#145: Small Games, Big Culture: Winning Japan's Board Game Market

#159: The 18-Card Game That Landed in Campgrounds Across America

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with Jeff Johnston, a veteran game designer from Boston who has been creating family card and board games since 2006. Jeff shares the story behind Campfire Smokeout, his first self-published game, and how it found its way into campgrounds across America through distributor Wilcor. He talks honestly about what surprised him most in the self-publishing process, the decisions he had to make around pricing and tariffs, and what he learned about the real difference between licensing and publishing your own game. Whether you design games as a side venture or are considering your first self-published product, Jeff's experience offers clear, practical lessons from someone who has been on both sides of the table.

#158: Art Meets Kickstarter: The Skill That Made His Campaign Work

In this episode, Jason Hsieh sits down with James Cole, a graphic artist who turned decades of creative work into a self-published board game success story. James shares how his background in zombie art, including flyers he created for death metal bands in the nineties, gave him a surprising competitive advantage when launching Zombie Survival Infection on Kickstarter. The conversation covers how he managed every part of the business alone, from designing 96 original art pieces to navigating a shipment that went missing at the Port of Los Angeles. James opens up about the hardest parts of solo publishing, what worked on Kickstarter, and how game designer communities gave him the support he needed to keep going. Whether you are thinking about launching your own game or just curious about what it takes to pull it off alone, this episode delivers honest insights from someone who has been through it all.

#157: Building a Trilogy: One Game at a Time

In this episode, Jason sits down with Kathryn Hahn, co-founder of Grod Games and the creative force behind Estate: Raise the Realm, a worker placement board game that opens an epic fantasy trilogy. Kathryn shares how a pandemic-era dream became a real publishing company, what they learned from their Kickstarter campaign, and how they are building a tabletop world with stories that reach beyond the game box. From convention road trips and Board Game Arena to outsourcing decisions and physical product challenges, this conversation covers the full reality of launching your first game. If you have ever imagined turning a creative idea into an actual product, this episode will give you the roadmap and the reality check you need.

#156: Escape Rooms by Mail: Innovation, Setbacks, and Survival

In this episode, we sit down with Eric Reynolds, co-founder of Escape Mail, a company that ships a complete escape room experience inside a standard letter envelope. Eric shares how a zombie-themed escape room in British Columbia in 2013 sparked a passion that led him to build mobile escape rooms, run them in schools across Alberta, and pivot the entire business model when COVID shut everything down overnight. You will hear the behind-the-scenes story of building two escape rooms in twelve days with zero experience, why a Canadian postal strike nearly derailed their best Q4 yet, and how new US trade tensions stopped their American expansion in its tracks just one week after they committed to it. If you have ever wondered what it really takes to keep building when the market keeps changing the rules, this episode is for you.

#155: The AI Shift: How Toy Brands Are Quietly Automating Everything

In this month's webinar, Jason Hsieh, founder of Toy Launch and Lakikid, breaks down how AI can go far beyond answering questions and actually become a working partner that runs your business alongside you. With over 30 brands and a thousand products under management, Jason shares the exact AI infrastructure he built to automate meetings into tasks, generate social media content, manage email, and even deliver a full business briefing before he wakes up every morning. If you are a toy or game brand owner wearing too many hats, this session gives you the practical strategies and real use cases to start reclaiming your time and scaling smarter.