Q&A with Matt ‘Mills’ Miller: Ustwo
Has your true north remained the same since you started in business?
Our true north when we started was just to do as good work as we possibly could, enjoy ourselves and learn how to grow a business, although we didn’t know we were learning — we’re just doers. There was no time to think as our business grew, because the demand for the services was so big. Now we’ve got time to think and, in all honesty, we’re not really sure what our true north is anymore. We love making and we love being surrounded and being part of a gang which has huge ambition — that’s what drives us.
Where the group goes in the next few years is to do with the interactions we have with the world and the people that we meet along the way. I think to have a hypothesis or a strategy about where I want to go wouldn’t excite me now, because that’s based on what I know today. Tomorrow I’m going to learn something new and the next day I’m going to learn something new, so I want it to be an evolving strategy.
They key thing for me is that I have two sides to the business, which allows us to take huge risks on the adventure/ foundation side, and continual focus on being profitable on the agency/games side. If you’re profitable you can take huge risks, have permission to play and you’re in a great place all the time. The true north is to continue to be profitable as a group and use those funds to make a measurable and meaningful impact on the world. And to enjoy ourselves, enjoy life and appreciate life.
How important is it for you personally to measure progress you set as a business? Do you ever set goals? What are they?
No. I’m lucky that I work alongside by bestie, Sinx, who is more target-focused than I am. But I wouldn’t say he is a target-focused person.
It probably is good to measure progress, but I tend — rightly or wrongly — to go for ‘feels’ progress. If it feels right, you know it in your heart. Numbers and data back up your inherent feeling. I’m not trying to build a business, I’m trying to build a Fampany and I use my heart. If I’m happy and people are happy then it’s going in the right way, but if people are leaving and I feel like I don’t want to be part of something, then you’ve got to assume that things are going wrong and you should change things.
I didn’t set a goal but I knew that I had ambition in me, and I wanted to prove to the world — prove to the business and myself — that we could build a monumental product, which ultimately became Monument Valley. I just wanted to create a place that gave great people a huge platform to do the best work of their lives — and then go on to do better things, or do big things in other companies. I’m excited when people leave now in the right conditions because they use the UsTwo platform and do great things. I think it’s really, really important. So, I’m excited by that.
Tell us about the JFDI plogcast?
The JFDI plogcast came on the back of me stopping drinking alcohol, deciding to take on a 100-mile run and realising that craving success through business wasn’t really the right goal to have. No matter what I achieved through the business, I always wanted more and truer success.
I’ve only learned this recently [but success] is about appreciating life and appreciating each day and not wasting each day wanting more, but being in the present and being in the moment and smiling more. My personal bet in the past year and a half has been to make a huge investment in my physical health and as a consequence my confidence came back. I actually had a confidence that was able to start talking to the world and not just to the introverted UsTwo that I’d created. I realised that I was an extrovert who had built an introverted company and, as it was a bit like a cult in many ways, we all talked to ourselves and forgot that a bigger world existed. That’s my take on it, anyway.
The JFDI plogcast is something I always wanted to do. I like the idea of being able to be myself and having a platform to be myself and not trying to be someone else. One day, I went down stairs and got my phone out and said, ‘you know what, JFDI (Just Fucking Do It). Let’s try this and put it out there. What’s the worst that could happen?’ The worst that could happen is that I wouldn’t even have started it. Amazingly, really quickly the JFDI podcast — or plog, as I call it because it’s become a daily journal — became a place where I was able to speak very openly about things that I don’t even know if I believe. They come straight out of my mind and into the ether before I can conclude whether I actually believe what I’m saying.
My wife says that I’m externalising my inner monologue. Some people journal by writing, but I journal by talking. There’s an audience of people that have found it, or it’s found them — whichever way you think these things happen. Being able to be open about my own turmoils and changes in my evolving journey over the last 15 years — and certainly the crazy journey over the last year and a half where I’ve basically completely transformed my way of thinking. I’ve moved from believing that the only thing on this planet was UsTwo, to realising that absolutely everything exists on this planet and now I’m desperately scrambling to understand how to compute all of these new inputs.
How are you measuring the progress of that journey?
I’m not measuring it. I will continue to do it as long as I wake up each day wanting to do it. I’m not setting myself any expectations about it going on forever. It drives me right now and it’s giving me the same sort of feeling as when I started UsTwo years ago, when I knew that I had to do something. It was beyond me, it was a requirement of my daily habit. I had to do it and I get really excited by it. And I’m very proud of it. It’s a really tiny audience — we’re talking up to 500 people a day might listen to my ‘plogcast’ — that’s absolutely nothing in the state of this world. But I don’t care about the volume, I care about the intensity of the interactions I have with those people. Knowing that we are on a similar journey is a wonderful thing.
Are routines important to you?
I think they are. I would love to believe that I’m not a routine person, but actually I find myself sitting on the same toilet every day and doing similar things when I’m in the toilet, like reading my phone — although I’ve set myself a limit so I can’t actually use it as much. As part of this metamorphosis from introverted to extroverted, in terms of how I see the world, I feel like I’m having to teach myself about putting myself into new interactions. When I’m in them I absolutely love it but getting into them is really difficult. So I find myself being very content in habit.
What I’ve learned is actually that I feel really good when I’m just repeating and doing things over and over again. Maybe that’s a human trait — I like it. I like that condition of warmth of knowing that I’m doing something that I enjoy and that doesn’t take much out of me. At the same time — the counter of that — I absolutely love pushing myself into new places.
What is your personal measure of success? How do make sure you keep on track?
I love laughing, I love smiling and I love hugging. They’re actually quite simple things that I really, really enjoy. I love the morning when the sun is coming up and I love that endorphin rush when you get it. I love running and that feeling at the end of the run when I feel so happy and I have a creative urge to do something. I love passion — when people are passionate I get really, really, really excited. Those are the things that I crave. I love caffeine so much, that’s why I love my Breakfluid so much. As long as I’m getting that stimulation then I’m at the top of my world. When I’m letting go, like I’m doing right now; when I’m in flow and not really thinking and I don’t know what’s about to come out of my voice. That’s when I feel really good. When I find those people that are on the same wavelength as me — I can’t get enough of that.
I want to feel springy, like I’m pushing myself everyday. So physically I feel like I’m pushing myself to new limits. Then I feel like I’m moving forward. I don’t want to be sedentary anymore. For 15 years I hardly even moved, just stayed in the studio jumping around and drinking loads of beer. That’s not what my future is. I know I’m on track when I feel good. You just look in the mirror, you hear what’s going on in your head and you just feel bongo. And if you feel bongo you feel good.
When you look back at the last year, is there anything you’d have changed?
It’s a wonderful thing hindsight, but I’m not entirely sure how useful it is in this particular instance. What I would say to my former self — and this may well be information that I’d give to my now self today, as apposed to me a year and a half ago — because I’m about to start on a new quest. One, it would be, to enjoy yourself. The journey is the journey. The journey is the fun part. The destination is merely a flag that is constantly hoisted so that you can see it, but when you get to the actual flag and you touch it, you realise that it’s just a flag.
The journey is about discovery and letting go and trying new things. So, I would say to myself, ‘don’t worry if you change your mind on the way to trying to achieve that big, big goal’. At the same time, and I’m about to contradict myself here, I would also say ‘do not change that big, big goal.’
