My Hero

Went to lunch with a couple banking types this past week, you know as this grows we need to worry about things like - where is the money coming from to grow this thing - small details!

We need people like this to get us to the next level even though these guys were so typical (I know they will read this), I play lacrosse, I'm into this or that - when I asked if they told other parents how their kid chain sawed somebody in Gears they couldn't relate to that.

The funny part was they could relate to other video games like playing Madden. So, we now had some common ground to make all my arguments about how large the video game market is and why they need to work with us.

One of the guys that was there was at the that New Year's Eve party from last year and remember seeing Alex aka "Frozenghost001" playing Guitar Hero. Although he didn't know that is how Xfuel started he did have some remembrance of the party so here's the story again with some new facts that I hope you gamers can relate to.

New Year's Eve 2008, Frozenghost001's 14th birthday and we're at the house of some good friends who our kids refer to as their "cousins".

The home owners have a couple Guitar Hero stations set-up for the kids to play at and there is a line of kids playing, as usual Alex is standing to the side and not playing. To say of these kids sucked, well that's being nice.

This family is a big "sports" family and all the kids there except ours were on the Football team, Wrestling team, etc - no gamers like my clan. So, I can see Alex is a little out of his element here with all these kids for a couple reasons:

1- he didn't know any of them except the people who's house we were at

2- he has nothing in common with anybody there because he is not a sports kid

3- all the boys are jacked on energy drinks (I know we make a real strong energy drink but these kids were like overdosing on them)

4- the girls are over the sports kids and Alex is standing alone

You can see testosterone in the room is flowing and Alex, he's not getting in the middle of it. I grab his friend the homeowner kid and tell him Alex is one of the Top 10 Guitar Hero players in the world and you need to get him playing.

He gets Alex to play and you know what happens next, 20 kids in row fall to the champ - he's now the Hero, people flock to him!

The rest is as it's been told, driving home, he says Xfuel and the rest is history but that is not important - what was important and I mean no disrespect to anyone was that for that night for those couple hours the gamer was bigger than the football player - the Hero!

Again, what seemed small at the time but stuck with me for days and ultimately made me do the research and go forward with Xfuel for Alex and Austin.

When I think about the whole adventure we've embarked on here over the last 10 months, one song comes to me over and over again, it's David Bowie's Hero's - please listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9kSDXz6nJA and in case you want the lyrics here they are http://www.lyricsdepot.com/david-bowie/heroes.html

I don't even know the point of writing this today other than to say "I was extra proud of my gamer son(s) that night, they were my Hero(s)."