And we’re back with Adam!
And here we go with part 2 of our interview with Adam!
About Adam:
Adam Collins earned his MBA from the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) in December 2019 and continues to fuel his passion for lifelong learning. He recently began a Graduate Certificate program in Social Media and Digital Marketing at UMSL, further expanding his expertise. Professionally, Adam serves as a Project Manager in UMSL’s Planning, Design, & Construction division, a role that perfectly aligns with his 20+ years of experience in the construction industry. He takes pride in contributing to his alma mater, overseeing campus improvements ranging from renovations to equipment upgrades. His work connects him with a diverse range of colleagues, enhancing the university’s infrastructure in meaningful ways. Beyond his job, he remains actively involved in the UMSL Alumni Association and the student-led Board Game Club. Adam is also an entrepreneur and board game enthusiast. He has launched a podcast, a YouTube channel, and an independent publishing company—all centered around board gaming. Passionate about bringing people into the hobby, he collaborates with local libraries and community colleges to introduce modern board games to new audiences. He has even helped organize game days for children at the library. His podcast, Eat Lunch & Board Game, explores games that fit into a typical lunch break, whether 30 or 60 minutes. Inspired by his own experiences starting a lunchtime gaming group at work, Adam has interviewed a wide range of guests from the board game industry, gathering their insights and recommendations. His son occasionally joins in for special review episodes, and together, they’ve also launched a YouTube channel, Reviews from the Attic, where they share their thoughts on board games. When he’s not gaming or working, Adam enjoys reading (often about board gaming), biking with his kids, “running” with his son, and hiking with his family
Adam’s plugs: https://beardedboardgames.com/
(A list of STL farmers markets: https://www.stlmag.com/dining/st-louis-farmers-markets-guide/)
Contact Adam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-f-collins/ https://www.youtube.com/@eatlunchboardgamepodcast146
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
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And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes: https://www.themarketinggateway.com
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jordan (00:01)
Well, hey, I’m Sean in St. Louis and welcome back to the Marketing Gateway. And today we’ve got part two of our interview with Adam Collins from Bearded Board Games. Now, we talked about a little bit in the previous episode about how Adam got around to starting this board game company with his partner, how he has been working ⁓ on going out into the community and selling board games in really interesting places like farmer’s markets and how that has enabled him to
find ways to connect with people. But more than that, and we’re going to talk about that more in this episode too, there’s a connection that board gaming can bring that is really special and it’s really social. part of the ⁓ genesis of his business was people getting together and playing board games over lunch hours. And he’s going to talk much more about that and how that shapes even what they’re doing today at Bearded Board Games.
I just love that idea. think it’s so cool. If you work in a larger organization where you can sit down and play some games together over lunch, it’s a way to meet people that you don’t know. It’s a way to work together, to build camaraderie. It’s a way to teach people things that maybe aren’t that useful, practically speaking, but which are fun and interesting. And it just, opens doors in ways that you might not imagine, especially if you happen to find someone who really enjoys playing board games and you do too. Then you have something in common. So.
With all that said, here is part two of our interview.
Sean Jordan (01:27)
So when you’re thinking about how you’re going to market a game and what kind of market you’re going to support, what are you looking for? And ⁓ when you’re talking with other game makers, what kind of partnerships are you looking to form?
Adam Collins (01:39)
So when we’re looking at a game, like right now, I joke that one of the first classes in the semester for this cohort that I was a part of was when the first question they asked us was, what does scaling your company look like? And I’m like, ⁓ man, what is scaling Board of Beer games look like? It looks like getting all these games out there and all this and all that.
And then by the end of the semester, into the class, I was like, you know what? think the best way to go big is to go small. And so I’ve got a couple of games under contract from other designers. So fences is our big flagship game and a buddy of mine, long story short, he created a game for a local farm, kind of like Eckert’s here in the St. Louis area. And they were really excited, but they didn’t want to like make it. He’s like, well, I
make games, I just design them. And they were like, well, if you ever get it made, let us know. And so then he calls me up. He’s like, hey, have you ever thought about doing a rolling ride version of fences? And I’m like, no. He’s like, well, I want to show you something when I see it. So we met up at a, at a proto spiel. And so it fits perfectly in alignment with fences and, you know, redoing the artwork and maybe changing a few little things. And it fits in like the world of, of fences.
