The Sword of Azeroth featuring Tony Won

All right, just a few more feet, and here we are, gentlemen. The gates of Elab. Good Lord. Don't panic. This is what the last 97 hours have been about. Stay frosty. There's a horde of armed goblins on the other side of that gate, guarding the sword of Azeroth. Warriors, unath your weapons. Magic wielders, raise your wands. Lock and load. Raj, blow the gates. Blowing the gates. Control, shift, be oh my God, so many goblins. Don't there. Never slash that move. Slash that move. Information, you got one on your tail. That's on my tail. Prehensile. I'll swat him off. I got him. That tonight I spice my me with Goblin blood. Not trap. They're flanking us. He's got me. Sheld. He's got Raj. Use your sleep spell. Sheldon. Sheldon. I've got the sword of Azer. Look at the sword. Sheldon, help R. There is no more Sheldon. I am the sword master. Let her look out. Damn it. No, we're dying here. Goodbye, peasants. Bast teleported. He's selling the sword of Azeroth on eBay. You betrayed us for money. Who are you? I'm a rogue night elf. Don't you people read character descriptions? Wait, wait, wait. Somebody just click buy it now. I am the sword master.

The Big Bang Theory touched on all kinds of nerd culture, including role-playing games known as RPGs. RPGs can be tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons or massively multiplayer online games known as MMOs, or specifically MMO RPGs. Many RPGs share some specific Basics. You can create a character that has a specific role, backstory, and specific attributes or skills. Those attributes can be enhanced during game play through experience and achievements. In some cases, you can attain specific items like the sword of Azeroth, which grants you a new title. These games also typically involve more complex character development than what is found in other types of games.

Tony Juan, my guest this week, imagined using many of the mechanics of RPGs in agent development. Then he rolled the dice and implemented it within his own company, Player Support. This week on Next and Q, we discuss the challenges of evolving a solopreneur model into a business with actual employees; challenges of dealing with foreign bureaucracies; how cultural differences can impact business operations; how he's using an ARPG framework to inspire employees; and keys to managing a startup in any country. Let's get to it. [Music]

Welcome to Next and Q, the podcast for contact center and customer experience professionals. Next in Q is brought to you by Happy To Vision. Eliminate blind spots and see right through every conversation with Happy To Vision. Learn more at ajpitu.com. Now here's your host, Rob Dwire.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining another episode of Next in Q. Today I've got a returning guest; his name is Tony Juan. Maybe you've heard of him. Welcome, Tony. How are you?

I'm doing well, Rob. How are you?

I am fantastic. For those that do not know, and shame, shame on you if you're a longtime listener to the show, but you joined me in season one of Next in Q, episode 36. That was way back in May of 2022. So for those of you watching on YouTube, um, check out the end credits; right, I'll put a link to that episode there. It was a wonderful conversation. We learned a lot about Tony, uh, really as he was just starting to launch this new venture called Player Support, but you've launched it; it's been a thing for a hot minute now. Let's talk a little bit about that. Let's just start with, tell us about Player Support and a little bit about that journey. What is it that you do?

