Becoming a Professional Gamer at 13 | A Conversation w/ Mongraal

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. vayner nation how are you very exciting podcast today especially uh for a lot of you that are into fortnite and gaming and streaming or have kids in it we have one of the icons but more importantly the reason i'm excited to have him here is i think he's living a very thoughtful journey as a young man and i think it could help a lot of you and so the the iconic mongrel is with us today brother how are you i'm good man i've never been better that's actually what i want to get into and why I wanted to do this podcast. But before we get into that sentence and how I think it affects not just people that are going to make content on social or try to be internet famous or a gamer or public figure, but even all the people that are just trying to achieve or stay afloat, we'll get into that part.

0:48But before we do, I want to give you two to three minutes just to let everybody know who you are and what you do and just to set the tone. And then I'll go into my questions so i've been playing fortnite for total of like seven years but i took a two year break we'll probably get into that a bit so yeah seven years since i was 13 i quit school i started playing fortnite full-time then signed to a team team secret that was my first contract and then obviously the side stuff i've done a bit of crypto you know that as well the dookie dash stuff that was pretty big that was during my break yep that was that was crazy i had so much fun so So at 13, you quit school and become a professional gamer.

1:24Yeah, it was a big risk, like a huge risk. How did that go down at home? Like explain, because I think a lot of parents are probably now perked up and listening. What's going on at home? Mom, dad, what's the situation? Yeah, I mean, obviously both of them weren't really keen on it. They didn't like the idea. I don't think any parent is going to really like that idea. You go to them and say what? Like I actually want to go into details of this. you go to them and say, mom, dad, maybe you've been noticing I've been playing games. Somebody wants to pay me full time to be a full time gamer or or had they already known?

1:54I really want to paint this because I think it's actually going to help a lot of parents. There was two things that tipped the scale. The first one was when I signed that contract and I actually started getting a salary. And then the second one was when World Cup got announced, which was I'm pretty sure the biggest tournament in esports. And with those two things, that's why I kind of told them, like, this is just the perfect time. and like i have to i have to do this like i i don't think i can qualify if i'm still in school six seven hours a day i have to go full time for this you know this duration of period for the world cup when you signed the contract they needed to sign it right you're a monitor how much was that for if i may ask uh i don't know if i can say the exact amount but it was over it was over 10 000 a year so for 13 that's you know not bad at all but i assume for parents they would have said you're only 13.

2:43Yes, this is a nice number, but it's not like a million dollars. How are you able to get them to get you? Like, I really am fascinated by this. And again, 13 is extreme. There's a lot of parents right now with 17 and 18 year olds who don't want to go to college and they're struggling with it. They've consumed my content. They know I believe that university is definitely not for everyone. And in fact, in America, we take on so much debt. It's crazy. Like you had such a line in the sand. You said, mom, dad, I'm literally going to skip school. Like you have to, Were you able to just get them there or did they have a feeling that you were that talented?

3:14I had to push them a lot. I remember like it took months and months for it to get to the point where I could quit school. But maybe they just saw the passion. Maybe when they looked in my eyes or they saw how much I was dedicated, they realized like this is just something I have to do. That could have been their full process. I don't know exactly, but I was just so fueled. You joined this team and then World Cup. Tell everybody who doesn't know what World Cup was, where it was, what the prize money is. obviously we know it well because and all that but for many of the people that don't know give them that yeah world cup was a land hosted in new york sea it was for 100 players solos and duos the total prize pool was 30 million i think first place in solos was three million and then first place in duos was three million split um i got like 13 for 12 in solos sixth in duos so it was a nice amount it was like 425k i think and that's when i was 13 so that's like a ridiculous amount you know to earn on your own you get your parents to buy in you're making this small but meaningful for a 13 year old but small to quit school i would argue even me as an entrepreneurial dad i'm not sure i'm letting my 13 year old quit for that small of a number but then it cashes out because how many months later was world cup probably not a lot i'd say within six months so within six months you're in new york city in queens right i think it was there right where the tennis tournament is uh where the u.s open is played and at the end of that weekend you're coming home with 425 000 us dollars yeah it's ridiculous it's crazy and so how do your parents feel then i don't know they were they were ecstatic man they were so happy i think that was that probably lifted a weight off their chest you know because like you said i agree like 10 000 a year or a bit more than that it's not a lot you know for a 13 year old like well it's a lot for 13 year old but it's not like enough to leave school you know like you still got a long time ahead of you so that probably you know eased the the weight on them um and then from there everything just took off was that 2018 19 when was that i think it was 2018 right okay so you're a young chap now you now your parents probably are worried about a different thing now you're 13 and you have a lot of money which is a whole obviously a whole different dynamic what happens next you come home next honestly it was just back home and back playing every day there was no at this point you're playing are you playing on twitch yeah streaming on twitch and are you building a following and it exploded post the tournament because you did so well yeah just that's what i've always said in a podcast before like if you want to blow up on any game the number one way is just to be the best player that's just how it is like if you're the best player people will watch you regardless of anything so that was kind of my mentality friends that are listening A lot of you know about influencer marketing and everything going on.

