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If you were asked to pick the most essential habit of wealthy entrepreneurs, what would you choose?
Perhaps you would go with business acumen or leadership. These are both great attributes shared by many wealthy entrepreneurs.
However, when you sit down and study the great entrepreneurs of the past decade or the past century, there is one essential habit they all covet, and that’s the habit of trusting their intuition.
On the latest episode of the Inner Edison Podcast with Ed Parcaut, we discussed the notion of trusting your intuition and how it can transform an idea into a world-changing company.
We sat down and talked with Rob Angel, the man behind one of the most popular board games ever — Pictionary.
He shared how Pictionary went from a simple idea to the most popular board game in the world. As you probably guessed, he relied on his intuition in many facets of Pictionary’s rise to fame.
Let’s dive in and discover how Angel turned a simple idea into a game-changer.
It All Started With a Bad Day
Believe it or not, the concept of Pictionary was born out of two friends trying to cheer one another up after a bad day.
Angel and his roommate had just gotten home and weren’t in the best mood when his friend asked if he’d like to play a game he learned in college.
Angel recalls, “he called it charades, but only on paper.”
After about twenty minutes of playing the game, he noticed something. He and his friend had completely changed their energy from playing this simple game.
At that moment, he knew that he had to share this game with other people.
Just Get Going!
Little did Angel know it, but it would be another two years before he would take the purpose he gained during that day and put it to good use.
He was spending his days waiting tables, all the while ignoring the million-dollar idea that was staring him in the mirror every morning.
Then one day, he decided to go out on the back deck and start with a yellow legal pad, a No. 2 pencil, and a dictionary. He started with the first word that he found in the dictionary.
“It was the word aardvark. At that time, I can’t even tell you I knew what an aardvark actually was. I mean, I knew it was an animal, but that was about it.”
It was then he realized the rush of adrenaline that came with sitting down and starting. He spent two years waiting to write that first word and only thirty seconds to find the second word.
Two days later, he had a completed list of Pictionary words. It was a lesson he would never forget. When you have an idea, just get going!
Partnering Up!
Angel explains throughout the process, he always relied on his intuition. When finding his two partners, he relied on his gut, and it proved right.
His two partners were all in on Pictionary, and every fight they ever had was always for the betterment of the game.
The one time he didn’t rely on his intuition was when he hired his first salesmen. Instead of using his intuition, he listened to the stats. It set the company back six months but taught them each the value of trusting your gut.
Finding Success and Making a BIG Decision
When starting out, they decided to choose a different path. Rather than approaching big toy stores that would be impossible to crack, they went to places where games weren’t traditionally sold, like Nordstrom, a real estate agency, and small storefronts around Seattle.
His intuition paid off, as in the first six months, people were looking for the game for the holiday season throughout Seattle. The intuition to start small paid off in the end.
The final piece of intuition came in February the following year when Milton Bradley dropped a contract for licensing in front of him that would make him and his partners instant millionaires.
Sitting there, it didn’t feel right, so he didn’t sign the contract, risking failure. As luck would have it, he signed a better deal a few months later, offering a better royalty, and he retained ownership of the game for close to twenty years!
Today, Pictionary has sold 38,000,000 games in 60 different countries. If you’d like to learn more about the story behind Pictionary, be sure to check out Angel’s book Game Changer.
For more great stories about entrepreneurism and more, stay tuned to the Inner Edison Podcast with Ed Parcaut.