Making Things Easier for Yourself & Your Community
Dan Gheesling’s behind the scenes look into building a gaming brand
In his weekly podcast, Dan Gheesling explained his thought process for creating new forms of content and how he has permitted himself to be more lenient with his schedule.
Over the past couple of weeks, Dan has started the process of taking episodes from his podcast and putting them into written, easily digestible articles. His decision in adding a visual counterpart to the auditory episodes was a simple one.
“My thought process is to serve things up in as many different forms as possible [to] make it as easy as possible for someone to get involved.”
His process for hiring two writing interns to help with the job followed a similar vein. After sending out a tweet and having those interested create an article from an episode of the podcast, Dan called the final individuals to make sure that not only will they be a good fit but that “there is something I can do for them” to help with their long-term goals.
Dan’s approach to making things as easy as possible in the community has applied to other developments in the past weeks as well. Recently, he created a Linktree, a tool that allows you to put all your socials into one easy link. In addition, he created a phone number, (313)-509–1979, where members of the community can text him directly.
In addition to finding different ways to connect with others, Dan has also been introducing different ideas to keep things fun and engaging through his Youtube content and Twitch streams.
On Youtube, Dan started a new series in the game Undermine, which he will send off with an upcoming finale episode. Also, Dan has continued creating content in Super Mario Maker 2. From “Kaizo Training” to “Hot Box Roulette,” it has steadily become the most viewed series on the channel.
On the Twitch show, Dan recently held the first World of Warcraft community night with the plan being to have a couple of more community nights this month. Also, new ideas have been used to keep Escape from Tarkov fresh and exciting on the stream as everyone waits for the next big update. Whether it be collecting as many gold chains as possible or doing DGDQ runs (a spoof off of GDQ, a speedrunning event), the goal has always been the same:
“Find a way to keep things different, fun, and engaging.”
While Dan has been finding ways to make things easier and fun in the community, he has also been trying to go easier on himself.
This week, the Twitch show is going back to its normal schedule after starting an hour earlier the past couple of weeks. Instead of worrying about what he could not change, Dan gave himself permission to be lenient with the start time because from a long-term perspective, starting an hour earlier for a couple of weeks is not a big deal. Not to mention that starting an hour earlier has allowed new people to watch the stream live that aren’t normally able to. In the end, Dan only wants to make sure of one thing:
“When people tune in, they are entertained, distracted, having a good time, and having a positive experience…everything else after that just kind of falls into line.”
