The Invisible Mentor

Mentor Yourself With Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe Part II

February 10th, 2012 |

Author: Avil Beckford

Interviewee Name: Nathon Gunn, CEO

Company Name: Social Game Universe

Website: http://www.socialgameuniverse.com

OMDC Digital Dialogue 22 of 24: Visioning the Digital Future

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Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Nathon Gunn: I am the CEO of a company called Social Game Universe and I also started another company called Bitcasters, which is still going. I’m an entrepreneur, and an innovator and I’m very passionate about creating new things. I work in new media and technology.

Image representing Social Game Universe as dep...

Image via CrunchBase

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Nathon Gunn: I work with a lot of my friends and sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes a bad thing but I certainly do socialize. I work with the people I love, and often these are the same folks I’m friends with. In that way my life is integrated. I try to have a balance, try to make sure I have time away from the office, but I also do enjoy, on a personal level, all the travel that work brings for me, so I often try to make work go in the direction of the personal side of my life. I will go to New York to do business because I like being in New York and seeing my friends there, so I do integrate in those ways. But I also try to keep some healthy distance because you can’t be at work all the time.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

Nathon Gunn: You mean not at Birmingham? (he laughs). I’m not usually at Birmingham. I like to go to the movies because it’s kind of a nice way to relax. My best friend Duane and I play tennis, my friend Ian and I play tennis as well. I love going to the island here in Toronto and get away from the city a little bit, and occasionally I play computer games though making computer games sometimes you don’t want to play them after you get off work.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Nathon Gunn: I’m no guru so I guess I’ll just be parroting what other people have said because clichés are clichés for a reason.

You have to just do it to quote Nike. It’s the same thing I said about radical self-reliance, put one foot in front of the other or the old adage, every journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.
Then you have to stick to it, putting one foot in front of the other doesn’t complete the journey, putting many feet in front of the other does complete the journey.
The journey is never really over. If you don’t enjoy the process then you’re doing the wrong thing. If you’re living for the destination then I know these are clichés but they are really true. I have noticed a whole year or months and months go by, and said to myself, “What was I doing?” and I said, “I was working on this thing to get to here.” And I realized that here never arrived, and it’s really killed me how I wasted three months, and in one case a year doing something that in the end I didn’t care about.
Happiness is an important part of everything. I read about happiness, I think in the Harvard Business Review, that there were a few key aspects to happiness. You have to feel like you’re making progress at something that’s a challenge and meaningful to you. Those things have to all go hand-in-hand because if you’re not making progress, and its’ challenging and meaningful, that doesn’t do it and if you are making progress but it’s not challenging, even though it’s meaningful then that isn’t good, and if it’s not meaningful, and you’re making progress, even though it’s challenging then that doesn’t do it. So there has to be all those things and I try to focus myself on that.
Remember that at the end of the day, all the work stuff is secondary to making sure that you leave the world a better place, and that you have friends that you can say at the end of the day that their lives are better because you were there.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Nathon Gunn: I steal them! Maybe that’s one of the few times you hear people say something like that but it’s an honest part of creating ideas. I don’t think many things come from absolutely nowhere. I think you have to be an absorber of great ideas to put things together in new ways. I work with a big team of creative, brilliant people so we get together as a group and generate great ideas together. We bounce ideas off each other. Moses Znaimer, my old boss, used to sign his name to various TV shows that he did, and that’s fine, but along with those signatures was a long list of credits for the other people who worked on those products. When you watch the end of a TV show you see those names and it’s a collaborative process. I think it’s a big part of generating great ideas, since you’ve asked, I have to tell you one of the funniest ways that I’ve generated great ideas – when we have creative brainstorming sessions, I notice I will hear a really good idea from somebody and I would repeat it back to the person I heard it from, and they will laugh and say, “You misheard me totally, that’s not the idea? It’s this other idea.” And often enough, the idea I misheard is a really good idea so sometimes bad hearing helps us to generate great ideas.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Nathon Gunn: “Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of,” Benjamin Franklin, or “I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things,” Benjamin Franklin.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Nathon Gunn: My definition of success is accomplishing our goals and we choose what our goals are. I have chosen goals that have to do with innovating and creating new products that hopefully will be delightful to people, but also make a difference and be positive in the world. I select those goals based on what is realistic, what’s going to be unique, not just copying other people but how we can take things a step further, but not reach so far that we automatically fail.

