Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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Boosting Loyalty through Gamified Marketing with Chris Doelle | Episode 371

 

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How do you handle early failure to leverage technology? With expert insights from gamification specialist Chris Doelle, we discuss real-life case studies, the psychology behind motivation, and practical steps for implementing effective gamified strategies. From handling early failures to leveraging technology for continuous improvement, this episode offers a comprehensive guide to making gamification work for your business.

From his days of designing actual board games and computer games to his marketing company that assists people in telling their stories through social, public speaking, authorship and podcasting, Chris Doelle is a lover of gamification.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

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Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob:
Hey, this is Professor Game where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez, a consultant and the founder of Professor Game and a professor of gamification and games based solutions at IE Business School, efmd, EBS University and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, if you’re struggling with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make sure your users stay with you, perhaps you will find our free gamification course useful. Find it for free in the links in the description. So engagers, welcome to another episode of the Professor Gaming podcast. We have Chris Daly. Dale. Yeah, is that daily?

Chris Doelle:
You got it Daily.

Rob:
Daily. Fantastic. Because we were in the pre interview chat, we were discussing how to pronounce it because you know your last name also comes from. You’re from Europe and Germany. Mine is from one of them anyways, is from Poland. It’s hard to get them right the first time, but you were kind enough to let me know in advance so I didn’t embarrass myself too much. So Chris, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Chris Doelle:
I am prepared to engage, always. I’m hitting the on button right now.

Rob:
Let’s do that. Because Chris, from his days of designing actual board games and computer games to his marketing company that assists people in telling their stories through social, public speaking, authorship and podcasting, Chris Duell is an absolute lover of gamification, which is, as you can imagine, the single main reason, reason why we would definitely love having him and discussing these things with us today. But Chris, is there anything you want to say about yourself before we dive into questions?

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, I think it’s just a matter of ADHD gone mad. You know, I do a lot of different things, but, you know, I think that’s a blessing that I live in a time, in a country, in a world where you can do a lot of things and you shouldn’t limit yourself. So that’s me crazy and having fun.

Rob:
That sounds amazing. So Chris, can you walk us through what does it, I don’t know, day, week, month look like for you? Like if we were in your shoes, what would we feel like? What would we be doing regularly?

Chris Doelle:
Perhaps I think if you were in my shoes, you’d probably be going crazy. But if you were following behind, you’d probably think I’m crazy because I literally every morning I get up hour and a half before sunup just because that’s my Zen time and I will go outside I live out in the country. I have acreage, I have chickens, I have, you know, the whole relaxation out there. And I like to enjoy the sunrise, barefoot, out in the grass, tending to the chickens. I know it doesn’t sound like a game guy, a tech guy doesn’t sound like anything, but it resets my brain for the day. And from there, as soon as I’m done with that, I hit the ground running. And it’s different every few minutes, what I’m working on. I could be working on creating a video course for 15 minutes, get bored, and I go off and edit on a podcast or I go to a meeting like this where I’m a guest on a podcast, or I work on my school community, I work on my board games. Whatever it is, it just something to keep me moving. And there’s obviously a lot of things that sounds fantastic.

Rob:
And it’s impressive to see how you can keep going all those things at a time. Sometimes it happens to me, like, I don’t want to finish this, but I need to finish this because the other things are important but not as important. And then my brain starts affecting my emotions, I guess, in that sense. But being able to jump across things and having things that will actually be moving you forward is sometimes a more difficult task to find. So cheers for that, definitely.

Chris Doelle:
Chris, don’t get me wrong, I sometimes get stuck in TikTok or Facebook reels like everybody else.

Rob:
Yeah, absolutely. Like, I don’t think there’s any much of a running away from that. There’s. There’s a past guest near Eyal. He has this book called Indestructible with all these techniques. But the idea is that you’re you, among many other things he talks about. One of them is, you know, you time box, but you can even time box for, you know, just sitting down there and watching TikTok for half an hour. If that what you decided. What’s you decided to do? Well, you’re not distracted, you’re doing your thing, right?

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, I do. I do have set times when I do that, for sure.

Rob:
Makes sense. Makes sense. So, Chris, let’s actually dive into one of the questions we love the most, which is all about fail or first attempts in learning. Right. We want to go there, we want to be there in a story with you where you were creating board games, computer games, something along these lines, or using gamification for sure, and things just did not go your way. Or at least on the first or nth attempt, it didn’t go your way. We want to Feel a little bit of that pain, perhaps, and find out some of the lessons that you took away from that or how you came out of that situation. We want to learn some lessons, essentially.

