Scaling Up Success Podcast

Beyond the Screen: Creating Real Connections Through Play with Jordan White

• Ryan Van Ornum • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Have you ever felt that post-COVID struggle to truly connect with others face-to-face after growing so accustomed to digital interactions? Jordan White understands this challenge and has crafted a solution through his company, GATE (Games and Trivia Entertainment). As a mobile game show host, Jordan brings interactive fun directly to homes, workplaces, and events throughout Colorado—and even beyond for those willing to cover travel expenses. His offerings include lively trivia nights, karaoke parties, and the newly launched "adult field day" experiences that rekindle that competitive spirit many of us left behind in childhood. What sets Jordan apart is his understanding of how games act as "backdoors into people's personalities," effortlessly breaking down barriers. Whether it's a themed trivia night about Harry Potter or anime, shared interests create instant connections, turning strangers into teammates and friends.

Jordan’s entrepreneurial journey has been driven by passion and community connection. Starting with weekly trivia nights at local venues like Alpha Charlie's in the Centennial DTC area, he grew his business primarily through word-of-mouth. While technology integration posed challenges—like balancing the convenience of smartphone answer submissions with the need for authentic human connection—his dedication to real-world interaction never wavered. A self-proclaimed geek who’s even cosplayed as Aqualad from Young Justice, Jordan brings enthusiasm and authenticity to every event. His advice to fellow entrepreneurs is simple yet profound: "Learn to think creatively about problem-solving and find comfort in discomfort. That's all the world's ever gonna give you—problems to solve." If you're ready to experience GATE for yourself, visit gamesandtrivia.org or search for "The Showdown 24" on YouTube to see his game show in action. Whether you're planning a team-building event or just want to make new friends while having fun, Jordan’s unique approach to entertainment is exactly what you need.

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Speaker 1:

What's up everybody. I'm Ryan Van Ornam, back with you for another edition of Scaling Up Success powered by Synergist. Today I have Jordan White with the Gate, so games and trivia entertainment. He's a funny dude and I love what he's got going on. Jordan, how are you?

Speaker 2:

been my friend. He's a funny dude and I love what he's got going on Jordan, how are you being my friend? What's going on, ryan man? Things have been going good, man. I've been having a good time. As far as the company's going, I'm still spreading that happiness and that's the big thing that we're trying to do so tell the audience what is it that you got going on?

Speaker 1:

man, I love what you do. And, dude, I love your energy that you got going on. Man, I, I love what you do. And, uh, dude, I love you, I love your energy that you bring to everything. What do you got going on? I?

Speaker 2:

appreciate that, man Seriously, um, uh. So, first off, I got it's important to say I feed off the energy of the people that I deal with. So you like my energies because you have a good energy yourself. So keep that up, man Seriously. But, uh, but for everybody else, hey. So I run a company called GATE stands for Games and Trivia Entertainment. I'm a mobile game show host. It means that I come over to your house, I come over to an event that you have, your workspace, whatever it is, that you have any gathering of people. I provide the entertainment in the form of game shows, trivia, karaoke parties, and now we just launched a new thing called adult field day, which is, which is a fun little way for us, to us, to come back as adults and still show that we, we got a little fighting spirit in us. So I do all of this and I and I provide it in a fun, interactive, like game show style where, uh, where you're competing against other people and meeting new people and essentially it's just a team building and a community builder.

Speaker 1:

Man, I love that. And man, you got such great concepts for what you do. Is it regional? Is it national? How have you built this thing up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I'm in Aurora, Colorado. It's my home base and I've been branching out to like any parts of Colorado. So since I'm mobile, I'll come to any spot in Colorado. I had a uh, uh, one of my clients that came out for Thanksgiving and and uh, their brother-in-law. He lives in North Carolina. He was like hey, man, will you come out? Can I, can I get you to come out for new years? And I was like yeah, man, I'll be there. Like, like you just got to pay my pay, my ticket, pay my hotel, I'll be there. So so, yes, it is a regional thing as of right now. However, if you guys want me to come out, I'm mobile, so I will bring everything out to wherever you're at, be it a cruise ship, be it the Bahamas, vegas, wherever you're trying to party at and have a good time.

Speaker 1:

I'm there to bring that energy with me.

Speaker 2:

That's what's up right there, so tell me how has this since you, since you started this, how has your business evolved? It's been a slow grind because I do weekly trivia right now at a place called Alpha Charlie's. It's in the Centennial DTC area off of Arapahoe and Peoria. So every Tuesday I'm there 7 pm and I run a trivia show. So, as it is now, it's just been word of mouth and, although I try to get on Instagram, I try to do the Facebook things.

