How A Minecraft Creator Built A Channel With Grit, Ideas, And Strategy

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We sit down with Zach from Loverfella to trace the real path from broke, shy engineering student to a Minecraft creator with millions of subscribers. We dig into what actually drives growth now: strong video ideas, repeatable formats, evolving topics, Shorts plus long-form, and the mindset to keep learning when life hits hard. 
• Zach’s origin story: debt, anxiety, and starting YouTube as an escape 
• Early growth through Reddit by making ultra-short tutorials people asked for 
• The grind behind daily uploads: efficiency, systems, and sacrificing comfort 
• The breakout moment: one unique idea changing baseline views overnight 
• Why topic interest beats perfect thumbnails and titles 
• Shorts as exposure and a bridge to long-form when done right 
• Building a Minecraft server as a second business: cosmetics, ranks, and community economy 
• Investing in yourself first: books, courses, and AI tools to compress learning 
• Mindset over tactics: finding your why, staying grateful, and pushing through trauma 
• The most actionable advice for new creators: learn formats and iterate fast 
If you like that, you can hit that subscribe button. 
It’s hub.loverfella.com. 

Transcript

Why Shorts And Long-Form Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Right in twenty twenty-six, you really need both. They can get you exposure. Your videos gotta get good enough to compete with Mr. Beast, because they're right there, they're side by side. If you're looking to like specifically have success right away on YouTube, I think the most viable thing you can do is understand formats. AI makes it so much easier to compete. People that just start up are already where it took me five years to get to, like in a month. So it's a lot harder and easier at the same time.

Meet Loverfella And The Channel

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that'll craft more minds than you. I'm Travis, and I'm here with a very special guest today, Zach from Loverfella. How are you doing? I'm doing good. How are you? I am super excited to talk to you because a lot of our listeners are gamers and they want to know how to make it on YouTube. And you have made it on YouTube, 3 million subscribers, over a billion views, but we're going to get to that in a minute. If you're new here, we help you grow your YouTube channel a lot of different ways. Sometimes we answer your questions through emails. Other times we interview people just like Zach. If you like that, you can hit that subscribe button. If you're listening to the audio only podcast, there will be show notes and all the details in there. So you can uh check it out there. But Zach, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Tell us real briefly about your YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

I do primarily Minecraft videos and I make a lot of videos with my fans, my subscribers on a server that I own. We we just do really fun, sort of cinematic style events. We uh kind of pull pranks on them, but ultimately we bring them into our content as much as we can because it just creates really fun, exciting, unpredictable moments that end up creating just really exciting footages that we can edit, turn into massive stories. And that's kind of the basics of it.

Starting Broke And Introverted

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I love it. And we're gonna talk about where you are now, but not yet, because I like to rewind and go all the way back to the beginning of everything. Uh, and I don't mean when the earth was made, I mean kind of your beginning of everything. Tell us about who Zach was before the first upload went up. What were you doing? Where were you in your life? What were you what was your job? Like, what was going on?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Zach was sad. Zach was very sad. He was in college. I was taking classes to become an engineer back then, and I spent all my money on a gaming computer because I didn't go out in college, you know. I was an engineer, I was a nerd, so I just gamed and I needed money to pay rent. So I was like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. I was like, well, my computer's good. Um maybe I can just upload like high-quality, no-talking gameplay footage, and maybe that'll make me money.

unknown 2:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

It didn't, it really didn't. But something about doing that, like just making a few videos, I was like, whoa, that was kind of nice. Like, I kind of like that. Yeah, I didn't even know you could make money on YouTube, um, like a lot. I thought maybe a couple hundred bucks. But that's how it started. I was in a very bad place, desperately needed money, started, and accidentally started being like, you know, I kind of like this editing thing. This is way more enjoyable to me than engineering. Because I really didn't like engineering at that time. So it felt like an escape, possibly.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

So you were in college at the time, trying to make rent, of course. Uh, and why did you think that uploading on YouTube would be the why wouldn't you get like a side job or something like delivering beats or something? Why was YouTube the thing?