5:55What Mongrel's talking about is in the e-sports profession, you kind of have like the best players. And then you have people who occasionally and rightfully explode because they themselves are entertainers or star power. Right. They may not be a great player. In fact, the whole thing has evolved. For example, I, Gary B., given who I am and ended up, if I was 16 today, I don't know if I'm the best player, but I could play a retro game and talk entrepreneur. I could play Paperboy for Nintendo and talk about entrepreneurship while I'm playing Paperboy. And I would have blown up for being star power influencer, but not for best gamer.

6:36What Mongrel's talking about here is a lot of kids ask how to get big and he's saying, you don't even have to be like for say charismatic. If you're the best, it's going to work. I would equate it to, to make this make sense for people that aren't following streaming gaming. Think back to Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. Pete Sampras literally was just the best. He was about as interesting as a piece of paper, but he was the best and thus that mattered. There are gamers who are just the best. they may not be the most charismatic and then you have a group of people that are both and they become superstars yes my girl is that a good breakdown perfect literally exactly i would say all right so now you're back home you're 13 are your parents letting you have access to this money or are they saying we're going to hold it because we don't want you to blow it on bubble gum and porno tapes or whatever the fuck that 15 year old will do with it it was a bit of both i mean they always let me know like throughout my whole career like my money's my money but they also advised me um when i was really really young but luckily i didn't have any you know i didn't want to spend any money i just wanted to keep and keep making more there was nothing i wanted to spend money on so right you didn't want a lamborghini you just wanted to be were you focused on just being the best at that point literally i did to be honest when i was like 13 to 15 maybe even 16 the money wasn't even the driving factor it was just being the best player like that's just what i wanted to do so i barely the only thing i was spending my money on was takeaway and you know new pc and all that type of stuff i wasn't spending on anything really no holidays no nothing i was just sitting in my room playing all day and that's why i enjoyed during that time i get it then what happens then around 17 18 actually a bit before that i win fncs and then i'm so burned out after playing for four or five years straight just every single day so i take a two year or a year and a half break i just start traveling the world solo again back to what I know will be valuable to this audience.

8:31Take me to the weeks, days, and months before taking a break. Because it was a big, big news, even for me who keeps an eye on everything in culture. I was aware of it before we got to know you at VaynerSports and all that. Where, you know, again, every parent or anybody who's over the age of 18 knows that 13 to 17, those are crucial years in the development of a human being. I mean, a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old are like two different human beings. You're maturing a lot, all these things. Probably some of the things your parents worried about of like not having the social, you know, elements of what school brings.

9:04Forget about the education. What leads you to that break? What, you know, how is it like, when is the first moment? Because I know at 13, 14, probably even into 15, it sounds like you're fucking pumped. You're just fucking playing every minute. I'm going to be the number one player in the world. Fuck Booga. He won the tournament. All that shit. When does the crack in that start to be like, hey, I'm not as happy? yeah i think like you said it's when i just got a bit older like 16 17 i've been doing it for four or five years straight like every single day no breaks i was not going out with friends or anything and it just got to a point where like i realized i needed to get out like did you feel lonely not really lonely not not so much i mean i died were you bored yeah just like bored and burnt out like i was just doing it too much for too long and i wanted to experience life like i was that age where like i want to go out i want to see stuff i don't want to just be in my room all day i haven't experienced anything for these four five years like i've done my job i've i've done a really good job at work to get where i am now you're streaming all the day all day how do you announce this to your audience and how long before you did it quit disappeared for a while how long like were you like okay i'm gonna do it this day and then you're like too scared to do it and it was another month like how long was that game i think i just slowly stopped streaming as much towards the end like the last like three four months and then i kind of just went radio silent i just i just dipped and i just started traveling honestly and were your fans looking for you people yeah people were um wondering like where i want when i think i had done a few updates but nothing major um and where'd you go i went japan singapore greece spain um i went to this thing called capital club it's like a entrepreneurship thing i wanted to get into that i just wanted to explore like everything i've ever thought of you know just like get out my system and just travel and just see the world a bit more it's an important question again for everyone do you think you were in a place of depression or was it just was it healthy were you like oh i'm starting to have like negative like like just i'm really sad or was it a little bit more of you were getting into indifference you lost your passion and you you got ahead of it before it got into something worse and you fucking did something about it.

