- Hi, I'm Preston Arsement.
Gamer, businessman
and creator of PrestonPlayZ, TBNRfrags,
PrestonRoblox and PrestonMinecraft.
I know, so original.
Honestly, I wish I knew exactly when I realized I was
a successful creator.
But YouTube just moves so fast.
Because of all the hard work and the hundreds
of all-nighters I've pulled everything is a blur.
A happy, fun blur but I'll do my best to explain
because this is my creator journey.
♪ vidIQ ♪
♪ vidIQ.com ♪
long before I got into the
YouTube business I was always an entrepreneur.
I was a lifeguard, I worked for a painting company
that my family knew and I would do any odd jobs
to earn money.
Even at 11 years old I was mowing lawns
and knocking on our neighbors doors to drum up business.
My first channel TBNRFrags is focused mainly
on first person shooters,
and geared towards a slightly older audience.
I started that channel simply
because I saw one guy uploading Call of Duty videos
and thought I could do the same thing.
It might seem a little bit conceited
but most 16 year olds are,
we're a little conceited right?
I was a PC gamer and I saw a YouTube creator named
xJaws who you might remember.
He made Black Ops 1 content
and I thought to myself heck, I can do this
and I'm on PC so it's gonna be even better.
Of course in the beginning it wasn't as easy as I thought,
I was scrutinized by a lot of Call of Duty community
as every creator was especially because of my faith.
The community was not the nicest
so I had to build up some thick skin,
had some motivational chats with my mom to keep me on track.
It's difficult to get berated by thousands of people daily.
I remember wanting to quit at 30 000 subscribers
but of course, my mom convinced me otherwise.
She knew I really didn't wanna quit
and I think deep down inside I knew
I didn't wanna quit as well.
But sometimes, it's just really hard to deal
with the backlash that you get being on a platform
with so many eyes always on you.
If you wanna be a content creator this
is definitely something you are going
to have to be aware of,
and you're gonna have to build up that thick skin.
It was hard to build an audience so I transitioned
to doing more zombie game play.
The audience was bigger and I love zombies.
Plus, since I was killing zombies instead
of other players I could engage with my viewers
a whole lot more while I was playing.
If you guys didn't know, I really got my start
on Twitch TV rather than YouTube.
And I used Twitch TV to grow my YouTube audience.
I had a really big breakthrough whenever I signed
with Machinima in November of 2011.
They made me a Machinima Respawn Director
on their YouTube channel allowing me to post
a video a week on the channel
and then I started a series on my channel called Moab
with every gun in Modern warfare 3
and that's a really helped accelerate the growth
of my YouTube channel.
As well as the bags under my eyes,
'cause it take me about 12 hours to get each gameplay video.
However my real breakthrough on
YouTube came when I moved to Minecraft.
I'm not even kidding.
When I created my second channel
PrestonPlayz my new found success wasn't necessarily
from the change in video game,
but the way I changed my approached to making videos.
My TBNRFrags videos were more focused
on being good at the game.
Like I said, sometimes videos would take me up
to 12 hours sometimes even longer.
At other times I could get it done within 30 minutes
to an hour due to the nature of Call of Duty
and trying to get 24 kills in a row with a weapon
that was not necessarily made for getting 24 kills at a row.
For example a silenced pistol,
it's very difficult to do
and sometimes it would take multiple days just
to get one of these game play videos.
It was mind numbing.
Don't get me wrong, it was really cool
to have people watched me for my game play and my skill,
and they still liked my channel,
but they weren't really watching for me.
When I made that transition to become PrestonPlayz I focused
on what I was saying as a commentator
and how entertaining and engaging I was
at least trying to be.
It wasn't about who was the best at Minecraft,
it was way more fun trying to be an entertainer.
In 2016, one of the hardest times
that I'd overcome was when my dedicated recording group
of friends, but you all know as
The Pack stopped recording Minecraft content.
Felt like I had lost my place in YouTube.
