When I was a kid I had no idea that I was living a lifestyle. I thought I was just goofing off and irritating my parents by spending all of my time indoors with my friends. I can’t remember how many times one of my parents or a parent of one of my friends would ask, “Aren’t you guys going to go outside and enjoy the sunshine.”

Well Johnn and Yax over at www.gamer-lifestyle.com are helping people learn, there really is such a thing. It’s a matter of using your interest talents and skills to build an online business to augment your income and eventually make games for a living. I am all about that as you can tell by looking over www.f1337command.com.

But more than just making a business I’m about creativity, the promotion of it as a skill set and the maintenance of ownership. That is why F1337 Command™ doesn’t own any of the IP associated with any of the content on the site. That ownership stays with the person who created it. This is true even in my case as the owner of the LLC. My work remains my property separate from the corporate assets.

So a little history here, three years ago I decided to start being creative every day. So I started writing and/or drawing everyday. Pretty much anything that was creative met my goal.

As I started creating things, my perspective on my life shifted a bit. My goals began to evolve based on the idea that making things was important to me. I realized what a driving purpose this was forming in my life. I believe it is the result of part of what Dr. Wayne Dyer calls “Living a fully realized life.”

For me sharing my creativity is as important as creating it. However, I was scared of rejection, failure, and disappointment at my results. What I really wanted was help. What I thought I wanted was help in getting it done. But what I really wanted was help in overcoming my fears. The problem is that mixed in with all my fear was real obstacles and my own learning curve. What I really needed was a support network to help me take my ideas and bring them along to a product stage without requiring a financial investment on my part. I found an endless supply of people willing to support me for money. 

So in 2007 my own searching lead me to a vision for a business. A vision sparked by ten years of facing my own demons and charging ahead anyway.

The vision is simple:
Create a community based product delivery company that automates as much as possible the complexity of running an outstanding business and allow me and other creative folks to do what we do best and that is make products.

Some people might call it a crowd sourcing model, other’s might call a co-op. I call it a community of customers and creative minds coming together to exchange goods related to a geek lifestyle.
So with this vision I created F1337 Command™ as a place for geeks. From there I launched the company in 2009. Throughout that year I learned, I studied social networking, and practiced my content development skills. By the end of the year I had learned three important things:

1. This is totally doable.
2. The site needed a focus.
3. The demand for products and services was very high for anything geek related.

So I got with my mentors and supporters and launched a focused version of www.f1337command.com . The site is now focused on RPGs and D&D 4e in particular. This is not the final vision of the site but it is where we will be for now.

So here is where the rest of you the members of this awesome community come in. For folks who play D&D the site will continue to provide you with great content in the form of articles, tools, and products. For those who are interested in that “Gamer Lifestyle.” F1337 Command™ is a service provider and a business automation engine that will help you achieve your goals.

However, unlike other service partners F1337 Command™ doesn’t charge you a monthly fee, or only provide limited services. We are a partnering organization and success for us is success for everyone. Our business model is a revenue driven model. Meaning if folks aren’t buying the products no one is making money.

So our one goal is to help sell products. I designed the services that F1337 Command™ offers tailored by my own needs. Since I like many want to participate in this Gamer Lifestyle I really set out just to solve the problems I needed solved. They are:

1. Web-Site development: we need a place to conduct business.
2. eCommerce: people need to be able to buy stuff form the site.
3. Marketing: people need to know the site exists and that there are cool products to get.
4. Sales: people need to be asked to buy and their concerns and questions addressed.
5. Delivery: people need to be able to get the products they buy.
6. Manufacturing: we have to have stuff to ship to them.
7. Quality Assurance: we have to support the product developers by checking out their stuff and giving them feedback on issues so their products can rock.
8. Design and development support: most of us aren’t product production machines we need help in figuring out how to bring our ideas to fruition.
9. Connecting: we need the support of others and to find like minded folks so we can find each other to work on projects and products together.
10. Financial systems: we need to manage the money of the business provide refunds, pay taxes, pay for services (e.g. marketing), pay royalties, and provide accurate book keeping for the government and our partners.

It’s a daunting list! So when I started looking at this list of capabilities as an individual wanting to build a business I realized that I bet a lot of other people have great ideas but no way of making all of that happen. I realized that this is why RPG and other game products are currently only being developed by a few companies and yet the demand for the jobs they have is so high. A lot of us want to make products but only a few of us have the management skills to organize it and bring it to fruition. In fact so rare is the synergy between corporate capabilities and creative folks that these companies are getting acquired by large corporations. For the independents the landscape is so dominated by these few companies its hard to fight our way to the top.

I think it only takes a short review of the products on RPGNow to see how many people want to live this lifestyle. How many of them are trying and having some success? The problem is that if you dig through these products available you’ll find what I did:

1. A lot of low quality: either visually not appealing or just overall bad game design.
2. Products that don’t have a community behind them. The good products that do exist don’t live on in other products. Campaign Worlds that don't get support.
3. Customers can't find the gems: There isn't a way as an average consumer to find the great products. Browsing through RPGNow is a daunting task and it takes a while to find what you want.

If all this analysis is depressing you don't be. Its meant to show you a point. The point is you will get overwhelmed on your own. However, as Johnnn and Yax indicated this is within your grasp. Whether you work with F1337 Command™, similar organizations, or go it on your own there are great opportunities and your creativity is your greatest asset. The internet and the economic situation around the globe is behind you. Large corporations have taken a beating because of the economics of how they work.

As you develop your own goals if you think you might like to make some great products and leverage the services of F1337 Command™ to get it done let me know. I’d love to share with you the strategies, business model, revenue management, and other parts of the business aspects.

On a final note, the following books have been very influential in my thinking about business and business structures. I recommend them highly:

Birth of the Chaordic Age by Dee W. Hock and Visa International
The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business by Tara Hunt
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch
The E-Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber