Today we’d like to introduce you to Jordan Long.
Jordan, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
We started as just my wife, brother in law, and myself wanting to talk about the video games that we loved to play so much. What better way to do that than start a podcast. With a podcast others could hear and possibly even take part in our conversations as well as share in our passion.
We went along on this route for about a year. Week after week with a new show for everyone to listen to. While I still enjoyed what we were doing it just wasn’t the same. That’s when I decided to team up with some other friends so we could host a LAN party. For those who are not familiar. A LAN party is an event in which people come to a location with their gaming systems (usually gaming computer) and via a local network on site they all play games together and share in a more personal multiplayer experience.
While the LAN party did not have the turn out we hoped it was a big turning point for me. One of the best parts of this even was raising funds beforehand to fly one of our biggest fans and support from Tennessee to Texas so he could be part of it with us. It opened up my eyes to what we could be doing if we pushed a little harder and built our social influence. Not only could we start building an active local community that we could share our passion with but we could make it a positive one in an industry filled with some much negativity. We could use our content and our events to help and support others,
Growing up my father was a small business owner. Unfortunately not in the video game industry! But none the less watching him build and try to foster that small business taught me many things. First was hard work and a positive mind set overcome everything. As well as how hard it can be for small business to survive in an economy ruled by large organizations, but how important and impactful these local shops can have on a community.
So now after getting the response from others we got from the LAN party and the small online community we had already built I had a new drive and a new plan. We were going to expand. And expand big time. Gone were the days of just an audio podcast. Now we have a YouTube channel with regular uploads of all kinds of events as well as original content for people to enjoy. We stream every single night on Twitch.tv. We have regular written reviews and articles talking about hot topics or supporting small independent developers trying to make a name for themselves in such a large industry. And we still do the podcast.
Our goal with all this content is to grow our fan base. With a larger online fan base come much greater influence. With much great influence you can have a much great effect on many things. We want to use this to create a more positive online gaming community for people to play games with. May online communities can be so toxic and filled with a lot of hate and negativity. We also want to use this influence to host events at small and local business to help them grow. We have been trying to do this a lot at New Main Brewing in Pantego TX and I would like to think we have help introduce at least a few new people to that establishment. We want to bring more attention to small video game shops that do new and used games as well as retro but don’t get much attention because of online purchases and big chain stores.
Ultimately we want to make a difference for the DFW community. The gaming culture is a big and vary powerful thing and wen gamer’s work together they can do incredible things. Looks at the money raised every year for charity by 1UP on Cancer or Games Done Quick. Heck I just watch a twitch streamer raise almost $3000 dollars in 4 hrs. and then immediately donated every cent to someone that just lost their child.
I know with the hard work and determination myself and the rest of my team are willing and already putting in we can make a big difference in our community as well. Right now we spend every extra second we can working on these goals. Would be amazing to say this is our full time and it’s how we pay our bills but truth is it’s not and that only a dream. But our goals are obtainable. And the goal is to build a gaming content network that uses its influence to help other and promote small business trying to live out their passions in DFW.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Oh no it has not been smooth at all. We have been at this over a year and still have so much growing that has to be done to really start hitting the goals we want.
One of the biggest challenge is obviously the cost to create the content. Not just the dollar cost to buy all the gear and materials, but the time investment. We all with the exception of LazyTurtle (my wife) have full time jobs. So the time to schedule us to all be together, edit audio and video, attend and plan events, and still maintain time with our families can be a bit rough.
One of the other hurdles is trying to prep yourself to be in the public spotlight. Weather being featured in the YouTube videos, live streams, or speaking and addressing crowds at events. You have to be ready for all eyes on you. As part of that when we started this I weighed 384lbs. I decided to take on weight loss to help boost my self-confidence for a lot of that. I have managed to loose 171 lbs. and once again it has made me more driven than ever to push for our goals as a team.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Controllers and Keyboards – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
We are Controllers and Keyboards
We aim to produce entertaining online content for people enjoy. Whether it be something to watch, listen to, or read. We want to use this content to build a local community we can in turn use to support local businesses, events, and causes.
We are most proud of the goals we want to achieve and the affect we are aiming to have in the DFW area as well as hopefully the affect we have already had.
What makes us different? I feel that the we are trying to use what we are passionate about to help support others passions and build a stronger local community
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
GROW!
We want to keep producing new and more interesting content. But the big future plan is to bring and plan more big and small local events all over DFW for people to take part and engage in. For instance we have an event schedule on Nov. 8th to do a battle of the bands but with the game Rock Band. I want to make a lot more of these type of new creative events happen.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.controllersandkeyboards.com
- Email: controllersandkeyboards@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/controllersandkeyboards
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candkcrew/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CandKCrew
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
