2021 Review | Key Trends & Lessons Learned (Product Philosophy #11)

hello everybody and welcome to philosophy friday i think this will be the last time we call this episode philosophy friday from here on out we're gonna call it product philosophy right brett that's right man we can be honest about the fact that it's not friday today it is not but in today's discussion we're going to talk about some of the key trends or say lessons learned from 2021 and four specific topics that we're going to cover is first the rise of personal brands second the power of people and building relationships third is what i'm calling the dual nature of human society and existence and the fourth is people just being hungry for the what we're calling the new new thing so this is our retro for 2021 and

i don't know is that it brett are we gonna talk about anything else i think we'll manage to talk about a lot of things in in that framework all right all right so maybe just going ahead and jumping right in i think one of the the key things i did notice in 2021 is the maybe it's it's more not the rise of personal brands because that's been happening for a while but i think more the popularization or people realizing the importance of personal brands and more and more people trying to build their personal brands and i think that you know i've kind of spoken about this before and for some folks just to kind of explain what i mean by personal brands i thought i could kind of explain the way that i view it first and then it'd be great to get your take brett but what i mean by that is that i think for a long time that the power of brand in a work environment has really existed at the company level or at

the product level and so one of the big changes i think with social media has been that social media more generally and i know it's been around for a while but i think that the way in which people are viewing social media and the way that social media has proliferated one of the impacts of this is that it's enabling the transparency and visibility of people in a work context to have greater exposure and so what i mean by that is like if we were to look at a different industry let's say entertainment let's say the film and television industry what we see is that brand has actually penetrated through the company level the product level it has reached the creator or the worker level the employee level so for example when we talk about a movie it's not just about the movie itself or

the studio that created the movie it's about who's the actor who's the director who's the writer and people are trying to find a relationship not just to the product in the company that they love but to the person and the creator that they have an association or a love for and so one of the big theories i have from from years back is that this phenomenon that we saw in film would penetrate to the corporate world and so more of the the typical enterprise and and um working world and i think that this is starting to occur at a much more accelerated pace in 2021. and just speaking from a personal basis i can tell you that it's it's a very powerful effect that even for for me personally as i have tried to build a personal brand have tried to build content and basically get more visibility around what we're working at on at lila games and kind of what we're trying to do the

kind of product we're trying to build and things of that nature you know that has i i can i can definitively say that if i didn't do that you know we may not have gotten our funding and that that has helped us raise our rounds of funding that we we have had for for as an example and so it feels like this has been the year that more people have become aware of the power of personal brand in that i think that we're going to see that trend accelerate in 2022 but i don't know brett and i know you also have been getting a little bit more active both in terms of you know what we're doing here with philosophy friday slash product philosophy but also kind of in some of your linkedin posts and things like that but what do you think i i couldn't agree more and i definitely want to give you a shout out for being somebody who said this a long time ago that this was going to happen

and it now now being here in that the personal brand identity strength and all that that's been happening for a few years now is something i definitely resisted for a long time and i think it was personally hard for me to balance between being what i would call an artist which is more of that internal worker the sort of the quiet the deep thought works that we've talked about before another podcast and the manager i would say more of which is more of that person who's going to connect with other people who's going to do more bd who's going to have more meetings and things like that like i just have had a tough time doing both but i think at this point to your point that it's become so powerful and so important that it's almost impossible or not impossible but it it's detrimental for me not to start developing my skills more on the personal brand and side of things because i think what we're seeing is

that it's becoming so strong that it can overcome and overpower good products right so if you're a company or you're a game or you're a politician or a leader or whatever you may be if if you're gonna just hang your hat on hey i do good work at this point i think that's not enough right and i know this is a controversial thing to bring up but i think we should learn from all things i think probably the strongest example of this is trump right i mean trump we can learn from some of the things he did he did become president of the united states and we saw the power of the individual brand and the ability to leverage some of these tools like twitter and other tools to influence a lot of people whether or not you believe in his policies obviously is up to you to choose and i'm not trying to talk about politics here but i but i mean again if you look at what he was able to accomplish with those tools you have to you have to

sort of say like wow look at how powerful this these mediums have become if if you use them in certain ways and and again we're not going to get into the specifics but we're also seeing this happen in gaming in our recap report we're writing about how candy crush saga used khloe kardashian to promote one of their recent big feature releases around tournaments and that was very impactful partly because they integrated khloe kardashian very well in the future in multiple different instances and this was khloe kardashian right this wasn't this wasn't someone who had a lot of talents or skills right and we did see it as well in brawl stars with mr beast right and arguably mr beast and chloe have skills i'm not trying to say they're not certainly mr beast does put some great content out there but they're not the sort of typical star that you would think of promoting things and and brawlstars saw some very strong download

uh uptick because of mr beast because that so i i definitely think that this is to the point where it's unavoidable and i think in some ways it's a good thing because i think we're as a society trying to focus on products and brands that we not only like the product but we also like the person that's creating it and then in other ways it can be kind of dangerous if the personal branding can overshadow the actual product or the actual like skills of the person right and uh again i would mention trump and i'm sure that a lot of people could argue that that happened right so um it's a double-edged sword but one that you can't avoid at this point right yeah and i do think to your point about trump one of the things that we found out is that trump's personal brand and again i actually uh you know i i'm comfortable saying that i don't like trump but i to

your point i will say he was one of the early innovators who understood the power of social media of personal brand and to some degree you know he kind of showed that his personal brand at you know to some degree was more powerful than the republican party itself right so uh so there was that power dynamic between the power of his brand and the loyalty that people had to him personally relative to what could you do as you know an established institution like the republican party and i think we've seen that example in other cases as well where let's say you know very recently we saw attacks on elon musk for example by members of the democratic party whether it was elizabeth warren or bernie sanders or whoever and i think what it became clear is that elon musk is more powerful than the democratic party

like his brand is more and i i i hope that the democrats take note of this like just like it's powerful but you know it's not like everybody does not know that i i think that aoc was one also early in leveraging social media for her brand and and you know again whether you agree with our politics or not she was very successful in leveraging social media to have success and as another example joe rogan when cnn came after him for ivor mechden and whether you agree with the use of ironmectin or not the way that they characterize his use of ivermectin was not correct and what cnn found out is that joe rogan's platform is actually and his personal brand is more powerful than cnn like a very powerful established institution and so it's um it's a whole new world i think you know 2021 showed us that the power

of individual people and brands can be more powerful than you know these big established institutions and this trend in my opinion is going to continue to accelerate yeah and i think to your point [Music] about the democratic party i mean i think it would be um dangerous not to stop and reflect on some of the things that trump did well right and i will agree with you i mean i would go out and say that i obviously obviously don't support trump but to go and not look at and say okay what are the things that we can learn from trump and take from trump that he did well is going to be a huge mistake for the democratic party and anyone else right and i'll just list a couple of them i mean the first is that he tapped into people's emotions right he he did not stand up on platforms and use a bunch of

very long-winded sentences and paragraphs that supported logical reasons for doing things which has its place obviously he tapped into people's emotions right and that's something that or any good marketer will tell you but that we all need to remember we've talked about this in our podcast how i've been really focusing in on my emotional creative brain and understanding that that is the more powerful side of your brain to influence and connect with other people and i've personally have not developed it as much thinking it's sort of like the child brain but it's not it's very powerful side of your brain that if you can use it is incredibly valuable the second thing is that he spoke in very clear language right he spoke he spoke in in language that everyone can understand as opposed to some of the politicians who speak in language that honestly i have a uh a degree from high you know high ranking

university and i couldn't understand it right so so he he did that which was well and then the third is he leveraged these these technologies right and and so as we're talking about building individual brand i think one of the things i've learned from trump and i learned from you prior to that probably is that being open and vulnerable on social media is okay like people are actually much more forgiving right like when i first started posting stuff it had to be edited and perfect and all this stuff and what i found was sometimes when i would just walk in the park and video myself thinking my thoughts of what was the next trend or what this report was about that would get so much more shares and so much more follows or clicks and all the stuff which doesn't necessarily mean that's better but it certainly got a lot more response because it was approachable it was relatable it was honest it was authentic and it wasn't so scripted and i think

that's something that as as we start all exploring this like individual personal brand building exercise i think that's those are things that we want to remember and maybe i could also just kind of add on a couple of potential implications of the rise of the personal brand first of which is this other concept that i've talked about before which i just called the digital footprint meaning that for anyone for you as in as an individual with a work history with specific skills and talents and things like that the more you have online whatever is it is whether it's a github you know repo of some kind that kind of shows what you're capable of doing whether it's a podcast whether it's you know a website that details a project that you've worked on the more that you have online that help that not only expands your personal brand but also serves as this digital footprint that talks about

who you are what you're capable of that makes it in my opinion a lot easier where what i guess what i'm saying is that the future of the resume as a piece of paper with a bunch of crap on it is is i won't say over but meaningfully less impactful than your what i'm calling digital footprint your personal brand the stuff you've worked on in your ability to show your capabilities to a future employer what you have online is going to be in my opinion a lot more valuable than this piece of paper that said i worked at google from you know 2017 to 2020. i did this i went to berkeley or stanford or wherever like that stuff is fine but increasingly it's going to be more about your digital footprint that in practicality shows more depth around who

