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Balancing Family, Career, and Community in the Games Industry with Amir Satvat
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Episode Summary
How do you break into the games industry later in your career? And once you’re in, how do you build a meaningful life and community without burning out? In this episode, Greg is joined by Amir Satvat, a Business Development leader at Tencent and the winner of the "Game Changers" award. Amir is one of the industry's most important connectors, having built a community that has helped thousands find jobs and opportunities.
Amir shares his incredible journey from finance at Goldman Sachs to gaming in his late 30s, offering a practical playbook for career pivots. He breaks down his disciplined, non-negotiable approach to balancing a high-stakes job with being a present father and husband, and reveals why true networking is a 12-month game of building relationships, not a last-minute job hunt. This conversation is packed with wisdom for anyone looking to build a sustainable and impactful career in games.
Timestamps
- (01:55) The Pivot: Amir details his unconventional path from banking and healthcare into the games industry.
- (11:00) The Non-Negotiable Framework: How Amir uses rigorous time-blocking to protect family time and avoid burnout.
- (25:49) Confronting Ageism: Amir discusses the industry's challenge with retaining and valuing older talent.
- (32:25) The #1 Networking Mistake: Why you need to build relationships long before you need them.
- (39:40) The Financial Modeling Trap: How a finance-first mindset can be both a powerful tool and a creativity killer in game development.
Guest Bio
Amir Satvat is a leader in Business Development and Strategy at Tencent and the founder of a professional gaming community that has helped thousands of people. Known as one of the industry's most important connectors, his work is driven by a deep passion for helping others succeed.
- LinkedIn: Amir Satvat
- Community Hub: amirsatvat.com
Key Topics
- Breaking into the games industry mid-career
- Effective networking strategies for long-term success
- Balancing a demanding career with fatherhood and family life
- Transferable skills from other industries (finance, tech, healthcare)
- Community building and the power of trust
- Continuing education and staying relevant
- Industry challenges: ageism, the future of consoles, and business models
Relevant Links
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Today on PlayerDriven, I'm joined by someone who's been called a game changer, literally. Amir Satvat, winner of the Game Changers Award, has been become one of the most important connectors in our industry.
00:00:11
Speaker
He's helped thousands of people find jobs and opportunities, and he's built a reputation as someone that makes the industry better simply by being in it. But what I love most about Amir's story is that he didn't start in gaming straight out of school.
00:00:22
Speaker
He came into this industry later in life, bringing skills and perspectives from other worlds. And once he was here, he immersed himself in a fast-moving, ever-changing space, not just keeping up, but helping the rest of us keep up too.
00:00:34
Speaker
The story I want to dig in today is how do you break into gaming later in your career? How do you stay on top of an industry that never
Balancing Career and Family
00:00:40
Speaker
slows down? And how do you balance that, all of that with fatherhood and family? And maybe the most importantly, how do you know it's time to make a change even when things look successful on the surface?
00:00:50
Speaker
Amir, thank you so much for joining us on PlayerDriven today. How is your day going? Oh, thank you so much, Greg. That's so kind. and And I'm really, really great. I just think these are such great topics to talk about because I think they're so relevant to so many people. And I'm just i'm just so excited to dig in with you. Thank you for this opportunity.
00:01:09
Speaker
No, I appreciate it. I was listening to a few of your other podcasts recently, specifically Navik, and you talked about education in games. And that's been something that I've just loved recently. I talked to all different people in the studio, from producers to studio directors, and and learning the skill sets that they utilize, realized it didn't all start in gaming. It starts in project management, starts in community, it starts everywhere. And I guess backing this even further up it is, I think that's how you got your start as well. I think you weren't in the gaming industry, like you said, and I'm really curious, and maybe if you can share part of your story of
00:01:46
Speaker
You went to school, you learned something in school, you graduated, and then in your late 30s, you decided to make
Career Flexibility and Opportunities
00:01:51
Speaker
that pivot. How did that all go down? It's a really great question. I mean, the truth of the matter is, in some ways, it's actually like a pretty boring story in the sense that, you know, i knew i knew what the general category of areas was, even in high school, where I kind of thought I had the most interest in scale, very generally.
00:02:12
Speaker
which is like, I really liked businessy stuff, financey stuff, Excel modeling, these types of things. And so I was like, okay, I'd really like to go to undergraduate business school. There are some, there aren't a huge number of programs like that, but I was excited that there was one in Boston.
00:02:28
Speaker
And I finished that. And of course my goal was to get a job in games, but because the most important thing in my life has always been location, being near my family, being New England, and i didn't want to move.
00:02:41
Speaker
especially back in 2004, as you know, there just really wasn't anything. And because of that, now I was like, well, okay, I can't do the first choice, but I do have these skills. What can I do with it?
00:02:55
Speaker
And so I thought that the best thing to do was to go somewhere really intense where I would kind of learn a lot quickly. So that's why I started in banking and did one of those, you know, standard analyst programs.
00:03:06
Speaker
When that was over, I had worked in the healthcare sector ah for my assignment in that banking program at Goldman Sachs. And Because again, games hadn't been an option.
00:03:19
Speaker
A lot of people have, you know, which I think is a very good and healthy thing, or at least I certainly thought it was, have like secondary or tertiary things they think is interesting too. So I was like, well, I think healthcare is interesting. I think tech is interesting.
00:03:31
Speaker
I guess I'll do something with these skills now in healthcare.
Passion and Challenges in the Gaming Industry
00:03:34
Speaker
So I went back to graduate school for five years and did, a triple master's in various areas, which is kind of super, super funny because of those, I probably really only use my MBA.
00:03:48
Speaker
And then I started out in healthcare and, you know, business development strategy, these types of things. Then the story from there is much simpler. I eventually gravitated from that. Again, post my MBA, I had gone to Cambridge, Mass to be near my wife to support her and her career. And at that time, education.
00:04:08
Speaker
And because there weren't healthcare care jobs, I made a little bit of a sidestep to tech BD and strategy. And then after doing that for a while, finally at Amazon, I was able to make an internal transfer in 2020 from tech BD and strategy to games BD and strategy.
00:04:25
Speaker
And so the two things I tell everybody is one, you know you can make people take one leap with you. Making them take two leaps with you is a lot harder.
00:04:36
Speaker
And what I mean by that is, I had the BD in strategy, education, work experience, et cetera. I just didn't have it in games. So now the only leap I had to make them take was this guy can perform.
00:04:49
Speaker
Does he understand the games area? And the second one is, yeah, just being open to opportunity and just keeping your feet moving. and I think if you do that, even though I really wanted to be in games.
Community Building and Online Growth
00:05:01
Speaker
I had reached a point of peace by the time I broke in that even if I had never made it, I would be like a happy person and kind of at peace with where I had landed. that That helped me a lot. I...
00:05:13
Speaker
The family aspect, I think, is one that really hits close to me. and a lot of it does, right? But I understand that feeling. I'm from New Jersey, and I tried to move away, and eventually you have kids. I'm like, oh, well, my parents are there, and I need some babysitters. Maybe they can help me out, right? And and you come home, man, and and you're kind of at a burden when you're on the East Coast, I feel like, because there's no real gaming hubs here. There's a few studios in New York. There's a few indies all around, but there's really no gaming platform. it And i love that you went the BD route. And I'm curious, are there skills that you learned from the BD side? And you're still a BD, but like that weren't in gaming. Are the skill sets exactly the same? Do you find yourself scratching new itches that you're in there that, hey, I need to do better at this or this skill is something I need to sharpen? and
00:05:58
Speaker
Definitely. i mean, it's interesting because even BD itself is so different from organization to organization. Like if I take, for example, when I was even at Prime Gaming in games, in that business, you know, we were providing skins, cosmetics, currency, free games, these types of things because it was a benefit program for being in Prime Gaming. And I had a team of BDs at the time.
00:06:21
Speaker
And there it was really like a velocity shop. Like we had to close tens of deals a year because you had to have that content for members every single month. If you contrast that with a place like Tencent, where it's a much more patient environment, definitely very different dynamics. So even within games, it's different.
00:06:38
Speaker
But I would also say like, There's, and this, don't think this is too controversial a thing about ah but some agree or disagree with it more strongly than others.
00:06:50
Speaker
Going back to where I started my career in banking, right? Many people are bankers and they'll cover like, transportation, and then they'll switch and they'll cover like real estate and then they'll switch and they'll cover something else.
00:07:03
Speaker
As you get more and more senior, that's more rare, but people do it certainly at more junior levels or in consulting. And some people be like, well, that doesn't matter. The skills are the thing that matters. And like an intelligent person can pick up an industry. And I certainly think that's true.
00:07:19
Speaker
And I think it's healthy that any industry like games has people who aren't all like games lifers. With that said, i I personally think it makes a huge difference loving the industry, thinking about it day and night, playing a lot of stuff, doing a lot of that type of stuff.
00:07:38
Speaker
I'm actually amazed that so many people are very successful in industries like games who like don't play games at all. And there certainly are many of them. But for me personally, i would find it very hard to be successful at my job unless I coupled all those skills with being like super intense about games themselves.
00:07:58
Speaker
That's an interesting point. And I feel like there's ah a counterpoint or an argument to made be made against that. But I agree because when you talk to gamers that are making games, you can tell the passion and love that they're putting into it.
00:08:09
Speaker
They know the genre, they know the mechanics, they know what needs to happen. And then you have maybe these MBAs that don't know gaming come and say, well, we need to be able to monetize this and do this and make this happen. And It's a completely different game
Networking and Skill Development
00:08:20
Speaker
and it's not wrong. It's not right.
00:08:22
Speaker
But I guess my argument is just because you're a gamer doesn't necessarily mean you should go to games. And think people need to hear this if they're listening is that it's not all fun and games and gaming. At the end of the day, it's a job. And I think it's important to keep careers and hobbies separately because at the end of the day, a hobby becomes a job if that's what you're trying to do.
00:08:43
Speaker
But yeah, I don't think it's for everyone. I mean, especially in the tech world, there's a lot of money to be made outside of tech. And sometimes I think people need to be able to look at, well, my skills are really good in this world and I can make some money in this world and I can bring it to gaming and play games again. Right. I think people just have this idea that being in games is the most amazing thing, even with everything that's been happening over the past couple of years. And I think people need to start realizing that jobs are jobs for a reason.
00:09:06
Speaker
No, you're 100% right. And in fact, I think for many people, I think they would find whether they want to believe it or not, that they actually will like it a lot less working in the industry.
00:09:18
Speaker
It's like you have to play and do a lot of stuff. Absolutely. You're around games all the time. You're around amazing, amazing folks. But you know you don't get all the time to play what you want. Like for example, in an average month,
00:09:31
Speaker
I would say at this point in my career, 90% plus of my playtime is not things that like I am personally choosing. It also may be stuff that I really enjoy, but it's stuff I need to play for work because we're evaluating titles because you're staying topical on stuff. And so you're so right.
00:09:47
Speaker
And it's also like nobody has a right to take away your love and passion for games for you just because it's not your job. Like it really is to your point, okay to be a fan. And I also think that ah it's,
00:10:01
Speaker
It's very, I think certainly in BD, it's true, for example, that like, you know, you play a lot of games. I think though that this one-to-one equivalency for a lot of people to your point that, oh, I love playing games, so I love working in the games industry.
00:10:17
Speaker
That could be true, but it also could not. Absolutely. um And I agree with that. ah And I wanted to kind of transition that to the family side of things, because this is something that I think I struggle with. And I think a lot of people struggle with it is, you know, were we're both getting in our later 30s, right? Early 40s. And it's like, all right, I have a family now.
00:10:40
Speaker
I have kids now. I'm trying to build this, especially you. You have your day job and you're building your community by nights. And that's awesome. I mean, you obviously, you see the impact you're making. That's great. But You there's burnout, there's real light, like you want to spend time with your family. How do you juggle that?
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, you know, so part of it is, and everyone has their approach to this, i'm I'm very, part of it is a philosophical thing and part of it is a planning thing.
00:11:09
Speaker
So I have, you know, blocks of time that are non-negotiable, both with respect to my job and community for my family. Unless, of course, it's very, very important for work, then work always has to take precedence.
00:11:24
Speaker
But it's like, for example, every day, My wife and I drive the kids to school together. Every day in the afternoon, my my parents, bless them, bring them back.
00:11:37
Speaker
Every day from 5 to 8 or 5 to 8.30, that's our, or 5.30 to 8.30, that's our family time where we do dinner. I spend some time with my wife and the children.
00:11:48
Speaker
They have their baths. They have their books. They go to bed. I... get up early enough to do all the work I need to do, have that family time.
00:11:59
Speaker
And then basically I do all the pickup work that I need to do for work. And then after that, I do our community stuff. And it's, ah it can be a lot, but of course now I have a lot more people who help. I think when I started a lot of it, I was driving myself, but that's becoming less true.
00:12:19
Speaker
And I also really overschedule my time. I think for some, this might drive them nuts, but for me, it helps me where every month or two, I literally block out in Excel, ah like time grid, which is a guess that I, of course, very off of, of like, here's what each the plan is for each day of the week based upon
Realities and Misconceptions of Gaming Careers
00:12:40
Speaker
what I think is going to happen.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I find that helpful for really a number of reasons, but one specific one, which is, I try to tell myself, well, I need, I'm totally making it up 15 hours a week to do the community stuff.