11:19There was a point where I was really sad because I got to like the position where I was financially like so stable for so like I could be financially stable pretty much forever at that point. And I was so young. I saw I'm so young, but I just didn't know where to go from there. I was just stuck. Like I had everything I ever wanted to get. Right. You were financially successful and professionally successful and you haven't hit your 18th birthday. It allows someone to question everything. Yes. Yeah. Uh-huh. Right clear. What did you find in that travels? Honestly, I need something to work on. Otherwise I actually get super depressed.

11:53Like I realized that. And that's why I've came back harder than ever. Because if I realized if I'm not working, I actually get quite, quite sad and quite depressed. I hate doing nothing all day. Like there's nothing worse than that. So now I'm just so fired up. I just want to do stuff all the time. I never want to have any downtime. I get it. I live that life. So you go away for a year and a half, right? Or so. Yeah. And this could be interesting for a lot of people listening who've stopped doing something and then came back to it. How did that go down? Did you just show back up or did you make an announcement or how did the comeback come?

12:30Again, for everybody who's listening, for a lot of your kids or for you yourself, this is a very famous eSports player at the time. I'm telling you, it's the comp of like a very big athlete just disappearing and then coming back. I mean, I'm not gonna make this comp for a million reasons cause it's not the exact right comp. Plus I hate the guy. But when Michael Jordan came back after his hiatus, that was like a big ass deal. You know, again, Michael is a one of one and I hate him. So I hate that I had to use that analogy, but it's a big one. The other person I hate did the same thing, Tom Brady.

13:01But like when you have these iconic good players come back it's big news in the e-gaming, e-sports, Fortnite, streaming world. This was, you know, how was the news received? Did you make a big to do about it? or did you just start streaming again? It was quite lucky, actually, because I came back and Fortnite announced their OG season or their OG chapter in December or November. Okay, so you know what? I'm sorry to interrupt you. I apologize, but I really want to keep the audience to understand this. You had started having feelings that you wanted to come back and serendipitously, Fortnite had decided to do an OG series to bring back some of its best players, just kind of like go that route so it worked perfectly for you?

13:40It was perfect. that's exactly what i needed and then from there and i haven't stopped and how'd you do in that og season it was crazy like when i came back bro people people loved it man like i was gone for one and a half two years and i was streaming every day for like 10 hours like everyone enjoyed it everyone loved it it was like back in the old days it felt like that it was so fun um for you as well yeah and from there just it just it just took off again for the next year and now i'm just in a position where I've never been happy with everything. Actually, let's bounce around a little bit here.

14:11I'll go back to the bigger theme at the end, but I'm going to bounce around because a lot of people are contemplating becoming gamers and streamers competitively, casually for brand deals, marketing, business. Here's a very nerdy question that I think some parents or players are thinking about. Fortnite has been your main game. Yeah. Have you tried to get great at other games? and do you think it's possible? Like this is something I always am curious about. If you're great at Fortnite at the level that you are, if Call of Duty does a new game that takes over everyone's interest, if something, Rocket League, or a new game altogether comes out that is the most lucrative, do you think you have an overall gaming talent that can make you very competitive in any game?