Chris Doelle:
Cool. Yeah. I would say that everything I do begins with failure, and that’s great. I’m a firm believer that you either try and succeed or try and learn. There is no real failure. So, yeah, I think podcasting would be a great example. Podcasting was invented in August of 2004. I happened to know the inventors, so I was the fifth person to ever do one.

Rob:
Oh, my goodness.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah. And that and 10 bucks will buy you a cup of coffee, right? But yeah, so, you know, I was doing it and I was testing out hyper local, regional, international shows, testing out what worked. I was so convinced this was a game changer. I spent all of the year 2005 traveling the country, speaking to business groups, speaking to college classes, saying, look, the media is changing. You can be the media. It is a game changer. You must check this out. And I got blank stares and crickets. I mean, it was way too early, so that was a struggle. Like, okay, what do I do? I know this is going to be something, but what do I do? So instead, what I did was I developed a system where, look, I am going to create a hyper local show. I am going to create a regional show. I’m going to create a sports specific show. I’m going to create these different types of shows. I’m going to create them on the side and make them grow to show people. I understand that right now I don’t get to the boss mode yet. You know, I get to little. You know, I get to numbers where I’ve got 10 episodes out, I’ve got 100 episodes out. And that’s what kept me going, reaching, grinding. Yeah, totally grinding and knowing. And I love grinding games. You know, they seem boring sometimes, but I love that grind until you finally unlock that next thing. And yes, it took almost 20 years to unlock it. I should say 10 years before it started getting really popular. But. But now everybody knows what a podcast is. Your mom knows what a podcast is. And so now I am reaping the benefits. I am in the. I guess the level where all you do is collect the coins.

Rob:
Makes sense. It makes it. Yeah. You were saying 20 years. And I agree. Like seven years ago when I started this show, you know, it was already a big thing. And I had been thinking about it for at least a couple of years before that, I had myself been listening to podcasts. Maybe Four years before I started. There’s one in particular I really, really enjoyed. And he was one of the people who. They were already very famous shows when he started, and that was, I think, maybe 2012, I want to say. I don’t know if you’ve heard of John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs on fire.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, I’ve had him on my shows.

Rob:
So, you know, he was one of those guys. And I think the time where he started was like the prime time in the sense of, you know, if you start before, you know, it happens a bit to what happened to you. Like, some people just like, what’s going on? What’s this? Right.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah.

Rob:
But he started when things were sort of picking off, but not too much, and he got that sort of super extra push all the way, and it brought enough, like, it’s a niche, but broad enough show as well, so that he gets millions of downloads in that sense. So I love. I love this show. I love. I still love it and his content. But I think that time was. Was something that. The timing, he got, quote, unquote, right. Again, there’s no. There’s no wrong way in that sense.

Chris Doelle:
That’s true. The saying, it’s just like planting a tree. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Same thing with the podcast.

Rob:
Absolutely, absolutely. So love that story. And, you know, again, as you were saying, there’s no. I like to say the phrase I use is failure is not fatal. It’s not final.

Chris Doelle:
It’s.

Rob:
It’s a learning opportunity. It’s a way where you can learn something, even if it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean that project is going to survive and make it right. But it does mean that whatever it is you’re doing, you’re going to have a new perspective after that, and you’re going to get better in whichever. Like, whatever that means. Exactly. It does mean potentially that you can get better at what you’re doing. Your art, your craft, your design, your engineering, your, you know, whatever it is that you love it.

Chris Doelle:
And to tie that example into gaming, you can fail at a game, but learn something that later works in another game.

Rob:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s also true that maybe the only thing that you learn from failing over and over in a game is that that kind of game is not for you.

Chris Doelle:
That’s fine.

