Leadership Lessons E5 - Rob O'Connor

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Welcome to the Talk CNY miniseries Leadership Lessons where we sit down and talk with business and community leaders to discuss the personal and professional lessons that have led them to where they are today and serve as a guiding light forward. Today's guest is a Syracuse native Rob O'Connor, who has left an incredible mark on Central New York. Rob's work is proof that gaming isn't just play. It's a way to engage, educate, and empower the next generation. Welcome, Rob. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

We are very excited. So Rob, you have built many successful ventures from car shows to eSports to education. As you are pursuing the next successful venture, how do you determine which one you want to pursue?

Well, that's a question that entrepreneurs struggle with all the time. You always have to look to the horizon and see what, depending on the business you're in, whether you're in tech or entertainment or lifestyle, you always have to look to the horizon to see what the next venture is, and you have to be comfortable kind of being uncomfortable and being the first one to kind of step through the door and pursue those trends.

That's good, comfortable being uncomfortable. So as you are then building your innovative teams, how do you balance both creativity and structure?

Yeah, that's another big challenge as well. I'm more comfortable on the creative side.

I'm not the most organized person in the world. That's just kind of the way my brain works, and I've tried to force myself to be more structured and more organized, but over the years, realized that's really not my strong suit. So I'm more of the creative side, coming up with ideas, and new ways to develop the business. So I tend to surround myself. What I found works best for me is I surround myself with people that are more organized than I am, and they can kind of help me through that sort of thing. So I've struggled with it. I've told myself that I need to be more organized as a business owner, but over the years, I've just realized that you know what? That's not my strong suit, so I'm going to let other people that are really good at it help me out.

I love that you've leaned into knowing what your strengths are. That's great.

That's great. So as you look back over your life and you think about people who have inspired you, who is someone who has inspired your approach to both business and community impact?

A hundred percent my dad.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I was very fortunate. He owned several businesses throughout his life, and I was very fortunate to be able to work with him on most of those business ventures. I worked with him most of my adult life, and he really ingrained in me: be yourself, treat people well. Don't worry about the money initially. When you're creating a business and creating your product, whatever that is, worry about taking care of the people first. Worry about putting out a good product first. Make sure you're doing the best job possible, and the money will follow.

Beautiful, great advice from your Dad.

Yeah, he was very old school, very old school businessman. Handshake is a contract to him, and he never, never backed out on anything He promised. I was around for everything. All the bumps in the road and all the good things that happened with the business, and he just maintained. He never faltered from that, and he never let anything really get to him. He just kept to his mission and made sure that people were taken care of. He always told me, he goes, you are your brand and the way you treat people is your trademark. So make sure you treat people well. Everything else will fall in place.

He sounds like a great man.

He was very good. Yep.

Well, one of the things that you've often talked about is that when you are communicating with students that gaming is really a great way to work with them. Can you provide an example for us?

Yeah, sure. I mean, a lot of students now, especially in this day and age, especially since post-COVID and with all the tech kids have, a lot of kids are disengaged with school. The engagement level is dropping, attendance levels are going down, grades are going down, disciplinary actions are going up. So gaming is a great way because these kids are 80% of the kids walking the hallway in schools are gamers in some way, shape or form, whether they're on their phone or at home on a computer or a console. They're gaming anyways.

They're digital citizens. They live in that world. So now if we can communicate with them where they live, it opens the lines of communication up. Now they're more willing to listen to you. You're not just over their shoulder saying, 'You shouldn't do this, you should do that. You shouldn't do this, you should do that.' Now you're communicating with them on their level saying, 'Hey, we acknowledge your passion. That's great. Here's what you can do with that passion. You can become a broadcaster. You can become a camera operator. You can become an audio engineer. You become a lighting engineer. You can be an animator. You can be a musician and still be in the video game business. You can be a lawyer and still be in the video game business.' So there are a lot of really cool things. And what's great about video games in the video game industry, by the way, it's a 200 billion a year industry. Video games are three times. The video game industry is three times as big as the movie and music industries combined. So there's a lot of great opportunities in that, but there's also great opportunities in businesses that are directly aligned with the gaming business. So that's the real power of it all.

