NZXT PODCAST - #197 - Influencers and Sponsorships?! (Ft. Rudy)

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

On this week's episode of the #NZXT Podcast... We have our Influencer Relations Specialist, Rudy, talking about his journey through jobs, fitness, and life! Also, there IS a difference between cinnamon crumb donuts and cinnamon crumb CAKE donuts. Follow Rudy on Twitter: https://x.com/Rutzo1

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 197 of the NCC podcast, the official podcast at NCC community. This podcast recorded live every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official NCC Twitch. It is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcast, Spotify and SoundCloud. My name is Mike. And with me, as always, is Ivan. How are you doing, Ivan? How it do, baby boo? Happy Good Friday, the Friday before Easter. super excited to be on episode almost 200 of the nzzyxie podcast i can't believe we've done this 197 times mike and uh this will be my last podcast in washington's and i'll be moving to Vegas next week so that's gonna be very fun you just docked yourself mike yeah i mean they'll

make it think it fine um we do have a very special guest today as always but before i introduce them I do want to make two quick announcements. So announcement number one, for those of you who celebrate Easter, even if you don't celebrate Easter, we have an Easter coloring contest going on right now on the NZXT Discord server. You can win yourself a coveted purple NZXT plushy, our little handsome boy, our shortest of kings, right? head on over to discord.gg slash nzxti and all the details are in the updates channel and you can enter for your chance to win. Next update is for those of you who are tuned in live right now on twitch.tv slash nzxte. You're in for a special treat because we're giving away another poochie plush.

And you can enter that giveaway by typing exclamation giveaway in the chat. You'll get a link to the giveaway. and if you stick around to the end of the show, you will get a super secret word that will give you a bunch of bonus entries into the giveaway, so stay tuned. Also, as an added bonus, for those of you who are NST club members,

you will earn poochie points just by watching today's stream. If you tune in for 15 minutes, you get 500 poochie points. If you tune in for 45 minutes, you get a whopping 1,000 poochie points. And if you have no idea what a poochie point is or what the NZXT club is, go to NZXT.C.O slash club

or type exclamation club in the chat. You will get a link to the page that explains everything about the club, and it's fun, so join today. All right, so now that that's out of the way, without further ado, let me introduce my baby boo. Rudy, welcome to the NZAXT podcast, Rudy.

How are you? I'm doing all right. Hi, everybody. Hi, Chad. All right, Rudy, for those that don't know who you are, I mean, some people do, because you've been working at NST for, I think, half a year now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've been very, very active on the Discord server in particular and also social media. But for those that don't know, introduce yourself and let everyone know what you do at NSXC. Totally. Hi, everybody. My name is Rudy, but you might know me in the community as Routso.

My official title is the influencer relations specialist here at NST. I just tell everybody I'm the influencer guy. You might have seen me on Discord, perhaps interacting on Twitter. Yeah, one of my favorite parts about being at at ZXT is just meming around with the community folks. So for those of you that I know, what's going on? For those of you that I don't, hello. And Rudy, what did you do before you joined NST? cry a lot usually yeah that was no I uh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's uh top five things no but um yeah so before nzxti i was involved in a couple of startups um

i sort of did uh you know i was young and i was i used to take a lot of risks and i would do events I would do, you know, I'll try to travel as much as possible. Let me back up a little bit. In those startups, I did marketing. And sometimes it would be hosting really big events with really big creators. Other times it would be working directly with creators to do some kind of activity, some kind of experience with activity, whether it was an event in person, or just figure out how to make sense of them getting involved.

in the business that I was working at. And I actually first met you really, even before you were doing that stuff with startups. I met you exactly, I think, 10 years ago because this month is my... It's an hour anniversary? Well, this month is my 10-year anniversary at NZXT. And I think I met you pretty much when I first started working here.

We used to work at I Buy Power. And I remember back then, IBy Power was going hardcore ham in the in the e-sports world, in particular with CSGO. And back then, NZT, we didn't make computers. We just made computer parts, primarily just cases. And I remember working with EyeBy Power at a couple of events by providing cases for builds for the CSGO dudes to use.

And I remember you in particular, Rudy, because it's going to sound really weird, but I remember your shoes because I remember you were wearing cowboy boots at a CSGO event, and I just remember, hey, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I literally walking around cowboy boots at a gaming event, so, yeah. I should have worn regular people's shoes, like, you know, like athletic footwear. I just had a, at the time, I remember, like I was, oh my God,

So I'm going to say this, and I can't, like, Snapchat bullying me for this, but I was getting into country music at the time. And so I'm Mexican, and I just, like, I'm, I come from, like, I guess not that side of, like, the world, but, like, I'm used to, like, farm life and, you know, open grass fields and stuff like that. So, like, I started just, you know, discovering country music around that time, and it kind of stuck with me. And then I saw, like, a music video.

And I remember thinking to myself, wow, those boots are really cool. And I was like, let me try them on. And then, like, I'm a gamer. So at the time, I didn't really go out. I didn't do very much other than, like, go to work and go to gaming events. So I was like, where can I style these things, right? I was like, I know let's do that at an event that I'm hosting. And usually when it comes to, like, you know, I have a power, which it's funny you mentioned that

because I still remember you, like, pinging me about the ninja cases way back then. and you had like a pallet of it. I mean, and I was just like, I just walked over to your desk. I was like, how many of those can I buy? For those of you that don't know, we used to share an office with the NZXT folks very early on, very early on. We used to, yeah, share warehouse when we used to share an office. And so I would like, when I was working out of power on the marketing team, I would just like walk over to the NZXT office. It was just one door between us.

If I remember that correctly, it was a building, but they, like, they were connected and there was one door between us. I would just walk over to the lobby. They would let me in, and then I would just, like, ask for stuff. And I would say, get out of here, Rudy. Is this true? Yeah. Yeah. How did you get into working in e-sports with Iber Power?

Because I know you also did, even before you started working, you were doing a lot of stuff in college, right? Yeah. That's correct. I, around like 2014-15, you know, I got into Cal State, Long Beach. the school. I transferred over from a junior college and I looked for extracurricular activities.

It just comes very natural to me to try to get involved with things and I looked for a rugby team to join, which I joined a marketing team and then someone somewhere I think pointed out at a flyer for like a gaming squad like hey, you were talking about gaming at the time really all I was doing was

like passively playing Call of Duty. well sorry when I say passively I mean I was trying to climb the ladder the MLG ladder on the leaderboards back then and I was like yeah I do and so I checked it out

I went into the room and it's the funniest thing because the room was kind of like you can hear like a dead silence and all you can hear is like the clicking of people playing on like they were playing on like Smash Bros and they were playing on a laptop

and this was like the super early renditions of League of Legends that people were playing on a laptop and I walked in there there and you can you can kind of smell the gamer be oh but i was trying to interact with people like oh hey what's that game i don't know what that look you know what that is and someone from the leadership approached me and she's like hey you're actually one of the only social people so you're one of the most social people that i've seen in a while do you want to do you want to get involved with the club and i was like yeah why not right like i was super optimistic at the time

and so from there we just hosted charity events we you know did a lot of um like intercollegiate e-sports land events and then eventually that got me so like I guess I tell us sorry to everybody but I used to have two jobs and I was going to college I would take a two-hour bus to get to college but my jobs were working at a warehouse so I'd work I'd wake up like around 435 in the morning to get there by like before six to so I can like receive stuff and then I would leave at 2.30 take a 30 minute bus right down the street and I would work at a sandwich shop and I work with the register finish mop in the floors at 9 p.m. I'd wake up the next day to take it two-hour bushrie to go to college.

And then I would go and do my extracurriculars, like rugby, e-sports and stuff like that. And then on the weekends, I would then take another two-hour bus ride to go volunteer, whether it was like the House of Blues or whether it was like a collegiate event, knowing there was going to be sponsors there. So I, like, took it upon myself to usually just go and present myself and push myself to, you know, go meet everybody around the block, whether that was Newegg, whether that was Rose Will, which I know is a name that's like way back in the day.

you know, the NCXTs of the world and then eventually Ward got spread around that what Long Beach State was doing just simply because we made enough, we had enough interactions with the outside world that we were starting to get noticed and e-sports wasn't

the biggest thing back then in some areas it was in our area in SoCal it wasn't and IBP reached out and they're just like, hey, when do you graduate? And I was just like, you know, in a couple of months they'd like, would you like a job now? And that was like my, the big, oh my God, like, guys, I made it. I think I did it, right? And that was because, you know, I was working $750 an hour jobs for, you know,

12 plus hours every other day to get through college. And so for me, that was like a huge thing. And yeah, so I joined IVAT power February 2016, if I remember that correctly. And then I joined as like the collegiate, the collegiate guy. It was a collegiate, community collegiate, but then they also like repurposed me. for a whole bunch of different things because we were a very small team.

