What Fortnite, PUBG, and Other Video Games Can Teach Us About Running A Successful Business

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, Episode 39 You're listening to the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast.

Welcome back to another episode of The Six Figure Home Studio Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Hood. I'm with my bald but beautiful co-host, Chris Graham. Chris, how are you doing today, buddy?

Chris Graham (0:28)

I'm great.

Brian Hood (0:29)

So today's episode is on a subject that I have a lot of reservations talking about. I don't know if I want to do this episode or not. I'm still not sold on this episode, but...

Chris Graham (0:38)

It's going to be goofy, but it's going to be great.

Brian Hood (0:40)

It's going to be an interesting episode to say the least, especially if you're a gamer. And you've probably heard Chris and I talk about video games in our intros these past few episodes.

One of the reasons is I'm actually launching a business in the competitive gaming world right now. And so that's kind of the world I've been involved in outside of the Six Figure Home Studio. So I have a good excuse. Chris has a great excuse because he's found that video games are a really good bonding moment for his children and also a teaching moment.

And Chris and I have gotten into this weird conversation on multiple occasions about the parallels of business and video games. Chris, do you want to kind of elaborate on what this means?

Chris Graham (1:15)

Yeah. Well, let me give a little bit of backstory first. So before I had kids, this is probably 10 years ago, I started playing reversey.

Brian Hood (1:25)

The hell is that?

Chris Graham (1:26)

It's this weird game with like little checkers that are black on one side and white in the other. And I got really good at it. And well, I got okay at it. And I decided, you know what? I want to be mentally fit. I want to have good mental fitness.

And reversey was the first place where I was like, I'm just going to master this game. And eventually, you know, a week or two later, I played it a lot. And it got to the point where every time I would play against the computer, I would demolish the computer.

And it was just a really good way to exercise mentally. You know, there was a lot of strategy and a lot of like recognizing the computer strategy and recognizing, oh, well, they just did this. It means they'll do this next. So I'll do this to thwart that. And so it was really good. But other than that, I'm not a gamer up until about two, three weeks ago.

And you know, I played a lot of Halo in college. It was toxic. You know, it was like, let's figure out who the biggest man is, you know, with all my friends and I was dumb. So Brian, you know, has started working on this gaming business and we've been talking about it and I was like, oh, maybe I should finally jump on the train and play like Fortnite. And because it's like the most popular game in the history of the world.

Brian Hood (2:42)

It's pretty popular. I don't know if it's that popular, but it's it's close.

Chris Graham (2:45)

It's very popular. So a lot of my friends' kids play it. And I was kind of like, oh, man, I don't want like a violent game with like guns and stuff for my kids to play.

And I downloaded on my iPad. I started playing it and was like, this is actually pretty cool. The object of the game is survival, not like kill everybody. So I let my kids download it on their iPhones and we started playing as a group, me and my two sons. And it was freaking incredible to talk to them about like what it meant to play conservatively and what it meant to be patient in the game to win, as opposed to like drop in, for those of you that play PUBG or Fortnite, drop in, kill as many people as you can, but you're probably going to live like two minutes before someone else kills you.

And so we've been playing pretty conservatively and it's been a cool way for me to lead my children and say, hey, we're going to drop in over there at the tomato town and then we're going to we're going to hide in that truck until the storm comes. Anyways, super nerdy. So let me get to the point here.

So as I've been playing these games, Brian and I have had a lot of conversations about the parallels between winning a game and being successful in business. And there are a lot, there's a lot to talk about here. If you are not a gamer, you're still going to take something home from this episode. If you are a gamer, you're definitely going to take home some tasty nuggets of truth to help you run your business better. So yeah, gaming and business, who'd thunk it?