Uploaded and Unfiltered: Conversations about Personal Growth, Mindsets, and Advice with BIPOC Creators for Creators

Failing Fast and Learning from Mistakes [Guest: Blerd]

• Jermaine Pulliam • Season 1 • Episode 51

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What if you could balance a high-demand career, family life, and a thriving online presence without burning out? Join us for an insightful conversation with Blerd, a father, husband, active duty Navy sailor, and dynamic content creator who has done just that. Blerd takes us through his inspiring journey from a modest bedroom streaming setup to creating a pro-black gaming community, all while juggling military duties and family commitments. His story is a testament to perseverance and the power of gradual growth, offering invaluable lessons for anyone looking to make their mark in the content creation space.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of uploaded unfiltered the podcast in which I, your host Jermaine, interviews another content creator. In regards to the journey thus far, before I get our guests on the line, I'm gonna go ahead and read his bio so we can get some background information before we can get this conversation started. Father, husband, active duty Navy sailor and Twitch streamer, turned YouTube content creator, blurr prides themselves on creating a pro black space, a place where people can be comfortable with who they are and what games they enjoy. His community's motto is we die our way through games. He has been streaming and content creating for four years where we focus on RPGs, monster Hunter, destiny 2, and, secretly, soul games. Go ahead and get this man introduced to the podcast, blurred. Thank you for being a guest. Welcome to the podcast. How you doing today.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for having me. Number one, sir, I'm doing great. Like I told you man, crazy week for my family. Babies just got braces, so, uh, it's been a lot.

Speaker 1:

It has been a lot man, you got me excited with that souls game. A little tidbit you dropped there before we get into that, though I don't want to, I'm about to jump the gun. How did you get started in content creation? What was the road to where you are now?

Speaker 2:

uh, honestly, I had no idea what twitch was. I had no idea what streaming was. I uh at the time, but again, still in the military, I'm stationed in pensacola, florida, and my work, for instance, analyst by trade going to work. It's not a lot of folks that look like you and I Right To be honest. So my cousin kind of gave me the idea, said, hey, man, you should try streaming. You really like Monster Hunter, I think. Like you're good at having conversations with people, you talk to anybody you know, give it a go. And that's that's really when I started. First person I met was X Evo, alpha, another black dude.

Speaker 2:

So you know, it was love, man, it was love.

Speaker 1:

That is awesome. So you went straight from like cold turkey. You was like you know what I'm streaming? What was your first setup looking like? Yeah, I knew it, I knew it. All right, this is going to be good.

Speaker 2:

My first setup was like an amalgamation of pieces I pulled from the house Always been like a tech dude, yeah. So I had the HD. I think it was the HD60 capture card. Yep, I had an old computer desk. I actually was streaming in the corner of my bedroom. Like you wouldn't have known, it was my bedroom but like my bed that I slept in when my wife is like on this side, I had a window literally right here that I had a blackout curtain on and I had the camera like pushed like this uh, I use a razor blade stealth laptop, okay, and my xbox and a capture card.

Speaker 2:

And, yeah, I have found a random mic. I think I got a mic arm for like 20 off of amazon right, and I didn't know what a pop filter was. I ain't know about noise gates, I know about none of that, and I'm just over here in the corner. Oh, that was cool. Yeah, it just, you know, you don't, you don't know what to expect. So it was exactly, it was low budget. Then I think I got a blue yeti. Somebody was like, no, bro, get a blue yeti mic dog, and I got one of them and it kind of, you know, stack by stack. I got a picture. Very first post I made on instagram was that's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Listen, I knew, and I just knew. I knew you was a tech dude, so I knew your first setup had to be everything like you're like hey, this is what I want to do, let me get it started and this is what I got, and that's what. That's all you need sometimes absolutely man absolutely that is funny.

Speaker 1:

All right, blurred, let's go ahead and jump into uh, current mindset. This is where I ask my guests how they feeling about the content, where your mind is in regards to where you want to take it. The floor is yours. How you feeling about it?

Speaker 2:

I have gone through like a lot of like transition. I used to be like, oh man, I just want to be a streamer, I just want to play the game with, like the community I built, and that's me fundamentally at my core. That is who I am. My discord isn't public because we're very what's the word I'm looking for? Very selective about like who to invite, right Because you want to protect you know what you're building. So, at the core, I'm a streamer all day. Community.

Speaker 2:

Um, when the content side, though, that kind of started to change for me for a while, I was making shorts on relevant things happening in the gaming industry and in the space and and that was enjoyable, is enjoyable to me and that's been great. But I've tried to focus more on making long form videos on youtube on, uh like how to beat bosses and uh like my thought about hades 2 just dropped. I made a video about my first impressions of the demo of the game, why it's so good in comparison to the first one. So, if you could ever, my mindset for my thought process going into it is hey, I can stream a game on Twitch and then provide some in-depth analysis in some form of long form video on YouTube and then on TikTok and Instagram. Make a little short piece of form content and post that there. Have I successfully figured that flow out? Absolutely not.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely not, you know like you know, my son got karate here in an hour and a half. You know, it's just. It's just the nature of the beast. So that's my goal, though really continue to stream, but continue to build out my YouTube. I tried streaming on YouTube. Didn't really like it too much. My community came, we tried it, did it and it was like nah, we back to Twitch.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, yeah, I think, as streamers, I, too, went through a similar transition and I feel like, unless you want to be a certain type of streamer, if, like, that's all you're gonna do you're streaming eight hours a day, yeah, 40, like four or five days a week, like I feel like that, if you're trying to make it a career, make money, I feel like that's the only route you can go at this point. But if you're trying to do streaming and content, I feel like, just like you said, making simple, uh, supplemental content in regards to the game you're playing on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, is the smart route to take and I'm glad that you're doing that. The flow that's the fun part that you got to figure out what's the flow that I need, especially with how busy your life is family-wise, schedule-wise.

Speaker 1:

You got to fit that in there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, I think, one of the hardest parts for me. Shout out to my partner, Grandmaster Snacks. He's like a behind the scenes tech guy when we were talking about the editing process and hey, I'm dual PC, I'm recording, but I want to edit on a MacBook. He's helped me figure out that whole workflow. One of the more difficult parts in the entirety of all of it for me is writing scripts. I got raw footage. I got idea Right.

Speaker 1:

But when I?

Speaker 2:

put hands on keyboard. I'm like, and Yasuke did a jump, but you know what I'm saying. You can only say that. You can only say that. So well, you know. Like Yasuke is a black samurai that you know before it turned into. Uh is a black samurai that, uh, you know before it turned into. Uh, I don't know. But it's just. It's just so difficult for me conversation all day I hear you putting it on paper. Boy can't do it that's great.

Speaker 1:

Like I swear to god, every guest I get on here is going through something that I'm going through. So I wrote maybe one or two script out of every video that I've done and those videos did well, but one or two scripts out of hundreds of videos. I can't do scripts like that.

Speaker 2:

My man said at my core, it hurt me to do, I was sweating.

Speaker 1:

I got a script right here. I had to read your bio and I was like I don't know what it is. When it comes to doing a video with a script, but I have seen people do it and it it feels different. It feels more professional, absolutely more put together, absolutely, man yo. If you figure out some magic, let me know and I'll do the same hey look we, we gonna work that process together.

Speaker 2:

My brother, you know, we gotta, we gotta figure it out that's funny.

Speaker 1:

All right, so going forward, like you said, you wanted to grow out your youtube a little bit more in regards to streaming. Oh no, you know what. We're here now?

Speaker 2:

I can talk about it, so what?

Speaker 1:

games have you been playing? Because I'll let you. I just everybody's playing elden ring right now, and absolutely. I was like I don't like I play. I love Elden Ring. Yeah, I don't have the time to play DLC. So I thought, and I was like you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and buy it. So now I'm making my way to the DLC. Which games have you played and do you stream those?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, stream them. Yes, uh, as of, as of lately right we be. Second row lies at p. We're on elden ring. I lost my save file for elden ring. I backed up from the steam cloud at a later save date than where I was at, trying to be cute and playing multiple places. They got me. Yeah, um, what is the other? There's another souls game that we recently played did you play uh?

Speaker 2:

bloodborne played bloodborne okay, yeah, uh, but I I say so especially when it comes to souls games. I never restreamed them. I secretly enjoyed them or I think I didn't know that I enjoyed them right. But I, like, I got sheer willpower. Like you know, we got to the end of Sekiro and you know I'm not good at games. I literally say in the stream I'm not good at games. I'm here because I enjoy games and we got to die our way through it. I think I'm streaming three times a week. I think we fought the final boss in Sekiro for like two weeks.

Speaker 2:

Because I just I could not beat the dude At nine hours a week, we in there. You know what I'm saying, like mmm. I'm sweating. I'm talking about I done played the first two phases of the fight so much that if I get hit one time I'll be like, hey, y'all, let's start over.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're done.

Speaker 2:

You know, I should, I should be able to make it through this flawlessly at this point that's so you end up being yeah absolutely, absolutely. You know, I'm just making sure you know.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely 187 deaths later, but absolutely like I keep telling people like you're gonna die, like, and if you and honestly here's here goes some crazy link linking of knowledge here I feel like people who enjoy souls games understand that you're gonna die. If that doesn't deter you, you're good like that's it, you're good.

