Bearded Nova content journey so far

Ever wrestled with the symphony of a screaming alarm and a toddler's early morning call to action? Well, join me as we tackle the trials of parenting while chasing our digital dreams in the latest Dad Mode podcast, featuring the one and only Bearded Nova. Together, we'll unpack the seasonal impacts on our daily hustle, and Nova shares his riveting transformation from a laid-back gamer to a structured content creator. Whether you're a fellow parent trying to squeeze gaming into nap times or a night owl aiming to turn those streams into dreams, our candid conversation is filled with relatable moments and valuable insights.

From the serene countryside to the electrifying world of Twitch, Bearded Nova recounts his streaming journey that began on the quiet frontiers of Facebook. As we wander through the bustling streets of online communities, we'll uncover the magic of raids, the progression of streaming setups, and the wonders of technological advancements like NDI that can take your content to the next level. For those curious about the steps it takes to transition from casual play to live broadcasting, this heart-to-heart is your behind-the-scenes pass to the dedication it takes to share your gaming world.

Let's face it, the tightrope walk between gaming, streaming, and family life is no circus act—it's the reality for many content creators like Nova and myself. In this episode, we get real about the juggle (and occasional struggle) of producing fresh content for TikTok and Twitch while staying true to the joy of gaming. We even dig into the nitty-gritty of streaming resolutions and the commitment necessary to engage with your online tribe and keep the content flowing. So, grab your headphones and a cup of your favorite brew; it's time to explore the rewarding, albeit demanding, adventure of content creation through the eyes of those who live it every day.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Stand by, stand by Switching from Human Mode to Dad Mode, initializing Sequence in 3, 2, 1. This is Dad Mode, the podcast where we navigate the chaotic realms of parenting, gaming, content creation, work and hell, just life in general. We're diving into the challenges of raising kids in the digital age, from social media madness to navigating the gaming landscape. We're talking about it all, especially from a dad's perspective. Whether it's conquering the littest game, creating content that's more than just a hobby, or just trying to keep up with the ever-changing tech landscape, we're right there with you. We want to help you navigate this wild journey of parenthood and modern life, from balancing family time to managing your career and still squeezing in some gaming and content creation. It's all about fun, some dad wisdom and a whole lot of dad mode. Now your hosts Bearded Nova and more.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Welcome back to Dad Mode. Today we're going to learn a little bit about Bearded Nova and his journey in content creation and learn all about it, and maybe you guys can learn something from what he has. I don't like that at all. I don't know where I was going with that. Welcome back to Down the Rabbit Hole. It's early.

Speaker 3: 1:48

This is what happens when we do it in the morning for you.

Speaker 2: 1:54

I'm up at this time and I'm usually at this point. I'm on the bus heading to work and I'm usually just about there at this point, but I'm not in a meeting this early. I'm at work, but I'm not present mentally. Welcome back to Dad Mode. Today we're going to be talking with Bearded Nova and asking all about his content creation and streaming journey. Bearded, how are you doing? I'm doing good.

Speaker 3: 2:22

I'm doing good. I was talking a little bit before we spun around our recording song today. So you know morning for you, evening for me.

Speaker 3: 2:32

Yes, it's fair, and I'm struggling a little bit this morning because I'm not used to doing this in the morning I was thinking this as well today At some point it's fine because I'm always in singlets or t-shirts to doing this, because it's summer here, obviously, and it's a million degrees and you're a jumpers up in my mind in the 40s, because it's winter. We're going to have a complete costume change at some point in this, where it was.

Speaker 2: 3:02

Yep, it's actually getting warmer, for like it's February, and next week is supposed to be like in the 50s Fahrenheit here, and for me that's really warm. We're used to blizzards still at this time of the year. I don't know it's strange.

Speaker 3: 3:21

Yeah, I really like that. 10 degrees, that's like this cold as it gets.

Speaker 2: 3:28

For us. That's like we're going to go on a short in that weather. We're like, oh my God, it's a heat wave.

Speaker 3: 3:34

Oh, I mean, I'm not alone. It does get lower than that, but not that much lower, Like that's a pretty average lower.