I talk to a lot of parents. I talk to a lot of teachers. They're concerned because gaming has gotten a bad reputation. You're going to rot your brain. You're going to sit in your mom's basement the rest of your life and not do anything. We're breaking those stereotypes. We're educating people in. It is more than just mashing buttons. There's a lot of really good things that happen, and the fact that we're engaging young kids that aren't necessarily engaged at school, now we're giving them things that they wouldn't normally be exposed to, like teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, things like that, which are all built into traditional sports. But these kids tend not to be traditional sports kids. So we give them the opportunity to find their tribe, find their group, and the whole social, emotional thing too is a huge thing. So we give them a place to belong, a place where they have friends and build community, help build community at school, make them part of the school ecosystem. So there's a lot of really good things. It's just people. For decades, we've been told gaming is, it'll rot your brain, but in reality, it's just the opposite.

You're proving that game-based learning can really open the door to so many things. You already honestly mentioned so much. Is there anything you'd like to add in addition to what you've added about game-based learning and how it may help students in the future, but really you've already added a lot?

Yeah, I mean, it just, what I encourage people, especially parents and educators and administrators at school, just be open-minded. Don't be closed-minded. The tech industry is changing rapidly. It seems like almost daily, and it's hard to keep up with it.

So instead of pushing back on it and saying, you know what, I don't understand it, so I don't want anything to do with it, embrace it a little bit because the kids already are, and if you want to be relevant to them, whether you're a parent, teacher, administrator, if you want to be relevant to those kids, you have to embrace it a little bit too. You don't have to be experts at it. You don't have to be an expert at tech, but you have to acknowledge that it's here. It's not going away. I mean, look at AI We didn't even talk about AI five years ago. Now it's everywhere. So in the next big thing, we don't even know what it's going to be yet. They will be the first ones to adopt it. So we have to be prepared to support them.

Well said.

Thanks.

So when you look at the students that you work with, what excites you about the next generation?

Oh man, it's so cool. What I really like are the light bulb moments that I have with the kids. Like I said, a lot of them are disengaged. They're kind of maybe a little introverted, and they're not exposed to really cool opportunities that they have. So I really like those light bulb moments. And once they have that light bulb moment, there's no stopping them. There is no stopping them. They are motivated, they're creative, and they're really good people. If you really let them come out. Because back when I was in high school a hundred years ago, it was the jocks, the nerds, whatever. They had these groups, and it's still kind of relevant today, but the kids that are gamers tend to be in that nerd category. But once you're in a room full of nerds, you're not a nerd anymore. You're just like the kids sitting next to you. So it builds their confidence up, and once you see that their confidence builds and they have motivation, they have a light at the end of the tunnel, it's like, oh my gosh, I can go to Syracuse University for eSports communication management. I could travel across the country and get a scholarship for another school. I can go to a job every day that I'm passionate about, whether it's in the gaming industry or a related industry. So it's really cool to see.

I love that. So when you think about then the future of Elite Gaming, BrainPlay and the Underground, what excites you about the future for your ventures?

Boy, we're just getting started.

Yeah, we're just getting started. And from an entrepreneur standpoint, that's exciting for me. If this has been done a hundred times before, it's really not that exciting. What we're doing is something brand new. There's literally less than a handful of companies like us across the country. So it's a brand new concept. But that comes with challenges as well, because a lot of people don't understand exactly what we are. We say gaming like, oh, like Chuck E. Cheese, or Dave and Busters, or older folks say like an internet land cafe, a coffee shop with computers set up and stuff. We're not really any of those. We're a place to build community, a place to expose kids to careers and opportunities and just bring people together. And around Syracuse, there's great people doing their own things in their own silos. Our goal is to bring everybody together in that space. And another big goal of ours too, which really excites me, is we had some great conversation from the folks from CenterState, CEO over at the new INSPYRE Hub, and we would love to bring game developers over there. It's a really good fit to bring companies that develop games like Blizzard and Epic and EA, and there's a very vibrant indie game developer community.

So we would love to bring some of those folks here to Syracuse because we have kids that will jump right into that. So we are building a workforce here in Syracuse over Elite and the New STEAM School, things like that. So we're building a workforce here in Syracuse. So how cool would it be for the kids to be able to get great jobs here in Syracuse, and those companies could start right over at the INSPYRE Hub.

I love your vision. That's so great. Thanks. You're doing great work. Well, when you think about your work and your impact, what legacy do you hope to leave?

Boy, that's a tough question. I don't know. I haven't really thought about it too much. If I could leave an impact, a fraction of what my dad did with the charitable contributions he did across Central New York and bringing so many people together to build the car culture and the car community here in Syracuse, if I could do a fraction of that with the gaming community and help kids out, we've already had some great success stories, and I want to build on that, that momentum. So if we can help some kids out find their way through this crazy world, and they can have a fulfilling life, kind of break the cycle that we see every day, I think that'd be pretty cool.

