Before Troydan would clock in over half a billion views on Youtube
Before Troydan would build a massive social media following, with 1.8 million youtube
subscribers, 425,000 Twitch followers, and over 150 thousand instagram followers.
Before Troydans reacts channel, which also had over 1 million subscribers, would get
deleted from youtube
Aright guys, the last time I made videos here on Chris Smoove you guys were roasting me
in the comments so this time I reached out to TroyDan himself.
He answered all my burning questions like what he wanted to be when he was growing up,
advice he’d give to someone trying to follow in his footsteps, and how he got his name
Troydan in the first place!
I’m here to make up for all my previous faults in this one with you guys, but before
that gotta give a huge shoutout to Raid Shadow legends who sponsored this video.
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Best of all the game is free to download in the app store, and when you download it go
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Hope to see you guys on there.
Now before we jump into it our trivia question today is how did Troydan get his name Troydan?
Let me know your answers below and I’ll have that answer at the end of this video!
Bryan Daniel Warren Biers was born on September 15th, 1987 in Toronto Ontario.
He’s the only child to Sherry and Bob Warren Biers, with his dad currently playing in a
Jazz Band.
When he was just 4 years old, Bryan would use a cassette player to pretend like he was
hosting a radio show.
He would make up stories and even interview his pets.
Safe to say the man always had the heart of a true entertainer.
At 6 years old he’d get his first Nintendo Entertainment system.
This would be the start of Troydan getting hooked on gaming.
At age 7 Bryan would move from Toronto to Nova Scotia, which he said was a total culture
shock.
Going from a major city like Toronto to a smaller rural town in Nova Scotia, Bryan had
a bit of a hard time fitting in.
This would lead to him discovering the internet in 1997 and learning how to code websites
at the age of 10.
He was also a shy kid, so he really felt most comfortable when he was at home and online
exploring the gaming communities.
Now growing up he was never too into his academics, admitting to just doing enough to get by,
with most of his marks being in the 50’s.
Although gym class was his favourite, after grade 6 Bryan didn’t really learn much during
his studies.
He would go on to attend Annapolis West Education Center in Annapolis Royal Nova Scotia, which
he said wasn’t the nicest of facilities.
Since his days it’s believed they cleaned up the school, but where he grew up, people
don’t really make it all the way through high school.
After high school Bryan decided not to attend a college or university for obvious reasons,
he hated school and majority of people where he was from don’t even graduate high school.
Growing up Troydan was also a huge wrestling fan.
More specifically Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
He explained that during lunch time while in school, him and his friends would always
try to do the wrestler’s finishing moves on each other.
Funny because I did the same.
Even though every wrestling show I watched always had the warning and told viewers not
to try it out.
Well, at least they tried to warn us.
Anyway, at 12 years old, in 1999 Troydan actually made a wrestling video game nobody really
knows about it.
He even admitted that if he had any connections to the wrestling industry at a young age,
he would have 100% pursued a career as a wrestler.
But unfortunately it wouldn’t be all that easy for Troydan.
Before youtube he would work in a total of 4 different call centres for a total of 8
years.
From working for Sprint Mobile as a support tech, to selling office supplies, until ultimately
selling car insurance for a UK based company called Admiral, Troydan was keep busy before
the youtube days.
He explained he got into call centres because that’s all there really is to do for work
where he was from.
Either that or live off of unemployment cheques, something he wouldn’t do.
Troydan would first try his hand in content creation when he got his first camera phone
in 2006.
Although he didn’t think anything more than just doing it for fun.
Mostly making top 10 lists that would garner about 100 views.
But back when youtube first came out, 100 views was pretty cool.
In 2008 Troydan found out about justin.tv, a streaming website where he would live stream
prank phone calls out of his parents bedroom.
He would only stream for about a year on justin.tv but as you all know, would start streaming
on Twitch in 2013.
But before he found out about Twitch, Troydan was almost a personal trainer.
In 2011 he took the course and passed but never actually pursued training anyone.
Aside from personal training, Troydan admits he might’ve even gone out west to Alberta
doing manual labour, something majority of his friends would end up doing.
In 2014 Troydan would stream the popular game World of Warcraft, seeing immediate traction
in the streaming community.
Due to Troydan’s increase in popularity online, he would quit his job at Admiral Car
Insurance to pursue streaming full time.
