Shift Your Goals for New Year
Originally published in The Boulder County Business Report, January 6, 2006
New game lets you face fears, take risks, choose love
Business Feature by Elizabeth Gold
BOULDER - If perception is reality, and all we need to do to get what we want is to shift perception of reality, why not make a game out of it? That’s what Nicole Casanova has done.
The board game Shift recently made its debut as a tool to help people attain their goals. It’s an opportune time, says Casanova, since at the New Year many are inspired to make resolutions.
The game asks two to six players questions on love, fear, work, relationships and behaviors.
"Everyone starts off in fear," said Casanova, sole owner of Exponential Growth LLC, producer of Shift. "The idea is to move from fear to love and drop your defenses."
With dice labeled "trust" and "doubt," players get to choose their direction. They draw cards along the way in categories like "step into their shoes," "shift beyond your defense," "the risk taker: AKA, vice is nice" and "choose love."
Questions include "When was the last time you said what you needed and what was it?" Other questions describe scenarios where the player decides if a behavior is coming from love or fear.
Ideas behind the game and quotations used on the cards come from people like Buddha, Gandhi, Abe Lincoln and even a local stand-up comedian.
Shift started showing up in local stores like the Boulder Book Store, Tattered Cover, McGuckin Hardware and It’s Your Move around Thanksgiving. It’s also sold on the company Web site, www.ShiftTheGame.com. Local spots like Unity Church and Boulder Co-op Market are holding game nights using Shift.
The game sells for $39.95.
Casanova invested about $200,000 to get Shift to this point, and spent three years developing it. "I was at the right place at the right time in the dot-com era," she said, explaining the source of her self-funded venture.
The company utilizes contract workers rather than maintaining employees.
Casanova believes her marketing background has helped get the company up and going and moving in the right direction.
"I quit my job because I knew I wasn’t taking responsibility for my own happiness, and I wanted to take that message to everyone," she said. It’s based on a lot of self-help principles - trust moves you forward and doubt keeps you stuck."
Target market for Shift is "People who are already into awareness - they’ll get the game in a second," Casanova explained.
She defines the group as members of the lifestyle of health and sustainability (LOHAS) industry, citing that sales in 2004 for the that market segment exceeded $227 billion with yoga, meditation and self-help products; services made up $11 billion of the total.
"Games for adults sales went up 84 percent in 2003," she added.
Secondary markets for Shift include psychologists, therapists and human resource departments. "We’d like to stretch into the education sector."
Current marketing includes trade show booths and e-mail promotions. About 300 games have sold to date to customers from the U.S., England, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands.
Casanova is in the process of setting up affiliate programs to complement retail and Web sales. Affiliates will receive 15 percent of sales.
She’s currently working to pair up with WorldWIT, an online networking organization for professional women in business, as an affiliate. The international group, which has a local chapter - RockyWIT - maintains a membership of about 40,000.
"We facilitated breakout sessions with Shift at their conference and are getting ready to do a survey with them," Casanova said. Multiple-choice questions include "What changes do you hope to make in the new year" and "What do you do to nurture yourself?"
"We’re looking at the New Year as a time for lifestyle change - changing thoughts rather than going on diets," she said.
The first print run produced 2,750 games, and the second run is expected the end of January. "In a best-case scenario, we could be profitable next year second quarter," Casanova said.