Robert Angel | The Creator of Pictionary on How to Turn Your Ideas Into Reality

Audio Transcription

Speaker 1:
On today’s show, we interview Robert angel. Who’s the creature of the BB Pictionary game, the game that so many of you have played with your family and friends, the game Pictionary, he’s the founder of the Pictionary company and the game. And he joins us to drop an endless buffet of knowledge palms. And he’s got knowledge bombs about why ideas are easy and why execution is everything. Having an Ikea is one thing. But when we started getting the word, we’re having a wall and I thought it didn’t make a good board game. That’s my aha moment. And until I started working on it, if it was just an idea, and so I turn it over to garden, I started telling myself in a negative shift, a waiter

Robert Angel:
Plan, I don’t have the skills necessary to do this. Right. And so, yeah, so it was like, I put it away. I started buying into it,

Speaker 1:
My own, my own negativity. He talks about how to go from having an idea and actually turning that idea into reality. He talks about the importance of being resourceful, as opposed to just looking for the most resources. When you do a thousand games, 500 cards per game, that’s half a million game. They were supposed to come from the printer boarded in groups of 500 for their belt kit. When they came for the printer, they came 1,001, but they’re not calling it. They’re not Jordan. I freaked out. I did, I did not handle it well. And, but we had to figure it out. He talks about why you just have to roll up your sleeves and get it done. He talks about how to deal with rejection and how he was able to go out there and sell the Pictionary game to people all over this great country, one rejection at a time. And then he shares why he decided it was ultimately time to sell the company and to move on to the next phase of his career. Ladies and gentlemen, grab a pen and a pad and get prepared to take notes. As we interview the founder of Pictionary, what did you draw? A cucumber moose and goof pimples, goose pimples, real goose pimples. That’s a bad group, but they got it. Pictionary. The most fun you can have with a pencil,

Speaker 3:
Some shows don’t need a celebrity in a writer to introduce the show. This show does to man eight kids. Co-created by two different women, 13 moat time million dollar businesses, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time.

Speaker 1:
Sure.

Speaker 4:
[inaudible] is a very special occasion

Speaker 5:
Because we interviewing the man who has made so much fun possible in living rooms all throughout this great country. He’s the creator of Pictionary, Robert angel. Welcome to the thrive time show. How are you, sir?

Robert Angel:
I am fantastic. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 5:
Oh, man. Okay. Well, let me ask you this. When did you first have the idea to start the game now known as Pictionary?

Robert Angel:
Uh, I came up with picturing night tea. Well, the concept 1982, and I launched it in 1985,

Speaker 5:
82. You have the big idea. Now my understanding is you kind of worked on this idea for a while. You kind of crafted it. When did, when did you first have the idea? I guess, where were you when you first had the idea?

Robert Angel:
I first had the idea just to graduated from college and I didn’t know what I was going to do with a shiny new business degree, but I knew I wanted, but I knew that I wanted to work for myself. Yeah. My dad had been fired from his job and then I’m not gonna let somebody, you know, have that sway over me. So I’m looking for an opportunity and moved in with three buddies after college. And one of them said, Hey, I want to play a game. You should. We called it charades on paper. And, and you know, I didn’t think that the opportunity was just have fun. And so, you know, I started sketching words out of addiction

Speaker 5:
Right now. Uh, these guys you lived with, uh, where did you live at the time? What, what state

Robert Angel:
Were you in? Uh, Spokane Washington

Speaker 5:
Really? Spokane is gorgeous. It’s gorgeous. How long did you live out there?

Robert Angel:
I was there for about 20 years.

Speaker 5:
That’s John Stockton country there, sir. That is an incredible place to live.

Robert Angel:
It’s doing stock in country. Yeah. His dad owns a bar up there, but we all used to frequent. Uh, yeah, no, it was a great place to grow up.

Speaker 5:
Did you like John Stockton?

Robert Angel:
How do you not like John Stockton? I was, I was a Sonic span, but as a human, as a player who he was just fantastic. You got to like John stock

Speaker 5:
Now for the listeners out there that don’t know who John Stockton was,

Speaker 4:
Your job title, each doctor Mike dilemmas stock to the middle, back to Carl, the mailman drive. Hey, score stock to come alone. 26, assess the needs for the time.

