Dad's Log - A Glimpse Into The Mind Of A Broadcaster

I want to talk today about showing people rather than telling them. I had this conversation the other day about how I want to encourage my son regarding chasing dreams. So many of us tell our kids, family, and friends to chase their dreams. We offer them guidance, advice, and encouragement along the way, but when the going gets rough, we haven't SHOWN them how to chase their dreams. We need to be doing it ourself (or have achieved it) so that we can draw on that experience to really help them. My encouragement today is to DO rather than TELL. If we all gained experience in chasing our dreams, we would be able to better support each other in the chase and provide real, experienced advice in that chase. Walk the walk fam! God Bless!

I've been working really hard on a lot of backend stuff for the stream lately, and have been taking that opportunity to catch up on the #AskBroman podcast lately. And it dawned on me, that while I rep the podcast on socials and reference it in some of my content, I've never taken the moment to formally talk about how grateful I am for that particular content. We are all influenced by people and content every day, but how many of us take the time to say "Thank You" to the creators of that content? My encouragement for you today, is to take a moment, and thank someone who has had the most influence on you in your life, even if you aren't a content creator. We consume content every day, and it influences us more than we care to admit. Thank someone for their influence in your life. God bless! #AskBroman podcast link https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-broman-podcast/id1308573788?mt=2

Today I wanted to talk about building community. A lot of content creators out there talk about how they want a thriving community, and they're creating content with that focus. It's a great goal to want to build community, people are what make the world go round. But in order to build community, you have to go beyond interacting with them ONLY when you're in your stream. You need to genuinely invest in those relationships to help them grow, and that takes a lot more effort than just talking with them during streams. It's why we use Discord and I'm constantly focusing people to get to the Discord and to get involved. It's where our community grows, it's where we invest in each other and where the community stays healthy and builds relationships. That's my encouragement for you today, invest without expectation, in the people that are part of your community, outside the stream. It will pay dividends that can't have a monetary value put on them. God Bless!

Yesterday was one of those days for me. Where it felt like no one at work was interested in helping you out, but pushed against everything you were doing. Makes you just want to quit your job and pursue your dream full time. We've all had those days, but we still have those pesky adult responsibilities like putting food on the table and roof over the heads of yourself and family. So we trudge on until the day we don't have to anymore. The silver lining here is that I have a job. A good job, with good benefits. God has provided more than enough to put food in stomachs and a roof over our head, and I'm reminded that I need to be grateful for that. I could endlessly complain about how frustrating things are at work, but I need to remember that I could be in a lot worse of a place. My encouragement for you is that no matter your circumstance, know that it could be worse. And that God will provide. God bless!

You never know fully what expertise lies in your network. We all know the importance of building your network, but a lot of times we compartmentalize our networks to "business" or "friends" or "family" without realizing the potential ACROSS those networks. I just met with a good friend of mine, who I built a relationship with long before I got into streaming. When I found out he did screen printing for t-shirts, I realized he might be a good person to chat with about options for shirt and gear printing. Because I fostered that relationship as a friendship and not as a "business relationship", I am able to leverage that expertise in a non-business like manner, in the same way that he can leverage my various expertise to help him with other things. At the end of the day, you always want to build positive, strong relationships with people, without expectation of anything, because you never know when those relationships might result in something game changing in your life. God bless!

Always make sure that people can see you when they want to. Yesterday I sent out the third wave of stream team invites. It's always exciting when you get the chance to discover new creators, or get to check out content for the first time from someone you've started a relationship with. A lot of times though, you don't get to check that content out live, so you go back and watch VODs. And here in lies the problem, some live content creators haven't enabled their VODs! My encouragement for you, if you're a live content creator, is to make sure you ABSOLUTELY enable your VODs so that people discovering you "off hours" can still watch your content. You never know when someone is going to stop in and wants to get a feel for the type of content you do, whether a viewer, collaborator, sponsor or developer. Do yourself a favor and make sure the can watch you any time, any place, anywhere. God bless!

Today I want to talk about challenging yourself. It's really easy when things are working like a well oiled machine, to get comfortable and complacent. Especially as content creators, when things are working, we're seeing the growth and relationship we want to see with our community, it can be scary to think about changing anything up. But at the end of the day, you also need to be careful not to let your content get stale. It can be something as simple as changing up the game to a genre you've never done before. My encouragement to you, if you are at a place where it's been awhile since you've made a change, to start to challenge yourself as a creator. Think about ways you can improve your content, bring new experiences to your audience. When you keep things fresh, your community will stay fresh and will want to come back and support you. They will see the effort you put in and appreciate it. God bless.

