Josh:

We’re close to about 900 paid members now. As I said, we have about 400 people coming in each week.

Adam:

Welcome to the Youngpreneur Podcast brought to you by The Hunter Futurepreneurs Program.

The Hunter Futurepreneurs program has been designed to inspire, educate, mentor and connect future entrepreneurs to start or build a sustainable business.  

It’s a free program for young people supported by the Commonwealth Government, under the Entrepreneurship Program Initiative.

On the show, you’ll meet other young people, not unlike yourself. These young entrepreneurs had an idea for a business and decided to take action and just got to work creating an opportunity for themselves. If you enjoy these stories please join us by subscribing to the podcast and checking out the other ways you can get involved by visiting the show notes at hunterfuturepreneurs.com.au/josh.

I’m your host Adam Spencer and I’d like to introduce you to your mentor today. 

Josh:

My name’s Josh Freiberger, I’m the owner and operations manager of GVP Esports.

Adam:

Josh started organising tournaments for his friends in a little shed on a golf driving range and now has an amazing location and community behind his business. We start this conversation with Josh with me asking Josh what he did after finishing highschool. 

Josh:

Finished high school, didn’t really want to go to university and it just so happened my dad took over a restaurant, thought I’d just go in and give him a hand getting it started up and then eight years later I was still there. My parents had been in the hospitality industry for 30 years. They didn’t really want me in the industry, but-

Adam:

Why didn’t they want you in the industry?

Josh:

I just think they knew more than most how much of a hard slog of an industry it is.

Adam:

The last four years was pretty much you running it.

Josh:

Yeah. I guess naturally my dad was happy for me to just take over and he still worked there, but he kind of just took a backseat and just let me explore my leadership and business style.

Adam:

First of all, what did you learn there in that four years and how did that inspire you or get you interested in business and entrepreneurship?

Josh:

Well, one of the things I learned was I guess there’s no real ceiling on how much you can earn when you have your own business. I mean there is in that context of that one business, but you can always expand and have more and then just learn how to deal with different situations, different leadership styles. I’m actually getting into kind of the numbers of the business.

Adam:

Where does gaming fit into this whole story? 

Josh:

Gaming is something I’d always just been doing. I mean, when I’ve been at the restaurant, I’d finished work at 10:00 get home at 10:30 and play games til 7:00 AM and wake up at 2:00 and get back to work.

Adam:

Well, what kind of games are we talking?

Josh:

That was mostly Call of Duty through that phase.

Adam:

Where did the tournaments start coming into play here that you organized?

Josh:

Tournaments started coming into play when Tom, who’s my best friend that we started this together. He went down to BAM in Melbourne, which is Battle Arena Melbourne for a Super Smash Brothers tournament and ended up doing really well and then came back to Newcastle and obviously wanted to keep competing, but there was no way to do it. And we’ve always been playing Smash together. So we just started calling up a few friends that had been interested in it in the past when they came over and we started running little tournament’s and they started out with four or five people and then eventually just kept on growing.

Adam:

Where did these tournaments take place?

Josh:

This was in the driving range at Cardiff. Tom owned that business there and we kind of just firstly just set up a little space for it in the shed and then we ended up taking up a fairly large portion of the shed and making a little arena in there.

Adam:

What year are we talking here?

Josh:

That would have been 2015 I’m pretty sure.Within the next year we were running tournament’s of 20, 25 people. And I’d say the player base at that point it was probably around about 50 just depending on who came on the day.

Adam:

Was there a prize pool, was there any incentive for them to come other than just the fun and the kind of community?

Josh:

Me and Tom would buy little prizes out of our pocket and then once we started getting decent numbers it was basically a $10 entry, five went to the venue, five went to the price pot.

Adam:

25, player base of 50 – was that a good number to you or even back then, did you have big ambitions for it?

Josh:

No, I mean we were happy just because we had new people to versus, really. I was still working in the restaurant and focusing on that and Tom had the driving range and he was focusing on that. It was kind of just something that was slowly building in the background.

Adam:

Were you Gomaz, because this is-

Josh:

I was Pedro.

Adam:

You were Pedro and that was the name of the-

Josh:

That was the original name.