It would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him, although after a few
months, his popularity started to decline.
He would jump around from game to game, after realizing World of Warcraft wasn’t the right
move, saying he felt maybe it was time to get a real job.
All that would change when he would start streaming NBA2k15 when it first came out,
allowing him to gain a whole new audience from before.
Being a fan of the NBA2k series, playing every game since 2004, he was pretty damn good.
This is when things would really pick up for the 2k master, who would go on to save highlights
from his 2k streams and upload them to youtube, after he noticed the youtube gaming community
had a much bigger audience.
His first big video wouldn’t come from 2k15 though.
It would be a clip of him yelling at the ballboy in MLB 15 The Show, which would go viral on
instagram.
Unfortunately he didn’t watermark the video, so no one knew who he was at the time.
It wouldn’t be long before Troydan’s brand would really start to grow, but when he started
to make money off of the videos, that’s when he realized he was the real deal.
He could actually get paid to do something he was willing to do for free.
Incredible.
However as any creator knows, it’s never just that easy.
One of Troydan’s biggest obstacles along the way was to learn it wasn’t a competition
with anyone else.
Everyone grows at their own pace, and to compare yourself to other creators is useless, it’ll
just discourage you and slow your progress.
As he progressed in his career, Troydan also didnt have much help, if any.
To this day he creates his own thumbnails, videos and edits all on his own.
And he credits Angry Video Game Nerd as one of his inspirations to get on youtube and
start creating content.
He also credits Eminem who helps him get hyped before he records some of his videos.
Now when it comes to his personal life, such as Kate, his girlfriend of two years, how
they met is actually quite funny.
Turns out she was his boss at one of his last jobs, but they barely spoke while working
together.
On the day he quit, she was the last person he saw, but they wouldn’t end up going out
until 3 years later when they would reconnect on Facebook.
When talking about previous relationships, Troydan simply put it, they were all mistakes.
Fun fact, this man’s a savage.
Now when it comes to some of his biggest achievements in his career, Troydan said having dinner
with Shaq or being body scanned into NBA 2K19 was definitely up there.
Especially since Shaq was one of his favourite players growing up.
Now moving forward, although Troydan admit’s he doesn’t like to plan too far ahead, he
told us he’s gonna be all over NBA2K20 when it drops in September.
So be sure to be on the look out for Troydan’s upcoming videos and streams.
Now when it comes to his definition of success, he said it’s waking up and doing what you
love while being your own boss.
If he had advice for anyone trying to follow in his footsteps?
“Don’t try to be like anybody.
Be yourself.
Try to invent something that nobody has seen before.
There’s too many copy and pastes of the same people out there.
You have to be unique in this game to survive.”
Safe to say Troydan is definitely original.
He even had a reacts channel which amassed over 1 million subscribers, but unfortunately
the channel got deleted after getting 3 strikes!
It seems for now his focus will just be on the new 2k coming up so you guys gotta be
sure to check him out of course on Youtube, as well as instagram where his handle is @realtroydan
and twitter @troydan.
But before we wrap this one up, I gotta answer our Trivia question!
How did Troydan come up with his name?
Well I’m going to quote him exactly on the story.
“This is a good one.
The name Troydan came in 1996.
The internet had just came out to a library in town.
It was the only way you could have it unless you were very wealthy.
You could book time there and use the internet for 30 minute blocks.
I went with my friend at the time and he knew more about it than I did.
He showed me how to make an email account on hotmail.
I tried to use the name Daniel@hotmail.com but it was taken.
It blew my mind somebody had my name taken.
I then tried dan@hotmail.com.
Also taken.
I didn’t know what to do but for some reason I took my friends name (Troy) and put it infront
of the dan to make troydan@hotmail.com.
I was able to create it.
To this day I’m still using that username 23 years later.”
So there you have it guys.
Hope you enjoyed this one and it made up for all the mistakes I made on that Chris Smoove
video.
As always drop your comments below with who you’d like us to cover next, a huge shoutout
to Troydan for taking the time to speak with myself and Mike, so be sure to check him out,
and of course a huge thank you to Raid Shadow Legends for sponsoring the video.
My name is Jarred Bronstein you can catch me on social media @bronst7.
Feel free to dm your suggestions on who we should cover next and I’ll see you in the
next one.