Have you heard of the phrase "Try Before You Buy"? It's a phrase that guides you towards trying out things before you actually buy them so you know they fit, whatever it happens to be. I would also say that this phrase is a good way to think about dreams as well. If you say that your "dream is to do X" but you've never done X at any level, then you're dreaming about something that you don't even know if you like. My encouragement for you today, if you are a dreamer, isn't to NOT pursue your dreams. But my encouragement is to make sure you actually like the dream your pursuing. So go out there, and do it TODAY, tomorrow, and for the next few months to make sure it's a dream you truly want to pursue. Because if you spend all these cycles dreaming and then find out you hate what you've been dreaming about, you will have spent a lot of time not pursuing something you really love. God bless!

I've never done a "State of the Stream" type update on the podcast before, so I wanted to take a moment and chat about all the things that are being worked on. What you guys and gals see on stream, is only a small part of what goes on behind the scenes. It's the culmination of all the time and effort that goes into it. So for the stream, the last 3 weeks have been incredible. The amount of support both inside and outside the stream have been amazing. I've been working on a few different things on the back end, including a couple of partnerships which will have some benefits both for me and for the Legion, I've been prepping a very special project in preparation for our partner application, and have continued to enhance things from a technical perspective. All of this work is helping me to create the best content I've ever created, content I'm really proud of. And you are all to thank for that. Big things to come Legion, I appreciate you and look forward to the future! God bless!

Something, that a lot of broadcasters are struggling with is managing viewer games. It can be stressful to play with viewers, especially when you manage a queue that gets large. With a game like Fortnite, people are constantly looking for people to play with and especially look to streamers since they think streamers will carry them to victory. Here are a couple ways to set expectations. Play solos or with a set group of friends. Set the expectation that you don't play with viewers. Not the ideal option for community focused players in my opinion. The next option is to setup a follower queue in you that results. After that, implement a rank system, where your viewers have to be in the stream for a certain number of hours before they can play. And lastly, you can move the queue to outside the stream and add the extra step of asking members to be part of the Discord. This has been the most effective strategy I've found to dealing with playing with viewers. God bless!

I don't often talk about the backend, or business side, of what I do on a weekly basis, so I thought I'd take a stab at it. People look at content creation, or streaming, as the "dream job". Many times, because they only see the resulting content, they think it's as simple as hitting "Go Live". Build it and they will come sort of mentality. For every hour of content you create, there are 2 to 3 hours on the back end that make it happen. I am spending hours every week making friends in the space (networking), hanging out with other communities, updating graphics, sending emails, programming bots, building my website, helping other casters out, and other items on my list. The experience you get, is a culmination of all the things I do off screen, to make what happens on screen as best as it can be. My encouragement is to evaluate and know what you're getting into if you want to do content creation for a living. It's not just about the time spent creating content. God bless!

Today I wanted to cover something that a lot of creators are making decisions on and provide you with a breakdown of the various live streaming platforms you have a choice to make content on. I want to cover the pros and cons (from my perspective) on Twitch, Mixer, Youtube and Facebook Gaming. I'm not covering platforms like Periscope or Caffiene because I have no familiarity with them. My encouragement to you is to make sure you really evaluate what your purpose for content creation is, and then compare that against the pros and cons of each platform. That will help you make the best choice for you and for your community when it comes down to choosing where you create you content. God bless!

I was asked the other night, "When you're exhausted and not motivated, what helps you to maintain your high energy and go live?". I initially answered with coffee and Gamersupps, but after reflecting on it, I realized I probably misled them a little bit. I love what I do and I feel a sense of responsibility to deliver content to y'all on the schedule I've set. I grew up in a time when your word mattered, and if you say you're going to be live at this time on this day, or be here at a specific time, or deliver a certain objective, then it's your responsibility to do it. My encouragement for you, is to push through your exhaustion if you say you're going to do something. I'm not talking about risking your health, pushing through something like your appendix getting taken out is foolish. Take the time to recover. But the day to day exhaustion, is something that you push through if you've committed to doing something. God bless!

