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The Amazing Authorities Podcast
The Game of Business: How Paul Paul Turns Role-Playing into Real Profits and Powerful Teams
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Amazing Authorities podcast where game changers, visionaries and category leaders share how they built their brands, platforms and global influence. Your host is Mitch Carson, international speaker, media strategist and creator of the Instant Authority system. If you're ready to learn from those who've done it and want to become the go to expert in your space, you're in the right place.
- [00:31]
B
Paul Pape from Omaha, Nebraska is here today. He's a guy that I would describe, a man I would describe as not only a double published author. He's fun and we are going to have a fun conversation. And I don't even want to call it an interview. Paul, welcome to the show because thanks.
- [00:52]
C
So much for having me.
- [00:52]
B
Yeah, because when I looked at your YouTube channel and played your intro video, I said, bingo. I like this guy. He's fun, he's funny, he's got a sense of humor and a personality. And a personality is what's necessary and in order to thrive in today's world. Because so many people are caught up into this on their phone and they don't allow themselves to interact and engage with humans. And you've, you've brought the fun back into business. And if you can gamify your business, tell us about that. I mean, the floor is yours, Paul.
- [01:32]
C
I appreciate it. So you mentioned I have some books here. So I've got two books. I started with this one here, which is the Creators Creative Players Guide to Business. And what it was is I've been coaching and consulting creatives for about eight years now. Been doing creative entrepreneurship for over 20 years. And what I found was that a lot of creatives had a really difficult time understanding basic business principles. A lot of it just kind of went over their heads or their eyes would glaze over when you start talking about Roas and Roi and all that fun stuff. And so what I did is I was, I was sitting down with a small business and they're very much a creative based business. And I asked them, okay, what are your individual roles in the business? And they all said, we do everything. Said, no, you can't run a business doing every, Everybody can't do everything. You all have to have your specialty. I said, so why don't I do this? Why don't we play a session of Dungeons and Dragons? But instead of Dungeons and Dragons, what we're going to do is I'm going to, we're going to gamify your business. And so each one of you is going to have a character, but your character is essentially your role. In the business, your expertise. Now you can have suggestions for other people, but if they're the ones in charge of that aspect, then they're the ones who take the lead. And we play that for about four and a half hours. And it just dawned on me. It was like one of those light bulb moments that went, this is how you reach creatives. You don't talk in a linear speak, you talk in a more creative story based method. And from that, it's basically where this book came out of and what I did with it is we start by asking two fundamental questions. What are you passionate about? Which is an easy one. Most people are passionate about something and then what is it that you do with that passion that is different than anyone else? And the answer to that question is really the seed of your business. They say that the riches are in the niches. And that is absolutely true. And so what we do is we take that and from there we create a character sheet, which is basically you as a business within the world. And then from there we work on what your strengths and weaknesses are. And a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, and I can admit that I'm one of those people as well, have a hard time saying out loud what my weaknesses are because, you know, I'm perfect.
- [03:48]
B
You know, well, my mom said that about me too. She said, mitch, you're perfect. But she lied to me.
- [03:53]
C
But anyway, right, so what we do with this book is we actually have you separate yourself. You, you're still doing introspection, but what we're doing is it as a character. So you're. Instead of saying, well, my weakness is this, you're saying, my character's weakness is this. And it helps to separate you just enough that you can be objective to what you need and you need to know what you're good at and what you're bad at so that you can find other people to compliment you. And that's the whole point behind it.
- [04:20]
B
I love it. I love it. So it's a deflection. Yeah, A good objective view of something that allows somebody to separate himself or herself and then look at it through a different lens. Oh, that's, that's brilliant. I love it. So give me an example of a company that you've worked with and how you.
