Indie breakout: Stirling Rank's Rise with Ready or Not

and I remember waking up and like my phone had blown up at the time we were using Discord for work so like my Discord just exploded and I'm like what the heck and I'm like looking at some and I think Ryan and Julio had stayed awake all night just posting all the YouTube videos and all this guy's playing it oh my god look you know it was like everybody was playing it you know it's like oh look Jack frag sidan every all these people playing it and it was just like oh oh that took off and I remember just being in bed looking at my phone with like weary eyes just going oh oh well that's pretty cool welcome to the gaming Founders podcast a show where we interview the founders that have shaped the gaming industry I'm Eden Chen the CEO of pragma a back-end game engine founded by engineering leaders that built the platforms for some of the largest live service games like League Legends fortnite Destiny 2 and plants for zombies 2 pragma Powers services like accounts matchmaking and player data for the world's most ambitious live service games and I'm Kevin Zayn partner

at upfront Ventures we're a venture capital firm based in LA and San Francisco I lead game Investments both in studios as well as the pick and shovel tools that power game developers and content creators to do their best work including pragma we interview Founders on their origin Stories the tactics that help them survive and thrive and key lessons for anyone interested in building the next generation of leading gaming companies learn more And subscribe today at pragma do/ gaming founders [Music] welcome to the inaugural episode of season 2 of the gaming Founders podcast we're dropping an early episode to give you a taste of what's to come we hope you enjoy it and we look forward to sharing many more stories soon you ready yes sir ready Sterling rank is the COO and co-founder of void interactive he started the company directly after high school and went on to build void which shipped one of the most successful Indie hits Over The Last 5 Years Ready or Not Sterling talks through how they got started as a passionate Trio with little

to no experience raised money garnered Community Support made every mistake in the book and ultimately after 5 years launched into early access to the surprising success of Ready or Not not just in terms of copy sold but in critical reception Ready or Not is an amazing story of success in an industry that has struggled of late it is about a team that had a Clear Vision for what they wanted to make and Scrappy perseverance for getting it done this is actually the first podcast that Sterling has recorded now on to his interview so are you ready walk us through your your early story like before starting uh void before starting the gamees what was your background before all this uh I was in high school actually um I was big into making like trying to make movies and things like that funnily enough a lot of the stuff that um a lot of those guys who made those movies I was inspired by like uh back in the like Freddy W and Corridor Digital they ended up uh a lot of some of those guys like um at one of

the guys who worked on the Freddy Wong like YouTube content Brandon lch ended up making video games it was kind of a bit of a flip and similarly similarly I had the same kind of experience there where I started making films or little YouTube things and then ended up pivoting into into video games um but it was a very strange strange uh move because it started just by doing art like a lot of 3D sculpting and stuff which then progressed into uh character like making character art for video games uh working freelance for the better part of like you know my when I was 18 19 and it was around that time when um uh i' I'd made some I'd made some good contacts some good friends um you know in the industry and also just people who I knew were really passionate about making games through you know modifying existing game content like uh dayy for example um which is actually where I met Ryan uh our

I met him through Day Z and we decided not to kill each other he he'll tell the story saying that that he didn't that he decided not to kill me and I'll tell the story saying I decided not to kill him but I guess it's anyone's guess and it just depends who you ask uh but we actually met playing that and we stayed in contact for many years um cuz I met I think we must have been playing when I was like 16 and then yeah when I when I was about 19 is when I reached out to him and U my other friend Stuart who uh was our former creative director director um I reached out to them and we kind of started talking about making making this this game at the time we called it code 10 which was uh you know quasi sequel to to swat or inspired by the SWAT franchise what year was that oh gosh uh 200 oh man H try to do the math in my head I think it about seven uh when we started talking about I think it was 200 it's got have been 2007

that sounds right no that seems a little early yeah I need a check but it was uh it was a long time ago it's been you know we've been working through it seven or eight years now so how come you didn't most people like they go and work at like a video games company you know get some experience and then like sort of learn the trade or so to speak like what made you just like hey we're just going to Dive Right In and start something stupidity mostly or naivity probably I think um uh we it you know having not done like gone to UNI especially in Melbourne there weren't many good colleges in I mean not to trash the ones that are here but for me I didn't find much interest in in in that that pathway um and and I think neither did uh Ryan or or at the time now did St as well so the three of us all kind of had very similar view views on that where we just wanted to create things we didn't want to have to be you know kind of having to learn all the steps and then start trying to work with we wanted to do it all like kind of at

once um which was a really strong mindset to have early on it was something that really brought us uh it it brought us in alignment it brought us together as well and it helped Propel the project uh very quickly I think in terms of what we wanted to see um so I think that was probably why like uh I that was the initial kind of mindset was just we just didn't want to you know quote unquote waste time going to going to University or going to college uh even though probably would have in in retrospect was probably would have been a great idea um would it I don't know maybe you would have went down a different path I've told people that and I usually get that response it's like are you sure because like it's worked out and and that's for sure but I think there were there are good Lear there are good learnings and good takeaways that come from um from higher education in that regard you you you don't make the same mistakes that you would make if you hadn't gone because you're essentially having to learn how to you know you're learning the process that you would have learned in college you're not in a safe

environment you're not in an environment where you're allowed to fail you actually can you there are only so many mistakes you can make I think how do how did you guys figure out like how to decide up divvy up duties early on it feels like you know you guys are all a bit self-taught and can take on multiple tasks like yeah how did you guys decide on that it was really really kind of like uh hodg Podge like we would just mix it up um to be fair Ryan programmed most all of it you know he worked on everything code related uh and and was we were essentially like yeah we can get this done easy no worries one one programmer um two artists essentially St and St and myself were artists I focused on the character side and some of the environment stuff he focused on the environment stuff and again a lot of the um early ideation for the story of of the former game you know not the one that we necessarily released but a lot of the um early stuff we wanted to do um so it was a weird way of divvying it up and then we would all kind of take turns doing more or doing less depending on what the other person had to do for

work or you know cuz we were splitting up our time we were working and we were doing um at the time what was called code 10 and then what became ready or not so how did that Evolution happen like why why sort of not that you necessarily started from scratch again but like share a little bit The Evolution from cten into ready or not and kind of how that idea really formed into the current game well the way I see it is like kten was kind of where we we started learning how to make anything at all any game together you know that was less about making the game and more about how we started working together whether we could or we we couldn't you know that was the the test um cuz it was bad it was really bad uh we had all this we had all these ideas on what to do cuz we were so cuz again when you start you're so naive I think a lot of the time not not everybody but like if you've never made a game you've never worked in a group before in that context you get super super naive and you just think you can do anything because you you know technically it's just a blank slate you know we would try and do all the most crazy stuff for the characters