Adam:

So when you guys were doing tournaments at Cardiff driving range where, were you calling yourselves Gomaz versus Pedro? Like was there any-

Josh:

Yeah, I mean as I said, it started off as a casual, not so much a joke, but it was just something we were playing with really.

Adam:

Okay. All right. So still another, what are we talking about, it’s just another three years left at Grill 32 here?

Josh:

I finished in 2016.

Adam:

By the end of 2016 when you kind of left Grill 32, what was the player base then?

Josh:

So at the end of 2015 is when we started traveling for tournaments and that’s when our kind of player base started to grow a lot more. It’s cause we were going to other events, people started coming to Newcastle and then more people in Newcastle started coming. It was from the end of 2015 to early 2016 was when it kind of all blew up a little bit more.

Adam:

Were you going to these different people and talking to people and say, come to Newcastle and come to our tournaments?

Josh:

Originally we just went down there to kind of see what it was all about. And then we were down there. We started talking to them, started talking to the players. They were shocked because the first tournament we went to, we hired a bus and took down I think 15 or 20 players and they had no idea that there was a Smash community in Newcastle. And then they were like, all right, we’ll come to your events then.

Adam:

And when you say it blew up, what does that look like? What does blowing up look like?

Josh:

It’s when our tournaments started getting … Like the biggest ones we’ve had. We were starting to get players that we had no affiliation with whatsoever, just show up to events and then they were bringing people that we had no affiliation with to the events and I could see something a little bit bigger than just a casual tournament thing growing.

Adam:

When did you start advertising or utilizing social?

Josh:

We were all word of mouth to begin with. I was, before this, I was not really a big, I’m still not a huge fan of social media, but I wasn’t a social media user. And neither was Tom really. So we started a little Facebook page mainly just so I could send out invites to the people that were coming and then they just kind of got shared around.

Adam:

So we’re almost at a point now where Gomaz versus Pedro, turns into GVP Esports. 

Josh:

I wish I did it earlier just because it’s more descriptive of the business. People confuse it for Guzman y Gomez, the Mexican place. So we opened in, March of 2017. In January of 2017 we had an invitational Smash tournament. So we invited four of the best players from Queensland, Victoria, Sydney, Wollongong and Canberra to the venue. And we did a weekend in the venue, like summit style event. At that time the Smash community was still pretty grassroots and they were hungry for tournaments.

Adam:

How did you entice them to come? Was that the big prize pool?

Josh:

Yeah, we had a prize pool for a teams event and then a prize pool for a singles event as well I think. All up there was around about a $2,000 price pool.

Adam:

Is that a big prize pool when it comes to those kinds of things?

Josh:

At the time it was because there was coupled with no entry cost and free accommodation. But the Smash community hasn’t really, I guess seeing the full benefit of Esports yet.

Adam:

Right. 

Josh:

We limited it to, I think it was 30 just because we wanted as many, it was basically just the best players rather than a huge open format.

Adam:

What was the objective there for you? So you hadn’t launched a business yet, but were you planning on launching the business?

Josh:

Yeah, so we’d just taken ownership of the space down here. 

Adam:

And so it was part of your launch strategy, I guess for the business. No press at all at this point?

Josh:

No. We promoted it through Facebook, Twitter and Discord and Reddit. That was about it.

Adam:

How long had you been planning the business before you launched?

Josh:

Since probably early 2016. When we started traveling to events I saw, I guess the potential. Having owned a restaurant and working in kind of a club environment. So, that’s where we kind of got the idea of the social club.

Adam:

All right. How many people are you getting in here on a good day?

Josh

Busiest days of the week is around about a hundred people. I would say it’s around 350 a week.

Adam:

Are you happy with that or do you want to see that grow?

Josh:

Definitely want to see that grow. We have some people that come in and they spend 10 hours a day here and then we have some that come in and spend an hour. So it’s mainly just how long are they spending on the PCs. I mean we could have 20 people in for the day, but if they’re spending all day on the PCs and it’s a good day for us.

Adam:

Tell me more about these tournament days. How often do these happen?

Josh:

Tuesday kind of what we’ve just started doing on Tuesdays is a sports day. So FIFA, NBA, NFL, those kinds of games. Every Wednesday is traditional fighting games, so Tekken and Street Fighter, those and then Thursdays, Super Smash Brothers.

Adam:

Clearly you’re not reaching the whole market in Newcastle yet. There’s people that haven’t heard about you. What could you be doing to-

Josh:

To be honest, it’s something that I’ve been struggling with a little bit is how to get a little bit more reach.

Adam:

Do you do any social advertising to push it out there?

Josh:

I mean we advertise through our Facebook page and Twitter and things like that. We haven’t done any, I guess traditional forms of advertising. I’ve got a few other friends that have started businesses and they’re kind of struggling with the same thing as in, it’s a time when reaching people should be, it’s easiest, but it’s almost as if there’s so much information out there that people just aren’t taking it in.

Adam:

Yeah. Well what’s your demographic? Who is your ideal customer that comes here? 

Josh:

Anywhere from 12 to 40. We have a lot of young people come in afterschool or we have a lot of kids who come in with carers and things like that and then when a little bit later in the afternoon. It’s adults that have finished uni and work for the day. It’s more, there’s still a bit of a barrier with video games or Esports and parents. Parents still don’t love it. So they’re hesitant to allow their kids to come.

Adam:

Interesting.

Josh:

Whereas some of them really love it and they’re seeing the improvements that their kids are making in it. And especially in the big social groups that the carers bring in. There’s a lot of interaction and they’re very happy with it. I helped found the university of Newcastle Esports club last year. And I’m currently talking with someone at the New South Wales education department to try and get a kind of a inter high school league happening. I mean that would be the kind of the best exposure for us is to have high school students competing against each other.

Adam:

Take me back to that day when you opened the doors for the first time.

Josh:

For the most part I was just happy that we’d finally opened because it was a long process of finding a building and getting … Council was a massive one for us because we were a brand new business concept to their area. So we got put through the ringer in terms of … the restrictions and all that. They put you through like doing acoustic testing on the building and well like, yeah.

Adam:

So what were you then? Were you 25…

Josh:

27.

Adam:

Did you go through and actually like think through business and do the business plan?

Josh:

Yeah we did all that. My dad and my mom helped me with that because they’ve been in business for forever.

Adam:

How long did that take you to kind of go through that process to plan it?

Josh:

Took about four or five months. Just going through it. I mean we were doing it as we were looking for buildings and just kind of getting a good scope of what we would have to do to make money.

Adam:

Is there anything that kind of blindsided you?

Josh:

I think everyone that starts a business has this idea that it’s going to blow up straight away and it didn’t blow up straight away. We just didn’t get off to a great start then put us in a little bit of a hole. But we climbed our way out of that and yeah, that hasn’t been too many … because we paid for pretty much everything outright to begin with. There wasn’t interest or any of those kinds of things that got us.

Adam:

How did you know that there was something here that there’d be enough people to actually start a business around this?

Josh:

I mean I didn’t know for sure. I was seeing what Esports was kind of turning into at the time or had already, it had been around for a while, but it was just growing more and more and more and becoming more part of the culture. And the people that we did have were just asking for it. They all play different games. They all have friends that played different games and wanted a place to kind of go and play and interact and compete.

Adam:

How does the business make money? Like what are the different products that you offer?

Josh:

So I guess our bread and butter is the pay by the hour gaming for the PCs. It’s $5 an hour per PC. There’s different rates for members and things like that.

Adam:

Is $5 an hour in terms of industry standard. Like is that-

Josh:

That’s a round about, right? The ones in Sydney were a little bit cheaper.

Adam:

Oh really?

Josh:

But the venues were a lot crappier.

Adam:

Ah right. Are there any other revenue streams?

Josh:

Yeah, we’ve got like the tournament’s do make us money as well. There’s an entry fee that comes with that. And also to have people in the venue buying food and drinks in the cafe is another good thing.

Adam:

Does Twitch and other streaming platforms like that have a big, do they contribute to your business in it?

Josh:

We’ve made a little bit of money off Twitch but not as much as I guess it’s possible to make, but we’re hoping if we can get more localized high school tournaments and things like that, that we’ll have more … in my perfect world for Twitch we’d have different days worth of content for a different game every day. So we have basically a structured media channel.