15:01Or are these skills specific? or does it depend on the player? Some can be multiply good at some things and other people are one dimensional, one game. That's the question. I think it depends on the person, but for myself, I know I can go pro in any game if I try, like I did with Fortnite. It was the same thing with Dookie Dash. It wasn't a crazy, intense game, but it was reaction times and it was the same thing. And when that started, I put my whole heart into it 16 hours a day for three months again. Yeah, let's talk about this. Bored Ape, so now we're talking NFT land. Bored Ape Yuga put out a challenge that was very very exciting and had some things set up i don't want to get any details wrong so set up for everybody the timing of this and what the whole thing was all about yeah dookie dash was um like you said a board game it was where you had to go for a tunnel dodge obstacles it got faster as time went on and you had to collect like little little points um you had to buy was that i mean the winning prize was what again i don't recall the winning prize was a key an nft a key yeah i think i'm pretty sure it was all speculation that no one knew what the key was going to do obviously board ape a one-of-one nft is crazy so that put you know a lot of hyper on the game um yeah i just played that for like three months straight and is it true and i could have this wrong this is actually i actually don't know the answer to this question but i thought i remembered because i didn't know it was you i i heard at the time in the headlines or on twitter or somewhere was someone who was a collector had hired a professional gamer to win is that how it went down for you so many people did that i uh i played for some people's passes as well like a lot of people would play for other people's passes get them scores um yeah but for my my past mine was all myself oh i see and you were the winner so that key was you yeah and then do you sell that nft or do you still have it or how did that go down yeah i sold that to um added weisman

16:59yeah sold it to him for 1.6 million yes i think was the final price a thousand eath whatever at that time um and that was another thing was just just crazy you know three months of grinding for that yeah but to the original question like i know i can go pro in any game if i put the time to be honest. If somebody is listening right now, from all these journeys, how old are you right now? 20. Right. I'm sure that just some people walking their dog, driving the car, gasping at how much life you've lived in this very short 20 years. But if we were to recap it, if this is like the final chapter of a book and you're trying to bring value to the world, in all these twists and turns, and not just from a perspective of what you've been through because you've started to lay that out here in this podcast but for people that are you know from other conversations you've had with the parents of kids or the kids you know what are the lessons learned you think from this journey so far i think my biggest lesson over the past 20 years is anything you put your mind to you can do and it's like it sounds crazy but i'm literally mean anything like everything is in the in the mind it doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing right now if you can make yourself believe that you're in a certain place and you work towards that 100 you'll always get there that's genuinely the lesson i've learned so far the biggest one yeah no it's funny i spoke in dubai yesterday and a lot of people from all over the different world and those are always challenging stages for me to go on because i'm improv and i rely on the audience and so as i'm like literally being introduced there's like 10 000 people in the coca-cola arena in dubai i'm like what the fuck am I going to talk about?

18:43This is how crazy I do public speaking. I walked in and my opening line was like, look, this is, this whole game is perspective. I couldn't agree with you more in my 49 years. So now we've got 69 years that we're trying to channel to everybody who's listening. It's fucking perspective. Like if you decide life is good, it's good. And if you decide life is bad, it's bad. To the point of your up and down in those late teenage years, there was a time where you decided like, oh shit, this stuff sucks. Like, what do I do now? Like the fuck, right? Like, And I think, I do think that the number one underrated thing in the world is people.

19:18I think we underestimate our capacities, our capabilities. I believe that. Yeah, me too. I think, like I said, everything is what you believe you can do and how hard you go at it. That's how I think it is. I agree, brother. What's going on in the general gaming space right now? Little update for the people thinking about getting into it, starting startups in it. Like what's the state of the union of gaming in your perspective? Like if you take a step back, what's hot, what's not, what are some of the trends, you know, Twitch, Fortnite, Call of Duty, streamers, general streamers, gaming, gambling, like give us a, give us a state of the union.

19:57Yeah. I think next year, in my opinion, I think Fortnite is going to have kind of like a second prime, even two days ago or three days ago, when there was that event for the new chapter that we reached the record amount of players playing the game which was 14 million in the whole you know career of fortnight i think next year it's gonna take off again like no other and i also think gta 6 is going to be one of the biggest things wait a minute t6 is actually coming out how long have we been waiting for gt6 i don't know bro it feels like forever but i think it's going to be the next couple years now hopefully so gt6 you know obviously literally my favorite joke is people commenting you know on social media like whatever happened like i can't believe this happened and we before we got gt6 it will that you know what would you do you know i can google it while we're talking do you know when gt5 came out no idea probably over 10 years ago close to that number 2013 so we're 11 seven years removed from gt5 which was a playstation 3 xbox 360 i mean uh is is this going to be more of like a fortnite structure where people can be playing from all over the world like is that how they're building it i have no idea but i think they're gonna integrate a lot more stuff that other games haven't done yet i mean they've taken so long to build this game i think it's going to be pretty much perfect and i think it's one of those games where as soon as it's released every big stream is going to be playing it every every person's going to be watching it you think there's a chance it could be a flop i don't think so maybe like a tiny tiny chance but i think it's just going to be a huge success but is it a multiplayer like the universe game kind of like fortnite is or no or you don't know it's kind of it's kind of like a multiplayer game i'm guessing i mean they also have the single player but the gta online stuff is going to be huge and i don't know if it's true but i've heard people talking they're going to integrate crypto and all of that stuff into it so with items and stuff so i don't know how that's gonna be um but yeah i think it's gonna it's gonna most likely take off i assume what about streaming platforms is it still twitch heavy or have some of the other people been able to penetrate what are you seeing uh a lot of people nowadays be streaming multi-stream so youtube twitch tiktok all at the same time i think that is the wave um that's that's what i'm doing as well and what What about emerging gamers?

22:24Is it fun for you as someone who broke out at 13 to be 20 and see nine-year-olds popping up? The fact that you're the OG and 80 % of the audience listening right now on podcasts, you're half their age and are like, what the fuck? How do you feel when you see the eight, nine, 10, 11, 12-year-olds pop up? It's actually really fun because I see myself in a lot of the upcoming pros. So I actually have a chance to give some advice I wish I had back then, which is actually really nice. I like seeing the upcoming Fortnite pros, the young ones doing good and stuff like that. It's nice. Do you answer DMs and messages here and there occasionally when you can just because, you know, they'll freak out and think it's cool and maybe they'll listen to you?

23:03Yeah, all the time. What about what about your general curiosities? We heard earlier about the entrepreneurial stuff. Like when you think about your 20s and then 30s and then 40, you know, I back to advice and living like I'm 49 as we're talking. and it's scary to me that I feel in my stomach and my soul the way I felt when I was 20. Right? Like I'm 49 and when you're 20, 49 feels old. I mean, I remember being 20 and my cousin was 28 and I thought he was like older, you know, like a grown up. So it's not lost on me that at 29 years older than you, it feels much older. My parents were 20 years older than me.

23:41I'm 30 years older than you. but I can tell you when you get to 49, now that you've realized you're just about the doing, you're gonna be very happy because at 49, I sit here and I'm like, okay, I'm at halftime and I have 49 more years to do shit and it's intoxicating. And I think about all the things I want to do and the impact I wanna make. How are you thinking about these next eight decades that you have in front of you? Do you think you'll get into some of those entrepreneurial things or do you feel like you're in the craft you're in for a while? I think for now, for the next few years at least, I'm going to stay what I'm doing.

24:17In the future, I've got some cool ideas I want to do and try. If I fail, I fail, but I just want to try them and see how they work out. But for the next 10 and even more than that, I just want to get as much life experience as I can. I just want to be full of wisdom when I'm 60, 50, 40. And I just want to keep learning, keep experiencing new stuff and just learn as much as possible. you feel like that traveling was very fruitful for you like you got out of it what you needed yeah and where do you live now still the uk yeah london and you like that yeah i love it here it's nice it's amazing uh final thoughts before i let you bounce here anything uh we didn't touch on that you had hoped we'd touch on or anything that's popped up to mind while we've been jamming um the perspective thing i think that was such a key point like it's so hard to wrap your head around it but it really i really do believe everything is in the mind like and you can actually achieve anything you want to do as long as you believe it and you you do your best at it i think it's all possible and everyone listening like whatever your goals are whatever you want to achieve if you truly believe you're going to get there and you give it your all every single day you'll get there that's just how i feel like that's just how life works and if you don't actually tangibly get there you will feel so satisfied because you fully went there yeah you know exactly yeah which is a whole nother thing living in your older years mitigating regret you know yeah how can people find you brother uh mongrau on literally everything that's literally it m-o-n-g-r-a-a-l on social on streaming they can find you with that exactly yeah brother i wish you 200 more years of success you're 20 you might get lucky and catch i i literally just got off to play from Dubai and ran into a friend and we were talking quite a bit on the flight and then as we were walking off this literally happened eight hours ago six hours ago I said we were talking oh we were talking about he left his glasses on the flight he's he's 54 I'm 49 and I was saying to him that I my eyesight has gone this is gonna be this is gonna be important for you to hear because you need your eyes for what you do and he was like yeah now we can't get the surgery and I was saying to him I can live with that but if they invent some shit that allows you to live forever like but they say that you can only take it if you're under 35 like if i miss that in my lifetime i'm gonna be really pissed i would struggle anyway i wish you 200