Cold Open

How do you make a skeptical audience suspend their disbelief? One way: don't give them time to be skeptical.

We were in Guatemala the other week running sessions at a family office summit. One of the asks: build a card game about family business dynamics. Make it fun, quirky, educational, meaningful. Oh, and run it for a room full of successful entrepreneurs and executives. No pressure.

We knew the game was solid. But they didn't. And we had about 60 seconds before someone in the back row started checking email.

So instead of trying to explain the game, we just hit play on this video. No intro. No setup. Just a cold open tracking 100 years of our cast of characters - "the Rosales' family business

It worked. Open mouths. Gleaming looks. That rare thing where adults look like kids again for a second.

We had them.

The kicker? I didn't need a film crew or a time machine to make this. Just me, hunched over a laptop for several hours, working with AI tools, plus cultural direction from Fer Franco to make sure it hit the spot with our multi-generational, cross-continental audience.

Production stack:
• Character Design: Figma, Gemini, Claude
• Video: Kling AI
• Audio: Eleven Labs
• Video Editing: DaVinci Resolve
• Subtitles: Descript
• Translation: Claude

We're building more of these for the scenarios and case studies coming down the line. Turns out cold opens beat long explanations every time.