00:12:56
Speaker
Is that reasonable? Do I have enough time? And if that's true and I'm now budgeted 15 hours, how am I going to use that time? And is that a sufficient allocation? So I try to be very purposeful about all of these types of things.
00:13:10
Speaker
I also will say it helps a lot of tricks you learn. And again, everyone has their own approach, but for me, for example, I do, ah huge amount of not only the content creation that I post on LinkedIn, but a lot of the community updates on the weekends.
00:13:26
Speaker
And I do it in batches and schedule or plan it out for the upcoming weeks. So that helps too. You said something there I wanted to tap on again. And I think it just goes back to the time management. I'm in awe on how you do. First of all, i'm I'm curious if you sleep and how often you sleep, but between all that and also fitting in games. And I guess if you were to look at the mirror back in the Goldman Sachs days, right, would you ever believe that you're the guy that would have one of the biggest gaming communities on the web? Like, does that blow your mind? And do people believe you when you tell them that?
00:13:59
Speaker
That's very, very nice. it It is mind-blowing. Well, you know what's interesting? um i I am surprised all the time But I, I can tell you this from the bottom of my heart, which is, i I certainly didn't expect this to happen, but for at least I would say back to high school ish, I had always hoped that
00:14:36
Speaker
to eventually do something big that was like community related in games. That was like my dream. It wasn't to be like VP of whatever, whatever production or something at some place or be a game director. It truly wasn't.
00:14:52
Speaker
ah And part of this comes from kind of my upbringing. My mom was, has always been very involved in like community work, volunteering, helping others, and that left a very deep impression on me.
00:15:08
Speaker
And so what I'm trying to say is, i am very surprised, but I think that it has worked because
00:15:19
Speaker
I put on display for others how I truly feel, which is like, I don't do this for money. I don't do it for recognition. Although I suppose at some level that's inevitable when you're doing something that has a lot of visibility.
00:15:33
Speaker
And I think those things coupled with a time where I think other people really needed that support and feeling together. I think that's probably a key ingredient of it happening, but no, it's, it's, um, it's, um,
00:15:49
Speaker
It's very humbling, sincerely, to be in this position. and I think beyond all the resources and the sites, an often overlooked part of it that I think a lot of people don't see, but I think you know this, ah because we've been friends for a while, is that a big part of it is just the trust and one-to-one confiding from the community as well. like That really surprises me.
00:16:14
Speaker
like the hundreds of notes sometimes in a week that I'll get from people just being like a mirror. I'm like really sad this happened or even like more seriously a mirror. Like I lost my house or I really need your help. I don't know what to do with like my career and like my work.
00:16:34
Speaker
It's pretty heavy stuff. And, um
00:16:39
Speaker
You just, you you try your best to be that thing that people are looking for. It's humbling, but also tough sometimes, Saeed. Yeah, I mean, there's so much credit and power given to you. Their stories are phenomenal, and they're heartbreaking, but they're also such great stories. And, you know, you started with family support, and I think that's the initial community you need to build strong. And when your family support and your community is big, right, you have that support to go do what you want, then you built this community online. And I think that same love and feeling that your family probably has you,
00:17:10
Speaker
I mean, all your posts, right? They just express that you, you are a humble guy. And I love watching that for, for a while. I want to reach out to you. and it's just like, I don't know how to do this. I don't want to like, I don't know. You just do so much good for the industry. And it just boggles in my mind that someone with the BD background, I don't mean that as a negative way. Like you built this community, like you, you practice what you preach and you did it. and like, I hope studios are also noticing this stuff because Community can lift people up from the the lowest point of their life, right? If you build that good network of friends and groups, and to your point, everyone in gaming is like that. You can meet them, and then that's probably the biggest FOMO I have from Gamescom is like, I miss seeing these people. I see them at all these other conferences, and now that I'm going to be able to see them this time. But it's such a strong community, and I think the pillar that you put there, ah the trust that people have in you is something that
00:17:58
Speaker
you can't buy, you can't do anything, right? It's earned and it's earned through hard work and dedication. And just the time you put into it is just fascinating. Thank you so much, Greg. Well, you know, also, and, and you know, this, I'm like a pretty open guy, you know, there have definitely been, you know, for the 99% plus that is all positive and and great, as you know, it rarely,
00:18:25
Speaker
And I think this is important
Education and Technological Evolution in Gaming
00:18:27
Speaker
to talk about. You know, I, like any person who has some degree of public visibility, get some negativity too. And I think some of it is, and i this in a good way, you reminded me of when you mentioned as a BD person, um,
00:18:45
Speaker
It saddens me sometimes that so many of us carry such a disappointment and skepticism in the world because we've been disappointed, because we believed in things and people weren't like what we thought they were, because people ended up having some ulterior motive that like we couldn't see at the outset.
00:19:06
Speaker
It does sadden me sometimes that a very, very small percentage of people like can't believe that we would do something like this for the reasons we say we do.
00:19:19
Speaker
Oh, like, there must be some angle, like he works at a company. There must be some angle. He works at like business development or has like a finance background or whatever.
00:19:30
Speaker
And I... I always try to show by example rather than talking and typing things and so forth. And I think that, I think that we're winning that battle with, again, that very teeny tiny percent that maybe it felt like they didn't have a reason to believe.
00:19:48
Speaker
And the biggest part of it that, lifts me up is not just leave what we've done, but that that has given the confidence to other people to start their own initiatives.
00:20:00
Speaker
And maybe even if they were skeptical that they could make a difference or do something, they've been won over. So um I think that's a big part of the story too. Yeah. And just to talk about myself for a moment, this is part of the reason I wanted to start the podcast was to help people understand the skills that they need, the education that they need to get started in the industry. I remember going to school and wanting to be in gaming and I took C++ plus plus and I failed it. And I was like, oh, I'm never going to go in gaming because at the time I didn't realize there was other paths in.
00:20:28
Speaker
And I think it's important to highlight there's other paths in here. and There's also other paths out. Again, not everyone should stay in gaming. There's a lot of great opportunities in there and other verticals and the skills translate over. And I think it's important to understand that. But on the skills...
00:20:43
Speaker
I'm curious for education for yourself, right? How do you keep up to data? And I don't want to get into the AI debate, but I love playing with the AI tools. And a lot of my day, I'm just messing around with stuff. I think that's the sales engineer in me. I just want see how everything works and how everything can play together. And ongoing education as you're getting older does get hard.
00:21:02
Speaker
How do you find yourself continuing to learn and understand what's happening? It's a great question. You know, let's let's take the AI piece head on for a second.