like game design of like pulling out magazines and swapping them around and we spent all the time on that when we should have been focusing on a cool gameplay Loop all these mistakes that you would make as a game as a very very new game developer um so you know that that was kind of what code 10 was if anything else it was just a way to kind of go what are we actually doing together um and then I I remember one day we were just walking uh I was just walking my my dog and then you know we'd been working this code 10 thing for like a year at that time I think maybe about a year maybe like eight months and Ryan just calls me out of the blue and he's like we need to he's like I need to talk to you about something and I was you know I'm like oh no we've been working this for so long to me at least at the time I'm like what's up he's like this isn't working this sucks the codee's all messy the the game just is is not fun to play like everything about this is so bad dude I'm like and I remember I'm just like all right let's just reset it so the two of us were just like all right we're going to we're going to gut the entire thing start from scratch with

everything that we'd learned um and just begin a new and I think that decision was probably the most important decision was something and it's something that we'd learn I think each individually depending what we were doing you know um you know on the artistic side it was that's a very common thing right you you have to have the mindset that I can tear things down um and and start again and be prepared for that you know if I don't think I'm making good Headway because the next time I'm going to come back stronger and then from a code side I mean from making a mod for for example you're always trying to rework new systems or rework an entire idea so that it fits better with what you want to do so I think with that that was kind of the you know that was the the the early Genesis of of of ready or not before it was ready or not so to speak and I'm again very glad I'm very grateful that we did it that way I guess the two sides of that one is like you know Engineers you really like rewriting everything from scratch um and like the one side of that is like you keep restarting because

you're never satisfied with like the state of where things are I think the interesting thing for you guys is obviously you started over and obviously that was the right decision in retrospect but it's like it's it's not like you kept starting over either at some level you had to have decided this is what we're making and for sure it's it's a fine line to walk I think you can't be yeah that um sensitive about it essentially oh I got to restart I've got to restart because I did this made this you know minor mistake cool it just I just don't like it sometimes you have to persevere but there is a certain point I think where you you can feel it like you you don't just you don't just go I'm restarting you you know you have to restart because it's just every direction you try and take to progress what you're doing you can't do it you're limited by something so that's the point where you go okay CU it's I think it's measurable like that kind of attitude and that mentality you can actually quantify and decide when you want to want to restart when you need to to have a clean slate go on back to you know kind of early days there's

kind of two reasons why I think most people don't start a company you know right out of school or right out of high school I mean one is like you know that you want to get the experience that you can kind of so know know what you're doing so to speak and the second one is like money right like you're you're sort of you don't have the capital to sort of invest in something for years how did you all even like get start like what how did you guys staying at your parents house eating Ramen what what did that look like in the beginning in terms of like actually staying alive oh man uh yeah it's interesting uh so I mean the first again when we started we were just working uh to make cash for ourselves and then we would work on this on the side and then over time it slowly started to encapsulate more of more of our Focus um yeah I mean I lived with my parents for a very long time um you know all my friends were moving out and stuff

like that and like getting rentals and like they got their jobs all lined up and I was still at home in this tiny little bedroom uh had my bedroom had my PC and I would that I lived in that that space for so long and those early days it was fine it was cool like oh this game's going to be at in in in a year and a half and it's going to be good uh and and like uh yeah like we we all had kind of a similar thing there I think Ryan worked um he worked and he rented as as well but he his job actually is kind of what allowed us to take the next step um you know thanks to his position also his demeanor um which I guess we'll get into but the yeah we we just we just kind of you know knuckled down and just went okay we need to you know our passion was making this game it was kind of getting this idea out because it's one thing to be making something for yourself or for um another for someone else right when you're working for another company and making art for another company or when you're writing a story for another

company whatever it is um but when you're fueled by that like that passion the energy of like we're going to make something for everybody and we're really excited about it and we can we know that everyone else is going to get excited about it it and nothing else really mattered like I would have happily stayed at like in that at that time especially I would have happily stayed at home for the rest of my life if it meant that I could eventually release this this thing so people could enjoy it um and that was that was like something I think we all shared it was really important and I mean hey we lived it for about 5 years or six years it was that was the reality you know um no matter what we were working on it did you already have did you have a sense for actually how much money it was going to take to get this game out like you know and then obviously like how did Julio come into the picture right like love to hear a bit about that so yeah we talked about it we talked we we met Julio he came he came here uh and it was also my first time meeting Ryan so he flew down to Australia with Ryan oh and then we all met together and had like yeah you know we had that kind of first

interaction like oh hey Ryan nice to meet you and like shook his hand and jul was like I'm expecting you guys to like hug or something like do something different um and yeah so like we we kind of sat him down and Ryan had already kind of shown Julio the game and and talk to him about what we were expecting to do and at that time we were saying like you know we need I don't even know if we had a certain amount of money in mind but we were like you know give us like $200,000 and and and take this uh and we'll going to get this game done in in a year and a half or at that time would have been like a year like we're going to get this whole thing finished 12 levels in a or it was like six seven levels and uh full thing we're going to get this done and we were so confident that we were going to get it done um uh and because he didn't he didn't necessarily he did his research think like looking at games and looking at how they went um but he was just happy to think go on the journey and he didn't have any misgivings about the fact that we probably weren't even close um put on the money but he also hadn't had much experience in that indust either so we

were all just equally as uh I want to say delusional but we were all equally as kind of a little uh uh Na I'll just say naive I think it's probably a better word because you know yeah we're all equally naive in that regard but it worked in that sense too because again we were all very passionate about it I think yeah I mean $200,000 for individuals a lot of money obviously yeah not for three guys in making a video game though I think it was that I could have been wrong no I mean the budget I mean the budget's so small obviously the budget's so small compared to anything else but I'm just thinking like I'm whatever I'm imagining I'm Julio and I'm like three kids come to me with a game and they're like $200,000 I'm like that's a lot of money for me to invest yeah it was yeah I mean I guess he he was just like we we sold him with the idea of this game I think and the because at that point it was no longer codent it was ready or not we've been working

or months I think at that point and it was pretty sweet like the movement was good the game was starting to feel like it was super rough but it was on its way but yeah no for sure it was still a huge a huge um risk but I think that speaks to his character you know he is like that he he's a he's a let's find out kind of guy in that way it's never like too too risque but like it's usually a little bit which is good you know it works out in that sense so how much money did it end up taking to get launched and you know when did s of Julio then jump in kind of both feet and ended up being you know full-time part of the company as well oh wow that would have been a lot later um as far as how much it's it cost us um I don't know off the top of my head it was it it was a fair bit I mean to get it to where it is now especially just because it's been so long and and we went through so many like highs and lows went through a lot of lull lull periods um you know that it probably was a fair bit cash but for the

question of when Julio jumped in that's a great question cuz ultimately it was oh man um I mean we released our we we okay well first things first we did our supporter Edition um which was kind of our way of being like let's crowdfund you know let's crowdfund our game but we we don't want to use um Kickstarter because we thought it had a bit at the time especially I think even now I'm not sure um had a bit of a bad kind of like if you had a game that was on Kickstarter a lot of those games weren't kind of like fully being delivered and whatnot um and then so we kind of wanted to avoid that as much as possible and just stick with with a website so we kind of set up our own um like support a program so people could crowd help help fund this game's development because we at that point we knew we're going to need a fair bit more cash um but we still thought that we were going to get it done pretty soon we didn't I think at that point it was probably a year but we thought we'd have like a nice Alpha candidate ready with some cool aspects of the game pretty quickly after that uh but at that point

you know when when we released the game play trailer um that was uh that was pretty much when you know I think um Julio started going okay well I should probably dive in and he I mean he he was already diving in hard like he was he was balancing his job and then also on the side doing this project that that Gameplay trailer was that one that uh that was like seven years ago or something is that that Gamespot trailer that um um the first one with the with the black and white and the co that's the gun that probably was in in hindsight that part of the trailer sorry that trailer itself would have been what what tipped Julio into being like we should we should do this because at that point we were already talking and then the trailer released and he's like this is great like this is a lot of traction there's something here um and yeah that wasn't that trailer though that was the supported one so that one actually just net like let everybody know essentially I think we just we made it um was that after the supporter then um no it was

before so still and I made that and we released that to uh Reddit we put it on YouTube and put it on Reddit and then it just took off like it just it exploded that's what I was going to try to figure out how how did you obviously wanted a crowdfund but how did you get the word out like how did people find out about the studio so we released the trailer it took off and then I think we met a subredit we started getting a lot of emails um we when we released the game play uh sorry the first trailer I'm pretty sure at that point we already had a website so people were emailing our website and getting you know giving us all this information oh we really want to buy this game y yada y we were like all right cool so there's that we have a contact list an email list and we have a Reddit a subreddit and there is traction for our game right now we've got Studios reaching out to us being like hey we want to work on your game with you and all that stuff um and then that's kind of where we went was there any like marketing or growth hacks like how did like what were you doing to get it just kind of took off it just worked I don't know exactly why I think it was the

abstract kind of like mixture of what the content of the game was and then the fact that it was just using um air in G from you know box air in G I think the strange contrast in that just made people curious about it plus the whole intro and the way that it was designed I think it was just really cleverly done and I mean a lot of um you know hatsoft is do for that one who um who was so imbued in in media and film and TV and music that it just like there was so many unique angles to that trailer that um yeah I think caused it to take off really well it was it was a very very uh cleverly done you can tell like uh somebody worked in film almost that worked on that trailer or like had a film eye because it's such a cinematic um trailer that first one um I I'm curious like where did the concept of ready or not come from did you guys have a sense of like who the audience was that you were making this for like how

did you cuz it's such a powerful concept obviously which is it's partly the trailer it's partly the concept like but there's such a it's it's a powerful idea where did where did that come from I'm not sure I think we we I mean I loved playing the old tactical shooter kind of games and then obviously setting it in in Los Angeles I think is always a really really good good place to be uh in terms of just um artistic inspiration a lot of the a lot of the decisions for the game especially early on were purely driven by kind of an artistic Instinct I think that was kind of what brought everybody in together um so for us that was kind of of why we made a lot of the decisions we made you know it was purely just because we wanted to have as much creative capacity as possible and we didn't want to set it in generic environments we wanted to use inspiration from you know from existing film and media uh film or media and other things that will kind of you know Inspire us and then in turn Inspire other people I mean a lot of art is

derivative right and I think for us that was the big thing you know even the anal staircase um in the initial trailer which was the yeah like is is um is a 9in Nails reference I think yeah I think it's from yeah there's a n so like there's a lot of stuff like that that just ends up kind of was seeping its way in there but that was like really really gripping people they're going oh wow and for us that was always a goal was like we don't want to have a game that is just there a lot especially a lot of tactical Shooters back back then hell even a lot of action Shooters they were all in very generic and boring settings right you have it in an office block or you would have it in this place and it would just be this you know very orderly kind of planned environment but or you would have the opposite which would just be too outlandish so we needed to tow the line and create something and I think there isn't a a a a better way to tell a story or or a better way to tell a gritty story than be by kind of following the police angle um because of what they're exposed to I think a lot of the time and also setting it in La I think is also good because of just one

the history of it of of the city um but also just the fact that there is such an incredible diversity of of um environments of cultures of um uh economic socio economic backgrounds like there is this in incredible Clash which um you know I mean we we got to see firsthand as well when we we did a we we visited during Co so um you know it was or just before CO as well so it it's uh it was perfect and top of that as well having a Noah sitting I think really really rock good at us too me and Kevin are both from both exactly yeah we're I love it yeah I always say that it's 20 cities roll into one it's so big and sprawling so many different communities um yeah it's a really rich canvas against which to to have all kinds of different stories and scenarios I try to figure out like it seems like so much worked well and like from a I'm starting a new Studio standpoint it feels like your answers are very much like oh like taste

oriented like we have you know good taste um but it's a hard it's a hard thing to sort of glean you know what I mean like um because but but it also feels like you were thinking about how do we how is this going to Market you know obviously with the staircase you know references and and these kind of really interesting environments like it was taste for sure but there it seems like there was thought into oh yeah a lot of thought into like how is this going to be marketed or perceived or viral it was just being as Brash as possible I think a lot of the time just we didn't really we didn't have any rules to play by it was just do what not not do anything too like outlandish and be like oh we're just doing this for shock value but do it so that you know don't don't shy away from what you wanted to approach in the first place you know even in the initial trailer we showed um a bit of like a a school at the time I think it was like a it was just a preview like a cinematic thing we we made up in like you know not much time but um even that was just us saying

we have an idea for this game we know we want to take it uh but we um and we're not really too worried about the the reception to that we just know we wanted to release it so I think that kind of um bullish approach is really what helped us out as well um I definitely don't think it was I mean not to say that we we didn't have some good taste then as well but uh it wasn't like us I think we just wanted to make something and show it with people and that was essentially just it just worked with what everyone else wanted at the time um you see that a lot right especially I mean it with video games but in general is like there are games or or movies that come out and they're just a little or songs or music they just come out a little too early or a little too late and as a result they don't hit the same reception that then another thing comes out with the exact same sort of tone or the same you know whatever it is same style that then takes off um I think it's really interesting when you think about it like hitting your mark you know we just hit