you are specifically and what you're capable of and and probably just the second point i want to make is that i also think that it's interesting about the rise of the personal brand i think that it also speaks to the to what what i'm calling the rise of um individualism actually this is a point i over i i watched an interview with peter thiel i watched a lot of peter thiel actually because i think he's a smart guy but i know but he talked about this he talked about how there's no more like ticker tape parades for anyone and he equated that to like the loss of um like individualism of celebrating heroes and people for accomplishments and i think that when we think about society as a whole like it does seem like and we're going to talk about the duality of human nature in existence later but like this this battle between do we

uphold people for being exceptional or do we try and make it make everyone equal right like and i think that the power of the personal brand and just the popularity of it speaks to the fact that we may be shifting from you know a time in the past where we where you know new york used to have ticker tape parades and used to celebrate individual achievements to a time now where it's more about hey let's have equity and let's kind of distribute everything equally let's kind of take down our heroes like whether it's elon musk or whoever and i think we are going to be shifting more towards individualism uh again in the near future interesting i don't know if i agree with that but i think there's been a meritocracy around it and i don't know for example i'm a hunter and uh there's a guy in hunting um cam cam what's i can't remember isn't it last name right now cam that's cam shoot

anyways he he's just a regular like guy who basically is in awesome shape he does like he goes elk hunting and he's super extreme electrons with a bow and he posts videos and he's been doing it for a long time and now he's friends with joe rogan and tom brady and has millions of followers and all these other things and it's like this guy is like a marketing manager at a random company in like i don't even know colorado or something like or portland he's in portland i mean it's pretty impressive like he's just basically become a joe rogan level person because he's super specific right no no this guy is like national level dude like he is this guy is no joke like he if i can't believe i can't remember his name right now but um he my instagram feed he probably there's probably like five

videos of him of it right now but um i'm sure it's gonna be like the first one anyways um this is i mean but the interesting cam haynes thank you and and the interesting thing is is that it just it's kind of interesting because it makes it feel a little bit more attainable for anybody to become these people right like joe rogan was i mean what was he he was a sort of a comedian and then he became a he was on fear factor and now he's like the top podcaster right so you don't have to be brad pitt looking to become this person right joe gonna be the first to admit he's not brad pitt looking right or he's not brad pitt talent or he's a hard-working guy who is not afraid to call people out so i i think that's i think that's really interesting i mean you know there's there's a lot of instances of it so to your to your

earlier point though the one thing i will say that you're still alluding to being a creator right because your footprint really has to be create things that you've created and i 100 agree that the resume i mean we don't look at resumes at liquid and grit so i mean we're already there we require no previous experience that we require no resume or linkedin profile or anything so but i think there is a there's a difference between being a commenter on on linkedin and being able and creating content right and i think that if you are thinking about your footprint i'd err on the side of creating and and building things even if you don't fall through at least you're like oh i tried this and i tried that i tried that but those have always led me to good places yeah and i i do think that one of the things to think about for our audience moving into 2022 is if you believe in this trend and if you believe in the power of

building a personal brand it's going to soon become a pretty crowded space for whatever industry that you're in and so i think there is a you know one of the things that i remember from roger mcnamee who's um like a famous hedge fund guy a famous investor is this quote where he said that between the content and the audience everything in between is a choice and one of the things that he really talked about is that you know if you're the only source of a specific type of content people will i mean over time kind of find you right regardless of the distribution platform whether you're on twitter or medium or wherever youtube or wherever but i think that to that point you just really need to have an original voice and i think there's a time for synthesizers and i think there is a place for you know what naval ravicon calls like

fortune cookies people that you know and you we've all seen this whether it's on linkedin or twitter where someone just says some random [ __ ] you know like some confucian wisdom of some kind it's just like okay whatever right uh so there's there's like there's like being a synthesizer there's like the random fortune cookie stuff and then there's like original thought where from first principles from your experience against a specific problem you provide something that is truly insightful and i think that that's what people will be attracted to is over time if you can show and if you can exhibit the ability to have insight and to articulate those insights in a clear way that that will be what helps you build your personal brand over time and other other people whether it's the fortune cookie guys or the synthesizers

might win in the short term but in the long term i do think that the people who have those original thoughts and are consistent over time we'll win yeah the the interesting the last thing i said was total crap so i'll have to cut that out but what i was gonna what i was what the interesting thing about today too is that businesses are letting you be individuals right like we see instances in gaming where we have adam for example who's at warner brothers that is a pretty litigious company allowing him to be on a podcast yeah right which is pretty unique to this era i mean before you either an individual or you're part of a business and if you're part of business you couldn't be an individual right and we're seeing that change where people at rovio and warner brothers and um you know other companies or can can post stuff and they're totally okay with it and to your point of being an individual