Speaker 2: 3:43

The iron average low. That's crazy. That's crazy, I mean because I've always lived in this climate where, you know, it's not like frigid, like it doesn't usually get. The iron usually goes below zero Fahrenheit, where I am Not usually, but like the iron expected to get above you know, three degrees above that in the winter. So this is crazy. It's like 50 degrees warmer than it usually. Okay, that's fair, I get that Anyway. Anyway, all right, so let's talk about your streaming career, the iron. Now. You've been streaming for a couple of years, couple of years now it just has to be four years.

Speaker 3: 4:25

I've kind of lost track already how long it's been. I'd say four years. First two years, though maybe two and a half years, wasn't very serious. Two, let's say first two years wasn't very serious. The third year I started taking it a little bit more serious. And then the previous say yeah, actually yeah. The previous year. Now I took it on completely seriously, though it was a real change on how the iron the iron Even a year and a half was. It took a complete change and I took it really serious. That's when TikTok and WeMap basically is when I started brand picking it up more.

Speaker 2: 5:11

Yeah, the iron. So when you got into it, the iron, the iron was why did you get into it? Why did you decide it was something you wanted to try out?

Speaker 3: 5:20

So we lived in rural, very out of town, never had visitors at our place for the eight, seven years we lived there, never had actually visitors coming over to our house, maybe twice. Yeah, and back when I was living in the city before I met my wife, I used to go and hang out with friends on like Friday night, saturday night we'd go hang out in a lounge and play video games, order pizza, order wings and etc. Just talk, have a good time. The irony of the move it away I missed that. I didn't have the experience of playing video games and sharing it with other people, and I was finding that I was up late and I was playing video games by myself and I thought, well, let's just put that streaming out there so I might interact with me. That gives me that social interaction that I was wanting while playing video games.

Speaker 3: 6:11

I actually started on Facebook too. Yeah, that was just like my general Facebook profile. It wasn't even like. It was simple, just to set up, click, go. Yeah, no overlays, no, screw, nothing fancy. There's a screen, there's a camera. Off, I went.

Speaker 2: 6:35

So you started on Facebook? Did you go right from there to Twitch?

Speaker 3: 6:39

Yeah, straight from there, from Twitch. So I think I maybe did about seven or so streams on Facebook. It was a real basic thing. You just had friends and family pop by and hang out for a few seconds and that and I was like this is not the place to actually do this. So I moved over to Twitch. The iron actually wasn't the iron, Probably.

Speaker 3: 7:04

As I said, that third year I changed games up a little bit. I started playing Apex Seriously and I started meeting a whole lot of US creators and then I started getting rating and backwards and forth. So that's when I started realizing that it's good to interact with other creators, because I actually never went on Twitch to watch anyone. So me streaming was my whole entry point to Twitch in general. It wasn't until a guy rated me and then I'm like hold on. I met some people there and then I started rating other people and vice versa. That I actually was like this is fun, I actually enjoyed this. I'm meeting people, this is something I can do and I started putting in that little bit more seriousness the cameras, the lights, etc. That's when I started taking it serious.

Speaker 2: 7:57

And at what time? At what point during this part, did you decide that you need to have 400 cameras and all of the other gadgets and stuff that you? It wasn't until we met.

Speaker 3: 8:09

I started coming. Well, I always buying stuff that was the thing. I was always buying bits and pieces had a crappy Logitech C 720 or something, the 720p basic Logitech camera. This was my first one. Actually, it was a laptop camera at first, then it went to that. Then I brought a cheap GoPro, thinking I could get a better quality than the Logitech camera. Turned out Not really. And then the C920 that everyone has and just buying and buying. I never got rid of the other stuff and it wasn't until later on when I started realizing I had all this gear. I might as well just use it for more people, more cameras, more angles. Every time I looked at a camera I'm like, well, it's just sitting there in a drawer, what am I going to do with it? At the moment, I know there's a camera right there in the background. Then I plan to do something with that. I haven't done that yet, right.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Now you made at one point you made really good use of all those cameras because you did a 24 hour stream.

Speaker 3: 9:17

Yeah, I did one sub-a-phone. I've done one sub-a-phone in time streaming and that was testing how I could get away with using so many cameras, and in a technical sense I actually was. It was done with, I want to say, three computers I needed for that stream. It wasn't just cameras. So I actually took my son's computer and set that up in the kitchen with another monitor and a microphone, and that was when the C920 was. Then I had a laptop in the lounge room, sit down so I could watch TV, slash, eat my food you can have a laptop just sitting on the coffee table looking at me.

Speaker 3: 10:00

And then I used a droid camera with one of my old Android phones on a little mobile tripod gimbal thing that I could pick up and then take with me go outside, do what I wanted to do outside, etc. Come back in, like if I needed to move anywhere. That's all I had, and I think I had commands, I think at one stage, so chat could change the thing. No, or maybe the command was just for me, I can't remember. I did set up commands, though, to change the camera inside the scene, so if I wanted to walk from one room to another, it would, just I could push a button. By the time it transitioned I was in the next room Right.

Speaker 2: 10:42

How did you get everything piped into like one, the one feed, like the other machines?

Speaker 3: 10:49

And what was it? And I think what the plugins called NDI. So I'd set up OBS on the laptop and now the computer as an NDI output, and then I was just sourcing that input back on the main computer.

Speaker 2: 11:10

That's very cool. It reminds me of the guy who you always show me that does these crazy subathons.

Speaker 3: 11:15

Astuly.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Yeah, it reminds me of something like that where it's all encompassing, very cool.

Speaker 3: 11:24

Yeah, that's actually where the idea came from. Oh is it? Yeah, because he had done a subathon. They went through and he was sleeping in it as well, and it went for a few days and he didn't have guests at time but he had, like you, go and have dinner with his wife every night, et cetera, but still played games and then have to sleep. You know, the camera would just be playing while he was sleeping. I'm like, well, I need to, I'm going to do a subathon. I want to be able to live my life. I don't want to do the traditional subathon that people do when they just sit there at their desk in order to breathe, and I'm like I'm going to do the same, this view for 72, 48, you know, whatever how many hours they're streaming. That just seemed bored. I wanted to be comfortable, you know.

Speaker 2: 12:08

Yep, yep. So you mainly were gaming on stream? Yeah, I've noticed, so I know. Now you just sponsored streams too. Yeah, and the ferry was very cool. Yep, how did you like sponsor streams in? And I'm curious people might be interested in knowing, like, how do you even get a sponsor stream? Yep, yep.

Speaker 3: 12:31

Once the streams came Blem. So, as we talked about, I'm mainly focused on games and you've got your sponsor streams inside your stream elements and let's see other one stream labs both of them. You should know that you're sponsored by them. Well, we're done with gigs for them and you get those kids. But I never actually Did any of them. I never. I never liked the look of it. And it wasn't till I was hunting for free games.

Speaker 3: 13:03

I was looking at how, how people get CD keys in that and another creator put me on to a website that was Keymailer and you could apply for games and you connected all your socials that looked at how you were average viewers etc on a platform and then you would have eligibility To apply for games and then the developer could go yeah, I'll give you a key, I won't give you keys. And it wasn't until I found another site lurk it that did the same thing, but they actually showed you what they were looking for. They would say you need an average of 10 viewers, 20 viewers, five years To get a key to be eligible and inside that they actually had a paid Version where they would do sponsor streams. So you'd also do the game, but you'd have a Pitch, a new idea, and so do a stream for $10 an hour or something like that, and Then the developer would say yes or no, or may come back with another offer, and then you go from there. So that was that's how I did sponsored game, sure.

Speaker 2: 14:15

And how did those? Music was really like a lot of. Did you have like any goals you had to hit or you just kind of out there and did your thing.

Speaker 3: 14:21

No, most of them was just do you think? Put yeah, stream for two hours, stream for half an hour. I want you to show this. That was it. That was that's all they wanted. At the end of the day, you just link your board To show that you had done X. It wasn't into Stuntfest, which is now called jet Jet something. They changed the name just start just as a god release that it was a Paid game.

Speaker 3: 14:53

I thought that was gonna be cool, usual, I'll play this game. And then the developer actually reached out and said, hey, we want to do something different. And I, you know, within an hour, was in a discord meeting with their public relations person and also the community manager, which, oddly enough, was Whisty you didn't interview of him. It was another creator met on tiktok. Actually was the community manager in a odd, odd world that we bred into there and I ended up getting paid to stream on their socials Because they wanted to do For steamfest. It was there, were showing off their indie games, so they they had a time slot, they had to do so many streams. Twisty was doing some, but he couldn't do particular hours. So like, hey, will you Stream for us on this? I actually didn't. You know. That's which they YouTube, steam, facebook and something else. All in one hit was a. It was cool Then they're. You know I think I did you streams for a month that I just kept doing a couple of streams here and there whenever they needed help.