our Mark at the right spot I think but I still don't know if if we'd release that now I still feel like we may have you know created some good traction just because of the aesthetic and the identity that we created with the initial release and then with subsequent kind of content that we showed everybody I guess there's like two points of like one is like many studios we work with a lot of kind of doublea startup Studios and there's like kind of one thing is like it's really hard to get attention and you did so with the trailer and the early uh you know early supporters and whatnot and then the second part that's really challenging is once you get a big audience of people now you have like all these expectations and then you launch into Early Access and a lot of Studios that I see fail to meet the expectations in Early Access because they're getting review bombed uh people have really high expectations coming into Early Access Early Access has certain um preconceived notions now as a player especially if you're charging money uh where people

have these really high expectations and then the developers are not ready for those expectations and you all seem to have like had these big expectations a good trailer and then you went into Early Access and the reviews seemingly were really good like how did you manage to do that and land on those expectations it just seems like such a hard thing to navigate and then controlling the scope and all those kinds of things I mean I think we were super strict on ourselves too uh we I mean look we released the supporter Edition uh well not release the supporter Edition but we we had a bunch of supporters we promised that we'd give them content and we did we put it under an NDA because um one we wanted to get the feedback from them at the time uh and we also wanted them to have something because you know we so we'd give them something but we really didn't want to put it on Steam yet we didn't want to give anyone else that because I think we all were so critical about it and honestly for many years we were too critical about it I think and that really really messed us up so I I reckon

it wasn't like super easy just to go from like supporter to full release and like everything was fine I we we went through this very extreme period of like very good periods of like you know we've we're we've got we've got a good amount of funding we're making some good progress we're feeling really satisfied about this and then bad periods where it just went these systems aren't working we're focusing on the wrong things we've got this it was all that these bad periods were kind of punctuated by just too too little experience we just didn't have the right level of experience so we weren't managing correctly that processes were all wrong a bunch of things that you commonly experience in pretty much any any um uh any business that you're trying to build and and work on and especially when you haven't uh when you haven't gone to a to a college for it so you know that that I think is probably you know a big aspect right is like just this this strange thing we went through any uh any of those sort of uh

troughs you know whe I'm guessing there were some near-death moments any anecdotes you you care to share about how you actually managed to avert death and you know turn it back around we we had so many of those moments I think like radio not's development and and the growth of void interactive as a company from this like really small team of just you know basically three guys to then four um and then you know exploding up into I think it was like 15 and then compressing back down to five right like we went through these periods where that felt like near death I mean I think I was thinking about this before the interview is that we've I've I've made I feel like me I I want to speak for everyone else but especially me from my perspective I feel like I've made pretty much any every mistake you can make uh when it comes to starting up a company you know and as a result it has built um my resilience it's built the company's resilience but those periods where like those near-death periods I think the only thing that brought it

back was the determination to continue to build this game and release something because at the end of the day any stress that was involved in those those those troughs like you say um all all the stress there was because there was the potential that the game could not then be made it wasn't oh we're worried that we're not going to make this then we're going to get sued or we're going to this whatever you know there were like those concerns if they were over there they weren't the issue the issue for me at least was always can't make the game I really want I really want people to actually experience this I want them I want it to be like the thing that you know cool I got to release this thing I don't want to be marred by all the other things that happen so I I think that was for us the the way to get through was just being determined to continue to push forwards um because honestly you're going to face so many different issues when you're when you're building a business right when you're building a product especially video games you're going to face a bunch of issues um from technical to business to interpersonal

problems everything right um and there's there's there's many ways of resolving those things there's different answers for for how you can fix that but I think the biggest ones are always when you just kind of decide that you have to continue no matter what like there is no other way out but through the problem um because at any point I I could have we could have all stopped we could have all just gone okay never mind like this isn't working this is way too stressful this is causing too many is going to cost too much money but it was the just the the the conscious decision to keep working and to continue to try and develop what we had and every time we did that we got better at kind of returning back from a failure um so I think that's probably what what pushed us through how aware was your community of some of these ups and downs and like how how did that have it impact you know positive or negative on on actually getting this thing you know to your points through the problems and and releasing the game I think we tried to isolate the community from it not in a way where it was like malicious or with ill intent it was just because well I I

think explaining every issue to the community I think that would actually be quite a difficulty in that sense the community or any Community not just ours but any community group of people can can be a bit of a dragon that you have to have to battle if you start going down that pathway um so for a lot of these like internal issues or any problems that we were facing unless it directly affected the community like through means of a delay or if or like a cancellation um anything that was that was really just an issue with us because we didn't understand a part of the process um we we we didn't we didn't share that I don't think we needed to because it would just cause too much too much of a scare you know in my mind it would have been I think a lot of companies it could be really interesting and very enlightening especially for video games to be like completely transparent development it would be weird it would be like a big brother moment for like video games and probably wouldn't work out but but it would give a lot of insight into just how complex a lot of development for Gam is it's uh it's never easy it's never

quick uh and it's it's always full of things you have to resolve every day you know I think a lot of people just like to reduce that down to oh they don't know what they're doing or like this thing isn't working therefore they're not putting any work in they're just trying to make money whatever it is right um but a lot of the time it's like no we want to make this thing we like working on this project but you know X Y and Z has happened and now we have to resolve those things or we have this other issue now because of our timelines and there's there's all these other things that occur which would be probably resolved if there was just a like a glass building kind of transparency you know um so and how long was it from when you started like all the way from the beginning to when you went into Early Access uh yeah it was uh it would have been five years I think or six years at the time um I think till no no that doesn't sound right it was it was we released uh the end of 2021 I think or 2020 yeah so was right as the board like Australia had a huge lockdown for like