Adam:

Yeah. 

Josh:

Australia always struggles with time-zones and that kind of stuff and even your big ESL Australian stuff doesn’t really cap out at too many viewers either. But I think that’s what is missing a lot with the Esports audience in general is engaging the local community in it. I mean it’s no more or less exciting or I’d say Esports as a whole is much bigger than the NRL, but the NRL connects with its community a lot better. People support their home team because they always have and their parents have and yada yada. So I think that’s what we’re focusing on is trying to engage the community in their local Esports rather than just expect to just nab people from everywhere.

Adam:

We could go down that rabbit hole, but I want to ask, what’s been the biggest challenge for you?

Josh:

I don’t think it’s unique to this business, is whether it’s large or small, you’re going to experience failure a lot. And I guess bouncing back from that. You sit there and you’ve got this idea that you think is going to be amazing and it falls flat and then you’ve got this idea that you just throw out there on a whim and it takes off and you don’t really sometimes understand why, but it’s something you just got to deal with.

Adam:

How much are you focusing on, that whole working on the business as opposed to in it?

Josh:

Being stuck in the business is a big thing. I’m lucky that I’ve got a really supportive partner so she’s able to kind of get me out of my little world, which is extremely helpful. If you spent enough time in the business, it’s hard to work on the business. And yeah, that is definitely a barrier. I guess what I like most is there’s still a lot of potential within it that hasn’t been fully explored. So I’m enjoying seeing where those go. And then there’s a lot of you get your wholesome days where you see a bunch of maybe some kids on the spectrum that come in and have a really good experience here and you see Esports being able to play a positive role in their lives, which is just good to see.

Adam:

Yeah. Tell me more about community and the community side of your business.

Josh:

I’m not saying that everyone that comes in here is really my friend or someone that I’d spend time with outside of here. But it’s good to see a large quantity of people that might, that are using this place or like a primary socializing hub for them. And have been able to use it as a tool to meet other people and kind of grow their own social lives out of the Esports industry.

Adam:

The community aspect of it that is really the thing that’s going to underpin the success of the business, right? You need to grow that community.

Josh:

Yeah.

Adam:

Are you taking any steps? Are there any plans? Is there a strategy in for you to grow that community moving forward?

Josh:

Doing more games or different varieties of games is always a good way to just draw in new people to begin with. And we have a lot of people that come in here for one reason and see that we’re doing something else. So they come back for that or bring groups. Like they bring their own social group in and it all just meshes together and then they all go home and talk in our Discord channel.

Josh:

Like there was a time when me and Tom where the primary, I guess, socializers in the venue and now we have events and we look around and we don’t even know who half the people are and they don’t even know who we are, and they don’t even care!

Adam:

How does that make you feel?

Josh:

Good. I mean there was a time when I thought if the people that were coming leave then there’s going to be no one else. But all of those people have been … like a lot of those people have left or they don’t come as frequently but they’ve been replaced by a bunch more other people that are bringing in other new people. So I guess it’s a good thing that you don’t know your customer base all the time.

Adam:

Who was the first kind of organization that you kind of started dealing with?

Josh:

It first started with the carers, I think one of the first ones was one of the kids who came in for Smash. His mum was an NDIS coordinator so she put us in touch with a lot of people and then I think it just kind of spread word of mouth through the carers. They were telling each other about it and they told their supervisors and then we, yeah.

Adam:

Yeah. Is there any formal partnership in place there or is it all informal at this point?

Josh:

It’s all informal. They have our information within their business so carers can see it. And we’re listed as an NDIS provider on the NDIS website as well.

Adam:

Right. Did you have to go through a whole process? What was that like?

Josh:

Long and fiddly.

Adam:

But it was an important thing for you to do.

Josh:

It was because they can use their funding here now, so they get allocated funding. So they can use it for social engagement here.

Adam:

So where we’re in 2020 now you started in early 2017. Where’s the business today? 

Josh:

Yeah, we’re close to about 900 paid members now. As I said, we have about 400 people coming in each week. I mean the biggest thing for us is to try and get into like our local education systems now to push it over the edge.