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think that it can be daunting to get into right for sure, like any other game, I think like when it comes to builds and mad max, and that's another aspect of it but the reality is is like you will die in the game.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Unless you are a professional souls player that is doing a, a no death run for charity or whatever reason that y'all are doing it. You're just you're going to die. So that stress of not dying, I don't care about that. Yeah, hey, bro, we have a death counter up here. I gotta, I gotta, command. It's an exclamation death counter that will spit out a random number of deaths, and sometimes it 1.5 million. You know 16,542. Like you don't. It's gonna. You know it's gonna happen.

Speaker 1:

Man, just sit back, ride the ride I'm gonna start hiring people and on the resume or in the uh job questionnaire it's gonna be like, do you play soul games? Because I feel like people who are cool with putting up with that adversity are going to do whatever it takes to get whatever they need to do done.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, we just got to hit the W key for you all day.

Speaker 1:

How do you feel about it? You mad.

Speaker 2:

You mad. Well, actually I haven't broken any controllers. I'm actually quite calm. I expected this to happen, Okay.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay, yeah, that's it Right right right. That's funny as hell. All right, Blurred. Lessons learned. What lesson have you learned? Because you started creating content?

Speaker 2:

Honestly, I would say that everyone is not the same, and what I mean by that is that you don't have to be friends with everyone, but you definitely should be respectful to everyone. No-transcript. But that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate you Right, and that's the vice versa of that. I think in this space often people assume that, oh well, you don't mess with so-and-so because you're not in their streams or you don't care about what they're doing, or you must have an issue with them no, I don't have time or sometimes you don't want to be a part of what somebody is doing, and that doesn't mean you want to see them fail. It just isn't on point with what your brand or what your foundation is that you're building off of. So I would tell anybody at any phase in content creation to protect whatever it is you're going into content creation with and align yourself appropriately with those individuals yes, that's a quote of the podcast clip.

Speaker 2:

That shit my editor say clip it and ship it. Baby, that's what you say clip it and ship it but back to what you were saying 100 in agreement.

Speaker 1:

It for because we're busy and it's all for me was always I'm a dad like dad comes first if the kids get up in the stream I'm out I gotta go, so I can't come to your stream at three in the afternoon. I'm probably doing shit with the kids or something. But that doesn't mean I don't rock with what you do, and that's why I try to go back and like people's posts on TikTok or show up every once in a while and be like yo, I'm here, I see you Right, I'm lurking.

Speaker 2:

Right. And it's crazy that you even have to have that mindset, that you have to do that Right, because at the end of the day, I work 8 to 4. My kids typically go to bed about nine o'clock. So I gotta come home, we gotta have dinner, we gotta do homework, we gotta get ready for bed. So on those nights that I'm streaming or is the time that I was able to carve out right? So when I'm not streaming, I'm literally being omni-man, doing everything else, exactly like you know. But again, we, and the takeaway is that we all don't have the same requirements in our lives.

Speaker 1:

So we don't all have the same amount of time to invest, yeah, so man, I have some homies that there was a during the pandemic when everybody was pretty much at home, we were gaming every night because we didn't have nothing else to do, right things kind of even just so far. I went back to work and he's just still chilling, so he's expecting that time to like hey man, we running dungeons and I'm like nah, dude, I gotta go to work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I gotta wake up in the morning, man, what you mean, and yeah, like, back to your point of like, having that mindset of, oh, let me do this, so x, y and z doesn't feel away. I'm starting to lean towards the. Anything I do is not to hurt anybody, so if I don't come to your stream, it's not because of you absolutely if it is, you'll know, because I'll just let you know. Like, hey, man, we can't x, y and z, I'll really message you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's it exactly. Hey, I understand, listen, I see you stream. I'm like dang the brother crib streaming yeah, well.

Speaker 2:

I need to go ahead and get these kids from school. Exactly what a pleasure. You know what I'm saying, you know. Like it's life man we. You know I hate to be the dude too, because my goal isn't to become like incredibly wealthy, right, like streaming, I do it purely as a hobby, as a pat, as a passion. That doesn't mean I don't want a high production level, it just means, you know, this is a passion and a hobby that I have, so I I can't give you, I can't give you a 40 hour workout in your stream, brother, you know it's not happening it's not happening.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 1:

All right, you know what this is a perfect segue into words of advice. So we kind of if you're listening and you're an astute student, you probably pick some words of advice out of that knowledge. But, to be specific, go ahead and drop some knowledge on whoever you want to give it to.

Speaker 2:

I would say anybody like starting content creation in content creation, wherever you're at in your journey, you are always new in some capacity. Every time you change the Avenue, you are new. So with that, I would tell you to fail as fast as possible. Just fail, because the quicker you fail, the quicker you'll get to success. That's a personal motto of mine. Hey man, I went live. The sound didn't work. Okay, well, this is a sound issue that I've learned how to correct. Hey man, literally in my stream. It is a joke. Hey, it's not a blurred stream if the sound ain't broke one point in time. Right, because if I'm waiting for everything to be perfect, if I'm waiting to learn how to finish all of these transitions in this edit, if I'm waiting to figure out how to completely write scripts, if I'm waiting to, you know, hit peak form, then I'll never do anything. So just fail really fast, man.

