If you create online, I hope this is helpful for you, because I've been doing this for ten years now. I've been making YouTube videos for a decade, I've been streaming since 2013, and I've actually quit completely from streaming and gaming two different times, and I've nearly quit so many more times than that. The most difficult part of being a Twitch streamer, a YouTuber, and a podcaster is knowing that you're making a meaningful contribution.
Meaningful work is what makes me feel good
What I find gives great meaning to my life is knowing that I'm doing some work that's good, that I'm helping somebody, and that I'm making a real difference. With some things you do, that's obvious. The Frontier guy came to install my mom's internet yesterday, and it was very obvious that he did something really useful. He came and set up my mom's internet, and that made a huge positive difference for us. He spent four hours of his time over there getting it working, and he did something that was truly worthwhile in that time.
For most of us, doing some kind of meaningful work is very important to being happy. You want to do meaningful work where you can see you're actually making a difference. What's challenging about creating all this stuff online is that it's difficult to see you're really making a difference. A lot of jobs give you the satisfaction of seeing that you helped somebody. If you're cooking fast food at a restaurant, you give somebody their food and you can see that your actions had a positive impact on somebody. You mow people's lawns, and you can see their grass is cut. You get a very concrete assessment of, "Oh, look, I did this, and they got that, and I feel good because of that."
What I've found is that if I want to feel good, all I need to do is help and serve others. When I serve others, when I help others, I naturally feel good. And it's when I'm not helping others that I don't feel good. When I'm just focusing on helping myself, that's when I don't feel good. That's been the biggest difficulty with streaming. It's about that validation, because there are chat messages, but what if nobody's chatting?
Why defining success by money and views is a trap
What a lot of us who create and stream do is define our success by money and views. The problem with doing that is that if you're not getting money and you're not getting views, which most streamers are not, then the easy thing you can look at is that you're not doing anything useful. That's what's difficult with streaming. You basically feel like you need to get money and get views to rationalize that what you're doing is worth doing. Meanwhile, most streamers are not getting money and are not getting views, and most YouTubers are not getting money and not getting views either. This makes it incredibly difficult.
What will happen, if you're like me, is that there will be this initial burst of euphoria where you get really excited. "Yeah, I'm going to be a YouTuber. I'm going to be a podcaster." Whatever you get excited about, there will be this initial burst of euphoria. And then there'll be kind of a plateau, where you're trying to be positive and tell yourself that everything's fine. And then you hit the dysphoria. So you get all excited, "I'm going to make a YouTube channel, I'm going to stream." Then you get the plateau: "Why am I not getting views? Why aren't that many people watching?" And then the dysphoria comes in: "Man, why am I wasting my time with this? This is totally useless. People don't even care about my stream."
That's what happened to me. I quit streaming twice when that dysphoria kicked in. When it came in and left me thinking, "Why am I doing this? What's the point of my stream?", I just quit. And the worst thing to do if you're a content creator is quit, because you lose so much when you quit. You just get absolutely punished when you quit. So that's why I've quit twice. But I didn't have anything better to do, fortunately. I didn't have any better ideas, anything I could do instead of streaming, and thankfully that's the only reason I'm still here.
The morning I almost quit again
I was struggling with this again this very morning. "Why even do my stream? What's the point of doing my stream?" It can come out another way, too: "There's something much better I should be doing. Instead of streaming, I ought to do some real work. I should get a real job instead of doing a live stream." That's what happens to a lot of people. Most Twitch streamers quit streaming. Most YouTubers quit uploading videos. Most creators quit, because it's difficult.
That's why you want to make sure, if you're doing this, that you look at why you want to do it. Why do you want to be a Twitch streamer? Why do you want to be a YouTuber? It can be much better, if you want to do this, to have another source of income. You need to make sure you've got another source of income and that you've got validation in other areas of your life. My wife and kids give me a ton of validation. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. In my experience, some of this is just part of life. Someone in my community mentioned that your 30s come with confusion, and I think that's fairly common, so this might be something you deal with even outside of being a Twitch streamer, YouTuber, or podcaster.
Try it, but protect the rest of your life
What's more pertinent, if you decide you want to be a full-time creator like me, is that it will be incredibly tempting to do something else. Being a Twitch streamer or YouTuber can be a good learning opportunity. It definitely can. But it can also be a huge waste of time and money. I've seen so many streamers get all set up, get all excited, and then put a ton of time and energy and money into their stream. They take time away from their family, their spouse, their friends. They go all in on their live stream and neglect every other area of their life. And then they quit. And it looks so pointless. Why would you waste all this time and energy and money?
The only reason that's valuable is the learning opportunity. There are some great lessons you can learn by being a streamer. It's challenging, and it's good to challenge yourself. I encourage challenging oneself as much as possible. So overall I think it's definitely a good thing to try being a streamer, but put as little money into it as possible if you don't have a really compelling why. For me, for better or worse, there's just nothing else better I can find to do with myself. This last year has been a challenge to myself, and I literally have no better ideas.
This morning I was thinking I should just do something real. I should help people, I should be a carpenter or something, I should get a real job and stop screwing around streaming. But I want to give the human collective the best I have to offer. I want this body to help other people have the best lives they can have, and I don't see anything better I can offer to the collective than my live stream. So I'm super grateful I didn't quit my stream again.
Digging deep to find your why
If you've had a hard time with this as a creator, it comes down to digging deep to figure out why you're here, why you're doing what you're doing, what your life means, and what the purpose of your life is. Asking and digging into all these questions is really valuable and really productive. It's made a world of difference for me to dig into these questions, carefully analyze my life, and think about why I'm doing what I'm doing. If you want to go deeper on this, I've shared a lot more of what's worked for me in my YouTube Coaching playlist, and the best way to work through it together today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we help each other stay in the game.
I'm so glad I didn't quit my stream again, because it was so close, and it's been such an amazing journey being a streamer. Often in life we get tempted to quit when we're in exactly the right position. Right when things are going well is when we'll be most tempted to quit. So if you're a content creator, I hope this helps.