00:21:14
Speaker
You know, I sometimes, I feel like I have to say things that I believe strongly in, even when sometimes the community doesn't always agree with me, or maybe they don't agree in the short term and we meet together in the middle.
00:21:30
Speaker
One of these examples is that a while back, I made a post about AI and I said, look, For me, it's not about being pro or against AI. ah In fact, if you force me to be like, well, what am I? i'd be If anything, I'm probably more anti-AI than I'm pro because of many things I worry about
Inclusivity and Industry Change
00:21:49
Speaker
for.
00:21:49
Speaker
But the thing that I really am pro is people in our community being employed. And if you want to maximize those odds, you don't have to love ai You don't have to like recreationally use it, but you should be aware of to your point, how it works and what the function is.
00:22:09
Speaker
Because I think there is something to this adage we've all heard that like you might not lose your job to AI. it's more likely you'll lose your job to someone in a similar function who is capable of using AI and like you're not.
00:22:25
Speaker
And so this general attitude, where sometimes people agree with me and sometimes don't, is kind of my attitude about everything, which is you constantly should be talking to other professionals in your field in both your function and adjacent functions to be like, hey,
00:22:44
Speaker
something I love to ask people is like, what's a tool or a resource or something like that you've been using a lot more of, or you just learned about in the past, like three to six months, or that is helping you in your job.
00:22:58
Speaker
And I just make lists of these things and try to look into them. So it's so important. my It's funny you say this because my father, who's a physician, you know, when you're a doctor as part of being a physician, you actually have to,
00:23:13
Speaker
take a certain number of credits of continuing education to remain certified. And so my father, from the time I was fairly young, always talked to me about this idea of like continuing education.
00:23:26
Speaker
And so I often think of that for myself. I'm like, well, why did why don't we all think like a doctor and be like, well, if I'm not doing X number of hours of continuing education, am I still certified to do my job?
00:23:39
Speaker
I think that's such a great way to put it. when When I started my journey here, I was not a designer and I still don't think I'm a designer, but I started watching TikTok videos and people create these one minute long TikTok videos on how to use Canva, how to use this, how to use that. And it's so cool to be able to see people use these tools and how they're using them. And I realized That's my method of learning is I can watch something and I can follow along. Some people like to read. And I think this whole journey has been a fascinating journey for because I'm trying to create content that people will engage with. Sometimes it's writing, sometimes it's imagery, sometimes it's video. And it's like,
00:24:15
Speaker
all right, well, what's going to stick with the audience? Who is the audience? And I think a game isn't any different. You need to understand the audience you're trying to sell this content to or push this content to, right? If I'm going to create something for for for older generations, if I put out TikToks, they're probably not going to watch it, right? And I think it's no different from a game. If you're going to release an FPS and you go to a place that doesn't play FPSs, you're going to miss the ball immediately. And I think, again, just understanding how this stuff works and finding that platform to learn is something that is
Industry Challenges and Opportunities
00:24:43
Speaker
driving me. like i I don't know. There's just so much information out there and I'm trying to be a sponge. And I i feel like you're probably the same way with all the people you talk to. like
00:24:51
Speaker
There's so much great data. And this can almost lead us into this next topic of old school um game creation versus new generations of games. I talked with Adam Boyes and he was telling me about the Midway days and stuff like that. And Ben Koala was telling me about backgrounds at 2K and stuff. And like,
00:25:07
Speaker
hearing how games were made and then seeing how people use UEFN and other tools now to create games. And there's a knowledge gap there. No one's wrong and no one's right, but there's learnings from over here that can be shared over there and vice versa, right? Some of the old school guys can learn some stuff from the new guys, right? And I think, how do you find that medium where the two can intersect and really share ideas? And I don't know if it's LinkedIn. I don't really think it's LinkedIn, but like, there's gotta be a platform where this can exist.
00:25:35
Speaker
Definitely. i mean, you know, what's super interesting about what you're saying is it brings together two
00:25:44
Speaker
two major topics, both of which I'm passionate about. One, which I know you've seen me mention a number of times, is the topic of ageism. And the other is kind of how to describe it simply, I'll say, a phrase, and then I'll explain why I said that.
00:26:03
Speaker
We just want to create games that we would want to play ourselves. I'll come back to that and in five seconds, a minute. So the ageism one is more straightforward. We have an ageism problem in the industry, period.
00:26:15
Speaker
If you look at any stats, stats that I have myself, stats from other industry organizations, IGDA, et cetera, only 3%, believe it is of those employed in games are 50 or over.
00:26:28
Speaker
And so I think that because it's a younger industry, we still haven't figured out how to handle people who are like 50 or 60 are still working in the industry.
00:26:38
Speaker
It's a major problem. They have a lot of skills, a lot of experience, a lot of know-how that in some ways hasn't changed going back to even the first generation of consoles. On the other side of that I see a lot of more experienced game makers who aren't even necessarily the oldest ones, but who come from systems.
00:27:00
Speaker
They've been at a big company that had its own marketing and advertising department, its own launcher, its own way of making games, its own systems for decades. And now they're out of that system.
00:27:13
Speaker
or even they're still within that system, but the times have changed and they're still making the games that they had wanted to make in like 2000. And I think it's so critical. And some people I observe do this better than others.
00:27:26
Speaker
Even if you don't love Roblox or UEFN or insert here, You have to play everything and see everything to understand like what the zeitgeist is, what people want, what different people wanna play.
00:27:45
Speaker
A lot a version of this that I see a lot these days and I'm sure you do too is there's a lot of interesting debate about Will we even have consoles in 15 years?
00:27:57
Speaker
Certainly, you know Xbox seems to be betting big in and and a level of agnosticism of where you play and on what you play. And I think the related point of that is we could end up being dinosaurs in 10 to 15 years where this type of experience that we really valued and grew up with of like the prestige high AA, AAA title on the most bleeding edge console or PC, that is like a totally niche product or a smaller product.
00:28:30
Speaker
And the kind of instant game that you can stream or play in your browser is the dominant form of media consumption. We could bring up 50 examples like this, but the point is you got to know about it to be as ready as you can be if and when it changes.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, and there's so much change on that side right now. We're we're talking with companies like Pokey and Itch, right? They're doing the games I played in high school, right? We used to go to like addicting games and play these games. And like, I feel like they're coming. Maybe they never left, but but I left.
00:28:58
Speaker
But now I feel like they're coming back. And to your point, I was talking to another interview and he said, the reason gaming isn't growing as much as it can is because it's not unified. And he used the examples of VCR.
00:29:10
Speaker
He said, when the VCR came out, originally, I forgot if it was RCA who made the VCR, but he's like, if it only supported them, it wouldn't work good. But everyone made VCRs. That means anyone can go buy $10 VCR. that You can go buy a $500 VCR and it can still play those games. And I like that about the Microsoft model because I can have my phone, I can have a cheap computer and I can still play the game.
