Be there for your players — and do whatever it takes to win. Joe, an industry veteran and Chief Gaming Officer for Misfits Gaming gives us an exclusive look into the mind of a coach, manager, and mentor.

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My first experience with esports was playing Starcraft as a teenager. I think that was the first competitive game that I was watching fairly extensively. This was around the same time I was going on SK Gaming and watching Counter Strike videos back in the day, along with COD4 promod. I didn’t really follow the scene as much, but I was definitely aware of esports, and I’ve always been a gamer. I’ve always been a very competitive person.

I think very early on, I realized I wasn’t a very good player myself, right. But I think I’ve always been a very good judge of character, and that’s what propelled me and my career and put me in the direction I wanted to go.

My first esports role was in the early days of League of Legends, we are talking about pre Season One here. Nobody really used Reddit back then — where you go to find news or whatever else. Nowadays ESPN and a bunch of other news outlets will be putting out esports articles — there’s just so much information out there. Back then there used to be a “find a player” section that was kind of similar to the Warcraft guilds or CoD clans.

So I was in one of these clans, and lead recruitment. We probably started off with eight guys that we met online and started playing games together. Then it snowballed to over 2000 concurrent players, it was crazy. We became one of the biggest online communities and we held these tournament with very small sponsorships — maybe some RP or maybe Steelseries would send a few keyboards to give out.

Then things started to change. We had one team that repetitively won and I thought — Okay, why don’t I put these guys into high competition? I’ll look after them day to day, I’ll book practices.

I was 17 at the time sitting in my bedroom and thought: I can do this.

What’s the key ingredient to a career in professional esports?

I think obviously a little bit of everything. Talent is a huge part of getting noticed. Then it becomes keeping up the grind, maintaining your love for the game, maintaining your love for competition. I’m not going to deny it, people get leeway because of their relationships with other people. So, your ability to network is a hugely important factor in this industry.

Anyone in an influential role within an organization gets thousands of emails a week. People are constantly applying, reaching out to me everywhere: Twitter DMs, LinkedIn, Discord, my personal Instagram and even through Facebook messages. So many people are hungry to get into this industry.

I think the most important factor is that you diversify yourself and bring something different to the table. You will get noticed a lot quicker, and you are able to build those initial connections because you brought something different to the table initially.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be in the competitive scene professionally?

Showing your face is very important. At some point I worked at Dignitas and at the WCS 2011 finals I bumped into Odee just walking around the event, and was like: “Hey, pick up my team, my team’s sick. Let’s sync up.” I mean, it didn’t happen then, but he saw my face. He liked my attitude and liked how forthcoming I was. Later when I contacted him, he knew who I was — because of that interaction that we had.

Just try and get your foot in the door, however you can. Then when you’re surrounded by people who are making these decisions you can show what you have. It’s not simple… but it is as simple as that really.

If you’re trying to be the best at something in the world you have to be willing to make sacrifices for it. There will be times where you have to compromise things you love to do or parts of your personal life.

As a player, how do you make the decision to compete full time?

As a professional player your prime time is now (in university) or even prior to that with high school. I think at one point, League had something like 80 million concurrent players every month, right? Think about the fact that 0.0001% of people actually make it professionally in that game. If you are that good, people like me will find you.

I would always tell someone to pursue their dream at some point in their life. But there is a fine line between what’s realistic and what isn’t.

You just have to be very real with yourself and not get caught up in it. There aren’t only professional players, there are coaches, managers, accountants, sport psychologists, nutritionists. There are literally hundreds of roles and different opportunities for people out there. You need to think: What else can I do? What can I do that will give these teams that extra 110%?

Who were some of the best people you worked with? What made them so great?

I think the most obvious one is probably Perkz because he’s obviously so successful now and so versatile as a player. I attribute that to his mindset and work ethic. He loves to have fun as well you know, I mean.. he wasn’t always the most well behaved kid either! Now he’s probably the most versatile player that League of Legends has ever seen.

Outside of my own organization? I loved working with Zven. He’s hilarious. I had him when he was very young and he has a great mindset, great personality. He just needed time and care and someone to speak to at times and as a coach you have to be there for them.

What do you look for when scouting players? What advice would you give to an aspiring pro player?

As far as how the excitement of the player goes, I have certain in game characteristics that I personally like. I talk to coaches and people around them, sometimes I’ve even spoken to parents, and I always talk to the player. If you’re good, and if you climb up, and if you have that repetition then you will get noticed by me or by someone else. Even now we are in what, Season 9? Right? There are players that still amaze me, they do things I’ve not seen in nine years. The game is still evolving, and players are ever improving

Always remember why you love the game. If you love the game, you’re playing a lot naturally. I think every player at some point in their career comes to this moment where they have less motivation for the game. I think every player needs to really focus on the why they fell in love with the game in the first place and the sacrifices they made to get to where they are.

How important is attitude versus raw skill?

I’ve seen many players with crazy raw ability, but they’ve just ruined their own development, because of their attitude towards improvement. You have to be receptive to what other people who have been doing it for a while and have been doing it successfully have to give you. Whether that’s your teammate, your coach, manager, or people in your personal life. To accelerate your career to the next level and get to the top you have to keep an open mind. I can definitely think of a few players who probably could have gone pro, or gone pro way sooner, if they’d fixed their attitude.

How do you get a team to fit together culturally? How do you keep players happy?

Obviously it would be lovely if you could have five players with the same personality and amazing work ethic. I think when you construct a roster, you do have to look at the stage of where certain players are — if they need to learn around veterans and how they’re influenced by players around them. Personally, I love having rookies in my teams, because rookies play a lot. When you have an older player and they see a rookie playing two, three times as much as them it does sometimes light a fire in their belly.

At the end of the day the main thing is always going to be winning. You do need to do what it takes to win, whatever it takes and you have to really have a comprehensive knowledge of your players.

How can an esports team fail? What are the major pain points to lookout for?

I think it might be a little hypocritical based on the season we’ve had, but don’t get baited by a roster on paper. I think this is one for sure. Intricately look at the personalities within the team and how certain personalities mesh together. If there’s previous conflict as well, look at the severity and see whether you can resolve it. A lot of this is eliminated by the amount of research you do, and the more you know about each individual player.

That initial roster construction and balancing personalities and talent is extremely important. There are players out there who are unbelievably talented, but lack the communication, for example. So, sometimes you sacrifice some skill and put someone who’s a better communicator around that player.There are so many different scenarios and you need to look at each individual characteristic, not only from a playstyle perspective.

What advice do you have for new esports organizations?

To start with — invest more towards individual skill, especially at the grassroots level. At an early stage in the development of an organization, I think it’s very important to look at the individual skill of the players. Then try to make the time commitment to manage any of the problems that the team has internally.

Also… Pay your players man! Honestly, you see so many people come in and make promises they can’t follow through on and it actually ruins players careers. Work within your means. Of course you have to take a risk, but you’re taking a risk by making that initial investment anyway. So why make further problems by doing stuff that you cannot follow through on? Right? It just doesn’t make any sense.

Try to give these players the exposure they need, because at the end of the day, these players who are using your platform will potentially attribute their success to it later on. Make sure you have a quality product and be very communicative with the people on your platform.

Based on an exclusive interview with Battlefy, transcript was edited and condensed for clarity.