Speaker 1: Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and t DC Media. That's gonna be a big
Speaker 1: setback there. But m VP is not the one we're
Speaker 1: worried about. Is they're just a setback here for t
Speaker 1: s M. Who is going to do it? Ts M,
Speaker 1: you're your champions. Go to these events, network people, find
Speaker 1: people to collaborate with, put the time in, be smart
Speaker 1: about it, look at what you did, and analyze what's
Speaker 1: going well, what's not going well well. I think being
Speaker 1: reluentless is super important, Like you need to really know
Speaker 1: what you want and like truly ask yourself, Like if
Speaker 1: you're only doing it for the money, it's really not
Speaker 1: worth the other dude, because you love it. Andy dinn
Speaker 1: is in the house, what's up? And from TSU here
Speaker 1: Andy from TSM. I mean, if you don't know that
Speaker 1: name and you don't know this associated with TSM, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you. So a very very successful,
Speaker 1: very influential person sitting across from me in the e
Speaker 1: sports world, I definitely think you are a pioneer, if
Speaker 1: not the pioneer in the space. E sports is something
Speaker 1: that people still to this day do not understand. What
Speaker 1: do you think the stigma is. I think the stigma
Speaker 1: has changed over the last decade from you know, gamers
Speaker 1: being in their basement to now being seen as a
Speaker 1: more acceptable path. It's not really there yet in the
Speaker 1: sense that where parents feel like, hey, my kid is
Speaker 1: growing up to be a gamer like basketball or football
Speaker 1: or soccer, but it is definitely more acceptable than before
Speaker 1: where parents were heavily against it. They're uncomfortable, the didn't
Speaker 1: know where it was. Now you see a fifteen year
Speaker 1: olds going to these like massive stadiums and winning millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. So I do think that there's some general concept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So ts M massive, right, and you're the
Speaker 1: founder of this massive empire. For people who have not
Speaker 1: heard of ts M, give us a little breakdown. So,
Speaker 1: so TSM is a company that I started when I
Speaker 1: was seventeen and not to shobby. What were you guys
Speaker 1: doing at seventeen. There's there's two areas of focus for
Speaker 1: the business, right. We employee close to hunted gamers that
Speaker 1: go around competing in these large stadiums across the world,
Speaker 1: from like the Staples Center to Medicine Square Garden. And
Speaker 1: these players they you know, they make millions in their
Speaker 1: their age ranges from sixteen to up to twenty four.
Speaker 1: And then we have the other side of our business,
Speaker 1: which is like a tech driven business that focuses on
Speaker 1: data and analytics and e sports performance that really helps
Speaker 1: feel our our gamers, and like with their practice regiment,
Speaker 1: that product offering is made and created for our pro players.
Speaker 1: At the same time, our fans and players also use
Speaker 1: it too. So we're gonna take it back to the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the t SM days. Okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: you're seventeen. Are you still in high school? No, I
Speaker 1: dropped out of high school. So you drop you drop out,
Speaker 1: and then the idea comes or the idea comes and
Speaker 1: then you drop out. So so I dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school to to go to college early. Okay, that
Speaker 1: it was a gradual process, and I started while I
Speaker 1: was in college and I just go to college part time. Really,
Speaker 1: were you inspired because you were actually a gamer in
Speaker 1: real life? I was inspired to be a content creator
Speaker 1: and just be a competitive player overall through just through YouTube, right,
Speaker 1: because at that time, YouTube was still early in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight where creators were starting to have millions
Speaker 1: of followers. So I think at that time, Ryan Higa,
Speaker 1: who had two million followers on YouTube, was the largest
Speaker 1: influencer of that time. And I really wanted to create content.
Speaker 1: But instead of creating fun and engaging content, I wanted
Speaker 1: to create content around being better at gaming. And so
Speaker 1: that was our niche. And at that time gaming started
Speaker 1: to really grow and exploded, at least from a social
Speaker 1: media perspective, and so I was able to capitalize on that.
Speaker 1: So I remember in two thousand and eight, that's when
Speaker 1: the Partner program started. I mean that's when all the
Speaker 1: people started really taking content creation much more seriously. When
Speaker 1: you said you wanted to go on to show people
Speaker 1: how to become better gamers or what were you doing tutorials?
Speaker 1: Were you because you weren't competing at that point, so
Speaker 1: what were you doing? You were just showing gameplay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so the sports didn't really existed in a very
Speaker 1: small form, and so at that time I had a
Speaker 1: small form of a community, and what I did was
Speaker 1: I created guides. I wrote articles about the game and
Speaker 1: this route guides in terms of how to play the
Speaker 1: game better. At the same time, too, though, I created
Speaker 1: video tutorials online on my own YouTube channel and while
Speaker 1: playing a game play. Okay, So I had a blog
Speaker 1: on blogger dot com. I had a YouTube channel on
Speaker 1: YouTube and just with a few thousand subscribers really and
Speaker 1: started to grow that over time and just started to
Speaker 1: upload daily. I didn't know what I was doing, and
Speaker 1: learned how to edit, learned how to write while while
Speaker 1: I was going to college, and you know, like through time, right,
Speaker 1: YouTube cpims were just really low at that time, and
Speaker 1: so it was a massive time investment spendings creating videos
Speaker 1: but would make you were spending twenty to thirty hours. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just just did you have time to go to school?
Speaker 1: I I skipped class a lot. I would imagine it
Speaker 1: was very very part time. I started to do uh
Speaker 1: you know, I think that in college I was particularly
Speaker 1: a strong student, but my grade started to really drop.
Speaker 1: At the same time too, I started to see hope, right,
Speaker 1: So from making like fifty cents a day and went
Speaker 1: to like twenty said to thirty to forty. It made
Speaker 1: me more motivated and I started to figure try to
Speaker 1: figure out other forms of revenue in terms of how
Speaker 1: to really grow this. So what were some of the
Speaker 1: ways that you made money? I think the a couple
Speaker 1: of ways that we made money was through YouTube and
Speaker 1: through blogger dot com got it, you know. I learned
Speaker 1: how to operate a Google ad Sense, learned how to
Speaker 1: set that up with tags, and um find people to
Speaker 1: help me on things that I really didn't know how
Speaker 1: to do. So meanwhile, you're in school, what are you studying?
Speaker 1: I was at this stage of just doing G education
Speaker 1: because it was your first year, right exactly. Okay, I
Speaker 1: took some college courses whiles in high school, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to try to finish G when I was like
Speaker 1: by the time I was seventeen or eighteen, uh and
Speaker 1: so I was trying to speed through school. But also
Speaker 1: why speed through? Did you have a plan to be
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur from the beginning? Were you just trying to
Speaker 1: get out and do your thing? No, No, no plans
Speaker 1: at all. I stumbled on it. You just wanted to
Speaker 1: be out, exactly. So I was already going to taking
Speaker 1: college courses in in the summer and winter and night
Speaker 1: classes walls in high school. So I was already a
Speaker 1: year ahead in college. So I wanted to finish G
Speaker 1: because we just couldn't. We couldn't afford to go to
Speaker 1: a four year university, so it made more sense to
Speaker 1: go to community college early and take all the g courses.
