1st of weekly status update, you can stay up to date via linkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/going-from-good-great-anari-sengbe or on our YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChhvSsDl4BuMvtMqiLailTQGoing from Good To GreatI love the book, "Good to Great". In life, I proclaim myself to be a take responsibility guy, If/when something goes wrong, I take the blame. It's the best way to learn from my mistakes.
In business, the book Good to Great taught me the importance of acknowledging the hard truths, facts that prevent a delusion-ed perspective about one's business.
Moving forward, I'll offer weekly updates on the progress of transitioning MY Gamerholic brand from Good To Great. The 1st of these updates, addresses the hard truths, facts I must acknowledge and address to bring me back to reality from my grandiose aspirations.
When there's an elephant in the room, introduce him
Hard truth #1... it's still very early.
Being 1st is a good thing, being early is not. There is a difference. Being early is the equivalent of showing up at 3pm for a party that starts at 10pm, being 1st is showing up at 12am for a party that started at 10pm but undeniably being the best dressed. The key difference here is there will be enough people there at 12 to acknowledge your arrival.
In bitcoin and gaming, there are not enough people there yet, to acknowledge the best dressed at the party.
Reason's could be, bad content media overload. From instagram to snapchat, to twitter, to facebook, youtube and more, it's now a "what are your friends talking about" source of media than ever before.
It could also be hard truth evidence of a dumb money society vs the new era of smart money society. There's now effort required in figuring out just how much your $5 is worth. In the era of dumb money, You know you have $5, what you don't know is you are buying less with that same $5 over time. It's not a thought. In the era of smart money, you see your $5 is now $4.95 or $5.15 and it's a math comprehension that requires effort.
Americans, even the 16 year old math hurdled teenager, know the fluctuation of the price of a gallon of gas for his/her car, but somehow they are uncomfortable in relating that to bitcoin. This is a simple media problem.
Solution
Give Kim Kardashian bitcoin. The moment She tweets about bitcoin, the "what are your friends talking about" source of media becomes the perfect media vehicle to get the young and no longer dumb talking.
Until that happens, I still have the "it's still early" hard truth to acknowledge. With it comes the following:
Hard Truth#2
The pool of potential customers is very small. The pool of potential customers who have bitcoin to spend is even smaller.
Hard Truth#3
A bitcoin gaming platform is more expensive to maintain. Bitcoin developers are expensive and there's a padded marketing expense of educating potential customers.
Hard Truth#4
Other bitcoin gaming start ups have failed. Gambit the latest platform to remove bitcoin from their service.
Hard Truth#5
Women are an important demographic in gaming. From Zynga's farmville to Kings Candy Crush, women made these companies billions of dollars. Women participation in crypto currency is very low.
These are the hard truths on the bitcoin side, now the decision to create our own crypto currency may have muddy-ed the waters a bit and padded development, maintenance and marketing costs. We have our own crypto currency called Gamerholic coin. Gamerholic coin is a SHA-256 crypto currency much like bitcoin. For some time, the team considered why even have our own coin? The benefit was a coin with our own set of API's perfect for creating enhanced gaming scenarios.
While I still believe this was a good decision and it creates wild new possibilities for resource based games. A hard truth is it's a hard sell at this stage to game devs, who don't yet get bitcoin to begin with, yet alone comprehend an alt-coin with it's own market. In addition devs are nervous about Google play or IOS removing their game due to some crossed line with bitcoin, gamerholic coin inclusion.
With Gamerholic coin, comes market speculators. traders looking to profit by trading the coin and not necessarily participating in the gamerholic platform. I've yet to gauge what that means for the platform. It's leaned the coin to the sellers side, while demand inches ahead with willing customers.
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, get the right people in the right seats and pay them accordingly
Hard Truth #6: The need to generate money quickly
Gamerholic must generate money in order to get and keep the right people. Money can come from Investors or sales.
My approach has been the later, sales will bring investors.
Sales of Gamerholic shirts, including licensing the gamerholic brand and sales of arcade tokens for the grabbit game and mobile games.
Solution
Be open and upfront with the crypto currency community. These are a savvy bunch who as speculators, bitcoin enthusiasts or gamers, know a company does need to make money in order for them to profit as speculators, see the bitcoin ecosystem grow or get bitcoin into more games. What they don't want is to guess how we are making money.
Here's how the Gamerholic platform makes money:
1. The high score arcade: Gamerholic makes money from competitive plays in the high score arcade. Each time a game is played 50% of the play fee goes back to the leaderboard, the other 50% is split between the game developer and Gamerholic. For each $0.25 competitive play, gamerholic earns at least $0.0625
2. The Grabbit game: Each arcade token costs $0.25. If a game for a $10 gift card requires a minimum 4 players and each player needs 10 tokens to play, that covers the $10 cost of the gift card (4 players x 10 tokens = 40 tokens, 40 tokens x $0.25 = $10). The game will have a max of 10 players, so if a total of 10 players join the game, that's an overage of $15 (6 extra players x 10 tokens each = 60 tokens x $0.25 = $15 gross profit. If only 5 players join the game, we make $1.50.
3. Gamerholic shirts at an average cost of $15 per shirt.
4. Gamerholic coins: We'll sell Gamerholic coins in bulk at a discount to game developers and brands.
5. Gamerholic store: This is often a break even due to the 20% off discount for members who pay with Gamerholic coin.
With these elephants introduced, lets get them a seat and get them involved in the conversation