00:29:32
Speaker
But I also see the, I love my Xbox. Like I'm a, I'm a dedicated console player, right? Like I don't think I can live without my Xbox. Like I would pay for the hardware, but I understand that like, if you want to penetrate more homes and more people, you need to find the medium that they're using. And it's not always going to be the console. And I think that's a, it was a fascinating take because I understand both sides of it and I don't know. I think Nintendo is the only one that does make money off the sale of their console, and it's not much, but it's a fascinating look at it. Hey, how do you grow this to an audience that's not gaming already? And maybe they just don't want to game, right? Not everyone is meant to game.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah, and and there's other things too, which is like, you know, let's face it. i I made my best argument, which was sincere, about how um ah to speak about the price of hardware and games.
00:30:22
Speaker
If you compare it to other forms of recreation on an hourly basis, if you look at it on an inflation-adjusted basis since 1980, I still believe these things are a bargain, but I'm also sympathetic to the point of view of,
00:30:36
Speaker
One, if you look at like internationalization,
Job Market Strategies and Networking
00:30:39
Speaker
as expensive as these things are here in a place like Brazil, it might be literally unaffordable for many, many people. Many people are out of work.
00:30:48
Speaker
And let's face it, like $500 with a pack-in game is a lot of money for for a lot of people, as is $70 or $80 for a full price title.
00:30:59
Speaker
And so like I can do whatever justifications and inflation and hour and whatever, and thank God I'm in a position that I can pay for those things, but it is very expensive and it is very, very expensive.
00:31:09
Speaker
And so, you know, it's it's complicated all, all All of these things are going to collide in some way. And it is clear that there are many elements we could call out that don't have sustainability in various areas.
00:31:25
Speaker
I want to take a hop backwards. Sorry I'm jumping all over the place. But but there was something you were mentioning about the different careers in gaming. And that someone used the term connecting the dots. And it was like, hey my skill here translates here and here. So how do I grow from here? And I think that's the part of the education side of things that really excites me the most because I don't think people understand what they're capable of.
00:31:49
Speaker
They might sit there and think, i am only a ah community manager. No, you're creating content. You're building this. You're doing this. If you want to go to marketing, you can do marketing, right? like I think connecting the dots is something that's really important to me. And taking a weird turn of question here is when you look back at what you've done so far in gaming or maybe your whole career, like if you can go back and teach yourself one skill that maybe you're not as sharp on and you want to be sharper, what would that skill be?
00:32:14
Speaker
Gosh, that's a good one. Let me think for a second. You're going to laugh because because of what we've talked about and knowing me, but I actually think it's how to network and meet people properly, especially in games. Let me explain this for a little bit because I think it might be interesting for the audience. So
00:32:41
Speaker
I give a lot of advice to people on how to network and meet other people because we have a ton of data suggesting it is literally the most important thing you can do to get a job.
00:32:53
Speaker
And that it's almost impossible to get anything on a cold application and But everything that I say is based upon tons of paper cuts of things that I had to learn the hard way.
00:33:06
Speaker
All the party fouls that like you don't do now, like reach out to someone cold and be like, can you help me find a job? Do you have like an opportunity? Writing people at the wrong seniority level relative to like where you are.
00:33:20
Speaker
But I think moreover, it's like, It is certainly true, as I said, that when I came out of college, there weren't any jobs around me, around us.
00:33:31
Speaker
But it's also, there's this really interesting thought exercise I think about all the time, whether it's Jersey or Connecticut. How different would our lives have been if we had grown up, same family, same value, same upbringing, but in Los Angeles or Irvine or whatever?
00:33:50
Speaker
I dare suggest we would have had very different lives, very different cultural settings, companies, people, environments, et cetera.
00:34:01
Speaker
There's
Knowledge Sharing and Industry Trends
00:34:02
Speaker
a big advantage, and even this is shifting as where jobs are geographically shifting. But for decades, I think, and people have confirmed to me this is a reasonable assertion, you would have been had a huge advantage just growing up in a center that is near all these companies because those people would have been there.
00:34:22
Speaker
You could have gone to events. You could have gone to games conferences. You would have had friends and family and people who worked in the industry. I did not have a friendship even with a single person who worked in the industry until I was like in my mid-30s.
00:34:38
Speaker
maybe early 30s if I recall. But it's just because like, it's it not like i I went to college. I like worked at an investment bank. I had an MBA, but it's like, it's hard to explain. And this is why I empathize with so many people.
00:34:52
Speaker
and And we made the resources the way we did. You just don't know what to do. It's like, no one gives you a playbook of like, here, reach out to this person. That's like what you want to do. And the last point I'll make on this, because I know it was a long point I made is,
00:35:07
Speaker
It makes me feel so much empathy for the early career people who are coming out of school because a lot of them actually do know all these things and they're 20 times savvier than I was at their age.
00:35:19
Speaker
But now the market has just become so, so challenging that even doing those things, it's hard to get a job. And so ah it's, anyway, I wish I had known more about that. Maybe it would have made a difference, maybe not.
00:35:34
Speaker
I'm so curious. And it's funny you say the growing up thing because the other week we my wife and I were driving and we passed one of the schools I applied for and I didn't go to. And I met my wife in college. I was like, oh, if I would have went to this school, we would not be in this situation right now because I wouldn't know you. Like everything happens.
00:35:51
Speaker
It's like a plan, right? Like you're just following life's plan and it all plays along. And I'm curious now that like, the world is smaller today. I can get news from across the world in a second, right? And growing up, it wasn't the case. If there was a game, if E3 was going on, right, we'd have to wait till that night or the next day until something gets posted about that. But now, like...
00:36:11
Speaker
I'm curious if growing up where you grew up matters as much. And it obviously it does for financial reasons, how how affluent you are and what you can do. But the way that tools like Unity are even out there and you see people creating games in these other countries that never have. And it's just such cool stuff coming out. So i feel like the world is getting smaller, but I understand where you're coming from as well.
00:36:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely changing. i still believe, though, ah we still remain ah hub concentrated business.
00:36:44
Speaker
Where those open jobs are is shifting. So that hub may be Shanghai or it may be Warsaw increasingly versus being like Los Angeles, but it is still true even today that the top five states slash regions ah California, Washington State, North Carolina, mostly because of Epic, Vancouver, and Montreal, that's 70 to 80% of the open jobs and games in any given quarter in north and North America. And you would find similar things in other places.
00:37:22
Speaker
I think it's easier to go to events. Most of the events are on the West Coast. I think it's easier to meet people and make connections. But you are right that
00:37:33
Speaker
I think people should seriously take to heart the other side of what you said, which is going back to the previous point about how because the networking has become harder and harder and getting that entry level job is harder and harder.
00:37:47
Speaker
We know for early career people over 12 months, based upon our community's data, they only have a 7% chance of finding a job if they have less than three years work experience and no experience in games.
00:37:59
Speaker
Now, not saying it's good, it's bad, it's fair, it just is. And this what I would do if I was out of college now. It has to be the one-two punch of the networking.
00:38:11
Speaker
And to your point, a blending what you said about learning skills and being able to do anything from anywhere, you have to have something you can show, especially if you don't if you haven't been able to get a job.
Community Impact and Inclusivity
00:38:25
Speaker
Project, portfolio, game, your own content creation or branding, It's like pick one and basically you can't go wrong, but you need something that allows you to show people that you have expertise.
00:38:39
Speaker
I love the idea about networking. And I think when it comes to networking for people out of college, it's tough and it's scary, right? It's probably a lot of intimidation of these guys have been doing it for years, right? ah And you probably have, whether it be kind of imposter syndrome or you just don't feel like you should be reaching out to people.
00:38:56
Speaker
um From my experience, when you reach out to people, most people are super friendly and and willing to at least say hi back to you. But do you have any tips on maybe... where you've seen your networking get better? I know you said you still want to work on it, but like, are there anything that you do while networking that maybe people can learn from?
00:39:14
Speaker
The biggest tip I always have for people is, you know, I often think about something I talk about a lot is thinking about a framework of normative versus positive things, by which I mean, right, what is versus what we wish was.
00:39:30
Speaker
Why am I mentioning this? What I tell people all the time about networking is, Networking properly one, something you should be doing all the time.
00:39:41
Speaker
And two, to do it properly, it's something that takes 12 months minimum. It probably takes years.
00:39:50
Speaker
One of the things that I really work hard on and try to message all the time is, and actually you could say it about anything, not just networking, looking for jobs, being aware of what opportunities are out there is,
00:40:03
Speaker
you don't just keeping your LinkedIn profile well edited and so forth. Way too much of the time people are like, Oh, unfortunately I just lost my job.
00:40:17
Speaker
Time to start networking time to start doing LinkedIn. And I'm like, no, no, no. Like you need to be doing that all the time or the reverse. They're like, I just got a job. Thank God I don't have to post on LinkedIn anymore. And I can like disappear. I'm like, no.
00:40:32
Speaker
And it's like,
00:40:35
Speaker
The reason this is so important is it completely colors how you network and interact with other people. If your attitude is now, and this is easy for me to say, because I'm not the one in a position now, although I've been unemployed in the past, I'm not the one in the position who has to pay bills, who's going to lose this house, who has medical bills to pay.
00:40:58
Speaker
But my flip side to that is I think For me, and I've done this, so I've walked the walk, I mean, until I was 38. You do what you have to do to pay your bills and keep a roof over your head.
00:41:13
Speaker
And then you network like crazy. If you have a one year plus horizon, you can now reach out to someone and just say, I'd like to get to know you better.
00:41:25
Speaker
I'd like to chat and you can mean it. And there's not like a secret agenda that like by email three, you're like, can you get me a job?
Personal Interests and Career Satisfaction
00:41:33
Speaker
Doing that does not get you the job.
00:41:36
Speaker
What gets you the job, in my opinion, is the person on the other side says, man, Greg is like so cool and he's like so fun to talk to. And the last piece I'll say is for me, even now, when I meet other people and I'm not even looking for work, I'm just trying to make friends or make connections.
00:42:00
Speaker
I find the most enjoyable conversations that lead to me having a relationship that has power with someone isn't some high-minded— and certainly you can have those conversations too— but it's not some high-minded conversation about like, I don't know, subscription monetization trends or whatever.
00:42:15
Speaker
It's just like relaxing. It's talking about nonsense. It's talking about like what people are playing, how their families are, where they went on vacation. And so I think the more you can just level down conversation and intensity from like the one end of the scale, which I think you should never do, which is like, can you get me a job?
00:42:36
Speaker
To I just want to spend time with you and have a fun conversation with you as a human. That is what gets you where you want to go. But it takes a lot of time. It does. And it's tough to ask these questions sometimes. right I was just talking to one of my old sales guys. It's hard to ask for the sale. You can become best friends with someone right and eventually you need to sell them something or you may want to, right depending on the approach you take. But I feel like this there's a lot of tough things that you need to be able to take a look at yourself and say, hey, these are the skills I'm good at or the skills i'm not good at. but
00:43:08
Speaker
If you're building a relationship to get a job, right, after you become friends, you might want to keep your eyes open and be like, hey, can you help me with this? Or do you know anyone in this position, right? I think that's the beauty of building that relationship is that you're not using me or I'm not using you. We're friends. And then maybe a year down the line, i say, hey do you know anyone that's looking for this? And I think, again, i think that's why networking events are important, right? This is the Gamescom, the GDC events. You can meet these other people. They're right there. And like you said, you talk about fun stuff. You don't talk about business there.
00:43:34
Speaker
And then you continue that conversation afterwards. Yeah, and the bar has changed too. Like, you know, I didn't go to my first GDC, in fact, until this this last year, if you can believe it.
00:43:47
Speaker
um And I didn't go to my first major games event until Gamescom in 23, even though I started in 2020 because of COVID and people weren't traveling and stuff. Anyway, people tell me, although I never saw it myself, that in GDC of many years past,
00:44:04
Speaker
You'd go to stuff at GEC and there'd be recruiters from many, many companies and they'd be having conversations and talking to candidates. And many of that very quickly would lead to jobs.
00:44:16
Speaker
Many people talk about networking and talking to others. And it's like, Oh, like, do you have anything? They'd have a side conversation and go somewhere. Um, I don't just believe this is true in games, but I certainly hear from many friends in tech this is true.
00:44:31
Speaker
Everything has just become a lot more standardized. The ease with which someone can like off book be like, oh yeah, we'll find something for you. We'll figure it out. Let's take your CV. Let's get you into a loop.
00:44:43
Speaker
There's just too many people now. There's too many people applying. Everybody is now getting more smart about working all these angles. And so that stuff still plays, but I would say one,
00:44:55
Speaker
I think the bar of a solid relationship that you need for it to actually give you a leg up has become a lot higher because they're just getting so many inbounds from so many people. And I also think, which is probably not a bad thing, everything has just become a lot more professionalized.
00:45:10
Speaker
And so I think the idea that someone's going to say something to you besides hey, you just got to go on the site and put in your application, but it'll at least get you in the pile that will get reviewed for like phone screens.
00:45:21
Speaker
Now everyone basically has to go through that. I remember when I came out of college, I'm sure it was the same for you. I mean, Jesus, it's like makes me feel like a dinosaur. Like places were still taking paper applications.
