Transcript: Lost my D&D Game Shop, Now I’m Helping Dungeon Masters Elevate Their Skills
Dungeon Mavericks has some pretty big things happening in 2022. I can’t wait to start sharing that with you. But first, let me tell you a quick story about how COVID lockdowns forced me to close the doors to my game shop, and in the process lose a loyal community of tabletop role-playing gamers.
But now I don’t have to worry about COVID stopping me from bringing gamers together ever again!
You see, at my game shop, I was starting to build this large local community of D&D Gamers, I had Magic the Gathering players and Warhammer 40k groups coming in. Then, of course, COVID hit, and I started to struggle to keep up with the bills and keeping jobs available for our staff, even though there was no revenue coming in. That’s not a really good feeling. I was getting more and more frustrated about those mandated closures. It was pretty damn scary that I would I was on the verge of losing the store because there was nothing to stop those bills and rent from falling behind.
Unfortunately, the saddest day of my life happened. The inevitable came about where the bottom just fell out from under me when these lockdowns lasted for well over a year and a half. That’s when the landlord decided to demand I pay all the past due rent, or vacate and close the game shop.
Which meant I couldn’t keep the game shop that I had put so much blood sweat and tears into. Pouring in all my life savings to keep the place going, and putting in my spare time and energy. I wasn’t really ready to give up on my dream of providing a safe space for the gaming community and specifically around building a community around the tabletop gaming groups. Then I discovered that D&D gamers were just as enthusiastic about playing online during COVID. For me, that’s when everything changed. I discovered how I could take everything that I know about serving my D&D customers at my game shop, and bring that same knowledge to the vast online gaming community. I also have my own knowledge that I apply, because I’ve been a Dungeon Master for my own group for well over eight or nine years now. I took this knowledge of these two worlds, and I began to help D&D Dungeon Masters improve their skills and systems.
I also discovered that because I have my business background with the game shop, I can show these Dungeon Masters how to find players who are specifically looking for Paid D&D sessions, and then build a business around a Paid D&D service.
This meant that I can now shift my focus from helping from being in a shop to now specifically focusing on helping dungeon masters perfect their craft, and get paid to run d&d sessions. This meant I was able to achieve the fulfillment that I was looking for all along when I opened my game shop. I had this huge passion for serving the gaming community. Even though I no longer had a local game shop, I was still able to help all of these awesome dungeon masters. Now I had the power to create a much bigger impact in the gaming community, and on a global scale now at this point, instead of just my local area, so I can now focus on changing the lives of these dungeon masters all around the world, who will then, in turn, go and improve the lives of their players.
That’s a little backstory about how I decided to start Dungeon Mavericks
If any of this resonates with you, and you want to surround yourself with fellow Dedicated Dungeon Masters who want to elevate their DM skills, click the link in the description of this video and get a tool that I call “The 3-step DM Adventure Pack”. You also get a chance to join our Dungeon Mavericks Guild Facebook group if you’re not already part of our growing community. So click on that link in the description and go look for that link. Go grab the extra bonus resource that I created there. And I look forward to seeing you in the dungeon master skill group!
