How to Leverage In-Person Sales for Business Growth

Jason Hsieh (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed. Today we’re talking with George, the mind behind Game of Ham a hilarious and unpredictable party game for a adult that combined with smart mechanic with total chaos. And thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, George.

George Berns (00:16)
Thank you for having me

Jason Hsieh (00:18)
Can you kind of talk about, was wondering if you can share with your background on how do you even get started into this industry? I know you have some background in like film industry as well.

George Berns (00:28)
Figuring out what the next steps were and what I wanted to do with my career. I got a very terrible knockoff of Cards Against Humanity. And when I got that, I realized well, this is awful. basically it was terrible knockoffs of like a guy with a jigsaw on his head or whatever, just very obvious horror stuff. And I said, we could do better than this. So, because my sister got me this gift. And then from there,

I continued to do that for several months. eventually went to grad school, did both the game and grad school for a period of time, realized that grad school was actually affecting my ability to do the game. And at that point I had put in about seven months with the game and I realized this is actually something marketable. I decided to drop out of grad school and continue doing this, which was a great choice. Cause in the end, well, it ended up working out. And I did a bunch of different things. So in the series of steps, I realized Cards Against Me,

A lot of people didn’t understand what the references were. And apples to apples apparently does do something like this, where you have a little description at the bottom of the cards. I took it a step further. There’s a lot of references and a lot of I call it the flavor to the pork and the game of ham. And one of the issues with games in this genre as a whole is the grammar between the questions and answer cards don’t actually work together. So you’ll have something where it’s like Me go park now, which sort of ruins it. And a lot of people might correct that.

And one of the suggestions, of course, is someone in the room. So you could actually bring the audience into the game to some level. And eventually the game turned into one of these things. Well, how can we make this more of a complete game? Because party games as a whole, it feels like it’s something you do with your friends. You sort of slap your knee, you laugh a few times, and then you sort of move on and the replay value isn’t there for a lot of party games. So eventually this became a board game too, with the concept behind it being the cards affect the board and the board affects the cards and it scales at 8 players so you could actually go up to 16 players with this games too.

Jason Hsieh (02:40)
wow, okay,

George Berns (02:51)
and And the idea is you kind of build your own like how you want like Legos or Minecraft. So the game itself actually has a 24 pages rulebook with 5 different game modes or 50 optional mix and match rules just a bunch of different ways to play the game. And in playtesting, we realized that was actually scary, which is why we also came up with the QuickStart Guide. And of course, you get a little fun and cheap humor there too. And the vision for the game is to not just be a party game, that’s one of the unique things that sets this game apart, but actually a game that goes into different game genres. And eventually every game connects with each other like a giant puzzle piece. And we just came out with the first release in that vision, which would be called The Punishing Board.

which is a one to six player game that works with dice rather than the party game components. It is actually child friendly. Okay. And it does connect into the game, bringing a dice mechanic into the fold. And I like to recommend this one for couples with unresolved issues. We’re gonna have some fun. And of course, one of the unique things to the game too, the game has a higher price point than other games in the genre. It’s 50 bucks versus other games, which are like 25 to 30 range, 35. But it has significantly more cards, 810 cards because we designed the game so you don’t actually need cards for this game.

Other games you have to kind of buy the expansions to keep playing. But with this game, we made it so you don’t need to do that. And instead, you get to season that pork to your liking with goodies like depression, x-ways, I love you, anxiety, we got the works. So you basically get to go on different adventures, each one with its own unique flair and unique flavor, which is one of the unique selling points and primarily the way we

of move this game is through conventions. So of course we offer sort deal that you’ll be going to get at the convention. We call them combo platters cause we love leaning into the food puns here.

Jason Hsieh (04:21)
I see, see, I see. so I understand the basic game rule, how long does it usually take to finish the basic game without the expansion? And you mentioned about the players, but can you also explain just on the high level, how does the rule work?