Speaker 2: 16:02

That's cool. I was very cool. Um, I started that. So at some point you also decided to start doing a Gaming news Podcast. Yes, eyes on, yeah. So what kind of led to you doing that and what was, what was your Motivation behind that?

Speaker 3: 16:24

that was changing, changing it up. I wanted to try and do more just chatting sections in my stream, but I couldn't figure out a way how I wanted to do it rather than just sit around waiting for people. Yeah, I didn't like the idea of starting my stream because of the time I streamed and Then sitting there waiting because they say, you know, do just chatting for a while, then move into whatever you're doing. I can sit there for half an hour and nothing really was happening. So I was like I need to figure out how I can incorporate this into my stream.

Speaker 3: 16:59

And that was when I zone came and came in, which was a short news for TikTok, very short 30-second headlines, brief brief overviews of news in the gaming industry, and then I will put that into an hour long podcast that was Recorded live on Twitch as one of my three streams a week. So that was my just chatting Stream basically, and it was purely just to mix up my content. How I was doing content, I think I did a couple of Sponsored streams with PC game. I want to say one of the one of the gaming public is, as a content creator, just covering different events to future games, first for summer and winter.

Speaker 2: 17:43

You know so. So you've done live streaming. You've done, you know, the daily kind of news podcast. You've done a regular podcast like that. You're obviously doing this podcast. Just what format do you? What format do you like the best? Like the daily, the Streaming, the podcast thing?

Speaker 3: 18:02

I can. This part, this, this format's the best for us now. That's just time-wise, it's a lot less stress we talked about it gets in the past. It's way more easier on us. Entire management it's like cool, I can, I don't need to do this by set. I've got, you know, we've got times that we have to have things done by, obviously, but it's not done within 24 hours. You know, trying to trying to make you know three times seven, yet Three tick tocks a day. It can be hard. It can be hard and there's people that do that. That's they know they'll record, you know, all their tick tocks for a week over, like four hours on a Sunday or something. That's hard to like it. Yeah, we got tick tocks, we got the shorts, but I was taking care of that and how. I couldn't. Ai couldn't do what.

Speaker 3: 19:04

Why needed for tick tock for my own personal channel, a Podcast? It's brilliant, but for gaming it's it's, unless you're playing some of the big ones that actually have AI. I think you fought night to call the GDs. You can actually use AI to scan your games for your kills or whatever, but it's not gonna find the good content in either. You know what I mean. That's all about marking and pulling that from Twitch. And if you didn't mark it, then you got to skim through the void and then maybe you didn't actually have any really great moments. So, crack, now I've got to come up with something original. Then you know it's. It's a lot. This is way easier, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:42

I Definitely agree. Now you haven't been streaming too much as of Lee, is it something that you think you want to do more on? I do, I do.

Speaker 3: 19:52

I do. I do want to stream again because that was my time to game, that I really game anymore. That being said, the last Two weeks I've gained one night just with friends, but not streaming. But every time I've hopped that that computer to and it is this time of night I'm sitting down the computer and I'm like cool and play cut you know games with mates for a few hours. The first thing that goes in my head is launch OBS, click life. But that's what I want to do, but I just haven't done it yet and I think that's where I will all start streaming that one night a week that I am gaming and then seeing where that comes from.

Speaker 3: 20:38

I think I I Like the game that I'm playing at the moment, but it's hard to stream at the same time the yes and no, especially streaming with you're playing with a group. It's hard to talk to twitch plus talk to the group plus pay attention to the game. I guess it's what I did. Um, that'd be better. I I've talked to you about scar and VR. We saw that. You know the 300 mods that I've installed still haven't played it. But that's that's. You know, that's a possibility. I think that would be a great series actually.

Speaker 2: 21:15

I Think it would. I really do think it would. Um it, I really feel you on, like the gaming and having that default Reaction of just going to stream, because I've been streaming gaming a little bit with some friends off line lately, which I don't do a lot of. I do a lot of souls, yeah. So every time I sit down in game I'm like I should stream this. I don't like the death by default.

Speaker 3: 21:37

That's exactly right, and I'm actually One of the guys that's I've been playing games with. He's actually started getting into streaming it. Part of me actually wants to. Let's just like Unload on him everything I know, because I know he's okay, you're doing it incorrectly, he's. You know he's not even he's not affiliate. He's Uh grinding for affiliate, but you know he's streaming at 1080p.