16 months and right at the end of that is when we released in December um so it was it was a a good chunk of time but it doesn't it's funny it feels like it feels like it was uh a lot longer than it actually was to me it felt like it feels like 20 years have passed since we came up with the idea of the game to now just because of how much stuff has been crammed into those those that small period of time uh and and Al you know personal growth I guess as well just by observing all this and being a part of it well there's AAA teams that that spend seven eight years that I've been building games for decades that you know that's still the timeline um and you guys obiously had no experience so it doesn't feel that long from from my perspective for for a team that's just getting started but uh how did you guys decide like okay we're we're ready to go into Early Access at like what was the we had a really cool game at that point

um we had just been I can't really go into detail but we've just been released so to speak and we were um focusing on uh we were focusing on just just finishing up what we had we had some rough levels made it felt good to play it was hitting all these beats of it being action and fun um it felt like a tactical shooter like it was hitting all these internal marks that we just did decided at that point like after all these years of kind of being in the in the Forge we'd finally brought it out and gone okay we know what we're making now it's only taken us this bloody long for us to figure it out um but we didn't know at the time we just realized that we like okay we actually got something cool here so I think it was just this like kind of conscious decision to be like oh well realization like this is really cool we were enjoying it um Ryan was playing it with his friends we had some other people who who were working on the project still who played it with with having their friends on and being like this is so much fun and I think up

until that point honestly we I'd never heard those words in relation to r or not I'd heard a little bit of it maybe from like supporters being like this is pretty cool I like this but it was always like it like it's kind of cool like I like what this is going on here I like this thing this is all right it was never like I'm enjoying the the hell out of this and this is a lot of fun so the moment we heard that I was like all right this this is really good news and I mean I was having fun playing it too you know like but for real instead of just kind of like playing it and being like focusing on all the bad stuff I was playing it I remember this moment because it was like we had the SWAT Ai and I was commanding them to breach a room I think it was this old hotel level the top floor and I was experiencing all these new feelings when playing the game like oh I was actually scared like things were happening and going oh this is terrifying I'm getting shot at and doors are exploding and there's enemies and I've got to like command my team and it felt exactly how it felt when I was playing like the old SWAT games to me at least from when I was a kid it was that exact same kind of like little feeling so I think at that moment it was almost like okay we know um we know we've got

to get this out the door and it was pretty much there you know we we had a few more I think we had like another month before we were ready to release it um but it was very shortly after that that we went we need to get this out we need people to play this because it's going to be sweet I that being said we didn't think it was going to take off the way it did I remember waking up I just got to I was I I just got down to San go and I'd woken up and then you know we'd released uh it was out on Steam so I went to bed and it and then overnight it got released we we it went live or whatever and I remember waking up and like my phone had blown up at the time we were using Discord for work so like my Discord just exploded and I'm like what the heck and I'm like looking at some and I think Ryan and Julio had stayed awake all night just posting all the YouTube videos and all this guy's playing it oh my god look you know it was like everybody was playing it you know it's like oh look Jack frag sidan look every all these people playing it

and it was just like oh oh that took off and I remember just being in bed looking at my phone with like weary eyes just going oh well that's pretty cool and I was so jetlagged I just put the phone down went to sleep woke up and then it would exploded even more and it just continued that way and I was just it it didn't feel real I mean in a lot of ways it still doesn't you know there are sometimes where it sounds really weird but then it little maybe a little too like a little too hokey but like I it's like you know waiting to wake up and be like still at you know still at home in my little cramp bedroom just you know making character models it's it's a very strange feeling being in this POS like being in this very fortunate position where we can work on this game in any capacity because of just the steps we took along the way um yeah but it it was uh it was pretty crazy for sure like we we did we sold a good a a yeah a good number of copies early on that just propelled us did you attribute any of that to like I guess like marketing strategy or was it it just kind of took

off I think no I mean we released the game and the only piece of uh content we released alongside it was uh a tutorial on how to play it because we didn't have any tutorial in the game we were just like okay let's drop let's drop a tutorial on YouTube and Zach um our audio director he he's uh he's great he just like kind of went all right I'm going to record this thing and his like deep Canadian tamber and then just like Chuck it on YouTube and had to play it uh and that was it you know like that was the only thing we released and that was even I think a little bit later we literally just dropped the game I'm pretty sure um I'm pretty sure we just dropped the game and it just took off you know we'd let all of our I think also I should mention as well we'd let some of our supporters play it a few days early or a week early and they really enjoyed it so at that point we were like oh this is sweet but we didn't have any time to make anything no we never made a trailer or anything I was in a plane uh and and everyone else was just tired we we'd all been working so hard like some of the long hours I've ever worked but also the most energetic

hours I've ever worked too it wasn't like this kind of grueling like kind of SLO through getting everything done oh we got to fix this light fix this get this it wasn't like that it was pure like it was just a a uh what do you call it it was like a flow state but a flow state for yeah four weeks it was insane it was very good and you know the light is at the end of the time yeah but we had no idea still had no idea at the time it was going to be like take reive the way it was you know it might it might sell like maybe like I was like oh maybe like 10,000 copies that would be cool you know like that would be great we already got supporters and maybe they're like not happy about it anymore but yeah so how did you decide how to price it I think we just looked at other games you know other games that were around and went what are we offering you know we have like a couple of level we have like six levels and some and some different Mission variations and we just went that sounds pretty fair also at the time I'm pretty sure we' Al we'd already had a standard addition that we were selling to people like that they couldn't play the game until that was um

out so we had the support Edition then we had like a pre-order for the existing game um and that was priced around the same if not a little bit cheaper and then we kind of had the steam price higher up I think do you remember how many supporters additions you know sold versus the pre-orders yeah it was I think order magnitude yeah I think it was probably like a uh with pre-orders comparing and comparatively I think it was like 10 to one no sorry yes no what am I saying it was yeah it was probably like and even less maybe maybe 9% of our of our sales with with supporter maybe it might have been a little bit higher and I could be completely off here but it was essentially not a huge amount but because the supporter reg was so much more expensive as well um that became you know kind of it propelled us a lot to be fair actually not I think it probably exploded after because we said support Edition is going to be closing

up at some stage and at that stage like people wanted to play it before also people wanted to play it before it released like people on supporter were already playing Ready or Not um and I think they were even streaming it if I'm not mistaken so essentially what would happen was you would have all these other people going oh I really want to play your game um but I I don't want to wait a week so I'll buy the supporter Edition and it kind of went and it just took off that way so you so that that is your you had the marketing strategy that is that much that ground swell from your from your base of players you know who really wanted to get their hands on it oh for sure yeah I know it worked out really well um I I think uh and I mean we're very grateful even um you know we're all very grateful to the people who supported our game it's always funny when you run into someone who's like I remember I remember paying for that I remember paying for a supporter Edition like like five years ago and I was like oh wow well you know thank you and I mean our our viewers to pretty much always be like hey you know um you know those people not everyone is well not just the supporters obviously everyone who pre-ordered the game but um that

group as well to always be grateful for the fact that they were kind of had a pretty significant hand in establishing um our company and our game because that's what allowed us to Value how you know our product not for like investment but just value it in the sense of like we know that there's an appetite for this game uh and and then we wanted to continue working on it and they helped us work on it essentially just by by that funding you guys so you guys obviously had some funding at the point and then I I mean at least from my perspective uh you guys continue to you know build the community continue to sell copies and and all that and I guess like what did that look like after you launched An Early Access in 2021 now you have some funding like in terms of managing the community thinking about dlc's what was the like Str like where do you take the game from here like how have you guys been thinking about that you mean sorry do you mean like post 1.0 or do you mean no well I guess even from Early Access all the way up until now so