Speaker 5:
10.5 assists per game. He’s six foot one. And he just was unbelievable. The pick and roll. He was the pick and roll he did. Did you remember watching the pick and roll?

Robert Angel:
Oh yeah. Kim and Malone and the whole nine yards. Yeah, they were, they were quite a show for a long time.

Speaker 5:
How would you draw the pick and roll

Robert Angel:
Pretty badly? I think we should just get something out in the open before we get started. I am terrible at my own game.

Speaker 5:
This Justin, the founder of Pictionary is terrible at his own game. That’s okay. Okay. So now you, you, you, at some point you, you started to develop traction with this. Um, I say traction as in, we always tell people, you know, the idea is great, but it’s the execution of the idea that that’s better. Um, can you tell me, like when did you start to gain traction with this Pictionary game?

Robert Angel:
Well, yeah, as you say, it’s having an idea. Here’s one thing. So when we started sketching, the words were having a fall and I thought, okay, this would make a good board game. That’s my hot moments, my epiphany. And until I started working on it, it didn’t, you know, it was just an idea. And so, and so I decided know I started overthinking. So instead of getting started, I started telling myself know negative self talk. I’m just a waiter. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have the skills necessary to do this. Right. And so, yeah, so it was like, I put it away. I started buying into my own, my own negativity. And so I overthought it. I basically panicked. And instead of getting started, I shut down, I put it away and I had to get away from the problem. I had to stop thinking about it. So I physically removed myself. I put myself as I call it in time out, I stopped thinking about pictures and stuff, thinking about how I could do this business plans and everything else. You know, I went to, I went to movies. I hang out with my friends. So a couple of weeks later I went back to picture and I said, okay, how can I break this down into the simplest easiest, first step to put this whole thing started. Got it.

Robert Angel:
And, and so it was the word list, creating words. That’s what drove the game. And I had everything I needed in front of me, uh, in the house wasn’t that I had to overthink the next step. I grabbed a pad of paper, a pencil, and a dictionary old were not dictionary. I went in the backyard and opened up the dictionary and I looked for scanning the first page. And the first word I saw that made sense for me was aardvark, aardvark, aardvark. Hmm. So fucking assist. I cut the database by write down the word aardvark. I literally started to shake. I broke into a sweat because by writing down the word aardvark, I was no longer a waiter. I was a game inventor. I was hit by one simple work. So that’s how the whole Pictionary dream, the whole Pictionary saga, everything about it got started was simply writing down the word aardvark and everything went from there. I wrote a second work and a third and a fourth. And that’s how it just built into what it became.

Speaker 5:
Now, when you built something into what it became, I mean, walk us through the messy middle. What was the hardest part of going from writing down these words, into getting this thing to market? I think a lot of people have ideas, but they never take them to market. What was the hardest part of going from, you know, the, the refining of the idea into actually getting this out there?

Robert Angel:
Uh, I think the hardest part was actually a big plus. The hardest part was we had, no, I got a couple of partners, but had no idea what we were doing. I mean, there was no manual for how to do any of the town of market and selling produce and all these things. So we just kind of made them up as we went along. And I think that was actually our superpower. I think that was a huge plus not knowing what the next step was. So we just took it a task after task, after task. Um, I see, you know, the, the physically putting the games together or producing the first thousand games, uh, was a difficult task, a very difficult physical tasks that we had to overcome.

Speaker 5:
And how did you make the games? Like how did you physically do it?

Robert Angel:
We, we, we, uh, came to the conclusion. We needed nine different parts to the game boxes and wraps and boards and diets. And so on. I went through the, uh, the internet of the day, which were the yellow pages. And I literally looked up the word boxes. There were boxes. So I found a box maker and then we physically found a pencil. And then we found diet and cubes and all the rest of it. And it had nine different companies supplying with, uh, parts, all shipped to my apartment.

Speaker 5:
Whoa.

