Today we’d like to introduce you to Brett Yanoski.
The Inner Gamer began as a conversation between friends. We had just finished watching the latest Dragonball Z film and went to a bar afterward for a drink. Soon after a conversation about the greatest first-person shooter of all time began. We thought the conversation was pretty entertaining and we enjoyed debating the pros and cons. At the time both Brett Yanoski and Austin Morales had been listening to a number of video game podcasts. We decided why not make our own podcast? The next week we got together with our friend Travis to record our first episode on a Yeti microphone.
That episode still exists today and we’re now nearly 200 episodes in. Austin and Brett are still actively involved as business partners. We’ve now expanded beyond a podcast into a YouTube channel and local events in Dallas/Fort Worth. Our goal is to build an inclusive community of gamers that come from all walks of life. We don’t play competitively or compete in tournaments; we simply want to build a community that plays to have fun.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
We’ve run into a number of obstacles on our journey to 200 episodes. Most notably was the fact that we were and still are bootstrapped having brought in no outside revenue. We’ve learned making money with a podcast is incredibly difficult, especially in this market. Advertisers look for thousands of downloads before they even consider you. YouTube is such a crowded market it’s hard to increase impressions there and stand out amongst the slew of already established audiences. We also had many technical challenges having not worked with audio in the past. Fortunately, Austin spent a lot of time researching the best methods for editing the audio to where we can get optimal sound quality on a low budget.
The other difficult part is building relationships with local businesses. You can’t walk into a place and say “we’d like to host an event here for free and we don’t know how many people are going to show up.” Therefore, you have to prove yourself first before they’ll be open to allowing you to set up in their space. We’ve created some amazing relationships with local craft breweries like Community Beer Company and Braindead Brewing to name a few. We have also begun to build relationships with local indie game developers. We find that partnering with these smaller groups is a win-win for both parties and it’s really helped get over some of the big humps in growing our audience reach.
Please tell us about The Inner Gamer.
The Inner Gamer has a simple goal. We want to be curators in the gaming industry for the casual gamer. As we get older, we don’t have the time to play games as we did as kids. We look for a trusted source to find out what games are worth our valuable time. Our goal is to provide that with our podcast and our YouTube series “Next.” We also provide our audience with the top headlines of the week in the industry as well as a deep dive into a particular topic in the gaming industry. For example, with the rise of Battle Royale as a genre, we spent an episode exploring what’s next for Battle Royale. These types of subjects are all based on opinion but are oftentimes questions our audience is asking themselves and want to hear a new take on the subject.
We have three shows on our YouTube channel. The Next series is for gamers to learn what is “next” for their video game wishlist. The Inner Gamer On is a roundtable discussion about a new topic of the week from the podcast complete with visuals and gameplay. The Inner Gamer Invades is a series where we interview developers, cosplayers, and gamers at conventions around the country to learn more about and to share their story.
Our events are some of the most rewarding parts of our company. We host monthly meetups in Dallas and Fort Worth to bring gamers together in a social space. We bring indie games from lesser-known development studios to not only expose new people to their game but encourage gamers to meet new people and hopefully make new friends.
I am most proud of our achievements as such a scrappy team over the years. We’ve had teammates come and go but we’ve managed to push through it all and produce some quality content. More importantly though are the relationships that have been formed. Through our events, Austin and I have made new, lasting friendships with people all because of our gatherings. These individuals not only support our cause but are wonderful people to spend time with. It’s the people in our community that reflect who we are and they’re the most kind, generous people you’ll ever meet.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I were to start over again, I would definitely focus in more closely on one thing before moving on to other things. Early on we tended to take on too many things at once and this resulted in several failed attempts. It’s important to focus in on one thing and do it well before branching out. If you add on too many layers to your business too early, the systems won’t be in place yet and everything will fall apart. We’re still learning from this to this day. For example, we tried to start a podcast, then a YouTube channel, then stream on Twitch and then run events all at once. With a small team of four at the time, we could do one thing really well and the others fell apart. We’re down to just three pillars and we still struggle to keep things afloat so definitely narrow in your focus and realize you have a finite amount of time. Use it wisely.
Pricing:
- We offer all our content for free. A recurring donation on Patreon would be much appreciated starting as little as $1/month.
- Looking to have us run events at your venue? Prices start at $100/month.
Contact Info:
- Website: theinnergamer.net
- Email: hello@theinnergamer.net
- Instagram: instagram.com/theinnergamer
- Facebook: facebook.com/innergamerpodcast
- Twitter: twitter.com/innergamercast
- Other: meetup.com/theinnergamerdfw
Image Credit:
Lizette Barrera, Brett Yanoski, Austin Morales
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