And, then we were also, you know, we were always in the lookout for like another big, you know, another game or whatever. And I decided, you know what? We have so many small publishers or small designers here in St. Louis that are looking to get their games out. What if we, instead of going and trying to go big and find some big game, like, what if we just go small and just try to push out games from St. Louis designers that just don’t want to, because what people also need to be aware of is if you want to start making board games.
and doing it legit, kind I don’t want say like I am, but like, but like I am, you’re starting a business. And a lot of people don’t want to do that. And I get that. I’ve done it for seven years and I’m like, why am I still doing this? This is crazy. ⁓ And so I want to kind of work with some smaller first time designers ⁓ or people that,
trying to catch a break. They’ve got a whole bunch of game designs. so what I look for in that aspect is I’m looking for something that I can… There’s all kinds of different games out there. The market has exploded over the last 30 years. It’s hard to that Catan, which is really what everybody says that that’s the watershed moment. That game came out in 1995. That game is 31 years old. So…
A lot has happened in the last three decades, right? So what I look for, I try to find games. I try to stick to my roots of games I can play in under an hour or something we can play in a lunchtime. But I also try to look for things that have like small production, but have big bang. So like fences is a tile laying game. And so every time you play the game, you’re going to have different tiles and you’re going to have different opponents. And there’s
different player profiles that offer different ways to play the game and score the game. So I look for something that has a lot of replayability. And that’s what I’m looking for. And so I work at a university here in St. Louis and there’s a board game design, board game art class that I know that I’ve become friends with the professor, obviously, because of board games. And but a couple of her students have had games and I’m like, if you guys really like legit want to do this,
I will help you, you I will help you take this game all as far as you want to. And, ⁓ I’m working with two different groups right now on their games and they’re, you know, it’s been a lot of fun, very rewarding to watch these kids. say kids and mean their students are like in their twenties, you know, they’re not kids like mine. There are seven, but, ⁓ but like, you know, if you have an idea, the best thing you can do, wait, like what you did, Sean, you,
You’ve worked it out. It didn’t work. Doesn’t mean the game does is terrible. Means it just needs work. Rework it. What didn’t work? Fix it. Play more games, you know, to figure out what can make what makes this one better. And so what we’re always looking for stuff like that. And then lately we like, you know, like I said earlier, we like to partner with other small publishers that are like me have one or two games and we boot share.
And so we can split the cost. keeps, makes profiting easier if I’m only paying half the cost of being there. So.
Sean Jordan (06:30)
And I think that’s such an important aspect of ⁓ small business and publishing world too, which is you have to actually know who other people are that are doing these things. They’re not your competitors, really. mean, they might, as you said, be competing for the wallet at that particular place, but really, like they’re your allies. They’re the ones that are trying to do what you’re trying to do. You can share resources, you can share ideas, you can learn from each other. And if their profile raises and you’re associated with them, your profile raises too.
Adam Collins (06:42)
No!
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it goes back to that toxic positivity, right? Like I remember going through this idea of smaller farmers market is my first one. Like I said, it 20 bucks for a booth. And they literally supplied the tent. Oh, you. And then if you didn’t have a table, they had one there for you, too. And if you didn’t have a chair, they had that there, too. You could literally just show up with your stuff. And for 20 bucks, you could sit there and sell your stuff. I’m a little.
Thank goodness I’m a little bit more graduated from that for right now. But ⁓ that’s where somebody’s like, hey, you ought to try this event. And I went there and it did not work out for me. I worked for six hours at this event. I sold $0. But the guy who ran it waived my booth fee, said, hey, I’m sorry, it didn’t work out. But don’t worry, there was another guy selling old board games downstairs. And I bought a lot of old board games. So I was actually
I actually was net negative money at that event. But but I’m telling you like that you’re right that those people that you meet or become so great contacts that, hey, have you heard this one of you? Hey, there’s this Facebook group. There’s all kinds of Facebook groups. So anybody listening, if you have a small company that you want to try to get out there, check out the farmers market scene or the craft fair scene, every
Flippin’ High School Band has a winter market in their gymnasium. Find the local school that has that in your area and pay the fee and just show up. Biggest things you can do is have your own table and a tablecloth. You’ll find out real quick. I would obviously I’d have Venmo set up and probably PayPal or Square ⁓ so you can take cash and credit and whatever.
I mean, then once you get into one, somebody there is going to tell you about another one. Who’s going to tell you about another one? Who’s going to tell you about another one? And now you’ve got, you know, I have to be kind of picky and choosy about where I go right now because, you know, the farmers market seasons, we try to do two or three different farmers markets, but I can’t be gone every weekend. But it’s not bad because, guys, they’re done by noon. You can be home taking a nap.
Sean Jordan (09:25)
Well, speaking of things that cut into your free time, ⁓ you’ve also got a podcast. I don’t know where you find time to game, honestly, because you’re doing so many other things. Yeah. But you’ve got this podcast, and you have this tagline on your podcast that, board games build bridges. So tell me a little bit about that.
Adam Collins (09:32)
I haven’t this month yet. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so my podcast is called Eat Lunch and Board Game. Stimmed out of the pandemic, like a lot of other people who were sitting around with like, do I do with my spare time? So I started off reviewing board games ⁓ that we would play at the office and talk about games. because I say board games build bridges because the company I worked for at the time was very segmented. Every we had a
200 people in this building and yet you probably only knew about the 15 or 20 in your division, your silo, your segment. And so at my group, we started playing Catan and I worked with a bunch of engineers and I’m like, so one little guy saw me playing Catan on my phone one day and he’s like, what’s that? I was like, I’ll bring it in. I’m sure one of these other engine, one of these engineering nerds around here knows how to play Catan. And it took me all of two tries to find.
to find somebody else who knew how to play guitar. And so we started playing guitar just the two or the three of us. And then we started off in this small conference room and then people was like, poke their heads in like, what are you guys doing? Are you guys playing a board game? And so then we taught them how to play and then we taught somebody else how to play. And then all of a sudden, now we needed two copies of guitar because we had more than one game could fit.
Luckily all the people I played with at work, they loved the game and they all bought their own copies. So we had like eight copies of Catan. But then we had a pretty healthy social or committee. missing my word here. Social committee. so we did, we tried to do, we was like, Hey, let’s just do a board game night and see what happens. So we did a board game night at the office and they gave me like,
40 bucks to buy pizza and soda. So went up the street, bought pizza and soda and people from like all these different segments and silos of the company of the same building. We were in the same building. Like it wasn’t like, you know, that big. And we all like came and played in like the cafeteria lunch area. And you really started seeing the lines of communication, like, you know, or the smoke.
all kind of disappeared and you see these lines of communications being built. And then all of a sudden, now you know somebody over in that department. And now if you have a question or need an answer from that department, you know somebody over there. They may not be the person that has the answer, but they can point you to the person who does. And so now that bridge is there. You’ve built that line of communication. You built that bridge. And then the company I for had multiple buildings on this
this campus and so then we’re like, hey, let’s take this campus wide. Let’s do let’s do a campus wide board game event. And we did. We had no idea what was going to happen. ⁓ And so we people showed up and we had like 20 or 30 people show up that night, maybe more. And all of a sudden now we have now, people in a whole other building on campus to where.
We started having to play every Friday. We would play in the centralized dining facility there on campus at lunch because we wanted to hang out with people from other buildings. And so you start seeing those lines of communication, those bridges, as I say, you know, the board games build bridges. You start seeing those bridges being built. The company started like realizing, Hey, you guys can build this over in that building. Well, why am I buying it from this guy? If we can keep the money in house.
And so you see that happening. then the next couple of companies I worked for, again, I worked for companies that were like, you know, they were two or three different entities in one building and they all viewed each other as like, not the enemy, like, you know, I don’t know what happens on that side of the hallway. And I’m like, well, let’s find out what happens if I bust out King of Tokyo and see if I get people to play with me.