Speaker 1: It's a much more cost effective path. All right, glad
Speaker 1: you did that path instead of taking out a hundred
Speaker 1: grand loan. Okay, so you're making money. Finally, you're taking
Speaker 1: this thing seriously. What are parents thinking back at home?
Speaker 1: My parents were really worried, right because I made some money,
Speaker 1: but it was honestly less than minimum wage. They immigrated
Speaker 1: to the US, and they really focused on education. My stepdad,
Speaker 1: it was a professor at Santasy State. And my mom,
Speaker 1: she she's an a student. She really cares about education.
Speaker 1: She didn't graduate college until she was forty five, primarily
Speaker 1: because when she she moved here, right, she needed to
Speaker 1: provide for the family, and so they take education really seriously.
Speaker 1: All my siblings had straight a's besides me, and so
Speaker 1: they were really worried about me. Well, shout out to mom.
Speaker 1: By the way, can we give a round of a
Speaker 1: flause for mom who still goes to school graduates. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Good for her. But yeah, that was probably a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure for you because sibling started doing what they
Speaker 1: quote un should be doing. But every time I talked
Speaker 1: to an entrepreneur, they always went against the grain, it seems.
Speaker 1: And I'm not telling your kids to kick don't don't
Speaker 1: get out of school, like don't leave it. So I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that. But what I am saying is every
Speaker 1: time I've I've spoken to somebody like you, they kind
Speaker 1: of had something inside of them that did you have
Speaker 1: something inside of you that said you wanted something bigger
Speaker 1: I did. I wanted to fund success. I wanted to
Speaker 1: provide more from my family. But at the same time
Speaker 1: too though it was more of a plan B. Right
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I knew that there's
Speaker 1: a high chance of failure. What was the plan A
Speaker 1: plane at the end of the day was to finish
Speaker 1: school really and either focus on finance or medicine, but
Speaker 1: like different just like doing the research, understanding the path
Speaker 1: of like what it took to become a doctor. It
Speaker 1: was a really hard path forward, right, you need to
Speaker 1: go to school and then medical school and then also
Speaker 1: you need to do residency. And that that was like
Speaker 1: I wanted to find success fast and I wanted to
Speaker 1: you know, really just go and so had I failed,
Speaker 1: I probably would have gone into finance. Well, thank god
Speaker 1: for Lee of Ugen's huh, So, so talk to me
Speaker 1: about entering into that world, because that kind of shifted
Speaker 1: everything for you. What year were you and cut were
Speaker 1: you still in the first year? Second year when you
Speaker 1: started TSM? I dropped out my second year. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you drop out second year? What prompted the dropout? It
Speaker 1: was it was actually a huge shift where are our
Speaker 1: blogs started to really growing, our YouTube started to really grow,
Speaker 1: and even though the revenue wasn't there, we had a
Speaker 1: massive user base. So I actually convinced my mom to
Speaker 1: let me take six six months a year off and
Speaker 1: if I couldn't show success, and I would just drop
Speaker 1: the entire project period and focus on school. Right, So
Speaker 1: I had really twelve months to find success because even
Speaker 1: though we had a huge user base, we couldn't make
Speaker 1: any money, and you know, I was spending a ton
Speaker 1: of time on it, right, that guy almost give up
Speaker 1: so many times. It was an inflection point where blogger
Speaker 1: dot com which was taking around of our revenue and
Speaker 1: also not really monetizing it well because they're plucking through
Speaker 1: ad sense. So I basically borrowed five thousandllars from my mom,
Speaker 1: which she was saving from my from my college situation. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, you either you know, letting borrow
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars or I going to go to Wells
Speaker 1: Fargo and borrow it for a student loan and just
Speaker 1: use that to hire an engineer to really create a
Speaker 1: website for me. Right, So, what the website did was
Speaker 1: instead of it being blogger dot com, uh, it was
Speaker 1: a CMS that allowed creators to write guides on our website.
Speaker 1: So instead of being a guide writer myself, I made
Speaker 1: it really easy to write legal legends guides, and then
Speaker 1: I went out to hire people to write guys for me,
Speaker 1: and then I hired engineers to make it really easy
Speaker 1: to write guys on our website. How did you know
Speaker 1: this was the move? I mean, I think that like
Speaker 1: being an entrepreneur like now, like looking at it from
Speaker 1: like a present perspective, I didn't really understand the risk involved.
Speaker 1: I was only able to see the upside. But honestly,
Speaker 1: much chances of success was really really low, and I
Speaker 1: kind of just put a ton of time effort to
Speaker 1: make it happen. Right. Well, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: your risk was five thousand dollars and disappointing your mom
Speaker 1: and then having to go and do something you probably
Speaker 1: your heart wasn't into. But at that age, it's a
Speaker 1: huge risk, right because you're you're basically tell in your parents, look,
Speaker 1: this is my one shot and if I don't, and
Speaker 1: that's not it's not necessarily fair to you to just
Speaker 1: give yourself one shot. But you gave yourself one shot
Speaker 1: and it worked out. But anyway, back to back to
Speaker 1: what happened, Yeah, I mean I felt like it was
Speaker 1: huge risk because I was working a minimum wid job
Speaker 1: before all of this at Traitor Joe's and it took
Speaker 1: me six months to save a five thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 1: and in total I needed to I needed fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: to build up the entire product, So I I used
Speaker 1: all my savings and then alone from my mom, and
Speaker 1: then five thousand dollars that I was earning by giving
Speaker 1: lessons to other people as a as a top player
Speaker 1: at that time to pay for the project. Right. But
Speaker 1: but once we launched it and it's created, it started
Speaker 1: it really started to blow up from maybe just coupled
Speaker 1: thousand patriots a day to hundreds of thousands of pagerets
Speaker 1: to millions. I think at the point where we started
Speaker 1: to earn eight ten thousand dollars a month was when
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, this is a good time. How
Speaker 1: many months in was that? It was months eleven. That's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. I mean before the end of year one,
Speaker 1: you were monetizing in a big way. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: monthly eleven. But when I completely dropped out, but it
Speaker 1: um was already two and a half years in and
Speaker 1: I was really feeling burnt out. There was several stages,
Speaker 1: like I spent all this money, it just wasn't kind
Speaker 1: of work because our product was broken all the time, right,
Speaker 1: We didn't have the best engineers. It was as an
Speaker 1: engineer that I meant through gaming. He was also my friend,
Speaker 1: and he was not only doing it like for a
Speaker 1: lower rate, but at the same time he wasn't the best, right,
Speaker 1: so there was a ton of friction there. The product
Speaker 1: was really never fully optimal, but it was enough for
Speaker 1: us to basically pieces together. So as an entrepreneur, you
Speaker 1: get to a point where you know you get burnt out,
Speaker 1: or the money is running low, or you're kind of
Speaker 1: over working with the guy that is a friend, so
Speaker 1: he's kind of doing a favor, so he's cheaper, but
Speaker 1: you need to like take it to the next level,
Speaker 1: and this would be maybe the time that you would
Speaker 1: try to raise some money, right, did that ever cross
Speaker 1: your mind? I mean, you were so young and it
Speaker 1: was still so scrappy. When did you feel like it
Speaker 1: was time to go and really blow it up on
Speaker 1: a bigger level. So, interestingly enough, we we didn't. We
Speaker 1: didn't ever raised any money until I would say, our
Speaker 1: Series A, which happened eighteen months ago, so eight years
Speaker 1: into the business. So we bootstrapped entire business from you know,
Speaker 1: for the first eight years. Um, how did you get
Speaker 1: How did you get by doing that? Um? Was it
Speaker 1: the scrappy is? Yeah, we were really scrappy. We spent
Speaker 1: we spent money in the right areas and we didn't
Speaker 1: invest the things that we just didn't need. I keep
Speaker 1: saying you were so young, but because I'm so impressed
Speaker 1: to run a business successfully for that long without it
Speaker 1: all just crumbling to the ground. There's gotta be a
Speaker 1: strong person behind that business. What made you qualified to
Speaker 1: do that? I mean, obviously you were qualified to game,
Speaker 1: and you knew the Geese sports world, but did you
Speaker 1: know the world of business? I didn't write. But because
Speaker 1: at the same time too, I was also the leader
Speaker 1: of my team. I learned how to work with a
Speaker 1: entire team, and I learned how to recruit. I learned
Speaker 1: how to give people feedback. I learned went to be
Speaker 1: hard and went to be soft at the same time too.
