Scopely’s Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships Wants You to Take a Leap of Faith

Lindsay Murphy, the Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at Scopely, has an occupation that exists at the cross section of her interests and her skillsets. As someone who enjoys working on partnerships all day, Murphy is responsible for platform partners with all mobile companies Scopely has its games on, as well as all of the licensing partners in the form of major movie studios for all live games and games in development.

“I really love building and cultivating relationships. Scopely blended everything I loved together—major IP with gaming. It’s an amazing, passionate company to work for, and [working there] makes me feel like I’m on the forefront of where things are going.”

Murphy views gaming as an incredible form of entertainment, and loves being able to put partnerships together that ultimately bring people together and make an impact in a tangible way. Over the course of a phone conversation with The Org, Murphy recounts how pursuing her interests led to her dream career and how taking time for herself—even if it’s only 5 minutes—helps her succeed in both her work and personal lives.

Growing up, did you ever envision working at a company like Scopely?

I didn’t always know I was going to work in gaming, though I knew I wanted to work in entertainment. I grew up playing video games and I knew that I loved films and that I loved tv.

I went from Disney, to Activision, to Scopely, and I’ve been really lucky in my career that I’ve been able to work with amazing IP. I didn’t know games would be my path, but it makes sense looking back that it is my path.

There are a variety of factors that influence someone to take a job. Did you have parents, teachers or someone in your life showing you that your vocation could actually be something that’s of interest to you, could be fulfilling, and doesn’t have to be just a job? Or, was it more just you out in the world, pursuing your interests, and through that you merged your interests with work?

A little bit of both, actually. I was a musician in college and what I found equally as exciting as singing was putting together all of the branding, marketing, and partnership campaigns. So I started to help some of the musicians around me with their merchandising programs and social media. I’ve always innately been a people person and have tried to connect people together, both professionally and personally. My family is inherently like that, too, so it’s partially how I grew up.

I had an early offer for a job that was a lot of excel grids all day, or, I could have taken a lesser paying job as a temp for a licensing company. I took a chance on the lesser paying temp job and loved it, was really good at it, and started to do licensing and branding work for this small company. After a couple of months, I was hired full-time. I knew I had found something that I really loved and was passionate about.

I felt very lucky because—as you said—you can have a job to have a job—but being able to work and—continue that work now—with what I’m doing at a different level has been really fulfilling personally and professionally.

Would you say forgoing the excel grids for a lesser paying, more fulfilling job was your “leap of faith moment,” or did that come later down the line?

It was definitely my leap of faith moment. You need to make money, so it was a little scary to forgo it, but I knew in my gut I was making the right choice for myself. I hoped—and what I thought in my gut—was that long term, it would pay off more successfully for me and I felt that had happened when I was hired full time. But what really solidified it for me early in my career as a manager was when I received a licensing excellence award for a digital consumer products program I’d put together with a comic book. Winning the award with this company made me feel like I was where I needed to be. I was getting to work with amazing brands and amazing people, and it solidified that I was in the right place in my life and in my career.

Over the past few decades, gaming has grown, but perhaps over the past two years, people have been looking to gaming now more than ever before for entertainment.

Definitely. We’ve all been home for a few years, and while I’m not saying anything officially here—just my personal opinion—I look at mobile games and gaming in general as a way to connect with people, especially being able to connect globally where people might be feeling isolated. You might be able to talk to someone in Spain who you wouldn’t have even known is also feeling isolated, so it’s definitely grown in that sense.

On a professional tip, how does taking care of your mental health help you be the best you on a day-to-day basis?

Now with most of us at home, it’s even more important to take care of ourselves, which can be hard to do when you’re virtual a lot of the day. Being a busy executive, I find taking small moments makes the biggest impact.

I’ll get up, try and clear my head, walk outside, feel sunshine on my face, and just clear and center myself so that I can be on for the rest of the day or be on for that next meeting. You may not have 30 minutes to go outside, and that’s fine, but you can do a 1 to 2 minute check-in with yourself, which actually helps a lot. Sometimes it turns into more later when you leave work and you’re done for the night.

Just taking a 5 to 10 minute walk when you’re done for the day and resetting yourself, not being in front of the computer, standing instead of sitting—all of those things really help. I’ve actually found that this is something I was doing before, I just do more now that I’m working from home. I feel it’s really helped me be more of a creative thinker and a strategic leader because I can think about what we need to do in those few moments, whereas if I was going back to back to back, I wouldn’t have time to think about what I’m doing and be purposeful.

You don’t need a ton of time to hit that reset button. We often get bogged down and think we need an hour to recharge, but what you’re saying is, if you take a purposeful 5 minute walk, that can be just as effective.

And it has been for me. Everybody would love to do more, but I think sometimes that can be daunting. You may want to do 30 minutes of something but feel so busy. So, what if you took 5 minutes to yourself? How would you feel? Would that make you feel more motivated?

In those moments you’re also able to use your snap judgments and figure out a problem or task in less time than perhaps if you’d had more time.

Sometimes there’s just the noise from everything that’s happening in the day and you’re going back to back to meetings. Just recentering yourself for a couple minutes—you may not even be thinking about it—but your head is clear. That’s sometimes when creative thinking can come on, or you’ll have mental clarity on a problem you had from earlier in the day, and all of a sudden you have that thought where you’ve figured out what you need to do—send that email, call that person, whatever it is—and I find that can happen in these small moments.

Do you find that recentering yourself and taking those minutes for yourself in your personal life also creates a formula for success in that area?

It’s definitely something I also do in my personal life. I call it a “transition,” where you can exercise, listen to music, walk or run, complete 5 minutes of meditation, yoga or breathing—whatever your thing is—and just sort of transition yourself to whatever is coming next. You can do it in your professional life too, but I’ve found in my personal life it really helps. Just getting outside for 5 minutes to reset I feel I can be more present. I’m shifting my focus to what has to happen next, versus still thinking about 50 things that are all going on at the same time. You’re taking some time to think about you. It’s really hard to do, but it makes a big difference.

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