You got to be willing to level set, though. I had to start at one company. We started out by playing Uno, Uno and Clue, but Clue is underrated anyway. I love Clue, but we played a lot of Uno and Clue and then we started playing other games at that point. We had, I don’t know, eight or ten people at that. You just start seeing it all come together. And so that’s what kind of really drove me to keep doing the podcast and finding games that people could play at lunch and then.
Sean Jordan (14:08)
Yeah.
Adam Collins (14:19)
Started interviewing people because my son asked me I should hey you should interview the guy that did one of our favorite games is the cooperative game Castle panic But fireside games and oh It’s one of the best cooperative games ever really I mean pandemic is fine, but pandemic it feels like you know life and death and it kind of is but Castle panic Yeah, yeah a little bit but then like Castle panic is just like
Sean Jordan (14:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s a great one.
And they didn’t lose thin after COVID, right? Yeah.
Adam Collins (14:48)
you know, you’re defending, it’s a castle defense game and you’re working together to defend yourself from the monsters coming in from all sides. And somebody sounds like you should see if he’ll be on your podcast. And I’m like, why would this guy want to be on my podcast? But I reached out to him via Facebook, ⁓ blind, and about 30 minutes later, he responded that, heck yeah, let’s do it. And so I’ve been doing interviews with people around the industry, different things.
⁓ Ever since and even that is, you know, building bridges. Now I have contacts that, you know, do all kinds of weird things in the industry.
Sean Jordan (15:22)
That’s fantastic. hey, have a fallback plan if Bearded Board Games needs another revenue source, you could be the consultants that go in and teach people how to play board games and as team building, build a board game library. It’d probably be a lot cheaper than hiring a consultant. And then you guys could build board games.
Adam Collins (15:33)
Yeah?
Yeah, I’ve
actually kicked that idea around, but I’m like, how do you even start that? how do you even, I was like, I don’t even know how you would begin to do that, but it’s an interesting idea. Maybe we’ll try to figure that one out, Sean. Well, how do we do this? Yeah, anybody can figure it out as you do it. You figure it out, let me know.
Sean Jordan (15:44)
you
We’re just giving away gold here on this episode.
Well, one more question I wanted to ask you is that, you know, there’s a lot of people that would like to get into playing board games, but they get intimidated by all the choices and how complex some of the games are. And I mean, you look at something like Gloomhaven, right? I mean, that looks intimidating. It’s a great game, but it looks intimidating. So what advice would you give to those who want to have a board game night that’s more exciting than just pulling out the old Monopoly or Scrabble sets?
Adam Collins (16:23)
First of all, Monopoly is underappreciated. If you play the game by the rules, it should play in about 90 minutes. It’s everybody messing with the rules of Monopoly that make the game last forever. But also people always want to be so hateful to Monopoly because, it’s just a rule of move. It is, but it’s also a mind game. And you’re trying to outsmart people in when to buy stuff and when to trade stuff and when to buy something from somebody else. And also, you have to appreciate a game that has lived around for 90 years.
Sean Jordan (16:30)
No.
Adam Collins (16:53)
and it’s still like the top selling board game every year. Like you sit there and think of these new games that come out there, like even games like WingSpan that have been out for a long time have sold just like in the low millions of copies and Monopoly sells like nine million a year or something ridiculous. Now part of it is people don’t want to buy somebody so they buy them a copy of Monopoly, but.