that I mean up until 1.0 and then obviously there's been DLC since then obviously there's another one coming up up in December that yeah that's interesting yeah what has there been some kind of strategy there like uh there has been now there has been uh when we released in in Early Access and we kind of had this boom I think we went through what a lot of people have you know a lot of games that come out early access went through you get all this you take off like lethal companies tap into them as well um you take off and you're like oh my God and then you kind of you need to start looking at you know how is your game set up and what do you do like your codebase your your production your team how's that all set up and then you know what do you do to actually improve that process because it's probably not going to work if you want to scale you know as soon as we saw that R now took off our goal was we need to scale this we need to we need more people um we need more Talent um we just need you know more hands on you know we need more more more Cooks essentially um because

it was just us how many people was it in Early Access like up until that point about eight or no 10 of us I think maybe maybe even L yeah we and they were all just like grinding crazy like we and you know myself included we were all in the trenches together just working on it which was great fun but it was just a lot you know um and we' all kind of like step on each other's toes to work on things like I would do some of the sound like the C2 exploding I was like let's just turn all the Reverb up on everything and and it worked really well and then Zach would come in and be like Oh I'm going to fix that and like he'd like tweak everything and make it sound good and then it would be this kind of like shared process where we were all doing everything at once and just playing around with it and for some reason I don't know why but it worked really well at that time so then after Early Access happened we couldn't keep doing that um it just wouldn't have worked we would have all gotten really burnt out like that after that release we had a huge break it was like a very very big break um and then you know we started looking how we could grow but the problem was is that um we were still

even then like even after all this time there were new mistakes that we'd made and that's why I say I feel like I've made every mistake in the book um even I'm you know I'm probably halfway through the book we've still got another half to go but like there's the I made I feel like I made every mistake in the book to this point that like could be made because even then we had a bunch of a bunch of capital to play with and we we wanted to do it right and we wanted to grow the team so we did that uh but we didn't do it the right way we didn't start by say hiring you know people who had an extreme amount of experience in certain areas we started by just grabbing people we like we would have if we were still in the The pre- Early Access period of just find this Talent here and here and just get them to work and and then one person I think it was me at the time yeah I mean it was me at the time manage everybody and there'd be some people who would also help share that management but it wasn't really structured at all and that carried for a long time until we actually finally started bringing in people who like we started splitting up the roles and splitting up the focuses so it wasn't

just all under one big umbrella um and that was you know that was kind of the thing that that shifted was just we need to have a much more professional mindset because you can go two ways about it you can release your game Early Access you can stop working on it and just say made my cash I'm happy I don't really care about this anymore or you can work on your project um as as like a solo Dev or with a small team and keep it small and don't scale and and just make sure your community's expectations are measured or you can grow but you're going to have to do a whole lot of changing to get it to work correctly because you're everything you're used to is going to change every system you're going to have new stresses going to have new problems to to to solve but at the end of the day you're going to have you're probably actually going to be more freed up you know um so yeah I think I think that was kind of why where we that's where we took it and have been taking it now for quite some time you know finding the right people to highlight that as well highlight that

process I'm curious like where does uh there's so much to talk about that I didn't cover I wanted to talk audio and Ai and all sorts of things but that's all right the um you you guys I guess where does void go from here in terms of do you do you have a DLC Cadence are you guys working on new games like what are you guys thinking about in terms of like obviously we scaled the stuff for the second half the book yeah exactly maybe we have to do a followup or something say well yeah I mean if if there some good engagement and I'm I'm like if you guys want to do another one I'll be more than happy to um look for the second part it's just been maintaining uh uh sorry been growing the company further but in a way that's very measured and uh it's done done the right way this time I think um we've learned a lot since essentially building up to 1.0 and and this year um we've learned a lot about how to actually run and organize the company in a way that benefits us um benefits our you know ability to sleep at good times and also like just spend time with with people who aren't your work colleagues and also benefits the community and the game so it's it's just

rounding out all these production facing problems or any like staffing issues and things that just you you actually expect when you go from being a very small Indie Dev to kind of growing out into this you know um remote organization which is essentially what we are we don't have you know like a like a home office where we all go in and start talking and like we idate we'll meet in places and chat and chat that way or we'll have we'll have calls at strange hours and while that's a huge battle in and of itself um you know that's something that we've wanted to maintain the entire time so every decision we make every um uh organizational decision we make has that in mind is like we want to be able to continue to be remote and free because you know it's just a different way of working everyone gets a bit more I mean they can have more spare time or they aren't as restricted you know to get on a train every day and go to the office so to speak yeah um but as far as like post one .0 and into our DLCs I mean our goal is just to you know

see uh we want to build out more of the story of the game uh and continue working on it we have some other stuff you know we've been focusing on um but I think the idea is just to you know continue to create content and continue to build out ready or not I mean every DLC we release has improvements to the game as well so we're not just trying and they're not like you don't have to pay for those they just come in with the game everyone gets them um we have a very like kind of open Community facing um DLC structure which you know doesn't necessarily benefit the HIIT pocket as much as if you were to to just make it everyone has to pay for it and get rid of mods and all that but because of the way we have our community set up and the way that you know we really like how it's set up we just go all right you know you can play with your friends that's fine you get you can get all these things you know you get the weapons for free you don't have to pay for those you know you get all these up updates and improvements obviously for free um that benefits you benefits everybody who works on the game but if you want to play these these maps on your own well then you have to pay for

them and I think that that General attitude isn't like that that DLC mindset isn't really something that happens in many games I think we were very inspired by Bohemia interactive and the way they did it for armor 2 um especially way back because armor 2 had that it like you could just play a really low five version of or like low res version of uh of chernus and just run around and it was like looked like you were playing on like a PC from like 2001 but hey it is what it is but as a venture capitalist I've remissed to not ask you about Ai and sort of how do you your philosophy on where does it make sense in your game obviously especially given you know I think overall gamers are you know have quite a bit of healthy skepticism on on that yeah I mean AI is an interesting one that that we're all facing today I don't think it's it's not going anywhere you know um our mindset and something we we're exploring even now is like you know how do we use it as a tool not something to replace people not something which I think is also very common thing that people worried about um and I am too it's like you know uh I

