Speaker 1 (00:00.354)
built a solum pre no business to 1.6 million euros in revenue that probably increased now how the hell that happened

I would say don’t do it.

And we’re going to find out why. Today I’m joined by a mobile marketing expert with 10 plus years in gaming. He’s globally launched 52 games and profitably managed over 48 million euros in user acquisition spend. Founder of Two and a Half Gamers podcast, the biggest UA gaming podcast, now consults for studios worldwide on launch strategy, performance marketing, and creative testing.

Usually when you have a plan B, you’re kind of focusing on something that what if this won’t work? Then I have this backup plan. It set you up for a failure like from the get-go. You just need to believe like this is gonna work and it’s gonna work. There’s no other way.

We talked about how he built a one person, seven figure consulting business and a behind the scenes into the world of user acquisition. You said once, I treat UA budgets like my own money. Why did you say that?

Speaker 2 (00:52.78)
your own money and you invested money for some reason. And the reason is you need to see the money back. I was in that position and every time I invested something and I got it back, I’d reinvest it. That’s how I could see my business grow.

from someone who understands leverage to its core, this episode’s and founder of 2 and Half Gamers, Matej Lanceric.

Mate, welcome to the show. So you’ve been interviewed many times about UA, I’m sure. Today’s podcast want to go a bit different, talk a bit more about the solopreneur journey. And this is an article you wrote in April and you had a very nice stat. So you built a solopreneur business up to 1.6 million euros in revenue. That’s probably increased now. So for everyone at home, I want to just dig in to how the hell that happened.

Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:40.214)
and just kind of advice for other people looking to do the same, especially in the games industry where it’s kind of becoming more common.

I would say don’t do it. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:56.974)
So I think this even goes back to when I started my career in gaming in general, because I started in 2014. I started working at Pixar Federation and I was there for five years. And basically when I was there, I started kind of posting more and more articles and blogs, which started happening around 2016. And I posted about Soft Lounge and suddenly…

People started reaching out like, Hey, you know, would you be able to help us with soft launch? Well, why not? So then I started kind of doing this on the side as a side hustle. And then the side hustle kind of became my primary job because I was making way more money on the, on the side than I was doing on my primary job. It’s like, then kind of ask myself, like, what, what, do I want to do? And then I said, life is short. Let’s let’s try something else. And.

never came back because usually when you have a plan B, it’s very misleading. It’s just like you’re kind of focusing on something that what if this won’t work, then I have this backup plan. But that sets you up for a failure from the get go. It’s that’s bullshit. Honestly, if you want to go for something, then you just need to believe like this is going to work and it’s going to work.

There’s no other way. So you will make it work. Period. stop right there.

I’m resonating with that because my dad is kind of that person on the shoulder where I started my business around April last year. And he said, just stay, just stay as a contractor a little bit, just do a little bit more, just in case something goes wrong. And it’s funny, the same conversation is happening now where my, hopefully my brother’s employer doesn’t watch this part. Essentially my brother, I’ve hired him on last year, but I have a second brother who’s also

Speaker 1 (03:58.326)
leaving his job to join mine. So he had the same conversation. He’s getting good money. Why don’t you stay longer and then help Harry on the side? But I’m like, I need it all in. And there’s a very big difference of a hundred percent and just not a hundred percent. like, it’s almost like you kind of have to, when you have a small business to be all in.

Yeah, of

Speaker 2 (04:17.87)
No, because you have different priorities. then if it’s 100%, you will give everything to this job. There’s nothing else. It’s like if you have all these different things, like my main job. But the thing is I could do my job for years. Instead of eight hours per day, I could do it in three hours per day. But instead of just watching YouTube videos, I can actually learn and work with different companies to just grow and then actually help other companies.

right? But then eventually that became the main job. So you see the priorities, right? Like shifted from something different and like that’s what happens always when you have so many different things. It’s just like, okay, where’s the focus?

You need to just pull the trigger Let’s get tactical I want to take so you started sooner than I expected so 2016 you were doing consulting but at least when you When I was reading the article, I think 2020 was a big year for my understanding. So yeah, what happened that you

Yeah, I kind of shifted all the all the like Slovakian bullshit side jobs away because it’s just not enough money.

These are clients with clients based there. you’ve

Speaker 2 (05:29.856)
Yeah, yeah, see, it kind of-

Maybe it might be worth it for people at home, like what were you offering then? Maybe is that different what you’re offering now? Just a quick high level.

Yeah, it’s the same thing. So I work on the UA side. I work, I manage campaigns when there’s no internal team. Then I kind of do the strategic advisory when there is an internal team. So I work with them helping, they’re doing the heavy lifting though. And then I have creatives as a motion designers. So a creative team, and then also build recently a tool for playables and build a playable team. it’s kind of like the creative team that I have on the side is very important in the business, which I

Did have back database like one person, I was like 10 or actually 13, if I count the playable team.

They’re not employees, they’re a team that you subcontract when you need them.

Speaker 2 (06:19.608)
There is kind of like on the side, says team of contractors that mainly work with me, but they have some other things that they can do. mean, I don’t care. Yeah. So like, look guys, this is something that few games that we are actually now creating videos for. Let’s do that. And then it’s like, yeah, Priorities. But if there is nothing, there’s like, you know what? Do whatever you want.

Similar model to how I started like I didn’t want to hire someone full-time because it’s just the fear of like okay now he depends on me and it’s the worst thing when you know, Someone’s got eight hours in a day and you’re like, just do don’t have eight hours of work today And I feel you start to feel guilty and you don’t want that

And also, I don’t really want to actually manage people and like every day or every week, like, 101 is like, know, are you happy? What are your feelings? mean, honestly, it’s very important.

agree with you here because I watched I have a question for this because I was just listening to the podcast you did last year found the same topic on the deconstruct of fun and you were both talking about one-to-ones and I was watching it and I’m actually in that stage now because I have Three full-time staff so I have my executive assistant who manages all the podcast I have my younger brother and then I also have a Frank who does all the writing and I’ve noticed on the one-to-ones they have agendas and

with my younger brother because it’s got a weird dynamic like he’s my younger brother and I feel like I see him in the house but he’s the only one I didn’t have a one-to-one and then literally we had a situation where six weeks went past and we were just so misaligned like he was doing something and he was doing it because I said so not because the client needed it and I was like no the client’s needs is obviously paramount and for me that was missed in a one-to-one so in my head there’s two options here don’t

Speaker 1 (08:08.45)
hire people who don’t know what they’re doing, but then it’s like, well, I can’t afford to pay, you know, someone four or five grand a month who’s an expert yet. I want to train them. I guess, I think it depends, I guess, but like it’s interesting where.