Speaker 1: That I was really fortunate, because really it's like you
Speaker 1: have to be a part of a nish early on
Speaker 1: to to really fund the type of success when you're
Speaker 1: not experienced, right, And I think that, you know, most
Speaker 1: of my competitors at that time, they were also participating
Speaker 1: in the sports as a hobby, and I was one
Speaker 1: of the very few people to go full time on it,
Speaker 1: to get very seriously try to really make something out
Speaker 1: of it, whereas most of my competitors were just people
Speaker 1: that did it for fun, did it part time. And
Speaker 1: so I was really lucky that there were there weren't
Speaker 1: strung competitors in the space. If I was competing against
Speaker 1: like a forty year old executive that worked at a
Speaker 1: fortunate company, I think that there was the word of
Speaker 1: no chance for me to succeed because I was in early.
Speaker 1: I put in the time, and I was able to
Speaker 1: just make a lot of mistakes and not not be
Speaker 1: punished for it. I was able to get to where
Speaker 1: I am now. Uh, and we skipped forward a lot
Speaker 1: just because we were talking. I wanted to get into
Speaker 1: the finance part of it, just so people can understand
Speaker 1: it's not easy. And you did make a really big
Speaker 1: risk at you know, a young age, making a big
Speaker 1: ask of your mom and also pulling all your trader
Speaker 1: Joe's money, which will that's a lot, but even as
Speaker 1: a twenty year old ye old, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: money to just put into a dream. You formed a team,
Speaker 1: you were playing on the team. Can you talk me
Speaker 1: through when all that happened. Yeah, So, so the sites
Speaker 1: up at the who whole entire time we had a team.
Speaker 1: There was no competitive scene at the time, so at
Speaker 1: the didn't think of this. Like I was a person
Speaker 1: that was also during the very first tournaments for Legal
Speaker 1: Legends right, so we had a hardcore community. There wasn't
Speaker 1: there was no higher level of play. So I started
Speaker 1: to host events for people to play at right and
Speaker 1: then I would go out and I would look for
Speaker 1: sponsors to sponsor the prize pool for those tournaments and
Speaker 1: then competing at the same time. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: major conflict of interest, but at the same time too.
Speaker 1: There there were no events, right, not really, It's like
Speaker 1: reserving a basketball court and being like, let's go play
Speaker 1: exactly and then give us some money if we win,
Speaker 1: and we're the best, so we're gonna win. Yeah. So nowadays,
Speaker 1: right with with all these professional teams, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to be the tournament operator and also rent. But
Speaker 1: it didn't exist exactly where so early I I was
Speaker 1: really competitive. I wanted to play. I wanted to play
Speaker 1: against people with good and you know, people didn't really
Speaker 1: take it seriously, and so I wanted to really hang
Speaker 1: that carret there for people to play. So I take
Speaker 1: my money, put it as a prize pool, and then
Speaker 1: have people play in the computer. You would use your
Speaker 1: own money for the prize. Yeah. So, because once our
Speaker 1: website got to that certain stage, right, I just saw
Speaker 1: it as a market marketing vehicle for our website and
Speaker 1: our products. So I did that because it was also
Speaker 1: a hobby of mine. Right really quickly, once we made
Speaker 1: enough money, what I did was I dropped out of
Speaker 1: college and I just played full time for fun, and
Speaker 1: then I ran ran my business. Oftentimes I would be playing,
Speaker 1: even though it didn't really bring more back business because
Speaker 1: it was a huge dimension returns. But but at the
Speaker 1: same time, it was it was my hobby. Do you
Speaker 1: remember the first tournament that you put together. I do,
Speaker 1: so it was really early on and it was just
Speaker 1: for this currency called riot points where you can use
Speaker 1: to just buy items, right, and um, you know, it
Speaker 1: was really scrappy. We basically posted a form post and
Speaker 1: then people would sign up by typing, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to play, and I would post that a schedule and
Speaker 1: then there was no organization, There were no there weren't
Speaker 1: tools at all. Right, it was just it's like a
Speaker 1: group of you know, the guys that the showpen online
Speaker 1: in Ventrilla at that time, it's technology that's kind of
Speaker 1: dead now, uh. And there would be maybe a hundred
Speaker 1: people in this voice chat and I would organize the
Speaker 1: event at the same time while competing in it. So
Speaker 1: from there to the Staples Center playing at Worlds. Can
Speaker 1: you can you for people who don't really understand how
Speaker 1: competitive e sports works? How do people get into the tournaments?
Speaker 1: How is it all types of games? Are they separated
Speaker 1: by legal legends versus Minecraft? Like how does that work?
Speaker 1: So it's really different? Right, Like think of each game
Speaker 1: as a different sport, whether it's tennis, whether it's an
Speaker 1: open or football or basketball. Right, it's it's all different
Speaker 1: in particularly legal legends. Also within the phases of time,
Speaker 1: it also changed. Right early on when I started to play,
Speaker 1: it would there would just be open tournaments where any
Speaker 1: five people they can sign up and there would be
Speaker 1: uprising and you would go to you would go to
Speaker 1: like an arena or theater and you would sign up
Speaker 1: as five and you'd play and be the last man
Speaker 1: staying to win. Now it's a lot different with with
Speaker 1: right Games League Legends franchising, where there are teams owned
Speaker 1: by the Golden State Warriors. Right, so several several sports
Speaker 1: owners bought into franchises for League Legends. Now there's ten
Speaker 1: teams and those are the staple teams in America where
Speaker 1: you can't join unless you're recruited to. It's it's a
Speaker 1: lot different than does TSM fall into that category. Yes,
Speaker 1: so TSM falls into that category, And what we do
Speaker 1: now is is a huge process that goes into it.
Speaker 1: You have to basically be recruited. We are always looking
Speaker 1: for better players on our on our platform, and you
Speaker 1: have to play through TSM JR. And then you have
Speaker 1: to get qualified through them academy and then make it
Speaker 1: through academy, then you go to the pro team. Is
Speaker 1: this your own? Yeah? So so it's our it's our own.
Speaker 1: It's okay, got it? So not every team operates that way.
Speaker 1: Every single team has an academy team, but not path
Speaker 1: below that, Right, they don't have a junior program, got it.