SPEAKER_00 2:54

I had a side job. I was uh in classes, I was working as an engineering like intern. Um but I realized when I was there, like, what even is engineering? You know what I mean? Like they don't tell you when you're 18. They're like, oh, you make a lot of money, but I didn't really know what it meant. I don't even know like an engineer was like a part of a job on a train until I was like 22. Like it was just confusing. I was like, what am I doing? You know? Yeah, and so when I got to my job as an intern, I sat in a cubicle and I was like, is this it? I don't like that's that's all I do. And so I knew I needed some way out. And so when I started playing games, I was like, Well, I like it. You know, I was really introverted, really shy. You know, I mean, I would get nervous walking to class, right? So my personality was the worst personality for YouTube. Um, I used to have to hype myself up before I recorded. I would do like 50 intros for years. Literally, I would sit there, I'd be like, hello guys, hey guys. Like, literally, I would take an hour just to start because I was so nervous, because I was so introverted. So, really, it's kind of weird that I stuck with it so long. But I think it's really good proof that when you have no skills, no charisma, like I was so monotone. Literally, my first videos are still up. I never deleted them. You can see like what I'm talking about, and I was just so shy. And it took years to break out of that, but it just I loved it. So I just kept pushing through it.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

All right, so let's talk about those first couple of uploads. So you um, you know, you're you're thinking that this is you got to spend your money on your computer, which by the way, nowadays, same thing. Things are so expensive right now that you literally could spend your rent on a on a uh on a gaming computer right now. But let's let's just go back uh about a decade ago when you started uploading.

Reddit, Tutorials, And First Views

SPEAKER_01 4:28

What made you um choose the games you did? Did you have any strategy behind? Were you inspired by anybody at the time, or were you just throwing up whatever? I was, uh you know what?

SPEAKER_00 4:37

So strategy, no. I tell you what, I had no strategy. It was like I there was like not a lot of good info back then. Podcasts like this didn't exist, you couldn't read books. Mr. Beast wasn't telling you all the all the secrets. Like, there was no websites that helped you, there was no AI. And that was one of the biggest struggles because I was like, I don't even know what you know, click-through rate is like this is a metric that didn't exist back then, and the the analytics in your YouTube studio back then like literally did nothing. So I was just totally blind. But I I do remember an inspiration back then that really helped me through it was Roman Atwood. He grew up just next to where I grew up. My brother told me, like, Zach, there's this guy, you know, in the middle of nowhere, he got like six million subscribers on YouTube. And I was like, Oh, what? Like, I was like, that's crazy. Like, how could you do that? We live by corn and cow, you know? Because I looked him up and I was like, Whoa, he's like kind of successful. That planted a seed, and actually, there's I could go way in depth on it, but he was like the primary thing that got me started on YouTube was Roman Atwood watching that and trying to model what he did. So, my early content, if you're familiar with Roman, he used to make daily vlogs where he motivated people. That motivated me. It made me believe in myself when I didn't have any faith. So that's all I knew. So I you'd be watching me kill people in a video game, and then being like, guys, keep believing in yourself. You can do it. Because that's all I knew, you know. Right. So it was like two years of me doing that. And some people will be like, yo, why do you stop? They like, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