But that was my first entry into Outer Power, and that was how I got in. I just hustled as much as I could and eventually got there. And you hear that, Mike? This guy played rugby, so they don't wear helmets and rugby, so that explains a lot about the things Rudy says. The big end? Oh, oh, my goodness. So you talked about being in the East Sports industry. Yeah.

And now you're the influence the industry. But before that, from what I've learned from Ivan, is you were also into the crypto industry as well. Oh, my God, yeah. Do you want to explain your time during that? Totally. During that. Yeah, totally, totally. And yeah, so, and this is actually one of the, one of my favorite stories to share, just because it starts off like, what the heck?

So I did Web 3. So I left gaming because. I was doing really big events with really big creators. I was at a company where I broke every record from viewership to online impressions to the size of the creators that we were getting. And it just seems like things were starting to get a little bit stagnant, in my opinion.

I was able to templatize what I was able to do and provide that somebody to do for $15 an hour. And I was like, all right, well, I need a new challenge because I can stay here and kind of accept this and just elongate the process knowing that there's nothing new that I can kind of not innovate but innovate I just I can't do anything different and I'm going to be doing the same thing over and over and over and over so I jumped out of that world and then I decided to go into what

the next up-and-coming thing and that was web 3 right Web3 is inclusive of like crypto and I guess a bunch of other things. And so Web3 to me at the time, I didn't really understand it. So I spent about six to seven months traveling all over the world to try to figure out what it meant, what Web3 meant and how I can bring creators into that. Creators being creators and influencers in like gaming, right? Where is like the convergence of both of them that I can create value from that? value from. And so in that traveling, I found myself meeting like the founder of Ethereum. I found myself being the founders of a lot of different popular coins, I guess, or groups of people

that created a lot of the tokens. And one of the companies that was owned by one of my buddies, who I didn't know too well at that time, but he'd know about the work that I'd done prior. And he says, hey, we're doing this startup. We're actually here at this event to kind of polish the polish the funding talk to the investors and things like that we're looking for a creator person would you want to be would you want to get involved with that i was like yes and this was like at the top of like this is in denver we were in i think breaker ridge or i really don't remember the name um not brok rage it's a break in ridge something like that it was really nice uh like houses and it was snowing um it was just a really cool experience um at the peak of when they asked me that we were pretty

like, you know, the endorphins were kicking in. I was like, oh, my gosh, yes. So I did that for about nine months. And it's funny because I always tell people, like, that was probably one of the best experiences I ever had. But I spent about nine months failing. When I say that, I mean, I try to talk to nearly everybody in the agency world,

and the creator world about the platform, you know to give you guys an explanation or a quick explanation the platform itself was imagine a world where you can let's say Ivan's are let's say the n60 chinchilla right n60s you want to pet the chinchilla right um the chinchilla's posting and they're doing you know there are yeah they're our influencer of choice here but let's say this person wants to um they do their regular everyday creator stuff um the objective is for you as a fan every single time you interact with these. You get like a couple of tokens, right? You, that's it. You get a couple of tokens. My job was to work with the chinchilla to open up

slots of time, have them, to pay them to give us time, to give that to the community, if that makes sense. So like, you'd be able to redeem those tokens later for like 30 minutes session with League of Legends, to play a game of League of Legends with the chinchilla, right? Just different ways to reward fans for being fans of the creator, but people didn't, they love the concept, they just didn't like that it was blockchain and web three. So for nine months, I went into offices, I traveled, I, um, all just to be, just to continually be kept saying no, um, at every door that I knocked into. But it also then made, you know, I think the way that I relate to how that like made me, I guess, a better person was the fact that I became fearless. I

that. I wasn't afraid of rejection, right? I was already, all the anxiety that I could ever feel in the world, I eventually, like, they flipped a switch where I was just like, can I guess on the show? Not have yet to ask. Yeah, wait, Mike said yes, which is chat, is a yes or no?

I would say, you can say a naughty word, let me just get the board's approval. Let me just get the sound board up so I can mute it. All right, go for it. No, no, no, it's okay. I won't say it. But I was just like, I don't give a fudge, right? I was just like, yeah, I was just like, you know what? Eventually, like a switch flipped in my mind where I was like, you know what? This is just another at-bat.

Let me try. And, you know, I really did feel the anxiety because I cared. I really wanted it to work because I believe in the product. And yeah, for the most part, other than that portion of it just you know putting some dollars this word matters in then just hoping praying doge coin goes up

so moral of the story everyone should buy more doge right just kidding this is not financial advice yeah Rudy when I found out

Rudy was like into crypto I was quick to tell him oh really because I'm a I'm somewhat of a dabbler myself. I have like all these doge coins and he's just like, get rid of him now. And I was like, never. And every day, he's just, he's telling me to sell my coin. But yeah,

yeah, but I'm hogglan. To add context, there's nuance to that conversation because I tell him, I don't tell him sell your coins. I tell him, take your profit. That's it. Like take profits. Make sure you're covered on whatever you initially invested. Um, no matter how little that was, take that, right? Take that and take enough for like an emergency fund or whatever and then leave the rest there and then passively invest into that later on. What needs to happen is you need to take your profits. Take profits. Please, that's all I beg of you. I don't know. I'll think about it, Rudy. Another thing, Rudy, because Rudy sits right next to me at the office here. I'm a very lucky man. I get this next to Rudy. but the other thing besides crypto that we talk about a lot is believe it or not fitness Mike can you believe it yeah I'm gonna be like I haven't says it before and I

will reiterate I think we are the most fit like community team in like PC industry oh no doubt about that we challenge any other PC company to to play rugby that is an open challenge. I'll just hide behind Mike and Rudy. I don't want to have kind of fun. You can. We're shorter than you. Actually, are we kind of fun if we do some, uh, uh, we do like a PC fitness, uh, like challenge? But it'll just be me, me, I'll put, uh, I'll put both you guys on my leash, just me and my short kings in front of me. But I just want to throw it out there for those that are interested in a challenge, this is

who you're going to have to deal with. Uh, I'm going to pull up your, the video. Yeah, well, let's see. Tommy deadlift, 405 pounds. This time I've asked you guys how much you think I could bench. A lot of you went for the $251 to 300 range. Wait, are you playing a video right now? Ready for 185. Oh, let's go.

Bosset all right up. There you know. 255. Easy. That's 245. That was 2405. What I said. What I try to do with those right there is, so when I'm not.

Come on, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try. So I think is a way to do it with power where you can do more. My objective in the maxes is to just be, it's just to pretty much like neuter myself and just like no extra from any other part of my body. other than the one I'm supposed to like max for. And so I got 265 on that. Ultimately, so, no, no, 255 is where I stopped. And then I tried 265 and barely got it, but I got it. And then I think next, next, I don't know, whenever,

I'm going to try for 275 again because I failed 275, but I didn't compromise for him, so I'm proud of myself. So that's our challenge to the PC industry right now, to the tech industry. Let's see the bench squat and deadlifts, because Rudy, I think, is the champion right now. Like, he's, I mean, that's insane. I wrote down my maxes here on the paper.

It's 265 pounds for bench, 365 squat. These are all one-rep maxes, by the way, folks. This isn't like three, because I know some folks go for three. This is just one rep. 265 pounds on bench, 365 on squat, and that is as to grass. and then 435 on deadlift

and that is a conventional straight-like shoo bro dang that's a lot of weight that's a lot of that's a lot of that's a lot of move the earth being moved I guess it's all relative well we won't go too much into it

but we'll just ask for those that are wanting to be like Rudy here like what is the workout routine like like what are you eating supplement Yeah. I know what he's eating.

I can tell you that. I can answer that part. I see a hot chitos eat it. I see it right next to you every day. It's a hot chitos. A lot of hot chitos. A lot of, I guess,

whatever snacks are at the office to be honest. That's the, that's the Mexican to me, dude. We love our hot chitos. I mean, so if when I'm going super strict, and I just like,

I have to, I don't know. I want to take off a couple pounds and I just don't want to... Yeah, that's it. When I'm like super strict, I can tell you my diet very specifically, right? Which I've changed now. Earlier, I used to do four eggs in the morning, two scoops of Greek yogurt, one scoop of valve and butter, and a handful of blueberries, and that was breakfast. Then for lunch, I would have 21 ounces of meat. Well, between lunch and dinner, it would be 21 ounces total of meat. So it would be like ground beef, ground turkey, or chicken. And then it would have like sauerkraut, again, another spoonful of almond butter, maybe some

spice if I was just like not feeling it, or like some mustard. And then for dinner, it would just be like two scrups of weight protein and creteen. And then also on the supplement side, it's creteen and then the protein shakes. because I'm not going to eat more food. Like there's, I eat, I eat enough. Yes, you do, Rudy. I remember your first day at NZXT, I took you out to lunch to celebrate. Oh, yeah.

You ate an entire chicken, right? And then you made me, you made me find a place that would sell cake because you told me that you always eat cake for lunch. And it's true. time I've eaten lunch with you, you always get a giant slice of cake. I love my steak, man. Yeah, I feel like because I've been on a diet, like, or I go on like, quote-unquote diet, or like my diet generally consists of like, obviously the foods are good because they're

spice, you know, they have spices and stuff like that, but it's like you got to enjoy life, man. Like, you need that. Like that cake to me is just, it's bliss. You know what I mean? Like in the middle of a day, maybe it's the sugar. I don't really know. But like in the middle of like eating kind of blandish, you know, foods, I need flavor.

I need something. And I think cake kind of accomplished that. Having those sweets, I'm like... I feel like... Good old chicken and cake. All right. All right, Rudy. Enough about your diet.

What made you actually want to work at NZXTE and like how did you end up getting here in the first place? Yeah, it was actually recommended to me by someone, a buddy in mine that reached out. He's like, hey, I think you'd be perfect for this. Like, I just saw this pop up. I think you'd be perfect of this. And I was in the job market at the time. So, I mean, I already knew NZXT. And obviously, like, it was up my alley because it was influencer related.

I think that the job hosting was like specifically influencer. I was a cool. I know influencers. This is right on my alley. I don't know computers. I worked out of Power. I've worked around system integrators before as well. Let's do it.

And then NSX also had a really great brand regardless. All the work that you guys did in the past with like Ninja and obviously everyone kind of like signals to these, right? The ninjas, the courage JDs, the everybody, all the other creators that you worked with it left some level of like lasting impression on the NSXC brand for everyone else that was outside of that or wasn't working out. at NZXT at the time. Yeah, so I think the biggest thing was just, one, I understand PCs and, you know, being a

system integrator and I also understand influencers. And then NZT was a brand that I respected. So, you know, past tense, just kidding. So besides sitting next to me and eating chicken and cake, what is a day in the life look like for you, Rudy, as an influencer relations specialist at NZXT? Yeah, man. A day into life is going through a midlife crisis by 11 a.m. every day. The reason why I say that is because there's a lot of, we get a lot of requests for, you know, for partnerships, for my DMs on Twitter, my email. People somehow find my email. I thought that would be pretty hard, but they somehow find my email and they pitch me directly on there.

And they leave red receipts, by the way. So like, whenever I open it, they know. And then they follow up right after sometimes. And I'm like, fudge! LinkedIn, get pinked all over the place. Facebook, sometimes I get Facebook messages about it. I even get text messages, which is cool. I mean, honestly, I don't mind it at all. I read through all the messages, but it's when I have like so many of them sometimes that I'm like, oh, crap, like I don't have the availability to kind of act on any of these right now.

And that for me kind of sucks a little bit because for me, I'm a person that, like, I'm a person that, like, love doing cool stuff. And what is cool stuff to me may not be like perhaps like a business objective or something that fits in what we're trying to accomplish right now, right? Because things always change. I'm an advocate for just doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff because I love doing stuff. So by 11 a.m., I'm already like, fuck.

And then we, I try to get into some deep work. Obviously, we have a lot of moving projects. nothing that I can talk about right now, but gotta chip away at those things, processes and stuff like that. And that's kind of my day for the most part, is also taking a couple of meetings with folks that I need information from.

And then what part of that is influencers, huh? Well, let me tell you. No, I'm just kidding. We also have partnership with FlyQuest, so I interact with them pretty much every day. Shout out to the FlyQuest folks. We also have partnership with, for those that didn't know, we have partnership with

East Sports Team Flight Quest and we also have a partnership with Travis Gafford. He hosts an online league every, I want to say it's every Wednesday night on YouTube.com

slash at Travis Gafford. So, yeah, I have a conversation with him figuring out what's next. If we have any promos, shoot that over his way. So interact with both of those folks and then meetings,

meetings, meetings, and then deep work. What's been the most surprising part of your, your job since you started working here? The most surprising part. I think I wrote a note about this actually. So jokingly, I always tell people like

what I, when I first got started at NSXT and what I'm doing now, completely, it's been shifted on its head a few times, just simply because our necessities have changed pretty frequently. And so having to adjust to that for me is something that yeah, I guess it's been

kind of surprising but also because I come from the startup world it hasn't been very hard to adjust to things

I think being quick on my feet is something that I'm pretty good at and then also just the

I guess I'll say this I used to get a lot of anxiety from like because like the startup world is like

all performance based like your worth is only you're only as valuable as you're what you're

able to produce for us right like the metrics like every metric matters because we have very limited amount of money for everything, right? And people will kind of not work with you.

In startups, they don't work with you. They work almost, it almost seems like they're working against you because everyone has like their own department and they're all trying to prove themselves at the end of the quarter or whatever it might be. So it doesn't know is like people are not real teammates, right? And so it's not that this is a bad surprise. In my opinion, there's a really good surprise. But it's just how cool everybody.

is at N-S-T. And by that, I mean, like, not only are they cool, but they're very transparent. They're happy to work with you. Even if you have, like, a dumb question, it doesn't make, it don't make you feel like it's a dumb question. They're just like, hey, yeah, let's talk about it. Even Lorette? That's another story for another day.

No, I'm just kidding. No, Lauren's awesome, too. Like, I still have the reflex, by the way. I know he just moved to, but I still have the reflex of, like, trying to look at his room every single time I walk in the door to say what's up to him. And then I'm like, oh, wait, he's over there now. But I think that's the surprise, it's a pleasant. surprise to know that like I can walk in and I feel for lack of a better way of saying it safe like I feel good um

I don't feel like I have to you know drive anxiety through the roof to try to beat people out I like I feel like my teammates are that they're teammates um and that's a new kind of kind of a new feeling for me but it's a pleasant surprise overall uh and then so you talked about like anxiety of these past jobs the form and stuff like that. And it's been kind of surprising that's been a little bit not nicer, but like a little less stressful, but what is

like a actual stressful or challenging part of working here at NCXB? Besides sitting next to Ivan, apparently he wanted me to make sure we specify because that is number one. That one right there. No, I'm just kidding. I think, and this is just something

for, this is more of a personal thing. I think the hardest, the biggest challenge about working at NXC is I, it's the amount of times I have to say no to things that I want to do, right? And having the discipline to, or finding a few creative ways of saying the same thing, which is no. So, you know, I referenced earlier that I do get a lot of messengers, whether it's Twitter, whether it's Discord, whether it's LinkedIn. I don't have the capacity to support a lot of these projects, like 90%, 995% of these things, right? because we're pretty hard to focus on the things that we have on our plate right now right I struggle

with telling people not right now well I guess the biggest challenge is teetering the line between not right now we can do it we can likely do something later without promising that we're going to do something later

if that makes sense because I know that people hinge on people's words right so it's like if I say something like oh well we can't do it right now but maybe we can do it later or like we'll be we'll have the capacity to do it later some folks will come back and like hey remember when we said that you know we can do it later we've actually been talking about that internally and it's been a month now two months

now or whatever it might be and we've kept you in consideration this whole time and it's like oh I can't help I can't do that I can't be a part of that right but they've already waited one or two months so I actually think about all of these things I'm trying to be a little bit colder on things to just to be transparent but I'm very empathetic towards everything that comes into my inbox, everyone that is, you know, because I, I try, not that I care too much, but it's like, I want to be of service somehow to the people that, like, have a necessity, right? And so my biggest challenge is that is, is it's hard to say no that many times. It's, it's tough, like, seeing someone stream in my inbox. And obviously, I'm not going to manifest that dream entirely

for them, but that's kind of how I see it, right? Because I've been on that side of the, the, what's the analogy of that side of the bench? That's out of the bench? That's out of the the table. Sorry. I mean, that is hard. I've been on the table, right? It's like, I've been outside the table, and I've been very hopeful about things hopefully working out for me.

And, you know, it's, it's something that I eventually will kind of mature into. And by that, I mean, like, I'll get better about the thing. Right now, the stigma is I feel that way because I still see myself as, like, a young hustler, right, like trying to get deals done and doing stuff like that. And I think eventually once I fit more of my like corporate throne, I will, I will get there. I'll mature into the role. But for now, my biggest, my biggest struggle is that it's empathetically seeing

somebody else's dream in my inbox and me knowing I have the capacity to make that work. And then still saying no, because I can't. I don't have the capacity, the resources to do so at the moment. That's actually a really good transition to my next one. I mean, for here, for the people listening, like this is the guy you want to talk to, right? Like, you know, like people are like, I want this. How do I get sponsored?

How do I get, you know, working with you got? This is the guy to talk to. So you talked about how it's difficult for you having to say no to, you know, these people you're like, I want to work with everyone. But how do you choose? Like, what makes a creator? And this is for those that are listening, what makes a creator stand out to you that you want to work with them? Yeah.

It's um I always try to see them for who they are first um I know like maybe the question the right answer the question is like hey work from a business objective backwards and then say that but just to be transparent with you it's like I try to view into what that person who that person is first what kind of content are they making um and just trying to see the potential um more than anything like there are some folks that are very objectively very good at at what they do. You know, they make the great gaming content, whether, you know, they do short form, long form. Not everyone is the same kind of creator. Everyone has kind of like their thing. Obviously, with these platforms changing on what you receive attention for,

has made some creators pivot towards what they understand they can make a livelihood on, right? So like, what's going to give me the comments? What's going to get me the attention? So kind of gauging into what they're best at and how that might fit our company, like our brand specifically. And then from like an objective standpoint, sometimes we'll have, like, for example, we have the egg product launch. The very specific things that we talked about were primarily, you know, can they make UGC content?

UGC being user-generated content, stuff that looks like very natural content, whether it was like a testimonial or they took a video, it took a picture, in a lifestyle setting, things like that are kind of all taken into consideration. I think what I'm looking for at the moment is more so UGC, like regular people that can create content. And that was actually, I think, for me, one of the coolest things to witness was what you did for the elite gaming gear launch. That's what that's what... That'll be egg launch.

Yeah, yeah. When he says egg. Because, you know, I can't recall a product launch. we've done here with that many people just creating UGC. And shout out to the international teams too, by the way. I know that the other influencer folks across the C are busting their chops to also make it work. So shout out to them too because they brought in so many creators as well. Yeah, it was really cool.

Everyone did a great job. And I think the other part kind of attached to that, that was really cool for me to witness, is watching you not just secure these. these pieces of content but also really going out of your way to try to build relationships with these people so what like what's

what's been your your process when it comes to building relationships with these creators yeah I feel like this can be this is something that you sort of like it's like having a conversation with someone you meet at like if I go outside right now and I say hey what's going on how about that weather

that person is going to either interact with me in a way that is going to drive a conversation or they're going to be like, oh yeah, totally. And they're just kind of close the conversation. You get a lot of that when you work with creators. Once the activation is done or as you're starting the, I guess the pitch for how you want to work with them, you very naturally see their conversation style, how involved they want to get their, you know, the affinity they have for the brand.

And you kind of just get it. there's conversations that I see a lot of potential in. Usually, you know, my rule of thumb is if someone is able to work with you, happy to work with you, and they work with you, you always want to keep them happy, right? Because generally those, it's kind of like if you own a business, generally you want to keep, you know, you're not your highest performers, but someone that is robust and well-rounded, happy. You want them, you want to keep them in the company because ultimately they make everything better, they make your life better.

Same thing with... Sorry, a quick digression. Since you said rule of thumb, I must know. Is the thumb a finger, Rudy? Yes. It's a philangee, yes. Okay, continue. Sorry. Why? Wait, what?

Hold on. Quick break. What? It's a controversial topic amongst the NDA community if a thumb is a finger. It's a finger. I personally think it's a yeah it's a philangee yeah Harley Hart in the chat doesn't think so

but it is a finger we'll address them later yes sorry to digress but I do want to ask you like a real question related to what you were saying there before you continue like what goes into actually launching a successful influencer campaign

like what you did with the elite gaming gear launch what do you what do you consider when you're setting something like that up? Yeah, I think this kind of layers to that, right? Because you have the personal objectives and then you have the business objectives.

I think from a business objective, that one is pretty straightforward, right? We accomplish the attention that we cared about, the amount of creators that we wanted to work with. And then from a personal perspective, it's more about continuing those really, a continuation of those relationships that I'm building because I'm going to have necessities in the future

that require either that many creators, if not a handful of creators that I can lean on, right? And I think this is where building that relationship helps is having folks that I can trust when it comes to that are reliable and that I can trust to continue working with is one of the most important things for that. So if I can take a handful of people

from everything that I do, from every campaign that I run, and be able to reliably have that, that to me is a win. And speaking of winning, you know, when you're working with creators, how do you measure success? Internally or personally? Let's do both.

Well, actually, you know, no, forget it, forget that. Let's do personally, like, for you, yourself. How do you measure? success when you're working with a creator? Yeah, I have a very not, like, there's something that's not a policy, but it's like, I try not to be very control of

of the content that they create. I think a success to me looks like someone who is open to working with us. Again, already has the enthusiasm to work with us. They don't, they're not just pitching me to either get free product or, you know, try to unlock some dollars. It's something that they already know the

product. They can tell me a couple of things about the product, or they have products, NXC products in the past that they had a good experience with. Maybe if they had a bad experience with it, as long as, you know, they've had the products and they understand their company, that would be great. And then, yeah, from the moment that we start interacting, and then if they're able to execute with, if they have a vision of their own, TLDR, so without going too much into it, if they have a vision of their own, that they can, that aligns with the NXT brand. I think that to me is kind of like almost a perfect scenario

where I can walk to someone and say, hey, I have this thing coming up. You know, I need some content. And yeah, like I want to use that in my marketing. You know, would you be free to do this thing? And they're like, great. I, you know, I love this case already. I know what I want to highlight.

I have these talking points that I love. And then all I have to do is pass over our talking points that need to get hit during that content if you know obviously it's that kind of that style of content and they can just kind of deliver that right they already have a vision for what they want to do because they have already interacted with in 60 they know our products um i think that to me is a you know a perfect case scenario and and a win overall and then also on the other side of that coin if i'm working with someone that doesn't really know n xt but i'm like your content's so good i have to try i have to try right or like you're a really good person

you make great content I have to try and then ultimately we get to a point where they're at the end of it all end up educated and enthusiastic about NCXT and they also produce awesome content for NSXT that's a win so I think cases like that are

I mean I find I try to find like the successes and in every single not every single but like in all the little things that we accomplish along the journey of getting from point A to point be with theaters so

we talked about like what goes into getting them how what's successful what you deem as like hey you know let's let's keep this going but I guess what's one thing that like a lot of people don't realize or like it's like a big misconception about

this industry especially for an influencer industry what was the question what's a big what's like a big misconception or something that people don't realize about this industry. I guess I can't holistically speak on that because this industry is very broad. But I think for us specifically, it's the way that we are trying to work with people and creators that folks haven't adopted.

And when I say that, I mean, I see a lot of pitches that I'll give an example. I'm not going to say the name, but I haven't knows what I'm talking about. A really big star. he's talking about Jason Mamoa Jesus Christ Not not Jason MoMAWA But someone someone someone Someone you hear on the radio

They have You know they want to start streaming They want to do You know stream stuff And they recently pitched me on Getting them equipment And then when I talked to When I talked to them I was like hey I can't

I don't have the capacity to provide you all of this Because they gave me a whole laundry list Of like the things that they wanted like I'm talking a ton just for them to start streaming and I can I was like I can only offer relatively very little

and immediately like no and that's it that was the conversation and I was just like so just to break it down for you they asked me to fund their entire streaming setup they were only going to use maybe once a month

because they were going on tour they wanted me spend a couple thousand dollars to set them up so then i could have a rotating logo you know what i mean like it's the value just isn't there in a lot of the pitches um and it's not very clear to me why i should work with a lot of folks other than well they're a big star it works right it's like no not that's not that's not how it works like nzc itself is also a big brand i have to preserve that um and on top of that it's like the value has to be there it has to be an even exchange um you know if i don't have the resources. If I can't give you the amount of equipment that you're asking for,

you know, it's, it would help me if I can get into the door with like a smaller, like, with a smaller item and just kick things off there to, like, engage into your traffic. Like, people aren't open to stuff like that, aren't as open to stuff like that because they feel like their brand is way too valuable to be a part of that. And I feel like people have lost sight of how things work, right? It's like, they have the money to do. so. I have another really big all-star, right? I'm not going to say the three

acronyms, or what is it, the three-letter acronym, but it's Ivan's favorite game. They have millions. They want us to give them all the, all the equipment for free, and it's going to be used once because they're going to go into season,

right? We're going to have maybe hey, thank you, on on a stream that they do. And that's pretty much it. It's like there's the value, TLDR, the value that we get as,

the misconception here is that people over leverage what the brand means to our area, our industry. They really believe that the star power that one person has translates over to the gamers you know

sometimes it'll be like hey Fortnite right am I right guys this guy this pop starts playing it PC right gaming and I'm like what you know it's like

please communicate the value and I feel like that's something that from like that point of you it's tough to to want to pursue stuff like that because for me I'm a fan of a lot of those folks I listen to their music. Speaking of pursuing, Rudy, what advice would you give to

someone who wants to pursue working in influencer marketing? Don't. No, I'm just kidding. Okay. End of the podcast. No. Yeah. When it comes to pursuing work as influencer is beat, try to get as educated as possible on influencer marketing itself

and learn from different areas because what works in gaming doesn't, entirely work on in, I guess, mainstream. And what works in mainstream doesn't always apply into gaming. So figure out what about content, working with influencers and creators you enjoy, and then try to pursue that angle because every company does it differently, right? There's companies that are in the business of sponsoring everyone and their mother. There's business that, oh, whoa, know the product that you're selling.