this goes pretty deep but we are philosophers here i think one of the things that to do that i've found is the further and further you really understand who you are as a person and the more and more you're authentic and genuine about that the easier it is for you to carve out your own little niche right like i happen to be into hunting it is weird like my dad was a computer consultant i happen to be really into fishing and the outdoors i don't know why i i honestly like sometimes i'll be leaving the fishing and i'll be like why did you just do that why didn't you just sit on the couch like every other dad you know and watch football i don't know you know or like why are you playing games and why are you doing this but the more that i know that about myself the more unique i am right like i'm not i have i'm i'm competing with the only other people who like to read uh like to build businesses and like games right like how many people out there are

like that that that that have those combinations not that many right so i've sort of like found like to your point but i only kind of found that with being authentic with myself and being like well i'm kind of into these random things and then once i mesh them together it was like okay this is my little niche and i think where people get into trouble is they kind of through society through they kind of convince themselves like oh i'm into the newest hottest thing right the newest platforms coming out that's what i'm into and it's like really dude are you really into fintech like is fintech really your thing like were you a kid like you know telling your daddy like what do you want to do in your group's like i want to be in fintech it's like no you weren't you know you were probably playing super mario right like i was so i i think that's and then and then you try to write about fintech and it like after after nine months you're writing about this thing you're not interested in anyways so it just goes back to knowing who you are is an incredibly powerful thing i think that i've learned this year so back to the original point

alright maybe we could transition to our second second topic slash lesson learned which is for me the power of people and building relationships and it's i would say like i mean i've always kind of conceptually known that people are important building relationships is important i would say that one of the biggest lessons i did learn working at mbc universal and you know just talking about la and the difference between la and silicon valley is that i would say that a lot of people in silicon valley are more transactional meaning hey you know i'm gonna everything's viewed as a specific transaction whereas people in la are thinking more about relationships and building long-term relationships now the the downside of that is that when you build those relationships it's like you know then it becomes less about performance and more about you know helping each other out in like i would say if if you have a

relationship but it's done in the right way where it's it's ethical then i think that's fine but i think there's there's a darker side to that as well but i would say that i think that one of the best things that i've done in 2021 is to try and work on this to build deeper more meaningful relationships with people and i i started thinking about this because ray dalio has talked about this a lot where he talked about like one of the purposes of his life is to build is to do meaningful work and cultivate meaningful relationships and so when you think about you know your life and value in your life or doing important things in your life or how you want to spend your time i think that that's a really great way of characterizing it right simple you want to do meaningful work you want to have meaningful relationships and so that second part the relationship part is something that i try to actively work

on and i would say that you know you brett you and i are on a certain kind of private slack together which i'm incredibly grateful for i've also tried to build um a couple of like i would call it secret private tribes meaning people who are interested or who are related by a specific characteristics and then we'll have meetings together and i have found those to be so valuable and in which i think they they have they have served as ways of building relationships with really great people but also the help that i've gotten from those networks has been incredible so i think we've talked about the notion of tribes before but i do think for for some of you who don't have have have like a tribe or some a way in which you can have a platform for a community of some kind i would highly recommend thinking about that at least for 2022.

right any thoughts yeah i i i think this is a it's a it's an interesting theme i think there's a i mean we've talked about there's a balance right there i think certainly strong relationships i think in my personal life actually is something that i would take as a theme for me more so and i think in my business life as well i think i've viewed business a little bit too transactional in some ways i think i've been scared in a way to create relationships with people for whatever reason i always generally don't think people care about me that much so uh so um this is some of the things in my my past for whatever reason but but now that i've worked in the gaming industry for over a decade now it's like you know like we've worked together for a lot of

years right and it's sort of like well i could go through life like just being transactional with jk or i mean we're we were spending a lot of time together more so that i'm probably spending time with with a lot of other people in my life like what why wouldn't i just form a relationship with with jk and talk about is you know what's what's going on in his life outside of figuring out how i can leverage our relationship or anything like that and i think that's a really wonderful wonderful thing to develop in in business and and obviously you have to be careful that it doesn't cloud your judgment right um and unfortunately business as i've learned it can be a very uh a a very objective thing right like you have to make these objective decisions as a ceo and as a leader and and so you get to balance that those relationships that you built with like

that those objective decisions that you make but if you if you can it can be very very powerful um i i called several people on christmas day that worked work with me right work at my company so um you know and i'll say on a personal note i think that a couple years ago i i was i was actually watching a documentary on the the rest strepo i don't know if you've seen it but on a personal level i was watching this documentary and these guys are in the corngal valley it's this very intense documentary but the thing that i watched it and i came away with was these guys were in what what most of us would consider hell right they're getting shot at every day and they come back to the states and they had bonds that were so strong over there that several of them said they wanted to go back because they wanted to have that that camaraderie that they had over

there and they even one quote that really struck me was one guy said that was my those guys are my family my family is not my family and what struck me was i was sitting in my you know a house in california whatever you know and i i felt like wow i'm like striving to have a huge fancy house someday with no friends with no connections like and and when i look back on my life i realized the happiest times my life i had very little money and i was surrounded with my closest friends and none of us had any money and those are the happiest moments of my life right so here i am striving to be a rich guy in a giant house by myself and here are these i'm watching the video these guys who want to live in hell again because they want those bonds what am i am i going about this the right way am i going about life the right way and it was a really it was a really transformative moment for me and

it made me realize like wow like what is you know what are these things and i do think you want meaningful work but what are what is this what is the purpose of this if you don't have these relationships that make that create so much value in your life when you even had nothing right and so on a personal level and i think for um for us dads out there who are like busy with work and we kind of put those emotions on like a second tier of importance and relationships as well i i've i've since put the emphasis on that and it's been incredibly rewarding and uh i i highly re i highly recommend doing the same if you're not right now um because it can become very rewarding at work and in personal life so yeah i think for me one of the objectives i've had for 2021 is to try and think about relationships like i think about time and you know we've been on the podcast

before talking about how important time is don't waste time make sure you use your time in the best way possible but i i think that it would help a lot of folks to also think in similar terms in terms of their relationships now there's a pretty famous quote or concept that speaks about how you are oftentimes the average of the top five people that you spend time with right and so when you think about the relationships you do develop i i would just caution people i don't know maybe the word caution is a little too strong but just like think about you know with the life is short with the limit amount of time you have the relationships that you invest them invest in and i do think that all of us should think about this concept of investing in relationships is but just be careful about it as well like if if there's a relationship that just doesn't make sense i'd say get rid of it

so um but yeah yeah and and again if you haven't read ray daly i'll drop a link where he talks about his own philosophy in terms of meaningful work and what he means by meaningful relationships but uh again i definitely would uh would recommend that you at least think about it at least for me personally it's been one of the best uses of my time in 2021 is developing those relationships and building specific platforms to be able to have better relationships with people i think are interesting and that you normally would not have the ability to speak to you on a normal basis okay should we tackle something super deep brett yeah i'm interested to hear your thoughts on this so all right so this is a a trend or kind of observation that i wanted to highlight which i'm calling and since we're philosophers

here but i'm calling it the dual nature of human society and existence okay and what i mean by this is that so i i read this book called the fourth turning earlier this year and it it's it's actually quite a fascinating book if you haven't read it i would recommend that you do check it out but it also talks that one of the main themes it talks about is like this duality between life and society operating in cycles versus linear improvement and it got me thinking about a lot of duality that exists in life in work and society in the universe right and it was further kind of enforced when i read and reviewed some of the writings of ray dalio as he speaks about cycles and how there's generally like opposing perspectives a duality that causes the cycle whether that's rich versus poor left versus right the duality between different systems is

oftentimes what causes the destruction of a system or world order and the creation of something new and that just got me to think about a lot of the duality that does exist in life society nature of the world things like that and so i mean obviously we're in a world in terms of politics where there's like a big battle right now it's very you know popular top of mind when we think about you know ultra liberal liberalism versus ultra conservatism but there's also things like you know life there is a perspective of life being very random and in which you know anything can happen versus determinism where you know things you can determine the outcome of your life for example we talked about cycles versus linear progression i've spoken on the podcast before about holism versus reductionism a little bit you know rich versus poor command and

control like china versus decentralization or democracy in technologies there's client versus server in physics there's you know is the is the smallest are we composed of particles or is it a wave i mean there's even that debate so like this duality in my opinion exists in life and for me i've i feel like it's been kind of observing this duality that seems to exist in more places than i had really thought about i i think it helps understanding what those those employees those opposing perspectives are and just trying to understand those perspectives for me has been something that's been like an interesting observation and brett i know that you know when i uh talked about randomness in millennia and millennials during the last podcast that's kind of what i meant is that so when you think about it if you have