- [04:41]
C
One of one of them is called Dragons and Beasties. That's one of my favorite businesses that I've worked with. And that was actually the team that taught me to got me into this one here, got me to the writing these books. And they were basically the Main proprietor of the business used to hand sculpt little dragon figurines and she would sell them onesies, twosies. And then what happened is she was approached by someone about sketch scaling up the business and they kind of said okay. So it was a husband and wife team and then they brought in their sister and said okay, let's scale it up. And what happened was the guy gave bad business advice, but the creatives in the business didn't understand the business enough, especially the business terminology and the methodology that goes with it. So they kind of were in for the ride. And the guy who was the expert almost ran him into the ground. They were netting a seven. They're a seven figure business and but they were netting negative 55 to $60,000 a year. And so they brought me in as a consultant and my first question was, where's the money? And then what we did is we dug into it and we found out that it was just bad advice but they didn't understand it and they didn't understand when certain contracts were being filled, like what to read and how to understand it. And so that was really what brought me in. And then now they're on track to collect that seven figures as opposed to losing it all through just leaking around the sides.
- [06:07]
B
So who is the what, what type of company is best? What is your ideal market? I know we over hear the word avatar, but who can you help? Could you help a huge company? Could you help the morale at X, formerly known as Twitter, after Elon came in and did what he did, would that be something to raise morale in that company that was basically flogged?
- [06:34]
C
I think a big part of it is it depends on the work culture. A lot of businesses that I've had the opportunity to work with have they have an issue with people lower on the rung speaking up to those higher on the rung. And so what happens is that we bring me in to have like, we actually do like a live RPG role playing game session here where we roleplay our individual roles within a scenario. We call them campaigns because that's what they do in RPGs, but we create a scenario in which other like everyone's expertise is accounted for in different ways. And what we found is that the management, the uppers, don't really want to listen to it. So I can work for a company like X, but what I typically do is I remove we, I do a session with just the uppers and I do a session with the people who are the actual working for the business. My ideal Avatar is actually small to medium sized businesses or people who are just starting out. I also, and this is actually a great intro to my second book, I introduced this to high schools and colleges as well for creatives. I have a terminal degree in, I have an mfa. That's the last I could get in my degree field.
- [07:49]
B
Master of Fine Arts.
- [07:50]
C
Yep. Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego. And they taught me how to be super creative. They're the top three schools. Super creative person. When I graduated, they're like, good luck. And I'm like, well, what do I do with this?
- [08:02]
B
Right, right.
- [08:03]
C
You figure it out. So I did. And so what this book is, is actually the Game Master's Guide. So this is for people to help teach this other book here. So this is a self led book. You can do this individually if you want or if you want to do it in a class setting. You actually use the Game Master's guide for that. And it teaches teachers how to teach via storytelling, which I found over the course of years to be the best way for students to remember things and to experience things through story as opposed through paperwork and, you know, looking at spreadsheets and all that fun stuff. Gotta use that.
- [08:33]
B
When you say story, I understand that would be, I would call that a higher level of consumption and retention. How about story with acting out? Is that what you do? Because you said Master of Fine Arts, so I presume that's partially acting.
- [08:50]
C
Is it theater? Yeah, yeah, theater.
- [08:53]
B
So would you include that in your deliverable?
- [08:56]
C
That's the great thing about the role playing is that's what we do. We get up there and we, and I don't want to say it's acting and I don't like to use that terminology when I'm dealing with real people because we're not acting in our real life. We're really doing these things. So we'll role play it. And that's used in therapy all the time. You know, it's better.
- [09:13]
B
Better labeling.
- [09:14]
C
Yes, exactly. And so it, it is acting. I mean, I just did a TED talk last year and that's acting too. You know, even though it's, I'm an expert, I'm going up there and I'm giving my, my speech. It's still considered act. I mean, I have a theater background and so that's really where my head goes for a lot of these things. And so. But we, we do it. Role playing as opposed to acting?
- [09:32]
B
Yep. Oh, that's fantastic. And do people come back for around two.
- [09:39]
C
It, it really Depends. Like I, I hate to say these numbers out loud because it really. But when you do like a room full of a hundred people, only about 30%, 30 to 40% will actually see the process through. And it's not because the process isn't interesting. It's just because their entrepreneurship is not for everybody. It's a lot of work, you know.
- [09:58]
B
Oh yeah.
