Lessons - E-Sports Player Turned Owner | Carlos Rodriguez - Founder & CEO of G2 ESports

What's the difference in your like what's the difference between being a player being an owner in like what's the mentality? How do you approach problems like what did you learn from that that switch? I mean as a player you learn to do one thing really well. You become a specialist, right? It's almost like having a it's like mastering the sword, you know It's like you become a master of that one thing and whoever you face you know that Whether you win or you lose your confidence in your ability master that sword to use that sword, you know? There is no not a lot of room for extraordinary ways to approach your work because The game has a set of rules. You have to follow and you have you can be creative within those rules Which for an overly creative person or artistic person It can be a constraint sometimes actually Because after playing the game for a thousand hours you realize that constraints exist, you know And you just learn to live with those. So I guess the biggest difference I mean, number one. I actually did learn very valuable skills as a player Number one, I learned a how to deal with people in high-pressure situations Some people like to be told what the fuck are you doing? Some people like to be told Hey, let's go through this together, okay? Because I think there's there's something we could do better And I learned the value of having people around you that know how to take responsibility over directions And not be cynical about everything So I was a player, but I was also the captain of my team So I did a lot of changes to my lineups and over the years And sometimes those chances were good sometimes those chances were bad And I learned what makes up a good group of people is not just mechanics in other words It's not just skills is the is the attitude actually what makes up a good group of people You need a minimum set of skills of course, but after that minimum set of skills is matched is achieved You need attitude and a perfect merge of attitudes And a group of five five and five It needs to have the humble guy that is the supportive mindset That will go out of his way to help a teammate when he's in need He will you will need the super cocky guy that is a wholesome dude that just loves the video game But like it's incredibly cocky and you know that you leave by the sword and die by the sword if he has a good day He's great if he has a bad day you lose you need to have the guy that is like very serious and telling everybody come on I'll shoot together, you know, you need to have like that captain figure you need to write and so there's different Independent on the game as well, right? so Learning what each game needs in terms of the types of attitudes Mix within each team is something I learned as a player and some that I still to this day deploy in my job Today, so it's not like my previous career as a player was useless quite the opposite I a lot of the skills that I developed and I still use to this day, you know But the biggest difference is I'd say is the ability to be creative like in my job There is no there's no walls. There's like no limitations You know, I literally wanted to make a song I I love singing okay I wanted to make a song so I did a metal song an epic metal song and we went hand with it We spent like half a million dollars in building the most incredible incredible high Production quality me a song best guitarist in the world best drummer in the world best Cheloist in the world the Cheloist of Hans Zimmer. We were fucking insane best songwriters. He was insane Okay, and I was the lead singer okay, which there's nothing more ego focused on that And I said why not you know you can't do that shit as a player, you know So yeah, it's just my job allows for a lot of creativity and a lot of fun Sometimes I'm focused on video content on approving scripts on approving the final video and approving the music on the actual scoring of our pieces Sometimes I'm focused on how we distribute all of that sometimes I focus on social media the quality of our pose Which social should we get into next you know understanding KPIs are we ahead are we behind understanding consumer products How consumer products look like then sometimes it's investor pitching time sometimes I have to close sales You know, it's like in sometimes very often I have to spend time on the actual esports teams the quality of the lineups Do we have to improve it? Sometimes there's problems they call me hey Carlos 3 a.m. I'm homesick in Korea whatever, you know I have to speak with him and I it's a it's a it's a different job that touches on a lot of different things So it's so fun bro. I would do it. I always say when I'm a billionaire I will literally do what I'm doing right now. I love dude. That's awesome. You know that you're doing the right thing when you could say that That's amazing. Yeah, come for the measures well