Transitioning From A 9-to-5 To Being An Owner
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Mr. Biz Radio: Transitioning From A 9-to-5 To Being An Owner
Unedited transcription of the show is included below:
(00:05):
Welcome to Mr. Biz radio, Biz. Talk for Biz owners. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.
(00:19):
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio with me, Mr. Biz Ken Wentworth. And this week we are going to talk about a lot of different things, but amongst those, we're gonna talk about disruption. We're gonna talk about forging ahead in a sort of not necessarily, I wouldn't call it new, but in the grand scheme of industries, it's, it's a new industry still, still working through some, some growth and some some growing pains, I should say. And along with that, we decided, Hey, if we're gonna talk about this, we wanna get someone who is at the forefront, is it the cutting edge of this industry? And this week we've got we're excited to have a very special guest on this show. He's the C E O of the United eSports League, which is the largest multi game eSports league in the country. Prior to his work in eSports, he had an incredibly successful career in real estate where he oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. His passion for competition and innovation led him to launch the U E L, which has quickly become a staple in the gaming community. He's a visionary leader, was dedicated his career to growing the eSports industry and creating opportunities for gamers everywhere. Titus Walker, welcome to Mr. Biz Radio.
(01:30):
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
(01:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's it's, it's super interesting. I mean, we've never, in six and a half years done the show. We've never talked about eSports. I don't know why the heck we'd haven't. And, you know, it's, it's growing by leaps and bounds every stinking day. And yes, when we, we found you, you know people on the team go out and look for gas and things like that. And I said, you know, we don't talk about eSports. Let's, let's, let's find someone in the eSports world. And they, they came up with a few different people, and I'm going through, you know, they gimme the information I'm going through and I'm like, this is my guy right here. I gotta talk to Titus. This is my guy. Yeah. Yeah. So Titus, tell me a little bit, let, let's get started with, I mean, we typically talk to the guests and talk about sort of their entrepreneurial journey especially moving from real estate into eSports, being a disruptor and everything like that. Tell us a little bit about your, your overall entrepreneurial journey.
(02:22):
Yeah, sure. I, I actually, I started my, my journey, entrepreneurial journey in real estate. And as you said, and essentially what I would do is I would I worked with a group that would go in and develop land. And so we'd buy big bulks of land, you know, hundreds of acres at a time. We would develop them into communities. And I started basically kind of learning the ins and out in ins and outs of the, from the legality of everything to the sales portion of everything, start to finish. And built up probably in my career, I'd say somewhere around 30 to 40 different communities. Oh wow. And so did that for probably about seven to eight years. Saved up a ton of money and realized, you know, it wasn't really for me. And, and as I was trying to think of different things to do, cuz I knew real estate is cyclical and, and there's, you know, ups and downs and, and we were experiencing, this was 2019.
(03:20):
And everybody kind of knows what happened in that, in that 2020 realm. Yeah. But I knew that something was coming, and so I, I was like, okay, let me start searching what I love, which is, you know, video games. And, and and it's, that's something that I've loved since I was a kid. I started trying to find ways to get into the business side of that researched a ton of the, the business side of, of eSports mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and saw a huge, huge gap in in the way eSports has one, what the way it was created, and then the trend that it's followed along the way. It's kind of kept this same line that everybody that's in eSports does it the exact same way, in the exact same format and the exact same business model. And the crazy thing about that is that business model doesn't work.
(04:07):
And I think anybody in eSports can vouch for me on this one. There's no money in eSports unless you, you, unless they figure out how to, how to work it, which we've done mm-hmm. <Affirmative> there's no money in eSports. And so I started, when I started doing the research, I worked with Mary Washington University, and we had their business team kind of put together some research to figure out, okay, what is the average amount of games that are played by a gamer in a year? This is 24 different games throughout a year that are played by an average gamer. Right. And there's, we, we found there's 3.3 billion gamers out there. The average gamer buys about 24 games per year. And then we found that every eSport played one game. Just one. Right. And it was like, okay, well that's kind of capping your market quite a bit.
(05:02):
And I, you know, being in in, from the business side of things, I was like, well, you know, is that something I really wanna do? Do I wanna start an industry where I'm putting a cap on myself and doing one, one game that now has an audience, there's 3.3 billion gamers, maybe this game has an audience of like a million, I'm missing a huge portion of that industry. Right? Sure. So I started doing more research and more research, and I found there was no such thing as a a eSport that really houses multiple games or focuses on gaming as a whole. And so I was like, well, why don't I create one? You know, why don't I focus on that instead and become a disruptor of eSports as it stands, but become the creator of the eSport that actually works in this industry. Mm-Hmm. And so started doing a ton of research on the, the creation of the NBA, the creation of the NFL. And where I really found my, my blueprint, if you will, was in the creation of the UFC.