- [09:59]
C
And so what happens is, you know, those 30 to 40%, they'll finish the program and then what happens is they stay in contact with me. I am one of those people. I'm not a gatekeeper of information. So if you come in and I consult you and I coach you, if you've got questions down the line, you just pop me a message. I'm there to help. Because my goal here isn't to become a multimillionaire and lord my information over people. It's really to elevate anybody who's got an idea and get it into an actual business. Because I think that entrepreneurship is open to anybody, especially now, because everybody wants a side hustle or they need to add a little bit of extra income because even a two income family isn't going to cut it in a lot of these cities in America. And so anything that we can do to help boost it. And a lot of people who have these great ideas, they're just average people. And you know, they say that, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. And it usually comes from somebody who's doing something and they're like, gosh, this would make my life easier. So they cobble something together and then they're like, well, I know like there's other people in my industry doing the same thing. How do I get that idea out to them? And that's really what this is for, is to help those people. Not the MBA people, not the business owners, not the people on Shark Tank. This is really just for everyday people to kind of help elevate their idea and get it out there.
- [11:12]
B
No, I get it. But would the application or the methodology help A business unit that may be stagnant may reinvigorate them. Would that be market or would it be something that you could apply to 20 employee Joe's Plumbing in Omaha?
- [11:31]
C
Yeah, here's the thing. I say it's for creative minded individuals. And if you're an entrepreneur, you're already creative minded. I've got CPAs who use this. You know, they're certified public accountants. You wouldn't think are the most creative, outgoing people, but they have to still find their clientele. They still have to offer them something that they think is going to be useful for, for the people that they're trying to, you know, have as customers. And so yeah, it works really for anybody. The, the idea behind it is to build a perfect unit in gaming. We call it your party. You want a party that is diversified, that helps and doesn't hinder you. What we like to say is when you go out, you don't want a party of five warriors because you're going to wipe. You need a warrior, a wizard, a healer and a DPS because that's going to give you the. What's a DPS is a damage per second. It's a guy who does a lot of damage overall or area of attack.
- [12:23]
B
Well, Paul, let's, I'm going to put you on the spot here. Sure. Because I think our. And I know you can handle it. It's not even the right wording to put you on spot. Let me challenge you with a scenario and how would you prescribe it? So the, the ailment is Joe's accounting. CPA has, he's been in practice 20 years. He's got a steady flow of clients, but he wants to grow. He's got a son who's in college and his, his son has a different perspective on taking over dad's practice down the road. And dad says, look, what have you, what ideas you have. I met this cool dude, I read his book. His name is Paul Pape. Oh, what, what about his book? Well, he, he integrates gaming to revive our business and attract more clients and make more money. How would you pitch that to senior as opposed to you've already got the buy in from the son who's in his final. He's in a senior year with an accounting major. So what can you offer to the owner of the accounting firm? And he's got several bookkeepers and he's got about 20 people in, in his umbrella. He's profiting and probably putting a half a million bucks away a year out of his accounting, his CPA practice. How do you propose to him to elevate that?
- [13:46]
C
My first question to him is I think his name is Joe. I believe I just made up a name.
- [13:51]
B
It could be Jim.
- [13:52]
C
I would say Joe, what is the thing that you do as a CPA that no one else does? Because we all have a specialty. There's that thing that we do that, that elevates us. When someone says Joe's accounting, what is it that really elevates you that makes them want to tell other people about you. And the first thing that I would do is once we know that information is we would drill down on it, we would eliminate all their other advertising and specialize in that. When you're dealing with older companies, especially ones where the owners are getting up in years towards retirement age, typically so is their customer base and trying to reinvigorate it with younger people, you can't use the same old tactics. No, you can't do is we have to figure out what is that, that key that's going to really drive somebody. And with the youth of today, even the millennials, the 20 somethings, they're hyper focused on individual results. And so when we drill down on that very specific need, then we can find those individuals out there that, that, that information really resonates with. So what I would do is I would say okay, let's figure out what that is or we're going to drill down on that and then we're going to work up an advertising campaign that really specializes on getting that message out there. So we're not going to be a generalist anymore. We're going to be, instead of the shotgun approach, I like to say it's a sniper approach. So we're going to go one on one to try and find those individuals. Because if you're more concentrated on a personal relationship as opposed to a we just help everyone relationship, then we, the customer themselves will feel more safe. Especially for an accountant, somebody who has, they have to trust with their money. They don't, they don't want to feel like just a number. They want to feel like an individual. And so that's how I would approach that with them.