With all of the announcements on Twitter about people moving platforms, it can be easy to get anxious about the influx of creators and the "competition" it creates. I let it get in my head a few days ago, and felt like I was going to fall way behind with the influx of large content creators. But what I realized, is that the Mixer and Facebook platforms aren't near at viewing or creator capacity yet. And the opportunity for the platforms to continue growing from a viewer standpoint is immense. My encouragement for you, is to welcome everyone with open arms. At the end of the day, viewer habit changes, streamers burn out, things happen and things change rapidly, so the more supportive you are of community the better off you are. At the end of the day, if you're the first person to welcome someone to the platform, and you're a resource for them, without any expectation, there is a good chance that good things will result from that relationship. God bless!

No, this isn't a topic about Big Brother always watching. Well, it kind of is, but not in the menacing sense. Today I wanted to talk about the fact that as a broadcaster, you never know who is watching. At any point, someone could be in your chat, perusing your Twitter feed, or watching how you interact with others to evaluate your ability to represent them. It's important to bear that in mind as you interact with others and create content. This isn't a scare tactic, or a topic I'm covering to put fear in you or to have you constantly worry about doing something wrong. It's actually the opposite, it's encouragement for you to always put your best foot forward with whomever you engage with. It keeps you focused on positive interactions with people, and at the end of the day, could be the one interaction that changes your life. So know that someone is always watching, and that that's a good thing! God Bless!

It's important as broadcasters, and as people, to take a step back every once in awhile to self-reflect and evaluate where you're at. When you're in the day to day grind of life, it's easy to get lost and to lose focus on what truly matters. If you don't take the time look inward, you will lose your why outwardly too. So my encouragement for you today, if you're at a low spot, is to take a day off. Take some time to put away the phone and the devices, and reconnect with your significant other or your friends. Take a minute to spend some time outside and meditate. It's tough to do, as we always feel like we're falling behind, but you'll be that much better for it. And so will your community. God bless!

I wanted in this episode to cover some of the hype that has been swirling around one of the biggest conferences of the year, E3. The Electronic Entertainment Expo is one of the largest events of the year, and there are always a ton of announcements and introductions made at this event year after year. New games that are coming out, updates to hardware, new technologies and disruptors to the industry. The games I'm most looking forward to getting more information about are Anthem, The Division 2 and Battlefield 5. Anthem is probably the most exciting, as it's a brand new IP from Bioware, and combines many aspects from games like Gears of War, Warframe, Destiny and Titanfall to deliver a looter shooter experience that isn't like anything else I've seen. I'm also interested in what new VR / AR tech might drop, as well as an announcement on the new Xbox Elite controller. It's an exciting time to be a gamer and broadcaster! God bless!

Faye_Vrit wanted to know about securing yourself and your family online. There are a couple different things you can do, but unfortunately it will always be a balance between putting yourself out there to grow (and giving up some privacy in exchange) versus approaching security with common sense. Some things you should never do: put your full legal name out there, personal info like social security number, full physical address, names of family members, information around where you'll be physically traveling to, etc. These are easy things to temper and can avoid making it easy for people to put you in a dangerous situation. At the same time, as you grow your community, your celebrity will naturally grow as well. Which means that the threats will grow. And at the end of the day, you need to decide how much of your personal privacy you're willing to give up in exchange for making content and creating community. That is a decision only you can make. God bless!

In the pursuit of always being better, it's easy to get focused on creating content without taking the time to learn new skills and pursue the simplification of our setup and processes so we can make better content. If there is anything in your setup that is keeping you from doing things better, you should continue to be persistent about making sure that you optimize and eventually resolve those items. My encouragement is to be persistent, even if it means temporarily creating less content, to get better, to learn new skills. It will pay off in the long run, and at the end of the day, help you do things better and make better content. God bless!

Today I want to add on to a podcast I did a little bit ago about effective self promotion. In that podcast I talk about making sure that your link to your primary streaming site is on EVERY profile you operate on. In addition to that advice and making sure you have your link on everything, there are a few other pieces of information that are vital to have everywhere you operate online. The three pieces of information you should have in every profile, are who you are, what you do, and why you do what you do. Now, there are some profiles that may not allow for all that information (looking at you Twitter), but do your best to succinctly describe those three things. When people are perusing others online, they want to know who they're dealing with before they engage. So the clearer the picture you paint for them, the better shot you have at getting that person to meet your community. God bless!