Speaker 1: So we're we're looking down the funnel to find like
Speaker 1: the next Lebron James from the next steph Curry? Got it?
Speaker 1: And and does it work like the NBA where you
Speaker 1: can get somebody from another team? Yeah? So there are
Speaker 1: major buyouts, right, depending on what level. But you know,
Speaker 1: player buyouts ranged anywhere between like two dollars to millions
Speaker 1: of dollars depending on how good the player is the
Speaker 1: prospect is it. Has TSM done that personally? Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: spent close to million dollars buying out players before. Has
Speaker 1: it been worth it? You know, it depends on it
Speaker 1: depends on the player. Right, So we won't we won't
Speaker 1: name names, but uh, yeah, no, I think that's a
Speaker 1: tricky that's a tricky thing anyway because you can never guarantee.
Speaker 1: But if you are, is it a recruitment process or
Speaker 1: is our people applying and they're like, look, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't you know, for people who don't understand that
Speaker 1: the process works, there's so many gamers out there, I mean,
Speaker 1: Twitch has millions and millions of gamers. How do you
Speaker 1: even find the good ones? So we're standardizing that process
Speaker 1: now as we speak, right, But the way the way
Speaker 1: to do it is there's there's an online challenger leaderboard
Speaker 1: where you can apply to really prove that you're the best.
Speaker 1: And most often teams look at that that ladder. Right,
Speaker 1: So out of a million people, the players that rise
Speaker 1: to the top two d are the ones that are
Speaker 1: being looked at, you know, on a day in the
Speaker 1: week by week basis, right. And so if you have
Speaker 1: strong stats, if you perform well, if you're a good teammate,
Speaker 1: then more than likely you have an opportunity to play
Speaker 1: at the per level. And then how many team mates
Speaker 1: are on each team, because I know there's it's not
Speaker 1: just like five people. It could be up to thirty
Speaker 1: for you, right, yeah, So in the game it's the
Speaker 1: five verses five uh, And so oftentimes roster arranges between
Speaker 1: I would say seven to ten people. You have different
Speaker 1: parts of your company that do more than just competitive stuff, right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so that there's influencers there, but so that does not
Speaker 1: count the eight people. There's like a larger group. Well
Speaker 1: I'm talking about just players that compete. Those are just fun, right.
Speaker 1: But at the same time too, though, you have to
Speaker 1: have a diversified approach in terms of building a fan base,
Speaker 1: creating content, and also performance. Right. So most established teams
Speaker 1: have they have a diversified approach more so than just
Speaker 1: focused on competing, and you guys do that as well.
Speaker 1: For us, we focus on competing because performance really matters us,
Speaker 1: not only from a passion perspective. Yeah, it's mainly from
Speaker 1: a passion perspective, but also like from how we are
Speaker 1: representative brand or performance really matters us. Winning really matters us. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not about the like social media drama. It's about
Speaker 1: let's let's win some tournaments. Absolutely, And the second part
Speaker 1: is really creating content that our fans really find value.
Speaker 1: And so at the end of the day, we're realizes,
Speaker 1: how do we make our fans better? How do we
Speaker 1: give them value? So when they play, they think of us, right,
Speaker 1: And so it goes back to when I first started
Speaker 1: t SM is that I made guides. I made content
Speaker 1: so our players so players can learn from us to
Speaker 1: play better. And so what does that entail? Do your
Speaker 1: players have to you know, stream a certain amount of hours?
Speaker 1: Are you helping create content or help guide the content
Speaker 1: that they're putting out there? So particular to our our
Speaker 1: the allergency, there are no requirements around our streaming ours
Speaker 1: well in terms of just content. In terms of what
Speaker 1: we try to do, we will we We aimed to
Speaker 1: create guides on how to play the game better on
Speaker 1: a month by month basis, so that our players can
Speaker 1: always follow the game as they're playing. They could learn
Speaker 1: from us in terms of how to play better. And
Speaker 1: where can they find that content? Um, they can find
Speaker 1: that content on our YouTube channel, on the YouTube channel
Speaker 1: which has over two million subscribers. When did you see
Speaker 1: a big growth in the TSM fan base because these
Speaker 1: are massive now. It honestly it was. It was a
Speaker 1: casual growth. There was huge growth when we really focused
Speaker 1: on legal legends and the second phase of growth was
Speaker 1: one Fortnite launched. Fortnite was a huge, huge, and every
Speaker 1: single aspect it really broke uh. I would say it
Speaker 1: broke through like mainstream pop culture right in the sense
Speaker 1: that every everyone is with the game. Celebrities in all
Speaker 1: genres play that game or engage within which way, from
Speaker 1: football players, basketball players, and musicians. So I thought that
Speaker 1: was really cool, and then TSM saw a huge growth
Speaker 1: through that, primarily because we invested into building a team
Speaker 1: there early. Do you think that Fortnite and like breaking
Speaker 1: into mainstream helped legit mis the sports world as an
Speaker 1: actual career, real world thing. I definitely think it helped.
Speaker 1: It helped a lot with that specifically in the US.
Speaker 1: But before Fortnite, rite e sports, which like Fortnite, is
Speaker 1: not as large in Asia. In China, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: already gone there, right, So I think that specifically to
Speaker 1: the U S, Fortnite really helped with that and played
Speaker 1: a major role at the same time too that I
Speaker 1: still don't think it's it's there yet can currently right now,
Speaker 1: to give your perspective, over the last four or five years. Right,
Speaker 1: looking five years back, there are only less than there's
Speaker 1: less than five, maybe five colleges that offered scholarships for
Speaker 1: e sports. Now there's over a hundred, right, and there's
Speaker 1: over two hundred varsity programs for for collegiate sports, which
Speaker 1: is amazing to put into context about like five to
Speaker 1: two hundred said through time, Once you know there are
Speaker 1: thousands of colleges that offer path to scholarships and becoming
Speaker 1: varsity and it's seen as a college sport, then I
Speaker 1: think that that would create a funnel at high school
Speaker 1: level which is also being worked on and then downwards
Speaker 1: as well. So so I think that that's at that
Speaker 1: point the sports would be seen as a very legitimate career.
Speaker 1: So so if you were a career day and somebody
Speaker 1: was to say, why is your job so cool? Like
Speaker 1: what's so great about working in the world of E sports,
Speaker 1: what would you say to them? Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: think that just just looking above the sports, right, I
Speaker 1: think that like above that, it's like creative content, being
Speaker 1: a creator. I think that kids understand what it means
Speaker 1: to be a creator looking at YouTube, looking at Instagram.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really exciting career because you are
Speaker 1: creating content and your aending value to other people's life
Speaker 1: at scale. Uh and the world is just more connected nowadays, right,
Speaker 1: And then taking it back from an E sports perspective,
Speaker 1: I think that I don't I don't think necessarily everyone
Speaker 1: should grow up wanting to be any sports player, but
Speaker 1: particularly people that have interested that like competing, and one
Speaker 1: want to uh to focus on another sport that's an
Speaker 1: alternative to what exists today. I think that that's a
Speaker 1: good career path, not necessarily a good career path for them,
Speaker 1: a good hobby for them to explore, to see if
Speaker 1: they could make a creative it. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. No, No, it makes total sense. It's
Speaker 1: basically like foster your passions and see where where you
Speaker 1: can take them. And that's something that you clearly did.