Speaker 1:

Fail fast so you can get to success hey, hey, everybody listening, your boy, because the shit that he's saying right now. I have been like screaming, You're my kid, Like last week I kid you, not Last week my oldest daughter, she's like oh, I don't want to do X, Y and Z and I was like, listen, I know you're scared, but as soon as you fail, like you'll get past that scary part, Fail, figure out what didn't work and go back and Absolutely Like Absolutely. Oh, man Thank you Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I appreciate it, man. Hey, we can put it on a shirt. Look, we're going to call it. Fail fast, yes.

Speaker 1:

Success. Make it, I'll buy one. I'm not even fucking. I will buy one by two. Shit. That is again. Failure is not something I think as young kids especially like in the school systems and just how we move in life. If you hear the word failure, you automatically think something negative like oh I'm absolutely I'm bad, but that's everybody's failed and that's how you get better.

Speaker 1:

I'm telling you like, once you realize that it just unlocks something in your brain, you're like oh, all right, so let me go fail five times real quick so I can get better.

Speaker 2:

Simple as that yeah, but but again, you're not taught that, we're not, we're not groomed that way. We're taught, you know instant satisfaction, exactly. You know, don't give into the process so that is awesome.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for rejuvenating my belief in humans. I'm here for you. It's crazy to think like not that you're the only person that thinks that, but it's dope to run into other people that do think that way and you're like oh shit, all right, there's more of us cool yeah, I mean, and you should acknowledge that and see it in people's content as they keep making content like you.

Speaker 2:

if you go back and look at the very first kai senet live stream video I guarantee it is not what it is today With a whole Elden Ring, mileena set in the background. He was probably in a closet in a room with a camera.

Speaker 1:

you know, like Mike and Morgan cameras is 720p, but yeah, but he stuck to it because he enjoyed it and I think a lot of us are in that specific space and I feel like that's personally. I think those people are going to be the ones that when they blow up, it's going to be a beautiful thing because they're not absolutely be other people like you're not trying to be, you're being you and you can see that in your content.

Speaker 1:

And then, the thing that I love when people start emulating you, they're like oh man, I know you can do that, let me do that right right, right right right, he's like yeah, I see y'all boys been watching. Honey, you enjoy the content all right, all right, all right, yo blurt. This has been a super dope conversation. I'm glad we finally got to get it on the book absolutely absolutely this is the first.

Speaker 1:

Uh, I'm gonna just go ahead and say this now, first of many, because I do plan on doing panels, and one specific panel that I want to do is a dad panel maybe, maybe I'll go parent lock me in, lock me in, I'm already there, lock me in?

Speaker 1:

yeah, because I think, as you were, as you said in your bio, creating a pro-Black space is something that when I was younger, I didn't know how badly I needed it. I'm telling you Because my pops was in the military, so we moved everywhere and, like you said, there's not that many of us in spaces that I was in at the time Work school, right, and so to create that, to show younger Black men, black girls, hey, we're doing this dope shit and it's possible, you can do this too, and so, yeah, that's what my that's. The goal of this podcast is to get more of our voices out there, more of our stories out there, hey, hey, this is how I struggled and this is where I'm at now, and it's been dope. So I appreciate the work you're doing and keep that up, man all right.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, sir let's go ahead and do a call to action. Where do you want to send the people?

Speaker 2:

I know you got like 55 links to drop um, really, I greatly appreciate it if you would go to your nearest youtube and look up james the blurred. There you will find some long-form videos I made about content that I'm excited is coming out and other things, and then, if you care and want to be a part of the live stream, definitely come over to Twitch. I'm James the Blurred on every piece of social media, but those are my two main platforms. But yeah, james the Blurred Twitter, tiktok, twitch, youtube.

Speaker 1:

Hell yeah, simple, easy. All his links will be in the description of this podcast and, as always, if you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast, upload it and, unfiltered. It comes out every week. I have not missed a week yet. This is going to be episode 50, which is crazy. That's crazy, 51 weeks in a row. Anyways, you know I'm just bragging a little bit, but follow the podcast. We're giving out knowledge, we're trying to uplift people and I want everybody to know that. You're not going through this shit alone, like you may think that, but trust me, there's at least one other person that's feeling the way you are, other than that blurred. Thank you again for doing this. I appreciate it thank you for having me, sir.

Speaker 1:

As always, I can't wait for everybody to listen to this. Anyways, as always, protect your mental, keep creating content, and I will talk to y'all on the next one, peace.