Rob:
All right. That is okay. That is okay. Not every is for every person. That is definitely for sure. So, Chris, let’s actually go for a story of success in the same world. Have you you know, I’m sure you’ve had plenty. You were talking about 20 years ago doing podcasting. There’s many other things that you’ve been doing as well. Can we follow you along in one of these success stories? Again, maybe not on the first attempt, which is the usual, how did you get there? If there are any keys to success, we want to live that story with you a bit and we want to be there.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, well, I’ve had no success at all. I was waiting for your reaction there. No, I have, in fact, business itself, which even predates that. From the time I was in middle school, or junior high, as it’s called here, I was an entrepreneur. I would sell things to other kids. I would assemble bicycles from junk and I would sell those and got to high school when computers were just starting. So I taught the teachers how to use computers and wow. And then I had a video production company for a while. I had a cabling company for computer systems back before wifi and I had all these companies. And then something happened. It was about 30 years ago when I said, you know, the thing that all these different companies had in common was that I was marketing them. And that’s when I go, wait a minute, I should just have a marketing company. That’s a lot easier. And that’s what I did. I, 30 years ago, started my marketing company, Fresh Media Works, and from there grew things like the podcasting, the board game. We have one of the largest Texas high school football websites, Lone Star, Gridiron.com that grew from that, which was an ad, a growth of podcasting as well. But yeah, so that’s kind of the success is keep learning, keep trying, and maybe back up and go, wait a minute, I should go at this from a different angle. And when you do that, that’s when it worked for me anyway.

Rob:
Absolutely, absolutely. Like I was thinking of, you were talking about the board games and how it all started from there. Is there anything that you created in that marketing world with board games or video games that you mentioned that you would like to quickly tell us about?

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, specifically the board games that we have out now. My friend and I have been board gamers since early days, since we were 10, 12 years old. And we loved it when computers came out. We started doing it on computers, the TRS 80 and Apple 2 and all these early computers. We were writing our computer games. But four years ago we decided, hey, we’re going to do a sports themed board game, tabletop board game, because it’s kind of a golden age for Tabletop right now a lot of people are, you know, getting tired of the, you know, I guess computer connection to people and wanted some real connection to people. And so we developed this game called Friday Night Legends. And it is a game where you can play high school football teams against each other based on their real stats. So you could play your high school football team against mine or against Tom Brady’s high school football team or Patrick Mahomes high school football team. And so we created it, put it out there on Kickstarter. It did exceptionally well. And now that has expanded to a college game, a pro game, a basketball game for high school, college and pro, including women’s basketball, wnba, college, you name it. So we’ve got the basketball and the football. We’re working on a baseball version right now. Same thing where you can play real teams based on their real stats.

Rob:
Awesome, awesome. I’m guessing that has some form of a connection to the digital world so that people can actually have that information updated.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, we have basically right now all we have, we have some Facebook groups where people share their scores and then we take that and we update the rankings because we’re not going to ever change the 1987 Miami High School football team stats. Regardless of who they play and how much they lose, that team will always have its stats so that it’s always represents what that team actually was. But depending on who they beat and who beats them, they may go up and down in the rankings of the greatest teams of all time, which we do keep track of.

Rob:
Sounds brilliant. Fantastic. And Chris, with all these experience, all the things that you’ve done, do you follow some form of a. If you were to create something from scratch, whether it’s a board game as you were sharing, or a computer game that you’ve created as well, or you’re creating a gamified situation, do you follow some steps? Like how do you even come about it? You were mentioning your ADHD at the start and you’re jumping from one thing to another. So perhaps if you do structure it, how would that look like?

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, it’s a very loose structure. It’s kind of amoeba, like. So what I do is I ideate and that’s that morning time that I talked about. When I’m out there and I’m catching the first rays of the sun. I know it sounds kind of woo woo, but. But I do. That’s when I get a lot of my ideas and I will record them. Oftentimes I’ll record a quick audio message on my phone and says, hey, you know, think about doing this or whatever. And from there, I bring it all together, and now I actually use AI a lot to help me compile that and help me decide which ideas make sense, which ones don’t make sense, and then from there, create a game plan to make it happen. And we’re doing that now, working on several new projects. Hopefully they’ll come to fruition. But that’s how you do it. You throw something against the wall and see what sticks.

Rob:
Yeah. Try new ideas and see which ones are actually going to be sticking with the audience that you’re targeting. Because again, we said it before, not every game is for everybody. That’s actually a good thing. There are games you will like, there are games you won’t like. And that’s fine.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah.

Rob:
Fantastic. Thanks, Chris. If I ask you, like, we’re usually thinking of this in terms of the audience, and they’re thinking like, well, yeah, this all sounds great. I might follow some of that process or all of it is there. If you were to say one thing, a best practice, nowadays, it could include AI or from some basic principles that you’ve seen. Is there a best practice, something that you would say, well, think about things this way, or use this thing or this tool or this whatever, and your project will be at least a little bit better than it was before.