Robert Angel:
And you know, everything, I own everything I own, you know, fit into the back bedroom to make room for all this stuff. And it tells you how much stuff. I didn’t know. And we physically hand assembled the first thousand games by ourselves in my apartment.

Speaker 5:
Oh, wow. Well now, okay, so you made 10, you said 10,001

Robert Angel:
Down

Speaker 5:
1000. Okay. So 1000 now, when you make a thousand of anything, it’s gotta be a monotonous tedious. Uh, uh, there gotta be errors everywhere. You gotta be making mistakes. What was kind of the, the craziest thing that happened as you were attempting to make a thousand games? My hand,

Robert Angel:
Well, I’m, I’m laughing now. Uh, so we had sent out the invitations for the launch. And when you do a thousand games, uh, there’s 500 cards per game. So it’s half a million game cards. So they were supposed to come from the printer sorted in groups of 500 for the thousand games. When they came for the printer, they came a thousand of card, one, a thousand of card too. It’s like, they’re not correlated. They’re not sorted.

Speaker 5:
I

Robert Angel:
Just freak. I won’t lie. I out, I didn’t, I did not handle it well. And, but we had to figure it out. My two partners and myself, because we had already sent out the invitations. So I’m going alright, let’s do it by hand. Okay. That’s absolutely game cards by hand in my apartment. And what we wound up doing was getting a six, eight foot tables. And then we went to Nordstrom and got 170 shoe boxes. And we set up the shoe boxes in a zigzag fashion around my apartment and hand collated and sorted everyone game cards in 16 hour days over six days. And we got it done.

Speaker 5:
Did you, did you go into Nordstrom? And you just said, Hey, can you give me boxes of shoes? I mean, or shoe boxes? How did you get those?

Robert Angel:
Yeah, I mean, we have another experience with North summit, which was really our big break that I can talk about a little bit. But, uh, we literally got in my car, drove to Nordstrom’s bank on their back door and said, Hey, evidence, your boxes, you want to get rid of. And they did. And they gave us 178. I mean, it wasn’t, it wasn’t rocket science. Didn’t over think it just went in and they said, sure. And we wound up filling up the car and bringing them back.

Speaker 5:
Hmm. Hmm. Okay. So, so you now, uh, you have the shoe boxes. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve, you’re assembling these things. When did you start to get some sales momentum going or, or, or how did you go about getting some sales, mojo going?

Robert Angel:
Uh, I think I mentioned earlier, there was no manual for any of this. So I just kind of went with what felt right. My sales, my sales calls were, um, how can we put this? I figured if you sold anything, you might as well be selling fixture. I didn’t, I didn’t ask what the question was about selling to toys, fours or toys R us. I just got to put the game with my arm and I would walk down the street and walk in any store. I walked into a real estate comprehend and I said, Hey, you guys should take on six games and put them on your table. So when a customer comes in, it’s gonna buy a house. It looks like somebody lives, their family values. They took six. I went to pharmacies, I went to a bookstore what’s up Nordstrom. So I went to all these different places, but what it did and was put picture in a place that people wouldn’t usually find games. So it was disruptive, but it was alternative distribution. So back then, if you wanted a game, you had to go to a toy store, which were, there were only like three or four in all of Seattle or toys R us and all the rest of it. So unless you really wanted a board game, you didn’t see it. So we just went to all these places where people wouldn’t normally see a game and gained, uh, and got that distribution. That was a big, a big way for us to get ahead.

Speaker 5:
So a lot of listeners would say, Oh man, you went to hundreds of stores. How did I get, I know a lot of our listeners would want to know, how did you deal with the rejection of, I mean, I mean, did, did, did you get a lot of rejection or did everybody just say yes right away?

Robert Angel:
Um, I learned very early on not to take it personally, not to take the rejection personally, because I knew picture it was a great kid. I knew it was a fun games. I knew, you know, it was all about picture. I knew that people wanted this game. So if a buyer didn’t take the game, it wasn’t because of me, it wasn’t because of my sales prowess. It was because of anything. It was because they just didn’t want the games. And that was okay. So I didn’t take it personally. So when I was rejecting, I go, okay, next door. And I watched out marched down the street with the game in my hand. And, and to be honest, with each rejection, I learned to understand why I was being rejected. And I put that in my, my quiver for the next sales call. So it wasn’t just like, Holy Odo. I learned as I went along, but in those first calls, it was, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t Pictionary. It was something out of my control.