you know as an example of this duality if you have a generation of people that kind of think well you know whatever i do you know i could be what i could be killed tomorrow i i don't have that much control over my life and then that leads to a certain outlook it leads to a certain perspective on life which i think helps explain some of the key trends in society and i do also think that these things tend to come in waves or cycles and so like maybe generation or maybe the millennials could have this more random outlook on life and but generation z in the upcoming generation will then shift back to determinism and so what impact will that have for example and so anyway that's basically one of the things i just wanted to talk about is that i have been observing this kind of duality that exists a lot more in 2021 than i have ever in my life

and as i think about that when i come upon different kinds of situations i try to think about what is that duality what are the opposing perspectives here and then trying to think about trends society in that kind of context of this one opposing perspective versus the other did i go too crazy on you brett what do you think no the the wilder the better man for sure i mean i think you know you know i was trying to to understand it while you were while you were talking and i i think what it at least what came to my mind was that that many things in life are very complex and they they aren't as as clear as we like to imagine them and i think that's something that i've certainly brought or learned in this year that i think you're touching on right it's like we want to be definitive in our thought and our arguments and our political positions

and the way we live our life and the way we run our companies and and all these different things right if that's sort of our human nature but if you take this view that you're taking which i i really like is you start to like get zoom out and you start seeing like okay look at all these trends that have happened over the last 100 500 years and how they've swung from one way to the other to the other maybe my thought isn't so 100 sure like maybe this is just a reflection of what was before what was after what was before that and and maybe this has something to do with this group think and and maybe it's just a little bit different from what the other person is saying and maybe i should kind of understand that they might be in a different way and i think that that's really what i've learned this year or maybe i had it before but what a big theme of it is and i hope that we all sort of embrace is like there are dualities to it but it's it's complex right and and we're we're struggling between these

dualities and these and trying to progress and i think in general we all want to progress and we're not really in agreements on how generally sometimes you know some sometimes we are but obviously as you think about like everybody we we have their different sense opinions um and it's not it's not like black or white even though we want it to be right like the way that i run my company isn't potentially the right way for everybody even though sometimes this year i was like yeah it's the right way jk you have to run it this way you know it's like after i you know that was one of the things that i came to when after we talked about so i was like okay well you know maybe it doesn't work well for that maybe it doesn't work well for the manager maybe it doesn't work well for this you know and having an open mind and kind of taking your stance on it or understanding your stance in it maybe like okay it's maybe a little more complex about stuff so um you know

i i um i i do think it's a great theme and i i think it's one we i hope we all take into uh the next year you know because i think we'll be all a little bit more understanding of everybody if we do yeah great point and yeah i don't know if there's any specific takeaway for our audience from that but i would just say maybe for our audience to also just try and observe this this kind of phenomenon in terms of duality and to your point brad i think one of the key things that was talked about by redeli is that these things just come in you know in waves and it kind of shifts between goes back and forth i mean even in technology you know client versus server that thing's just gone back and forth like multiple times right so i think they take away if there is a takeaway and this is something i've talked about a little bit it's to have a plan and build a system that responds well to the unexpected like that is what i generally try to live by in my personal life and

in my business have a plan for what you think is going to happen because if if you can predict the future and you are right you can be rewarded greatly right if you can predict the crash or the boom or whatever you could be right right but life is unpredictable so also have a system or a way that you live your life or a way that you're prepared for something completely unexpected you actually can't compare prepare for it in the way that you actually know what's going to happen meaning you have no way of knowing that covet is going to happen right or you have no way of knowing the next thing that's gonna happen how do you make yourself prepare for that resiliency you're in good shape you're mentally prepared you have strong faith whatever it is right you figure it out it's different for all of us but those are what i think are really in terms of a business in terms of a gaming company in terms of an individual

try to predict and capitalize on the future that you think is going to happen but also be prepared for a future that you never expected like those are the two ways i think yeah and i think just bill walsh and the score takes care of itself he was actually pretty big on contingency planning and having a plan b just in case things went wrong and like situational sort of analysis like what happens when we're in you know third and long or when we're in you know like different different kinds of potential scenarios he was pretty big on making sure that you had some kind of a plan so all right last key trend or lesson do you want to go over this one brett yeah i think the last trend that we're seeing is probably the second half of the year but we do see some of it earlier is just the the hunger that we all seem to have for the new new thing right and that is a reference to a book that i've read a while ago so i'm

not super up to date in all the details of it but the new new thing right being like the next platform the next big market the next whatever and i think one of the things that we both we were both referencing as sort of an example that was clubhouse that was earlier in the year but it was wow we were all so convinced that clubhouse was going to be massive right and jumping on i i must admit i was a little bit more hesitant to other people but you know i was on clubhouse and it was sort of like okay this is going to be huge right let's get on clubhouse is going to be the next and i don't think we ever all thought it was going to be the next facebook but there was just a desire there it was a there was sort of a blind desire in that we overlooked one of the sort of obvious issues with it was that you had to be online at a certain time it couldn't be asynchronous which is a huge pain and we're now seeing this with a metaverse right i mean everybody is quick to jump on the metaverse vr i think could probably be another good example of that maybe obviously not this

