How many people are working for Dexterity?

Steve is always refering to it as 'we' and always seems to refer to more then one person

The size has varied over the years between two and four people, sometimes part-time and sometimes full-time, depending on what kinds of projects have been happening and whether I hire contractors or employees. At present things are now so well automated that there are actually no full-time workers at all -- I'm not even full-time anymore. Although Dexterity makes me a nice income, it takes very little work to maintain now, really just a few hours a week.

So consequently, I've been doing a lot of thinking about where I want to go next. Do I want to continue to grow the business, or do I want to start into something new? Dexterity has a great niche position among logic puzzle games, but to expand beyond that niche (as I've tried many times) is very difficult, and to grow further within that nice is fairly limiting. As many of you know, I'm a very growth-oriented person, so I'm not satisfied to just run a business indefinitely -- I want to keep building, and I prefer big hairy audacious goals to little ones. But the question is whether I want to keep building Dexterity or whether I want to try building something new.

Right now I'm leaning strongly towards the latter. I've been pondering ideas for my next career after Dexterity, especially something in the personal growth arena, like writing a book and/or working towards becoming a professional speaker. The nice thing is that the cashflow from Dexterity gives me the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want and not have to worry about it being profitable initially. Lately I've been expanding my horizons in these areas to see what I enjoy most and what I'm good at. I'm already working on a new web site, writing paid articles, and doing public speaking locally at least twice a month. But things are gradually beginning to snowball into something with a lot of potential for a whole new line of work.

I'm not abandoning Dexterity by any means, but I feel that I've largely accomplished my goal for what I originally set out to do with it. So in a way, I feel it's already pretty much "done" in terms of what I wanted to build.

Steve,

I want to congratulate you very much with your realised ambition!
And also I want to thank you for your support to the indie community, sharing usefull information.
What kind of professional speaker "job" are you doing and what kind of payed articles are you writing? How did you did that by the way? I am also interesting in what kind of book you want to write (niche).

Best Regards,

Johnson

What can I say, Steve - you're an inspiration to us all.

A related question - how much is Dexterity worth? If you decided to sell it today, how much would you ask for?

I know this may be an inappropriate question but I'm curious about how much can a business that starts with a relatively simple game end up being worth. I know RealArcade bought GameHouse for $35M but I don't have any other data points.

Johnson : "How to be Steve", by Steve. Wouldn't you buy it? :)

I got also another question Steve, how about the development of your RTS game in progress?

Are you not tempted to turn Dexterity into a games development studio, Steve - with a small team to create games for the PC, like say Popcap? I thought that would have been the natural way forward for Dexterity, ie to grow bigger and increase profit to Popcap levels.

I've been writing paid articles for over a year, mostly for download.com's developer newsletter. But I'm not doing any paid speaking yet -- at best I've gotten a free GDC gigapass (around $1200?) for moderating the indie roundtable at the GDC several times. I'll probably have to speak at least 50-100 more times for free before I reach the point where I'm good enough to charge a fee, and even then it's going to take a while to actually make significant money at it, since it's an extremely competitive industry. Plus I have so many interests that I don't yet know what I'd want to speak about long-term. Personal growth is too general a topic, and generalists don't usually get paid well. In order to succeed I've eventually have to pick a specific area of focus and aim to become the leading expert in it.

Right now I'm just trying to improve my speaking skills, so mostly this involves speaking at local Toastmasters meetings, since then I get lots of helpful feedback on every speech... everything from tonality to tempo to gestures to specific words to how many times I said "um" or "ah." I gave a speech last week about getting organized which went very well, and I'm scheduled to do another speech in a few days, which will be my first humorous one. I'm really enjoying it so far, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to continue with even if I never got paid for it.

So far I've read several books on speaking. I'm currently reading one now called Speak and Grow Rich, which is about the business side of professional speaking. I've also been studying the web sites of other professional speakers and trying to attend more local seminars to study other speakers. I saw Dr. Wayne Dyer here In Vegas about six weeks ago. I think the fact that I can build my own web site and offer downloadable content (audio, video, etc) could give me a competitive advantage. Many talented speakers have utterly hideous web sites, or they're overdone with Flash and hard to navigate (Tony Robbins' web site at www.anthonyrobbins.com is a good example of one I don't like).

Obviously I have a long way to go, but I'm having a lot of fun exploring this new direction, not worrying too much right now about where I'll end up until I build more experience. Once I get a better feel for speaking, I'll set some specific long-term goals for myself.

As for whether or not to continue building Dexterity by developing new games internally... that was a direction I explored for the past year, but I've opted not to continue with it. I've been running Dexterity for a decade, and in that time I've grown so much beyond my original game programmer/designer mindset that such a role is just too limiting for me today. While I believe that I could continue to build Dexterity into something like a PopCap or GameHouse and then cash out for millions, this type of goal doesn't inspire me. PopCap and GameHouse have already been built. There is no need for me to build another one.

The problem is that I've become "infected" by new goals and visions that are now much more compelling to me than continuing to make games. While I'm working on a new game, in the back of my head my subconscious is writing a new article, and it keeps giving me ideas until I finally stop working on the game and start writing. I woke up this morning at 4:30am and my brain wouldn't shut up -- it keep flooding me with new ideas for my next speech, so I had to eventually get up and write them down. And this was after working for 3 hours straight on a speech last night.

While entertaining people is certainly a worthy pursuit, I've become more inspired by the idea of helping people grow... in whatever way I can do that. When I was 22 years old, building Dexterity was my dream, and I did it. But today at age 33, a new vision is getting a hold of me.