Adam:

What’s the plan there? What’s the first step for you or have you taken that step already to get in touch with these people?

Josh:

I’ve taken the step to do it. You’ve just got to keep trying. You can’t just send one email away and expect a reply. You’ve got to send four, five, six and then once you get a reply, you’ve got to continually follow up that lead and just try and make your way up and get bounced around from different places until you find the right person. And you might never eventually get there, but you’ve just got to keep following up nonstop.

Adam:

Have any conversations started with-

Josh:

Yeah, we finally got some kind of contact within the New South Wales education department. So I’m hoping that leads somewhere and I think just short of that, my next approach is just going to have to go and sit in the school office and talk to the sports teacher and get something going that way.

Adam:

What’s the pitch like? 

Josh:

I mean specifically for the high school Esports stuff. It would be … High schools love sports and sports does such good things for kids and Esports is now a declared legitimate sport by the government, but it gives access to do the same things that traditional sports gives to a community of kids that probably aren’t going to go down that path. So you now have a lot of introverted kids at school that might not be as physically gifted or just maybe they’re just not into it, so they get a chance to perform in front of their peers for their school, work in a team and get those skills that they wouldn’t otherwise get.

Adam:

Hunter Futurepreneurs and other organizations are out there to help young people start their business. How would an organization like that have helped you in the early days?

Josh:

I mean, I’m lucky in the sense that my family had always been in business. My mum works on the Hunter manufacturing board and first on different manufacturing boards as well, and she’s got a master’s in marketing. So she knows her way around that part. So she’s been extremely important for me to be able to bounce those ideas off. And then my dad just works well in businesses. Works hard and if I didn’t have them then I guess young entrepreneurs or something like that would be exactly what I would have been needed to get through. But even so it’s probably still a useful thing for me if I was to go there just to find different perspectives and different ideas.

Adam:

Is there something that has been a common theme in your journey? 

Josh:

Yeah, I mean mental health is always a big one. Something that keeps me sane or keeps me going, is the gym, especially when you have your own business, there’s so much out of your control, whereas your health and fitness is just something that you can control. You can get a constant sense of achievement and progression from it, and it gives structure to your day. So if your business isn’t going fantastic and you don’t want to get up out of the morning you still get up, you go to the gym, you feel better, you come in and you’re more motivated to kind of keep on trying.

Adam:

Thank you for listening to the Youngpreneur Podcast brought to you by The Hunter Futurepreneurs program. What exactly is the Hunter Futurepreneurs Program? I’d like you to meet the Entrepreneurship Facilitator at Hunter Futurepreneurs…

Cheryl:

Cheryl Royle and I’m the entrepreneurship facilitator for the Hunter Region.

The Hunter Futurepreneurs Program exists to support, inspire, educate and mentor young people who have an idea or a passion they want to explore. We show you step by step how to validate your idea and build a successful business.  

If you are…or know a young person with an idea,

Hunter Futurepreneurs are here for you.

Adam:

Do you have an idea for a business but have no idea where to start? I’ll tell you where to start, it’s simple, all you need to do is go to the show notes page for this episode, hunterfuturepreneurs.com.au/josh, and there you’ll be able to answer a couple of quick questions and then Cheryl will be in touch with you to schedule a free meeting to help you get started the right way. 

Cheryl:

So that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. Two young guys coming in, knocking on my door, saying, “This is my idea. What do I do with it?” And we developed it to at least getting them a grant to make it happen. Proud. Proud, but I felt that the opportunity, the opportunities that were going to open up for these young boys were incredible, and the journey that they’ve been on has been incredible as well. So they’ve learnt so many things. They’ve learnt about finances. They’ve learnt about resilience on how … They’ve learnt about how to develop an app. They’ve learnt about things like contracts, working with other people. It’s just been amazing and it’s been an amazing journey. Whether that app is successful or not doesn’t matter now. These young boys have walked away with skills that will hold them very high throughout their lives.

Adam:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts for more incredible stories from other Young Entrepreneurs to learn how they started and built their businesses. They started from scratch just like you, there is no better time to get started than right now, get in touch with the Hunter Futurepreneurs team today at hunterfuturepreneurs.com.au/josh.

Thank you for listening!