- [15:33]
B
All right, I'm going to give you a niche. And then from there, because this was personal, I went through a personally, I'll disclose a divorce 19 years ago. I had to go through a complete forensic accounting to separate when I, when I had to separation with my, my then wife, she was an attorney so she knew how to press on the, on the hurt button. And I had to put together all of the forensic accounting of my advertising business, which I owned back then, don't anymore because of that situation. So I had to, I had to find a, an accountant, a CPA firm that specialized in forensic accounting specifically for divorce. Yeah, there's your niche.
- [16:21]
C
Exactly.
- [16:21]
B
Because divorce happens whether we say I do until sometimes you have to say I don't. So I was at the I don't stage.
- [16:30]
C
Absolutely. But you're right. 100. And did you find that person?
- [16:34]
B
Oh, I did and I got his bill as well?
- [16:37]
C
Well, of course, because that's how it happens. But when you specialize, again, the riches are in the niches.
- [16:42]
B
Sure, you found that niche, I found that niche, and he found my wallet.
- [16:47]
C
But that's the good thing about it is because you can then trust that person's expertise. It's not a generalist. I talk to tax preparers all the time and they have a generalized knowledge. But when I'm talking to businesses, I said, you are your best tax preparer because you know your business and what is truly going in and out and what it costs to do your business better than any generalized CPA or generalized tax preparer that you'll ever find. And so if you can find that niche person, that's the way to go and what it costs.
- [17:15]
B
All right, so then, then the next level is, okay, what, what do you come in and consult for them to do? What, what's the game?
- [17:23]
C
Well, the, the biggest one is, is typically there's disarray in what their party is. That's, that's, that's usually the biggest one is I come in to help them understand their roles and that every role has a voice. You can't just. I mean, you have a leader, of course, because somebody has to spearhead. But the spearhead is not the only part of the spear. There's the entire shaft behind it. You support in there. And a lot of times in businesses, you'll have a member who is crucial to your party, but they're under heard, typically because they're quiet. They fear their job's going to, you know, they don't want to voice their opinion. They're bookkeepers. Absolutely. And so what you need to do is you need to put them in an environment in which their expertise is the only way to progress forward. A lot of times it's like having a challenge with a puzzle. And only one person's good at this specific type of puzzle. And so we're going to put them in charge. And that's typically what happen. The breakout sessions that I do when I come into these businesses. Usually when I come in and we've got groups of 30 or 40 people, we do the characterization part, we do the character sheet, and then after that we go looking for parties. So we find people to help to, well, round out. And then we do scenarios or, you know, our little expeditions based on those little breakout sessions. But it helps to elevate those quiet voices and minimize the loud voices because there's always going to be that person who's just a Little too loud. Even though their ideas aren't the best, they just want to be heard and they want to do it their way. Their way is not always the best way.
- [18:51]
B
Okay, so then you, so that you create this environment where the, the mousey individual gets to have a voice.
- [18:59]
C
Correct.
- [19:00]
B
And so this party, is it public or is it only within the company? Within the practice?
- [19:05]
C
It's always within the practice. A lot of. Because you don't want to when it's a big open room. I mean colleges are probably the most open area that I do, but those are still in classroom settings or like a small group. You don't want to. Because you're putting a lot of that introspection that we have to go through is, you know, we've got to really look into our souls here. And so we don't want a public. Yeah, you don't want to put that on display. And so if we keep it within the business, it usually is. Okay. When we're doing this one on one. I do a lot of one on one consulting as well, or coaching. And what I find with them is that becomes a little bit more therapy than it does about actually building the business. Because there's a lot of self doubt in especially solopreneurs and they feel comfortable around me because I've been doing this and my books are filled with my own personal journeys and a lot of those journeys are my mistakes. And so the fact that they can see that I've screwed up, they, they can relate to that and they'll open up a little bit more and then we can help to really ground them down to, to understand the essence of who they need to be as a, as a business owner.