Well, Rob, I think you're humble. I think you're already achieving it, and I know you'll continue to do it in the future.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

Alright, well now we'll go to our fun face. It's called the Rapid Fire section. So I'm going to hand you these cards. The goal is for you to flip through each card. You can answer the question and get about 30 seconds, and then we'll go on to the next one.

So answer each one?

Yes, please.

Okay. I'll do my best.

And if there's one you don't want to answer, it's okay.

Do you want me to read 'em out loud?

Yes, please.

Okay. What role does mindset play in leading through good times and adversity? Boy, you just have to stay positive. Again, like I said before, as an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and there's a lot of uncomfortable moments when you're an entrepreneur. A lot of challenges, and especially when developing a business like this, that hasn't been done before, but I kind of pull from my dad. My dad kept a pretty even emotional state. Try not to get too excited when good things happen. Try to get too bummed when bad things happen. Just kind of maintain and stay focused.

I like that.

So yeah. Let's see here. What aspects of your work bring you the most joy and fulfillment? Helping the kids, helping the kids out, seeing those light bulb moments, and even seeing parents. The light bulb moments for the parents. Literally had parents come in with tears because of the transformation they've seen in their son or daughter being involved with a program like ours. They've come out of their shell. They didn't have friends before. Now they have friends they belong to. They're exchanging text messages with kids and building their friend group. So that's really probably the most fulfilling. I think.

That is beautiful.

Thanks. How do you continue to grow and refine your skills? I told my boys and they bugged me about telling them this. I've told it a thousand times. Head on a swivel, pay attention to what's going on around you because you never know what is going to make sense for you in the future. Pay attention to what other people are doing. Pay attention with the industries around you adjacent to you. Keep an eye on them. You never know how you can pull from those, and help what you're doing currently or in the future.

I love that.

What strengths do you rely on most as a leader? Probably patience.

Yeah.

Probably patience. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to say that some powerful thing, but I think it's patience, letting things kind, not overreacting, letting things kind of come to you. Sometimes you have to act fast, sometimes you have to do something quickly. But I like to err on the side of caution and be a little patient before making any kind of big decision and grabbing information from different sources and kind of make a best guess or educated decision, something like that.

That's great.

So how do you handle the pressure of leading multiple ventures at once? It's difficult. It's not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it. It's a challenge every day. But the little bit, it's just like you talk to people that play golf. You're frustrated out of 17, out of the 18 holes, but that last hole, you hit a birdie, you're like, okay, I'm back. So it's the same thing when owning a business. Sometimes you just feel like you're getting beat down every day, but when you get those little wins, that kid, just recently in June, I had one of our students come up and drop his diploma on my desk, and when he came to us, there was no way he was going to graduate. He wasn't going to school. His grades were non-existent. He was getting disciplinary actions. He came into my office in June and popped his diploma on my desk, and now he was enrolled at college.

That's huge.

Yeah, that's massive.

That's great.

It helps. Stuff like that really helps. It gives me a boost. It's great that I don't think they realize how much it affects me. I try to, again, keep an even keel and I don't think they realize how much it affects me in a good way.

That is beautiful. Beautiful. Well, well said. It was a pleasure listening to all of your answers and responses. So we're getting ready to close. So as we do close, for the person who's listening and let's say they're thinking, you know what, I'd like to go out and be an entrepreneur. I want to be someone who does impactful work. What would you say to them?

Yeah, it's probably the hardest and the most rewarding thing you'll ever do. Don't be afraid to fail. I've had other businesses that have not done that well, and my dad had businesses that had ebbs and flows, and don't be afraid to fail. Stay focused. Stay focused, and go back to what my dad taught me. Make sure you're taking care of the people around you and your customers, and the money will follow. Don't be focused. Don't make every decision based on dollars and cents, pennies and nickels. Make your decision on what's best for you and your customers and your employees, the people around you, and then everything just seems to kind of find its way.

Great advice. Thanks. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Rob.

Thank you. It's been fun.

Oh, it definitely has been. Well, if you would like to get additional information from Rob or listen to more of his responses, we will have them across CenterState CEO's social media channels. CenterState CEO's podcast Talk CNY, the miniseries Leadership Lessons, is presented by NBT Bank, and it can be found across all podcast platforms. Thank you for watching. Have a great day, everyone.

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