(06:06):
Okay.
(06:06):
Followed it, you know, as I was, I've probably watched two, two UFC fights in my whole life, but I've always been intrigued by the business model of it all. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, because when you think about it when the UFC was created, there were essentially, you had the, you had boxing, you had wrestling, you had juujitsu, you had all these different fighting formats, right? But and they all were okay on their own, but the UFC still took that and said, I think I can, I can rebrand this and re rebuild this and create something that encompasses all of this. Right? Yes. And so, rather than just focusing on one, you, you know, industry or one niche, the UFC captures all of those. They capture people that love boxing, wrestling, you know, juujitsu, what all of it, right? And so I was like, well, why can't we do that in gaming?
(06:54):
So I created the sport that focuses on the different game styles, which there's, there's five major game categories, strategy games, sports games, racing games, fighting games, and shooting games. And so we created a sport that encompasses all of those and focuses on the genre instead of the game. Another big hole that that fills is right now, in every eSport you build up a community, you build up an industry, and let's say you have a hundred million people playing in that, in that game or in that in your community that you've built, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. The second that, that game, let's call it Call of Duty, decides to say, Hey, this is mine. I own it. I own the game. It's my ip, I don't want you playing it anymore. What are your choices? And the answer is, none. Right? You have no choices because they own that ip, they own that intellectual property.
(07:47):
So it doesn't matter how big the community, it's like if I bought a, you know, if I don't own this big patch of land, but I build a huge mansion on it, it's not mine. Therefore, the second that the person that owns the land decides to pull it, it's theirs. And I learned that in real estate. Yeah. And so and so that, that is something that I've, I, that, that I built up and, and we've been going, going ever since. We're up to around 400 professional gamers in our league and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of, of views per year.
(08:18):
Interesting. Well, man, Titus, you said so many things that really resonated with me like a student of the game. Right? And when I say the game, I don't mean gaming necessarily. I'm a business. Right. And, and the reason it resonated with me, and I do the same thing. I studied the ufc, right? I'm not even in any of this stuff. I, I studied successful businesses. I don't care what industry is in it. My, my friends make fun of me. We're running outta time here, but I gotta say this real quick. My friends made fun of me cuz I watched the Netflix special, I think it was called Drug Lords. I'm like, man, if these dudes can build multi-billion dollar businesses with illegal stuff, what could they do if it was legal Exactly. And didn't have go through all this rules, so. Exactly. Yep. We're gonna hit a break here on Mr. Biz Radio. Come back. We'll continue talking with Titus Walker.
(09:01):
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(10:10):
Got a question for Mr. Biz. You want answered on air, email it to
(10:21):
All right, welcome back to show. And it's time for Mr. Biz tip of the week and this week's tip. So I get asked these questions all the time not only when I get interviewed, but also just people randomly will ask these questions and everything. My most recent book don't Fake the Funk which is about achieving massive goals. People talk in their eye, have the, the SMAC formula. S M A C. People ask me all the time, what's that stand for? What's that an acronym for? And so today I wanted to mention the C what does the C in the SMAC formula within? Don't fake the funk, the book and C stands for what I call consistent perseverance. To achieve any goal, you've gotta have consistent perseverance. You're gonna get knocked down, you're gonna have trials and tribulations, you're gonna have challenges.
(10:59):
I don't care how smart you are, how pretty you are, how handsome you are, who you know, what you know, how much money you have, you're gonna have challenges. If you don't have the fortitude to have consistent perseverance and continue to get up when you get knocked down, you're probably not gonna be a successful entrepreneur. And I'm sure Titus will agree with this as well. I'm sure he's absolutely had some challenges with U E L as he launched it. So that's the mis bridge tip of the week. Consistent perseverance. Super, super important. I'll tell you this much. It's this, it's this important. When I mentor people that are in the, what I call entrepreneur stage, right? They say, man, I, I, I got a corporate job or I got a nine to five and I want to, I want to be an entrepreneur.
(11:35):
The main thing without telling them that I try to determine is if they have consistent perseverance. Because if you don't have that, you will not be a successful entrepreneur. You will not. So there have been times where I've had to tell people, look, I don't think you're cut out for this. I don't think you got the right mindset. And I kind of feel like that consistent perseverance you kind of have or you don't. I mean, you might be able to improve it some, but man, you gotta just have that right mindset to be able to do that. So that's Mr. Biz tip of the week. We're gonna get back into talking to Mr. Titus Walker, who's the CEO of the UEL which is the United eSports League. You can follow him on the Gram on Twitter, get on TikTok. And he also has a YouTube channel. Uso Titus, I guess going back a little bit, was there a specific, easy for me to say, specific moment in real estate? I know you had mentioned, you know, the cyclicality of it and you were heading into a, you know, rough patch as you could see, but was there something specific that, that you said, that's it, man, I gotta get out of this. I gotta figure something else out.
(12:36):
It's kind o f wild. I was, I was really at the peak when I decided to, to start you know, start doing something else. I was in the number one the number one producer at the time. And I just studied, I've, I've studied the markets for so long, so long. I mean, from the second I started, right? So it's like seven, eight years I started studying the markets from the second I got into the industry. And I just recognized that, you know, it is cyclical and, and I've never wanted to depend on someone else in order to be able to provide for me and my family. And so be, you know, that just, that right there is really all I needed. It, it pushed me to where this is great, I'm making more money than I've ever made in my entire life and probably more money. I'm, I'm a part of the one percenters, right? But it, it wasn't for me, it was like, if this can't last, then it's not worth, you know, continuing to depend on cuz eventually I'm gonna end up, you know, homeless if, if I, if I continue this, you know?
(13:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I relate, man. I left the c I left the corporate world very similarly. I was, you know, it sort of at the top of my game doing really well and just, I'd always kind of wanna do my own thing anyway. And I just you know, the, the funny story that wrote, the ending part of the story when I decided I was gonna leave, I was in New York City. I worked for JP Morgan, and I called my wife from the airport and I was getting promoted to the top 1% of people in JP Morgan. And my wife, I told her, she said, oh my God, that's great, you know, whatever. And I said, I'm gonna leave. And she said, oh, your plane's taking off. You gotta go. I said, no, I'm gonna resign <laugh>.
(14:13):
And my, my Tell us my wife accused me of, of having adult beverages at the airport. She said, you've been drinking? I'm like, no. She's like why don't we talk about this when you get home? Yeah. But, but I, so I I, I get that, man. I get it. And I'd always wanna do that on my own, you know, do my own thing and all that kind of stuff. And I'm super happy now. Like, I wasn't dissatisfied with my career, you know, previously. I mean, I, I right. Did really well. And they treated me super well and, and loved my career then, and enabled me to do what I do now. And it sounds like you've taken some lessons you learned in the real estate world as well into launching UEL. So, so why, how did you decide that you wanted to get into eSports? Is it just because you were so interested into gaming?
(14:54):
Yeah, I you know, I, I really wanted to do gaming. And my wife actually had the idea to start like a, like an just an arcade, right? And as you know, being from the business world, when I began looking into starting the arcade, I realized quickly, like, okay, the arcade back in the day made sense that, that style of like, oh, you come out, you play video games together, but in today's world, it doesn't make sense. The arcade is your living room, you know, discord, right? All, you know, you know, all of these different platforms that you can really be almost right next to somebody virtually. So the arcade model didn't work anymore. And so I was like, okay, well what can I do to still be in gaming and still create this arcade, but have something that draws people in, that brings people in on, on a regular basis?
(15:42):
And that's kind of what pushed me into the eSports side of things. Once I saw that huge hole to fill, I was like, oh, well, I know if you have a, a hole to fill in a business, especially a hole this big, I mean, this is an entire industry that is failing, period. It's, it's failing. And with a gap this big in an industry, I thought, okay, this is the perfect business to get into. I mean, it's very rare that you find a gap in an industry that's this big, you know, UFC was a, was a, an example of that where there's just this huge gap in the fighting game, the fighting industry. And so it was just the right time, right place, the right mindset, and and we kind of, we built it from there.
(16:27):
Interesting. Well, you know, I know you know this because you've studied it, but one of the things I found interesting, and I've actually heard Dana White speak a couple times, speaking of the ufc, you know, they originally bought the UFC for 2 million bucks Yep. And then continued to go downhill. Yep.
(16:41):
Right?
(16:42):
And he, he had to call up the business partner, the Petita brothers and ask for more money. And they're like, wait a minute. We don't know if we wanna throw more money after this. Like, and he convinced them, and I'm sure, as you know, they sold, I don't know, whatever, five, six years ago for $4 billion. Yeah. They clearly, you know, figured it out because that Yep. That combat sport industry just wasn't going. And, and to your point, Titus, those individual areas were doing okay, but even some of those were slipping. Yeah. You know you know, wrestling wasn't big. You didn't see that on television. You didn't make any money as a, as a wrestler. I mean, I guess if you're in a WWE and you're one of the superstars there, you know, and in that world maybe, but, you know, even boxing, you know, once Tyson was kind of out of the picture shortly thereafter, there wasn't a whole lot of money. You had a couple of guys that were making money, and that's it. You know, if you got to fight Mayweather, you're gonna make money. But, you know, other than that, there's a huge gap. And it sounds like you identified a very similar gap in the eSports world, and, and kind of, it sounds like you kind of took even that UFC approach of combining these different games into one huge league.
(17:43):
Yep. And that takes the rug pull away from the developer's hands. They no longer can tell me what I can and can't do, what I can and can't play because I have so many games that we're playing all, you know, all at once, essentially, they don't, at a, at a, at a certain point, because my community doesn't care what games we're playing. They're gonna wanna use me as advertising for their games. Right. Right. So the the, you flip it on its head, and now the developer's coming to me, I don't have to go to the developer anymore. They come to me and say, look, we know you have a community a hundred million strong. We wanna, we wanna see our game on your wheel. How do we do that? Right. And so that, that is where we've, we've taken that, that, that power. The, we've given the power to the community, the power of community. We've given it back to the community and taken it away from the developers.
(18:30):
Yeah. I love it. I love it. And you know what, I was gonna mention this earlier, I could tell you're a visionary Titus people, a lot of people say they're visionary. I can tell you're visionary because you were starting this and launching this, and you're already thinking about ip. Most people don't think about that stuff until sometimes it's too late. Yes. Right. And then they completely lose everything. So we're gonna hit a break here, guys. We'll continue talking with Titus. We're gonna learn all sorts of different things about launching u e l, becoming a disruptor, et cetera. Come back after the break on Mr. Biz Radio.
(19:00):
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(20:01):
Check out all three of Mr. Business best-selling books at mrbizbooks.com. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.
(20:10):
All right, welcome back show again. This week we're talking to Mr. Titus Walker. He is the CEO of United eSports League. Again, you can find UEL eSports on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, twitch everywhere. Find 'em everywhere, UEL eSports go out there and follow them and connect with what he's got going on and all the things that are going on. So Titus you know, we talking a little bit about a lot of different things, but so as you were launching, again, I, I know eSports isn't new, right? I know it's been around a while, but as an industry, you know, it's not like plumbing. It's not, you know Right. Plumbing's hundreds of years old. So in that regard, it's still sort of in, in infancy stages. Absolutely. And then you're, you're, you're launching into something and doing something completely disruptive than all the other eSport leagues were doing. You know, talk to us about some of the challenges and, and tribulations that you faced with that, and then sort of how, how you overcame some of those.
(21:03):
Yeah. so I'll start with the obvious one. We started we, we came up with the concept December, 2019 probably the worst time to come out with any type of business in history, right? Right. And so we were supposed to launch in April of 2020, and immediately got shut down government, you know, government shutdown happened in in Covid. And, and so we, we had to kind of postpone. But from that point, we, when we started doing the, the, the league and we started promoting it, it was like, there, it, there was so much pushback. And there was one quote that I, I thought about to keep me going, to keep me focused. And that was a quote that I heard kind of randomly. I read, I read a lot. And I read it in a book. And it, it was Henry Ford who said if I would've asked the consumer what they wanted, they would've asked for a faster horse.
(21:57):
Right? And essentially, I just kept thinking that, like, look, I know that it, because people would come, why don't you do it the regular way? Why don't you just do it this way? Why don't you just do it that way? And and they all wanted me to follow the model that they're used to. And, you know, being that they had never seen my model in, in action, and I'm trying to tell them, Hey, no, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. You know that was probably, I would say it was one of the hardest times. But no, it was, it was definitely a tough time to push through that adversity of like, everyone that you were trying to speak to didn't want what you had to sell. Right? They didn't want what you were offering. And and so our first season we were, we were playing for $10,000.
(22:43):
And in a local tournament, that's unheard of, right? So I put up big money for this. Mm-Hmm. We had 14 people come out. So if you do the math on that, right, money's not there, right? Yeah. It's, it's not there, right? And so those 14 people, season one stuck around, they loved it. They really enjoyed it. It was like, that is, that's kind of what I held onto. And we did a season two, another $10,000, and it was like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna keep pushing this thing. And so still getting that same pushback. Everybody that's joining this is just, they want, they want what they're used to, right? Right. They can't see, and you really can't expect them to see what you see cuz it's your dream, it's your vision. Right. And it's really the same with I read a book, the Innovator's Dilemma.
(23:29):
And with, even with all of the larger brands and the larger companies, it's great that they can't see it because they're so big that it's tough for them to pivot. Right. That gives you the advantage as a smaller company to be able to pivot fast and be able to take over the industry before bef before they even see it coming. Right. And by the time they actually pay attention, everyone else is too. So it's, it's okay that they are. Right. Yeah. And so I kind of just kept, kept, you know, studying, kept reading, kept pushing forward Season two, I think we had like 30, so we doubled in size doubled. Yeah. 30 different different pros. By season three we had probably around 70. And so we just continued to grow at, at a kind of slow pace up until about six months ago.
(24:21):
And right before this, this kind of explosion we had, you know, the explosion of another kind, where a lot of the people involved became what's just became very negative. And kind of started to try to almost poison the community and, and cause tons of issues and tons of like, just, just a headache, you know? And, and I'm, you know, trying to manage it with my team and trying to make sure we keep people motivated. Cuz again, it's a tough thing to do to, to, to to not only really trailblaze something, but to make them have to go through all the ups and downs with me. You know? Right. Because every pro within my league also has that option of going and doing the normal thing instead. Right. And so keeping them involved through all those ups and downs became a really difficult dance that I had to learn how to do over time and got really good at it.
(25:22):
And and you know, like I said, about six months ago had a cybersecurity company, well, it's a little over six months ago, had a cybersecurity company that is very big in the community, reach out and decided to in invest heavily in, in our community. And then took that and ended up meeting one of the best friends of I'm sorry, the cousin of Jay-Z, who who helps, is a director at Rock Nation. And then that kind of helped me meet some of the, some big celebrities that ended up, you know, purchasing teams and, and getting involved and just started, it's just started kind of doing that, that Nike swoosh curve of just like, you know, it seems like it's, you know, you, you just, you're pushing your way up. And now it's just like, it's exploding.
(26:16):
And and we really, I, I couldn't be happier enough, but we have a, a massive team now of, of people that are involved. Our last draft had over 200 people trying to join. So we have 400 professionals. We had 200 people just trying to get in. Okay. And we only had about 20 spots. Oh, wow. Okay. So like, and then, and it's just continuous. And we do that, that's, you know, every, every three or four months we're doing another draft where we're, we're getting new pros in. We have one of the top fighting game players in the world in our league now. Some of the top shooting game players strategy. And they're, and they're not coming for a game. They're coming for the game, which is u e l. Right. And so u e l eSports is really going to disrupt the industry, but also improve the industry and help it become what it was always meant to be. And so I'm extremely excited, but talk about adversity. It's all over the place. <Laugh>.
(27:20):
Well, it's interesting, Titus too, because, you know, and I talk about this often, but you know, the challenges you face when you launch and you're, you know, kind of bootstrapping and you're trying to get things going. And then when you finally hit that, that stick of dynamite and things take off, you know, as a CE O it takes a certain skillset to manage through this. Right. You're keeping the troops in inspired, right. Watch, seeing your vision. Don't let them get downtrodden, and then things start to take off. And it takes a whole nother skillset. And you're probably experiencing that right now than it did when you were down here. Right? Yeah. And you gotta really keep your eye on the prize when you're in that, that situation because now you know, you got a whole nother host of problems. They're, as they say, good problems to have, but, you know it, it takes a whole nother thing. So hats off to you, man. I mean, I, I can't even imagine trying to just hold onto the reins as this thing's just taken off <laugh>.
(28:11):
Yeah. It's like, it's probably the most, one of the most surreal things when you have and when you've dreamed something and then you get to watch it in, in reality, it's god, it, it, it is, it's so satisfying.
(28:33):
Yeah. Well, and I, here's the other thing I, I would imagine as well, it's gotta be super satisfying for you, for the people who were with you from the beginning Yeah. And stuck with you and were loyal. And then I'm sure there were some people who jumped ship and said, this is never gonna work, tunnel, blah, blah, blah. Yep. And now they're like, crap. Yeah. I should've stayed on with Titus. I should've, you know, realized his vision is gonna be successful. Yeah. Super inspiring Titus. Look, I mean, I, I wish you all the luck in the world, man. I really appreciate you coming on the show. We're, we're running out of time here, but really appreciate you coming on o on the on the show here and yeah.
(29:06):
Yeah, man. And like you said, I mean, we started with six investors, I'll be short. And and then it became just me and my wife. So like you said, they jumped ship, we gave 'em their money back. And now look at now you know, where we were, where we are now. So thank you so much for having me on. It's yeah, absolutely man. I appreciate, it's been great.
(29:22):
Yeah. I appreciate you coming on Titus. So again, go out and follow UEL e -sports on Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, YouTube channel. Guys, have a great rest of your week. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And don't forget, as always, cashflow is king
(29:38):
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