Speaker 2:

It's the whole purpose of the company was to bring people back together after COVID separated us and taught us that the digital life is sustainable, which it is, and it makes things easy. But at the same time, people don't know how to get back in touch with people anymore, because they're like hey, if I don't meet you online, how am I supposed to meet you? And this is the way of doing that, where it's like I always call it a back door into people's personalities. So we bring you out to do a trivia game, for example, let's just say, harry Potter, you like Harry Potter and you feel like you know enough to do a trivia game. Come out to my show and now you meet other Harry Potter fans and now you just enlarged your friend group right there of like it was almost fractured when COVID happened.

Speaker 1:

And now I love that you're rebuilding that. You know, one event at a time, man, that's what's up. I love that that concept is sorely missed and I love what you're building out to incorporate that back into our society. Thank you for doing that, bro.

Speaker 2:

Man, sure I appreciate you saying that Seriously, because a lot of times I don't get the, I don't get the recognition for that. But I'm not, I'm not that out there for recognition, I'm out there to, to, to have fun. I'm out here to bring opportunities to other people and I'm a geek myself, so selfishly, I'm doing it for myself. But no, I appreciate you saying that and uh, and bringing that to the spotlight, because that's, that's 100 real absolutely so.

Speaker 1:

What is um? Do you have like a favorite trivia night that you, that that you'd like to bring to the masses?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so, uh, um, of course, like I just said, I am a I'm a geek myself, so I'm a big fan of animes. So I ran an anime trivia where it just had like a collection of everything over the place. Right, I ran an avatar, not the blue people avatar, the real stuff, the Legend of Korra, you know the last airbender. That was something that I was a big fan of, and so I ran a couple of those trivias and it really brought out the super fans, which was awesome. It was such a fun time we had, we had fun out, we had costumes, so you came in costume, you got extra points, we had some customized prizes. It was. It was a good time.

Speaker 1:

So I was just gonna say do you like, do you go to like uh, like like uh comic-con conventions and like, are you, you know, hook up with those type of groups with that are cosplaying? Like the marvel, you could have like a marvel game show, like mobile game show on, like uh, comic-con and stuff like that yes, that would be amazing with that um I, what is it?

Speaker 2:

one of the the anime conventions out here is called NDK and I reached out to those. Those are the people who run that one and we have works, but they just never followed through. So I kept reaching out to him trying to like, hey, I'm ready to do this. Well, talk to me details. We're never going to follow through with it. And that was just going to be like a like they paid me nothing and I would just make money off like five dollar tickets for people to come. So I would love to do that because, like you said, that's where they're at and I used to cosplay as Aqualad from Young Justice.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, my little geek is coming out, but, uh, but yeah. So so, no, I'm a fan, because, because, uh, in in any sort of world, whether it be at marvel, be it, um, uh, you know any sort of books that you might have, uh, harry potter, uh, whatever the case is, they're just we're all regular people, right? It's just that we have an interest and we enjoy playing a different role.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, some people dress up like the Wolverine.

Speaker 2:

It's all good, that's it. Tell me that you don't dress up like Wolverine. Tell me. Tell me, you don't dress up.

Speaker 1:

Dude. For my real estate company. We ran a trunk or treat every year for like 5-6 years in a row. I dressed up like Fat Thor of the Avengers. So it was either I either got Big Lebowski, jesus or Fat Thor. Oh it was. It was fantastic, bro. We had 4 000 people show up to this thing and they're like bro. The only reason is because the mule nearer that I have behind me I would walk around with that just like just giving daps up with it and everything like that. They're like I thought you were big lebowski, I thought you were jesus. No, I'm fat thor. That is great. That is great man, exactly exactly you just proved my point, man.

Speaker 2:

It's like, it's like, it's, it's fun. Man, it brings you back to this, this happy memory, and you can see on your face right now, when you're going through that memory, how happy you were with that, even though that they didn't know who you were.

Speaker 1:

You know exactly I still gotta rock it out though brought his own hammer.

Speaker 2:

What's up y'all?

Speaker 1:

that's. That's exactly how you got to do it, though, man, and that the the funny thing is, when you, when you, when you build that stuff out, you build such camaraderie, because people just their inhibitions gonna go away, like their ambitions kind of go away like their judgments, kind of go away.

