John Younger remembers being in his father’s car, his father picking important calls from his car phone, popular in the ’80s and ’90s. He could never tell if his father was talking to a friend, a colleague from work, a client, or a potential partner; the old man would treat everyone the same way. Creating meaningful and authentic relationships at work is something John picked up naturally from his father. 

In this episode, John is joined by John Younger, Vice President of Esports & Gaming at Pivot. John is the former President of Signal Fire Sports & Entertainment and former Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Infinite Esports & Entertainment. John also has vast experience in the car racing space; he worked for Hulman Motorsports Connection, International Speedway Corporation, Richard Childress Racing, Vision Racing, and Red Bull Racing, to name a few.

They also talk about the importance of building meaningful relationships in the workspace and why it is vital to keep those relationships as authentic and intentional as possible. John shares some of his experiences in the marketing space, and he established some interesting parallelisms between traditional sports and sports and gaming. Finally, they talked about internships and how they can help us learn what we love to do or how wrong we were about what we thought was our dream job.

Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnyounger/

To follow John on Twitter: https://twitter.com/J0hnDavids0n

Full Episode Breakdown:

2:42 – John Younger talks about the importance of nurturing relationships at work and how he picked that up naturally from his father.

6:35 – We highlight the importance of partnerships and how to maintain meaningful relationships in the workspace.

10:32 – We discuss the similaritiesd and differences between skateboarders and gamers and how brands should approach gamers.

12:03 – We analyze how gamers, esports athletes, and the esports community react to marketing campaigns and activations. 

15:03 – John Younger talks about his learnings and discoveries from working on the business side of sports.

19:16 – We talked about the esports and gaming ecosystem and how it reacts to brands trying to enter the industry.

23:21 – We talk about the lack of people with long careers in gaming since it is a young industry. We also talk about the hole in some data as a consequence of that.

27:15 – John Younger talks about the difficulty of getting metrics from the esports and gaming industry and the insistence of some brands in using traditional sports methods to get them.

31:23 – John Younger speaks about his experiences as a baseball player.

34:54 – We talk about how internships can help us find the job we love or makes us hate a job we thought we would love doing. 

39:53 – John Younger shares his view on how similar traditional sports and esports are when it comes to identifying difficulties and finding solutions.

43:43 – We talked about the importance of building relationships in the workspace and following up.