Speaker 5:
What kind of a strike rate did you have? I mean, for every 100 people that you pitched to how many said yes.

Robert Angel:
Oh, wow. Um, I would say probably about 25%.

Speaker 5:
Yeah.

Robert Angel:
1100. But again, we’re dealing with people, you know, I got, I sold a hundred percent of the, of the toy store

Speaker 5:
When you were getting rejected. Um, there’s, there’s all sorts of self-talk. And, and maybe you could speak to that a little bit, because I think I am missing my amygdala because I stuttered as a kid. And, uh, you know, the amygdala is the emotional processing center of the brain. It’s the almond sized portion of the brain. And I, whenever I got rejected while building my first company, DJ connection.com, I can honestly say this. I didn’t care. And every time I got rejected, it made me more fired up. I don’t know that that was something that I was intentional about. Did you have like a, a book that you read that spa inspired you, a movie you saw? Did you have a mantra that you said, what kept you coming back?

Robert Angel:
Uh, what kept me coming back was, was the vision that I had for picture. And I knew I had something special. I knew it was, it was a great product. And so I, I just instinctively knew to keep going. And as I said, not to take things personally, not to try to understand what the other guy’s thinking, gotta understand where the buyer was coming from. You know, you certainly want it cut out, set their negativity and, and make the sale. But it was just as an dyeing belief in what I was doing. And it was, it was that the positive self talk at this point first, it was a negative. Now that was a positive. And so every time I get rejected, Oh, I can do this. I can do this. I get my courage back up, walk into the next score. Just as excited.

Speaker 5:
Did you say things to yourself in your head? Did you, did you talk to yourself

Robert Angel:
Always?

Speaker 5:
Oh, you still do. Okay. Okay. So, so you’re now, so you are now getting some traction, getting some mojo. When was the first time where you were really getting a lot of sales where you thought to yourself, you know, this may work, this is going to be huge. This is good. This is a thing people know about this. When did you know if this is a thing, or when did you first run into somebody who owned your game that you didn’t sell it directly to? Or when did you feel like you did it?

Robert Angel:
Uh, you know, I know, I know the answer that in, we started to Seattle was 26 years old, 1985. And about less than 24 months later, we are I’m in Europe. We’ve expanded to Europe and we’d had a lot of success. And I heard a lot of stories in Seattle and the United States about how picturing touched their lives, but it still, for whatever reason, wasn’t quite real, it was such a rollercoaster. It was such a train that we were on. And then I remember this one, one time, the first time I went to France for the, uh, marketing team in Paris and I was tired and couldn’t quite get my head around what was going on and jet lag. So like I went for a walk, put myself in timeout again, and I remember walking down the street and I looked, and in this window randomly was Pictionary in French. And I remember I’m just, I’m just kind of looking around, like, I’m on candid camera. And I look, and I see anybody else seeing this. And it was that weird moment where I can still recall, I can still point to where it was in the window. I can remember the color, what I was wearing, everything. And I thought, Oh my God, I did that. I invented that. And it’s in a window in Paris, France. And it was just this otherworldly moment.

Speaker 5:
Now I understand that you started to run into copycats, um, cashflow trouble. So people trying to steal your ideas. Could you walk us through how long? Cause you had the idea and it took you three years to get the thing to market, if I’m correct. Uh, how long in, before you ran into cashflow problems and copycats

Robert Angel:
All the cats, the copy cats, they don’t start galloping you until you’re successful. So, uh, you know, uh, uh, stealing your ideas, the most sincere form of flattery. Well, uh, we trademarked and copyrighted the rules and the name. So nobody could good, uh, steal our name or our, uh, intellectual property. And if they did, we went after them. But we couldn’t people from creating grindings because you couldn’t patent that. So there was 57 different knockoffs in the marketplace. By the time we sold it to Mattel in 2001, but we were the first, we were the best we had the brand and the name recognition, so nobody could have thrown us. So we were first to market in that. Uh, and as far as the cash flow problems, we borrowed to produce those 1000 games, $1,000, or excuse me, uh, $35,000. And that was enough to produce the thousand games a little bit for marketing.