That's the big thing. Know the product, know the margins. margins. All right. Give me the specs of the NZXT, Krakkeny Lee 240. Two hoses. It's got two hoses. That chinchilla in the middle.

Yeah, but like knowing, knowing like the products that you have is very important. The reason why I say this is because it determines the kind of creators you get to work with. Or you want to understand. Also understanding how and where to pull creators from, finding useful ways and resourceful ways of how to find those creators, right, without using platforms too, because there's going to be a lot of companies that are not going to give you dollars to use a $10,000 a month platform. So find creative ways.

Ivan, I feel like you're going to say something. Well, no, you're just, you're saying like the stuff that I wanted to ask you about next. Oh. No, it's a great segue into what I wanted to ask you about, you know, you mentioned you're finding creative ways to work with creators

and it's for me it's been really cool watching you to see what you're doing on the Discord server in particular so for those that don't know NST has a Discord server Discord.gg slash NZXT and

when Rudy first started when Rudy first started working here I told him you should check out the Discord server because we have a lot of a lot of people that post in our setups channel you might find some some cool content in there that we can

repurpose or use for whatever or cool people to work with so can you let people know what you're cooking up in the Discord server yeah yeah so guys I don't know if it's exclamation mark Discord on in chat do we have that command yes we do awesome yeah so if you guys want to join the

Discord go on there so going to and I'll lead into what we're doing of the Discord, what I'm doing in the Discord at the moment is, yeah, I mean, one of my early, one of the earliest, like, I guess things we took on was like, how do we find creators for stuff that we are going to do, like Egg, for example, or Elite Gaming Gear, for example. And then Discord was a big idea because we have a lot of folks that are interacting. It's part of our community, a lot of folks that are interacting there and always wanting to show up

their setups. and I think he just came very natural to say, why don't we just work with the people that are already posting about NZXT? So in that, one of the first things I did was, I asked Mike to help me look through our Instagram. I asked, yeah, Mike and I am it to help me go through our Twitter, follow hashtags that are tagging NZXT. Who's tagging NZXT already?

And when I went into the Discord, you know, Esclamation mark Discord in the chat. There's a room called setups and set-ups and set-up contests that I think we host weekly. That's actually monthly. Every month we draw three people from there, and we give them Gucci-Plushies and steam gift cards and sometimes other things too. Yeah. So essentially, these are real people posting their real setups, and some of them happen to have in ZXC products. that to me was almost like a gold mine

where I was like, oh my gosh, this is perfect. And so what I do is I look at the Discord, exclamation of our Discord in chat, and look at the setups and then I go down the line every month to try to find a handful of people to give a small upgrade to. That means if they have, let's say, like a Coursair case,

but they have a Corset cooler or some other kind of cooler, I'm like, hey, would you like to upgrade either? I let them pick from the website, and all they have to do in exchange is provide me with a couple of pictures and or a video. Keep it simple.

Those videos and those pictures, I will repurpose for the business, right? We get content, you get an upgrade. And then I'm building a super secret community. I have a guy to talk about it. That's why that's what I wanted you to talk about. Okay, okay, okay. So I'm building a super secret community within the Discord.

I'm labeling them content creators. So anyone that's created UTC at any capacity during setups or even other rooms that I've happened to catch your setup and reached out to you or talk to you, if you've worked with me, you get access to that server, or that role. And in that room, I am going to be posting our next few campaigns. that you get access to first

before we do our outreach to all the other creators that we've worked with in the past. So if you guys want to be a part of that, and I guess maybe this is like a stream exclusive right now because I haven't told that to other... Nobody knows. Yeah, if you guys want to be a part of that,

please, I implore you, post your setups, and make your picture pretty, make videos, whatever you need to. You don't have to do an influencer style. Like, hey, guys, this is an NZXT pick. You know what? You don't have to do that. You can't if you want to. You just have to let the world's most expensive gaming PC.

Yeah, you just have to let me use your face on our advertisements. But post in our Discord. Again, exclamation mark Discord on in chat. Go to setups. I think it's like hashtag setup contest. It'll be one of the first ones you see. Post your setups on there. I'm going to be looking to upgrade people.

Every single week, I look in there. Every single month, I have a handful of it. people. I will be posting, sorry, I'll be looking on there. Once I shipped the stuff to you and you've received it and you posted and you provided me with your content, I'm going to add you into that group. And then you're going to get an opportunity to be one of the first people to access our latest and greatest when it comes out. Perfect timing. Love that. All right, Rudy. You've been looking at a lot of UGC out there. Before I wrap up the interview and get into my favorite part of the show, which is where Mike asked you a bunch of

random questions here. What has been the coolest piece of NSXT UGC that you've seen so far? This is the, I guess it's more influencer base, but one of my favorite ones has been the music video that Legion created. That was pretty cool. Mike, can you pull that up, by the way, that? Yeah. Technically, that's not UGC, but like if I had to, so after you pull up the video, I would like to call out PNW Tech and Ariana.

I think those to me are like awesome. Yeah. Ariana in particular PMW Tech has probably the coolest setup I ever seen in my entire life. That guy goes ham. Besides the Fallout guy. Besides the Fallout guy. no uh oh yeah but which by the way shout out shout out to shout out to him because you said it's a couple of goodies i say it's still on my desk because we have some special guests staying in the fallout room this

week once they're done once the office is uh you know it's not being used anymore i'll uh i'll plug it in after taking my my my percentage cut i took the bubblehead well not the head the candle holder. And breaking news, it looks like Ariana is in the chat. It's Tashi Roko. Oh, yeah. Yo, what's up?

I think the coolest thing about Ariana is like what they did with Egg or Elite Gaming Gear, I keep saying Egg. I tell you. I love that egg from my brain. I'm surprised I don't thought about it earlier either. Like the quality

of like the photography and video is amazing and I feel like they went above and beyond what we asked them to do. You know, like we told Ariana, you know, here's some, here's a keyboard and mouse and a microphone and a mouse pad, you know, do your thing. And it was like, every day I would open up Instagram, they would be the good new thing. And it was like, wow. Yeah, it's like, holy shit. They've been doing this for like a month already. Like, I love it. So thank you, Ariana. You're the best. And then, uh, Mike, were you able to get a hold of those? the music video?

No, I did not find. Can you guys send me the link? Yeah, yeah. Let me show it on. Let's see if I keep it. I actually posted it on the general Slack channel a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, let me scroll, let me scroll, let me scroll.

Yeah. This makes me for great radio. Yeah. I'm swallon through his media right now to find it. I found it. I'm going to send it to you, Mike, on Slack. There it is. I love this video.

Chalieries. And by the way, guys, just to give you insight as to like my brain and what went into this, I've worked with religion in the past before, and I like his style of content. What I wanted to do was spice things up a little bit because we have our normal deliverables everyone does like hey guys check out the xx t stuff which is great that's exactly what we care about right um i always look to throw a wrench into things sometimes

uh or like add a little bit of spice add a little bit of flavor into things and i felt like jordan was the person to to help me accomplish that so um it's up there okay cool so ladies gentlemen i present to you nzxte what is it what's the name of it is xt now is nzxcc home yeah nzxt My favorite part was the first time on the stream as they see home. My favorite part was the, it's the, where was it? Yeah, instead of going like this and it's just in the background, like it's like my favorite part. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah, and this is what I mean by the way, what I mentioned like, hey, everyone kind of has their own unique style of doing things. This one isn't, you know, the standard, check this out. Like he decided to do, to add this. spin, you know, obviously I knew that that's just kind of who he is. And when it comes to keeping folks in mind for things, like this is stuff that stands out to me, right? Big is a part of me now. Yeah.

Before we get into my favorite part of the show, I do want to ask you some community questions here. I've been gathering them throughout the show. We have a handful. So, yep, just Taco asked, is it harder to work with younger stream? slash creators or older streamers slash creators. It really depends on how they were raised. I'll be honest with you.

And why don't say that? Good answer. Yeah, yeah. Because like some younger folks will be like, hey, like I am trying to get better at this. Help me out. And I'm happy to do so. We can have a conversation, you know,

even if it ultimately ends up like, let's say a no or let's say we do end up working together in the future. What matters is the impression they left on me, simply by asking for help. how they presented themselves during that moment. Because I've also had folks who are like, hey, give me sponsorship, here's my channel. Then they follow up with, where's, like, so what's up? Like, and I'm just like, what's up?

And they're just like, what's up? And I'm like, okay, anyways, right? There's some older folks who, you know, again, they have experience with stuff. So they understand kind of how, like, how to have. a conversation about it and then there are other folks who are older folks who are very entitled and they're just like I have everything I'm the best give me PC why aren't you giving me PC and I'm just like some of them so I'll give me five reasons some of them are like Mike young and entitled what Kel Bell asked what is the criteria that needs to be met to partner with

nzxte as an influencer yeah so There is no hard requirement at the moment. It is, I guess the soft requirement is you have to consistently be putting out content. I don't care if it's once a week. I don't care if it's, you know, ideally it's not once every two weeks, but if that's what it is, that's what it is. And make sure that your content and your content quality is something that you'd be willing to put in front of me if I was to put you inside of an office with my CEO. Or Ivan or Mike. If you believe that what you create is something that you can put on a PowerPoint and then stand in,

front of us, press play, and that is something that you would say, great, you know, this is what I present to you to partner with you, then, you know, make that kind of content. Otherwise, we would have to find a creative way to sell you internally to be like, hey, this is why I want to work with this person, and then I would have to justify that, right? I guess what I'm asking is make my life easy by posting content frequently and posting content about the relevance of the market that you're targeting. In this case, it's system integrators slash PC slash tech. So make tech content.

Find your style. Don't do what the NZXC chinchilla does, please. Yeah, don't do. They're in the chat. But technically, technically it worked. Yeah. Technically. Technically.

Dear Mimi asks, what would you say is your favorite way to outreach to creators. If we haven't worked with NZXT before, what would you recommend is the best way to change that? Yeah, I don't have a perfect answer for you because at one point I posted on Twitter and I said, I have the opportunity,

and this is before, and I mentioned earlier, if you weren't here earlier, I mentioned that what I was going to be doing when I first started, got flipped on a set of a couple of times because we've had a lot of changes since then. So what I came in for or the objective that I was going to accomplish when I came in for has changed But at one point on Twitter during an objective that we wanted to accomplish I posted hey guys I'm officially working as an influencer and now I have my DMs are open

And I got Seven hundred and like fifty six DMs from creators that and at that point I literally spent two weeks going down every single message and putting folks like that I will work with into an Excel spreadsheet. So I can feed that into like an agency to make it easier for me to like sift through stuff with my recommendations added onto there. So I took the time. Now that that's kind of like the flooding has been accomplished, I still have a lot of folks that I haven't gone back to on yes or no because I'm not, I can't respond to everybody.

I think just be consistent in outreach. And by that, I mean, don't spam my stuff, please. If I don't get back to you, you can assume that I have read your message. I just have to figure out any point internally when something comes up where to fit you into there, if it makes sense. So what I'm doing is essentially trying to figure out where you make sense within the business. So if you've DM me already, I already have your stuff. I already have you on my sheet. And generally, I'm keeping if something about your content stands out to me, once I check it out,

it'll come up in the moment that I have something come across my desk and then I'll think of you at that moment. So that's the purpose of like, sort of like why I tell people to be outreach to me, not because I'm going to, it's a direct yes, I'm going to work with you, but it's more so you can put your stuff,

your content in front of me so that I can hopefully see something that stands out that when I have a necessity come across my desk, you're the first person I think of. And I'm like, oh, wait, this is like a, like maybe it is like a nuanced thing or nuanced topic. I know someone that work, that's done some kind of work like that.

And then I go out and outreach to you, right? So just DME, Twitter, marketing email, marketing at nzocc.com, and assume that I've read your stuff. And if I don't get back to you immediately, it's not because I'm not going to work with you or I don't plan to work through, I don't like your stuff. It's just simply because I don't have a use case for that right now. but it's in the you know if it pops up in the in my mind as it has a day's rise we'll get back to you

Shaw Panj asks can we connect with you on LinkedIn Rudy are creators allowed to reach out to you on that platform yeah I check it once once a week though that's one of the platforms because I get a lot of BD emails there or messages there and I do my once a week sorry no or like here's my email, whatever it might be. So you can technically, I would say as a creator, it's probably best to you reach out to me via Twitter because I think it's the most relevant place, if that makes sense, right?

Because creators generally live on, like, Twitch, Twitter. That's where I would talk to you as a casual person, whereas if you reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'm going to, I don't know, talking to businessy tone, I suppose. Yeah, I think if you want to reach out to NZXT on LinkedIn, you've got to play games with Laurent on there. like the way you do it um all right that was the last community question of the day michael take it away

all right we'll wrap this up we'll wrap this up a little quick so we're going to do some rapid fire rudy answer as fast as you can top of the mind all right let's do it all right right now number one what games are you playing right now league of legends oh i'm sorry since you're talking about it sadly you're into league of legends what are your mains uh jungle primarily and then toppling let's see favorite game of all time league of legends oh that's your favorite of all time it's it well it's between league of legends and heartstone because i've i used to competitively try to play in heartstone um but i've lost my faith in it well i'm really i'm really hoping for

something else what is a game you'd recommend to everyone not league of Legends. Not legal legends. Anything else? Yeah. What do you like to do in your spur time? That's a good one, actually. So there's two sides of me, right?

You know how there's like two wolves that live inside of you? There's two sides of me. There's the lazy side, which is, I don't want to do anything. I just want to scroll IG Reels and send memes to my friends. And then there's the, I have to be productive side of me. And that is like, I like listening. One, I like listening to music and discovering new music, just because, I don't know, I like music.

Finding hobbies, books to read, places to learn stuff from. I see the mean one to read. Place to learn stuff from. And then also kind of like, I love listening to thought leaders. Like, I have to check in what someone's opinion on influencer marketing is. Like, for example, I respect it or whatever. Like, I'll go on LinkedIn. And there's some people that I have notifications.

on that I get like feedback. It's just on my phone. And so I go back and I try to read their articles just to figure out what their perspective on like a certain scenario is, right? So I can learn from them. I love watching YouTube. I go to the university YouTube

to also learn new skills or figure out what programs I got to join to go learn that new skill that I'm interested in. I also do boxing twice a week. I do work out at least four times a week for one hour. It's like a gym. locally. What else?

And then... The correct answer was pickleball. I don't like pickleball, dude. Oh, my God. But that was also another rapid fire question. Apparently, this is from Ivan. You hate pickleball, but you work at a pickleball center? Yeah.

And, and, and... And he has a sandwich named after him. Oh, yeah. At a pickle restaurant. Yeah, yeah. So, I always... Shout out a little pickle. Yeah.

Shout out a little pickle in Costa Mesa. Go get the Rudy special while you're there. So yeah, I work at a tennis center. So not a lot of people notice about me, but I work seven days a week. And the way that I explain it to people, because some people are like, some people have noticed me from NSXC, and they're just like, wait, what do you do? And they've gone to the tennis center. They're like, what do you do?

So on the weekends, I work, I just as a general clerk at a tennis center. And I just check people in, and that's it. the way that I explain to people was just like the TLDR is that Tennis Center pays for my rent NCXT covers my 401K and that's the TLDR there's no necessity for me to have two jobs it's just I don't have I don't like what else am I going to do on the weekends I've just been accustomed to working my whole life that I'm just like if I'm not doing something productive I just I feel like I what do I do right so until I find a side hustle on the weekend that that just pays me more or is you know takes less time to in and does more um i'll be there for a while

but yeah that one pays for my rent this one does my 401k yeah i'm the opposite i only work i only work two days a week you work that's true i i look yeah yeah we work here uh one million cash in hand right now but you have to choose a video game character to fight and win You know who you'd fight? Probably A video game character? Can you give me, can you close that down a little bit and tell me from like,

give me like a couple of titles to pick from? Because I'm looking at like League of Legends and I'm just like, I'm picking like the weakest. Yeah. Probably Yumi from like League of Legends. People are saying Toad. If you were saying Toad for Nintendo. No, Toad is a gangster dude.

Do you don't, you don't mess a Toad. Oh yeah. Him with his, uh, like swagged out car in the the Mario movie yeah when he goes on stage so I always consider this because I always feel like characters in video games have alternative personas they have like a real life you know what I'm talking about so when they're in the video game they're on stage so when they're on stage they're just like a regular toad they're like well or whatever the you know the toad says

there when they're outside they only like like a yakuza life you know what I'm saying he's like he's got like tat he's like tatted up and he's just like got the cars all the money he made from Nintendo. Yeah. So I wouldn't fight them. Let's see. Would you rather fight

100 rat-sized elephants or one elephant-sized rats? Yes, give them all to be. If I'm going to die anyways, all at one go. I want to go out in a blaze of glory. Yeah.

Also, I can play the political game. I can turn the rats against the elephant, and then maybe the elephant squishes some rats. I don't know. Sorry, the rat, the elephant-sized rat, squishes the, you know what I'm saying?

So I'm like, hey, hold on, guys. Let's really think about this for a second here. There's a hundred of you. This guy says that you can't beat him up and he's elephant size and you're the elephant. So I don't know, you know, and then just, oh, maybe I win without ever having to throw a punch. So let's just, you know, consider alternative options here.