Yeah, it depends, but then it’s kind of, it’s called communication rather than just one-on-one only. If you talk, doesn’t really need to be like regular one-on-one, just talk about priorities. I talk to the guys almost on a daily basis because yes, of course, if I say, is the brief and bye, see you in few weeks, and then maybe something changes and then I don’t tell them, I go, well, that’s my problem.

Can we move it bit tactical here? So is this on Slack? Are you doing calls? Are you doing huddles? Like how does this look like?

Honestly, I hate calls. So it’s all written. Every time I can avoid calls, I avoid calls. It’s just written. And I can, I can do handles. I can’t just record stuff. It’s just, mean, I recorded. Yeah. I record stuff. Like I record podcasts every, every week, three times.

You think about looms. I love me a loom.

Speaker 1 (09:10.262)
In my head, like a loom is really powerful for what you do, right? Cause you can just look at what you’re doing, but you’re saying you’re not using loom.

No, I just, actually we don’t even use Slack. just, it’s either like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. I don’t care. That’s it. That’s it. I mean, it’s weird. It sounds, it’s just, I mean, I’m kind of crazy person, obviously, but I work with people that I trust like 500%. And what the crazy thing about this is like, I sometimes I feel like they’re living in my head.

Which every time, we are, I mean, we work together for a long time and I know them. That’s why we work together and I know them for a long time. So every time there is like a brief or there’s an creative that needs to be done, I write the brief and like, look guys, like this is how it should look like. And it’s almost really scary when I actually see the output and the final video. It’s exactly what I’d imagined. And you can’t get this with everybody.

So if you gave that brief to 10 people, for my understanding, the team that you have, they don’t need as much information as the other people. like that is what can afford the fact that so, so my head, this works at your current scale, but if you needed like five of those teams, then something had to change.

Most probably, or I just hire those people that I know again for a long time that are on the same page as I am. But yeah, of course, if I would need to scale myself, well, obviously I need to clone myself first, but if I need to scale the creative team, yeah, they most probably would need to be additional layer of communication or something, which I don’t really like. So I most probably won’t scale the I would rather not scale.

Speaker 1 (10:56.258)
Maybe it’s good to get it out there. Like what’s the plan? Because one on the outside could be like, he’s made it. Sodapreneur, 12 year old time, you know, we’ve got seven figures, revenue numbers, right? Like live in the dream. why go bigger? there plans to go bigger? Like where are going?

Well, that’s the thing. I don’t think I need to go bigger and I don’t really want to go bigger because then I think we had this discussion with the Akub Myco co-host on Two and a Gamers. We do all these the dad’s cabins with kids and he’s like, okay, so what keeping you from like go from here to 5 million a year? I was like, well, that’s a fair question. Well, I would need to either just…

clone myself, which is not possible, or B, just go an agency way, which I don’t want because of like all the communication bullshit around it. Or C, it’s just diversify outside of games and start investing in different major activities. And then on the other hand, I know like I can do, and I’m kind of investing a little bit more in the content production now on my end and the sub-stake and everything, it’s growing like crazy. So…

Yeah, because you have a very successful… I’m guessing there’s very few more successful paid sub-stacks in the games industry right now, like it’s huge.

Thank you very much. Yeah, it’s 20,000 people, which is insane. Also not all of them are paid. mean, if 20,000 paid, yeah, that would be the five wheel.

Speaker 1 (12:21.642)
It’s like, I’ve seen a few different first up stacks. Like I’ve never seen those numbers.

It’s really, really insane. So now I think I had like 50 K in the newsletter and now it’s 70. So it’s kind of like, it’s growing still like month by month. And I think that can grow quite more and also on the podcast side and all of like, so like the content side of things that that’s definitely scalable.

Yeah, like the monetizing maybe something for me to give some insight. Like I’ve spoken to a few people who run podcasts and our niche, we can get sponsors for like 100 to 200K a year because we can include the newsletter, LinkedIn content. Like they sponsor everything. And especially in your niche, like the topics you talk about B2B baby, like the, are you thinking about that? Is that a plan? I’m curious.

It’s already started to happen like early this year and that’s also something that’s quite scalable. like all like that kind of like the content arm of things, it’s where I think it’s going to grow even more. So that can definitely help with the scaling. honestly, but on the UA side and the creatives and like the actual like executive side or execution side, that’s what I want to do still mainly, but I’m not going to just grow the team because well, I mean, I could.

What’s the point? I I have enough money. have enough money. And I also have three and a half years old daughter, which is way more important than everything else. So I wouldn’t sacrifice spending more time of working than just seeing her grow and just spending time with her because that’s that’s insane. mean, that’s not even a trade off. it’s like, that’s no way.

Speaker 1 (13:43.414)
have a leverage.

Speaker 1 (14:08.822)
Like my motto is make money, make babies and you’ve done it. You’re one of the few, you’re the one of the first guests. Like you’re in that stage, baby. You making the money. Now you made the babies and you made enough money to spend more time with the baby.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s the kind of the level where I’m kind of fortunate enough to be at right now. But what other people just don’t see is just it took me eight years to actually get where I am. So there are no shortcuts, basically.

Okay, let’s talk about the lack of shortcuts. So year one, let’s say we’re talking to a consultant. They’re like, Mate, I’ve got these skills. I’ve been a career man, been a career woman. I want to go start contracting. So like, how did you get your first clients and would you recommend that to someone else?

Yeah, so my first clients was definitely from the article that I posted on pocketgamer.biz and that was 2016 until this day I still get leads from there, from that article, which is insane, insane. But then it was kind of the combination of talks, the conferences and content, again, like writing and just speaking.

Where were you writing content back there?

Speaker 2 (15:16.27)
It’s just pocket game, the base or randomly wherever like different sites. I, then I created my own blog and then I started posting it there. But then, yeah, I think the, improvement was when I shared Substack basically, because then I was like, okay, well, let’s, this can grow. then I was like, wait a second. I can actually get the paid section as well. 100%.