Still, nine million or something. They sell millions of copies of Monopoly and they have for 90 years. That’s crazy. But back to your question, how do you find games? There’s a couple things that I do. ⁓ I utilize Board Game Geek. It’s a great website. My coworker and I, we joke, because trying to get a new game listed in there.
our next game and we’re trying to get it put into board game geek. You can tell this this website was built by geeks back in the late 90s and it’s all like code HTML code based and it is terrible. And it’s is somebody who’s trying to add a board game or add an artist or add a designer. It is horrible. But
as a user just trying to find out about games, ⁓ that is a great resource. You can go on there, type in a game that you know, or that you’re curious about, and you can read about it, and it’ll tell you. The best thing you can do, or the two things I like to look at the most are play time, how long is it gonna take, should it take me to play the game, and then look at the weight. And I try to keep my, I like to play anything under a three, because three,
tends to get to be very complex and the learning curve becomes really steep. But I like to try to keep it, you know, right there. ⁓ Because if, and then you can also type in a game that you know and you like, and if you scroll a little bit, it’ll, you know, you can see the mechanics on the side and you, know like I’m throwing out words you may not know, but like you can read about the mechanic and what you like about that game could be that it’s a reroll and locking game like Yahtzee.
A lot of people know Yahtzee. Apparently my wife didn’t. Like I was like, how did you get to be 40 years old and never play Yahtzee? ⁓ But like if you like the rerolling and locking of Yahtzee, King of Tokyo uses that in a whole different way. And there’s other games that do the same thing, like Age of War and stuff like that, that use rerolling and locking. But that’s another way you can click through those mechanics or you can click on the weight and you can find games that have low weights.
For instance, Candy Land is a one because you can’t give it a zero. Candy Land has zero strategy. Shoots and Ladders is a one. There’s no strategy. But then a game like Gloomhaven is like 3.8 or something or four. It’s like super complicated. So stay away from those at the beginning. But you can also read a lot of times if you go to the files, it’ll have the instructions. You can kind of read through it. How to videos. There’s everywhere now.
⁓ There’s always the joke now about do you even need to write a rule book or do you just need to make a really good how to play video and then it sounds like a rules up like a rule reminder quick reference guide in your in your box. We still write rule books because that’s what everybody expects but you’re going to learn a new game you’re going to watch a video. ⁓ And so go to YouTube and watch videos on a game you’re curious about. That’s it. I watch a lot of videos that way like.
There’s a couple really good, so I like to watch or play old games. feel like have kind of been forgotten. And ⁓ there’s a couple of really good YouTube channels that I’m like, I wonder if he’s done a video on this game. And if he has, I sit down there and watch it. Yeah, I’m going to find that. But that’s, you know, YouTube to find, you know, to watch how to videos. ⁓
I would also use Board Game Geek to find games that have like that two or two-ish. I mean, don’t be afraid of a game that’s 1.8, but any game that’s like 1.1, you’re probably just rolling and moving. You’re not doing a whole lot. But I would use that. then, shameless plug, mean, my podcast, the Lent and Board game, most of the games that I review on there can be played in under an hour, 30 to 60 minutes.
And the reason for that is that’s what I like to play. I like to play a lot of games at a night. I’m what they call a grazer. I play a lot, but nothing more than, you know, I don’t play deep. So I don’t play a game a lot. I play a lot of games. ⁓ I’m trying to pull that back a little bit. ⁓ But yeah, that’s what I focus on. know, King of Tokyo is one of my favorite games forever to bring people into the hobby.
because it brings that familiar Yahtzee. ⁓ A new one that’s really great is Flip 7, just a deck of cards. And it’s a push or luck. You’re trying to flip seven numbers and not get a repeat number. And sounds easy when I say it like that, but there’s a little bit more going on to it. But ⁓ that’s another one that has really made…
a play to be a game, a gateway game. That’s the other thing you can do. Google gateway games and look for those games that, know, pretty much I would say until lately anything you can buy at Target that’s not Hasbro is probably a good way to start. Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne. lot of those, again, these games are getting to be 30 years old now, man. I mean, that’s… What?
know, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride just did a brand new edition. Things like that, or find it, you know, I wouldn’t advise jumping in with Gloomhaven, that’s for sure.
Sean Jordan (23:08)
There are games that are easy and understandable, and then there are games that are made for the really hardcore audiences. And you have to kind of learn how to tell the difference, that’s for sure. I often flip it over and look how many pieces are in it, and that tells me a lot.
Adam Collins (23:18)
Don’t end it.
I look at playtime like, can this game be played in an hour? 90 minutes. Oh, OK, we’ll try it. If it’s like three hours, I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s a good game. I just don’t want to play a game for three hours.