George Berns (04:38)
Please just like cards against me any judge reads a question people play responses Judge picks a winner and at the bottom each one of the card there’s little numbers and those numbers allow you to move across a board you start at a beginning spot you finish at the last spot and as you move across the board you pick up different ability cards that allow you to do things like swap the cards in your hand play twice around force the judge pick a card or just be a jerk and make your friends sit out Behind this game is the cards affect the board

Jason Hsieh (05:02)
Okay.

George Berns (05:06)
and the board affects the cards, creating a unique push pull mechanic. And the punishing board, which doesn’t work with cards at all, that’s much more take that leaning into games like sorry and Shoots and Ladders and games and even a little bit of Magic The Gathering elements in there. Cause we actually have a stack rule for the people who play games like Magic The Gathering So much more on the punishment aspect, which is one of the things people really enjoy in this type of humor. and basically.

There’s tons of ways to play and the general way it could be as short as 20 minutes but it could be as long as about 60 minutes. It depends on how quickly people play the game but I would say a real sober guess for people in a group of four to eight I would say you’re looking at about a maybe 30 40 minute game.

Jason Hsieh (05:47)
I see. Okay. Thank you for the explanation. And you mentioned about like going to trade show for the business, any other marketing strategy you have tried that has worked well for the brand so far?

George Berns (05:59)
So I mean, we did do a few different strategies. We worked with a bunch of different content creators. game is very searchable. We did reviewers, we did We did gameplay videos. We worked with many of those content creators. And that had moderate success. It didn’t really justify the expenses involved. So I wouldn’t call that a huge success in terms of marketing.

We did Facebook and Google Ads as another means of both during the game. And although that showed some success too, I wouldn’t say that would be a huge success. The thing that’s been a major success has been trade shows. So I know a lot of people may say that social media is one of the great things for games, which could work for certain games because what you see is what you get is one of the things that you see at trade shows a lot. Like if go to a trade show, you see artwork, you know exactly what it is. Or games as a whole are going to face an additional challenge.

because the person has to explain what it is. In fact, there’s only one other game that we really see at trade shows. Shout out to one of our good friends, Drinks with Frenemies, which is a game that the title sort of suggests what it is, which makes it a little bit easier to understand when you go to trade shows. And we love Eric, he’s fantastic and the game is great. Definitely recommend Drinks with Frenemies for people. when it comes to just games as a whole, and this is where we’ve talked to many, many game developers too.

They find it challenging to do trade shows because the high expenses involved and the ROI just isn’t there unless you find a way to sort of bridge the gap between filling people in on what your product is quickly. And let’s face it, people aren’t going to care what your product is. And that’s your job, whether or not it’s through the digital space or the real space. And with our brand, we’ve really mastered the personal in-person space, which is why it’s been a success, but you don’t see that as frequently.

So I would definitely say for a lot of people, the digital space might be better, but for us, it’s been the personal space, because we get to put the cards in people’s hands, and the product speaks for itself.

Jason Hsieh (07:49)
I see, see, I see. And maybe that’s some additional strategy you can consider to translate some of those success into like some of the digital marketing effort potentially as well.

George Berns (08:00)
Yeah, that’s something we always play around with here and there every time and that’s the thing of when you create a brand as a whole especially with a brand where it’s not obvious Just by looking at it what it is like you hear a title like Game of Ham You don’t know it’s an adult party game just by the name you have the additional challenge of jamming a lot of information to your potential consumer in a short period of time and it’s got to be like an elevator pitch if you can’t master being able to translate that information

Jason Hsieh (08:13)
Yeah, yeah.

George Berns (08:25)
You’ve lost them because frankly, why would they care to begin with? A lot of creators are going to have to face at varying degrees.

Jason Hsieh (08:30)
Yeah, that’s true both in the in-person setting and also in the online setting. You definitely want to make sure the information or the video you are showing can really summarize all the benefits and the features really quickly before they lose their attention altogether.

George Berns (08:44)
Yeah, I mean if you look at the drop off for a lot of videos if you get beyond 10 seconds you’re already doing better than a lot of videos in terms of marketing.

Jason Hsieh (08:50)
Yeah. Okay. And I think you have developed so many different like expansion. Can you also talk about like total amount of product you currently have as a brand right now?

George Berns (09:01)
we have the main game, we have the punishing board, we have a bigger storage box, which is like a Where’s Waldo artwork and everything. And I believe at this point, it was 23 unique products. So we’re looking at 19 expansions, 17 of which are things you can get online, two of which you could only do in person that aren’t mentioned online. You gotta have some fun with it. But also a brand like this, people like the darker material, so we have two convention exclusives that go darker than our other stuff. Serial killer dark web and stuff that’s just gonna get us canceled you know.What’s the line of what’s acceptable right? We do it in person because we actually have people even sign a waiver in order to purchase it.

Jason Hsieh (09:36)
woah, okay.

George Berns (09:58)
You know it’s all fun tongue and cheek and people have a good time. And each one takes on its own personality. So the interesting thing about this brand is it’s more about the writing than it is even about the mechanics which is unique to this genre of game. Don’t get me wrong there’s a 24 page rule book, there’s a bunch of different ways to play. But ultimately, the bread and butter of this genre of game is going to be the writing ability. Which is a little bit more unique compared to perhaps your more traditional Euro-type game. But when it comes to the personalities involved, the idea is, I don’t know if people know that old anime card captors from like the 90s or whatever, where there’s the main heroine who there’s magical items who sort of appear all over the place. And there’s lots of TV shows that do this kind of thing.

And the heroine’s job is to capture these magical items into cards, right? That’s what I like to describe it as when it comes to creating each one of these expansions. to some level you sort of have to be an artist. I don’t like to refer to myself as an artist, but you kind of have to acknowledge the artist’s quality. There’s different aspects to what existence is, I guess you could say. And each one is something that if you’re able to get a

tuning fork to what it is, you could shine a light on it and create something that people resonate with. That’s what it really comes down to, being able to resonate with the product. And the game is filled with all kinds of little Easter eggs. mean, the title itself is Game of Ham, which stands for Hating All Mankind, which is a reference to the original genres of games that started this, Cards Against Humanity, that type of game, but also a reference to a bunch of other things too. And there’s tons of Easter eggs throughout the whole thing. But in creating each one of these expansions,

I like to say method acting is sort of one of the things that contributes to the style in which the game gets developed. So as the writer, I have to put myself in a certain mindset in order to create a certain tone of cards, right? Like some expansions are much more tongue in cheek. Like these two guys, Yup, that’ll kill you. And X-Ways to say I love you. These guys are more tongue in cheek. It’s a little bit of sweet, little bit of sour, but it’s sort of middle of the road. But then there’s also, and

as the name suggests, things like Yup That’ll Kill You or That’ll Kill You are literally or emotionally and the pun is emotional you know? We take our creative liberties. Things like X Ways to Say I Love You, this could be stuff that’s sweet like breakfast in bed, but it could also be sour like a black eye cause how to say I love you has a bunch of different things.

But then there’s also the more emotionally evocative ones you know, like Depression and Anxiety, the stories behind this and this is sort of interesting. So one of the experimental sets when creating the expansions because as artists your goal is to sort of imagine different areas people might be interested in take a shot do some play testing see if it actually has some viability right? Yeah. Into the heart of emotion was one the more experimental ones where some people really resonated with it and other people didn’t. The goal of that one was to capture strong emotions in each one of the cards. Stuff like rivers made from the tears of unheard pain you know slightly poetic

I don’t go to small shows. The smallest show I’ll go to is 10,000 people. But I’m at all the big ones, New York Comic Con you name it I’m all over the country. You get to see a bunch of different people. But the one thing people really resonated with was, in that particular expansion was Depression. It’s one of those things where people don’t really talk about but that’s an example of shining a light on a part of society that people might otherwise not want to discuss. And then sure enough people kept talking about it and people are like “oh i have that and anxiety.” So I was like

Jason Hsieh (13:07)
Thanks.

George Berns (13:21)
screw it, know, let’s have some fun. We’ll make an anxiety pack too. And what pairs better with depression than anxiety. And then the fans who tell us what they want. So we ended up coming up with some other expansions, like one of the, one of the new best sellers is Good Parenting. And I like to tell them that’s one they could unpack in therapy. It’s sweet stuff, but also the sour stuff, a little bit of everything. The superhero pack, which is not just literal superpowers, but things that should be a super power, like reading above an eighth grade level. Fun fact, it’s actually the US average that that is not even made up, unfortunately.

And basically each one of these different expansions takes on a tone and the idea is to flavor the pork to your liking that way the game has sort of a nice mix of different cards but depending on the expansions you do and we do it in volumes and if you saw that but this is volume 3 there’s So there’s a volume 2 and volume 1 you do it in increments. So you could basically Make the game you want which is exactly why the sandbox exists as well This is something that was sort of inspired by how booster packs work in a lot of trading card games

Jason Hsieh (14:04)
Yeah, yeah,

George Berns (14:18)
where you come up with a certain number of cards and but here it’s not random. Obviously you have predetermined things, but it’s the same concept in terms of you buy more to build a deck you want. That was sort of the loose inspiration there.

Jason Hsieh (14:30)
Got it. it. Got it. I want to kind of take one step back and ask one question. I think a lot of the entrepreneur and also designer we in the booking industry faces in the initial process, what make you decide to go with self publishing instead of try to pitch your idea to a bigger publisher and just go for licensing instead?

George Berns (14:49)
Well, so there’s a program near me called score where basically retired people, give entrepreneurs, insights in various fields. And I remember when talking to my mentor in that, she was talking about how in licensing, if you sell a game for 40 bucks, for example, you might only make 40 cents and not just to be able to have like certain amount of, I guess you could say standing. And I was just like, well, screw this. I don’t really want to.

to rely on anyone else. I’d rather just shoot my shot and take it. I mean, high risk. And don’t get me wrong to say that you don’t go through periods. In fact, this guy here, a lot of the cards in there were inspired by the process of making a game like this. You go through periods where you’re like, in fact, I think every entrepreneur has to sort of gaze at the abyss and sort of reflect on did I make the right call in doing this at one point? And

That’s the difference between the successful entrepreneur and the failure of an entrepreneur. The ones that quit are the ones that never get there. Basically, I don’t think I took the wrong step. I actually have no regrets in that regard. But I decided to just skip that because I was like, why would I want to put myself through this I think I might have talked to a few different distributors early on in the process. And they were like, we don’t even want to talk to you until you have six game products. It’s like…

why am I going to bother with this? I tried that so that was one strategy. I ended up getting one distribution company to pick up the

Jason Hsieh (16:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

George Berns (16:25)
And a few conventions happened where, and once again, we tried a few strategies. We actually created a list of over 2000 mom and pop shops around the country. It ended up being a lot of phone tag. You can’t end up reaching the person who you want to reach, who could actually make the decisions. You’re following up a million times and it ends up being for like one wholesale. It’s like, this was not worth the time. And don’t get me wrong, it’s great. You have some relationships where it’s like, there might be some repeat purchases here and there, but

Ultimately, it’s just not as exciting as conventions, which was another strategy we used. We did Anime New York City in 2019, where we realized a good direction to go in. Planned a year long campaign for March of 2020. And for the history buffs out there, you can guess what happened during March of 2020. In fact, one week before the first convention is when COVID was the pandemic, national pandemic, everything got paused.

And then conventions started opening up in August, 2021. So from there, started doing some shows, it ended up working out. And at that point, I had a full-time job in a marketing position for a real estate company, had a super cool boss who was okay with me doing shows because he knew about the situation and I’m super flexible. Definitely good to have a good boss, right?

And eventually in May of 22, I realized this is something that is viable and did a gamble of doing that campaign that was initially planned in 2020. It worked out and have been doing it full time ever since.

Jason Hsieh (17:51)
I see. Okay. Yeah. thank you for sharing that story of that and what has been some of the hardest part in your entrepreneurial journey? Like what are some of the biggest challenge you face?

George Berns (18:01)
Sure. I mean, there’s so many challenges at every step of the way.

Every step of the way, you find a way to sort of navigate through it. Some of the biggest challenges were when working with manufacturers in the manufacturing process, because eventually you’ve selling a product, you got to do reorders, getting these companies to do the color matching from the previous cards was a challenge. So Pantone is definitely something I recommend people to get into who are new to this.

At this point I was kind of committed so you kind of you kind of stick with CMYK for people who don’t know that that’s a cyan, magenta, yellow, black basically the different color palettes do Pantone is something I recommend to entrepreneurs if you’re new be able to time your inventory correctly. If you don’t time it correctly. It is punishing. It is very punishing

Jason Hsieh (19:04)
Yeah, yeah.

George Berns (19:10)
The worst, the worst reorder situation I ever had was there were some delays with the manufacturing process. Cause at that point we were a little more seasoned. We understand how long the process takes. takes about six months if you’re lucky and it could take a little bit longer than that from start of creating a new product. The real thing happens very much quicker, but you got do a lot of back and forth with files you got, and all kinds of random curve balls happen. Like, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but being able to just get the card size standard playing card size.

being off by those slight millimeters, you could feel it in your hand. it, that’s not something you would think about, but that’s one of those curve balls you got to be able to deal with in real time. sometimes the process for the manufacturing, have to, get the prototype as you know, and then eventually you do the mass production. for those who don’t, and we had a couple instances, cause now that we have so many different products, obviously we’ve gone through the prototype and then

production phase a few different times. Sometimes the prototype wouldn’t reflect what the production was. And it’s like being able to say, guys, this is not what you gave me as a prototype.

Jason Hsieh (20:13)
Yeah, you do the quality control. Yeah.

George Berns (20:15)
And then you got to do back and forth. So that’s another curve ball. When it comes to being able to put yourself out there, you’ve to take risks. Okay. If you don’t take risks, you don’t take rewards, but there’s certain risks that you want to take and certain risks you don’t want to take. given that the business sort of evolved to work in a convention space, which might be, which is probably more unique for some of the people here. Cause I think a lot more people went the more traditional route of doing it online or working through distributors or whatever it is.

Working in the convention space, it’s a different animal. And you want to be able to experiment. So satire is a big thing for the brand here. We love satire. So working in conventions, we started satiring different products. So experimenting with things that might or might not work that are still connected to the brand. We came up with plush toys. We came up with pins. We came up with parody stickers of different anime characters or whatever.

Okay. Came up with even ham artwork, which the idea is to a whole bunch of different artists create some unique thing in their style related to a ham with that being the assignment. And each one, the idea was make it so the markup was good enough that even if the thing failed, you still break even. At the end of the day, you never know what’s going to succeed and what isn’t. And you want to minimize your loss. So that’s something I would recommend to experiment, be bold, but also do it smartly where

the margins are good enough that even if the thing is a failure, you still break even. Obviously there’s other things too that might be a little more proven, like when you buy plush toys or something that are more conventional, you can feel a little bit more at ease than if you do a ham plushy, for example. Like, do you know if there’s a market for a ham plushy?

Jason Hsieh (21:51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

George Berns (21:52)
So obviously know your market, but when you’re actually experimenting with a new product that’s not proven, try to get as high return on investment as possible. So it breaks even. And sure enough, that principle worked, ended up having some failure products, which is fine. Cause in the end, one you learn, don’t be afraid of failing because you’re going to learn. And also being able to find that product that does resonate with the audience.

The return on investment makes up for all the failures to begin with. And frankly, I think that’s how a lot of business works, not just in this industry. And getting creative with different ways you could build your brand. Don’t think small scale. A game is one thing, but be able to think of other ways your game could actually connect with your audience. Like one thing I think is a great brand example is T-Turtle.

