Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Corsavius Jackson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Corsavius thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea?

An idea without action is just a dream. I didn’t want to have a dream of creating a board game forever so I had to take action and make it reality. My first step with WordUp! was figuring out what physical items I needed to take it from abstract to concrete. I went to Dollar General, bought some note cards, note pads and a pair of dice. Next, I had to figure out what the actual scores for each letter should be. A couple hours of research and 50 notecards later I had the first prototype of WordUp! I then took this monstrosity of a board game to some friends. It’s one thing for you to think a game you made up is fun, but does everyone else think that? I played with a couple friends and it became an instant hit. Next step was turning these Dollar General materials into something that more closely resembled an actual board game. I commissioned an artist to do the artwork of the box first. I then used the new artwork to print off my first “production copy.” At that point I was proud of it, but I didn’t realize just how much more work was in front of me. The original person I commissioned was great at graphic design, but had no idea what all went into designing a board game. That led me to researching and finding someone who did specialize in designing board games. That’s when things started to get really fun. The box got resized to a more travel friendly size. And everything from the cards, the rulebook, the scorepads underwent a huge design process. I honestly did not expect the amount of back-and-forth from me and the designer but I soon came to understand, you have to be critical of every single design choice, because this was my game and I had to have pride in it. I remember showing the second to last version of the game to a friend of mine, and he asked me “If you don’t love the design, how can you expect anyone else to?” Thus leading to another 10 hours revision, but it was all worth it. It’s kind of hilarious to this day, I still make small changes here and there to the game because something catches my eye that needs to be changed or updated. However, I can say at the end of the day I’m extremely proud of the progress I’ve made and the “final” design thus far.

Corsavius, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Definitely. As you already know, my name is Corsavius. I’m from a small town in Alabama. I have a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from Auburn University and Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology. In January of 2021, I quit my job in Florida and moved to Atlanta to focus on WordUp! and other game night endeavors. One of my game night endeavors is my YouTube channel called Better Game Night. The purpose of the channel is to introduce people to different board games that they can add to their shelves for their next game night. Also, I host game night events for people to come to and experience the funnest game night Atlanta has to offer. My game nights are different because they’re fast paced, competitive, and involve games most people haven’t heard of so the playing field is more even.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Balancing outsourcing and doing it myself. I’ve always been a fan of outsourcing anything I didn’t know or didn’t understand to someone that was more adept at it. When I originally started I was still working as an engineer and had expendable capital to make that happen. However, in 2021 I quit my job to move to Atlanta and that’s when I realized, I can’t keep paying to outsource everything I have to learn how to do most if not all of it on my own. Even though it did cause me a lot of time and strife to learn, I saved a lot of money. Although, I wouldn’t say the money savings were the best part. It was actually learning the processes and how much effort it took to do every part of business so that when I did have funds to outsource again, I had a better understanding of the terminology people used, and I could negotiate prices a lot better knowing the actual effort it took to make things happen.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

The biggest source of funding I received was from doing a Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website for all types of products/ideas. You essentially offer people pre-orders at a discount to help you build capital. Most Kickstarter campaigns last 30 days. Therefore, it forces you to act. You have to create a funding goal before you launch your Kickstarter and at the end of the 30 days if you don’t reach the goal you don’t get any of the money and everyone receives a refund. Over the course of 30 days I was able to receive a little over $8,000 when my goal was only $5,000.

Contact Info:

• Website: wordup-game.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/thewordupgame
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cttjackson/
• Youtube: youtube.com/c/bettergamenight