Speaker 1: I don't think you ever imagined you would build this
Speaker 1: empire or shape the industry, or maybe you did, it
Speaker 1: doesn't sound it sounds like you kind of were just
Speaker 1: like you know, I just wanted to get out of school.
Speaker 1: But it worked out awesome for you, and I think
Speaker 1: it's well deserved because you worked your ass off for
Speaker 1: eight years right before you really felt like you were
Speaker 1: doing it. Yeah. I mean even to this day, I
Speaker 1: still feel like there it needs a lot. That's every
Speaker 1: entrepreneur literally like you will you you'll sell your team
Speaker 1: for two billion dollars and still think that you have
Speaker 1: more to do I just put that in the universe.
Speaker 1: Did you like that? Absolutely? But yeah, I mean going
Speaker 1: back to that topic though, I do think it's really important, uh,
Speaker 1: and I would like I am concerned for kids that
Speaker 1: like focus on making sports are career too much. I
Speaker 1: think that there needs to be a balance. They need
Speaker 1: to have a plan A, they need to have a
Speaker 1: plan B. You had a couple of plans. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think that was really smart of you. And I
Speaker 1: really respect the fact that you scrappy like you worked hard.
Speaker 1: You didn't just borrow money from mom. You went to
Speaker 1: Trader Joe's. You did what you had to do to
Speaker 1: get to where you are today. So, speaking of today,
Speaker 1: the present day TSM is massive. Why do you think
Speaker 1: the team is doing so well? Largely there's there's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. Right first and foremost, we were first
Speaker 1: to market, and so we built a huge competitive advantage
Speaker 1: in terms of understanding the space where to spend our dollars,
Speaker 1: Whereas within the last two to three years there's a
Speaker 1: massive VC dollars injected into the sports space and most
Speaker 1: of these operators really don't know what they're doing. They
Speaker 1: don't understand where to basically invest into to turn that
Speaker 1: into revenue, right, and so because we understand the space
Speaker 1: really well, we're able to understand where where things will
Speaker 1: play out, how I'll play out, and so we're investing
Speaker 1: our dollars much better. The second perspective is that we
Speaker 1: we've been early so far into Fortnite Leagal Legends, and
Speaker 1: I think that we were also going to be early.
Speaker 1: From a mobile perspective. I think that mobile e sports
Speaker 1: is going to be the future of um where where
Speaker 1: gaming is, and so I'm super excited about that. But
Speaker 1: I think it has to be being early. That's why
Speaker 1: we're we have a huge advantage. I think being early
Speaker 1: is definitely an advantage for you one on any platform.
Speaker 1: But also I think what really sticks out is your strategy.
Speaker 1: Like you said, you guys have been strategic, you know,
Speaker 1: you know the back end of things. You're not just
Speaker 1: you know. I think a lot of these newer teams
Speaker 1: are probably just figuring it out as they go. Have
Speaker 1: you ever collaborated with any of the other teams in
Speaker 1: any way? I often wonder that. Absolutely from a business perspective,
Speaker 1: whether it's sales or just overall structure of the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: we worked together closely, because because that's really important to
Speaker 1: build it out right. But at the same time, to you,
Speaker 1: like there there are our competitors, and it's not structured
Speaker 1: in a way where at least yet where all these
Speaker 1: owners do work together to build the ecosystem from a
Speaker 1: success perspective, So that means like implementation of the league,
Speaker 1: how do we standardize contracts, how do we work with
Speaker 1: like players? I think that, like how do we increase
Speaker 1: the player welfare? Like those are all important topics, but
Speaker 1: but it's not at that stage right now. Okay, and
Speaker 1: you've been on kind of all sides of the coin,
Speaker 1: from playing on the team to you coach, and now
Speaker 1: you're you've taken a step back from actively being a
Speaker 1: part of it. How's that for you? It's it's it's
Speaker 1: honest that we've been challenging, right, Like when I when
Speaker 1: I first retired, waking up at eight am attending meetings
Speaker 1: was hard, and being responsive to emails for me as
Speaker 1: a gamer, I would do more like text messages or
Speaker 1: like just a channel channel chats, right, and so acclimating
Speaker 1: to the business world was really challenging, making meetings, setting
Speaker 1: accepting yes on calendar inside exactly instead of just a
Speaker 1: text like, yeah, let's meet and talk about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So how do you think you're gonna stay on that
Speaker 1: side of things? Yeah? I think I'm naturally really competitive
Speaker 1: person overall, um, and the way like you know when
Speaker 1: when I played games, I was really competitive. That's that's
Speaker 1: why that's really excited to me. Now it's my next
Speaker 1: journey to be a better entrepreneur, be a better CEO,
Speaker 1: be a better leader. And you know I haven't. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've been the best leader. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's something I'm really focusing on right now in
Speaker 1: terms of even how to manage people. Right, Like to
Speaker 1: give you perspective, three years ago, we had had a
Speaker 1: team of maybe twelve full time employees. Now have seventy
Speaker 1: full time players and seventy full time staff, right, and
Speaker 1: so it's like a hundred forty people, and then we
Speaker 1: have another sixty seventy contractors on top of that, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that we've been able to really piece
Speaker 1: things together. But like from a company management perspective, it's
Speaker 1: it's not done particularly well. So how do I how
Speaker 1: do I get better all these things from giving clear
Speaker 1: direction to managing people, to making everyone's time, more efficient
Speaker 1: with clear instruction. I'm aboud at a lot of these things.
Speaker 1: So it's work in progress. I mean, you can't be
Speaker 1: too bad at it. The thing, you know, it's things
Speaker 1: aren't falling apart, You're doing well. What would you say,
Speaker 1: what's your weak point? My weak point is, I would
Speaker 1: say being consistent. I think that, like my strong set
Speaker 1: is being strategic at, but being consistent and holding people
Speaker 1: accountable and meeting with like my direct reports to mixture
Speaker 1: that they're getting things done the way I want it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of my weaker set, right, Why do you
Speaker 1: think that is? Why do I think that is? It's
Speaker 1: it's just because I have a scatter brain. I'm focused
Speaker 1: on all these things. I love. Adding more and more
Speaker 1: projects to managing is a little tough for you, yes,
Speaker 1: but managing people, yeah, Well it's exciting at the same
Speaker 1: time because I love to work on things that I'm
Speaker 1: weak at, and I think that's my skill set is
Speaker 1: I know what I'm weeke at and and I'm able
Speaker 1: to get people to cover those weaknesses because at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, what your company is comprises of
Speaker 1: your employees and your team, right, And so at the
Speaker 1: same time, not only my finding people to cover my weaknesses,
Speaker 1: but I'm also working on them so we can have
Speaker 1: more success. Well, it's like a piece of advice for
Speaker 1: any entrepreneurs out there. And also it's okay to have weaknesses,
Speaker 1: you know. Actually, I think it's the best. That's it's
Speaker 1: probably gonna be the thing that you're best at by
Speaker 1: the end of this journey. You know, it'll be the
Speaker 1: best person manager ever. Is there anything that you think
Speaker 1: that is misunderstood about the world of e sports and
Speaker 1: competitive e sports that you'd like people to know. I
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's it's going to get there
Speaker 1: through time. I think that people don't see it as
Speaker 1: as a sport. I think that's probably the biggest debate
Speaker 1: of all times, Like, hey, e sports is not really
Speaker 1: a sport. There's nothing physical about that, and you know,
Speaker 1: I particularly don't. I don't don't really care, but it's
Speaker 1: just talking about that topic. I think of the sports,
Speaker 1: I think of content creation. I think of like what
Speaker 1: we're doing right now is influence. Its entertainment at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you know, like when when you're
Speaker 1: watching basketball, right you're not you're watching basketball because it's
Speaker 1: entertaining you're watching football because it's entertaining. At the end
Speaker 1: of the day, like how significant something is is based
Speaker 1: off of the amount of eyeballs that that watch it, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that's probably the biggest misconception is that
Speaker 1: any sport or whatever we do, it's mainly just entertainment content,
Speaker 1: And then people don't think it's just work it's not physical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that bait that debate is really meaningless.