Jason Hsieh (22:39)
game inches in

George Berns (22:51)
who wants to get into card games and being able to mesh his style of artwork with the board game industry. So these are people who have sort of gone the other way with it, where they didn’t start with the board game, but they go into the board game space. But with our brand, we went in from the board game space and started experimenting with other spaces too. So that’s something I would recommend, but that’s one of those things you do at the later stages of development. Because at the end of the day, you want to be able to make money.

Jason Hsieh (23:10)
other spaces. Okay, okay.

For sure, for sure. So what is next for Game of Hemp? What do you have on the horizon that you’re currently working on?

George Berns (23:25)
Sure, ⁓ so right now there’s a few different things that are being experimented with. There’s a few expansions that are going to be worked on that are hopefully going to be released in the next year. Some of the ones that are at the final stages of drafting and ready to go to publishing would be some additional expansions for our Pocket Ham. We have this standalone expansion that is just the cards. So for people who know Cards Against Humanity, Apples to Apples, it would just be a pocket version of that for three to four players. So there’s two additional volumes of that, which are medium

The first volume was a success and now there’s also going to be a military pack because one thing I recommend for people is Know your audience and play to them, right? Depression and anxiety connected with people so leaned into that in a humorous way But also the three the three audiences for this brand are military first responders and ER nurses Knowing your audience allows you to be able to play into it. So there’s also going to be a first responder pack

Jason Hsieh (24:11)
interesting.

George Berns (24:15)
the military plaque plays on a different tone. So that’s going to be developed. There’s also, since we go to conventions, we’re going to be working on an anime pack that’s in the drafting stages, a divorce pack as well. but there’s also a few other experimental games that are like the punishing board that stand on their own. Those things are still in the earlier stages, but stay tuned for that because that’s also going to be coming out.

Jason Hsieh (24:35)
I see, see. Thank you for sharing that. So where can people find more about you online?

George Berns (24:41)
Sure. So we’re on all social media. The two most active ones would be Facebook and Instagram @gameofham. And of course we have our website, gameofham.com.

Jason Hsieh (24:48)
I see. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your entrepreneurial journey within the game toy and game industry. And also, do you have any last thing you want to share with the audience before we wrap up the interview? Sure.

George Berns (25:01)
So for anyone who wants to pursue this field, one thing I’d recommend first off to be an entrepreneur means to take risk. And like we said, you have to gaze at the abyss and be able to still be able to pull through and make the success happen. And if you’re one those people who likes to start things, but you have difficulty when the challenges get hard, this is not the lifestyle for you. But if you want to, if you think you’re crazy enough to do it and you’ve got to be a little crazy, okay.

The world is built by the crazy dreamers, right? As challenging as it was to develop the game, and keep in mind, it took two years of development. That’s like 65 hour work weeks consistently with little money being made during that period of time to be able to pull it off. And that’s hard. But compared to the development, the marketing is so much harder. if you want to go into something like this, you have to be prepared for that.

Jason Hsieh (25:47)
For sure. Yeah, thank you for sharing that piece of advice. I think that’s very important. Just like you said, marketing can be even harder than the design itself.

George Berns (25:57)
and listen to the times, pay attention to what is working and go in that direction. You have to develop the guerrilla marketer strategy, which is basically pay attention to what you’re seeing and adapt to the environment as you see it. Like I said, expansions got developed here because we noticed certain trends in who was paying attention to this kind of game. So we work around that. And what resonated with people and exploring that direction, you just take your shots and then do testing.

and do lots of testing because your product is only as good as your weakest product.

Jason Hsieh (26:28)
Yeah. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you again for being on our show today and sharing your story. And for our listeners, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We hope you enjoy today’s conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate your support and would love it if you can leave us a review and share the podcast with your friend and colleagues.

For more resource tips and the latest update we in the toys and game industry, visit our website at toy-launch.com. Join the conversation and connect with us on social media using #toybusinessunboxed. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, keep bringing joy to toys. This is Jason Hsieh signing off on the Toy Business Unboxed podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, everyone.