So all of them, only want to go. All right. All right. Now we're going to do a little fun segment that I've been wanting to do. It's blind gratings. Oh, okay, okay. So basically, I'm going to give you a list of five things in orders. I'll just give you one per thing, and you just got to hopefully create a good ranking out of all of this.

So we'll start easy, start very simple just to get us into it. We're going to start with just some nice sweets, you know, some delicious things. So we'll start off with like Reese's put Peter Bar Cubs. Oh, that's top notch. Where are you putting that? Number one through five. So five is low as one is like top. One.

One. Oh, you're putting Reesis up here. All right. Well, how are we ranking it one if we don't know what two, three, four, five are? That's exactly what it is. I don't need to know. It's a blind ring. You got to kind of, it's the, it's the goal is to try to make a perfect rating without knowing it, right?

All right. The next one, Starburst. That's a four. That's a horrible candy. How do you guys say it's a horrible candy? It's delicious. It's like it's super hard. Yeah, it's just the texture of it.

Like, you get, like, your teeth get like the corners and you're like, if you really want that texture, get hichu. Mm. All right. That's even worse. Donuts. Oh, one. Too late.

You can't, Erie, you put it at one. So you got to. All right. Put Rees's donuts then. No, you already put it at one. So you got to put that two then. You want to as eyes up there. Wait, can I put Reese's at two and do that one?

Blind Ricky is once you put it there, it's there. It's there. It's stuck there. All right. This is why it's a trial run. It's a trial run. Yeah. Yeah. I live with my decisions.

Um, Almond Joy. Oh, they used to be my favorite, but now I'm old five. No. Yeah, five.

I'm afraid of what that last one's going to be. It's going to be like dog poop or something. No, no, no. I made sure that it's, it's relatively okay. It's sour patch kids.

And that's the five. That's the five, but we'll put it at three. for now. All right. So this was the trial run. So now we're going to do we're going to do exercises.

Oh, okay, cool. Now I know. Okay. Okay. So now we're going to go to this. So first one I'm putting on squat. Where are you ranking that?

Oh, that's a top. That's, oh, that's fudge, man. Number one. You are putting in number one. So remember, you were stuck with number one as this. So just for reference, squat is one of the best exercises you can do for all parts of your body. And I know that it's a low- Especially the dumper.

Right? Well, no, no, not at all. I have to learn that kind of effed. All right. But I think squat is probably the best one. Next one. Bicep curls. Number two.

Wow, you're putting in number two. You can't see that, but it's like. I would put that five. I was going to say five for me because I'm like, I basically don't do bice and gross. I do other things that supplement the biceps. Oh, I, I love doing it. It's like the, oh my God, it's fantastic. All right.

Next one, bench brass. That one was like a five to be. Really? Wow. Yeah, my lower, my upper body is actually the weakest part of my body. That's why that's when my lifts like from the waist down are like 300 and 400. It's like I can't. I don't like doing

upper body bench press is one for me yeah I'm guessing shoulder presses next that one's three actually if it doesn't if it doesn't tie for one it's number three it's going to be Bulgarian split squats that's that's a four I've actually gotten a lot better at those because of squats

by the way because of squats I doesn't Bulgarian split squats don't hurt as much as they used to really totally that's a three let's put that at three dang all right and it's I don't even know what that is. Bulgaria Squissloss is the one where you put your leg up and you have weight and you basically do like a lunch. Yeah.

But with a foot up. But you can do the lunch, depending on which part of the leg you want to like emphasize. So if you lean forward, you work out a little bit more of the quad. If you lean a little bit more back and your center of gravity goes straight down, it's a little bit more of the hamstring. So you kind of get to pick and decide which portion of the leg

you get more of a workout in. again squat super versatile helps you with both you'll have no deadlift yeah delis is number four it's uh it's not my it's not my favorite mine mine would be bed press one squat two bulgarious split squats three deadlift four bicep curls five that's that would be mine yeah the the correct answer is squat deadlift bench press uh i don't know what uh bulgarian squat is say curls and then the Bulgarian squad. Oh, you got to try to book a lot.

Those are so fun. That's also good. I mean, I feel like that's so personalized. That list is like, it needs to be super personalized to everybody. Exactly. All right.

Final one. We're in, we're going to break some hearts. We're going to do some video game franchises to end it off on this one. Riot games at fifth. Just kidding. We'll do. I did like video game series,

not franchise series, I guess. So, I'm encapsulating everything into this. I make it a little easier because I didn't want to just do like one game because like for some people one game's way better. So I did every game. So the first one we're starting off is Halo.

Eh, I was never the biggest fan. I feel like moving around and like it's just maybe I'm just maybe I just hold a grudge for when I was little and I tried the Xbox of the first time. That one's like a five for me. Wow. Wow, really?

Yeah. I'm not the biggest fan. I never really got into it. I never understood the hype. I understood the hype of Xbox, but never really of Halo. We're going to go with Next Doom. That was, uh, I'm going to leave room for, for, no, uh. Because my words, it's everything from the OG Dune to the new one, too.

So yeah, let's put two. Let's put two. Let's put two. Yeah. Okay, okay. I'm learning to play this a little bit safe because I know you introduced the the good ones early and then I don't

I never really know what happens yet. I switch things up I always go like okay feel it out place your things and then this is already like way wrong all right this one is specifically for you where are you putting league

oh number one obviously I knew you're going to do that I knew you're going to put it there this is actually Hold on. This is actually the influencer part of me. This is RageBee right here. You put,

anyone takes a screenshot of this, puts it out there, and the world is going to turn it on its head. It should be six right here. Let's finish the list, and then this is a social post of its own. If you want to get canceled, I'll volunteer.

This is it. All right. GTA. Ah, that one should have been number two, I think. Yeah, number three. That was, yeah, GCH is great.

I consider it out of probably one of my favorites of all the time. I mean, yeah, so we're not, and we're not able to switch like stuff around there. Yeah, it's just, it's just is what it is. And then the final one that would go into here will be fallout. I know he's in the room right now, but four. Really? What? It's got a great story line.

I just, it's one of those game. I don't. I know. I know he's in the room right now. It's hard for me because I'm not a storyline player. I don't play the games that require or that like have a, unless it's Final Fantasy, like the last storyline game that I played was Final Fantasy X

and I fell in love with Yuda, right? Like that's why I don't do that anymore. So now it's just strictly F, not FPS, PVP. It's probably the worst ranking I've ever seen in my life. What do you mean? Ball guy just says return to package the standard, please. Yeah. Quick interruption here.

I have to hop off, guys. I have to go to a meeting. So I'm going to let Rudy and Mike finish the show. We'll finish it off. Thank you everyone for tuning in, and I will see you all next time. Bye. All right. It's in the office.

All right, Rudy. We'll finish off on the, we'll finish off the announcements. First, do you? have anything you want to say do you have anything to say to the people to influencers that are also listening anything at all speak your mind yeah don't ask me for nothing

no I'm just kidding guys keep going yeah I mean really keep trying keep putting yourself in front of me because ultimately what matters is that I keep you top of mind when the necessity comes up again there's going to be times where I'm not going to respond I'm not going to reply and that's because I don't have the capacity

to at that time or I've moved on, right, to something else that I have to work on. Don't get discouraged, right? Assume that I've watched or I've either watched, I've seen your profile. If you sent it to me at any capacity, whether it's on Twitter, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether you found me on Discord, whatever it might be, assume that I've already watched your content. And you're in consideration already, right? So keep trying. And in reference to folks, like the question, the problem of the question, the question,

question seem to be how do I get noticed? Just figure your style out, make sure that you caterate to tech, make sure that you're covering enough tech for me to trust that you can cover, you know, a crack in, or you can cover an NZXT case or, you know, elite gaming gear. I have to put that trust in you. So, you know, just show me that without telling me, I guess, because I'm not going to prompt for a conversation unless I feel confident enough in your ability. to either produce content or to work together at any capacity, right? And then lastly, and most importantly, join the Discord. You know, exclamation mark Discord in chat here on Twitch.

Go to and submit your stuff in setups. I'm looking to, I am looking to upgrade a couple of people, whether it's a case, whether it's a Cracken, because ultimately once the content has been delivered to me, I am going to add you to our secret group of content creators there, and I'm going to post the opportunities that I have whenever they may arise there first prior to then doing an outreach, right? My goal, transparently, is to use that group to then source the amount of everything that I need so I don't have to do outreach, right? obviously we're always going to look for new creators but if I can get everything I need from that group

and if that group is you fantastic right that's how we'll get noticed there so I can't stress the importance of that Discord group enough go to you know exclamation mark Discord put your stuff on setups and outside of that

yeah I don't know get some cake with as a side dish so it was great Nice. All right. Let me get into some announcements and I'll give the code word out to those that are here. And you'll get your 500 extra entries into the Poogee giveaway.