Robert Angel:
And that was it. We didn’t have any leftover for salaries or anything else. So we used that money for proof of, uh, of the product and at work. And so now our cash will problem basically comes, uh, inventory problem. How do we, how do we scale this demand was bigger than we could afford. And so we had to go back to our investor to raise more capital. And without that, we would have been dead in the water. We weren’t making enough in cashflow to pay for the next round of games. We couldn’t keep going 1000 games, 1000. We had to do 10,000 to keep up with the current demand.

Speaker 5:
Now, um, you had an opportunity to sell the company to Milton Bradley, I believe, or, or knock out a licensing deal with Milton Bradley. Um, tell us about this, this opportunity and maybe why you chose to pass on it.

Robert Angel:
Yeah. This was one of those, those moments, those seminal moments in your life, your business life, uh, that had a profound influence on the business. We, we did raise some capital. We were able to get to 10,000, but demand just, just exploded. So the only way for us to scale the business was to license. So that’s, we give somebody to look the, the rice delay manufacturer, sell market and distribute the game. And he passed the royalty for the rights. Okay. She’s pretty straightforward. So we have a meeting with Hilton breath, the biggest board game company in the world.

Robert Angel:
We walk into the meeting and the marketing guy looks at us and he slaps his thing and he goes, boom, on the table. And we look at it and what does that? Well, it’s a picture, a game. Here’s what we’re going to do for you guys. We’re going to change the packaging. We’re going to change the graphics when he changed the rules, when he changed, some of the rules were to sell a ton of these. Uh, okay. Well, we, we didn’t really believe that was a good idea, but let’s let’s have conversation. So the contract came back from them with the biggest royalty rate they’ve ever given. And the one thing they wouldn’t put in the contract that we demanded was you demanded. They cannot change the packaging without a written approval. We didn’t know what they were going to do with it. And here I am a 20 and I’m 26 years old, 27 years old making $500 a month.

Robert Angel:
And I’m driving a 10 year old car. All I have to do is sign that contract. My partners we’re in agreement. We’re in alignment that Milton Bradley did not share our vision of Pictionary. So what they were proposing was not in our best interest and that certainly wasn’t in Pictionary, but best interest. So our vision, our vision from the start was to keep Pictionary what it was our vision was to recreate the fun and the excitement that I had when I was playing with my roommates and friends packaged that. And that would be success that would give us some money that would give us a success, give us the game stuff. So here’s Milton Bradley mucking with our vision. We said, no,

Speaker 5:
I turned it down.

Robert Angel:
The ticker. We had no plan B. This wasn’t like we had some other company going, okay.

Speaker 5:
Were you on the phone when you told him? No. Were you on the phone when you told him no. Were you face to face? Where were you when you told him? No,

Robert Angel:
That was, that was, that was, the struggle was on a, on a, Hey, a speaker box back in the day, it was it’s conferencing. So we’re listening to this voice through this black box that we couldn’t figure out who it was, what, whatever, what we knew, what they were saying. And so we said, you know, we need you to put this in writing. And we all, they said, we can’t, we all look at each other and I literally pushed the stop button, muted them, kick them off the call. And that was the end of it. That was the end of that call. But it, but it was a right decision. You know, we had no plan B our, our plan B was to go back to work, to find out how, how we could get more games, how we could find some more capital to produce more games. Cause, uh, the popularity was exploding, even worse, even better. But, um, it was not, um, as the salmon setting calls it, it was not our just costs. We were willing to go back to waiting tables rather than give up on our cause and our vision.

Speaker 5:
And how many guys were with you on the team? At this point,

Robert Angel:
I had three partners. One was a silent partner, mind financier, and then I had two business partners. One was a graphic artist. One was, uh, the account, a CPA, the business side, and the three of us made this beautiful, beautiful team.

Speaker 5:
Did you guys all agree on the decision?