Speaker 3: 22:03

Well, no, no, no. Yeah, don't don't do that. I know it looks great, but you can't do that. You know your viewers can't um Things that I didn't know when I started streaming. You know, I mean, I did the same thing, but Giving him advice on hate, hold off doing that until you hit this goal. Then you can do this, because your viewers you know you, this is your viewers that you got now. Hey, there's only so many people that can watch a 1080 60 stream at this. Kill a bit Right, it said. If they don't have the internet connection, they're not gonna watch you. I haven't done that to him yet, but that's that's what I want to do at the same time is just, I gotta help you.

Speaker 2: 22:41

Yep, yeah, because there's a lot to learn and you know it's, it's when new people start. They think that thing right, they think that they have to do this.

Speaker 3: 22:48

You know I gotta, I gotta go out and buy a million. You know different devices and the best of everything. I need to buy the best of everything. This is always a it's a workaround.

Speaker 2: 23:03

We should probably do an episode sometime just on the gear stuff Get the gear you really need and what you don't. But anyway, all right. Um, so we were talking about content, you know, in the streaming and in gaming and wanting stream At some point. For me, um, it became all about content.

Speaker 3: 23:21

What about you like, guess, you have a period of time where, like you weren't even like a human, you were just like a content creation machine, like that's all you saw you wake up, you go to work and then you know, half the time I was trying to record tiktoks in the morning before work and then think about tiktoks and content walls.

Speaker 3: 23:37

I'm late from work but at the same time I wanted to check on my socials, making sure I replied to comments and putting out a tweet. That was before twitter, you know, did scheduling, which was great, but Trying to keep everything without scheduling and on top of it was a lot, because it's just wake up, work, come home, content, dinner, content, family, sleep, strict. It was a robot. I was a robot, I know, looking at how much my wife hated it and how much she mentioned all the time that she hated how invested I was getting into it. Um, yeah, and I would try and explain that to her like, hey, no, no, this is why you looking at it now. Yeah, it was wrong, it was bad. You know I'm lucky I still have a wife.

Speaker 2: 24:33

I, you know, I, I a thousand percent agree with that, and my wife went, a thousand percent agree, yes, with on my side, though it's it's difficult because you get really into it. I don't know why it's so easy to get addicted to, but you know, I think that personality like yours in mind, you just it just becomes, um, something that we feel like we have to do. You know, um, so what kind of got you past that point? Because, like you, you're not streaming as much now, or you haven't seen in a little while, like, was there a point where you're like I'm gonna, I just gonna stop doing this so much?

Speaker 3: 25:12

or but it partly started, uh, with depression. I started getting a bit depressed with work and how work was going and actually I didn't noticed it. It flew into content creation. So, while real happy at work and everyone was great, I'm doing 120 posts, you know, a month, etc. Like just hidden everything that I need to do, content out the arse. That's when I started bringing on, you know, eyes on. Everything was going and then I kept eyes like going but everything else started to dip off as I wasn't happy at work and I think work called me and, um, that was around time when I quit, before I quit, and I said, look, I'm not happy with this. They turned around so well, we're not happy with you.

Speaker 3: 26:03

They actually tried getting me in trouble for tiktok, saying you know you can't do this. I think there was a tiktok where there was a logo of the business somewhere on my computer screen or something and no one would have picked it up on it, to be honest. Or I was in a workshop. They didn't have the work logo but they could tell from the top just the checker pack in that that was a work shirt, or you're sitting in your car, etc. I'm like, well, I know, you know this is done at six o'clock in the afternoon, it's not During work time. Yes, I'm still in the work hours closed, like we said. You know, I finished working and then you straight into it. But they had done that and then I it's like, okay, crap, okay, looking at my analytics Because you, obviously, when you're getting heavily involved, you're looking at analytics I pull up my analytics.

Speaker 3: 26:53

The more depressed I got with work, I could actually see where my decline in hatred for work and my decline with Concentration happened. At the same time. They both Tape it off, like you know, 120, 90, 60, 30, 15, 15 and I'm like, hmm, and I actually took that to work. I like I went into the, the general manager and my manager sat down and would like you know, because we had this talk about that being a priority over my own work and I went away thinking, no, that's not the case. And then I've looked at these analytics. I came in the next day with my analytics into a meeting. I'm like you want to say there was work. No, work has caused my, my analyze, my numbers to drop. This is where I'm now happy. This is what's happening. This is when I am happy and right. So that happened.