First, we have our motherboards are available on Amazon now finally. After a long, long wait, our motherboards are finally up. So I'll put the exclamation points in chat. If you're listening to this outside of it, you guys can just go ahead and look on our Amazon page. But I'm putting the links in chat. If you guys want to take a motherboards, people have been asking almost every day. So there you go. They're available. We have a poochie Easter egg

Easter coloring contest going on right now. You can draw Pucci, color him up with the things on our socials. Take a picture and then go ahead and go into the Discord.gG slash SDXT and go to the section. I think it's like, I forgot which, what's called? Channel it's in, but submit your drawing

and it will go ahead and draw some winners for some prize. So go ahead to do that. We talked about Discord over time. We talk about, you can kind of see in chat. There's people claiming Pucci points. Poochie points are part of our club. You can go ncxty.com slash club or Eskimo point club in chat.

You literally joined a club. You type in chat. You participate, join us on live streams. And you can get points and then use it to win free stuff. I literally just sent out like a bunch of stuff earlier this month. And we do it every month. So it's free. just do it.

I don't know what else to say other than do it, it's free. And then I guess Rudy, I'll go ahead and link your Twitter, I think is the best way to reach out to you. I'll go ahead and send that out. You guys can spam

him as much as you guys want, right? That's basically what you want. You want everyone to just spam you as frequent as possible. Listen. No, it's cool to DM me. And again, it's the reason I want, I want people to understand the reason why you're DMing me is not because I'm not going to read it. It's not that I'm going to ignore it. It's not that I am going to work with you, right?

It's like it. The reason why you're DMing me is so you can put your stuff, your content, your profile in front of me. So I'm going to read every single DM that comes through. I click on that. I click on your profile. I'll look at your content. And then what happens later, once the necessity arises or once something gets. I come across something that we're doing a campaign.

If your content and you are relevant to that, and you come top of mind, that's essentially the attention you're fighting for. It's making sure that I keep you top of mind for when the next campaign comes through. And that's what you're DMing me, right? Not to get a response back for me to say, hey, you know, I've read your stuff,

or so we can have a conversation, you're DMing me so I can click your profile, file when I have the time to watch your content and if something arises pair you up with them there you go uh and then I'm gonna go ahead to give the code word out so I have to preface this I really does not know I made this as the code word but I was laughing for so long at this thing so I'm gonna show a screenshot of what happened because this literally I was laughing for so long let's see let me put it here and is. Here it is. I was today years old when I learned there's a difference between cinnamon

crumb cake donut and a cinnamon crumb donut. I've always thought someplace it just made different cinnamon crumb donuts. What's the difference? What is a cake donut, the smaller donut? The other is a regular donut. And I think it's the same. I was laughing at this for so long. Guys, here is what I've learned. So I used to think that those donuts were different. There's a small little cake donuts. They're about like, yay, big. And then there's the regular donuts.

I love cinnamon cream. Maybe the picture's not the same. But to my credit, I actually took a bite and a half of the cake donut. And I was like, how do I show this? So I, like, line them up. And then I was like, cool, maybe this might show, like, show the size difference.

Clearly, I didn't accomplish that goal. But I used to think for the longest time that they were the same donuts. I just thought some donut places had different cinnamon crumb donuts. And I was like, oh, I'm hoping to find, every single time I go into a donut shop, I'm like, I'm hoping to find my favorite donut, which is a cinnamon crumb donut, a cake cinnamon crumb donut. Every time I have asked them for a cinnamon crumb donut, some people just give me this little one, right? I never knew the difference until I went to this one right here, the one near my place,

and they're like, yeah, this one's a cake one. And I was like, what? And she's like, yeah, you see? And then like it connected in my brain all those little tiny donuts Those are cake donuts The ones with the frosting The pink frosting, the white frosting, the chocolate frosting

There's chocolate cake donuts too All different And I had this epitome where I'm like Guys, my world has changed As of today And I wanted to share that with the world And I just got a lot of that. But like my question is

When you would eat Would you be always eating one of them or would you be eating both of them and you didn't know the difference between them? Right. Look up a cake donut. Look up a cinnamon crumb cake donut and then look up a cinnamon donut. We can do the comparison right now

because obviously this is like the same thing, right? But like... Cake donut. Crumb cake donut, you said, right? Yes. Okay, and then just a regular cinnamon crumb donut. That one right there, cinnamon crumb donut. No, no, no, not those.

Okay, cinnamon crumb donut. cake donut yes okay so we have you see the one um you see how little it little it is no it's not that one which one it's uh it's i guess almost it's any of the other ones all right that one right there yeah yeah so this is yeah so this is yeah yeah yeah that's a little that is yeah yeah yeah oh yeah okay now look up a regular cinnamon crumb donut and then this yeah it's yeah that's no that's a cake donut yeah oh yeah oh yeah wait cinnamon Cinnamon, cinnamon donut,

I guess this? No, no, no, no, that's a cinnamon cake. Just look up a regular cinnamon.

Dude, I'm gonna, okay, hold on. I'll send you on this. Okay, you know what? I understand now.

There's a cinnamon crumb donut and it's just, it's a donut with cinnamon cream on it, and there's a cinnamon crumb cake that is cake. And the difference is,

is the texture. So like, the big, the regular cinnamon crumb donuts, it's the ones that, like, it's just a regular donut. It's like,

it's like fluffy, whatever, you know, you can bend the whole thing and one bite, whatever, you're done. Cinnamon crumb cake donuts are, the texture is different. It's, it's more full, like it's a little bit heavier too.

You know what I'm talking about? Guys, I'm not crazy. Chat, please. Somebody help me. Wait, but my question is, so you would go to the place and you eat one of them and then would you also, like, later down the road, you get the, so let's say one day you eat the regular crumb donut, then another day you eat the cake donut.

Would you think that they were the same or would you be like, oh, this donut tastes weird? No, there's a clear difference. Let me show you. Okay. Okay. So at least you understood that it was different. Visually, there's a, it's completely different. Okay.

Yeah, it's so different. That's what I'm saying. It's so different that I didn't know they were called something like different. Okay. Because my thing was I thought you were eating one. Then you get another and go, oh, this is a little different. But it's okay. And then you learn.

I didn't realize, okay. You at least learned it there. I was, I was very confusing because I thought you're like, you're eating like a, basically like a chocolate bar from Hershey's and you're eating a chocolate bar that is like almond joy. And you're like, oh, this tastes a little different. It's around the same. That's what I thought. Yeah. Hold on.

I'm like, I feel like I'm going crazy right now because there's no good pictures. Guys, I think it's all in his head. It's all this hand. It totally is not. It's just it. I'll make hold on regular donut okay this is like okay hold on

regular maybe maybe that okay regular donut versus cake donut yes correct okay cool thank you Google let's see this let's see oh man this is this is tough I don't think you I don't think you're saving your case bud

people don't talk about this enough I'm gonna go get donuts after this I'm gonna post it on Twitter guys I need y'all to watch this or watch that because I'm not crazy the pictures don't do it justice oh my god I'm gonna have to go and get donuts after this okay yeah you gotta you gotta show us on Twitter after but guys yeah follow me on Twitter Roots-o-1 R-U-T-Z-O-1 and then I'm gonna post the donuts shortly after this I'm gonna take a quick break I'm gonna go grab a donut a

a cinnamon-crum donut and a regular ass donut I'm gonna do an overhead picture and then you guys are gonna see that I am not crazy and there is a difference between a cinnamon-cromb cake donut any cinnamon from donut and that is the code word for five for extra entries is cinnamon crumb dough oh is it

and that is the code word because I was crying laughing at this because I was like what is going on cinnamon crumb donut and and Rudy post it

and then we'll be the judge of the difference between those you're like Pam right now at the from the office you're like through the exact same picture no I'm not crazy

guys guys I'm not crazy guys I'm not Crazy, trust me. Everyone gaslight it. Gaslight him. Okay. Thank you guys for joining us. And remember tuned to live on Fridays at 10-A and Pacific Center time on the official

ZC Twitch. And don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and SoundCloud. You got any questions for us. Send an email to podcast at nz-ec.com or tag at S-EC on social media platforms. Thank you, Rudy, for joining us today. And everyone, go have some cinnamon crumb. Which one's better? Don't know, the regular donut or cake donut.

Go ask for both. Go ask for some cinnamon crumb cake. I'm a cinnamon crumb cake kind of guy. Okay, so everyone gets some Sydney crumb cake donuts this weekend. And happy Easter to everyone that's celebrating. And Rudy, you have anything before you want to go out? No, that's it, guys. Yeah, again, thank you all for listening.

Thank you all for watching. If you need to hit me up, you have my socials. We'll see you all on the next one. All righty. See you guys later.