Some of those decisions in terms of choosing the goals and aiming for and working on them, is the formula for success. But if there is one thing that I have found, is the big part for the formula for success because you can pick the wrong goal, have the timing wrong, you can make mistakes along the way, and none of those have to necessarily fail if you persist, if you don’t give up. If you keep refactoring what you learn, and keep reapplying it to what you’re trying to do, and sometimes adjusting what you’re trying to do, that’s the formula for success.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Nathon Gunn: I made a point of working with the best people I could find. I made a point of conceptualizing the most interesting projects that I could imagine that were realistic opportunities that would be in demand by the customers and the audience. And I used those conceptual ideas for really exciting and interesting products to inspire the best people I could find, and then together we went and found support, and opened doors to the kinds of partners who we wanted to work with. I would say it requires reading about things, it requires meeting people to make sure you have access to talent requires understanding your industry, know which doors you want to open, and which people you need to talk to. It requires learning how to talk to those people, in their language, about the things that you want to do, and then it just requires work and persistence, – not to beat a dead horse – but that’s been my formula, and it seems to work.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Nathon Gunn: There are a lot of tactical things I talked about in the question above, but none of it would be possible if I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing. I’ve really been excited about the ideas in my head, the people around me, now I’ve designed it so that the people around me are exciting, and I’ve tried to focus my thoughts on exciting things. I’ve tried to find people and partners to work with who are exciting and interesting to me. But if I were to give a piece of advice that could work for anybody, I think it has to be that old saying that you have to love what you do. Because everything will follow from there if you love it, something will wake you up in the morning and ask you what you will do next and you will find an answer, if something wakes you up in the morning and says, I want to do this. And it has to come from inside you, so if you don’t have it you have to look for that. Before you can study the mechanical parts of making it work you have to find the fuel and the fire inside that going to make the mechanical parts do their job.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Nathon Gunn:

Nelson Mandela is an incredible human being. I’ve always wanted to meet him and in fact I wrote a letter to his elders’ organization and was asked to do some work, but we haven’t had the right opportunity, but that would be one of the great heroes for me. There are obvious ones, people who have character and strength – Winston Churchill would be a fascinating guy to meet. He was a man who had his mistakes and foibles and maybe wouldn’t have been a great leader without the challenges at the time, but it was phenomenal. Gandhi of course – those are big names that anybody could easily cite but of course they are big names because they have done incredible things. I would of course be delighted to meet them. In terms of living people, I have met Richard Branson but we didn’t get to chat. He is a fascinating character because he did things through creative pursuit, passions but turned them into businesses and he’s also had a flair for making a big name for himself without coming across as a pompous jerk so I’ve always admired his ability to generate publicity for his companies without looking like a pompous jerk.

The fifth person should stand for all the people who I meet every day, to say that they are all famous isn’t fair. I think sometimes you meet a hero in a book shop. I was looking at antique furniture, I met the woman running the store, and she started telling me a story about how she escaped Berlin when she was a little girl. Moses Znaimer told me a story when I went into his office and said hey, “look at this photo of you and Jack Nicholson, what was it like to meet him?” And Moses said, “Well it wasn’t as interesting as the conversation that I had with the woman who has been working in my garden.” It turns out that she had escaped from Eastern Europe as well so we compared notes on that. And I had to say that’s an interesting point he made to me, so I’ll share that point. There are people who you cross paths with every day and they are heroes in their own way and that’s important.

It would be interesting to meet my grandparents. I had a grandfather who worked on the railroad and a grandmother who died before I could meet her, a great grandmother who died from leukemia, all of whom I’ve heard stories, who lived through such incredible times. They had such an impact on my parents, wouldn’t it be amazing to know them?

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Nathon Gunn: It was Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. He wasn’t a doctor but he spoke to many doctors who had been studying the idea of emotional intelligence. Many people will be taking this for granted at this stage in history because his book had such a big impact and changed so many people’s views about what smart really is. But before that book came out, the further back you go, generally the accepted view on intelligence was that it’s analytical skills, can you do the math, can you remember the answer to this question? I had a number of people around me in my life who had high IQ. They had numerous degrees, and they worked from 5 am in the morning to 5 at night, and to be very honest it kind of intimidated me. I thought, “God I’m not that smart, will I ever want to get up at 5 am and do what these people do?” I sure like sleeping in.