yeah we see AI as a tool something that isn't there to replace people but actually make a lot of the the light work easier if you're ideating on a concept and you're not an artist you don't have to then sit down with an artist who might be better focused on something else just so you can get some rough Concepts out you know you can use it to kind of give an idea and say okay let's build on this idea let's give that to the concept artist let's give that to a 2d artist or just to the team to kind of start working on that on the important aspects of it the stuff that the end user will see um just that's just from an artistic example I think it's yeah it's got some other great uses as well um I mean obviously a lot of people use them for for meeting notes now so you don't have to have someone sitting in there writing every single every single note down and doing it that way and in our game we do have you know we do have ai stuff it's not um it's not as it's not as uh uh common as people think think I reckon we do get a lot of feedback talking about Ai and it's like oh well

this is this is clearly AI generated sometimes it's just not or it is or it's partial some a lot of the time as well we'll use it as a base and then it's like partially done that way or it's something so small and so minor like a magazine cover that we go we don't even need to worry about it too much we just need something and we don't want to pay like a stock site $15 for a picture of a face and then comp that entire thing in Photoshop and then add it to a thing just so someone can look at it for 3 seconds and then continue going it's about it's like you know there um uh there's a scale to that that you need to be mindful of so I think for us a lot of the time it's like just being being um intelligent about where you use it and how well you use it as on top of that I think but I I I see it going it's going to probably I I don't think we can even predict how it's going to be in the future with the way that AI is head it it seems to every day there's something new that it can do um it's all generative AI but you know there's a lot that it can do that's going to fill a lot of of gaps or at least cut down the timelines on things a lot you know make the process shorter and shorter but I

don't think it'll work if there's no intention you know AI does not work at least from again from like a creative standpoint like AI can't like if you get chat GPT to write something for you it has no Pros it it sucks like it doesn't like have a way of telling a story it's just like a robot telling you a story or um even if you have it tell it like in a certain way or if like yeah with like videos or whatever it doesn't have like um it doesn't know like proper composition or it doesn't do it very well or it's not consistent and there's all these kind of issues it's I think that's the biggest thing it still needs to be human driven which is why it's a tool and not just something that's that's just going to replace everybody's jobs and call it a day well I know you're ingame AI like not not a generative AI but your actual squad-based AI has been complemented a lot I've I've seen wait were you guys talking about generative AI this whole time well no no I I yeah I'm sure Kevin was talking about gen as a as a hot thing but I was just saying your your actual in-game AI has been also

something that's uh been complimented a lot um I know that was your mostly your CTR right uh yeah I mean it was the whole the whole engineering team for sure early on it was like it was pretty much like a very small um it wasn't just a CTO even with the early AI it was like um yeah it was a good couple guys who worked on the project for quite a while um but um now it's now it's like a whole team working on it and sharing responsibilities you know um and all those guys are so good so it yeah um the the AI in the game it's extremely difficult to get right A lot of the time because especially with our game where it's not linear there's a lot of potential alternative situations that you can run into depending on how you approach your space or the level or whatever you're using that it's it's quite tricky to get right um and you know uh I think it's something that we just actively try and improve as much as we possibly can uh but yeah we've gotten some good compliments on it I think for me personally it's one of those things where it's like it'll never be enough

like the way the AI is probably never be perfect you can always make it better so to speak but at some stage you kind of have to go all right this is going to have to do we're not there yet though we're definitely not there yet there's plenty of things I think that need to be improved um in that front but that's just because we even even though we've grown our team we still have a lot to focus on and we just don't have the Manpower or the just the general like ability to to look at everything all at once all the time sometimes you got to prioritize other things I wonder do do you have any thoughts on um I guess the general games industry in terms of like right now I obviously I meet with tons of studios and I think some people are talking about how it's one of the most difficult times to to be a game developer in many ways there's so much saturation in terms of there's so much content out there um players are more entrenched in their existing IPS than they have ever been in the past um I don't I wonder do you all think about

that as you think about you know the next you know franchise that you might work on or like where do you think the games industry is going in terms of like some of the stuff I don't know if those those thoughts are kind of things that you spend your spend your time thinking about at this point I mean realistically we've been um relatively privileged to not have to experience that kind of thing right like we've been lucky in that sense like we have got to worry about that because we have a pretty well gravitated player base but um it is a it is a real concern because I think the worst thing I mean you can you can consider it maybe like a a lull or like again like like a trough like what Kevin said right it's like a bit of a trough um maybe in the industry where right now that's what the players are are seeking they're seeking um like tried and true experiences just stuff they're used to yeah yeah stuff they're used to essentially they they're seeking the players are still seeking things that they they're familiar with from their from their past um but I don't think that's going to be there I don't think that ever lasts and

stays forever I think eventually there's always an appetite for something new um and that does come down to saturation but it might be one of those things where you know currently just because the way that the industry is set up you know AAA games that are being made all relatively similar they will try and play the safe game make something that's that everyone is already playing you know make the game that everyone's already playing well then no one's going to play your one because it's only slightly different with some new characters um and you know I think I I think right now it is the the the Indie it's the time for indie games and sure you make an indie game and it's flavor of the month which happens a lot like there's a lot of flavor of the month indie games but it doesn't take much I think from going from something that gets some appeal to attracting an audience but what you need to do is have an idea when you're coming up with the game have or even after is just come up with an idea on how you can continue to extend the engagement in your product you know what's what's your angle and are you engaged in working on it too I think there are plenty of games that

come out there are plenty of games that come out that you know maybe they're just a they're meant to be a short profound or fun experience and then that's it and players maybe expect more so it can also flip on its head a little bit where the expectation um of of the game isn't necessarily from the developer but it's from the players it's being like Oh well I played I'll use lethal company again CU cuz my friends been ask me to play it again recently but like people like oh well you know I played that I really wish they contined to add more things and it's like well you know in one way do they have to like does does every game have to last forever and get all this support eternally no not necessarily I mean it's a great idea because you continue to create like you continue working on the existing game without having to take a risk and make a new one but you know there's also something to be said about just releasing content and then calling it a day I know that's hypocritical and it's a bit it's a bit it's pretty ironic me saying that working on a game that isn't like that but you know um maybe it's cuz the Grass Is Always Greener maybe I see that as like a great goal to establish is like it would be awesome to release a

game and say we're done and then we can make something new and we can be creative all over again and that's that's the best feeling I think is being able to just continue to not be don't be limited by what you've made you know always try and do something new always try and push the bar a little bit um but again yeah it it just depends on who you are what your circumstances are whether or not you can take a risk like that can you can you take a risk to be creative or do you have obligations you have you have mortgage do you have a family do you have like you know where are you situated like what is what is going on in your life that allows you to be um a risk taker and not worry too much about what the game as appetite is if you can do that then obviously that changes things if you can't well then it's it's it is a hard time right now to be in the to be in the Indie industry especially um it's I yeah I think it would be very tough to crack into that but I think last thing I was going to say on that is just that you know being