Would you recommend this to someone starting off?

It’s like, I always say like content is the way to go. mean, honestly, nothing else. Like I don’t, I don’t believe, well not believe, but I’m terrible salesperson. I can, I can talk and share everything that I’m doing on a daily basis. And I will share all the numbers, all the processes, everything basically. So people can, can understand, learn, and they can do it on their end. But what I’m doing.

Even if I say like this, follow these steps, one, two, three, four, five, it’s not going to be exactly the same if 10 other people do it. It’s just going to be different. Still. I’ve seen it a billion times before and it’s going to just keep happening. even though, even if I say like, this is exactly what I’m doing, that’s why I’m sharing all the numbers and all the soft launch processes and the creative stuff and, uh, and everything, because I want people to just try and then I’ve, and anyway, like they just.

ask questions because it’s different for them.

Speaker 1 (16:39.822)
Yeah. I have the same philosophy, right? You just, I share usually the high level of what to do and kind of my sales process. I fell into it, but it works so well. is literally like we share origin stories. So intro is on the call. And then I basically say, what are you doing right now? And then they tell me their business strategy. And then I say, okay, this is what I would do straight away. Like you’re not going to any conferences. Why you’re not doing this YZ like why you’re not sending connection requests. That’s free.

And then I’m like, all right, now I’m just going to show you exactly what I do for my clients and what I would do for you. And if you want help with execution, happy days. If not, here’s the step-by-step and please enjoy. And it found it so nice because it’s never a no. It’s just like, I’m not ready to afford you yet. I’m like, okay, enjoy. Bye bye. And it’s so good. I signed two clients from pitches that they said no, because they went and told someone else in the taxi while at GDC. And for me, it was like, amazing. Like the process of just sharing exactly what you would do, it just…

drops those barriers and it really, really helps. I think that’s something for people at home. Just like you need to not hide things behind the curtain and they have to pay you to find out if you’re good or not, right? I think people really miss that trick.

Yeah. Yeah. man. my God. it’s every time when someone says, Hey, this is guaranteed. You should do this. Like nothing is guaranteed. First of all, second of all, I can’t tell you because that’s secret, but if you pay, I will tell you why.

It’s doing the execution ideas come on so easy

Speaker 2 (18:08.03)
Yeah. It’s just like, look, you do this, you will get better and then you will need some, someone else’s help, which is fine. If it’s not me, that’s okay. If it’s someone else, fine. just tried on your, your side. If it works perfect for you, awesome. If it doesn’t work, you will get help, but at least you know how it works and then you understand and then you can ask for help. It’s fine. It’s just like, you can’t even, even.

you I’m just like, how many times we got this question or not questions as requests from like the industry people like, Hey guys, stop telling all the secrets on the podcasts. You’re ruining my job because you’re spilling all the beans. It’s like, what are you talking about?

Do you think that has that legit had an impact or they’re just afraid of an imaginary?

I think that’s imaginary impact. Wow. Yeah. It’s just come on, that’s my leverage. Like, what leverage are talking about? If this is your leverage, then you’re not a proper person and you’re not even a nice person at the same time. Come on.

Yeah, a hundred like for me where at least like I used to be recruiting for unity developers in the Nordics and honestly You could get a B player unit developer if the soft skills were perfect. They’re never leaving that job It was literally when it came to it the higher you go into a business in lacing games It was all soft skills and it blew my mind. So like if your leverage is how far you code It’s not that deep to find someone else

Speaker 2 (19:37.774)
So yeah, that’s all, like the knowledge sharing and like the willingness to share, like that’s, I think that’s very, very key. And also what you mentioned that just going to conferences and just meet people and talk to people, like that’s also like one of the strongest things you can do.

very curious. So I take pride in my conference strategy. I feel like I’ve nailed it now, like it’s working. And I try to, I average like one or so clients every conference. But you said on that podcast I listened to before our call today, like you did a week where you went three different conferences, like you went to Nordic and then AppSly. So how do you approach conferences? Like let’s talk about it from a business development perspective.

I can tell you, I just went back from Singapore. I went to Singapore Playventures event, then I flew to Tokyo right after, and then I spent two days at home and then flew to Hamburg and back. also three different kinds of things. It’s just from my perspective, people ask me this all the time. What’s the goal? I don’t have a goal. I have zero goals. I just want to talk to people and meet people at different events.

during the conference. It’s always the start. Like if you know more people, it’s always better because then it’s like, wait a second. I know, like I have this UI problem. Who do I talk to? why’d say, I know I met this guy crazy at the conference. Matei, I should ask and that’s it. It’s easy as that. I’m not there to sell. I usually have a talk which helps with like the exposure and sharing knowledge. And then like I meet more people obviously after.

So like this, that’s it. But that’s it. I’m not.

Speaker 1 (21:18.392)
So the plan is let’s reverse engineer, get a talk. I think that’s a big part is what I’ve noticed. I last year, I didn’t have pretty much any talks apart from one accidental one this year having the talks. Yeah. You is a bit of a status change and you can feel it in conversations. Like I can say the exact same thing, but because they know that you’re talking on that subject, it’s just like, it’s actually, don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but if someone’s first language is in English, wow.

Game changer.

Speaker 1 (21:47.864)
Like you can say the exact same thing, but they just, you need something to hook their attention. I’ve noticed like, and if you’re speaking, then I feel like they’re internalizing what you’re saying because they’re in conference mode. They’re like, okay, is this person worth my time or not? Yeah, it’s a, it’s a big change, but I don’t want to discourage anyone going to a conference. It’s like, if you can get a talk amazing. And also some people overcomplicate getting a talk. The best way I found, maybe you can speak on this is literally just go to the founder. Like, Hey, great event.

Like when you go to the conference for the first time, what’s your speaker looking like for next year? I can speak about this. Like, okay. That’s typically been my strategy.

Easy as that. mean, now I know a lot of different founders of different conferences, not by now. mean, after some time in the industry. So it’s definitely easy, but yeah, this is exactly what I do. Or what I’ve done before is like first talk at the MAU, which is the mobile apps unlocked conference in Vegas, which is like the biggest mobile marketing conference. I was there for the first time. And then I was like, I found Adam who was the founder. like, like

I can actually speak exactly what you just said. Like I can actually speak about this. have saw this article, this article, these talks, these talks. Let’s do it next year. Okay, done. And since then every year I’m, I’m, I’m speaker there every year, seven time in a row. mean, like one, one, one discussion, nothing else that simple as that is very simple. So yeah, I mean, I would encourage everybody just to do this. Obviously you need to be.

in the, in the field for some time. So you, you know, you know what they’re talking about. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (23:27.424)
something to point to like you could write a few art I think the bar for a speaker is actually lower than people think like if you just have some story as well even if you’re not the most expert if you have a cool story that you went from X to Y in a short amount of time or like I’ve seen more recently like people explaining failures as a part of a talk well hey you can even fail and then become a

Exactly. It’s still, think my main motivation for like become a speaker back then was just, saw all the talk is vague. It’s like, where are the numbers? Why are nobody’s talk?

Yeah, I don’t I have a I’m doing conferences now I’ve done eight events and I’m gonna be organizing a I’m organizing a conference in Helsinki. So I’m looking at venues. And when I did my speakers, I was like, okay, they’re gonna be 15 to 20 minutes. And it has to be tactical. And I’ve noticed there’s some conferences, not all of them, like, it’s a bit of pay to play usually, or it’s like they’re gonna sell a service and you know, fair play to them. Do what you got to do. But yeah, especially

If it’s like my event, I want the talk to be practical and tactical. And then what you tend to find like people aren’t professional speakers by accident. So like some people just leave the good parts at the end or they forget to mention like little stuff like that. actually, I went a bit of ramble there, but you’ve done a lot of talks. I’m curious. Like if you have to give a talk, like any, what’s the three tips for someone giving a talk at a conference.

I told this to Felix because he was pretty nervous when he started talking and like, I need to do all the prep and whatever else. like, man, I tried to do preps before, like speaker notes and whatever else. That made me more nervous than like no speaker notes and no prep because every time I talk about the topic, I prepared the presentation. If someone else preparing presentation for me, like that’s terrible, right? So it’s it’s quite hard.

Speaker 2 (25:24.558)
But if I do the presentation on my own, I already know what I’m talking about. And like prepping and just trying to rehearse and like do all this stuff all over again, makes me more nervous than I should be. So, and I’ve done it before and it didn’t really help. So honestly, maybe, okay, fine, try for yourself once or twice, but don’t overdo it. It’s just for me. I know what I’m talking about. It doesn’t really need to be.

A, B, C, D, it can be whatever. And I have one talk and if I speak in different places, one talk, it’s always different. It’s always different. It’s like the topic is the same and slides are the same, but they always talk about something else. So no guidelines, kind of thinking about what I’m going to talk about.

I think the main reason is the idea maybe. Because you’re speaking about something you live and breathe every day.

Yeah, exactly. exactly. I can, yeah. Say, you know, let’s have a, can you have a talk in 30 minutes? I mean, like what’s the topic here? Okay, fine. Either I already done it before, or I’ve just kind of, can, yeah, I can ramble for some.

the key part honestly like I’ve seen if you’re given a talk about something you’re not used to and you don’t prep that is like high school it’s the most scary thing because it’s about something not only you don’t care about but you also like you’ve spent so little time thinking about that’s why I’ve always I saw someone mentioned that recently it’s like the reason high school public speaking is literally the worst setup because it’s about something you don’t care about with people you don’t care about and it’s like last minute it’s like of course it’s horrible so if you’re

Speaker 1 (27:02.21)
But when you’re speaking in a normal corporate world, it’s usually about stuff you’ve been talking about on calls.

Yeah, exactly. That’s pretty magic, right? So you have a topic, creative testing trends, whatever else. And even the podcast is the same thing, right? When we started, we usually had like two hours, three hours preparations for each episode. Now it’s like, okay, you know what? This is the game we’re talking about. Okay, let’s do it in two hours. Fine. The only thing we actually need to play the game. that’s like the longest prep we need to do, but still.

It’s, I already know what I’m going to talk about. I just need like looking to different dashboards and different external tools and that’s it. No free four hours. So yeah, I mean, it gets better with the experience, obviously.

Yeah, for sure. I think one tip that I’d share is I’ve done the same talk now and the first time when I rehearsed it The advice I was given and really helped was if you’re rehearse it, you’re not allowed to stop So when you press start you just continue until you finish the talk No stopping and then you only are testing for the amount of time it took and then I noticed like the first time I did it was like 20 minutes and it was a 15 minute talk but Okay, and then I did a second time it went to 16 minutes

And I did it one more and then it was good. Okay. And then that was my prep. But if you do the rehearsal I’ve noticed and you stop at like four minutes and then you go again and again and again, that’s where I, the energy, the heartbeat goes up. It’s not fun.

Speaker 2 (28:23.97)
Yeah, it’s not fun. then you’re just in the death spiral all the time. It’s just like, my God, like it stopped. Yes, start again. So yeah. I find it like pretty fun when you stand on the stage. Taking a step back. I don’t really like to stand on the stage and just be like all the eyeballs on me, but I’m- Because it’s part of the job, It’s part of the job.

What do you do it so often, huh?

Speaker 2 (28:49.184)
It needs to be done and I like sharing things, right? So I really like sharing stuff. And that’s all the unnecessary part. Like everybody’s staring at me. Like this is way better. Also like the recording podcast, like there’s no live audience. So there’s no kind of judgment and everybody judges you. Everybody judges you on the stage. my God. Even I judge fast the speakers. It’s human nature. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Yes, I’m always trying to do as much as I can. when others are not doing the same, I’m just, so yeah, that’s why I’m very not happy to be on the stage. But then after the talk is done, everybody’s like, my god, this was actually very useful. it’s like.

Yeah, the dopamine cycle continues. I’m gonna, I want to spend a part of the podcast because we kind of have a similar situation where I started as a solopreneur. I am going the agency route. I was deciding at one point, it was a crossroads. What should I do? And I’ve gone the agency route. So I’m scaling that way. And in your article, you wrote a few things which stood out to me. So I just wanted to ask you questions and then basically treat this as free consulting for me. And then maybe people at home will write it. like,

You mentioned no website until after half a million in revenue. So I’ve just recently invested in a website and the best benefit I’ve had from it so far is someone did a cold outreach because I had a website for a tool and now it’s like changed my life. So it’s funny enough. That’s been the main benefit so far, but I want to hear from you. Like why did you make that decision? Why no website until after that certain.

Because it’s not necessary. mean, you have your LinkedIn profile. You have everything there. You can treat that as a website, basically. Yeah, so it’s resume, right? So it’s CV, and that’s it. I didn’t have even like the proper deck that I shared. It’s always written in the email. was absolutely unprofessional. still have Yeah, about Google. Well, OK. Well, I now have like a proper deck that looks like semi-professional.

Speaker 1 (30:38.05)
Which I did until I had one year.

Speaker 1 (30:51.384)
Have a good one.

Speaker 2 (30:58.604)
But it’s still, it was very random because I don’t think that matters that much, especially for the companies that I worked with. Of course, if I want to work with like a huge company, then it needs to look professional. it’s like website and all the testimonials and reviews and all the fun.

They just have that checkbox criteria, right? Like if you are over a certain size, they don’t want to have a situation where the boss goes, who do we send money to? Did they have a website? You’re under punishment now. But if you’re just speaking with the founder of a SMA, then you don’t have that. They’re just looking at you.

Exactly. then I mean, I’m mostly working with small to mid-sized companies and I do work with the big ones as well. like… Yeah, because if you rely on one big company and you’re done or they are done with you, then you’re fucked. And that happens all the time. a million times. And it’s going to happen to me again, like a million times more because that’s how it works. I mean, that’s life of the consultant. mean…

that by a choice? you share for people?

Speaker 1 (31:53.279)
It’s to you,

Speaker 2 (32:02.144)
You’re everybody’s like, as soon as they’re done with you, like you’re the first one to get fired. It’s always over, always. Which is tough, but still. you, have one big client and you’re done. Then what else? Well, so then you need to have like a few either small ones or a few mid-size. So you are safer. It’s not always safe because it can happen. Just, you know, you lose still 30, 40, 50 % of the, of the revenue, but still you have the other 50%. So.

At least you have something. it’s kind of maybe more work, but it’s way safer for you to maintain this if you had just one big one. It’s just, and it’s way more sustainable.

I’ve spoke to someone recently who’s, she’s a fractional PR manager and she has two big clients and one of them’s a big part of the revenue. And I just imagined this goes into a second question actually, but the amount of work for that big client is actually quite a lot. It’s probably like more than half the week. So if she lost that client, well, I guess big deal. So like it’s almost, you really need to set that internal rule that I’m not going to be owned by a client, right?

Yeah, because then you could be just working for them full time or part time. It’s like, it’s the same thing. I mean, it’s not really like the main point of the consulting. you have…

What is the main point of consulting because I feel like you’ve from the outside looking in You set really good boundaries and I don’t think you have much scope creep when someone hires you and at least for like in my business It’s like all could we do one more post or could you do this last minute or could you know? Can we hop on a call to talk about this? I’m getting better with that. But at some point I’m like it makes sense why they’re asking that okay, I’ll do it but then it adds up, right? So how do you avoid like that kind of boundary being broken?

Speaker 2 (33:49.966)
I don’t, I just sometimes set those boundaries and I say, look, I’m not the full-time employee, so I can’t really reply on your questions in a second. It’s just not going to work like that. And some people do understand that, some people don’t. And those that don’t, well, we don’t work together. It’s it’s as simple as that. Because it’s…

It’s really create like a lot of additional work, which is not necessary. don’t have the time to manage this kind of political, not political, kind of like the additional work. don’t want to say like I’m not doing extra stuff, which I do almost all the time. It’s just there are boundaries and they should be. And if someone doesn’t really understand, it’s because they’re kind of like.

based on the deliverable, right?

Speaker 2 (34:43.767)
treating you as a full-time employee, that’s not right. That’s not right. And you need to be very vocal about it because if you’re not…

you do it? Because there’s there’s probably a good way and a bad way.

It’s, it’s, it’s a way like, Hey guys, like, this is too much for me. And you know, like I do everything for you within these boundaries and you’re overstepping, which I can do this one time, but please next time be mindful that I, know, I have life and you have life as well. Like this, like this is it. And I do everything for you anytime. Just, you know, not, not like this also. Can we hope on the call? We can.

But ideally I have a 24 hour buffer so I can actually manage my time because I can’t do like, Hey, can we go hop on a call now? No. I I have a, I have a time scheduled on the daily basis. And if you want to call, it’s fine. I will have the call if I have the time during the day, but please let me know in advance. I mean, that’s a very simple ask and people actually understand.

Yeah, because they would expect that too.

Speaker 2 (35:54.858)
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s just, I treat people exactly how I want to be treated. And that’s it. Like, that’s very simple.

So in terms of your funnel, I’m very interested. So you’ve got a few ways where clients could in theory come to you. So you’ve got the podcast, you have the Substack, you have your LinkedIn, you have conferences, and I’m guessing word of mouth. Plus you’ve got that pocket game article and also all the other articles. So that’s quite a few ways of getting clients. I’m curious, like if you had to only keep two, which one are you keeping?

sub stack and conferences.

Why the So no, you would let’s say delete the LinkedIn. I mean LinkedIn. Let’s say LinkedIn over sub stack

Maybe I would pick LinkedIn over Substack because I was on LinkedIn very early on and I think it’s just my 13th year or something. So I was very active there, but that’s why I have all of them. It’s just in different times, there’s a different kind of priority and I still keep my LinkedIn very up to date. But I still also post more articles and we also do a lot of podcasts. And again, I still do conferences.

Speaker 2 (37:11.982)
So it’s like, it’s a different audience and a different type of communication. So it would be very hard to kind of pick two, but I would go maybe, like the conferences that’s 100 % something which I started with and I wouldn’t really.

Yeah, I think I would I would have confidence number one for me, too

And the podcast is doing well. It’s really like people start to notice us. It’s, amazing. It’s really, I mean, it’s a lot of fun as well.

think it’s really good. It’s really hard to measure, but I’ve noticed 100%. It builds a lot of trust. So any other time where they could have met you in person or they might see a post, I’ve had someone message me and he was kind enough to tell why he was working with me. He’s like, I listened to a podcast of you. You seem like a nice guy. And that’s why I want to work with you because I feel like I trust you. So like the trust building of sharing on a podcast, you might not get a direct client. It does happen, but I think the intangible benefit of just putting yourself out there is massive.

Yeah, it is, is, because not everybody can do that and people still don’t understand like, or doesn’t realize like how hard it is. It’s pretty hard. And just not only talk, but actually make sense while talking and sharing at the same time as much as you can. So it’s like all of this free and then the post-production, we don’t even go there. It seems then it’s fine. It’s just, yeah, I’m just, of course, like those are rare cases, but even in those rare cases, I can’t really…

Speaker 2 (38:40.852)
expect anyone else to do this but me. This is my responsibility.

challenge you, can, it’s it’s going to cost the price.

Sure, but I don’t want to anyone else to do it because of, mean, yeah, of course I can pay anyone, but this is just my responsibility. So there you go.

That’s weird. For me it’s like, there’s someone who, if you mapped out what you did, someone would be willing to do it and more than happy to do it. But you’re not, I don’t feel like you’re gonna do that.

I’ve 100%. No, no, most probably no. I do. Yeah, I do. I do. Because you learn a lot of new skills while doing this. And I work with different AI tools now. I can do, well, I work with, you know, transcripts so I can transform that into articles afterwards. And I’m trying to kind of like this all. I couldn’t really kind of process all of this before because I mean, I didn’t even know.

Speaker 1 (39:12.302)
Enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (39:35.544)
The eye’s going really good in

I even know. I do all of this. And suddenly, while doing all the post-production, you know how many ideas come to my mind for content? It’s just insane. And if I don’t do it, where are the ideas coming from?

I mean I have I have the solution you make a custom GBT and that person puts it in there and then as a human they check it and then they serve you the ideas but that will take time to set up by its

possible. mean, of course it’s possible. But you know, my mind works very differently. I know, but yeah, that’s good. It’s good. It’s good. Because I look, always try, I always ask people like where they get the inspiration from because I’m, sometimes I really, I’m, I’m just walking around like listening to whatever podcasts I don’t even actually listen. It’s just like some voices, but yeah, exactly. And the sound like, fuck, this is amazing. So the right old, all the different ideas.

And there’s no right or wrong, I’m just kidding.

Speaker 2 (40:32.044)
This way, like, where do you get ideas? For example, you like, where do you get ideas for like anything content?

It’s a Podcast is a big one. I actually have a note a keep note. So I write all my ideas for posts So I’m gonna scan them now and have a look so I’ve got That was a Joe Rogan podcast. That was origin story moving to Cyprus. I think I just remembered I haven’t spoken about that yet A few more homozy podcasts YouTube video and then LinkedIn posts

That’s good. Yeah. So it’s open eyes and ears and, just while kind of enjoying the life, which is good.

I might be missing because I did it three months after I went on someone else’s podcast and I got the transcript from YouTube and then I looked at the ideas. I was like, there’s like five things I’ve never spoken about before. I was like, I need to add that to my flow now.

Yeah, yeah, Because then, I also work with the transcript for the episode descriptions and everything. And she’s like, wait a second, like, this is very, very interesting. So I take that bit and then just kind of work with it. Because then I have like 10 articles kind of like 70%, 80 % ready. because like ideas just come into my mind as soon as I have the idea, I need to write about it. And I don’t really feel like I need to post.

Speaker 2 (41:56.174)
that idea or article right away, I just keep it in the buffer. So if the time is right and when the time is right, there’s always the time. So I was like, oh, now. And I just kind of edit and then added the 20 % missing piece and then boom, there we go. And I have more of this. It’s working so well.

I’m a bit not struggling by my weird spot. I have a newsletter. So anyone who’s listened to the podcast or clicked it it’s like 1200 people and they’re all gaming professionals and At the start I was doing a weekly Newsletter it was just an email just some advice, right? And then it got to a point where I had like eight clients. I had all this stuff I had my own content. I was like I can’t so now it’s kind of Every time I release a podcast or announce something they send them in an email

But I’m definitely missing a trick because all my podcast transcripts can easily become nice blogs for the website and the newsletter, but it’s just my body doesn’t want to do it.

I know, because it’s hard. I know exactly because I had the newsletter idea in my drawer for three years as I don’t have the time, blah, blah, blah. And then I do it every week since I started and it’s like 167th kind of newsletter. Three years plus. Yeah, since the very beginning. And it’s just about how you structure it. Because if I had the structure of like very long form articles or something, which I need to do it every week, it’s just impossible.

It’s impossible to do. So you need to have the, at least like a section which you can write every week. And it can be just like a tip or whatever, just something which is, can change a lot for different people. doesn’t really need to be long. It’s just very tactical. That’s it. And then you have like multiple of sections that you can write in different topic, whatever, like different.

Speaker 1 (43:49.26)
are interesting. you have a repeatable modular process and then a part of that you decide what to write, but the rest is kind of like a regular cadence where there’s like what’s happening in the podcast world.

So I have the, yeah, the, weekly brutal Leon as newsletter justice. there’s a tip of the week. There’s a, I call it the drink talk at the very beginning, whatever is happening at like a conference is wherever traveling. Tip of the week is UA always. There is also a part where there is a talk about the podcast. There’s also part about AI and then there is a part which is called a diary of dancing unicorn, which is always something that happens to me, which is.

either weird communication with the client or like random shit, which is still like, it’s still real. So like.

a mini Casey Neistat vlog I’m feeling like fireflies like just something thing that happened this week right you you might think you might have started something because I’m getting excited I was like I can do that now that you’ve put it like that it’s like

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (44:48.27)
Exactly. Yeah. And you can do that. It’s just, need to think about like a small modular, exactly, modular pieces that you could put together and suddenly it’s long newsletter and that’s it. That’s it. And it’s very, it’s very simple. I don’t spend more than an hour on that, writing every week. And I think you can spend an hour.

100%. I think it’s more than mental energy of thinking of a topic or not. By the way you said it, I don’t have to do that. Like for example, I spend an hour a day probably on my LinkedIn content and I enjoy it. But it’s because I’m like, I have to release something tomorrow and I’ll think of a lesson and I’ll say, but for some reason, when I look at an email, I’m like, fuck, I’m going to send this to a thousand people. It’s got to be good. And then I was like, all right, let me just announce a podcast and see you later.

Yeah. Look, I pushed Felix to do this and now he’s on like 5,000 subscribers in less than two months because I was like, sub second LinkedIn as well. was like,

Fantastic is that on sub stack?

What do you think about, I have kit, which is an email newsletter. I don’t have a sub stack and I haven’t touched LinkedIn newsletter. What do you think?

Speaker 2 (45:53.718)
You should do both. do both and I have, yeah, have 12.5 thousand on Substack and it’s almost 8,000 on LinkedIn. It’s a different audience. It’s the same content, but different audience. I post on Substack on Monday and the same thing on Thursday on LinkedIn. Grow is like crazy. Easy as that.

Why the both? What was the diff-

Speaker 1 (46:15.512)
You just see it as like YouTube versus a different platform, right?

Exactly. So that’s why we do YouTube on two and a half gamers and Spotify and Apple. It’s just different. So it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s easy as that. It’s like, again, like you just need the initial push and just to figure out the structure. And this is exactly what I said, Felix.

naturally.

Speaker 1 (46:36.29)
You recommend not to batch then I think what you said you don’t I’m guessing you don’t batch that much Week to week just put it on your diary I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do that’s gonna be fun

No.

Speaker 2 (46:49.326)
It’s every week. It’s a, don’t worry. Like the main reason how and why this works is the consistency. It’s really like, when we talked about the shortcuts and everything, how, what’s the like kind of the way, how I do stuff, it’s just consistency. And you said like, you try to rehearse, you start, you don’t stop. It’s the same thing here. Like in business, you start and you do it until it’s good. That’s it.

I’m do it. I’m buzzing. I don’t know why, but the way you said it, I was like, I’m ready now. I’m good. I’m gonna call Ali Fahar because we started that.

I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. We both made the GDC wire last year. It’s just, it’s a road.

Perfect. So just for the last few minutes of the podcast, I’ve got a few questions I’ve prepared, which I’m curious. this is about client delivery. So you said once I treat UA budgets like my own money. Why did you say that?

Because it’s very important. Because if you spend your own money, you need them to get back. mean, you need to invest in investment. So it’s your own money and you invested money for some reason. And the reason is you need to see the money back. And some of your managers, don’t treat it as they’re all like, oh, know, like this big companies, nobody cares. Everybody cares. And you should care as well. And like, that’s the biggest…

Speaker 2 (48:14.286)
kind of difference between a UA manager and a good UA manager because the UA manager, you use budgets randomly. you have a goal. That’s fine. That’s it. But the good UA manager sees like the business perspective and the business point of like how much money you can spend, where it’s going to be back and what is the payback for all this UA stuff. has impact on the actual business. And it’s very, very important. So…

That’s why I treat it as my own money because I was in that position and every time I invested something and I got it back, I’d reinvest it. And then that’s how I could see my business grow in the previous non-gaming era.

That’s now I think you use the e-comments, right?

Yeah, we had an e-commerce brand. It was an interesting.

When we’re bringing it back and a new vertical to the business scalable

Speaker 2 (49:06.38)
Very scalable, I know. just, it’s not going to be exactly helping me to focus on gaming anymore. I was on-

What if you did software? You said you’re building something,

I do have a tool. Yeah, I do have the playable tool, which is growing and I can see that. charge for it? There’s a fee and it’s it’s kind of exporting playables from videos. So now it’s on like 4K monthly recurring revenue and it started over. How much it cost? I can check. It’s like a couple hundred users. We started

I’m going to

Speaker 2 (49:46.062)
pushing this in November, well pushing it started talking about it in November and now, mean, a couple.

subscribers from the sub stack?

Really? No, no, no. I actually, I don’t really, I don’t know. I pushed it maybe like twice or three times on my sub stack and talked about it very briefly on the podcast. So not a big push for me yet. So it’s like kind of growing nicely board of mind. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I want to improve the product to put to the point where I can say, okay, let’s go, which I’m kind of like doing all these like mentions here and there. And every time I do that, like it’s definitely goes up.

because you want to improve the product.

Speaker 1 (50:22.958)
I mean, boom. mean, that’s they are massive companies, right? Like you see them exhibiting conferences and they literally essentially just have a tool that helps UA go a bit faster. And when I think of it like that, like, that’s not far off from a custom GBT at some point.

Yeah, exactly. Of course. That’s going to be quite interesting to see how I can grow that with the team that I have on that side. So that’s exciting.

Yeah, hit me up because the BD strategy for that like There’s some new tools which you might be interested in like there’s some stuff we’re doing here where we can now scrape all the engagement of the gaming industry on LinkedIn each week So anyone who’s liked your post or the top posters and then put that into a spreadsheet and then run custom prompts to check their website to see if they serve the same industry are they decision maker

And then are they relevant for X tool and then enrich the data and then say, Hey, either I saw you, but even if you don’t want to automate a message, you can automate a connection request to them. Like the amount of time people spend building lists of people who are either not still working there or they like not actually active. Like we’ve really pivoted over the last few months to go from building lists based on job titles to building it based on like signal, like are they online right now? Like little stuff like that for the tool that

If you haven’t mentioned it and it has decent retention, yeah, like you can, this is the best time to start a solo business. honestly is.

Speaker 2 (51:57.794)
But yes, 100%. I mean, it’s really hard at the same time, but I mean, the tools and the possibilities you have these days, it’s just insane. It’s insane. You just need to use your brain. That’s it. Seriously. And I always say this when you don’t have enough budget or you are kind of not struggling, but you are in like a push to the edge, that’s where all the magic happens because then you need to be very creative and very efficient.

And if you’re running out of money, you don’t have big, big budgets. You need to create something that really is out of the box.

me three weeks ago. It was very weird. I went to like four conferences in a row and I brought my team and then I must have miscalculated. I was like, Oh, I’m going to run out of money in the business. So I lent 5k to the business and then I ordered it all the finances. I was like, okay, how do I make some money? And then what I did was I used to position my coaching as like two months of LinkedIn coaching. And then I was like, okay, how do I make this worth more? And I was like, ah, let me give them

Let me do some of the ghost writing work where I basically here’s your target audience. Here’s how we’re to reach them. Here’s now your discovery calls going to be like this. So I make them a Google doc and then I gave him all my best resources to like write content and whatnot. And I said, let me install this system for two and a half K and you have access to me for two months. And I sold like three of those and I was like, Oh, wait a minute. Like hell that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t run out of money. It’s crazy. Which is insane to me. Cause like

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (53:29.674)
My main offer right now, and like I’ll be transparent, it’s like three K a month, but all these people who couldn’t afford that, they could have afford two and a half K for something that is very valuable, but it takes a lot less time. And also I don’t have to pay anyone to help me. yeah, definitely when you have nothing to lose, the most innovation happens. And right now, my God. I’ve seen it spoken to these people at podcasts where when a company gets to a certain size and you could probably speak on this, it’s almost like a disincentive to become more efficient sometimes.

because they might be afraid to lose their job or what have you. So if you don’t have that, you are going to, it’s not like two X, like the stuff that we found, I know for a fact, the business developer out there, he’s going to a conference and checking who should I message. It’s like, bro, we can scrape meet to match right now and just get that in a spreadsheet. But you don’t, but you’re not looking for that because you don’t have that incentive. if you, yeah, just you can see how excited I’m getting. It’s like the best time. Like if you just solo and you have

expertise like you can monetize it.

Yeah, 100%. And you should monetize it. It’s just people are sometimes either afraid to ask for money or some people are just allergic to money, honestly. And I don’t think like, well, on the other hand, don’t think money is like the best motivation, but it should be something else. The motivation, if the motivation is like earn as much money as you can in the world, it’s like that’s wrong in my opinion.

And I think you also tend to make less money when you do that With the person you’re helping

Speaker 2 (54:57.824)
Exactly. you make wrong decisions always because every decision is always tied to make more money or money. eventually in the long run, it doesn’t pay off. It just doesn’t.

Either burn the market I’ve noticed or you burn yourself. Like you’re doing something that isn’t aligned with yourself. And I think I just want to commend that what you’ve done, like I can really see like you could have went a different way by chasing bigger number and definitely in like what you’re doing right now, you’ve got such a good foundation to either be with that tool and also growing the content side. So yeah, I just want to commend the steps that you made.

Thanks. I appreciate it. Wasn’t easy. but you know, like nothing is easy in life, especially life is not easy, but that’s, that’s how it should be. That’s how it should be.

If life was easy, then opportunity wouldn’t be there, right? Like if this was easy for everyone, but yeah, amazing. Anything that you want to leave that you haven’t covered today for anyone listening to this who’s looking to become a consultant.

Yeah. Besides, don’t do it. No, no, no. No, no, no. mean, because it’s very hard and people still don’t really understand like how hard it is. And it’s like, everybody can be a consultant. Of course, go and try and see if that sticks because I see a lot of consultants these days and they do it. And then suddenly after three months of trying, they just get a full-time employment and some other company.

Speaker 1 (56:01.598)
What are you being cheeky or is there

Speaker 1 (56:27.092)
They struggle with getting the clients or something.

Yeah, of course. mean, of course, like, because everything that we just discussed, it’s very hard to get trust. if you don’t, I mean, obviously, if you know what you’re doing and your work is good, I mean, that’s 50 % of the success, but still, you still need to speak to those people and it’s very hard to find them. And it’s very hard for them to actually trust if you are a good UA consultant or not. Even if you worked with different companies before and whatever big names you have in the…

kind resume, it’s not the same thing. It’s not the same thing if you work with big companies and then you kind of work with small teams like, Hey, it’s a lot of work and it’s different type of work. That’s the thing. Like nobody will do it for you and you don’t have all the predictions. You need to do manual stuff suddenly. Like, wait a second. This is not what I did before.

I think it’s a combination of constantly learning but also you literally not being afraid and also some people I think just do not understand the volume it takes to have conversations like when I tell someone like if you send a hundred connections a week that’s 400 people a month if you if you have a good profile 30 % will accept so now you got 120 people and then if you send everyone the best personalized message gold standard 20 to 30 positive reply so now we’ve got 20 or 30 people

And then if you’re a master in the DMS, you might get five on a call and then close one.

Speaker 2 (57:52.286)
Exactly.

All of the stuff I described is technically free but then most people send two DMs a day or just don’t send connections to the right people. So like everything’s possible. I think people maybe underestimate like the amount of volume they need to do whether it’s conferences or building

Yeah, exactly. Because then people always say, my God, yeah, let’s start working together. then 10 people say this. So after those 10, you get two on call, or at the best, let’s say five. Five like, here’s the deck, this is the pricing. it’s too expensive. Fine. Two say, this is good. And then one say, let’s work together. And after one month, they say, this is not the right time. Let’s circle back in six months. And then suddenly it’s like, wait a second, where are all those 10 people?

It happens, it happens all the time. But if you don’t have the pipeline, then that like kind of destroyed the whole business like right away.

I think people get too excited as well. I’ve seen it happen where they get verbal yeses or sometimes I’ve had this recently someone said yes, they said well good send the contract and this was funny enough a big business and then it took two months and I said hey guys, this is still a priority. No stress. He’s like, yes. Yes. Yes. Let me chase it one month later Hey, no pressure, but they haven’t said no still this was three months ago and said yeah, yeah still priority We’ll let you know and I was like cool

Speaker 1 (59:18.936)
So sometimes people will say yes, and then it’s not even a yes. So I think just to back up the point, like you need to have as many conversations as possible.

Yeah, exactly. And that’s very challenging and hard. that’s what people don’t really… High percent possible. High percent possible. Of course. That’s where I’m at the moment. because things take time. It’s hard, but everything is possible. You just need to believe in it. That’s it.

Sweet. Amazing. Matej, what’s the best place where people can get in touch with you?

I think LinkedIn or the Substack, which is my surname.substack.com, which is Lancerich, it’s L-A-N-C-I-R-C.substack.com. And two and a half gamers. So there you go. Easy as that.

Lovely. All the links to that will be in the description. And yeah, everyone, you’re listening to this and you enjoyed it, go to Slack and send it to your colleagues. I’m sure they’ll enjoy it. Yeah. Share it. Subscribe. take. Thanks so

Speaker 2 (01:00:24.462)
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.