00:45:33
Speaker
And again, two sides of the equation. Some people will say correctly, that was a bad thing because it excluded a lot of people from the process. But in some ways, you could also maybe argue it was a good thing because it raised some barrier to entry.
00:45:47
Speaker
It meant that you had to make a little bit more of a connection to the hiring team so I can see both sides. I've spoken to a few studio leads recently. And the one thing that kept coming in common is that they all started with a financial modeling background.
00:46:02
Speaker
And you mentioned models before, and I don't think you meant it in the same way. But I'm curious if you can look at the industry and you can say, hey, this all falls into... It doesn't fall into a model, but does it fit a mode? Do you see a reason why people are starting in financial modeling and making their way into gaming?
00:46:19
Speaker
I think... I do. And I think there's a side to this that I think is maybe better and a side that I think that is worse. The better side is I encourage everybody. I say this all the time, whether you're an artist, engineer, UX, BD, doesn't matter what your function is.
00:46:40
Speaker
I think every person, should have a basic understanding of corporate finance that you can learn through any number of MOOCs or YouTube courses online.
00:46:52
Speaker
Understanding how to read a 10K, understanding how the financials of a business work, because increasingly, let's face it, there's a lot more scrutiny on investment and costs.
00:47:04
Speaker
And like it or hate it, Having some type of thoughtfulness about pursuing an audience, monetization, having like a long tail on games, it's just more and more important.
00:47:20
Speaker
It's like a very nice luxury if you can have a game that just sells a single product at a single price and DLC, but often you have to do more than that to be able to make a game go.
00:47:34
Speaker
So I think that's good to know about and a good general life skill to have because you want to know why people are making decisions. The flip side of it, ah having worked at Amazon for, you know, five years is, and there are a lot of very, very good things about that environment, but
00:47:55
Speaker
You also have to be cautious that like the bean counting doesn't too much run the business and you don't end up like green lighting repeatedly large projects with large investment, large numbers,
00:48:13
Speaker
because that's the one that like looks the most appealing the further that you push it up into the spreadsheet. And so I think that there's that at other companies, certainly you'll know which ones I mean.
00:48:27
Speaker
a lot of people feel that sometimes again, too much of that ruins the creativity, makes kind of cynical pro projects that are too monetization heavy. So as with many things, I can see it cutting It's funny you said that. I keep saying recent conversations I had, sorry. But one one was about following market trends. And if you're following a market trend, you're already too late. You need to be the one setting the trend. Because if you if you start doing it when people set the market trends, that means there's already people ahead of you, right? These games have already been created. There's are going to be a market built and you're you're going to start chasing the leader.
00:49:00
Speaker
But if you can build something that you want to build, something that maybe doesn't, not doesn't exist, but it's underrepresented, you're going to have a better chance of finding a large audience. It sounds like that along with the financial idea of like understanding how a gameplay loop works or a user loop. Hey, I find the game. I go into the game. I play the game. I leave the game and come back. Right. And I think that's where these models start to make sense to me, at least like that's how I see the world, but I realize other people are probably going to see it a little different than I do.
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah. And something that gets talked about a lot is, you know, every time, there'll be a really breakout game like Claire Obscure.
00:49:36
Speaker
It's like inevitably there'll be the like 700 posts about like, well, here's what they did well. And like, here are the six things to take away. And it's like, again, to your point, well, you know, too late.
00:49:49
Speaker
Like, you know, the reason those things work is they're ephemeral and you get a lot of copycats and, you know, some copycats do work, but yeah, again, you have to have your own take, your own Yeah, and I'm guilty of this, right? But I see a lot of content online about monetization. Here's how Clash of Clans did it. Like, all right, like this is death by data now. Like we get it, but you have to understand how it works, right? It's not just about the numbers. It's the process behind it, right? Like Clash of Clans isn't great because their monetization strategy is good. It's because they created a great game with a great gameplay loop that players want to play. Like it's more complex than that, but it's also not. Like if you could create a good game and then you can build a good audience around it. Like again, I think people have this,
00:50:30
Speaker
I love data, right? But I think it's death by data at a certain point, right? It's just like, all right, I know there's a lot of live op shooters out there right now, right? Like, they're making a lot of money. Let's create another one. Like, no, let's back up and take a bigger look at what's going on in the industry. And I think people are just too busy chasing the quick dollar to think about, hey, there's a bigger picture here.
00:50:49
Speaker
Definitely. I mean, the fascination with the machine underneath the covers is like fine. And that is important to be knowledgeable and expert about, but you're right. Like... at least for as long as I hope that I work in this industry, I think there's no substitute for making a good game that's engaging that people want to play.
00:51:07
Speaker
No one ever said, oh my God, have you seen this game? Like the modernization is like totally dope. Like, you know, that's not that's not how it works. I have some great skins in Call Duty. People love that stuff.
00:51:18
Speaker
yeah um On a little bit of a lighter note, you know, GDC and Gamescom are both expensive to get to. Are there any local conferences that get you excited? Absolutely. So one of the really fun things about our community is one of our resources is I call it Ticket to Ride.
00:51:35
Speaker
And basically it's like because of the great generosity of donors in the community, we've given away free passes to over 30 events in just like 15 months or something like that. We've given away over 2,000 free passes to events.
00:51:50
Speaker
I'm most proud that we're an official partner for GDC and Gamescom. And one out of every 60 people at GDC came from our community. And so initially we started with those big ones, but then we got per our previous point about like where one grows up or where one is, people justifiably were like, listen, it's too California West Coast centric.
00:52:12
Speaker
And so I've learned about many things. You know, we added PAX East and West. We added an event called Momocon, which I think is in Atlanta. We just did two different events that are in the Midwest. We did Nordic Games. And so I'm always thinking about GamesBeat. Everyone knows I'm a big fan of GamesBeat, and they have events in a number of different locations.
00:52:33
Speaker
ah um XP Gaming and all their events in Canada. And so... I'm constantly thinking about like big, medium, small. And I would say a word about the small, which is there's many good sites. If one does a Google search for like games events of the small to like mid category of like truly like local meetups, smaller things like that. And so ah I think I can confidently say except in maybe some extreme edge case scenarios, pretty much wherever you are, certainly I would say in an environment that I can speak the most comfortably to, which is North America, you will find that in most places, there'll be a group for your area, they'll have a Slack, they'll have local events, and that there's a whole range of things that you can go to.