The first time I was exposed to that book was in the form of an article in Harvard Business Review and it was emotional intelligence applied to leadership, and it talked about the qualities of a good leader. And the qualities that were cited were things like empathy for people, the ability to understand the people you work with is a quality that makes you a good leader. You look at Warren Bennis and other books on leadership, and look at some of the older stuff and you see things important to be the head of General Motors, the head of General Electric, but really inspired leaders have empathy. Other qualities in the list include ability to be self-deprecating and look at your own self and laugh.

These were things I couldn’t believe were including in a list for a leader. I thought being a leader and being smart meant you could do the math puzzles, you could boss people around, you could get up at five in the morning, and you never showed any weakness, so that book changed my view of what being a good leader really meant, and what being a success in business really meant. And I have quoted that book many times to friends. I’ve had friends say, “I’m not smart,” and these are some of the smartest people I know. For people who are not familiar with the concept of emotional intelligence should take a look at it because it goes to the qualities that you need to have to make the brain do the things it needs to do to succeed in life.

They had one study in the book where they looked at all the smart people who worked at Bell Labs where PhD and Nobel Laureates worked and they found the guys who did very well were the one who walked around and talked to other guys. Because instead of sitting at their desks working on a puzzle for a month, they might find out it had already been solved just down the hall. So some of those social and emotional skills are part of intelligence and that book changed my life by showing me that.

[See article Read Study science and math to get ahead in the future of work, right? Gigaom.com]

Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?

Nathon Gunn:

Two Years

I could build a boat out of the book and try to leave, books wouldn’t float, darn it. I think the thing that is most interesting to me about being on a deserted island for two years is the idea that for once I do not have to do some of the things that I do here in Toronto, so I would want to meditate, a lot. I wouldn’t have a lot of choice, would I? I would start by saying I would want to think deeply about things that I just don’t have time to think about. When my life is spent trying to accomplish goals, and move fast from thing to thing, the thing I don’t get to do enough of is to actually read philosophical books that deal with really deep issues and spend time meditating on it.

My first answer was going to be that I would bring all sorts of gadgets and digital goodies in my suitcase so I could keep inventing things, but maybe the best thing about being on your island, is I could stop inventing things and start meditating on things.

I would probably go stir crazy at some point and start trying to invent things with whatever else I had, but that’s about it.

Five Books

The five books would be nothing about accomplishing things. There would be a book on physics, literature, philosophy, politics and humanities. So books with big ideas that you can put in your head and let them jumble around.

Movie and Music CD

I love movies, you have taken all my fun away! I don’t think I could pick just one movie, I love so many movies. I would bring a movie that a friend had made because I have a number of friends who are film makers. I would bring one of their films so I could think about the process of creativity, and the process of my friends being artists, and participate in their art. And if it was only one music CD, I would burn it myself with mp3 so that I could fit 600 songs on there and it would be a mix of everything.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Nathon Gunn: I love life and I get excited everyday by new things. I love to discover new things. I’m addicted to new experiences and I like to travel and discover new things and I can do that inn my work. I like meeting new people and I like discovering new interactions with people and new things about myself through all of that.

In general, I like the wild, creative, exciting adventure that is life everyday when you go out and try new things.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Nathon Gunn: I spend time with good friends, and on my own, and I think about the ways I can try to improve and the mistakes I’ve made and the ways I can correct them. I try to remind myself to think about other people, and put their needs and thoughts ahead of mine and then go back at life with that in mind. But I think I nurture my souls largely around people who I admire who have qualities that inspire me.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Nathon Gunn: I’ve been very lucky to have support from mentors, and the world, so I can’t say I haven’t had it, but the hardest things in life have been when the support has been inconsistent or when I couldn’t find the support to make progress through the difficult challenges. If the genie could give me one reasonable thing, it would be consistency and stability and support that you can always count on, that’s always there. I know a lot of people think that’s a bunch of money, but I think it takes different forms at different times so I would ask the genie in a very vague way so that I could have money one time, friends another, and just a nice place to sleep at night.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Nathon Gunn: I’m making progress in something I care about that is a challenge, especially when I’m doing it with friends.

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Video Credit: OMDC Digital Dialogue 22 of 24: Visioning the Digital Future Uploaded by OMDConline on Aug 3, 2010