My start up business 6 month review

When I sat down and finally decided that I was going to do something about starting a YouTube channel, I made the conscious choice to treat it like a business.  More than a job, because that's just what you do to pay the bills; this would be treated like a start up business.  Now, that doesn't mean I started doing things with making money as my top priority, which is what people generally think of when someone starts a business.  Making money off of my YouTube channel has been the farthest thing from my mind.  And it's something I'm not even remotely interested in at this time.  I was looking at taking this seriously and handling it professionally and in a timely fashion.

I very easily could have said that I was going to start doing YouTube as a hobby.  You know, "I'll post a video whenever I feel like it".  I didn't want to do that.  I also didn't want to make promises that I couldn't keep.  I was going to get serious about this, but I was also going to have fun with it.

So, before I even started I sat down and a made a plan.  It was a 3 pronged attack.  I didn't put this plan together on a whim.  I actually thought about it for several weeks before I committed anything to paper.  I'm very careful about things.  Especially setting goals . . . and starting a business.

Prong #1 of my attack was titled: Physical/Equipment/Hardware.

I sat down and started to make a list of all the physical things I would need in order to start capture videos for YouTube.  This part of the plan was the easiest and the one that I was the most familiar with and most ready to execute immediately without too much research and preparation.  Before I could even start to capture videos I needed the equipment to do so.  I already had the consoles to play games on and capture from, but I needed a capture devise.  In my research of capture devises I settled on the Elgato HD 60.  The only problem with that was that I also needed to get a new TV (one that had HDMI inputs) and a new computer.  These were extra expenses I probably wouldn't have thought of if I had just jumped into this without a plan.

Getting a new TV and laptop can get expensive.  And it was.  But the benefits for things beyond capturing were worth it.  But I had to plan ahead and make sure I had the money to get the items I wanted.  But also to get the best that I could afford.  Is there better out there?  Absolutely.  Could I have afforded them?  Nope.  What I got has been very good, although storage space on my laptop is sometimes lacking.  File management is an almost weekly thing.  External hard drives are on option, but I'm back to saving up for the things I want.  This is a business.  I'm trying to be responsible.

Once I had all my equipment in place I could start working on prong #2.  Software/Social media.

The hardware is great but it needs software to help it run and work.  Same goes with starting a YouTube business.  I had to do a lot of research when it came to this part of my plan.  Software is so much more selective according to personal taste and function that it gets overwhelming to me at times on picking a specific program to do a specific thing.  With the extra expense of a new TV and computer I didn't have the money to get some of the software that I really wanted to get.  I still don't have the funds but I'm saving up for them and hopefully I'll get able to get them soon.

One of the things I wanted to get was video editing software.  Unfortunately with no funds left for development I had to settle with what I could get for free.  That was Movie Maker software that came free with my laptop.  If you've been watching my channel since the beginning you'll know that I was having a lot of audio problems while I was recording.  I bought, tried and returned several microphones before I finally settled (somewhat unhappily at the time) on using Audacity to record audio knowing I'll just have to spend extra time syncing up the audio and video file before editing.  Not the solution I was hoping for, but I had to make it work.

I think I have.  But I still have lots to learn.  I've tried to spend some time learning Audacity and Movie Maker so I know what I'm doing and hopefully learn to do it better all the time.  It hasn't been easy.  I did searches for "how to" videos online and most of them haven't shown me anything that I hadn't already figured out for myself on my own.  I know there's still a lot I don't understand and/or use that I could, but I'm getting there.

But no all of prong #2 is software related.  I have a Twitter account.  I've had one since 2009.  But I really wasn't using it.  No particular reason either.  I just didn't think about it when I wanted to say something.  That was what this blog was for.  I followed a bunch of people (that list grows and shrinks as I find new people and/or drop people I don't like anymore).  I just never been one to communicate in 140 characters or less.  I'm not an emoji child.

Starting my attack on prong #2 meant I needed to get on Twitter more and use it.  This has probably been the hardest part for me.  I'm not an extrovert by nature.  I'm not a complete introvert either.  I can be very extroverted but usually only with my close friends.  With strangers it's much scary.  And I've have to keep everything within that 140 character limit.  If you've read this blog at any time you know I can be a bit wordy at times (this time included).  I like being able to explain myself.  My thoughts and ideas are brief so why should my communication be as well?  I think I'm falling down on the job as far as this is concerned.  I'm getting better.  But I'm not where I want to be at this time.

The other part of the "social media" aspect is this blog.  My blogging hasn't been consistent.  Ever.  I've set goals to do it X number of times a weeks.  But when I force myself to sit at the computer and type something up when I have nothing to say things don't go well for me.  But hopefully you've noticed that I have blogged more than I have in the past.  There's room for improvement, but I think I'm getting better.

I'll go into prong #3 at a latter post.  That's a whole other story that hasn't written itself yet.

So, why am I telling you this?  Because it's my 6 month review for my new business.  And while it's my start up and I'm doing this for myself right now (more on that later), I still hold myself accountable for the content that I put out.  And you're my friends, so I think you should know my thought process on this whole thing.  When I tell people what I'm doing on YouTube they just don't get it, unless they're a gamer.  And forget about talking about this with my family.  Parents just don't understand.

