so I can see this book being very interesting. So thanks a lot one for being on the podcast, but two and more importantly, thanks for putting the book out because I believe those books are to able, enable other people to miss out on some of the scars and get to close a little bit faster. So congratulations, and I wish you well on the book.

 Appreciate it, Steve. Thanks.

 Love it. Thanks a lot for being on the show. Look up yourself, Rob, and see you in prison sometime.

I’m strangely happy about that. That’s good!

IMPORTANT LINKS:

Home

Buy the book

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn