CEO Brent Dusing of TruPlay: Creating Christian Video Games in a Secular Culture DMW#194

14 views

his week Greg sat down with Brent Dusing. Brent is the CEO of TruPlay based in Austin, TX and has been featured on Fox News, The Mike Huckabee Show, and others. TruPlay is a Christian based company that produces video games and media content for children and teenagers. Greg and Brent talked about his worldview on the arts and the tech space, the challenges and opportunities christians can encounter when building a business, and where he sees the future of content and media. It was an interesting episode. Enjoy! Check out TruPlay here: https://www.truplaygames.com/ Dead Men Walking Podcast Website and Snarky Merch here: http://www.dmwpodcast.com

0 comments

00:04
Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an
00:10
Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Well, hello everyone!
00:22
Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast. I'm your host, Greg Moore. Thanks for coming along on the ride. Thanks for following us on the socials and checking us out at dmwpodcast .com.
00:31
Over the last few weeks, you've probably heard some of the interviews we got at the Fight, Laugh, Feast conference in Tennessee.
00:38
Is that where I was? No, I was in Kentucky. I hope you guys have been enjoying those. We got a good response on those as well, too.
00:45
Last year, we broke that up into four or five episodes. It was a little bit much. So we did two one, one and a half hour episodes, let you guys kind of hear who we were talking to down there, what's going on down there.
00:55
Obviously, we had some entrepreneurs on, some people creating things in the Christian space. And we're going to kind of continue that today.
01:02
I don't want to belabor the point too much and talk about what's going on in my life because I don't want to keep this guest waiting.
01:08
He's the CEO of a company called True Play based out of Austin, Texas. It's Brent Duesing.
01:15
Brent, how are you, sir? Doing great, Greg. Good to be with you. So I wanted to talk to you about this company you guys have because I'm always keeping my ear to the ground on people creating things kind of in our space, the believer space, the
01:29
Christian space. Can you give us a little bit maybe of your background and then maybe just an intro into what
01:35
True Play is? Absolutely. I've been a tech entrepreneur for 18 years. I started out in Silicon Valley and built a company.
01:42
Some of you may have used, it's a company called CellFire. We're at the grocery store. If you've ever seen a product that said, use your cell phone to save money at the grocery store or use digital coupons at the grocery store, invented that, started that company, wound up selling that to Catalina Marketing.
01:59
I then built a company that built Christian games on Facebook. So if you ever played Journey of Jesus, Journey of Moses, Stained Glass, these were games.
02:07
We had over 7 million people play them on the Facebook platform, kind of Christian video games.
02:13
And then just started True Play a couple of years back, launched the product just two months ago.
02:20
And what True Play is really about is, look, we're parents. We're concerned for what's going on with kids and toxic media, toxic content.
02:29
The difference is we've built and released now a world -class entertainment platform for kids.
02:35
That's really, really high quality gaming content, videos, and comics. But everything we do has a biblical foundation to it, whether it's stories and games from the
02:46
Bible or a new set of IP that we've created or other partner content. Everything we do puts
02:51
Christ front and center. Wow, that's awesome. So mine are 14, 12, and 9.
02:57
And we've been going through that process of watching what they are streaming and playing and things like that our entire lives.
03:04
I'm a homeschooler as well. I was homeschooled in the 80s and now homeschooling my children. So we keep an eye on that.
03:10
What I have found, and maybe you can touch on this a little bit, is by worldly standards, the ratings, they will say, oh, this is for everyone, this is for kids, right?
03:19
And we're seeing this in the last five, six, seven years to where you might not have a cuss word, you might not have violence per se, but you are overloaded with certain agendas, certain type of attitudes that the characters have that we look at that and I say, well,
03:35
I don't really want my kids partaking in that. So when you're talking about Christian based, family based, are you guys taking those into account to to where, you know, our stuff has, you know, a certain idea or worldview or is teaching certain characters?
03:51
Is that something you guys take into account when creating content for your company? One hundred percent. So so we're, you know, at True Play, it's first of all, it's a high quality experience.
04:00
I think too often Christian entertainment for kids is sold like Robitussin. Yeah, I know this doesn't taste very good, but you need a drink.
04:06
It'll help your cough. Well, I don't want to drink Robitussin. It tastes awful, right? We sell chocolate cake with vitamins and protein and calcium in it.
04:13
Right. So it's video games that kids love. We look at the data that the usage rates, the feedback we get from parents, not just kids, but parents enjoy playing it, too.
04:22
So if you're listening, you might might enjoy doing that with your kids. But the way that we tell our stories, some of our games.
04:29
So so True Play, just to give you a sense, if you're listening, is one app on your phone, on your iPad could be
04:36
Android or iOS, one app with a bunch of games, dozens and dozens, dozens of hours of content, various video games you can play for hours and hours and hours.
04:44
Digital comics, both from the Action Bible. We're just launching from Keystone. So I Kingston Comics, the
04:51
Book of God series video content as well. We have some new video content we're releasing in just a couple of weeks.
04:58
We're really excited about. It's like prayers that kids do in a really high quality, artful way.
05:03
I think people are going to love. So the point is, it's content where everything we do. Some of our games are based on Bible stories.
05:10
We have a game coming out called King David's Battles where you get to play King David. I mean, think about this. King David is the best, most action packed story in the
05:19
Old Testament. Right. Why has there never been a great video game about this? Talk about values, right, and the underpinnings like you were talking about, the content, the characters and the way it's written.
05:28
We've also built this set of intellectual property called the Rimverse. And if you're watching this on my T -shirt, you see these animal characters with different animal costumes.
05:37
Maple is a bunny rabbit. She wears a tiger costume. Why? She's a little girl. She believes very strongly in God.
05:43
She's got a very strong personality. But she doesn't get taken seriously because she's a little girl and she's a bunny rabbit.
05:48
So everybody kind of laughs her off. So in her mind, if she wears a tiger costume, then she'll get respect because tigers are respected animals.
05:56
And so she goes on this adventure deep in the forest and finds there's this evil queen who's twisted and manipulated the meaning of words.
06:04
And it turns out later on, the queen has extracted Bibles. She's confiscated
06:09
Bibles from the society. And because of that, the whole society that these children live in has deteriorated. Now, they kind of uncover this mystery over time, but they're basically battling evil.
06:19
And what evil is doing in their society is they're trying to silence God's word. And the kids are called within their giftings and abilities to make a huge transformation and change.
06:29
And this is all done through adventures of bad guys and laser beams and adventures in the forest and spaceships and sword battles.
06:35
It's a really, really exciting, epic story. Wow. So yeah, before we get too far in here,
06:40
I just want to jump in, share the screen, so people can kind of see who are watching this. I just wanted to play one of these videos.
06:46
We'll just play a couple seconds of it. I want people to see the quality of it here. And if we have to, we'll add in the audio later.
06:55
I'm not sure if it's coming through on your side. But as you can see here, you've got,
07:03
I mean, like you said, sometimes when people come back with Christian content, it is just not that high quality.
07:10
And you can see there, I mean, this is high quality stuff that you're doing. And I just really appreciate that.
07:18
Because sometimes I hate that we get kind of second best stuff, you know? We don't do quality stuff when it comes to this space.
07:26
And we're going to link all this up so you guys can check them out, see what they're all about, what kind of content they have.
07:32
So something like that would be like an animated cartoon or something for a kid. You have video games as well.
07:39
Let's talk about the importance of this. Because I think it was something like a stat, 52 and a half hours a week on average kids are spending on some type of screen.
07:50
Now, I know it's not that high in my house. I'm probably below that average because we do try to monitor that. Well, we do monitor that.
07:56
We don't try with the parents. That's half the problem. Do or do not, there is no try, right?
08:02
Right, exactly. So what's the importance of this kind of content in this next generation that is constantly in front of some type of screen?
08:12
It's critically important. Here's the statistics. And a lot of Christians, if you're listening and you're likely to be a
08:17
Christian parent, you might be blown away by this. But these are the facts. Number one, anxiety, suicide, and depression rates are all -time highs for children.
08:25
And by the way, that statistic was true before COVID. So don't believe the story that, oh, well, it's because COVID. No, no.
08:32
It's because of social media and toxic content on smartphones. When you look at media consumption of toxic content, social media particularly, and suicide, anxiety, and depression rates, that chart goes lockstep.
08:44
Second fact, the average male is exposed to pornography when he's 11 years old. And there's a lot of data and science coming out.
08:51
It has been in the Christian community forever. But even in the secular world, in secular psychology, about the damaging effects of pornography on the lives, especially for children at young exposure, adults too, but especially when children get exposed to it at young ages.
09:04
Third statistic, for the first time in our lifetime, less than half of Americans go to church.
09:11
That's the first time since Billy Graham started his basically revival in I guess the late 1940s,
09:18
I believe. That first time that statistic is true, that less than half of Americans are walking into church. And the worst statistic is only 31 % of children believe in God.
09:28
So 62 % of U .S. adults 40 and over believe in God without a doubt, only 31 % of kids.
09:34
So when you look at when societies change and shift, so many of us as parents today, like you said, you got homeschooled in the 80s.
09:41
You look back and say the world is so different. America is so different than what it looked like when you and I were kids. We're probably about the same age.
09:47
Why? Because generations shift. Why? Because 52 and a half hours a week is the average amount of content a child's consuming.
09:55
What does the Bible say? The eyes are the window to the soul. So when you're taking in sexual content at five years old, when you're taking in hyper -violent content, demonic content, where life is cheap, where it's all about greed and those kind of things, you're lowering the moral standard, and you're really poisoning the souls of all these innocent children.
10:20
So the average child's at church 30 minutes a week, but they're on the screen 52 and a half hours a week.
10:25
So we have to be there with content not only that brings God's truth, but that brings God's truth in the way that competes with all the video games and all the video content they're consuming.
10:36
And that's why we built Trueplay. Okay, so if someone is listening and they go, okay, that's great, but there's quite a few companies out there that say they're family -centered or child -centered or have this holistic or moral approach, and then you find out there's stuff in there.
10:54
Even YouTube kids, I'm thinking. Disney, I'm thinking. Some of these bigger guys that are focused on the family.
11:01
And yet I find things in there that are just abhorrent. So maybe they're asking, okay, so why should we trust you?
11:10
What's your worldview? Who's creating this content? Is there any way to – how do you gauge the content and go, this should be in, this shouldn't be in, this is something we should talk about, this isn't something – where does that come in?
11:22
Because the content side of it is pretty darn important. Great questions. Great questions to ask. Let me go through that.
11:28
So first of all, I'm a Bible -believing Christian. I'm the founder, CEO. Most of our employees would tell you the same thing.
11:37
Secondly, everything we do – so we stand on four pillars in terms of our product.
11:43
Everything has to be fun, right? We can't sell entertainment products by saying, this is something you should do to kids.
11:51
They've got to want to do it. And everything we see from having launched two months ago, our kids love it, our customers, our subscribers love it.
11:58
Two, it's got to be beautiful. You mentioned, how come Christian content is subpar? It's interesting.
12:05
It wasn't always that way. From the time Constantine accepted Christ in around I think 330, 350
12:11
A .D. until the late 1800s, Christians made the best content, the best music, the best buildings, the best artwork, the best sculptures.
12:18
Amen. Typically made by Christians, right? That changed about 150 years ago, but that doesn't have to be our destiny.
12:25
And I think you have to give credit to people like The Chosen, like what Hillsong and Jesus Culture and Lauren Daigle have done with music where they've brought the quality standard to a higher bar than frankly maybe where things were a few years back.
12:40
Sure. Third, we've been endorsed by some phenomenal Christian pastors and leaders you can trust.
12:46
We've been endorsed by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Think about Will Graham is someone, he's the executive vice president there.
12:55
He's endorsed us. Sam Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Council, read the
13:01
Bible at the inauguration in 2016. He's endorsed us.
13:07
Ken Harrison, a good friend of mine, the CEO of Promise Keepers. Everybody I think probably knows who Promise Keepers is, helping men to be better fathers and husbands.
13:14
He's endorsed us. Candace Cameron Bure, Dean Cain. More people on the way.
13:20
We've been endorsed by a lot of Christian leaders. We've been endorsed some of our games. One of our games in particular was endorsed by Jack Hayford.
13:27
If you guys know who that was, he was the head of the Foursquare International Church, one of the most influential pastors of the last 100 years.
13:35
And by Darrell Bock, who is one of the foremost theologians at DTS. So we're not here to take on a particular denomination.
13:45
We're Christians. We believe God is real. The Bible is true. Jesus is God in the flesh. We don't take a denominational bent because we'd rather provide something that's appealing to all
13:54
Christians, frankly. And by the way, we want to invite non -Christians to try this. We've had many, many non -Christians play our games and love it.
14:05
And our goal is to either strengthen Christian families or to provide something to people who aren't
14:12
Christians where they can really see the truth of the Bible and the love of God for maybe the first time. Yeah.
14:18
So is your programming and your content generally principle -driven, like biblical principle -driven?
14:24
Or is it scripturally driven to where there might be some type of Bible verse or scripture in there and some of that?
14:32
Or is it more of a 30 ,000 -foot biblical principle -driven? Great question.
14:38
So here's kind of our criteria. So again, if you haven't used
14:43
Trueplay, if you're listening, it's one app with a bunch of games, comics, videos.
14:49
So there are different types of experiences. So for example, there's a game we made called
14:55
Stained Glass. In Stained Glass, you collect stained glass pieces. They form a stained glass window. The stained glass window comes to life when you solve the puzzles.
15:03
And a character from the Bible tells you their story. So first, Eve tells you what her experience was like in the garden. And then
15:08
Noah, what it was like for him. Then Sarah's version of the Abraham story, and then Moses.
15:13
And the way that that story is written is from a more realistic standpoint. What I mean by that is when many
15:21
Christians hear the Noah story, I think it's when they're five years old and it's a coloring book. It's something like,
15:27
Noah got to build a floating zoo, and it was so great. I think if you think, okay, the
15:32
Bible's about real people encountering a real God, right? So the Noah's experience wasn't really great.
15:39
It wasn't building a floating zoo, and it was so fun. He was laughed at.
15:44
He was scorned. He had three other men to help him who were his sons. And let's all be honest. Those of us who've been asked by our fathers to do hard manual labor, it's not for 120 years or however long it took him to build it, probably not the most fun thing he ever signed up for.
15:58
Then it rains. How do you feel? Well, did we seal it? Do we have enough food? All these thoughts go through your mind.
16:05
Is this ever going to end? How did Noah's wife feel? None of her family made it. Think about that. All of her brothers and sisters, parents, nephews, nieces, they're not on the ark.
16:14
We know that from the biblical text. So the point is, stained glass, it's a really fun puzzle game. You solve all these puzzles.
16:20
But when you're hearing the biblical story, we're trying to put you in the shoes of someone. What if you were there?
16:26
What would that experience have been like? A real person, but encountering a real God, okay? Another example, King David's battles.
16:33
We don't do it. So we tell the story of David. We start out, David's a shepherd boy, right before the
16:40
Goliath battle. So he's young, and he's a little bit cocky. He knows he's been anointed by Samael, right?
16:47
Because that's happened first. And the Philistines are bearing down on the
16:52
Israelites and that whole dynamic, and you're fighting all these battles. So we're telling his whole saga in kind of an artful way.
16:59
But one of the biggest underpinnings of that story is watching the development of a boy become a man.
17:05
So in the game, you play young David as he progresses, and then there are some flashbacks where older King David is reflecting back on some of the wisdom that he gained in those times, and honestly, some mistakes that he made.
17:17
I mean, I think as Christians, we have to always remember this. God doesn't use perfect people because he doesn't have any of them.
17:25
And that's me and you too, right? We're not perfect. David was clearly not perfect, neither was Moses, neither was Abraham. Only Jesus was.
17:33
But everyone else, they make mistakes. And so David's working through that.
17:39
And the key point of David is a boy becomes a man. We don't do a good job in our society or culture anymore teaching a boy to become a man.
17:47
Now, you ask about the rest of our content, all these animal characters, Maple, Oliver, Benjamin, Lucas, they look ridiculous, right?
17:55
It's a bunny rabbit in a tiger costume and a skunk who wears a crocodile robot suit, but their personalities are just like personalities of children today.
18:03
Maple's very headstrong. She's a Christian, but she doesn't really care about other people's opinions. She doesn't get a lot of respect, and she's tried to kind of always push forward.
18:11
Lucas, he's on the autism spectrum. Turns out a lot of kids today are, right? And Lucas, his brother, died a year ago.
18:18
And Lucas, by the way, doesn't know God, doesn't understand who God is, what that means, why his brother died, has a lot of unanswered questions.
18:24
And he's on a journey. There's a character named Oliver. He's adopted. He's got some questions about that.
18:30
He kind of believes that God exists in concept, but the idea of praying doesn't make sense to him, and Maple winds up rescuing him.
18:37
He's trapped. He's getting strangled by these vines, and Maple rescues him early on. Spoiler alert. And he starts to learn the value of praying, and God starts to show up.
18:48
So the way that our characters in the Rimverse are written, and there's a lot of games based on the Rimverse, they're just like real kids today.
18:55
They've got some superpowers, of course, because it's got to be fun and exciting, but they're praying to God. They're referring to Scripture.
19:02
They're putting their faith in God. And by the way, sometimes in the action, God shows up and makes a way for them. Yeah. So let me ask you this, and it's funny that you talk about Noah's Ark, because at the top of the episode here, when
19:13
I just said I came back from a conference, it was in Kentucky at the Ark Encounter, and I was walking through that replica
19:21
Ark, essentially, full -size Ark, and I had the thought, I said, man, my kids love all these building games and Fortnite, and I said, someone needs to make a video game where you just live out the life of the 80 years of building an
19:33
Ark and getting it in the boat and onshore. It's just an epic story, right? Like you said, there's a lot going on there.
19:40
It's not just two giraffes sticking their heads out the window, which is what I grew up with, with the felt on the board in Sunday school, right?
19:49
So yeah, you can make some epic adventures out of these Bible stories, which I think is really cool.
19:55
So it's all in one app. What is your age range on this, do you think? For people listening right now, and they go, okay, I have some kids,
20:01
I don't know, I have a two -year -old, a six -year -old, an eight -year -old, and a ten -year -old, like what's the range there for people who want it?
20:09
We find our sweet spot is really five to twelve. We have some games and activities that skew a little for the younger, some games and activities that skew a little more for the tween kids, and the other thing we find, and this kind of happened very naturally and organically, we have a lot of parents enjoy playing our games too.
20:28
We started testing our games a couple years back before we were building them because we wanted to make sure they were fun and people were enjoying them.
20:34
We had to tune and tune and tune the games, and we found that after the child would play the game, then the parent would ask to play.
20:41
And we find that we get feedback from our customers that, hey, my kid plays it and I compete with them for high scores on some of the games, or adventure games where they help their kids get through some of the adventures and the challenges and the puzzles.
20:54
So, like I said, it is really kind of five to twelve, but we do find parents enjoy it too, and as you know, as a dad,
21:00
I've got kids at home too, like you. It's not always easy to find a thing you actually enjoy, that your kids enjoy, that doesn't make you cringe in terms of the values your kids are going to pick up.
21:11
Right, yeah, absolutely. So, what are we talking to price point? As we wrap this up, I have a couple more questions on the business side, because we have a lot of entrepreneurs in the audience, and I always love picking the brain of guys who go out there and risk it, like I have and others have.
21:22
But what price point are you at when you're talking about an all -in -one app that I'm assuming is iPhone,
21:28
Android, PC, Mac compatible? Yeah, so iPhone, Android, tablet, or phone.
21:35
And by the way, we sell a family plan, so when you subscribe, you can put it on all your devices, everyone in your family can get an account, just for that one price.
21:47
You don't have to pay extra for every single kid. It's one price. Okay, so you guys aren't
21:53
Netflix anymore, where you can't share passwords, huh? Well, the point is, we want each kid to be able to have their own account, because you score points, you make progress in the games, and you don't want someone to mess your score up and stuff, right?
22:05
Right, right. So we do that. We charge the same price that different kids' educational apps cost, some of the top leading services.
22:15
So we come in, you buy an annual plan, we come in at about $120 annually, which is around $10 a month average on an annual plan, and then some monthly plans vary.
22:28
That's very competitive. Yeah, it's in market. I mean, I would say to parents that, just to say one thing if you're listening, so many parents say, gosh,
22:38
I wish there were alternatives to all this toxic content my kids are getting. My team and I, we have a world -class team of tremendous professionals, and what we do, we're selling subscriptions, and then we're taking that money, and we're paying great salaries to truly world -class people to then go build more great content, because every month there's new games, there's new videos, there's new comics on Trueplay.
23:01
So it's a living, breathing service that we keep reinvesting in making a better and better product. I mean, that's one of the things
23:07
Elon Musk talks about. When you're running a company, you want to keep reinvesting on your product, so you're always delivering that value for the consumer, and we take that very seriously, and so we really need parents to come on board and support what we're doing so we can continue to build more great stuff and reach more people.
23:25
Yeah, so that 5 to 12 range, not to stick on this, but that's where you're at right now. You're focusing on that. You're producing a lot of quality content.
23:32
Any plans in the future to expand that range at all, if you're getting into, say, teen or preteen or young adult?
23:38
Absolutely. Well, we certainly cover preteens because we're hitting the 10, 11, 12. And look, it's not to say there certainly are some teens that play our stuff, but we're not trying to go compete with a
23:50
Fortnite experience, right? Right. We're competing more with the casual mobile sector, so a game like Royal Match or their experiences in, you think back to the days of maybe
24:04
Angry Birds or some of the more casual experiences kids are playing and using. It's more of that style of game that we're kind of fulfilling for children.
24:15
And over time, we're going to continue to build great world -class content that's going to be deeper games, more expansive games, games that will reach larger audiences.
24:26
And look, as technology continues to progress, there'll be a whole lot more opportunities to bring those experiences into the world of VR and AR and those kind of things.
24:37
Yeah. So as we wrap this up here too, I'd be remiss if I let you go. I know people are going to email me or message me.
24:44
We got a lot of entrepreneurs that listen and we got people that are creating things and that are building things and taking risks.
24:51
And I don't have to tell you all the sacrifices that go into running a business or owning a business.
24:59
So just people out there, when you're building this, what was some of the struggles you had and some of the accomplishments you had when sounds like you sold one company, started this just a few years ago, to all those young entrepreneurs out there, maybe give them some advice or just give them some obstacles to avoid when you're building something like this.
25:20
Yeah, I'll be happy to do that. So the first thing I would say to, if you're listening to someone who would be just starting a company,
25:30
I do think there's value to finding co -founders, partners, and here's my advice on that.
25:39
Two things. A, you want to choose people whose values you have almost 100 % alignment with.
25:46
B, you want to choose people whose skill sets are almost 180 degrees opposite. Of your own, yeah.
25:52
No, it's true. Because when you start a business with somebody, you have partners or co -founders or even large investors.
26:01
It's the next closest thing to a marriage. Marriage is first, but after that, there is this bond, this relationship.
26:08
I've been blessed. My first two companies I started with a wonderful guy. He was really still a brilliant CTO, co -founder.
26:19
He was the guy at CellFire, the coupon company. We built the first time a mobile phone plugged into a retail point of sale system.
26:25
He figured all that out. He and I were very aligned on values, but he's this brilliant technologist developer and I was running the business and leading and communicating and raising money and doing all the whole business side of the deal.
26:39
That's the first thing. I one time worked at a business where the two founders, the guys who ran the company, were opposite in values and identical in skill set.
26:47
It was a disaster. The company didn't work out. It was an internship I had a long time ago.
26:53
A second piece of advice I would give to people is to test and iterate your product as much as possible.
27:00
I would guess you've probably found that in your experience doing your podcast. You find, you learn what works and you redo it and you lean in a little more on things that worked and you remove the things that didn't.
27:12
Look, to start any business, you have to have a high level of conviction. You have to.
27:18
You have to be able to see things and make decisions based on things that you may see that other people don't.
27:27
That said, you need to take feedback from who your core audience is.
27:33
Now, you need to know who you're selling to and who you're not. If we were to give this to Trueplay, to somebody who hated everything to do with Christianity and they said, well,
27:41
I hate Trueplay. Well, I don't really, that's fine because you'd never buy from me anyway. But if I take this to a child who's
27:50
Christian and raised in a Christian household that plays video games and they don't like all of our games, then
27:57
I know I've done something wrong. So to get in front of that, we spent two, three years testing games with kids all the time and the result of that has been that what we've gotten back, our play rates, our usage rates, the enjoyment of our app, the ratings are better than the top kids' apps, the top educational kids' apps in the world.
28:18
I mean, just what we've gotten in the last two months has been earth -shaking stuff, but it's really because we spent so much time testing and improving.
28:28
I'll give you one last piece of advice if you want. Sure, throw it at us. You gotta hire people. There's a word
28:36
I always got, you wanna hire slow and fire fast. Hire slow, what does that mean? You wanna look for people who are bought into your mission.
28:44
Whatever that mission is, if God's called you to do something, it's critical that people buy in, but they've gotta have a great skill set too that fits.
28:53
When I started my first company, it was 26, the coupon company. The biggest mistake I made, and we all make mistakes, one of them at least, was
29:03
I knew what I wanted in a hire, but I'd get somebody, because I'd feel like this sense of urgency, so I'd hire somebody that was really off -spec, off what
29:11
I was looking for, but try to fit a round peg in a square hole, it'll work out, let's just keep moving, and then they don't work out.
29:19
When you hire the wrong person, I just want any entrepreneur to please take this to heart, it's a triple whammy, here's why.
29:24
Number one, you've hired the wrong person, so you don't get the output you expected. Two, you've missed, once you hire for that role, then you stop looking.
29:34
The second whammy is, you've missed the time in looking for Mr. or Mrs. because you stopped looking because you hired someone else, and the third whammy is, it drags the team down, because when you have a high -performance team, and we really have truly built a high -performance team at True Play, when you have a high -performance team, everyone else wants great people.
29:53
It's like the 98 Chicago Bulls, or the dream team in 92, or what the
29:59
New England Patriots did for a long time, where you've got all these high -performance players, well, they want to be able to throw the ball, and have the next guy catch it and score.
30:07
They don't want to throw the ball, and the guy was looking the wrong direction, the ball goes out of bounds. High -performance people don't tolerate low -performance people, so if you start early with great people, you can build a snowball.
30:20
If you start with people who can't really do what you need them to do, it's really hard to ever get out of that rut.
30:26
And so that's my advice, try to be intentional about who you hire. Wow, that's great advice.
30:33
All right, last question. How are you doing in Austin there? I mean, Austin has been put on the map, it feels like, in the last five years.
30:39
It's kind of a politically split city. Everyone's talking about it because, you know, you've got Rogan putting it on the map there, but it was there before that.
30:47
But it's really kind of blown up over the last three to five years. How do you fit in there? Do you like it there? We love it.
30:53
So I grew up in Missouri. I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for four years. I lived in the
30:59
San Francisco Bay Area for 15 years. And then we moved to Austin eight years ago.
31:05
We love it. It's been one of the best decisions I've ever made. You've got to remember, Austin is still in Texas. Right.
31:12
Don't forget that. It's still in Texas. Great schools, great churches in town, a really legitimately strong great tech scene, great creative people.
31:24
I'm meeting some really fascinating people, whether they're neighbors or in my kids' basketball game, some of my kids' basketball team, some of the other dads, you get to know them, and they're interesting people.
31:36
It's been a wonderful, wonderful place to live and a wonderful decision. My wife's happy.
31:42
My kids are thriving. I love it. We've got great employees in the office. I mean, you know, it's warm and sunny.
31:48
I'm a little partial to that after having lived in the frozen tundra of Boston, Massachusetts for four years.
31:54
Yeah, so it's nice to have that sun during the winter months. Yeah, awesome. All right, cool. So let everyone know where they can find out more about you.
32:01
Maybe follow you or the company on social. Throw those out. We'll make sure we link them up. And then also where they can go to check this out if they'd like to maybe subscribe and see what you guys have to offer.
32:10
Absolutely. So please go to trueplaygames .com. You can sign up and subscribe today. We've got a free trial if you want to check it out as well.
32:18
You can follow us on Twitter. Trueplay, T -R -U -P -L -A -Y is how to spell trueplay, so drop the
32:24
E. We're on Twitter. We're on Instagram, Facebook. So we're on LinkedIn, too, if you're listening and you want to be part of a world -changing entertainment company that's going to put
32:36
God's truth first. And so check us out at Trueplay Games. And, you know, look, our vision, we're coming alongside parents.
32:45
We've heard a lot of parents say they're tired of toxic content. We've delivered, I think, a great product that we're getting so many people start to subscribe and get excited about, and we'd love to have people join us as part of that journey.
32:57
Yeah, that's awesome. Brent, thanks so much for taking a couple minutes out of your day today. Well, more than a couple of minutes to sit down with us and talk about what you've got going on.
33:05
We really appreciate you being here. Good to be with you, Greg. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Listen, this is so critically important.
33:12
I know we talk about it on the podcast so much, but we're always complaining. You know, why are they trying to shove this agenda down our throats or why do they show this to kids and why is there anything wholesome out there?
33:23
But then yet we don't take our money out of the pocketbook and we go support the guys that are actually doing it like Brent and his team at Trueplay.
33:30
So what we need to do is you need to go to that website, check it out, click on it, click around and subscribe if it's something that fits your family, because we can only grow things within the
33:40
Christian community if we're supporting those people who are actually doing that. So we need to put our money where our mouth is.
33:45
I know you guys have heard me talk about this day in and day out, but I think it's very important. That's how we have believers that are realtors, believers that are investors, believers that are creating art and that are creating content.
33:57
We have to support each other in doing that. We just can't complain that we're past the point of being complainers in this culture.
34:04
We now support and we create. And that's what we do. So I'm glad Brent could come on. Guys, thanks for listening to another episode of Dead Man Walking Podcast.
34:10
Remember, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Dead Man Walking Podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at dead men walking podcast at gmail dot com.