year it's been around for a while but maybe a little too eager to jump on vr nfts in the blockchain i i you know i do think that nfts are going to impact gaming but i'm a little bit i'm a little bit leery of how quickly it is and we are already seeing a ton of companies jump on this bandwagon and go yeah we've built this division and i don't know how much they're investing in it maybe it's just one person who's sitting there reading and you know nft research or whatever which is fine but if they're gonna go out and build a whole game and build a whole team like that's a pretty serious investment and maybe nfts is the next big thing right maybe it's the size of the mobile gaming industry but that's much less likely obviously than it being what i think it's going to be which is like the real money gaming market in the us for example right like the male audience 25 to 35 year old

the spender who's very focused on utility right only wants to play poker because it can win he can win money or only wants to do something because he's going to get something out of it and if it's that size market well there's probably only going to be a couple like really big winners right so i think that there's just kind of this like desire for the new new thing and on a personal level i think that for the listeners who are i'm assuming product managers and gaming companies or whatever it would be i would be careful to jump on the next trend like i saw a lot of my co-workers and peers at zynga do that where they jump on the next thing like this is gonna be next big thing it was i remember pot was gonna be a huge thing i had a couple p we lost a pm in our gaming company to pot right like pot was going to be just like the biggest market and maybe it still will be but it certainly didn't happen overnight and i think in the i think it's you know some people do get lucky with that stuff but i think it's a

dangerous game to play like stick to things you're interested in that you find interesting and you can like do for three five years because that's where you can really create a lot of value right like you can stick in it jk and i we've stuck in games for a long time we both loved games like these industries that aren't going away games have been around for thousands and thousands of years that you are actually interested in like that's much more valuable than jumping out jumping off into the you know nft space if you don't have any interest in the nft or if you have no interest in being virtual like don't jump in the metaverse space right like like just be honest with who you are and and don't jump on the newest trend or maybe like adopt some of the aspects of it but be careful of it right and i think in the gaming industry too it's like it's okay to be a second mover like there's a lot of research that second mover is more valuable than the first mover like it if the nft market is the size of the mobile gaming market there'll be plenty of money for you to make and it might be prudent for you to just like sit it out

for a couple years and just like let other people kind of thrash and figure it out and then you come in with your brand or your you know whatever so yeah i i agree with you brad i think that it seems like increasingly there is this there is this i guess we're calling it hunger but like this strong desire for quick growth and just i guess what i'm calling grq get rich quick it's like how do i get rich really fast right and i think i i think people should really focus more on you know what they're strong at and where they can actually add real meaningful value instead of the next big shiny thing which may not materialize and i think metaverse is a great example nobody understands what the [ __ ] it is like no one has a really good understanding of what it is and yet people are

like trying to go all in on it right and and not not to say that like if you have a good perspective and if you have something to share or if you have a product to make i think that's fine but it seems like more people are just opining on vague nonsense rather than having a specific perspective or something tangible to add to the metaverse as an example and so i do hope people do understand that building value is is i i think really more about understanding what you're good at and doing something over a long period of time and if i remember correctly there are some statistics and i think i also probably heard this from peter thiel that the majority of value in startups actually comes after year 10 right like 80 of the value is after year 10 for most startups and you can see that

in like paypal and other companies right tesla uh other companies like that and so instead of going for that big new shiny thing or if something it is hard but you're good at it like stick it through don't just pivot over because you had opportunities to just do some crypto or blockchain based thing and actually we so something similar happened to us like you know we were out fundraising and it's like hey if you guys go all in on you know crypto will offer you this much money and just like oh you know it's like no no but then ultimately we thought about like that's not really us it's not us and so i i think you know at that time while tempting i i think we made the right decision and and again that's not to say that you know crypto's not going to work i i have my own doubts about it at least in the short to medium term but oh i guess to your point

i feel like society today and this this goes back to the duality of human nature but there's like this there's there's a certain philosophy around you know investing and building for a longer term future and then versus get rich quick and i think the pendulum has been swinging more and more towards how do we make money fast how do i you know this is why crypto has gotten so so popular is just because people see the quick increases in gains in in crypto currencies and things like that and they they also just want to like you know just figure out how to how do you make a lot of money fast and instead i would i would hope that people think more about longer term value and mission and going back to ray dalio if you can erase it all and just think about meaningful work meaningful relationships i mean that those concepts i think that concept is a fundamental truth and so grounding yourself in fundamental truth versus get rich quick

