On this episode of I Know This Guy we feature the founder of ULT Apparel – Nate Eckman. We discuss how he was able to take his experience studying the arts and apply it to modern day marketing in the E-Sports and apparel space. We touch on the importance of sticking to a life philosophy and how Nate strives to apply it to every project that he’s involved with now.
Date: November 7, 2020
Episode: 29
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Nate Eckman, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Ultimate Media Ventures, which Creates eSports Content, Experiences and products
Subtitle: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-29-finding-your-voice-ult-apparel-w-nate-eckman/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Nate Eckman, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Ultimate Media Ventures, which creates eSports content, experiences and products.
Nate has worked with the top gaming publishers around the world and has founded ULT Apparel. He discussed how he applies his knowledge in arts into eSports and on his business.
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Nate 0:00
We’ve got to acknowledge that we have a very, very powerful voice together for good.
Norman 0:16
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy. The podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy, wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, like kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 0:52
So who’s the guest for today’s episode?
Norman 0:54
All right. So do you remember John Davidson?
Hayden 0:57
Yeah, of course.
Norman 0:58
So this is the person he recommended and it’s Nate Eckman. He’s got an incredible clothing line called ULT and I don’t know if you’ve checked it out, but it’s really cool. Plus, he’s one of the most creative guys I know.
Hayden 1:16
Yeah, yeah. He sent over some of his work. I was pretty blown away. Yeah. Like they the amount of stuff he’s involved in is pretty phenomenal.
Norman 1:25
So I can’t wait to start talking with him.
Hayden 1:28
Yeah, let’s dive in.
Norman 1:30
All right.
Norman 1:32
All right, Nate. So welcome to the podcast.
Nate 1:34
Yeah, I’m happy to be here. Thanks, guys.
Norman 1:37
It’s pretty interesting, John Davidson was saying how he knows one guy, I got to talk to you and something about Nacho brothers or something like that. We got to get into that like.
Nate 1:49
Yeah. Man. John Davidson’s a good buddy of mine and he lives in Dallas, I live in LA and I love going to Texas anywhere in Texas. I think it’s like you got to get barbecue. I know. Like, that’s not an original thought. So to make it original, I was like, I love nachos. Can I have nachos in Texas? Three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner and not just playing nachos like barbecue nachos. Because I love barbecue, I love barbecue sauce. This is like all my favorite things. So I’m going to visit John and by the time I see him for lunch, no, we had dinner that night. I had successfully had breakfast nachos, lunch nachos, and we’re at some fancy place and so I get like that where they cut the steak like perfectly to the size of the tortilla and they like dress it up real fancy and then I was like, John, I’ve done it. I’ve successfully had breakfast, lunch and dinner nachos and so we started calling each other Bro Nacho, and we text each other stupid Nacho memes all the time and it’s just our thing and like, anytime I’m preparing nachos or eating nachos at a restaurant. It’s like we can send each other like psychically connected through the nachos. So he knows I’m going to send him a picture and we’ve just been going back and forth with that kind of stuff. So yeah, he’s a rad guy and to his credit, he is an extremely professional industry thought leader. We just happen to have a lot of stuff in common. So right, not just being one of the one.
Norman 3:31
I got to try barbecue nachos for some reason in Canada, at least in Ontario. Hayden, do you know of anybody that has really great barbecue?
Hayden 3:42
No, they always go out of business within like, two months or something.
Nate 3:44
Isn’t it? I mean, we talked about this before, I’ve been to Toronto, and it was cold. I gotta say, it was pretty chilly. Yeah, being a West Coast California kid like, it was cold and I’m like, I can’t picture anybody outside with a smoker, preparing barbecue. I remember I ordered an iced coffee and they were like, what? We don’t make that like, don’t you get it’s freezing here and I was like, Okay, yeah, I’m gonna pick up on that. But yeah, I mean, even out here like in LA we have a couple pretty good barbecue places. But, when you’re really looking for some fantastic barbecue, I’ve explored my share of different cities around Texas and so yeah, triple Nacho day, barbecue everywhere. I mean, come on. It’s a great part of the plan.
Norman 4:39
You can’t can’t beat that.
Nate 4:40
Can’t beat it.
Norman 4:44
We got to get into your backstory. So just, can you tell us a little bit about what makes Nate, Nate?
Nate 4:51
Gosh. Well, I come from a house of four siblings. I have two older brothers, a little sister, grew up in a little beach town, Morro Bay, California. Pretty small, humble little surfing fishing town, always loved playing video games to drawing, exploring, adventuring and, I think I really started to know that I was different or unique I cast by the time I, as any young person you start grappling with, like, Well, why did we exist and where are we here and where was this all me and where we going and my mom would drop me off at the library in the summer instead of drop me off at the pool and I would just read as many books as I could get my hands on about Philosophy and Theology, and like everything I could understand about diverse worldviews and different unique cultures and I think that was a really early formative part of how I became really into the idea of culture and having a lot of purpose in my work and really wanting to participate in developing community and like having a brand that stands for something that has a commentary on like, everything about existence, and purpose and identity and all these types of philosophical things that I grappled with throughout my life in my adolescence and really helped form who I would become and went to study Art and Film and Audio Engineering and Philosophy and Painting and eventually found a creative outlet in in marketing, which helped me utilize all of my diverse skills and interests and storytelling and it was kind of a typical, I guess, going from art school to finding myself doing, like marketing and advertising campaigns. But I think it was a way to embrace all those early formative years where I was really like, obsessed with Philosophy and I found creativity helping communicate that and creativity helped me express myself and challenge myself. But it was really through being able to do these broad national marketing campaigns that I had to professionalize. I had to commercialize that, I had to settle myself into a role and into a career that I could take all of that type of thinking into my work and I think that set me on my path and I kind of revisited my love of video games very specifically, where I could get lost in the imagination of a world or explore a world or create identity in a world and create friendships in that world and so I gravitated to other people like that and I found them in video games, and I found them in the video game industry and I was surrounded by very innovative radical progressive thinkers who were unafraid of taking risks and challenging themselves and that type of environment really helped foster my ability to find a home for the different types of, say, ideological or conceptual types of things that I really weighed on me throughout my life. It gave me a focus for that and I could put a job against that. I could put a career path in that and an industry with other people that I could work with and so I think all of that, really, it’s just about identity and meaning and purpose and I found a lot of that in Philosophy and I think that found its way through the Arts and the Arts led me to marketing and my love of video games kind of made sense of all that stuff and I think that’s still true today, still true. Decades later, like.
Norman 9:00
You still have the passion.
Nate 9:02
Yes and curiosity. The curiosity, I think that’s like, not assuming I have the answers, but I’m very, very curious and fascinated to discover, and to learn and to be willing to adapt and grow and challenge yourself and I find that in the games industry, I find that in most of the work I get to do with my own brand and it’s just continuously challenging yourself to be your best and being willing to discover what that means and to be open to critique from people you trust and respect. I just built my whole life that way. My personal life and my professional life. I’ve kind of built it on those types of principles.
Norman 9:51
So you went through school for marketing, and then when you graduated, where did you go?
Nate 9:58
Yeah, so I actually, throughout my, geez, you’ll love this. So I changed schools ever since I was a kid. I did homeschool, I did private school, I did public school, I homeschool again. Then I went to private college and I went to Art school and I went to Film school. I changed schools so much I was searching for, what is my thing? What is the thing that’s going to really connect with me and so I studied all these different Art forms and it really was what landed me in the world of Marketing that in the agency world, in Los Angeles, around Lifestyle Marketing, and really developing a deep love of the city and the culture of the city and I use that in my work to find inspiration and I’d say school really landed me in the agency world, doing marketing and advertising campaigns for automotive, or mobile or beverage companies and it was really, after some time doing that, where as a young person, I was like, I’m a gamer, there’s a huge audience of other gamers out there that we’re not addressing, we’re not speaking to them through any of these campaigns and I was really weighted, it weighed upon me that I wanted to have a whole dedicated division that could be focused on gaming and that was really an opportunity space and it was through taking that responsibility on and demonstrating that I could lead that category and develop it and make it profitable, and make it grow that I could work with the biggest game publishers in the world and that few years of time, proved itself to be very true and I got to work with Riot and League of Legends and Microsoft Xbox and these types of large publishers with games that I loved, with people that I respect, and these large scale, whether it’s arena events, or getting artwork in games that players can enjoy all around the world, like, it showed me that things were possible. Like if you just stuck to it, and you just persisted and you weren’t afraid to be vocal about an idea that the idea itself could open up so many doors, and that you could find yourself kind of at the top of the mountain with kind of impossible meetings where you’re getting to do the thing, like you get to have an idea and that idea gets to become reality, and then you’re creating realities for a lot of other people to enjoy. I think once you realize that life can be that way, and that you can shape it, you start to never be able to look back, like it’s impossible. It’s impossible to go back. So you just keep going forward and you find there’s people like you out there who think that way, and who encouraged that way and then you have teammates who join you in that way and you move faster, you learn, you can move more efficiently, like, yeah, but I mean, I’d say we all have that level of ambition and curiosities. It absolutely came out of from all the way from when I was a kid and now I get to share that inspiration and passion, like you say, with my teammates, but also with my other industry leaders and we get to challenge what this space can become and what gaming can mean to so many more people around the world in new ways and I guess that’s the fascinating part of the work that, I’ll never be able to shake it. I still show up every day and that’s what I’m trying to, I’m trying to explore what that means for me every day.
Norman 14:02
It’s not work for you.
Nate 14:04
It’s not, it’s like a gosh, I find that even when I get time to take a little breather. I always am like, man, like, I want to get back into the nature of the work, because the nature of the work is always about advancing an idea forward and that never feels like work to me. It always feels like an exciting discovery and like, how far can this go and I’ve never gotten sick of that, and it never feels like an obligation. It never feels like it’s motivated out of anything other than like, how big can this idea get? How much more broad and the impact of it and developing it and no, so it actually, it never feels like work to me. Quite ever, actually.
Norman 15:05
Yeah, I love when that happens.
Nate 15:07
Yeah, I mean, you guys are having fun. I’m having fun out here with you guys. So yeah.
Hayden 15:12
Yeah. Nate, I want to add something in there.
Nate 15:15
Sure.
Hayden 15:16
That switch from the arts over into marketing, was that like a willing switch or were you dissatisfied with staying in the arts and searching for something?
Nate 15:25
Sure. Yeah. No, that’s a really good question. Because I was studying, I went to study Philosophy and then I was unsatisfied with a room full of people who assumed they were right and I just wanted to learn and discover. So then I switched into studio art, which was painting, sculpture, illustration and then I studied photography, and I just didn’t feel challenged enough. So I said, What’s the most challenging art form on and it was filmed at that time. I was like, film has all of these things. It has design, it has managing talent, it has lighting, it has camera movements, it has art everywhere. So I went to film school, and I succeeded. Well now, won some national awards and things like this. So I was pretty good at it. But then I was like, that’s not enough. Like what’s more creative, and then it was like sensory, it was audio. So I enrolled in some Audio Engineering Master’s Programs and then it was the thing about marketing, which it sounds weird, coming from a really creative type of person. But the marketing was actually the most creative medium for me at the time. Because there were really high stakes, there were always these big brands. You’re dealing with billion dollar brands and like, these big national campaigns. There’s so many variables, it’s like this orchestra that you have to put together and the complexity of it. It was almost like a puzzle game to me and I love puzzle games. So you had to really manage like a ton of different things, to pull together on an successful marketing campaign and so to me it with felt like taking all of my creativity and putting it in this medium and then over time, like, I became frustrated with that and I think entrepreneurship was really the next thing in line for me to continue to challenge myself. But yeah, I mean, it seems bizarre on paper, when you’re like, how does a super idealistic philosopher art school kid get into advertising? But it was a means for me to reach more people and to challenge myself with taking all of my different talents and putting it into one thing that I could be exceptional at. Like that was kind of my thinking at the time.
Norman 17:48
So you’re in business, you’re working for these agencies, when did you cross over to fashion?
Nate 17:54
Yes. So because I was developing the marketing campaigns for the different video game publishers, a lot of my work was very art led and so we create really cool artwork and that would sometimes be in the game, sometimes it would end up on fashion and so there was this blend of like, a ways you could experience the game in real life and you can wear the clothes, and you could see the art in the game. So there was always this kind of hybrid of the way you could experience art and gaming in real life and on clothes and I didn’t really think about wanting to make a brand to address these things until many years later. I mean, it was like maybe a decade of kind of pursuing my interest within gaming, and refining it over time to be like, from marketing to agency to consulting to creative marketing campaigns. Suddenly, you’re like, I can do this and I can do this at a high level, I can work with the greatest game companies that are out there. But there’s a limit to what I can do, because they have a lot of rules. So it’s like, if I’m going to ever really pursue my passion to the most extent possible, I have to take myself seriously and I have to go on my own, create my own thing and really embrace it in its totality, even though it’s the unknown, even though you’re step away from 10 years of having a very comfortable job and all these types of things and people paying you for your ideas, and you’re just like, I’ve got to know where this goes and the only way I’ll know is if I take a risk on myself, if I bet on myself, and I take myself seriously. So, I mean, that’s really where it started. That’s where it kind of turned into where I’ve really created something for myself
Norman 19:59
Is it all about your first brand?