Speaker 6:
Yep. Yup,

Robert Angel:
Sure. Yes. We, we totally aligned. There was never a time when one of us, one of us said, well, maybe we should. And for that, I am so grateful that we were all on the same page. So we were all shared the same vision of what we were going after. And it just made that decision along with numerous other decisions. I mean, this was a big one, but there was many, many decisions we had to make as an organization that since we were, uh, had shared the same vision, uh, it made those decisions easier.

Speaker 5:
Now let’s talk about this for a second. Let’s talk about this. So you, you then sold 38 million games before selling, how long did it take your chief from when you first had the idea that Robert, until you sold 38 million games, how many years, how many, how long did it take you?

Robert Angel:
We launched, uh, June 1st, 1985, which, which in less than two months, is it 35th anniversary of that launch? And we sold it almost 17 years later to Mattel. So it took 17 years to sell that many games,

Speaker 5:
17 years to get to, to get rich overnight. Is that right? Did you get rich quick?

Robert Angel:
Yeah. Yeah. It just didn’t show up one day. No, there were many hurdles, many problems. Uh, there was, you know, a lot of positive, a lot of negative just as like any business. I, we weren’t special as far as that goes. It’s how we dealt with that. Made it different, made it unique. And so, yeah, over 17 years of blood, sweat and tears, we were the biggest selling board game in the world for about 15 of those 17 years

Speaker 5:
Now. What were, uh, what, what, uh, uh, books did you read along the way? Were there a couple of books along the way you read or a couple movies you watched or any, anything that kinda kept you encouraged along the way, or maybe a book you would reference for recommend for our listeners?

Robert Angel:
Um, yeah, I I’m, I’m a big fan of, uh, the four agreements.

Speaker 5:
The four agreements. Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah. Tell, tell me, what’s this book about the four agreements?

Robert Angel:
Well, it’s just agreements you make with yourself and they’re not, they’re not, uh, earth shattering. There’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but one of the agreements is don’t take anything personally. So there’s four simple agreements. And so that is that without knowing it, that permeated my life as I’ve discussed. So I’ve said, so I was living these things before, before I knew, um, what I was doing. So that was a big one. Uh, never eat alone is a good one for right now. Razi, that’s a good one. Uh, recommended that one, uh, of course gamechanger, which is my book coming out on the, the whole experience,

Speaker 5:
The book’s called game changer. Check it out folks.

Robert Angel:
But so there’s, there’s a lot of good books out.

Speaker 5:
Now. Let’s talk about your book. Why did you decide to write this book?

Robert Angel:
I was time I wanted to share with other entrepreneurs and just people love pictures. And I just wanted to share my experience, you know, to show that, uh, you know, if you, if you really tried to take that first step and anything is possible, uh, it’s, it’s inspirational. Um, that, that we went from, I went from waiting tables, straining this, this behemoth. And I just wanted to share that story with people and hopefully that.

Speaker 5:
And what, what, what’s the title of the book? One more time,

Robert Angel:
A game changer

Speaker 5:
Game changer. Okay. In the, in the book game changer, the story of Pictionary and how I turned a simple idea and to the best selling board game in the world. Um, did you, uh, do you, do you talk about it in the book, uh, selling the company, ultimately selling the company?

Robert Angel:
Oh yeah, for sure. That was a two Metalla 2001. That was, that was a big moment as well.

Speaker 5:
Did you get $7 when you sold the company? Did you make $7,

Speaker 7:
$17,

Speaker 5:
Sir, you get a mate, you get to make a point.

Speaker 8:
Yeah. It was time.

Robert Angel:
What did, after 17 years we’d become a stable brand and a mature brand. And so I, I totally admit some of the passion was gone for, for the business, you know, after 17 years. And so I thought the timing was right to do that. Plus I had a young family that was becoming more important to me. And so just a bunch of different reasons all came together at the same time that kind of dictated the sale. And once again, you know, partners were all on board with it.

Speaker 5:
Hmm. Hmm. Okay. So let’s talk about this for a second. So your partners are all on it and I, and it’s, unless it’s a published, you know, unless it’s a number that you want to talk about, I’m not going to ask you how much money you got there, but did anybody not want to sell it or did, did, what did you guys, I mean, did, did, was it a universal decision that you, everybody wanted to sell it w was anybody opposed to selling it?