Chris Doelle:
I think the best practice is get started. Because at the end of the day, people spend so much time trying to come up with the perfect idea. And I think it was Voltaire who said, you know, perfection is the enemy of done. So I’m paraphrasing it. It’s something like that. But. But the idea is you can sit and plan and plan and come up with the levels and come up with everything, and if you don’t get started, it doesn’t matter. So the example of Microsoft is a good one. Microsoft has never, ever shipped a completed product. They put something out there, and then they have bug fixes. Right. That’s us doing their testing for them and us making it perfect by complaining when something doesn’t work. So I’d say get it out there. Like, same thing with podcasting. I’ve got a client who for two years has been planning his first episode, and I bug him all the time. Dude, it is never going to happen. It will never be perfect. After you’re 10, 15 episodes in, it’ll be pretty darn good, though. But you got to get started.

Rob:
That makes a lot of sense, and it is definitely a best practice. Getting stuck inside your head is One of the most difficult things to get out of. Some people like to claim as a positive thing, oh, I’m a perfectionist. I want to make sure things are perfect, but in the end, when you’re. Again, I don’t have anything against that. I have a lot of that or had even more in my past, too. And lots of people I love have that, too, and they do great work. The thing is, how much of that great work could be if it’s this big? It could be this big nowadays if they just got started some of those things. And in the end, it’s about what you are able to achieve, what’s going to be your legacy, what are the things that you. How many people you were able to help. And that depends on, you know, how soon you started. It’s a compounding effect, for sure. I love it.

Chris Doelle:
Amen. Yeah.

Rob:
Chris, we’ve talked a lot about your work, Right. And you’ve heard these questions. You’ve heard what, you know, what we’re expecting from our guests. Is there somebody that you think, well, you know, I’ve heard these things, and I would like to hear this or that person answering those questions for the podcast. If I ask you for a future guest for Professor Game, is there Anybody in your 20 years of podcasting and beyond and whatever else you look around that comes to your mind?

Chris Doelle:
Are you saying who I would like to hear on your show or who I would like to have on one of mine? Okay. Okay.

Rob:
On this one, for sure.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, definitely. Obviously, Elon Musk comes to mind. He would be amazing, because I think he does a lot of the same things, and I hate to put myself in the same sentence with him, but he does. He just gets going, right? He doesn’t stop and think about things. He just gets going. And he takes huge risks. And risks are the only way to get rewards.

Rob:
It’s the only way. It’s like, you know, I don’t want to compare it to gambling, because it’s definitely not. But if you don’t take risks, it is compared to financial risks in many ways. And you do get better and you analyze some of the things. But if you don’t take a risk, you’re not going to get the rewards, that’s for sure.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah. And I think that’s what perfection is, is avoiding that risk, you know, because they don’t want to ship something that’s not perfect, so they don’t want to risk looking bad or something. But now you got to put it out there.

Rob:
Absolutely, Absolutely. I love that. So, Chris, Keeping up with recommendations. Is there a book that you recommend this audience, The Engagers and why?

Chris Doelle:
Gosh, it’s tough because I set a goal of reading 52 books a year, nonfiction, one a week, but I usually get about 80 done because I listen to them in audio while I’m doing other things. And I think some that totally change your thinking are things like Weapons of Mass Instruction, which talks about the education system and how we are trained to obey, stand in line, raise our hand, and it takes all the creativity out of people. So I think that’s just good information to have. And then you’ve got game games. You’ve got books like MJ DeMarco’s Millionaire Fast Lane, which does a brilliant job of explaining success, whether it is, you know, the traditional slow path or getting in the fast lane and how to shortcut things like that. Another one I think of is Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last, which is probably one of the most influential books I’ve read, because he talks about leadership, and he talks about how servant leadership is really true leadership. It’s not dictatorial. It’s not like, you know, you must do what I say. It’s like, come here, help me pull this. You know? So, yeah, like I said, I could go on and on all day.

Rob:
We usually aim for one. But, you know, good books are good books. I mean, one of the things that happens to me is every week I get it. Usually a new book. Like, yes, I have had some repetition, but at this point, with three over almost 400 episodes, I can tell you I’ve gotten a few.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah.

Rob:
And that makes it such that even with your lofty goals of eating, eating, of reading, 80 a year or 100 a year or whatever, that looks like, I’m still way behind.