Nate 20:01
Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, I think I tried my hand at, I had my first bit of entrepreneurship, I was actually mastering music for different international pop artists. Because I loved audio mixing all this, like it was like painting with sound and I was trying to do that in addition to my full time agency role and then I was like, no, that’s not gonna work and then I was like, well, maybe I’ll create something else and it really wasn’t until feeling like old was so deeply personal. It felt like it started as almost like an artistic statement to myself, like I can do this and it had very humble beginnings. But it was a night and day transition for me from kind of doing a lot of agency work where you’re in the shadows. Nobody really knows who’s doing it. It’s just kind of they see the campaign, they see the big brands, but they don’t know who’s doing it and I kind of gotten comfortable with that and so the day we launched ULT, it was kind of like this unveiling of like, well, this is what Nate’s doing now. So it was a crazy day, it was in Los Angeles, the LA Times covered it, all the heads of the different gaming companies were there, and maybe a small, little private event for like 50 people and it was really like, I had to get up on stage for the first time. Speaking publicly for the first time, about something I just created and launched for the very first time and it was like driving a car into a wall. It was like so radically different from anything I had done in my life up until then and fast forward, you’re doing like 42 speaking engagements a year, but that first night, you’re like, Okay, I gotta get up in front of people and tell them what I’m doing and like, I remember that day very clearly. Because it just felt like I was departing from 10 years of what I had been doing to start something new and there’s one of my staff members years later, he was like, What is it like to be an entrepreneur like, what is it like? What does it feel like to start something and I was like, You ever just like running full speed into the darkness and you can’t slow down, you’re just getting faster and faster. I was like, that’s what it feels like and he just looked at me like, well, I’m kind of terrified about what that means. But I guess that’s part of it to me. It’s like the exhilaration of there isn’t a rulebook waiting for me. Like there’s no predetermined guidelines telling me what to do. There’s no blueprint of architecture plans that I just inherited, that’s going to tell me what’s next. It’s like, it’s totally up to me and before then that’s how my art and to this day, my art is that way, my personal experimental art is that way, but there doesn’t have to exist any parameters and so, taking that idea, putting it into to the ULT brand, it was the beginning of a new period of my life, and I’m still smack in the middle of that and like, taking it as a medium to interact with the world with the culture, with my fellow gaming audience and industry leaders. It’s like, it’s my medium.It’s like the paint that I use when I go to work on the canvas. It’s what I’ve got in my toolset. Yeah.
Norman 23:51
Being an entrepreneur, I know what you’re talking about running in the dark, going faster, but for some reason I run into trees.
Nate 24:03
There’s the wrong part of town.
Norman 24:06
I gotta find that blood field.
Nate 24:09
Yeah, mine’s got like a hole downhill. I see it as like this downhill into this fog of darkness and like when you’re a kid, and you just run down a hill full speed till your shoes fly off and you can’t slow down and you just you’re running out of breath in your lungs are like pulsing with with ache, but it’s like you’re not gonna stop. It’s like a meteor like flying through the sky.
Norman 24:33
So all the designs that you made at the beginning, you did all yourself?
Nate 24:38
Yes and that was a very interesting time in my life because you’re starting a new company. You’re separating yourself from all your comfort zones, you’re discovering like, Okay, how do I make clothes? How do I develop them? How do I build websites and like, you don’t have the comfort of a full agency at your disposal to go and just hate to lean on people. So I did sit down and draw sketches very much how I draw sketches to this day, and you learn to rely on your, like your family, or your close friends who you can trust and that becomes your team. Even without having a staff at that time, like, you had to know how to do every part of the job like, from how’s it made, designed, produced, manufactured, fulfilled, like every aspect of the whole chain, you had to know intimately and I think those first releases taught me those lessons and I can still rely on that knowledge and experience when I’m like, yeah, we might have a lot more resources and team members and things at our disposal. But you can always go back in your mind and be like, I know how to do this, I’ve done this. I’ve had to grind through all of the painstaking details to like, create something and it teaches you to really appreciate the craft a lot, and what dedication to quality means and the respect of others that elevate that and bring their expertise into it, it just makes you appreciate the work. But yeah, having to design things alone is not what it became over the subsequent years. Like, you develop it’s a team and a staff, you have art directors and designers and people helping with production and tracking and logistics and eCom and like you have in marketing and social, you have all these people who are excellent, and but you do have to be the one to have an idea and to steward that idea into reality and sometimes ideas can take years to actualize their full potential. So you have to be the one to be responsible for those initial feelings of excitement, like you have to keep it and you have to carry it with you and make sure it doesn’t get lost along the way.
Norman 27:34
I’m kind of interested in Okay, so now you’ve got the brands taking off, you’re bringing on new people and then when you bring on somebody, how do you articulate the design or the way you want the shirt to be designed or whatever you’re designing it for? Because you’ve got a very specific look to your designs. Now, how do you get other people to translate that?
Nate 27:59
The real professional would say, I’ve got a 388 page style guide full brand guidelines. As essentially like a one end, you could say, I’ve got a rule book. If you follow the rule book, you could do it. But that’s not true. Right? Because I think part of the brand’s DNA is one of evolution and adapting and experimental ideas and new applications and so how do you capture that a lot of it is you have to develop trust based relationships with your teammates. Where you can build a foundation together as people first, as humans first and you can relate to one another and you can share ideas and you can mutually understand that like an idea is a collaboration or a synthesis, as I say, and it’s really the meaning behind the triangle logo itself is it’s a philosopher named Hegel and his idea of synthesis where there’s an idea here, and there’s one here, and they create a third variable or a point at which previously did not exist and so if I’m working with the teammate, I’m one of those points and my teammate’s the other point, and I have an idea and they have an idea, and together and only together can we reach the third variable of a synthesized idea or a collaborative idea. So my design process is often extremely collaborative when I’m working with other people and even if that’s a big group or outside design, collaborator or creative person, it’s built out of trust, and being able to rely on one another to bring their best thinking and then there’s a nuance too you can’t assume, just like those philosophy classes when I first started college, or being that kid at the in the library in the summer with the books It was like I can’t assume I’m right. I’ve got to start with an open mind but I’m going to bring my very best thinking and I’m going to trust that my teammate is going to do the same and we’re going to learn and discover what that new idea is and that new idea becomes the base of my next triangle, which is now challenging. How do we elevate that and how do we synthesize that and how do we continue to build these ideas, so that they’re far more fascinating, awesome, cool, complex than we ever could have thought in the very beginning. So I know that’s a difficult thing to do. But it’s one of trust and relying on each other. But really like as individuals, embracing your voice, and not being afraid of what that is and, when I trust that my teammate also has a big bold voice, they know that I’m going to listen to that and I’m going to process that, and I’m going to try to understand it and together, we could create something new that I didn’t see coming, that’s gonna be really exciting and it’s going to be way more exciting, because it’s going to have aspects that are going to surprise me and my favorite stuff is like the really, really cool exciting moments when you’re like, that’s so awesome. I love that and I think good ideas feel really familiar to you, like anybody could have them and they’re close and it’s almost like it came out of your brain or their brain and it’s like you never, like the good thinking is like, really relatable. Yeah, design is like creating solutions and utility but art is really the beginning. For me, it’s like, it all comes out of the art.
Norman 31:57
Love it. I like how you explain that.
Nate 32:00
I’m sorry. I know, I could have typed that into 308 pages. One of my buddies, he wrote a 388 page style guide and I read it and page seven, it had this triangle, like an ascending triangle, at the very top of his triangle was the word promise and I talked to him about to say read your guide. Page seven, you use the word promise and he said, you know what? You’re the first person to ever identify that and I’m really grateful and so we’ve developed that that trust relationship and then over time, my work challenged all of his rules and that guideline, and I remember, he stopped one day, and we were talking to my studio, and he was like, you’re the only one we let do this and I was like, let do what? He was like, break the rules. He’s like, I write the rules. So I can’t break my own rules that just be weird. He’s like, but you can. You can break these rules and I trust that your work, because you care so much and you’re so passionate about it. You’re gonna bring good work, and it’s going to be stuff we couldn’t have seen coming and that’s going to be the most exciting stuff and like, beyond the products and the design, to me, it’s like those relationships that you build and those friendships that you build with guys like John Davidson, guys like that. That’s really the rewarding part of entrepreneurship so far. It’s like, yeah, you can always make more money. You can always go bigger. You can always do more elaborate, complicated stuff. But like, have you built friendships? Can you call people and rely on them? Can Nate call you and you’ll show up for them? That’s why I did the show. Because I was like, John’s gonna, anything John asked me for help with, like, I’m going to show up for him and that’s just the mentality that I think I want to see in my work and my staff and my team in my industry and so here I am.
Norman 34:04
So it’s funny how we just talked about John, because he mentioned during the podcast, how he met you at a trade show. He really was impressed with all of your product, the design. I think he said it was the shoes that you designed. But anyways, he was really impressed with how approachable you were and you guys just formed this friendship and I know that we talk about this a lot. The ability, not so much to be approachable, but it is being approachable, but it’s building that network. How important is that network to you?
Nate 34:44
Oh my gosh. I still have my early formative friends that you can call upon and relate to each other and I think being approachable is and we can use John as an example because it’s almost like I use this thing of like, it’s like magnets in the dark, right? The magnets will find each other. Even if they can’t see each other, even if they can’t anticipate win, but like minded people who are willing and open, they seek each other out. There’s a will, there’s a longing to find other people in the universe who think like you, who will acknowledge you, who will recognize what you’re doing and I think that lends itself really well to networking. I remember at that event really clearly. I had just stepped barely off the stage and John was like, ready with like, bubbling over with excitement and it’s hard to turn that away, it’s hard to be like, Yo, dude, I gotta go, I gotta get in my car, like, I got stuff to do, like, peace out. But he’s had these big, bright eyes, and he was just like, God I have so much to talk to you about, like, bah, bah, bah and I’m like, that’s awesome. It’s exciting, getting to meet people, new people have new experiences, learn from them. It’s an inspiration to me and the benefit is like, yeah, you can build friendships, you can build good business based off of good relationships and in my experience, good relationships and good business go hand in hand. You could trust each other, you communicate openly. So yeah, networking is like, I’m enthusiastic to meet and discover other talented people who care like I do and they might be in parallel crossover industries. But I’m always like, excited to learn and I think that’s what makes networking exciting and that’s why John and I have become quite good friends and have a lot of mutual respect for him as a professional. Anybody, any grown dudes, like meeting each other about nachos? That’s because we’re friends and that friendship came out of a mutual curiosity to learn how our industry could be better and he had aspects of his professional career that really were interesting and complimentary to mine and so it was a very natural development of our friendship and of our professional ability to support each other, and to collaborate together. But yeah, networking is huge. Like, I could sit here and gripe that, like, doing 42 speaking engagements a year and traveling across the country to go on stage for 15 minutes is a pain, but it’s also an honor and it’s a responsibility that I take really seriously because the value that I get every time I come home, even though it sucks to be away from your kids, and your wife and like, be away from your home and your comforts. You come back every time you’re like, I’ve met this cool person and I wouldn’t have known they existed unless I was there and I met him and man, there’s some cool stuff we could do together and I always know that’s going to happen, because I’m open minded. I’m willing and I share in that longing to challenge myself in new ways and a lot of times challenging yourself in new ways means you can have to meet new people who think differently than you, who have radically progressive ideas that will inspire you in new ways. Hopefully, I think gamers too, in particular, are really excited about relating to one another, because we share a passion and connecting with each other on that level is the foundation for everything. It’s like, Alright, cool, we got that. We got that on lock, like we all love video games immensely, and what’s gonna happen with our industry. So let’s do something fantastic together about it, is a good frame of mind to kind of enter a networking opportunity.
Norman 39:04
The other thing about networking, too, is okay, I meet you, now and I’m talking about you and John. Now your networks open up to one another as well. So he asked you a question, he don’t know what you do, tap into your network. So it just spreads and spreads and spreads and spreads. It’s great. But a lot of people don’t understand or don’t go to a lot of events. For me being in my business, I have to go to a lot of events. I might get well, I do get education. But at the same time, I’m not there really to get that much education. We’re there to meet people and just incredible every time you go you meet somebody and if you mind map it, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this or thought about it. But I go back three or four years ago or five years ago, and who I met and then this led us to these three people who led us to these. It’s incredible what you can do, just by reaching out for me, I’m not talking about a friend request on Facebook. But actually knowing somebody, and getting to know them and not just, gimme, gimme, gimme, but sharing information and becoming friends.
Nate 40:18
Yeah and a lot of those like 10 years later, like you said, you can look at me like, I remember, like, I was just on the phone with one of my other friends who he went on to be a huge executive at PepsiCo, and then he went on to be a huge executive at Footlocker and Mountain Dew and NASCAR. It’s like, I remember the day we met at South by, and we’re both kids and we’re both just trying to figure out cool stuff to do with this brand and fast forward now. It’s like, I called him when I was on the beach with my family on the weekend and I’m like, sharing pictures of the kids and I want to hear about what he’s doing in life and it’s like, it’s more important to me that he’s happy, and that he can share his joy and I can share my joy and I know, like, if he asks me for help in his work, I will help him and if I asked him for help, he knows that he’s gonna, like, we will show up for each other and I had, I just texted John, and like, when I was talking to him earlier, I was like, man, you’re gonna do fine. You can do awesome and here’s why. Because so many people in our industry have come to really know you and like you and trust you because of the networking and because of the outreach, and you’ve built a lot of trust. So when you show up, and you raise your hand be like, hey, I’ve got an idea. But I’m gonna need your help. I’m like, John, you’re gonna find everybody is going to want to help you because they like supporting good people and they like seeing good people win and the more you’re conditioned in your mind to know that’s true. The more ambitious you are, the more confident you are, the more you’re willing to go after something that seems completely ridiculous and out of your reach. Like, you’re just gonna go after it and you know that your friends, your family and your close teammates will be there to support you and to help you figure stuff out and that’s what makes it possible.
Hayden 42:18
Hey there guys and gals. That concludes part one of our interview with Nate Eckman. Make sure to tune in next time to hear the rest of the interview. As always, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts. It keeps you up to date with everything I Know This Guy and helps us grow the show. See you next time.
Hayden 0:03
Hey there, guys and gals. Welcome to part two of our interview with Nate Eckman. If you haven’t heard part one yet, make sure to go back and give it a listen. That’s enough for me and now for the rest of the show.
Norman 0:22
A week or two ago, when we talked, you were mentioning about building a brand for good, or how you want to build your brand platform for good. Can you give me a couple of examples on how you’re going to achieve this?
Nate 0:35
Yeah, when COVID really hit, so I live in Los Angeles, and we were all terrified and quarantine, everybody didn’t know what was going on and like, there was a lot of frontline hospital workers who were working around the clock and they were getting sick, and they didn’t have good masks, and their masks were hurting them and they didn’t have, even like good food delivered to them and like they were just really overwhelmed like the frontline staff. So we’re like, well, what can we do as gamers and it was an opportunity to collaborate with other game brands from around the world. So some of my friends here in town, and some of my friends in Sweden and some of my friends in Japan, and how do we all not only raise awareness, but all of the proceeds of the masks that we designed together, we give one back, and we gave two back. So we could use the capital that came in from the community to create more masks. So we were able to donate 10s of thousands of masks to frontline hospital workers here in our community that would otherwise potentially get sick and not be able to help other people who are really sick and that was like one of the beginning of like, we are a very globally connected community of gamers who can activate quickly, who can collaborate quickly, and deploy solutions rapidly and so that was a really eye opening thing and I think after that, I was like, wow, we can really do cool things to help people with our brand, and we’ve had other opportunities now like recently, like right now with gamers vote, like there’s a whole NBC broadcast going on, right? Like tonight with, we’ve been able to design products that are going to be worn by hosts and talent and celebrities and streamers to help them just generate awareness and have something to talk about that’s like, hey, go and register to vote. This is important. It’s a part of having a voice as an individual, but being mindful together that we’re all people. We’re all in this together. How can we advance categorical imperatives, like having a good world and a good culture and society to raise our children in. So, yeah, it’s being aware of, Hey, it’s a lot bigger than just me, being a design guy, artsy guy, like, with big ideas. It’s bigger than my brand. It’s bigger than being an entrepreneur. It’s bigger than games as an industry as a cool eSports thing, all the buzzwords attached, like, we’re humans, we’re on this planet, and we need to help each other and if we can, we should do that. We should do that. Just like that, except talking about networking. It’s like, we can show up for our friends, but we could show up for the rest of humankind, in the ways that we can and if we’re capable, which I believe we are, we will continue to demonstrate that.
Norman 3:29
What’s interesting, you must have been in awe when it first hit you how powerful your group was, like, just how you can make a change.
Nate 3:42
It’s humbling, I’ll say that first. Like, it’s very humbling. Because when you start on your little entrepreneur thing you do, it can feel isolating, and it can feel like you can be alone, and the creativity, the burden of that can be on you and and then I realized, like, the more I got out there, and I met more people, and I was like, This isn’t about me at all, like this is about all of us and it was kind of liberating, and that changed how I thought about it and, being able to say to my staff, my teammates, like you guys, we have a platform, our own brand. This is our voice. This is not a rulebook in front of a committee. Like, we are all people here together and we can speak up together, like, we can encourage each other. We can lead by example, not just, theorizing or sitting around with conjecture. It’s like, no we can do this and then once you start leading with example, your teammates know like, okay, we have confidence. We have the confidence that we’re going to be supported. We have the confidence that we’re going to be heard and we can take that as a team now, we can go and help other people. Like, that’s very real in this day and age in this culture and in this pandemic climate that we are all experiencing together. Like, it would be irresponsible of us to not embrace that.
Norman 5:18
Yeah and just imagine what it does for your corporate culture as well. Just getting everybody on board means I feel good for everybody.
Nate 5:26
Yeah, I’d say I try to have a culture of like, I don’t care if you’re the CEO, or you’re the intern, like, everybody’s a person, everybody’s got passion and capacity for thinking, capacity for critical thought and, like, we are all a team, that’s really important to our ability to succeed. So enabling people to believe that that’s true and then validating it with our actions, I think has encouraged them to have more confidence together and as individuals and things that makes us far more effective together.
Norman 6:06
Right. So is your fashion brand influenced by any outside influences?
Nate 6:14
Yeah, I mean, I say growing up as a kid skateboarding, playing video games, surfing, like being from Southern California action sports, surf skate culture, it was a very heavy influence, I think is still in the work. Very much influenced by a lot of my friends who were creating streetwear brands when I was a teenager and into my 20s, living in Los Angeles, visiting the shops and the skate shops, and like, knowing that, like, the culture around brands was so much more than just making shirts, it was about like community building, and being able to have a voice and being able to express your creativity. So a lot of my other inspirations are in contemporary artists, like other painters, who’d really challenge and experiment with color and experiment with form and texture like that is very often in my work, like the way that light interacts with products and light interacts with designs. So I’d say like, definitely skate culture. I still love to go to the skate park, I wish I was in right now. It’s a ton of fun, like, it’s just like in painting, like you’re in video games, your mind, all the cares, they just drift away, and like, you can be very present. When you’re writing on your board, or you’re playing in a game, or like, you’re inside the detail of a painting. Like, it’s all very similar types of behavior and I think all parts of my inspiration, says a lot of crossover inspiration, I think that’s part of being a modern gamer, that we exist in that cultural crossover together as like, yes, we love gaming, but we also love art and fashion and design, and like sneaker culture, and like all of this, like, it crosses into us and we cross into that and that might be more mainstream every day. But we’re creating that culture together with our choices and that’s really, part of the fun with the ULT brand for me is being able to play in that space on the front edge and shape it, see where it goes and find inspiration from a lot of diverse things and filter it through the work, I think is a part of the fun for me.
Norman 8:33
I’m really curious, at least I know for myself, and I’m sure other people, but they underestimate the influence that games have on our culture right now. Yeah, I like to talk a little bit about that. So like one of the things that we were talking about was gamers vote campaigns. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Nate 8:53
Yeah. I mean, I’d say the first professional incident instance that really fundamentally changed my view of how gaming really impacts culture was my very first like League of Legends World Finals. When you’re sitting in an arena with 10s of thousands of other people from all different parts of the world, different languages, and you’re all there together for the same reason, because you love a game and it just eliminated like any thought of like, this is so huge, the order of magnitude. It was like a line in the sand. I was never going back. I couldn’t understand it any other way. So when you think about modern or contemporary ways you could use that to help people like yeah, like awareness campaigns like gamers vote, it’s a fun camp. It’s a fun bit of messaging with a popular game, they’re going to be playing fall guys, which everybody loves to stream and it’s very accessible, can be played by anybody. Mix in some, some different athletes and streamers and gamers and you put it on a national broadcast and It’s entertaining for everybody and it’s accessible to everybody and games trance a form, many people’s abilities to think and your go across every generation and every cultural difference. It’s like if a game is fun, it connects us and it’s entertaining and we have joy and if you introduce positivity into that, suddenly you have a lot of people who are capable of seeing something similar, activating together, spreading a message quickly, digitally, anywhere in the world rapidly. I think that the gaming community is very primed to socialize ideas rapidly, get something in front of people, mobilize quickly, all these types of things like we’re perfectly tuned to do that. So yeah, generating awareness for gamers’ votes came together really fast. Speaking of networking, like I met the gentleman, Mike Tomlin, who he was at D dubs, and then he went to Wambo sports, and then he went to get help gamers vote and he and I both play the same video games, and we can relate to each other as friends. So when he called me for help, just like I said with John, and just like, so many of my friends in space, I’m like, yeah, I’m going to show up because A, I’m going to help you and B, these awareness campaigns are critical for not just our industry of gamers, but like humankind. So we’ve got to show up to support each other. But then as community members, as part of the games industry, we do have to acknowledge to your point, like, we’ve got to acknowledge that we have a very, very powerful voice together for good and I’m very dedicated to that. I’ve seen it firsthand and being able to help awareness campaigns, like gamers’ vote has been a really rewarding experience, because it eliminates this idea of like, Who’s competing against who and who’s the best at this? Or what’s this new drop, it’s like, we just identify like we’re humans. I’m going to help other people and this is a way I can do that my platform and gaming as a whole can reach so many people. Yeah, the modern gaming culture is one that can be able to shape mainstream lifestyle, but also the global economy. Like, it’s a very powerful community, and I’m very thankful to be a part of it.
Norman 12:36
I remember many years ago, before the beard grew in. It was maybe stubble at the time, I had Pong, and you probably weren’t even near being born. But anyways, I remember, it had in Montreal, it had a community actually back then, where people would go around, Quebec was the only place that I remember where you could actually tie in, and be in a community with other Pongers at the time. The first video game that I ever saw, I never saw it when I came to Ontario, which is another province in Canada, but I saw it in Quebec. But when you said, sitting in an arena with 10,000 people, that’s crazy.
Nate 13:25
I mean, the arena’s Korea fill multiples of that, but yeah, it is a life changing experience, where you’re like, Okay, if you ever doubted it before, and that was the first of many, like, some of my favorite experiences is being in a big stadium, people from all around the world were all there for the same reason to have fun and love games together. It’s powerful, and I think the equivalent of that for the mainstream industry is like, Oh, gaming is a billion dollar industry, multiples a billion dollar industry and all this and it’s like, well, it’s that way, because people are really passionate, and they come together. Just like Pong back in the day. It’s like, it just takes like one person to love something and then that begins to grow and building community and now, we have tools, digital tools, and streaming tools and online tools to connect us faster and in larger groups and get the message out to more people, very quickly. So, it’s just kind of a natural evolution that like gaming as a whole can influence culture in a very, very dramatic way and honestly, that’s one of the pieces that I love about it the most is, we get to participate in that we get to have a voice in that we get to meet other people and challenge each other to like really take that seriously that work has a lot of impact and so yeah, I’d say that’s a huge part of what we do every day.
Hayden 15:11
I feel like there’s very few things that we have right now that can connect, like not only, like people with common interests, but also across like generations. I mean, even I find being able to relate to some of my students, like I teach music. But if you do a fortnight dance on screen with them, like they instantly connect into you, and you can share that with them and I imagine that’d be the same with being in an arena like, Can people from all different backgrounds, all different age groups, all are as much into the same thing and I feel like maybe outside of sport, there’s very few things that we have in society that can tie us together that way.
Nate 15:48
Yeah, I think gaming is such a quick way to relate to somebody and especially when you’re in, we’re talking about how I met John, it’s like you’re in these rooms with lots of people and it’s like, the one unifying metric is you love games and that becomes the common ground, that becomes the thing that transcends, like you said, age, demographic, any economic background, anything that differentiates people from one another, like gaming is that common connection. So we build from that one point, that’s kind of the core of our whole community is like, we all can acknowledge that, like, we all have a shared passion and we all have this identity that we that we share from in game to reality, and the crossover between all these things together and, yeah, it’s quite a beautiful thing, man, like, the stories that I share with my son from games that I grew up playing, that he can now play and share his stories with me. Like, that’s just such awesome stuff and I’ve made all of my greatest friends that I have the benefit of knowing in life, like through a mutual love of video games, and I’m very grateful for that.
Norman 17:14
One of the things that you support is the LGBTQ community and can you dig into that a little bit? What are you doing and how are you doing it?
Nate 17:24
Sure. Yeah, I mean, I go to a lot of, some of my favorite memories are going to events and not sitting in the owner’s box. But like being on the floor, screaming your head off as a fan of games, and in those environments, you meet so many other fans of competitive gaming. So in those experiences, I’ve built a lot of great relationships and in my life, I’ve had a lot of friends who were underrepresented. Friends who are gay, or friends who are black, and like, so part of us as a brand being like, how can we support underrepresented friends in our community who also love games who like, through awareness, but also giving back proceeds to positive campaigns that like, raise awareness, raise funds, give resources, and how we do that is we create really cool art. That’s what I can do. I can use design. I can use art. I can use my brand platform. I can design something cool people want, and I can get their attention through my platform. So I can share awareness, I can generate proceeds, and I can give things back and I think that is a way that like, at first it’s a little overwhelming, like how can I help people? But you use the tools that you’ve got, and you start to realize that they’re really valuable tools like, the gamers vote people, like, can you design something cool that we could put on people and they could go on stream, and then we can talk about it? I’m like, Yes, that’s very much in my comfort zone and my skill set, and a way that I can use my humble abilities to help facilitate a message and facilitate people being able to learn from one another and to relate to one another and to have something to talk about. Oftentimes, like the simple thing of like you put a piece of clothing on your body. It’s a way you can identify yourself. It’s a way you can have something to speak about, to share a story, to relate to another person and art and design are ways that I can do that and I’m very grateful that I can have those opportunities to help other people.
Norman 19:46
Now we’ve talked about a bunch of different things. We went down a bunch of different rabbit holes, but I want to know something that you live by. Do you have a motivational quote or quote that you live by?
Nate 20:00
Yeah, when you when you threw this one at me, I’m not like one of those daily motivational calendar people, but one quote did stick with me that my co-founder, he told me, and I’m not gonna say that he invented this one or anything like that, but it really stuck with me and he was like, “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice” and when I think about that, unlike, it doesn’t matter how big and aspirational and ambitious and successful whatever you think you are, it’s more important to be nice and you could always go up and be like, I’m this big hot shot on stage and all this kinds of stuff, but, or design or this or whatever. But it’s like, just be a nice person and I think being a nice person has qualities of like humility, being grounded, being relatable, approachable, like we talked about, and so it’s something I think, like, really resonates with me, because of its simplicity. Like, everybody wants to have the big ego and feel important, right? But far more important than that, it’s just being a nice person and some of the most gratifying messages that I get now are from like, younger people who got like, I helped give them their first shot, just like somebody gave me my first shot in space in gaming. I can do that for younger people. We’ve hired a lot of kids straight out of school, and like, they’ve gone on to have amazing careers, and I’m so proud of them and they send me these messages, like you remember, like, four years ago? You gave me a shot and this is like, you encouraged me, and I’m like, I love that. I love that, it makes me realize that I can do something positive and just being nice to people, no matter how busy you are, always helps. It always makes a difference and so that’s why, yeah, it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.
Norman 22:06
We all know those people that think they’re bigger than they are and yeah, like you said about the magnets, right? You’ll attract people that have the same sort of personalities. They always seem to attract and if it’s polar opposite, and that’s fine. Stay opposite.
Nate 22:25
Right. Yeah. It’s a big world and yeah, I think you got to be humble, you got to be grounded, you got to be like, if the one thing I can do, it’s free, right? Just be nice and I’m always grateful, and people are nice to me, and it’s important. It’s the smallest littlest thing, but it can make all the difference.
Norman 22:52
Right. Yeah, there’s a lot of times that I’ll get up, I’ll get people calling and they might want to show me a product or whatever, they might want to get me involved with something and then you just and it always happens. They say something, it’s like, we always hear it, how you treat a waiter or, one of the servers at a restaurant, when you’re on a date, you can tell basically what the person’s gonna be like. Well, same thing like this, red flag, somebody says something, and you just go, Oh, yeah, I already nailed you. But it makes life so much simpler, doesn’t it? Like just going out there and trying to be your best?
Nate 23:35
Yeah, I think it’s about mindfulness and being nice and realizing like, like you said, it’s not about being vulnerable. It’s about being confident and comfortable enough in your own skin, that you don’t have to be selfish, right? You could be selfless and it’s about that calmness, and that grounded nature of being like, it’s not about me, like, it doesn’t have to be about us as individuals. It’s like if I can be nice and generous with my time or with my knowledge or my experience to help another person in their life, that’s so gratifying. Infinitely more gratifying to me than tracking revenue back to metrics back revenue all over again. It’s like, it’s humans relating to other humans and I know that sounds really simple, but like, my obsession with Philosophy just led me into that way. It’s like, I’m alive. It’s got to be a reason and if I can do something good with that, I’m going to do that. I’m going to choose that path and being nice is a big part of that.
Norman 24:51
Now, that’s great. I mean, there’s a lot of business people that come on, there’s a lot of different people that come on to this podcast and fortunately, I get to meet them and they’ve all been really great individuals, including yourself. I mean, you’re the type of person that I mean, it’s just great. Everything you’ve been talking about on this podcast, I’m sitting here going, Oh my god.
Nate 25:18
I thought those long pauses were like, awkward silence. Just kidding.
Norman 25:23
Yeah, no, no, none at all.
Nate 25:25
You’re very generous with that. I appreciate that.
Norman 25:28
Yeah, no and I appreciate you just being so candid and transparent that says, thank you. So, now I find that my son, what did he say? He was a big fan of one of the guys that you follow and Hayden, you want to just talk about that?
Hayden 25:48
I love the fact that you mentioned Haruki Murakami. our emails. He’s definitely
Nate 25:54
Really?
Norman 25:55
Soon as the name came up, he’s just, Oh my God. Yeah, I’m a huge fan.
Nate 26:00
Well, I’ll have you know Hayden. My goal, I’m going to read his entire catalogue, his entire life’s work back to back to back to back to back. It’s difficult for me to interject any other novelist or book or memoir, anything like I’m so completely obsessed with Murakami’s work. It’s like, I relate to it. It inspires me. It’s in my paintings now. It’s like in my dreams, like, he is a special author and I am so blessed. One of my friends in games many years ago suggested I read one of his books that was probably eight, nine years ago and I have not stopped reading Haruki Murakami’s work. I’ve got a stack on my shelf, and I send them to my friends. Now if I finish one, I send one to a friend and like a set finish when I send it to another friend and I got a stack by my bed that I just can’t stop reading his work. Hayden, what do you love about it?
Hayden 27:01
For me, I kind of consider him like a great mental painter. I feel like the aesthetic that he can get across in his writing, I can see everything so clearly and even if it’s really bizarre, it’s still very clear in my mind. But it’s not necessarily super descriptive. It’s the choice of words and maybe actions over describing every little detail I find in him and then along with I feel like he’s someone who’s always trying to get at some deeper truths and like sliding them in the background, just so masterful.
Nate 27:38
He has this special way of the stories. I’m like, almost he got to read like 200 pages before I get strange, right and by the time it gets strange, he’s taking you with him where it starts painfully ordinary, like so ordinary, like, almost like awkwardly ordinary and it’s just like, over time, the character goes on this whole experience and you just like, by the time it is so permanently strange, there’s no looking back and it’s just reality, it’s just reality now and like you forget what is real and what is not, and you stop caring. You’re just fully in it with them and I just love it. I know, I get the joy of these conversations where it’s like, Yeah, dude, I love Murakami and, like some of my paintings now are of those some of his characters because you see him so clearly in your mind and, you’re like, I need to paint that. Like, I want to read, I want to experience that in a new way.
Hayden 28:49
He’s actually inspired some of my compositions too.
Nate 28:54
Very cool.
Hayden 28:55
I think it was Norwegian Wood. That novel really hit me hard and definitely sent me down this weird creative path afterwards. I’m curious actually, like, do you have any standouts? Maybe for our listeners? Like could you recommend?
Nate 29:08
Yeah, The Windup Bird Chronicle. That was the first one I read.
Hayden 29:12
Yeah, that’s my favorite.
Nate 29:14
Then 1Q84 like, epic, like a thousand pager like that what I love, but most recently, Killing Commendatore is about a painter. So being a painter myself, I just like totally obsessed over his descriptions of painting and the significance of it and the just completely otherworldly experience that that book goes on. Has just kind of transformed my thinking about painting and my belief in what painting can offer me as a creative person, like, it’s a good book when it changes your life, when it changes how you think about yourself, it’s really cool.
Norman 30:00
So Hayden.
Hayden 30:01
Yes?
Norman 30:02
Your dad’s birthday is coming up.
Hayden 30:06
So as your son’s.
Nate 30:09
I gotta send you guys both books. I’ll send you both of the comic books.
Norman 30:12
There we go.
Hayden 30:13
Welcome to The Book Club.
Norman 30:17
Man, we’ve gone down so many different avenues and I mean, this is really late into the podcast. But I can’t believe how long it’s been like we’ve been talking for an hour and a half here. But let’s go down like one of the reasons why I created this podcast is I wanted to talk to really interesting people and successful or not, or just in between. But I wanted to know about struggles, and I wanted to know what struggles, what their most significant struggles were, and how they got out of it, and how they turned it around. So I’d like to talk to you a little bit about that now. So can we start talking about your greatest struggles?
Nate 31:05
My greatest struggle, honestly, it’s like, and this goes back to what I was talking about being a kid and being afraid about why we’re here on this planet, and what it all means and I think you just don’t want to be alone. You don’t want to experience this life alone and thankfully, my wife, Monica has really helped me overcome a lot of those types of obsessive negative types of thinking and I think that’s always a challenge for me is, yeah, I have a brand platform. Yeah, I have huge opportunities that a lot of people will never be able to have in life. But it comes back to like, can you overcome the fear of being alone, and the power to step outside of yourself. Be more mindful of others. Be nice, be thoughtful, be selfless. Remove yourself as much from the equation as you can like it eradicates that sensation of being alone and I think when I put myself into the work, and I surround myself with my team, and we learn how to trust and communicate openly, and there’s this radical transparency that starts to occur, you can’t feel alone. Because you have to relate. People relate to you, you share ideas, you share inspiration. It’s impossible to feel alone and then when you start to interact to like, do things like this, like, go on podcasts and speak to others and go on streams and like watch shows, or like be in an audience with thousands of other people, like, you realize, like, I am not alone, none of us are alone. Like that is only in your mind and if you can remove that, and remove that fear, there’s so much more waiting for you and there’s so much of a big beautiful life that you can have. So I’d say like, yeah, the fear of being alone is a wildly detrimental state of mind and I only overcome that by trying to be grounded and relate to the people that I love and that I trust.
Norman 33:15
How long did it take you to get around that? That fear of being alone?
Nate 33:22
How old am I now? Man, I’m not gonna say it’s go it goes away. I’m aware of it and I have tools. So it’s a lifestyle. Now it’s like it, reading Murakami, playing video games, spending time with my kids, being open with my staff, like, those are all lifestyle choices that helped me combat the negative things, the fear and the idea of being alone. So I’d say like, I’ve not eradicated it entirely. I’ve just learned how to have the right skills to address it. But I’d say like the really the dark period, when you’re 28, 25 like you’re really grappling with, what does this all mean? What am I doing about it? Like, you feel alone a lot of those steps along the way and overcoming that is absolutely something that takes pure daily dedication. It’s an absolute lifelong thing that you have to be very diligent about it all. So yeah, but I’d say early formative years, adolescence, like yeah, it’s a scary thing to think you are alone in this universe and that’s not true. It’s just not true. We’re not alone in this universe at all. So very glad I was able to be encouraged to overcome that.
Norman 34:50
So let’s talk a bit about the other side. What about your successes? What’s been your greatest success?
Nate 34:56
My kids, my kids. Yeah, hands down. Creating life, seeing that life grow, seeing these young people be so full of joy and knowing they’re going to have a good life. They’re going to be kind to people, they’re going to work hard. They’re going to be unafraid to share their voice with other people. They can be leaders. That’s faraway the greatest success I will ever achieve, period. Nothing will compete with that and seeing their love and their joy reflect back on us as parents and to each other as their siblings like, and with their friendships that they can build. That is absolutely the most gratifying success. I’m very, very honored to be able to witness in my lifetime is seeing the joy and the love of my children.
Norman 35:48
I betcha. Hayden, are you there?
Hayden 35:52
I’m here.
Norman 35:54
Alright. Now. What do you think? Did you think that Nate was gonna say that? I just knew it.
Nate 36:06
Oh, man, but you guys have seen my kids on this on the prep videos?
Norman 36:10
Yeah.
Hayden 36:13
They’re already stars.
Nate 36:15
Yeah, they’re their little bosses around my house and I couldn’t have it any other way. Man, I’m grateful that I get to be around them as much as I can and quarantine has done one amazing thing for my existence is like, I get to see them. I don’t have to travel, commute, sit in meetings as much like, I get to see them. I can make them breakfast. Like I get to read them a story at night. Like, those things are priceless to me and help motivate me on a whole other stratosphere of motivation that like, I can’t even articulate, so. Yeah,
Norman 36:51
I have three boys and it was really kind of cool. Having all three guys back at the house. They’re all over 20 and you thought now that that time was over, they’ve left, they’ve left the nest. But having them here for two or three months was really kind of cool.
Nate 37:18
Yeah, I believe then.
Norman 37:19
Then Hayden left us.
Hayden 37:22
Enough of that.
Norman 37:26
Just imagine going back and living with your dad. Right? So, you know what the funny part was? I had him trapped. He works with me. So all right Hayden, what are we doing tonight? 9 o’clock. Hey, you got a second?
Norman 37:43
He had to get out of the house.
Nate 37:44
I got to say a big part of a, like John called me and he was like, hey, do you want to be on this podcast and I was like, John, what do you ask him and he’s like, Oh, it’s no, it’s this cool. It’s like this Father, Son thing. I was like, yeah, I’m gonna have to like, just Yeah, that sounds awesome. Like, and obviously, you guys sent me the work and it’s great work and I’m stoked to be here and a big, big fan of what you’re doing. But I’m like, I just think it’s super cool. Like, I love being able to do stuff with my son and if I’m getting older, my wife will always tell them like, you can live with you here with us forever, right and he’s like, he’s seven. So like, yeah, Mommy, I’m gonna live here with you forever and I’m like, she’s serious about that. Like you could absolutely stay here forever with us. We’d be very happy about it. Yeah. I think it’s cool. I’m happy to see you guys doing cool collaborative stuff like this and, it’s been really fun to get to know you look better and, I’ll tell you this to the gentleman that I’m going to invite on the show. Very similar to myself, like an industry leader, gamer, but a dad is a super gamer dad and our kids have a lot of fun playing together and that gives us both a lot of joy and it’s a ton of fun to see. So I think you’ll get a kick out of him too and his name is Guy. So he’ll go with I Know This Guy. I know this guy. His name is Guy. Yeah, he’s one of my best buddies. So I think he’ll get a kick out of it and I told him the selling point too. I was like, Dude, it’s a rad. It’s like a father son thing. You totally get kicked out of it. So be fun.
Norman 39:29
So who is Guy?
Nate 39:30
So Guy Constantini. Brilliant, brilliant guy. Oh my goodness. So I met him through his time at Riot during League of Legends. He was like a super powerful executive dude. But he’s also just such a rad grounded like crazy intellectual, but a total total like fun, goofy, just like awesome personality and we just like John Davidson and I, like we just completely became friends and he’s gone on to be, he’s, I would be very curious to how he would answer this question about success. But I’ll say he went on to work with some of the biggest Triple A Game of the Year level publishers in his day, and still even now, like he’s pushing the envelope of VR. He’s on mobile, he’s on PC, he’s done just a myriad of Triple A tier one types of work and he’s probably not going to talk about it. So I might as well just say the dude is very successful, very impressive. But the most impressive part of him too, is he’s just a really good friend. He’s a very humble guy. He’s a ton of fun, super smart, but he’s not afraid to just listen. He’s one of the best listeners I’ve ever met. So, yeah, Guy Constantini. One of the coolest, coolest friends ever.
Norman 40:58
Yeah, I hope he doesn’t listen too much, cuz he’s got to do some talking or I’m gonna.
Nate 41:04
Hey, you get him going nonstop, man, like, man, he also likes barbecue, but he’s got a crazy knife that he uses. He’s super funny. He’s very particular, very funny and he could tell some funny stories. So I’m sure you guys will have a blast with him.
Norman 41:20
Oh, that’s great. Well, I can’t wait to talk to him. So once again, Nate, it’s that time. I really appreciate you coming on to the podcast. We’ve taken up a couple hours here and yeah, just wish you all the best and thanks again for coming on.
Nate 41:37
No, I had a blast. Both of you and thank you so much for having me on. Big fan of what you’re all doing with this and can’t wait to hear it and share it with my friends and family. So yeah, thank you very much. Appreciate it. I really did.
Norman 41:50
You’re welcome.
Hayden 41:56
Thanks for listening guys and gals. For our next episode, we’re going to change gears a little bit as we have concert pianist Marcella Brodsky on, out of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Not only is he a world class musician, but he also runs an initiative that brings music lessons to impoverished neighborhoods and he’s actually had a few of his students go on to play with him at Carnegie Hall. I know Dad and I both got a lot out of this interview, so make sure to check it out. See you next time.