Speaker 2:

You know what I'm saying? That's exactly it, man. Like I said, a backdoor into people's personalities. Now you're not. Now you don't put up that wall, be like, ah, who are you Like? I don't like the way you look. Whatever the case is, man, like you get to meet people, you get to understand the real people, and it's all through games and it brings back that, that happiness, that smile. You know what I mean and that that's really all I'm trying to do.

Speaker 1:

So I love that man, I love that I got to see that with you. Absolutely so. What are you most proud about with this, this journey that you've been on with this with, with Gate?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm creating my own world out of it. So there hasn't been anybody who will provide entertainment on this level. It's always DJs or magicians or something like that, which is nothing wrong with that, but everybody knows about that. That's the thing I'm most proud of is because now I'm opening people's minds a little bit of like hey, we can do something unique. We don't have to do the same thing just because it's been done. Let me think of how I can be creative now too, and now I can do something outside of my comfort zone and with me creating this path, it's letting people know that it's okay to do that and it's fun to do that.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I love that and being able to step into you know like who you are as a person and just run like full speed into that stuff. Man, I love that. Dude, you were just killing the game with this thing. It's so freaking cool. So thank you, man, absolutely. So one of the things that I find interesting is, like that you kind of talked about a little bit is like how do you stay in front of that we had from COVID, but in a different way and utilizing utilizing your personality, your persona and bringing people together in that way? But how do you stay in front of industry trends?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a good question, man, look at you over here thinking.

Speaker 2:

Being 100% real man. I've just been kind of running off of, like you said, it's my personality. I've always been just a happy person. I'm always looking for the positives in things and that's been my steam that I've been using. But you're right, I do got to stay on top of these industry changes. But I'm not worried about it because, again, with who I am, I've always been a creative person.

Speaker 2:

I always love thinking of variations to things. So if you're doing basketball, for example, you know like we want to do a free throw shooting contest, I'll be like, all right, now we got to do a free throw shooting contest backwards. You know like, I just throw on fun little twists and I've always done it. So that contest backwards, you know like, like I just I just throw on fun little twists and I've always done it. So, um, uh, I that. That that's what I've been doing to to keep ahead, because a lot of people again they're so we're so programmed in the following what has been made, what, what's been successful before? Let's do that? Right, like let's, let's do it. Yeah, you can do that. But but after you get into that groove, create your own little lane a little bit. You know, like, like throw little things and test, because we know that this is successful, we know that it's been established here. Let's like like we can, we can branch out and we come back if necessary.

Speaker 1:

You know, like that that's a little cha-cha slide each way. Oh, that's it.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, I love it.

Speaker 1:

Tell me a little bit about like uh, I know, I know what the aspects of what you bring to it, but has technology played a role into what you do and scaling what you do?

Speaker 2:

yes, so um again, because because it's uh, it's, we're in a digital world, um, you know ai's, ai's running everything right now. You got, um, everybody's still used to having their phones in their heads. You can't just make a hard turn without that. So I've been able to integrate bits and pieces of my games so people are able to submit their answers using their phones. That's cool. Still allows them to have control of like hey, I still got this glued to my hand, right, right, but now I can, I'm interacting here and then, real quick, my head's down, head's down, and now I'm back into the real world. And that's kind of what I'm doing with as far as with technology is going. But I am. I am fighting against, for example, ai, a lot of people that they can create AI trivia games by simply chatting into chat, gpt Boom, it gives you a full on on a game and I play with it.

Speaker 2:

It's powerful, it's a very powerful tool, but you still have to research it because because it'll get things wrong. One of the things that I had a question. I played with it and I was like give me a celebrity trivia question from somebody who was born in Colorado, and it kept giving me stuff about Leonardo DiCaprio and Natalie Portman and I had to research that and I was like they're not from Colorado, what's going on, right? And it didn't give me. The one that I was looking for was was Don Cheadle that was. That was the guy who I was looking for, right, but it didn't give me anything with that. So it just lets you know that you can't just rely completely on technology ever, and you can't type it in and just expect that it's going to be perfect every time, bro.

Speaker 2:

I know, but we're going to lose a lot of followers right now off of that.

Speaker 1:

Do we actually have to fact check?

Speaker 2:

Forget it, I don't want to fact check.

Speaker 1:

You're like ah, forget it. I don't want to do it, I'm done. I'm done. I can't handle this anymore.

Speaker 2:

But, yes, no, you definitely have to fact check, otherwise you're going to be running this show and people are going to be like, oh you're wrong, you don't know what you're talking about and that's the worst thing. You don't want to have that in your trivia show oh, getting caught off guard like that.