Sean Jordan (23:38)
Yeah, I’ve always wanted to play this game called Twilight Imperium. It looks great, but I picked it up once and I almost dropped it because it was so heavy. yeah, I can’t imagine that I would have the time to learn to play it, let alone to play it.
Adam Collins (23:47)
It’s so big! The box is huge!
Oh,
yeah. Well, and it’s like a six hour, eight hour game. I know people that they play it with some of the expansions and it is their Saturday. Their friends come over like eight o’clock in the morning and they play into the wee hours of the night. And I’m like, the same game. Yeah. But like I said, once you learn a game, find the mechanic and you apply for other games and then from there, you know, you can keep jumping around and, know, that’s how you wind up surrounded.
Sean Jordan (24:00)
Yeah.
Well.
Adam Collins (24:21)
Or as my wife says, drowning in board games. But I’m not drowning yet. I got room. I can still stack things up to the ceiling.
Sean Jordan (24:27)
We’ve got a one in one out rule in my house right now because we have so many that we need to sort through.
Adam Collins (24:31)
Ha ha ha!
Hey, I start off every month as a no buy month and this year I’ve only bought four games. So I’ve done pretty good. One a month, then added to the collection. ⁓ Expansions don’t count by the way, just in case you’re wondering. I can buy all the expansions I want. I can’t buy new games. That’s kind of the rule.
Sean Jordan (24:54)
Well, I have
⁓ not been able to avoid buying board games this month because I actually bought a couple from you. Yeah, no. And so I’m looking forward to playing them. But I want to ask you at the end of every episode, we ask if there’s something you want to plug. I’m sure you want to plug Bearded Board Games. Tell us a little bit about how people can find them and how they, like me, can buy them.
Adam Collins (25:00)
That’s true. I gotta mail those out yet.
Absolutely.
Yeah
Yeah, so beauty board games calm and we have a shop right there ⁓ We are pretty much out of fences right now I’m got it waiting on my quote for the second edition which we’re putting together which will the only real difference between the the base the original edition and the ⁓ Second edition is we’re to make it two to six player right out of the box and we did a ⁓
We did a small mini expansion because of the production problems from the first game called Seasons. And we’re just going to include that in the base game as well. So I’ll probably pull that one off the site here in a little bit and put up a pre-order for the second edition. But then Locked Out’s on there, which is our space competitive style game, which is interesting because the whole point of the game is that you’re working together to unlock
the computer because the ship has locked you out of it. The catch of the game is if you guys succeed in doing it, then the player with the most points left in their hands wins. They actually win the game because they were the best space pirate and then had all the points. However, if you fail to get to the board computer in time, then the player with the lowest amount, the fewest points left in their hand is the winner.
so you can sabotage the mission. But when people realize you’re sabotaging it, then they try to shed points. But maybe in the same time, that causes victory to happen. So it’s a lot of fun because you get to kind of accuse each other of withholding stuff from me and stuff like that. But yeah, it’s…
And then we got more coming out. We got another one. We’re getting ready to launch on Kickstarter. Hopefully in June mid-june ⁓ Had some issues with Facebook ads Manager what a meta ads man, what are they’re calling themselves these days? So we’ve been working through that but we got that coming out ⁓ and then we’ve got two new games that are gonna be coming out again soon That are smaller. We’re calling them
Goatee games instead of bearded board games. We’re have goatee games. They’re gonna be these short quick small small box games you can play
Sean Jordan (27:38)
I love it. And I know one of the ones you showed me that’s coming up as a soccer game. I, know, St. Louis is becoming a city of soccer. So again, maybe there’s some opportunity for you there, but we’ll put a link to Beard and Board games, as well as to your Kickstarter page in the show notes for anyone that wants to check it out. Because I’m telling you guys, I got to see these games firsthand and I was really excited about them being a board game player. So I know that they have a lot of opportunity to, even if you’re kind of a casual board game fan, I think you’ll really like what they have to offer. So.