Even though I don't have the views or subscribers right now, I'm not worried about it.  I'm just trying to make content that I love and enjoy.  Hopefully that will come across in my videos.  And hopefully other people will find it and love the same things that I do.  Will I get better at it?  I hope so.  Will more people watch?  I hope so too.  This has been a whole eye-opening experience for me.  In good ways and bad.  But don't worry I'm going to blog about that too.

So what do you think about my new start up business?  Have you seen any of my YouTube videos?  How did you find them (hint: you can find my channel here  )?  What do you think.  You can leave me a comment here, or you can leave me a comment on one of my videos.  That would be nice.

I live in Hell and I'm losing my mind

I think I'm gong to lose my mind.  There's so many things that are frustrating me now in my life that I just want to go stark raving mad and get hauled away to the loony bin.  At least then I might get some peace of mind or at least a mental vacation for awhile.  And someone else can pay for the air conditioning.

Work: I've had so many meetings lately that some days I spend less than an hour sitting at my desk actually getting work done.  Why so many meeting?  I've been there so long that I'm the resident expert on everything so whenever a new project starts up that effects our unit, I'm asked to be the SME (subject matter expert).  Even when I'm too busy and they assign someone else in my place that always fails and I'm roped in later on because the original person can't handle it.  Well guess what?  I CAN'T HANDLE EVERYTHING!!!!

Also, due to the fact that I've been there so long and know everything, I'm also the trainer.  And I'm damn good at it (I did get my degree in education).  We've tried to split it up and have other people train on some things and that hasn't worked out very well.  I have to step in and "re-train" someone because they are so hopelessly confused.  It takes about 6 months to fully train someone so that they can function completely on their own and even then they probably haven't seen everything yet.  We had a new assistant start last June.  He got fully trained around late November/early December.  In January we had another assistant start.  He's almost done training, hopefully in the next week or two.  And guess what?  We have another person starting next month that will also have to be trained.  All these meetings and training are in ADDITION to my regular job.

Video capturing:  I've been so excited to finally get set up to capture video of game play and put them on line.  I've had some bugs and I thought I had everything worked out.  I spent a lot of money to get equipment to correct audio issues and at first it was working just great.  Then I seemed to have problems again.  The same types of problems.  I haven't figured out how to fix it permanently but I have figured out a work around.  Unfortunately that work around triples the time it takes me to edit a video.

Editing:  Now I'm having a new problem come up in the last couple of days.  Every time I go to edit a video when I get about half-way through and try to cut something out my whole video gets corrupted and I lose everything.  Not lose permanently, as I can always scrap the project I'm working on and start over from scratch.  But there is only so many times I can take trying to edit the same video file over and over again after it crashes each time before I start to go mental.  That's why I haven't posted a video in awhile because I can't finish editing any of the ones I've got recorded.  I think I'm going to have to edit in stages.  After I make a few cuts and things haven't crashed then I'll save the file, close out, reopen and try again.  Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.  I'm not happy.

Weather:  I live in Arizona and the winters are absolutely lovely.  The summers, on the other hand, are brutal and I hate them.  I've been here for the last 19 consecutive years and I'm starting to feel like that's 12 years too long.  I can't take the heat anymore.  I can't take the endless blue skies with not a cloud to be seen anywhere.  It looks good on paper, but 114 degrees sure doesn't feel good in real life.  Yes, I have a pool and can take a dip to help cool off but that requires getting out in the sun and the heat.  I was only out there for about 20-30 minutes yesterday at lunch and I got burned.  Add a nice sunburn to the "uncomfortable heat" factor and you can see why the summers suck.

I miss a change of seasons.  Where snowy lawns give way to spring flowers.  Where cool breezes give way to sunshine and worth.  And then the air turns crispy and brisk as colder air comes in heralding the first arrive of winter and snow.  It's the cycle of life.  In Arizona you only have 2-3 months of "wonderful" and then 7-8 months of "bake in hell you SOB" weather.  I'm tired of it. 

I hear of other places getting inundated with rain and I openly beg them to send some my way.  Then I start to think.  Why should they send it over to me?  Why don't I just go to the rain?  Or at least somewhere that has weather and hopefully a change of seasons.  It's a scary thought about picking up to move just because of the weather (that and the fact that my job is sucking the life out of me) but I don't know how much longer I can take living here. 

Of course, I feel that way every summer and somehow I get through it.  Then the brief "winter" comes and I love living here.  But then the summer comes back and the cycle of my life repeats itself.  I'm finding this summer particularly awful.  I think we've had almost 2 weeks with temperatures above 110 every day.  That might be new record.  I don't think my other frustrations are helping me.  It's hard to get excited about editing after I've come home from a very stressful day at work.  And then when the editing doesn't work . . . .  You get the picture.

I've noticed some of my crabbiness has been getting into my commentary in videos (at least as far I can tell while doing what editing I can).  I'm trying not to let things get to me but it's hard when you're hot and miserable all the time.  I'm going to push through it and hopefully things will get better.  At leas the weather will get better . . . in about 6 months.  Until then I'll just keep living in Hell and losing my mind.  I'm pretty sure I don't have much left.  It's been fried from one thing or another for a while now.