Speaker 1:

Have you had a half have? Have you had that happen before?

Speaker 2:

I have. I have, yes, I did. Um, it happened with when I paid. Sometimes I'll pay people to do research as well. So one of the things that they did for me was uh, lord of the rings, and uh, and I was like, yeah, I'm not, not, not fairly sure with it, so, but they came. Luckily they were still there with me. So as I'm running this show, people be like, oh, actually, it's this. So I look back at them like, hey, is that true? And here they're like a little bit, but not really, and so they're able to explain it, which is good. But uh, but yeah, that that's. That's the difference with with uh, with my shows is that it's always like like we have real people who are researching, we have people who are coming up with these questions, and it's not. You still have to have that people aspect. You can add technology, you got to have people still.

Speaker 1:

You're like take it to the judges.

Speaker 2:

That's it. That's it, yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, that that's exactly the terminology I'm going to do. I'm just going to have judges there all the time, and that way I can be the host.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, exactly, like Steve Harvey on the on the family feud, he has the judges every once in a while. That has to, has to, has to. You know, decide if, if that was the right, the right answer or not.

Speaker 2:

You're right, you're right, yes, yep, so that's. That's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I love it. So what advice would you give to someone that's starting on their entrepreneurial journey? Because, like there's so many ups and downs along the road, man, and like you know, like there's one day you're the hero and the next day you're you're the scapegoat. So, like what, what piece of advice would you give to somebody?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, uh, I got two pieces of advice on this.

Speaker 2:

Number one is that, uh, that you have to, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you have to have the ability to think outside the box and, uh, and and to avoid that cliche and dive a little deeper into that just means that that you have to be able to creatively solve some, solve problems immediately.

Speaker 2:

So, because you're always going to come across a hurdle and but it's up to you to decide whether you need to jump over it, go to the left, go to the right, maybe. Maybe it's up to you to decide whether you need to jump over it, go to the left, go to the right, maybe. Maybe it's it, maybe it's a virtual hurdle that you can run right through. You know, like, like, you can come up with ways on how you interact with that next problem, and that's what you have to. You have to love that, because that that's. That's an uncomfortable thing and that's where you have to live at is in this uncomfortableness, and find comfort in being here, because that's all the world's ever gonna give you is problems that you have to solve. You have to be used to that, ready for it and love it.

Speaker 1:

I love that answer, man, and you're the embodiment of that answer yourself, dude, and I love what you do with being able to think outside the box with everything you do, being able to scale in different ways and find new avenues for growth. So fantastic work in what you're doing. How can people get a hold of you? How can people want your services? Tell the people where they can find you, my friend.

Speaker 2:

Yes, sir, yes sir, Thank you for that. So, first off, you want to jump on my website. It's going to be games and trivia dot org. Games and trivia dot org will pull you up there, um, and from there it has all my contact information where you can reach me through uh email, you can reach me through uh phone calls, um, you can even see our schedule of events that we have coming up that you can show up to um, especially if you're in the, in the colorado area. Um, yeah, that's going to be the best spot you can also, uh, matter of fact, you know, I'm not even going to give all my my social media handles.

Speaker 2:

When you go to the website, scroll to the very bottom, it's going to have all of our handles, uh, for social media, and it's also going to have our youtube game show that we have called the showdown, the showdown, so. So we currently have five episodes of that out here right now. We're always looking for contestants. So if you guys want to be on a local game show, have a chance to win some prizes and support some local businesses and, yeah, make sure to take out. Take a peek at the showdown that's on YouTube the showdown Twenty four, the two, four, all one word, no spaces.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, what? Why are you going to holler at your boy Like not even get a chance to be on the game show? Bro, listen man.

Speaker 2:

I feel like. I feel like you would be. You would steal the show from me. Man, you got too much personality.

Speaker 1:

Oh, come on now, man, we'd have a good time.

Speaker 2:

No, we would so. So, first of all, our episode can't be live. We have to make sure we edit I love it.

Speaker 1:

I love it, my friend, awesome Love having you on the show. We'll definitely let's, let's definitely hit it up again soon. But thank you so much for being a part of scaling up success, and nothing but success for you in the future, my friend.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much and, of course, same to you guys, you guys at home. Thank you all for watching, appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

Awesome Ryan Van Ornam scaling up success, powered by Synergist Jordan White with Gate. Thank you so much for your time and looking forward to nothing but continued success in your future, my friend. Thank you, man. Thank you, man. All right, take care.

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