Sure. Player Support grew out of just the side gig I was doing when I was working full-time jobs for video game companies, um, and uh, just as a way for me to to get out some writing. Initially, it was a a free publication, um, mainly just doing blog posts, and then it grew into some consultancy, and then over time a friend of mine just challenged me to to do more with it. He's a he's a good friend, and it was really a conversation where that he drove, and a former business partner, and so we did a couple of mobile game companies together, uh, you know, making them from scratch and then, you know, releasing them on the App Store, and he kept on with entrepreneurship, and I went to go work for for companies like Riot and Epic, and then um, so he's pushing me to go back into it and do something much larger with it, and we started operating, building teams for, say, uh, you know, video game Publishers, video game studios, really focused on the gaming industry to try to help solve very specific uh, challenges that they have with outsourcing operations and um, you know, we got our, let's say, operational start with agents and everything like that at the end of June. We're at about 75 people plus um, right now, and uh, yeah, it's been it's been a a great um, start to things. We want to be very careful about how we grow, but you could you could think of us as a provider for um, specialized, whether it's customer service teams or moderation teams, or even if you want to try to do, because some of my friends have done this in the past, use these teams to supplement your network operations center as like a like technical triage uh, that uses your run books. So all of these kind of operational teams that benefit from being in different geographical locations, doing a fall of the sem model um, we build these kind of teams. We do Consulting from if you don't know what you're what to do with your customer Serv functions or any of this kind of stuff, because a lot of video game companies they don't want to think about all these extra bits and Bobs. It's really most of them just want to make a great game. You know, worrying about business operations or customer service operations or all this other kind of stuff is really not in their wheelhouse, and it's nice to be able to have a partner whom you don't have to hire full-time, you know, you could just kind of ping once in a while when you need something or uh, you need direction for a function, because a lot of times the parts of the tools are custom, they have to be built in-house at the studio, and you need to know how you're going to fit that into your development schedule as you get ready for launch. All of these kind of issues that come up and and questions that arise during your development process, especially if you're going to be doing any kind of a live service game, we can partner with you and help, and there's a a lot of things where people just need a fraction of someone's time for testing, um, and so you know you don't even need a full-time customer service person, but you would like somebody there for uh, your internal tests for your limited, you you know, beta tests, whatever it is um, we're happy to do that as well um, because for a lot of larger places at are Enterprise, it it doesn't make sense for them as a business, but for us it totally does. We're happy to do that kind of stuff.

Yeah, it is fascinating to me to see all of the different little niches that people find to offer support or customer service, and there really is something to having that kind of experience and excitement and affinity for supporting a a certain type of business, right? Um, I recently had on Margaret Garcia, whose company focuses on the pest control industry, right? It's wildly different than supporting a game, but I know that when she talks to P control owners, she knows their business inside and out, and um, there's a lot of trust that's there, and I have to imagine that when you talk to gaming companies and development teams, knowing their business and knowing all of the things that are going to come up allows you to come in from a position of trust where they know, no matter what happens, right, Tony and Tony's team, they're going to be able to support us.

Yeah, I mean um, for sure, I I believe that the more you know about your, and it really supports the idea of being a business partner, and it's not just sort of being an order taker, let's say, and I think it's important when we talk about adding value to the business, your function needs to provide some kind of information or Insight that's going to help the leadership of the company make decisions or make better decisions. Yeah, and being being able to understand what the core concerns of the business are and how things get done on the other side really does help out um, and it does build, I think absolutely a lot of ease of conversation when you're starting the relationship, and they under they understand like there's a lot of things you just inherently understand like this person you're talking about, I mean that sounds very specific, right? And if she knows it, then people know that knows it, right? And it's it's really cool. It's really cool to have somebody's like, oh, I don't have to explain like everything to you. It's like, yeah, right, heard that before, seen that before, we've been through that. Certainly, you know, it's it's going to be it doesn't reduce the challenge of execution, but um, it does help, right? It it reduces whether it's misunderstandings or time to to ramp up, or it increases accuracy in terms of when you're hiring for specific roles um, you understand what it is that they're looking for, and so maybe as you put candidates in front of them as an example for what you might consider to be a very specialized role, they talk to them, they're like, yeah, this is this is the this is the kind of person who like um, so it helps to streamline a few things.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, all that said, going from being a guy who writes articles, coming from a position of expertise and who consults, is very different than spinning up your own team and your own real business, right? With with payroll and and all of the the challenges that come with that. Tell me about what were some of the big things that you were like, oh well, I didn't expect this, or maybe some challenges that were unanticipated or or hard to figure out, or maybe you're still trying to figure out?

Yeah, well, it I had done this is about the fifth startup that I've been involved in directly, so it wasn't the first time um, but even then I say to everybody, there are always things that are going to pop up that you cannot perfectly prepare for or anticipate, and um, it's it's better just to accept that fact, and as they come up, figure out how you're going to manage through them. One for sure was the challenge of navigating a new business environment. I had never operated a business in Malaysia before, never getting in and learning the environment and um, how to interact with all the government, different government agencies, getting used to, I think every country has its own flavor for bureaucracy, so just getting used to, and you've experienced a few of them, let's be clear, it's not your first rodeo living abroad, but this is a new flavor.

Yeah, it's a new flavor, so I mean it's it's challenging, but it's interesting at the same time. I wasn't expecting something that's very unique about the bureaucracy here and the way things I would say the the kind of flow of business here. A lot of people have a challenge with this, I think especially um, maybe if you're coming from you know the west, and I feel comfortable saying this as an American, like even if you're paying money for an agency to do work for you and um, you know, help help streamline some things or or help you understand something, it is best to approach it as, even though you're the client, as a more like you're like a coworker, I think just for for your your own kind of disposition, it helps because you're just trying to be helpful, and there is something that you've got to do to help push things forward sometimes, and and that's okay um, and so you know um, those kinds of cultural differences where you know you might be pushing things along to say, oh, is there is there anything I can do to help make this move faster, and using even the kind of communication tools that uh people prefer in their different countries, you know, here like WhatsApp is like a really big part of regular daily communication as one example. So you have things like that. I think another additional thing to get used to was the very heavy use of notice periods as a thing in in this country. As an American, I was like, notice periods, like we kind of just have a two weeks, right? Like we give two weeks notice, and you know it's it's is a courtesy, right? And you know there's there's nothing legal saying oh for for most contracts saying like oh you know you got to I mean, yeah, after you get to be at a certain executive level, it's like, sure, yeah, you know, they they ask you for a month or two months or whatever it is, but for most regular roles or entry-level roles, it's like simply two weeks, but uh, just standards are different around the globe, right? I mean, you've got people very commonly have a month, sometimes two months. I had one person come and interview and they're like, yeah, my my notice period is three months, and I was like, three? Wait, like a quarter? Like what? Yeah, what a heart are you now? Like three months? Like how are we gonna do this? So um, I'm like, H do I, and being in video games, it's like we rarely have people come to us and say, yeah, you know, oh, we don't need people until three months later. Usually, it's like we need people yesterday, right? Now and just like, well, you know, so um, some of those timing difficulties or challenges, learning all of the the labor laws just to make sure that everything is done well and complied, getting used to stuff, and so there's all these different little things as an employer, renting an office space because you're unknown to anybody in the country, don't have a credit history, don't have anything, so they like massive deposits, right? Just like massive. I'm like, wait, you want Helm much? Like just to park there? And it's like, okay, cool, like I guess I don't have a choice. And so you've just got every you know, little little bits and Bobs, and none of that's too bad, they just kind of pop up and you de with them as they come and try your best to adjust and to learn, you know, you shouldn't if you're going to start a business, never if you're too rigid and you're insistent on your way all the time, like either you need someone else to handle all this stuff, or you're not going to make it, right? It's just going to frustrate too much, and and you're going to frustrate too many people yourself, and and that's not going to be good, but you mainly it's it's all of these kinds of things operationally. I think the hardest thing was you have um, there's this concept when you're doing startups of what I call Stacked newness, so new company, new processes, new team, new client, maybe they have something that's new, new game, new product, so you have all these new things stacked on top of each other, and that's really hard for human beings. Really, I think everyone does thems a favor thinking more carefully about disposition, especially for those first couple of teams or hes that you have as much as possible, trying to make sure that people understand and expect all of that chaos, because in any you know, cohort of people that or any population you're trying to hire, going to people be people who are more or less comfortable with those things, and for sure sometimes it's it's sometimes it's a little too much for some people, and that's not their fault per se, and so I think I should have paid a little bit more attention to that in some cases.

I'm curious, uh, you are not a stranger to South East Asia, but what made you choose Malaysia as your base of operations this time around?

The the way that I share with folks is just focusing on the word value. I I think for our type of business, we have to be aware of you know where the customers, where our clients find Value, and they have let's say a really strong let's say General push for education for their kids out here, so you have an educated Workforce. English is very commonly spoken, let's say sort of the the lingua franka for especially for business out here. You have a lot of people who do learn Mandarin growing up, and they they have good Chinese schools out here as an example. They've got great TL schools as well, if something that your business needs, so they have a wealth of different kinds of cultures and languages that have their different kind of um, strong language schools, which supplies and and for us in gaming, right? Like being able like China is always a huge market, and we have a very unfortunate geopolitical situation right now, and so Malaysia has great relations on both sides, which helps things, and then just the natural placement of it geographically puts it in a time zone that makes sense for video games. If you think about many typical play patterns of Western game companies, you know a lot of the peak playing time coincides with our regular day, and so that's that's nice to to just have so that you you don't necessarily have to always have like a huge number of people on night shift or something like that, especially if you have other locations together with this one, and so all of these things combined together, it also helps just very selfishly that it's closer to South Korea and our family there. It's only a 6 and 1/2 hour flight, something like that from here to Soul, and so it's much easier for my in-laws to visit and see their grandchild and vice versa. The food here is also amazing, so all of that, all of that combined makes it hard to say no.

Yeah, that flight from Soul to whether it's LAX or Seattle or what, it's not a fun flight. No one wants to do that.

Yeah, man. Oh wow. It's it's rough, you know um, and coming from like when I was in Carry, it we always had to connect to like a larger Hub, right? So it's like you go to Atlanta or you go to New York, and then you go. Yeah, it's like 20 hours. Yeah, and um, the recovery takes just as long as as the flight took, if not more. So I want to talk a little bit about the intersection of Dungeons and Dragons and people management, so you sent me a little blur, and I want you to expand on this. I don't even know what question I'm asking other than, tell me more, Tony. Tell me more. What is it?

Yeah, so I've I've been working um on a light framework for people management um, that because I I was going to you know, working for different companies, different corporations, everyone's got their version of a of a nine box or some kind of 360 feedback survey thing and some kind of write up with some kind of software or whatever that it is, and all of it seemed well-intended but insufficient, and it really felt like we were with all of those kinds of typical practices, we were depending too much on on a rigid form that didn't capture all of the important details of somebody's performance and what value they brought to the company in combination with the challenge that we have of different personalities, and so you have those sayings where people say, oh, if you don't leave companies, you leave managers, or people have the experience where I love the company, but I don't like my manager, or I don't like I don't like the company, and I like my manager, and my manager provides shelter for me within a very difficult company environment or any combination of those things, and so it's too heavily dependent and too subjective. A lot of it is just based on like when you read the feedback, it's pure perception, and if there's anything evidential in there, it's being recalled from like eight months later or something like that. Yeah, can you give me positive feedback on that project we worked on like seven months ago? Um, I don't remember anything seven months ago. So instead of doing all that, I as I continued to progress in my career, I was trying to think of, well, what would I want as an employee? Like what do I think's more fair and transparent and actually creates value for those meetings instead of them being like a buddy-buddy, let me kind of just socially talk to you and get some updates that I could easily read in an email, more substantial conversations around the the key points of your employment that really matter for um, your overall performance, but also your longevity, how long you're probably going to stay with the company, and so it eventually came out to be this system based on DND. Like I will, if you have a good character creation module for feature for your RPG, your video game, I'm probably going to play that for an hour just before I even get started in the game. It's how like obsessive I am about that stuff, and I really enjoy good character creation um, but even for pen and paper D&D, right, when I play with friends, and so I'll actually put effort into that. So it's broken up into five sections. The first section is uh, just about your your class, right? So if you're if you're in an Archer, if you are a warrior, if you are a mage, if you are whatever it is, this is just about the person's job role, like what's what's your job? What is the core of what we expect you to do at work every single day? And so core responsibilities for me should take up about 80 to 90% of your time on any given week, and so are those clear? And often as you know, jobs change over time, so new things get added, some things fall away, but nobody ever keeps track of that um, but this makes sure that you do keep track of that um, the Cadence is meant to be every two weeks, but it it it makes sure that we have this as a touch point, and so when you you hit section one on class, it's just like, hey, does this all still match? Did we add anything else that's significant? Because another thing that happens is people get overburdened, and um, they add on all these things, they don't get a title change, they don't get raises, and it's unfair to people who have a certain disposition where they're really hard workers, but they're not good advocates for themselves, and there's a lot of those people that they're very pleasant to work with, but they they often burn out and um, don't know what to say, and they'll end up just leaving, and you're like, why? And you're like, well, you burned them out, and they're not good self-advocates, and you didn't pay attention to this, so you know they're gone, and so all of that um goes there, and to make sure that the scope's appropriate, and if someone's overburdened, you have that conversation, like, hey, let's trade something, hand this off to another person or delegate this, and then just do this new stuff that we gave you instead um, it's it's a much fairer way of of doing that for people and helping people manage their time as well. The second section is about a person's disposition; we call them attributes, right? So you know, and it's it's a way to talk about someone's personality, and when Ed the terms positive and and negative, but don't think of that in a a typical good versus bad type of way, it's more like yin and yang, right? It's like two parts of a whole, right? So these are the things that make up who you are, and if we can talk about it, and we come up with a language that the manager and the employee understand mutually, we can then more easily talk about relationship at work, so you hit this section, and and after you kind of work this out, and a lot of it's self-identified from the employee, talk about what's your relationship like with your colleagues? Was there any notable interactions that you had with anybody, you know, good or bad in your opinion? And so you get to talk about personal interactions and hopefully nip things in the bud so that they don't fester um, but then also reinforce like maybe someone really likes working with somebody else, and you can as a manager work something out so that that happens more often um, so people have you know a better time at work, but also they have a better time at work and they work with people that they like, their outputs are probably going to be better, right? So that's one thing. The other question is just very simply, even though a company is not a person per se, and we always blame we talk about companies like people, right? Like personalities, so it's like, well, what's your relationship like with the company? And why is it that way? You know, do you feel bad about the company this week? Why? Well, they did layoffs, and I didn't like the messaging, you know, I didn't think it was forthcoming, and you can have that conversation, and you can have clarification as a manager if it if it actually was something, maybe it's a a judgment that's a bit more emotional, or maybe you as a manager you would just honestly confirm and say, you're right, we don't have an excuse for that. I'll bring the feedback to my boss; we do need to fix this, right? Whichever way that it goes, at least you have the conversation, and the employee has an opportunity in a safe place to share some honest feedback for the company overall on how something is done. There could be a problem with Benefits, there could have been a problem with payroll, there could have been a problem with you know, the event that was held last week or whatever it is, but at least you have a place to talk about it. Uh, the third section is really about we just call them uh, skills or um, in HR speak, competencies, so we label all of the core competencies required for the job out. We lay out the competencies that an employee aspires to develop for their next career step, and we make sure that we're acknowledging the growth of the ones that you're going to focus on to grow so that people are building for themselves a step-by-step roadmap for what their next promotion should be within your company um, and they feel like they have a tangible long-term goal, and you're actually looking for opportunities to stretch a person, challenge them, develop new skills on the job um, but what it what it also does is as a team, it gives you a competency map of everyone's skills, so you know if you need to hire somebody new um, what kinds of additional competencies or new ones would be helpful for your team to have overall, so it's a place to lay that out, to talk about that, and to also talk about development um, so where are you going? Sometimes you'll hire somebody, and maybe you didn't didn't know how skilled they were at a particular thing. Sometimes when people struggle with performance, it's because they don't know something or they didn't develop a skill that would be helpful, and you can more easily, it's not bulletproof, nothing's bulletproof, but you can more easily, you have a space to talk about it now, and you can pinpoint and say, oh, actually project management would be a very useful skill, and you don't have much project management ability, so that's keeping you back from delivering your work faster or doing whatever it is that needs to be done or working with people across silos or in other departments. Let's work on this so that that stops happening, right? Um, and so you have a place to talk about it's a technical conversation; it removes you know, people's personal offense from feedback because it's it's very clearly about a skill, and it it's easily solvable. It's like, we'll just learn how to do this thing. So you have that, and then you have uh, section four is really simple; it's just we call them Feats uh, right? So the DND language is coming in. These are your huge accomplishments throughout the year. I found a lot of employees never keep track of them; they don't know how they contribute to the workplace, and usually when I start doing this with people, I've even done it with people who I just mentor who are in other departments in the company but come to me for mentorship. When we start doing this, a lot of them are shocked. They're like, I I delivered a lot of value for the company this past. I'm like, yeah, you totally did, and you know I'm thinking of a very specific person, and she said, you know, I never

I never did this work, so I never understood like what my worth was, to like what I was doing. And I was like, yeah, you should probably get a raise, and uh, you know, it's it's it's just a funny, it's a funny thing that people don't do for themselves, or they don't take the time out to do it, or managers don't take time to do it. But it it it's material for your employees, is the way that I like to phrase it. It's really important that we do keep track of these things, so that people understand that it's a fair game and that they are being rewarded and recognized for value delivered. So that's, you know, those are less frequent uh, they're basically proto-business cases, part of a business case for whenever you're going to promote somebody or give them a high-performance rate.

The last section is just a parking lot; it's called biography. You know, this is the part where you don't have to do it in a D&D game, but I always do it where I I write in like they're from this village, and this happened to them, and this is where they, yeah, yeah, the back story. Um, so it's a place for you to spend at least a little bit of time um, every other week to get to know your employee a little bit more on a personal basis. But it's also a parking lot; hopefully, you develop an actual positive relationship with your employees, and sometimes they'll feel comfortable with you to share more personal matters. You don't ever document any of that stuff recorded unless you are required to by law if it's very extreme. But it's also a place to, like, a lot of people want to talk about mental health, but they don't know where to do it, and a lot of employees are unaware of the full benefits package they have when it comes to things like mental health or other kinds of medical care. And this is a place where you could, if they feel comfortable sharing things with you, you could actually really help somebody out in a different way. For example, people didn't know one of my employers are like, oh yeah, we'll pay for three mental health visits of a of a local doctor, of you know, a physician of your choice, a mental health care taker of your choice, voice um, every every single year. Like my employees didn't know this, and several of them took advantage of it once they found out that it's a thing. I was like, yes, totally a thing; just go to HR, and they're like, I didn't know that. I'm like, you need to read your work contract, but um, but luckily I'm here to let you know. So yeah, yeah. So that's what that's for. It's it's just these five sections. Some weeks you just go over it very quickly because nothing has changed or nothing has happened, but at least you're touching base every other week to say, hey, we need to talk about these five things, um, how are they going, and um, you know, uh, you share the document is shared between manager and employee. There's a companion document that's just text that has all of the manager's thoughts on there about the employee, whether it's extremely positive or whether there's constructive feedback; everything needs to be there so that there's no surprises. So an employee, if an employee is ever wondering, oh, how am I doing? It's like, oh, just go to your manager's cheat sheet. And if you don't see enough on there, you just force, you just put in, just put like, I need to know how I'm doing, you're not telling, and then it, you know, gives them a kick in the pants and say, hey, like, don't avoid this, right? You need to talk to your employee about how they're doing, and they need to know.

So as we start the new company, it's a general point requirement that I have for all my people managers, doesn't matter how junior or senior they are; if if I ask them how any employee is doing, the answer should be really close to what that employee would say if I sat down with them and say, hey, how are you doing? Yeah, it's great transparency, and I feel like we all uh, just added some people management points to our skill set in this conversation, so I'm going to say at least plus 25. I don't I don't know exactly what we gained; I probably need to roll a die to figure that out, but I don't have one handy because I just don't. Tony, uh, you and I could probably talk for the next hour; um, there are definitely some other topics that I wanted to get to that didn't get to, so maybe we'll come back to another episode and discuss those. But I really just want to number one, say how great it is to talk to you again, and number two, thank you for blessing the podcast with your presence. I know the audience is going to get a lot out of this, and it's it's just great always to talk with you.

Thank you so much, Rob. Um, really enjoy our conversations and happy to come back anytime and to to chat with you; um, it's really fun, and I I really do hope people get something out of this, so thank you. I know they will. Next inq is brought to you by Happy to and is produced by me, Rob Dwire. If you enjoy this podcast, please by all means subscribe and or rate this podcast in iTunes or your favorite podcast app, but more importantly, please tell just one person about this podcast. Word of mouth is the best way for people to discover new content. As always, thanks for listening.