- [20:05]
B
So Paul, do they. Are your books available on Amazon? Where can they find them?
- [20:10]
C
Not yet. They're on gamify business.com and the reason that we do that is because I usually like to sell upsell to groups as opposed to buying onesies. Twosies. Okay. And then also if you would like to be a, you know, a consultant client of mine, it's easier to get a hold of me through there.
- [20:26]
B
Well, yeah, it's hard to get. Amazon isn't so free about handing out their list of buyers. Like it's.
- [20:32]
C
Plus they take a lot of money out of your, out of your way to earn which, you know, it's good for the publicity. But at the same time, if you're, you know, as, as an author, you know, you're not making a ton of money on the books. It's not the books really, that make the, the thing. It's the consulting, it's the consultations, it's the coaching that comes with it.
- [20:48]
B
How have books been for you? Have they been helpful? I mean, do you think it credentializes you? Has it created a good lead flow for you?
- [20:56]
C
Absolutely, because before I had the books I was still doing this coaching and consulting, but, but until I came out with like the actual physical version of it and they're like, oh, you wrote the book on it, you must be. Be the expert. And I'm like, well, I've been the expert for years, but until they see the physical version of it, they're like, oh, you know, it's so. Yes, it's like a badge of honor, I guess.
- [21:16]
B
100%. 100%. And what's interesting also about books, I have, I've written several books myself. And one of the books from a podcast interview I was on, the lady had all of these beautiful badges at the top of her book and on the back of her book book awards. So then elevated it even more, you know, best selling badge, of course, which is something I help clients create, you know, international bestselling. But the, and then there were the book award badges. Now it's a pay to play sure. Situation. But who doesn't? Who, who's going to look past that? Oh, they must be credentialed, they must be the expert because they won a book award, they're an international bestseller. Starts though with writing the book and that's what you. So you truly are the expert. So hold your books up once again so people can see. Let's do.
- [22:12]
C
Yeah.
- [22:13]
B
All right, so the one is, it's kind of hard to see the game masters.
- [22:16]
C
This one's the, this one's the game master's guide to business. And it's a game manual for creative entrepreneurs. And then this one is the Creative Players Handbook to Business and it's a game guide for creative minded entrepreneurs.
- [22:27]
B
I love it. I love it. And where can they find you?
- [22:30]
C
It's@gamify business.com. it's all one word, just like the sign says behind me here. So that is easy dot com.
- [22:37]
B
Okay, well, Paul, you've been a great guest today and I know that you would be a fun guy to work with and I. And we'll see, guys, gamify business.com is where you will find Paul. He can come in and create an environment of fun and reinvigorate. Because the most expensive item in any business is employees is your payroll and you want them retained and sometimes it just requires a little bit of a spark and a reset so they can associate fun with your business. So you're almost in the employee retention business. For employers, that's another angle. A benefit is employee retention. You'll get the recordings, you'll hear that. But I think that's another big takeaway for me because I've employed lots of people over the years and the biggest expense is training someone, keeping them interested so they don't leave. Yeah, that's true. And that's something you provide, I bet. And you may not even have seen it, but that's what I came out of. This I took away was my God. If you can keep the most valuable asset, it isn't your clients. You necessarily they pay you. But who keeps the clients in place are great employees, great teammates, great members of your mission, members of your mission to serve your clients. And if they're not on board, on your playing board, courtesy of Paul Pape. You could be in a perilous position. So Paul Papes handle your handles your perilous position. Some great alliteration came up with that. Paul, you've been fun man. I appreciate you and I'll certainly have you back after book three.
- [24:28]
C
Excellent. I would appreciate it.
- [24:31]
A
Thanks for tuning in to the Amazing Authorities podcast. If today's episode inspired you, take a moment to subscribe, rate and leave a review. It helps more experts like you rise to the top for behind the scenes access and free resources to boost your authority. Head to mitchcarson. Com until next time, stay amazing.