Chris Doelle:
No, not at all. Not at all. And I do a podcast series summarizing books, too, because I love them so much.

Rob:
Makes sense. Love it. Love it. So, Chris, what would you say in this world of creating games, board games, computer games, doing gamification, all that stuff that we’ve mentioned and talked about, what would you say is your superpower, that thing that you do at least better than most other people?

Chris Doelle:
I think it’s probably tell stories. And I do that because I understand everybody in the world has a story, but not only that, everybody has an amazing story. And if you view the people in your company, your customers, your clients as stories, you help them succeed. You help tell their story. As a marketer, that’s what we do, is tell stories, Right? But you can gamify that big time. Whether it’s unlocking rewards for customers as they reach certain plateaus or flip that around like our sales staff will have different levels that they can reach depending on the first one who closes the sale this week or whoever closes the most sales this week unlock something else. So there’s lots of ways to use gamification in day to day business, which really helps you succeed because yeah, we’re all adults now, but we all still love playing games.

Rob:
And as I always like to remind people, it’s, you know, being adults is not about becoming a boring person.

Chris Doelle:
Right.

Rob:
This might be something that happens, right? I’m not, I don’t have anything against that. But you don’t need to be a boring person to become a successful adult in any, you know, capacity. You want to put that. My, my, my. There was a phrase my dad used to say. I always get it wrong and especially translating, but he was saying, like people, we used to be very serious. Like I was not the kind of person, especially as a kid, to be smiling all the time and laughing. But then they saw me doing theater and they said, look, you know, the fact that I am laughing in theater, right? Doesn’t mean that I cannot do serious thing or that that can be a serious thing itself. So you can be laughing and doing serious stuff as well. So I, I like that one.

Chris Doelle:
I’m going to paraphrase it and steal it myself. I love that.

Rob:
Feel free to do that. Feel free to do that for sure. And now we get to a difficult one because you’ve been doing this, you mentioned since you were 10 or probably even younger. What would you say, Chris, is your favorite game?

Chris Doelle:
Oh, that is tough. I tell you all time, my favorite game was, and I say was because I don’t have access to it anymore, was NCAA 14, the College Football game that was on the Xbox. And in it you could modify the player names, you could modify their skills so people would upload, here’s the real skills for the real team this year and you could download them and you could do whatever you want. Or I would take like my friends and add them to my team and I’d give them varying skills. But it allowed you to play these seasons. I played something like 400 seasons as the University of Texas Longhorns. And then I got bored with that and I played the Brigham Young Cougars for a long time. You know, I just, I played that game to death. And then it finally, when EA Sports got sued, they got rid of the game because it was violating the likeness of some of the players in the real world. And that’s what led to the whole nil thing in college football. It finally they settled that lawsuit and now college football players get paid because of that.

Rob:
Well, it’s a good thing that now they’re getting paid. Yeah, it’s not a bad thing. Right, Right. Love that. Love that. So, Chris, we’re getting to the end of the interview, but I want to let you go before you tell us, you know, if you have any final words for the audience, of course, where we can find out more about you or if you have any final calls to action. That’s. It’s a fantastic time as well.

Chris Doelle:
Yeah, I would say if I had a call to action, it would be whatever you’re contemplating doing, get doing it right now. I mean, get started. As far as reaching me. FreshMediaWorks.com is my company, but ChrisDaily.com and with the weird spelling D O E L L E is kind of my home base where you can find fresh media works, you can find Lone Star Gridiron, the football site, you can find Board game Legends, the board games, you can find social media, you can find my books on Amazon, you can find anything that my crazy ADHD mind has created.

Rob:
Sounds brilliant. In fact, we will have absolutely all of that on our page. But if the top one is Chris Daly, well, you’ll see that right there on the show. Notes. And Chris, thanks again for sharing your experience, your insights, all the stuff that you’ve been doing. I love the story about podcasting because this is a medium. I only regret not having joined a little bit or a lot sooner, to be honest. I really enjoy talking to people. Having these interviews is always exciting. So thanks again for being the fifth podcaster in the world for sharing that story. Many of the other things that you’ve had, however, Chris, however, Engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game podcast. And since you are into gamification and game inspired solutions, how about you go into the free gamification course that we have for you? Just go to professorgame.com freegamification workcourse all one word professorgame.com freegamifications course and get started today for free. After that we will also be in contact and you will be the first to know of any opportunities that Professor Game might have for you. And remember, before you go on to your next mission, before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

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