Speaker 1: But at the same time too though, I do think
Speaker 1: that from an e sports perspective, it's really really I mean,
Speaker 1: it is physical. I've I watched those competitions. I mean
Speaker 1: people are sweating bullets, You're going crazy. That's stressful. It's very,
Speaker 1: very stressful. A mental perspective is the brandom muscle you're
Speaker 1: you're the doctor or the pre med you we answer
Speaker 1: that question, no, But I mean the sports sponsorships, people
Speaker 1: make way more money doing that than any quote unquote sport.
Speaker 1: I mean you could argue that too, like all the
Speaker 1: sponsors and my production company also works with a lot
Speaker 1: of branded deals. Everyone wants to work with the sports
Speaker 1: right now. Everyone it's like the hot thing that people
Speaker 1: are now being like, oh, it's cool it's legit. What
Speaker 1: do you have to say to that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: super exciting, right because eighteen thirty four year old male
Speaker 1: cord cutting, etcetera. It's like exciting for sure, just because
Speaker 1: it's hard to reach your audience. And so at the
Speaker 1: same time, to you know, more people are becoming involved
Speaker 1: with the sports than traditional sports Sundays right there. There's
Speaker 1: so many kids that love this particular industry, and so
Speaker 1: it's really exciting for us, and I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: be a part of it. It's got to be like
Speaker 1: and I told you so a moment. I mean not
Speaker 1: in a mean way, but you know, like I knew
Speaker 1: this would be something. I never really thought about it
Speaker 1: that way, primarily because I can't honestly say that I
Speaker 1: thought that this was going to be big. I mean
Speaker 1: you made it. Look at this world that you've created.
Speaker 1: I really, I really give you the credit for this,
Speaker 1: and you have to give it to yourself too. I'm
Speaker 1: making you well. I would say that I did it liked,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter if you did it ignorantly. Let's
Speaker 1: I mean, think of all the things that were ignorantly
Speaker 1: found or whatever, Like, it doesn't matter you you created
Speaker 1: basically jobs for lots of people, aspirational careers for many gamers.
Speaker 1: You've shaped in an entire industry. Yeah, And I would
Speaker 1: go to say that like a lot of other people
Speaker 1: do that too. Twitch made a huge role in like calling,
Speaker 1: made a huge rolling rolling Twitch making it so that
Speaker 1: millions of people can you create a career out of
Speaker 1: streaming and content creation, right, And I think that that
Speaker 1: was a big part in terms of making sports a
Speaker 1: more viable career. So a lot of people played a
Speaker 1: big role in it, and I'm really happy to be
Speaker 1: a part of it earlier. But you're definitely like if
Speaker 1: there was an All Star basketball team, You've got a
Speaker 1: jersey on that team for sure. For sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: And yeah, twitches massive, and I want to kind of
Speaker 1: touch on that too. How involved is your team on Twitch? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we are one of the largest networks on Twitch,
Speaker 1: very early on, and I think that Twitch is amazing.
Speaker 1: We're really focused on creating content there were exclusive on
Speaker 1: that platform. I am concerned though, like if you look
Speaker 1: at like Twitch from like a mobile perspective, or if
Speaker 1: you look at Twitch like what the Twitch versus YouTube
Speaker 1: battle like over the last like a year or so, um,
Speaker 1: they're just major players in the space, but from over
Speaker 1: like overall, though, it's always good to have multiple options
Speaker 1: that exists in the market. It's it's really really cool
Speaker 1: too to see just how many people see it as
Speaker 1: a full time career versus when I first started, there
Speaker 1: was only maybe a dozen people. It's so awesome. It's
Speaker 1: like you created your own lane. Accept it was a
Speaker 1: highway that was like a thousand miles wide. So is
Speaker 1: there anything about the e sports world that in the
Speaker 1: last year or two since it's become very popular that
Speaker 1: you kind of makes you cringe a little? Not particularly
Speaker 1: which ones do you think? I don't want to. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be so obvious when I say this, but
Speaker 1: I feel like some some of the at least I
Speaker 1: saw this from a Twitch perspective, some people, once they
Speaker 1: became like bigger, became very very mainstream and didn't really
Speaker 1: connect with their community as much. I just feel like,
Speaker 1: you need to stick to your community and the people
Speaker 1: that brought you to where you were. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people made a lot of money very
Speaker 1: fast and maybe that got to them. I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that, Uh, it's it's and then
Speaker 1: it's gonna be what what you want to focus on, right,
Speaker 1: whether you want to go mainstream and stream us. Like,
Speaker 1: streaming is really tedious career. The reason why streaming is
Speaker 1: really stressful is because I was a streaming for two
Speaker 1: to three years. Is that you're you're broadcasting eight to
Speaker 1: ten hours a day live where everyone can watch and
Speaker 1: see you. You have to like, eat, launch, and do
Speaker 1: all these things right at the same time too. Though, um,
Speaker 1: like with YouTube, with being a contracutor, Uh, it's really
Speaker 1: stressful because you're you're always focused on the numbers. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't stream for a day or two days, your
Speaker 1: numbers start going down and it makes you feel bad.
Speaker 1: So you're now you find yourself streaming so to sevent
Speaker 1: days a week, and then the burnout, Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: it leads to burnout and then it's it's it's really
Speaker 1: hard balance. And so I think that you know, streamers
Speaker 1: are large, they're trying to really figure out what they
Speaker 1: want to do, and they're they're experimenting, right, and you
Speaker 1: know some of them are making those decisions and they're
Speaker 1: losing a lot of their falling for it. But like,
Speaker 1: I think that because it is early, people are going
Speaker 1: to take very different paths and then they're going to
Speaker 1: find what's optimal for them and whether Like I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of people make mistakes in their career.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, you know they learn
Speaker 1: from it and that they're gonna some of them are
Speaker 1: not going to ever be able to get to back
Speaker 1: to where they wore, but that's that's the truth that
Speaker 1: they made. So what advice would you give somebody who
Speaker 1: is listening to this interview right now and is inspired
Speaker 1: and wants to start a company, maybe not in the
Speaker 1: e sports world, but in any world, what advice would
Speaker 1: you give them? Well, I think it's a like it's
Speaker 1: it's gonna be very general, right, because I think that
Speaker 1: these habits often will lead to people becoming more successful.
Speaker 1: I think being relentless is super important. Like you need
Speaker 1: to really know you want and like truly ask yourself,
Speaker 1: like am I doing this? Like if you're only doing
Speaker 1: it for money? The money, it's really not worth it.
Speaker 1: You have to do because you love it because times
Speaker 1: are gonna get really tough and you can't can't give up, right,
Speaker 1: Most things in life just don't come easy. And if
Speaker 1: you want to be successful, you have to go the
Speaker 1: extra mile where other people are not right. You have
Speaker 1: to network, you have to collaborate. You have to find
Speaker 1: your advantage, figure out what you're good at, what you're
Speaker 1: week at, and really focus on what you're good at,
Speaker 1: and then find other people to help you that. That's
Speaker 1: probably the number one thing. Go to these events, network people,
Speaker 1: find people to collaborate with and put the time in.
Speaker 1: And then when you when it's not working, be smart
Speaker 1: about it, look at what you did and analyze what's
Speaker 1: going well, what's not going well Because a lot of
Speaker 1: these people that are pursuing these careers they do it
Speaker 1: and you know they let too much time passed without
Speaker 1: evaluating what's what's good, what's bad. And you have to
Speaker 1: really take that time out. You have to pause. You
Speaker 1: have to look at everything and say and value whether
Speaker 1: whether you want to continue. So you're at a crossroads.
Speaker 1: Do you have a bad day or a bad couple
Speaker 1: of years or months and you've spent all your savings.
Speaker 1: What at what point do you turn left to quit
Speaker 1: turn right to keep going? Because you kept going. I
Speaker 1: kept going because I I budgeted accordingly right, I lived
Speaker 1: at home, I didn't spend money on for listenings like
Speaker 1: clothes or whatever. Things I just didn't need. Like when
Speaker 1: I started my company and we started to make money,
Speaker 1: I didn't just upgrade my life instantly. I I a
Speaker 1: dollar frozen dinners for I would say two and a
Speaker 1: half years. Really unhealthy. By the way, how's your health?
Speaker 1: Are you good? It's good now? I love better now,
Speaker 1: trust me. But you know it's it's budgeting, right. You
Speaker 1: need to like you need to have your goals and
Speaker 1: then you need to plan around it with every aspect
Speaker 1: of your life. You need to make sure that this
Speaker 1: was running a business, it's do I have the runway
Speaker 1: to keep going right? And so it's it's a financial decision.
Speaker 1: It's a like decision in terms of how you want
Speaker 1: to live. So for you, it's very financial the decision.
Speaker 1: And so you didn't ever have a moment where you
Speaker 1: were like, I can't do this, I'm not good enough.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an internal thing. It was how do I
Speaker 1: set myself up so that because quitting is not an option.
Speaker 1: Quitting wasn't on an option in the sense that I
Speaker 1: just knew that I didn't I didn't want to follow
Speaker 1: the general path and I didn't want to go back
Speaker 1: to school just just because I loved what I was
Speaker 1: doing so much that, like, not making a career was
Speaker 1: something that absolquency. So I was willing to give up
Speaker 1: a lot of different aspects to give me a larger
Speaker 1: runway to make it happen within life, Right, you can't
Speaker 1: just have the best of both worlds. You have to
Speaker 1: take what you want. I think people forget that. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think there's definitely a misconception on how easy things happen,
Speaker 1: and people probably don't know that you were really scrapping
Speaker 1: at your dollar you know, meals for two years because
Speaker 1: of where you are today. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: this show is so important, because we need to pull
Speaker 1: the veil back on these these ideas that everything, oh e.
Speaker 1: Sports just popped up and here comes TSM. That's not
Speaker 1: how it happened. How does your mom feel about her
Speaker 1: five fell in all our investment? Did she get her
Speaker 1: return on investment? Absolutely? Uh, My mom was taking care
Speaker 1: of and you know she she couldn't be more proud, right,
Speaker 1: She watched it Like when I used to play, she
Speaker 1: watched every single event. She's probably the most supportive person
Speaker 1: in my life. And so you know, like I ever
Speaker 1: already think anyone, it would have to be her in
Speaker 1: terms of being so supportive be mom. Oh and that's
Speaker 1: my mom. So I didn't mean you're the best mom
Speaker 1: in general. I just meant you're the best comma mom. Anyway,
Speaker 1: TSAM has some cool stuff going on. You guys are
Speaker 1: gonna open a facility soon. Can you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Yeah, I'm super excited. We're launching
Speaker 1: our facility sometimes this summer, and I think at least
Speaker 1: it's going to be one of one of the first
Speaker 1: facilities that are focused on actually sports performance. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that no one really has it right yet,
Speaker 1: and so what's so exciting is that we're focusing on
Speaker 1: it and we we want to stay true to that.
Speaker 1: So we're thinking of it from like a three sixty angle,
Speaker 1: whether it's like nutrition or physical working out on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: or even mentally, or even from a data perspective. Right,
Speaker 1: we're tackling it from every single angle. So we're tracking
Speaker 1: every single event when the players playing, from all the
Speaker 1: steps they due to, all the moves they make every
Speaker 1: second by second, where that really doesn't exist in traditional sports.
Speaker 1: And then from a nutrition perspective, we're developing a nutrition
Speaker 1: program that that that it's going that we think it's
Speaker 1: going to work for the sports and then, like I said,
Speaker 1: we're going to measure it and fine tune it, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's going to give us our competitive
Speaker 1: advantage by focusing on that early words, like, if you
Speaker 1: look at most gaming facilities now, it's it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a pretty office. Can you explain to people
Speaker 1: who are not familiar, what is the gaming facilities that
Speaker 1: open to the public. Is it just for the team? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So most people that would name like their office of
Speaker 1: gaming facility is basically an office where the gamers go
Speaker 1: and play, and there's a separation between where they live
Speaker 1: and where they play. I love that. By the way,
Speaker 1: that needs to happen. You need that mental break. Yeah yeah, okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: I just had to enter because I never like to
Speaker 1: work from bed because then it's like I associate working
Speaker 1: in bed, you know what I mean? Okay, I need
Speaker 1: to keep going. Over the last decade of the sports,
Speaker 1: gamers typically lived in the gaming house and they would
Speaker 1: play and compete in there. Also in practice exactly now,
Speaker 1: I think over the last next couple year, you're going
Speaker 1: to see that separation from your pro career to like
Speaker 1: their personal life, and most companies are focused on creating
Speaker 1: that separation. I love that. So is the facility going
Speaker 1: to be here in l A. Absolutely, Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: It's gonna be playing Vista. It's ft okay, awesome. And
Speaker 1: so for people who aren't aware with the whole scheduling
Speaker 1: of all the competitions the tournaments, when is your next
Speaker 1: big tourney? It depends on the specific game, right, But
Speaker 1: for the league legend specifically, we play on a week
Speaker 1: by week basis on Olympic in Los Angeles, and that
Speaker 1: often leads up playoffs and then a stadium final somewhere
Speaker 1: in the US. And so we're actually playing this weekend
Speaker 1: on Twitch and YouTube and so it's it's it's a constant.
Speaker 1: It's basically a league. And so basically, just to compare,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the NBA where you play a
Speaker 1: regular league and then you get to the playoffs and
Speaker 1: then you go to the championship, which in your case
Speaker 1: it is called Worlds. Okay, and the Worlds are in
Speaker 1: a different city every year. Yeah, it's in a city.