I think being honest with with what you want to make is is really important you know if you if you make something that you would love to play is you you have you have something you want to say you have a story you want to tell uh an experience you want people to to feel whatever it is um I think that that is the best way of kind of engaging an audience it's not making something that you think other people are going to like it's making something you're going to like that other people also happen to enjoy you know that's the best way it's Being Earnest about your development I love that yeah um we always have this question we ask U which is if you could go back to the founding of your company and give yourself one piece of advice what would that be um don't worry so much stop freaking out and stressing honestly that's the biggest one uh you know know it's not always roses when you're in development even you're running a business uh it's

it's never you have some great moments but a lot of the time those Great Moments get ruined by you worrying about what the next bad thing's going to be and that's been my mindset it's gotten a a lot better at it now but especially for like five or six years every time something bad happened I thought you know the the walls were crashing in so my advice would be to just hey hey it's me from the future relax a little bit you know you would you would have enjoyed yeah take it easy you would have enjoyed things a lot more if you weren't so worried about whether or not you were going to like you know what worrying about what the bad thing is that's going to happen next like you would have just enjoyed all these moments you would have probably remembered them a lot more instead of being so anxious and thinking forwards you know um I think that's a very common thing though especially um when you're making something it's you know being like the anxious achiever so to speak uh it's you know it's it's a double-edged sword in that sense because you're thinking forwards but you're also not really thinking in the moment not being present enough so yeah my advice would be to yeah take it easy for

sure wonderful um all right still you ready for a lightning round of questions yeah I'll try and be quick with my answers this time uh maybe I'll start uh any media what have you consumed recently that you really like oh jeez you know this is going to sound really stupid but I watched smile to and I I thought smile one sucked and I thought smile 2 was going to suck turned out to really enjoy it that's something I consumed very recently that I liked which is a very very milk toast answer to be honest but um and not artsy enough at all but uh yeah no honestly smart too good movie go check it out cool your uh your favorite game right now that's maybe not lethal company since we we touched on that one yeah yeah I was going to say don't worry I won't be mentioning that again um favorite game right now uh you know Doom Eternal I I only just played it and I just finished it and the two and the I panned it when it came out I hated it I it sucked B and then I just picked it

up recently and I realized how much of an idiot I was it's a really really welld designed game super well-rounded a lot of fun I know there's a lot of like controversy around the with MC Gordon and things like that but as a game itself it's it's so perfect in so many ways there's a studio working with us that our ex ex Doom internal guys that uh I just sent them well when Ryan rigny did your your interview I sent that stuff to them they have a a game called defect where Mick Mick did the I don't know if you saw that empty vessel you check it out but they were they were super inspired by you guys um working with them but they're they're ex they're all like exd maternal guys um any just call calling them out but uh they game royalty so uh is there a dream IP that you would love to work with you know yeah uh Judge Dread I think I think ready or not as well as a as a game I think the dread IP would have been so perfect I mean the one with um oh jeez I forgot his name it

is oh he's he's New Zealander but he's Australian um Kur whatever anyway um the the most recent one that came out that was so good H and I think it would just land really well yeah dread was great um yeah that's cool okay you definitely need to check out defect it's it's inspired by dread it's not dread at all yeah look up def empty vessel defect trailer um anyways that you'll uh you'll you'll definitely like it all right uh any productivity hack that you uh you recommend productivity hack um yeah if you put on if you're trying to get into a flow State and work on something if it's again I'm speaking from a creative angle here but I think it works with anything um put on some ambient music not not anything that has any kind of beat to it just just flowy synthy ambient music and and and remove all distractions get rid of your phone if you could turn off your internet don't have your internet on so you cannot be distracted at all and I guarantee within like 15 minutes you will be so dialed in

that you'll just want to work for so long as what you're doing is engaging I think it doesn't really work if you're like studying like law but you know if you you know you will be so so engaged with what you're doing um that you you'll just continue to work and create and and improve what you're you know whatever it is that you're writing or whatever it is that you're making um it's worked for me a lot it's great if you can just kind of become Zen in your little in your little Zen space you know get your coffee get your coffee get your have like a nice little soda with you or whatever and just work and just listen to the ambient Tunes it it it's it's perfect then on the flip side what's uh best way to relax oh geez you know uh you if you asked me this like five years ago I would have said like like bouldering or rock climbing that would have been my thing actually when I was in LA I did rock climbing at a place that was pretty fun the uh uh but now I'd probably say honestly best way to relax is probably a bit of Jiu-Jitsu bit of Brazilian jiu-jitsu I think really helps me chill out like you know there's nothing like

getting squashed for two hours I going to say have someone kick you in the face and knee you I hope not no it's it's it's that honestly has helped me I think anything on on a real note like anything that allows you to step out of your own head and focus really intently on on something that is relaxation for me because like lying down on a couch and like staring at the ceiling or like whatever it is that whatever it is you might like doing um you're you're not actually doing anything you're still thinking you still have the option to think if you have an activity that doesn't give you an option to think now that's awesome yeah love that all right final question your biggest lesson or it doesn't even have to be the biggest but an important lesson that you learned from a mentor when I met Julio one of the things that he taught me um and I would consider him a mentor is you know never be afraid to talk with people you don't know always communicate with new people that would be that would be one of the biggest things I learned and and not being afraid of that just reach out to people

communicate have um have open discussions about anything it doesn't have to be about work in fact that that's another part of the of what I learned is you know when you get into a meeting if you're talking about like something business related if you're talking about some work you need to do don't start that way just take the first five minutes and talk about anything else just have a conversation about not about the weather but like talk about something that happened you know oh you know God just got elected or you know F this thing happened oh I tweaked my knee yada yada you know it doesn't matter but just talk about anything else and use that um because it it helps smooth everything helps chill everybody out and that mindset I think as well you're just taking that into any interaction you have and you meet somebody new you know instead of whatever you might want from them if you want anything from them talk about something else don't talk about what you want uh and that's something that I that I definitely took away from him um you know on top of not being worried about who you talk to new conversations are always good and everyone has a story everyone has something to say and you know I'd say

99.9% of the time it's worth listening to you know it's it's something fantastic that that someone's gone through that they will eventually tell you because they haven't actually had an opportunity to talk to anyone about it before you know we're so also busy talking at each other that we never actually start talking with each other and I think that's really important so yeah these are things those are things that I've learned from from Julio who's extremely social dude that's beautiful well we'll have to we'll have to have you on again and deep dive some of this stuff but I really appreciate the time and I think people are going to learn a lot from this conversation so thanks for thanks for joining us thanks guys [Music]