Uploaded and Unfiltered: Real Talk on Healing, Creativity, and Mindset for Black Creators
Creative journeys. Real struggles. Honest growth.
Hosted by Jermaine, Uploaded and Unfiltered is where Black creators talk real about what it takes to create in public—and stay sane doing it. You’ll hear from YouTubers, streamers, podcasters, musicians, and other digital creatives on how they built their platforms, overcame burnout, dealt with self-doubt, and found their voice.
This isn’t fluff or “how I got famous” talk. We dig into the messy middle—impostor syndrome, grief, perfectionism, procrastination, and the pressure to perform.
Every episode is packed with truth and tools to help you:
- Build your creative presence online (without faking it)
- Move through mental blocks that keep you stuck
- Learn from the wins and fails of other Black creators
🎧 This podcast is for you if:
- You’re a BIPOC content creator or want to be
- You’ve got ideas but keep overthinking or procrastinating
- You want honest convos, mindset shifts, and real strategies
New episodes every week. Hit subscribe and join the movement.
Uploaded and Unfiltered: Real Talk on Healing, Creativity, and Mindset for Black Creators
If The Dream Found You, It’s Yours To Build
Send me a text! Be part of the show!
We talk about hitting 1,000 YouTube subscribers after 19 years, why celebrating milestones matters, and how returning to our creative roots restored momentum. We break down fear-based decisions, the subconscious, and a simple path to consistent, meaningful output.
• celebrating creator milestones and honoring your archive
• lessons from 19 years of YouTube and early tools
• shifting from perfection to authentic rhythm
• fear, subconscious safety, and self-sabotage
• visualising desired outcomes to prime action
• building momentum with tiny, painless steps
• setting a weekly cadence and meaningful content
• gratitude for community feedback and support
Book a session today:
https://stan.store/CoachJermaine
Welcome, welcome back to another episode of Uploaded Unfiltered, the podcast in which we talk about mindsets that help black creators become great. Today's a special episode. As always, uh, my anniversary was what was it, two days ago? Damn, only two days ago? That's crazy. And we celebrated our 16, 16th year of being married, and that was awesome. And a lot of awesome memories came up. And speaking of which, she's been here my entire time of having a YouTube channel because I've had a YouTube channel for 19 years. That's impressive. I know it's impressive. But on that day, I finally hit a thousand subs on YouTube, and I was excited as hell, and I made a video about it. So go check out my YouTube channel, Cryptonite with I, and you can see the latest video where I talk about hitting a thousand subs. But I want to talk about a little bit about that today. And I dropped a video, three things that kept me motivated and kept me moving forward. And in that pursuit of making that video, I went back and looked at some of my old footage, some of my old YouTube videos. And thankfully, I don't know if you knew this, but if you log into your YouTube channel and go to the back end, you can download any of your YouTube videos straight to your computer, which was awesome for the video that I cut. And seeing damn near 20 years ago, me is insane. Like, I've I've definitely have memories of making these videos. I don't remember like the whole process, I don't remember what I was editing in. At some point, I was editing in Final Cut, iMovie, uh Luma Fusion, I believe is the software I used to use on my iPad before I switched over to DaVinci. So many things. The music choices I used to make. I used to have an intro, I used to have an outro, which I might bring that back. The outro was kind of fire. Um, there was one point where I was making my own music, and I used this music that I made on the Korg DS software for your uh Nintendo DS. So many memories, and I just wanted to get on today to say when you hit a milestone in your content creation career, celebrate that milestone. As I look back, I have no regret. I don't think that I should have hit a thousand faster. I don't think that I should be further in my YouTube career. The way that I use my YouTube channel has informed what I do today. As I go back and look at some of those videos, I used to vlog my ass off, and I was really good at it. So guess what? That shit's coming back. But I rarely made cuts. I don't know at what point where I was like, I need to cut all these ums and ahs and these pauses out. It was just pure stream of consciousness for my mind, me creating and putting together what I saw in my head, and that's what I do now. And I just needed to lock in and remember that first and foremost, I do this content thing for me. I get significant value out of creating content, using my mind in a way that produces something that at one point didn't exist, and bringing that into reality just brings me so much joy, so much peace, so much perspective on the world, as crazy as that might sound. But yeah, man, 19 years of having a YouTube channel, and like it feels like I'm just getting started and I'm moving with such momentum that I didn't have back in the day that I'm excited to see what the next six months are gonna bring to my content creation career. So I just wanted to let you know that if you started a YouTube channel or you thought about starting a YouTube channel and thought about giving up, please, please put back, pick it back up, put it in the work that you need to do to get it to a place that we're you'll feel happy with, and just keep pushing. You don't fail unless you stop. If I would have stopped over these last 19 years, then yeah, I would have been like, Man, you're a failure. You you failed at this thing called content creation, but I've seen so many things, I've had so many opportunities, different life experiences, all because I decided to get in front of a camera and record myself talking about things that I enjoy in life, and that's what I do now. So the next year of my channel is going to look interesting. I'm striving to do at least one video a week, and they're gonna be meaningful videos. I might even bump that up to two because I have so many things that I want to create and put out there. Nothing's stopping me but me, and that's that's what it always is. Nothing is stopping you but you. I do know it took me a while to get to that thousand subs, to get that consistency that it takes to get those thousand subs, because I was definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, making decisions that were based in fear at the time. Uh became becoming a content creator wasn't