But I continued recording videos by myself
and eventually found new people in the community.
Smaller YouTubers that were funny, wholesome
and had a whole lot of good stow
and just wanted to pursue this full-time.
By giving these smaller YouTubers a chance I was able
to connect with new viewers and continue to move forward.
We as humans want to progress in life.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Creating content is like playing a game
with YouTube's platform.
What are the secrets?
What's the next big trend?
How can you make your own trend?
How can we combine element X with element Z and element Q,
to create this awesome new type of content?
Moving forward is always important but having
a balance in your life is also extremely important.
I would say the big struggle throughout
YouTube would definitely be not taking enough creative time
for myself, I tend to like to stay inside
and record videos for about
a 100 hours a week I'm not kidding.
But at certain point I realized that if I don't go outside,
go to the gym, get some fresh air
or even read my bible, my commentary will start to drop off
and I'll start to lose my edge.
Hard work is what helped my channels takeoff
and grow and of course I credit a lot of that to my faith
and all the family and friends I have around me,
but there still has to be a balance even
if it's not always 50-50 or even 90-10.
I've now learned that the more I've intertwined my family
into business the more fun I've honestly had.
My siblings and my amazing wife we're always having
a blast filming content with me.
I think that family has really made me successful
because I want to work hard for them.
I came from a humble beginning,
we all lived a in motor home together for many many years
and had just each other and that's all we needed.
My parents had a traveling music ministry
and so we got very close in that tiny motor home together.
So the fact now that I have a nice car,
and a nice house it really doesn't mean much to me,
at least not as much as getting to hang out with my family.
And of course the amount of sweet messages I've received
from my audience has just been so overwhelming.
I have a fan art wall at the office
and I don't even like to call my viewers fans I feel bad
but this viewer wall of mail
and art in the office if I ever need inspiration
or I need to remember why I'm doing what I'm doing
because maybe I've had a hard week
or something has happened,
I just go to that and I just look at it.
I mean it's just, it's overwhelming to see the support
and to see that somehow I've changed peoples lives
for the better by just playing video games
and uploading it to YouTube.
My longterm goal is to stay within the video game industry
and to grow as many companies as I can.
We have the blessed opportunity to use YouTube as
a vehicle to move forward with all of our companies.
And don't get me wrong, YouTube is still so much fun
but I wanna gain experience and knowledge in other areas
and keep growing companies within the video game industry.
We've recently started a fourth channel
for the newer version of Minecraft.
It's called Bed Rock Edition Windows 10 edition,
Pocket Edition whatever you guys wanna call it,
but do a lot of cool branding content on PrestonPlayz now,
it's fun to kind of expand, play new video games
but eventually I think I'd be more fun if
it was mainly real life content.
Vlogs, videos of my siblings, challenge videos with my wife,
just having fun with my family and friends,
and trying to entertain viewers.
In fact, we've already started doing that in 2019.
The audience that we have is the coolest audience ever.
And making videos for them is literally just pleasure
at this point.
You ever go to Chick-fil-A and they're like, "My pleasure."
That's how I feel when I finish a video.
My pleasure.
Whenever we put out a brand new video people are
like this is awesome, Preston is making money
and working with the cool brand and we like it.
I feel like nowhere else on YouTube can you find
that kinda support from an audience.
It's so easy to keep coming back and filming videos
and stay motivated when you have the most amazing audience
in the world.
If you wanna be a creator follow your dreams.
I don't think it gets any more simple than that.
A lot of us see things through a specific lens
that we were forced to see things through,
something that tells us our dreams don't matter.
Or that they're too far fetched.
But you have to find your own lens to look at the world.
Find the way to believe in your dreams
and pursue your passions.
- Hey folks is the animated version of Rob here at vidIQ.
Who's video creator journey do you want us to animate next?
Suggestions welcome in the comments below.
If you're thirsty for more already,
checkout this video creators animated journey over here,
and watch our full series down here.