Speaker 3: 27:44

I got changed work. So it was a little bit folksome, changing work again, um, still keeping eyes on gaming going. And then I had to boot Um wife was pregnant. That was fine, I still was person for you through, you know, dealing with all that wife moved. They came early, never came back to it. That was Pulled apart. The stream, you know, the setup at all got pulled apart. It took weeks to to put it all back together and then I just then I didn't have the time to actually come on and click live, so everything just Put on the back burner.

Speaker 2: 28:26

Put on the back, do you? I'm sure there are aspects of it that you you miss and you talked about you. Every now and then you want to kind of get back into streaming a little bit more. Put on the back. Do you see yourself ever getting to the point where you're doing as much as you were doing before now, like?

Speaker 3: 28:43

only enough. Only if I won, like the water. You know you, you win the lotto and my wife actually said that the other night. I almost fell off the chair. It's off, we win the lotto. You know I'm not. She goes, I'm not working, I can stay at home with the baby full time. I'm like, yeah, that's cool. So I know I'd have to. I would have to do some work to keep myself happy. I couldn't just sit at home, she was, you could just do your streaming full-time. Put on the back. Put on the back, what's that? My wife? Where did she, was asked. She was possessed for a second.

Speaker 2: 29:20

Put on the back and all right. So one part I didn't really touch too much on is like the social media stuff. Now you've mentioned how you're doing a posting and I know that you got really into like the quote-unquote, the way you're supposed to do things right, posting everywhere and all this stuff. So what do you find that was more disruptive? The actual streaming schedule or Doing all this stuff outside it, like with with posting on social media and responding to all that stuff?

Speaker 3: 29:49

Put on the back was more the social media stuff, but then I'm new, that was more important to grow the stream. So then it was okay, I got to do the social media stuff more than I can stream, and that's I never. It never took away anything but Put on the back times for a while. I just don't want to stream tonight, I just want to sit there, need to record this, I want to edit this, etc. I want to make graphics look something that that happened, but Put on the back. Then I got a little bit smarter as well. Well, obviously, what? And I just use my string, put on the back, don't need so you don't need to record on your computer the unload the phone From twitch and then just cut the crap out of it.

Speaker 3: 30:36

But there's your content for the week. If you can, if you're doing you know three, three hour streams that's nine hours of raw footage. If you cannot get you know 2030 clips from nine hours, then you probably shouldn't be streaming. Let me just go to put it out there. You probably shouldn't be streaming. Yep, put on the back. You know working that a little bit smarter, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:06

And so I know you also did YouTube as well. Little bit, no much, no much. What. How did you like? The process of making Put on the back goes versus streaming, versus podcasting. I did editing videos.

Speaker 3: 31:22

I did what you do it all the time. Now I know I do it all the time, but I it was the daunting process of trying to learn editing probably yeah, that you can watch them does and YouTube videos and stuff and it's still didn't help me at all. It actually wasn't until I got into after effects and wanting to make stuff for my overlays and twitch that I was playing around and you got it. You got a key stuff, key frames and that and add effects that I'm like Okay, that's how key frames work. This is how I add different effects. I'm like hold on, this is exactly the same as how you do it in Premiere over. So then I took editing way more serious and easy because I finally get it. I finally understand what I need to do, put on the back to make content and how to edit. There wasn't such a, you know, sit down and look at a screen for six hours trying to edit something. Then I could realize I could edit fast and I could make fix.

Speaker 2: 32:27

Yeah, put on the back. When you were kind of at the point where you were the most engaged in in Streaming content creation, did you ever think Put on the back like a look and say, hey, I could actually make a career out of this?

Speaker 3: 32:43

No, put on the back. I Put on the back the way we all want to Do that. Yeah, there's this party you can't say no, there is a party that would love to do, because it's something that makes you more happy than the job that you can't really doing usually. In the case Put on the back, I was very realistic with In replacing my income. You know, I've got a big family, I got I think it's a need my income to support them and that was not something that you know and unless I'm in that top 1%, I'm not, I'm not hitting those numbers. Put on the back. For me to Get to that point I Realistically it's like when the water You've got to have that moment where you go super viral. Really nowadays is the only way to really Get places is to get lucky with something super viral to send you on that momentum to go further. Put on the back, put on the back.

Speaker 3: 33:48

And then For me it was the time, but when I was streaming we talked about that. You know we both stream that those hours for me, where I am, it's a way less dense amount of people actually available to watch my stream. Yeah, I'm very, very stuck to a local time. Well, honestly, I feel like if I was on your side over here might be faster and easier to grow, because you know there's so many still people still around at that time. For Australia you know the amount of people watching in Australia, new Zealand, at 10 o'clock at night for a week is not that much at all and I can say that because I see people do videos about how they refresh their stream to get transcoding.

Speaker 3: 34:46

Transcoding is sometimes you, apparently, if you're affiliate, you don't get transcoding. Never had that issue, never had that issue down here. It's always just been fine. And for me, you know, then I'd have to relook at more into cat cool. What's what is peak time? Where is peak time in the world? You know that's why Eastern Europe, basically, they just swizzle. In Sweden I pitched myself in a demographic in an area already like I didn't want to change again. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2: 35:29

What's something that you wish you had done differently during that period of time that you didn't. Maybe you didn't know it and you say, hey, if I had done a little more of this, a little less of that.

Speaker 3: 35:40

I would always say getting into the social media site, getting into shorts, probably building a present in shorts way before streaming. I would do that instead and, to be honest, it's when I get more back into this outside of just download, it will be that that is the way I'm coming back into. It is going to be doing TikToks, posting to YouTube shorts like that. When that starts ramping up, then you're going to probably start seeing more strings of me and that's what I tell anyone to do. Just get into that. You know, build up a couple of photos.

Speaker 3: 36:18

There's people I know on TikTok that I'm still, you know, way past them and they're going hard at TikTok. Nowadays I do nothing and I still have more followers than you know other people that I know and that's where you can build. You build that big presence so you can then go hey look, I'm going to start streaming on Twitch. People are following. People will come over. They want to see you live. You know there are people on my TikTok when I have done TikTok lives that have actually said I love it when I can catch you on TikTok live, but I'm never available when you stream on Twitch. I've had that, as you know, people that were just healing me on TikTok live. But I wanted to meet me on Twitch but couldn't Yep.

Speaker 2: 37:05

Last question for you what advice would you give to anyone who's thinking of getting into content creation or streaming Like? What kind of thing should they think of before they get started? How?

Speaker 3: 37:16

does it affect your loss? Now you know probably what's your priority, what's your goal. How does that affect how you currently live? This is probably my biggest one is work that out. Is it going to impact XYZ, sleep, muddy relationships? That's the first thing I would figure out First, and then second, don't blow your money Unless you know, unless you got a great job and you got the great disposable income. Sure by the, you know the Canon mirrorless, the Sony mirrorless, you know the stupid expensive mics, multiple stream decks, monitor, studio lights, etc. You can do all that stuff. If you don't have that money, don't spend it because it's not going to help you. It's really not going to help you increase your viewers or quality in any way. Just use what you can within your budget and slowly invest back into it.

Speaker 3: 38:19

I'll add and say one thing I didn't actually buy a stream deck for ages. I used my mobile, the mobile stream deck app, for a long time because I did want a stream deck. I couldn't justify it. It wasn't actually until I got my first big donation on Twitch, which was 500. One of you gave me 500. Yeah, blew my mind. I think I got that before I got a Twitch payout. Was that early as an affiliate. Well, obviously I got Twitch payout. No, they didn't do it through Twitch, they did through stream elements. So it was straight into my PayPal without having to wait the 90 days at the time of Twitch. That's when I actually ran out and bought a stream deck. But then I used both a stream deck and my phone. Didn't really help All right bearded.

Speaker 2: 39:14

That was great. If you want to catch more bearded, you can check the description of this. You can find all his links to all his socials there and we'll catch you next time on that note.

Speaker 1: 39:26

You've been listening to Dad Mode. Our passion is navigating this wild journey of parenthood and modern life, from balancing family time to managing your career and still squeezing in some gaming and content creation. And no matter what the women say, they will never be able to pry the controller out of our cold dead hands. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the show. If you did find us on Twitter, TikTok and YouTube at Dad Mode Podcast, and we can be found on every podcast site at Dad Mode Podcast. Y'all be cool. See you next time.