Robert Angel:
Um, we were, we were all the same page of selling it. I think my partners, one of them would have been happy to continue. Um, but it wasn’t a forceful, I, I don’t want to sell, let’s not do it. I want to continue. Uh, I think he was still more just to be perfectly honest, a little more engaged than I was. Uh, but ultimately we were all on the same page. I know you don’t have your 17 years. Um, it, wasn’t an insignificant amount of money

Speaker 5:
That didn’t hurt. And when you, when you sold it, did you, did you feel bad? Did you, did you miss it ever? I mean, do you ever look back at it and go, God, I wish I still owned a Pictionary.

Robert Angel:
Hmm. I, I won’t, I won’t say that I missed it, but you know, it was a big part of my license. He included the creation of 20 years. It was like, you know, the longest relationship I’ve ever had. Um, so it was, uh, a labor of love when it started. So, yeah. Well, when I sold it, I, I looked back on it all the time fondly. And so it was a part of my life and continue to be a part of my life after I sold it. But there was no regrets that I sold it when I did. That was the right decision for me. It was, it was probably, and possibly one of the few very selfish decisions I made with picturing. It was always us, my partners and I Terry, Gary and rich, and we were all in agreement. And this is probably the one time about selling. If we weren’t in agreement, I probably would’ve. I would’ve said something, but it was time for me to do it

Speaker 5:
Now. Uh, w I have somebody here in the studio today by the name of Jonathan who he, you know, there’s certain people that love the civil war so much. They dress up like the characters, you know, and you go, are you really a civil war, man, actor. I mean, there’s people that actually dress up, you know, like civil war people, there’s people that love Marvel movies so much, they dress up like it, there’s so many people that the people who love star Wars so much, they dress up like a Wookie for the, for like a one year before the movie comes out. John is like this with board games. No, John is he’s into games. John will sit down with you and start a game of monopoly and he will not leave until he wins. And you might, you might have a slow death. You might pass away three years into playing the game, but he will not stop until there’s a clear winner. Uh, Jonathan, you’ve got, you’ve got here, the founder of Pictionary. Uh, what questions do you have for, for Robert angel, sir? So any new games in the horizon for you? Ooh,

Robert Angel:
Ooh. What’s funny is I’ve been playing Pictionary more recently than I have in years. I’m playing zoom, Pictionary a ton over, like I said, over zoom, FaceTime, whatever. I’m having a ball playing the game.

Speaker 5:
Are you winning?

Robert Angel:
No.

Speaker 5:
Okay.

Robert Angel:
I am, but I have fun. That’s the beauty of be that’s one of the beauties of Pictionary is that you don’t have to win or lose to have fun. So am I having fun? Absolutely. How am I winning? Not so much. Not so much. That’s okay.

Speaker 5:
Johnny, Jonathan, you you’re, you’re trying to, Jonathan has a, this is what this, Robert, let me tell what Jonathan does. He doesn’t hop on the show very much, but what he does is, you know, how there’s certain reporters that like to ask a question statement where they try to paint, you know, the guest into a corner with a gotcha question. That’s really what he lives for. So I’m gonna him to ask you a few more questions at any point. If you don’t like the question, you can just hang up on him. We’re all going him. So, John, what’s your next question for here for the founder of Pictionary, let’s say that the, the founder of, or the creator of monopoly was still alive and you guys sat down at your dinner table and you guys played Pictionary who would win that

Robert Angel:
I’ve been asked. I’ve been asked a lot of questions. Got to tell you that’s the first, uh, Ooh. Wouldn’t that? I’m gonna, I’m just gonna go with myself.

Speaker 5:
Okay. And what about the other way around, if you had to play monopoly with the creator of monopoly, would you win that one?

Robert Angel:
Ooh, Ooh. I’ll call that one a draw. I like to be a little confident and say that. Yeah. I would be able to hold my own against that guy.