Initially I really balked against this kind of "intrusion" into my future plans for Dexterity. But the more I tried to fight it, the more synchronicities kept happening to push me further down the new path and further away from continuing to make games. Eventually I just sort of had to surrender and said to the universe, "Fine. You win. I'll cooperate. I'll try this new direction for a year or two and see what happens." The next day I received an unexpected five-figure inheritance.

I would someday like to be able to coach people (once I've walked the talk). It's a very popular thing these days. Maybe that's something you can do too.

P.S. If you need a guinea pig for your coaching experiments, I'm sure I can make it worth your while.

Sounds to me, you've got a lot of spare time on your hands. Maybe learn to fly and do speeches all over the country. Feel free to drop by in New Zealand any time. ;)

And I believe in big hairy audacious goals too:
Mine leads up to buying a house next to a lake, with a floatplane to do the groceries.

Steve

Congrats on achieving such a great level of success in this industry. Honestly, Dexterity was the first gaming company I came across and said to myself, "man they really have their act together, totally committed to doing everything with excellence and never satisfied with mediocrity." Rare in this biz, even with the big major leaguers.

You have been a great inspiration to me and I have loved reading your articles and observing your approach to marketing for the past few years. I am sure you will excell in whatever you go on to doing.

I would someday like to be able to coach people (once I've walked the talk). It's a very popular thing these days. Maybe that's something you can do too.

At different times I hired my own personal coaches, once around 1993 and again in 2000. Each time I did weekly one-hour phone calls with them, and I worked with each coach for about six months. I was pleased with the experiences. In fact, I'm considering hiring a new coach to help me with getting into speaking professionally, since there are coaches who specialize in that field. I find that transition periods are great times to work with a coach, since they can help you stay on track with new goals and prevent you from slipping back. A coach can help create some extra accountability.

I don't think I'd enjoy being a coach myself though, at least not full-time. I really want to do something that gets me away from my desk, not sitting and talking on the phone all day. Speaking in front of an audience is something I find very energizing. Plus I wouldn't mind the chance to do some traveling outside of going to software/game conventions.

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!

Steve, have you considered writing that book about indie development? While it probably couldn't be justified in terms of time versus potential monetary benefits, if you are considering writing a book, there's probably not a better subject for you to write your first book about (even if your long term goal is to write fiction books).

A personal development book would be great in the near future, if not now. I find Mr. Pavlina's articles very informative and motivating.

Good luck to you Steve! Let the transition from game development to personal coaching be a smooth one! :)

(Maybe make a personal development game? hehe.) :D

I was very close to writing the indie book, and I even created a fairly detailed outline for it. But this kind of project would send me too much further down the same path I've been on for the past 10 years, and I'm ready for a bigger change.

I do plan to write a book in the near future, but it won't be about software or game publishing. It will be able some aspect of personal development. But before that I'll be setting up a new web site with a free newsletter, new articles, and probably a blog.

One book I read during the past year that really helped me in making big decisions was Optimal Thinking by Rosalene Glickman. At the heart of the book is a very simple concept. Most people will ask themselves questions like, "What would be a good project to do next?" But optimal thinking says to ask, "What's the best possible project to do next?" Instead of asking, "What would be good to have for breakfast?" you ask, "What's the best breakfast I could have?" Writing an indie book would be a good, perhaps even a great project for me. But it's not the best one for me.

One book I read during the past year that really helped me in making big decisions was Optimal Thinking by Rosalene Glickman.

Having read the book too, I agree that asking the 'best' questions is a superior way to move through life.

However, I've got to ask, didn't you find her affirmations and 'principles' of Optimal Thinking a little impractical? I felt like Glickman would suggest we are fundamentally emotional creatures above all else...which doesn’t fly with me.

I'd love to read a book like Optimal Thinking from a more business centered perspective. Or just one based on exterior problems, rather then 'inner' development. In other words, if you wrote the book Steve, I'd buy it. :)

Michael Sikora
Guardian Games (http://www.guardiangames.com)

I thought the main problem with Optimal Thinking was that there just wasn't enough material there to fill a whole book. It seemed like an article that was padded out to a book. Unfortunately a lot of personal development books are like that. But if you get just one good practical idea out of it, that can make it worthwhile. Learning to ask, "What's the best solution?" instead of "How can I solve this?" has helped me a lot.

Problem with goals is once you achieve em it's hard to stay motivated. Now just go by bi-yearly goals, one for Christmas and one for start of June. Happy to achieve them then rachet it up to next level once there. Have only one fuzzy long term goal which is to do well, what that is don't know as want to avoid hitting a barrier.
Woke up early this morning when all on tv is crazy product pitches. Used to work as programmer/contractor for a direct marketing company so heard lots of stories. Figure if those crazy pitches can work, bet Steve can easily do just as well given how motivating his words are.

Problem with goals is once you achieve em it's hard to stay motivated. Now just go by bi-yearly goals, one for Christmas and one for start of June. Happy to achieve them then rachet it up to next level once there. Have only one fuzzy long term goal which is to do well, what that is don't know as want to avoid hitting a barrier.
Woke up early this morning when all on tv is crazy product pitches. Used to work as programmer/contractor for a direct marketing company so heard lots of stories. Figure if those crazy pitches can work, bet Steve can easily do just as well given how motivating his words are.

Brian, I think your goal should be to start using pronouns :)

Pro whats? Noted :)