00:53:24
Speaker
And certainly we, like many other organizations, try to help. Travel and hotels, I know, are very expensive and that's tough, but we at least try to help with the pencil. I think that's awesome. hu And I thank you for all that you do that. I see so many people in know the industry benefiting from that. I think it's, again, it's just a good thing to do. There's nothing better than doing good for someone, seeing someone kind of succeed, right? I think that's the greatest feeling I've ever felt is helping people get that next step in their level. And there's just this joy you feel that you can't describe. It's just like you feel good. And you also know you have an ally though there somewhere else, right? it is
00:53:59
Speaker
It's part of networking. It is so good. And and again, it's another good test. It's certainly different if you've been in the industry and you kind of know things are at, but if you're someone who's like early career or is making a career switcher,
00:54:14
Speaker
I can't emphasize enough how valuable these events are because it'll also give you a chance to really ask. Like, I feel like people understandably get so caught up in just wanting to get a job.
00:54:26
Speaker
I feel like that's fine, but it's also so important just to get to know about it. Like ask someone like, what do you do on a day-to-day basis? Like, what is it like? Is that something I want to do? Like it's um it's a very valuable conversation have.
00:54:40
Speaker
Those are great questions to ask and and i can't I can't disagree it at all. um I have two more quick questions. i don't want I don't want to take up too much of your time. These are just more of my kind of fun questions I have.
00:54:51
Speaker
What game are you playing now? Right now, I'm doing a lot of mopping up. So I'm doing Mafia, the old country. I'm doing Donkey Kong Bonanza.
00:55:02
Speaker
I'm doing a lot of... So I went back on Switch 2 and I have this like ambitious one-year plan alongside all this other crap that's going on of I want to go back and play all the 1P titles that I really liked in 4K HDR now. So that's been really, really Oh, and the new, I have to go check out the new wild patch as well.
00:55:25
Speaker
There you go. um Second question was the one that just fascinates me is what did you have for breakfast?
00:55:31
Speaker
What did I have for breakfast? My, so my mom, if I may humbly say so, is I think the best baker and chef in our community and in our family.
00:55:46
Speaker
I think she's amazing. And she makes so many things that I've eaten my whole life. And now that I live here, I get to enjoy them a lot. I'm im back home.
00:55:57
Speaker
One of them is called Nune Shirma, which I suppose directly translated from Farsi would be milk rubbed bread. But it's kind of something between...
00:56:09
Speaker
I don't even know what to compare it to. Maybe like a dense scone that's kind of like a little bit sweet and has kind of Persian delicious aromatic flavors. I love them. And she'll make like 30 of them and bring them over because the kids like them too.
00:56:27
Speaker
love it. I have one last question. Do you have a hard stop you want hop? No, no, no. Please, please. all right. This is the last one, and it might be nowhere, but you know you've come so far from from being the BD at Goldman and other companies, I'm curious, what are you interested in doing next?
00:56:45
Speaker
The honest, honest answer is I truly just love where I'm at. like I am at a point where ah you have points in your career where you're like, I want to get title X or perhaps a better way of thinking about it because I've never been that that kind of orientation myself.
00:57:10
Speaker
I would like to have this type of scope or be in this different type of situation. I'm very lucky and grateful to Tencent that... They give me the three things sincerely that's all I wanted.
00:57:24
Speaker
I love being a BD in the industry, and that's the type of job I like doing the best. BD, strategy, I get to do a little bit of both. I'm grateful that I can do my community work with the community because that means a lot to me. and They respect that.
00:57:36
Speaker
And I really, really appreciate that I can do it from home in Farmington. So like, honestly, if I've learned one thing in my career is things that companies as so many, unfortunately, have found out over the past few years were so talented.
00:57:50
Speaker
Things can get pulled out from under you for so many reasons, for so many reasons. ah so many different moments. I just hope everything stays exactly like it is for as long as possible so I can keep enjoying it and helping others. You found your zen and it's beautiful. i remember years ago talking with my buddy, we worked together and we're like, always wanted to get paid more, but then you just hit this point where it's like,
00:58:12
Speaker
I make enough money. I just want to be happy. I want my time. I want to be able to spend time with my family and stuff like that. You're so right about the Zen component of this because you and I know that at some point, if one is self-aware and reflective,
00:58:26
Speaker
We can look up the ladder and you know what those jobs entail. I think people often get googly eyes for, oh, I want to be the VP. I want to be the head of whatever. And God bless it.
00:58:37
Speaker
There's many wonderful people who occupy those roles and they're a right fit for those people. I look up that ladder and to your point, I'm like, it's just – it's not for me. Like the amount of work balanced into everything else in my life is like plenty. And I think that's actually a skill that we don't talk nearly enough about in organizations, which is it's okay to be like, I have enough.
00:59:02
Speaker
I have enough money. I have enough responsibility. I actually don't need a promotion. And I feel like In many organizations I've been a part of, that's almost like unusual.
00:59:13
Speaker
It's like there's almost this expectation that if you're like sane, you would always unidirectionally want to keep going up. And that shouldn't always be true. No, I remember it clicked one night for me. My wife's a CFO and I'm sitting on the couch and she's sitting next to me and she's doing work on the laptop at 10 o'clock and i'm playing video games with my friends. I'm just like, I always wanted to be a founder of a company. I have my own company do this. And I'm just like,
00:59:36
Speaker
no, I don't want to be sitting here at 10 o'clock at night doing this stuff. Right. Like my sense of freedom is worth a lot more than my day job. Right. And and if I can afford to do both, like I want to make sure I could keep it that way.
00:59:47
Speaker
A hundred percent. And it's, it's, it's again, just like you said it perfectly, it's not good, bad, or in between it's just different. And I think everyone has to find that mix that works for them. Well, Amir, I can't thank you enough for your time today. I, I so enjoyed our conversation. yeah um I'll have links to all your information, but you want know that want to let us know where we can find you?
01:00:10
Speaker
Absolutely. So I always tell people the easiest, easiest way is my name, all one word, amirsatvat.com. If you go to amirsatvat.com, what's great about the site um is every link for every one of our community homes is there. What I mean by that is I often talk about our communities having three community homes.
01:00:33
Speaker
The website itself, of course. our discord server and my LinkedIn profile, Amir Satvat on LinkedIn, where I have posts and content. And so I encourage people to use the site, sign up for our discord. And if they like, always grateful for a follow, just so I can provide hopefully helpful and entertaining content.
01:00:53
Speaker
We will have links to Amir's site. If you're a Dave the Diver fan, it's a fantastic and fun site to check out. And I just love this. There's so much great content about family, how you balance work life, education, just gaming. it And ah again, Amir, I thank you for everything you're doing in the industry. You've given a life raft to people that need it. You're building this industry up again just by this community.
01:01:15
Speaker
And you've done so much good. And again, thank you thank you is not enough, but thank you for all that you've done. Thank you so much, Greg. This has been really, really fun. And thank you for all the thoughtful and good questions.
01:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, have a great rest of your day.