Speaker 5:
So a more serious question is, so you obviously are a inventor, you you’re a creator. And so do you find yourself just always having ideas of other, you know, products or ideas that you would like to pursue in the past? Do you just carry like a notebook around where you write these down? Or what does that look like?

Robert Angel:
Yeah, I, I’m a real big believer in writing things down and it used to be in a notepad, but for several years now I have a, I think it’s called voice notes on my phone. And so when I have an idea on side or anything, I think it’s absolutely brilliant. I will just make a voicemail and I’ll get back to them. I don’t look at them every day, but every week or so, I’ll just read through them and listen through them and see, which makes sense. I mean, you know, not every ideas is a winner, so I, I just like going down radicals is kind of, one of my, one of my superpowers is I go deep down a rabbit hole until I’ve either flush the idea out or realized it’s not a good idea, but I do take notes for sure.

Speaker 5:
And so you, you obviously create a Pictionary, uh, you’ve written a book. And so what’s kind of the next big thing for you. Do you already have that planned out?

Robert Angel:
I think, well, the book has been in a five years of a labor of love and pain and sweat and tears. So I’m going to take the next year or so and promote the book. And one of the things that I’ve really working a lot on is a speaking, and I don’t even use the word speaking career. I love talking to college kids. I love talking to young people about my experience and, and motivating and inspiring them to be whoever it is they want to be. And that’s my new passion. You know, there’s those entrepreneurs we tend to get in our own heads. And then we start thinking about all the things that everybody’s telling us to do. Instead, I love being creative. I love now listening to other people’s noises. And so my new, my new thing is, is definitely sharing that experience and what I’ve learned and hopefully have an impact and influence on people. Really. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 5:
Now I have a question for you, sir, cause I want to help. I want to tap into your genius here so that you can continue to make a big influence on our half a million listeners here. So I’ve got my final three questions coming in rapid fire. Okay. When you were building Pictionary, what time did you start your day everyday? I mean, how did you organize the first four hours of every day?

Robert Angel:
I did not organize the first four hours, but I did have a mindset every morning. I did two things. First mindset was I remind myself of what the vision of Pictionary was. And that was to create this game that had the same feeling that I had with my friend and that dictated the decisions I made during the day. So when they would come in, I wouldn’t have to panic and stress. I knew what it was and too, I told my mind and I said to myself, I don’t know what’s going to happen today. I’m just learning as I go. Every step is new. So when something new comes in, I’m not going to panic, just going to figure it out, do the best I can and learn from it. So instead of the panic mode, all the time, I was in absorbing mode and those two mindsets, what I started every day set my day up for success.

Speaker 5:
Hmm. Okay. Okay. Okay. So now, uh, what time did you typically start your day?

Robert Angel:
Oh, Oh, I, I, um, I don’t even have an answer for that question, except when I would get up. I mean, I was, it was quintessential startup mode. I was working 1820 hours a day.

Speaker 5:
Whoa, you said 18 or 20 hours a day. You were working. Where did you, I just hear you were correct, sir. Did you work 18 or 20 hours a day?

Robert Angel:
Heck no. 16 to 18 hours. How’s that?

Speaker 5:
And I hear that so much from top entrepreneurs that the level of sacrifice and dedication it requires to become super successful is always tremendous. And I don’t think people realize how much work goes into building a great game, like Pictionary or a great brand or a great business. Robert angel, you are a great American. Your, your new book is in bookstores everywhere. You can buy it on amazon.com. The book is called game changer. The story of Pictionary,

Robert Angel:
You can preorder, you can, you can preorder it on Rob angel.com. It’s pre-ordered at Amazon right now with provigil.com. You can get it. It’s all good,

Speaker 5:
Brother. I appreciate your time. I really do appreciate you coming on this show and, and sharing the story of how you built a, one of the greatest games in American history.

Robert Angel:
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. And it was a good, it was good. Fun. I appreciate it.

Speaker 5:
And now folks we’d like to end each and every show with a boom because boom stands for big overwhelming optimistic momentum. And that’s the kind of energy that was required to build, to build Pictionary and to build any successful company. You’ve got to bring that big overwhelming optimistic moment. So without further ado, let’s do it. Three, two, one, boom.