i hope people think about more in 2022. yeah i couldn't agree more i mean i've seen people get rich quick and you know the funny thing about it is they go back to work and they basically do the same thing that they were doing before they got rich quick and they just have to start over again so to your point what's the purpose of getting rich quick you have a lot of money which i mean there's value in having a lot of money but then most of the people i've seen who end up having a lot of money realize that the thing that they really want to do is to to create meaningful things and have strong relationships right and unfortunately some of them gave up their strong relationships to get quick but rich quick but but the important thing is is that creating something of value is more valuable than than all the money right so you want to be careful about just getting rich quick because it's like you you lose so much of what is valuable in life and i i'll

i was reading henry ford a book uh on henry ford and he had a quote where he said he actually failed to make uh the first car company and he was sort of like well yeah i mean what's the rush this is my life works this is my life's work right like i'm gonna just get after it again and that struck me because it it's like yeah this is my life's work like this is what i'm leaving on this earth and sometimes i think about my own company that way i have a very long-term view on it and people are often very surprised when i'm like yeah i don't really care if i don't if i do this for next 20 30 years like what 20 30 years it's like listen buddy i will be 60 65 like that's not that old like i don't really you know let's say i don't even know if i will want to retire at that age if i had the option right so that's 25 years from now so yeah like well that's okay for me

right like why are you trying to retire at 45 what are you gonna do you know so um and i think that that goes for your career as well like you said like just because it's gonna be a shiny new object and you're gonna jump on board and it's going to take you 10 years we're six six years into liquid and grit and and if you look at the history of facebook like one of the fastest growing companies yeah it took a long time before that was like massive right so that's the best of the best so you better be interested in it because you're going to have to do this for 10 years and i would say that's always been an advantage of mine that i am interested in because i'm always like hey dude you want to take a day off well you lost because i just i won't you know not because i'm like the hardest working dude in the planet but because i'm actually interested in this and you're convincing yourself to do it because you think you're going to get rich right so you're waking up every morning going someday i'll be rich like just do it today right i'm waking up and just doing

it because i intrinsically enjoy it so it's a sunday and i've worked and and i have the day off i have no kids it's the day after christmas and i've worked multiple hours today not because i'm like yeah i gotta get work done or whatever it's cause i actually enjoy it like i wanna be doing these things in fact i'm trying to pull myself from it so i can do these other things so you're you're competing with somebody who on a sunday uh the day after christmas by himself can do anything and is choosing to work right you better buckle up if you're doing this to get rich because i've this is six years in and i'm doing it this way and and i'm just giving i'm just highlighting that there are other people out there doing the same thing right like they're not elon musk isn't building a car because he just wants you know he wants to get rich like he really wants to like improve the world right so you better be ready to battle it out with that person who's getting up for fun

getting up like you would get up for the thing that you enjoy that's a very hard person to beat out even if you're smarter have millions of dollars or whatever you know what i mean like after a year or two years like you're gonna start dragging your feet where that person's just gonna be getting up like yeah i get to go do the thing i wanna do you know so it's incredibly it's an incredible advantage and speaking of facebook i know there's a lot of criticism about facebook and mark zuckerberg but there's a also a pretty famous anecdote about mark when he was given an opportunity well i think yahoo made like a i don't know billion dollar offer to acquire facebook during its early days and the board was pressuring mark to actually accept and then i i believe mark basically told the board well why if if i if i made that money i would just start another social network and do basically what i'm doing now so

yeah i definitely think that's a it's a good point and that um you know the thinking in terms of the long term is very difficult and people talk about it all the time you know play the long game think long term but it's just it's a fundamental truth if you if you play the long game go for the long term i mean you you weed out a lot of competition just because not everyone's oriented around the long term and uh and so if you can get there yeah it's like i i would do just like brett said you know think about you know think about the long term optimize for year 10. so yeah and and we talked about this in other podcasts if you think about the long term and the best case scenario it's it becomes clear right don't think 10 years from now you're going to be a senior product manager you know what i mean like think 10 years from now you're going to be the ceo of a public gaming company

right and when you when you make it extreme it becomes clear about what you want maybe you don't want to be a ceo of public i don't want to be a ceo of a public gaming company like unless i own the company outright and didn't have to deal with uh probably like like that's not something i want but maybe you do right so long term and extremes help clarify things so that's all i got jk all right we're right around an hour and let's see yeah i think that's it for for us for 2021 last podcast of philosophy what was known as philosophy friday which will now be product philosophy going into 2022. hope you all had a great year please uh stay tuned keep watching and we'll catch you next time everybody catch y'all later

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