Are You A Game Changer?

In 1985, Rob Angel was a 26-year-old waiter from Seattle. Using a few simple tools of Webster’s paperback dictionary, a number two pencil, and a yellow legal pad, he created the phenomenally successful and iconic board game, Pictionary. He had no manual to turn to. He relied on his intuition, hard work, and that unwavering entrepreneurial spirit that we love so much here at The Successful Pitch to turn Pictionary into a global powerhouse. He put together the first 1,000 games by hand in his tiny apartment. He mastered all the needed business components including sales, marketing, and distribution. For the next seventeen years, he shepherded the distribution in 60 countries and 45 languages with over 38 million Pictionary games being enjoyed by people from all around the world before he sold it to Mattel in 2001. Rob has all kinds of insights to share on what he realized about resilience, persistence, and focus.

I love this story of origin. Usually, I ask my guests to start but your introduction gives us and paints that great picture of you with your dictionary, a piece of paper, and a pencil. You think, “To start a company, I need all this money and resources.” You figured out a way to do it without all that. Can you take us back to when you first had the idea? I know it wasn’t this straight linear, “I’ve got this idea. Where’s the paper?” and off you’re running. There were a few challenges in there that would be helpful for people to know about, a little procrastination perhaps or maybe some other things.

Nothing is in a straight line as you say. When I was a young man who graduated from college, I’d seen my dad as this businessman. He ran this company and I thought, “That’s what I want to be when I grow up.” I wanted to be with my dad, and he got fired. All of a sudden, my worldview of who I was and what I wanted to be was gone. I decided at that moment that I was going to work for myself. I was going to be my own boss and in charge of myself. That was the backdrop. A couple of years later, I moved in with three roommates. One of them said one night, “Do you want to play this game?” We played it in college called charades on paper. We get words out of a dictionary. I was always looking for an opportunity. At this moment, the opportunity was to have fun. I didn’t see it as a job or anything. We stayed up all night long playing this game. There’s my a-ha moment. “I’m going to turn this into a board game.” That was it. It was a simple activity. That was the genesis. It didn’t go quite so smoothly, but that’s how it all got started.

Clearly, it was your friends or other people who were playing this game. What do you think it is about you that made you think this could be an actual thing? A game that people would play and grow that other people didn’t see. They just thought, “We’re just having fun.”

It was my mindset. I’ve always been looking for an opportunity. I was always looking to create. I’m always looking for something. I wasn’t sitting back and waiting. When it came, it was put out to four different guys. I latched on to it. I said, “This is in my wheelhouse. This fits what I’m looking for.”

This concept of you having the best opportunity in the world presented to you and if you don’t have the mindset of, “I’m looking for something,” versus “I’m just going to keep floating along, see what happens, and not figure out how to make my own way in the world,” is the key. Did you ever feel a little bit of what’s known as the imposter syndrome? You’re a 26-year-old waiter, how are you going to take this and make this such a big success? Did you always know you could do it?

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