Adam Collins (28:08)
Yeah, that was the it’s always funny to say, you know, wow, you know, how hard or how long does it take to be fences? Well, we designed it to be played in a lunch hour. And the funny quick story behind locked out is I sponsored a board game design contest through the game crafter and it was called design a lunchtime game and the seven finalists, their playable prototypes were mailed to me and I took.
all seven of them to work and we played them in lunch hour. Putting it through the spaces can be played in the lunch hour. Is it fun? Is it something that’s replayable? And there were three games that we really, really liked. ⁓ One of them we were like, we really liked this game, but there is no way it can be played in lunch hour. No way. So that one, that one had to be, unfortunately we had to.
Sean Jordan (29:01)
more of a ditter time game.
Adam Collins (29:06)
Don’t put that one onto the side. ⁓ And then locked out was the winner. We kept coming back to it just because of the dual ending. Like no matter what happens, only one winner. And that was so cool. And we had a lot of fun with that one. And when we signed it, I took it to a couple of proto-speals. There was a couple of things that needed to kind of be like rough edges that just kind of need to be sanded off to make the game play a little bit better and a little bit of development to it.
Other than that, Locked Out was fun and that’s how we found that one.
Sean Jordan (29:40)
fantastic well Adam thanks so much for being on the show it’s been a pleasure and I love talking board games but you really help us understand the marketing side of it too which I really appreciate.
Adam Collins (29:42)
I love it.
Nah.
Yeah, no problem. you know, appreciate being on the show and you have me and yeah, anybody with a small business and you just want to kind of get out and test the waters, like find a farmer’s market or a craft fair or something like that in your area. just you’d be surprised how, yeah, you like we’re we sell board games and I’ll but I’m in a row next to other artisans, other artists.
Yeah, the cabbage guys behind me and the pistachio guy, which is one of my other favorite guys, the pistachio guy, every farmer’s market I got to buy a bag of those, two, because we eat through one while we’re there and then we take the other one home. They’re there, but we’re also there. And you never know what you’re going to find at a farmer’s market either. I’ll tell you that. ⁓ Soap. I think people sell soap at a farmer’s market and candles. like I said, book binding and stuff like that. I mean, it’s…
go to your farmer’s market, see what’s there. I mean, if anything else, plug, I’ll plug that. Plug your farmer’s market, man. Go check it out. Those are great. That’s a good way to meet people too.
Sean Jordan (30:55)
Well, great. Well, thanks so much,
Sean Jordan (30:58)
Well, I really want to thank Adam for taking time to be on the show. He and I actually had a conversation that went on a little longer after this interview because we both have so many shared interests, not just in board games, and we both definitely love them, but also just in finding ways to bring people together and, you know, have that kind of sense of community. And I’m really excited for the things that they’re doing at Bearded Board Games. I am sure we’re going to continue to hear more from them in the future. ⁓ And I want to mention again that
⁓ Beardedboardgames.com is their website. You can go there and look and see at the games they’ve got. ⁓ Fences and locked out are the two that I have. And I’m waiting on them to get sent to me because I just ordered them, but I am excited to play them. And I know they have others on the way, including one that is coming up that is called ⁓ Packlash, which definitely looks like it’s going to be a really fun game as well. They’re going to be at the Geekway to the West.
⁓ Board Game Conference this weekend. Actually, it’s already open right now. You can go on geekway.com and register. So if you want to go meet Adam and his son and check out what they’re doing, they’re going to be there. You can also just look around local farmers markets because they go to those too. So check around and see if you can find them at any of those. But beyond that, I also encourage you to check out their ⁓ Eat, Lunch, and Board Game podcast, which I think at some point we’re going to try to get me on, which I’m really excited to do.
And they also have a YouTube channel called Reviews from the Attic. And all of that is in the show notes. Be sure to check it out. Be sure to support our local board game makers and community, because ⁓ that’s part of what we’re all about here on The Marketing Gateway, is bringing together not only our expertise, but also our enthusiasm for what each other is doing. So thanks so much, Adam. Enjoyed having you on the show. I’m Sean in St. Louis. This has been The Marketing Gateway, and we’ll see you next time.
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