Speaker 1: It's a different city every year. And then who are
Speaker 1: you guys, who's your biggest competition this year? Who's our
Speaker 1: biggest competition? It honestly changes every single year just because
Speaker 1: the teams, like there's so many new teams. There's not
Speaker 1: not that there's new teams. Um, the game is still competitively,
Speaker 1: is still competitive. You don't really see that one winner
Speaker 1: winning every year. Okay, so there's not like a I
Speaker 1: don't know who I was going to say the Lakers,
Speaker 1: but they've been awful. Yeah, so there's there's not a
Speaker 1: golden state. There was traditionally they're called t one skat um,
Speaker 1: but now it changes every single year. But you've always
Speaker 1: been in the top three. We we've always been in
Speaker 1: the top team in our region, but internationally we still
Speaker 1: haven't found success and we haven't won Worlds yet. So
Speaker 1: why do you think that is? I think there's a
Speaker 1: combination of reasons, being that players and other regions they
Speaker 1: have they have a stronger cultural foundation of how it
Speaker 1: plays better as a team. If you look at where
Speaker 1: the sports originated, right like, if you look at Korea,
Speaker 1: they've had coaches, they've had sports really has been a
Speaker 1: career much longer in Korea than the US. And then
Speaker 1: if you look at China, right, for like the Legends,
Speaker 1: Like I would say, they have a much larger player base.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a hundred million people that played
Speaker 1: the Legends on a monthly basis, right, eighty millions of
Speaker 1: those players are in China, So they have much much
Speaker 1: larger talent pole to select from, and they have players
Speaker 1: like they have our program down to like the Dot
Speaker 1: and so we need a lot of improvement to do.
Speaker 1: But at the same time we need we need to
Speaker 1: learn how to train our talent better. Are you excited
Speaker 1: about your talent roster this year? I am excited about them,
Speaker 1: but I think that some of the challenges that we're
Speaker 1: gonna have is making them play as a team. We
Speaker 1: have really strong individual players, but the end of the day,
Speaker 1: League a Legends is a team game. How often did
Speaker 1: the players switch out? Like, because once they have synergy
Speaker 1: and harmony, are you going to switch out a player
Speaker 1: or does that hurt the team? Ultimately? It really depends
Speaker 1: right on. There could be multiple reasons why you you
Speaker 1: change up a roster. Typically for us, we've made very
Speaker 1: big changes in the last I would say that for
Speaker 1: the last seven years. So to give your perspective out
Speaker 1: of the last fourteen championships ever in league we want
Speaker 1: um six of them, right, we want almost half the championships. Well,
Speaker 1: every single year we always make large roster changes because
Speaker 1: we want to really perform at the world's level. Is
Speaker 1: that the standard is that expected from the team? Are
Speaker 1: they getting butt hurt when they're traded out or is
Speaker 1: that just an expectation. I think that's an expectation for
Speaker 1: our team. Is that if if we're not a team
Speaker 1: that can contend at the world stage, then there will
Speaker 1: be roster changes. Who makes the decisions on roster changes,
Speaker 1: It's it's our general manager, But most of the roster
Speaker 1: decisions up to the state were made by me, and
Speaker 1: I've I've maybe taken a lesser role over the last
Speaker 1: year and a half. Well, I'm still involved. So you
Speaker 1: don't think there's a benefit to keeping a team together
Speaker 1: versus switching people out. I mean to be candid, I
Speaker 1: think that I've made some huge mistakes, like, for example,
Speaker 1: we had a superstar roster that when a seventeen and one.
Speaker 1: During the regular season, we dominated. We want three seasons
Speaker 1: back to back in North America, but when we went
Speaker 1: to the international stage, we we we actually got destroyed,
Speaker 1: and so I made a quick decision to change roster
Speaker 1: up and like looking back with like hindset information, it
Speaker 1: was it was a bad roster decision on my part.
Speaker 1: After that, our our team kind of fell apart for
Speaker 1: a year. We had to rebuild. We lost three championships
Speaker 1: back to back. It wasn't a great phase of TSM.
Speaker 1: We're currently rebuilding now. But you know, when you make
Speaker 1: these big changes, there's of course, of course, but it's
Speaker 1: now so you never know. You think you guys can
Speaker 1: get to the top this year. I think it's gonna
Speaker 1: be challenging. I have a lot of faith in our roster.
Speaker 1: I think that we can regain our championship status. Awesome, Well,
Speaker 1: it was so nice to have you here today. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to see what else, not only TSM does,
Speaker 1: because I know you guys are going to just continue
Speaker 1: to expand and do more and more outside of what's expected. Um,
Speaker 1: but just you in general, I mean, if if we
Speaker 1: could fast forward ten years, where do you think you'll be?
Speaker 1: I mean you're still you're still so young, So where
Speaker 1: do you see yourself? It's really hard to tell, just
Speaker 1: because we our path and our folks changes all the time,
Speaker 1: but I think that we're going to have really strong
Speaker 1: data platform that helps us train our talent. So you're
Speaker 1: saying we you're still at TSM ten years from now,
Speaker 1: I think so, yeah. I'm still the majority owner of
Speaker 1: t s M. I don't see myself really selling the
Speaker 1: business anytime soon. I'm super excited to be involved, and
Speaker 1: I truly I think the space is starting to slow
Speaker 1: down in the sense that it's it's matured, but I
Speaker 1: still think that there's still significant growth left. Right. We like,
Speaker 1: if you look at it, this is still the first
Speaker 1: generation of the sports. Whereas you look at basketball, fans
Speaker 1: had kids and their kids started watch their team, and
Speaker 1: then their fans they had kids. Right, so there's like
Speaker 1: three generations where their audience quadruple. Where if you look
Speaker 1: at the sports, there's multiple things that can happen where
Speaker 1: the industry explodes. For example, when I used to ply,
Speaker 1: it was a male dominated industry with five percent female.
Speaker 1: Now it's like training towards right, and so as that
Speaker 1: gets to fifty fifty, the audience is going to double.
Speaker 1: And then as our fans are to have kids, that's
Speaker 1: also gonna double. So you can really see this growing.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Do you think you'll ever pull a Michael Jordan's
Speaker 1: and retire? Absolutely not. That was not even That was
Speaker 1: not even like, well, maybe, guys, I'll think about it
Speaker 1: to give your fans a little hope. You're like, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I'm past my prime. You're gonna see you and get
Speaker 1: my butt kicked. Do you really think so? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. But I think I gets to hold
Speaker 1: my own against some of the players at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the league players. But you're done. Yeah, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: it was so nice having you here today. I I
Speaker 1: love that you got to stop in. I know you're
Speaker 1: really really busy, have a lot of things going on.
Speaker 1: You have a team to manage, and you're gonna be
Speaker 1: the number one people manager. Maybe not number one, but
Speaker 1: but why not? Why not shoot for the stars? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot for the stars number one. Andy didn't
Speaker 1: everyone from t s M. And I'm sure he's going
Speaker 1: to do many, many more things in the future. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep an eye on him. We're gonna stop TSM,
Speaker 1: We're gonna route them on all season long. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys had fun to love. Behind the influence of
Speaker 1: the production of i Heart Radio and TDC Media