something that I saw was real. I thought it was luck. I didn't think at first that it would be for me. I just was like, man, I want to make some dope videos. And actually, the first video I made was a I took a Halo 3 commercial and put a Jay-Z song on top of it, just because I felt like it needed it, and it came out fire, but unfortunately it got copywritten. So uh Jay-Z was like, nah, you can't be listening to my music and making money off it. I wasn't, I just started the channel, anyways. But I was make I was definitely going down that corporate ladder, and because I felt like that's what I was supposed to do. I was not passionate about it at all, I was just really good with computers, really good at talking to people, really good at getting people to do what I tell them. So IT managers spit. That seemed where my life was headed. And 19 years later, I here I am entrepreneuring, coaching, really into mindset, really into crystals, really into mental health. A full flip from where I was damn near 20 years ago, and I appreciate and I am appreciative and humbled to be able to go back over the course of 19 years and see videos that I created and put out there in the world. That shit excites me. So when my channel does blow up, when I am getting thousands upon thousands of subs and I'm making that ad revenue and I'm getting sponsors in, there is gonna be such a big backlog of content for people to go through. I can't wait to see uh that journey. But I say all that to say this if you ever think of anything making music, making a video, becoming a podcast host, um, being a video game streamer, if there's something creative that pops into your head, anything that tells you that you can't do that is a fucking lie. If it popped into your head, it's yours to have. That's how I feel about things. That's how I've always lived my life. Not out loud, but definitely internally. I always thought that if something pops in my head and I think about it and I can see myself doing it, the only thing that's gonna stop me from getting there is me. And that feeling has just gotten stronger and louder, and now I talk about it with people because at the end of the day, all the voices that you hear in your head are you talking to yourself. And if those voices are things that you don't want to hear, then those are not your voice, those are things that were installed into you when you were younger, or maybe you picked it up through watching TV or socializing with people who have different points of views of you. But at the end of the day, I don't think our mind wants to sabotage us by keeping us unhappy or stopping us from obtaining these goals that we want to set for ourselves. We just need to keep in mind that our subconscious mind, the only thing that is there to do, is to keep us safe. And if we think of something that could go wrong, our subconscious mind doesn't know what reality is, doesn't know what thinking, dreaming, or fakeness or just a thought is, it thinks it's real. So if you think of failing at your YouTube video or nobody watching it, and you feel the if that to happen, you feel like you would feel shameful, or you would feel like a loser, or like you failed, or some negative thought, your mind is going to be like, Well, guess what? Here's some anxiety, so you don't want to do that shit. Here's some procrastination, so you don't have to do that shit. Here's imposter syndrome, so you don't feel like you know what the fuck you're doing because that seems safe. Anything outside the routine usually throws up flags to our subconscious until you understand how the subconscious works, if you understand that there is nothing negative to come from things that you want to do in life, if you focus on the positive, you focus on what you want to feel like once that thing is accomplished, then that's it. Your mind stops wasting energy on throwing up those red flags, it stops fighting you on trying to get things that you want, and then it starts assisting in opening up your eyes to the possibilities that are at hand. The more that I step into knowing my channel is going to be monetized, the more I step into knowing that my TikToks is going to be monetized, that my podcast is going to be profitable, the more ideas I see popping up in front of me. The more opportunities I see that I can tap into something that I have been locked locking down for forever. It took 19 years to get to this spot for me to be the creator that I know I want to be, the what the creator that I want to show up in the world as, and to be the type of father, husband, friend, content creator that I want to be. Knowing that is only got me excited even more to see where this journey takes me. So again, stop dragging your feet, stop waiting for the right time. Find one step that you can take that's not going to be painful, that'll help you move forward towards your next goal of creating my YouTube channel or getting more invested in your Instagram channel. Take one step, one tiny step forward, and continue to do that until those steps are running, and those running are flying, and you're going towards your goal at a light speed that no one can stop you because at this point is inevitable. This is going to happen. I'm supposed to hit a thousand subs. I'm supposed to have a YouTube channel that's monetized, and uh there's nothing that anyone could do to stop that. Anyways, if this was helpful or any of the conversations we have on uploaded and unfiltered are beneficial. Thank you for everybody who's been shouting me out and letting me know that they listened to the podcast and letting me know that maybe something that I said helped them on their journey. I really appreciate that. In the past, I thought that I didn't need things of that nature, and it's not that I need it, but I definitely appreciate it. And because I know it's not, it's not people don't need to tell you that. People don't need to tell you that, hey, you inspired me. But when it happens, appreciate it, be gracious, take that, add it to your armor, and then keep moving forward. So thank y'all for letting me know I appreciate that. And uh yeah, on all your podcasts, catches of choices, you know, you know the you know how to end it works. Anyways, I'll talk to y'all later. Thank y'all for listening. And as always, protect your mental, keep creating content, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace. If you've been second guessing yourself or stuck trying to figure it all out, you don't need another course. You need clarity. That's what I hope my clients get. Fast. Check the link in the description to book a session or grab the five day coaching option if you want quick, real relief.