So okay, so you're uploading games. It looks like um, so I binding of Isaac was there, Terrera. You're doing a little bit of everything, like you're just kind of bouncing around.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Actually, fun story about that. I'll tell you. Yeah, I had so little money after I bought that computer that I would get all of those games free because I would go to Reddit, I would find subreddits, beg people for games, and they would buy them. $250. That's how much Terraria costs. I couldn't afford it. $2.50. They sent it to me for free. Same with Binding of Isaac. All of those games you see in there for the first like two years, I could not afford myself. It was literally me begging people. So that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Well, listen, I've talked to people recently that the hustle at the beginning when they don't have money is actually it's actually really inspiring. There's a creator that I just interviewed, and probably by the time this podcast goes up, you'll be able to see it. Uh, a gentleman who is uh really a very successful travel uh vlogger now, uh started in Nigeria, and his first job to kind of save money up to do YouTube stuff was an Uber driver, but he didn't own a car, so he borrowed one. So uh it's stuff like that when you hear like, listen, I just went to Reddit and see if someone can buy me a game that's really kind of inspiring. So you started uploading for a while with these games that you were either given for free or whatever. Um, did how long did it take before something actually happened where you're like, okay, this thing finally could start to be something? Because I have to imagine at first it probably wasn't all that great.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Well, the first year, I think I made around $10,000. Now that sounds good, except, except I was like $90,000 in debt. We didn't have a lot of fixed tests. And you have to understand, I posted every single day, sometimes twice a day for that year. And I was so consistent on that schedule, right? Second year, I maybe made like $12,000. It wasn't a lot of money. It took me many, many, many years of daily posting. I did my own recording, my own ideas, my own thumbnails. I edited my own videos, you know, no team for years. And so I would spend like, you know, even when I graduated college, I still, you know, had to work as an engineer. I would work eight to nine hours there, come home, and I literally specifically chose where I lived in relation to this business so that I had a shorter drive so I could put more time into my business. So uh I would spend another eight, nine hours after my job just making videos every night daily for a year and a half. I did that. And it took almost four years of doing this, maybe three or four, to get uh any level of actual success. And while I was doing it, my whole entire life for four years was about efficiency. How could I trim down anything to save time? So I was like, my friends live downtown in Philly, so I'm gonna live five minutes from the job in the middle of nowhere in a place covered in freaking roaches and rats, because now I'm getting back 30 minutes a day. And then I read about sleep. I was like, do I have to sleep? You do actually. Turns out you can't cut down on that. At some point you do, yeah, yeah, of course. I would meal prep, like anything that would save me five minutes, I add it up, and suddenly you're saving hours a week. I put it back into YouTube. And like that was my life for years. I was like, I will do this or I will die trying to make it happen. It was just unbelievable grit. And honestly, sometimes that's what it takes.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

So for the first year, when you're uploading daily, how long did it take do you, if you remember before you got monetized? Was that something that happened kind of oh back then though? This was 10 years ago. To be clear, things were different.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yeah, you were monetized right away back then. You just started and you would make a penny a day or something. Yeah, I forgot about that. It's way different.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Now, yeah, gaming is different in a lot of ways um because the the CPMs and RPM stuff are are lower than everything else. So the strategy I've been seeing lately. Well, I guess it depends on on how you do it. Like live streams and stuff, it's probably fine. But like if you are um, and again, I I I want to separate the fact that when you started, things were way different. Maybe we should start there. There weren't shorts. Um, live streaming was not at the was even was there even live streaming when you started? I don't think there was. If there was, it wasn't a thing, really. Yeah, I mean, what was Twitch even a thing 10 years ago? I mean, it was very close to being a thing. It was just a TV. Oh, okay. So Twitch was around. Twitch was around, but it wasn't as big as it is now. Uh live streaming on YouTube is huge now, but it wasn't a thing then. So you literally had to, like you said, you had grit of just uploading and uploading. How long before you started seeing video views go to something that was kind of uh good, like a thousand or something? Because I have to imagine daily from zero back then, it must have been a while.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Yeah, it would take a long time. So we had no success for like the first like three months, like maybe 20 views, 10 views, like for three months of daily posting. And then um, I actually started seeing people online complain about like, oh my gosh, like that was when watch time mattered. Like, so the longer people watched, the more YouTube would promote you. People were like, These tutorials and these games are horrible. Why is it 10 minutes? You could tell me in two minutes. So I made a series on a game. It was called Arc Survival Evolved. It's like a dinosaur game. Yeah, and I made tutorials where they were uh like a minute or less, like how to build a base in one minute or less. And Reddit loved it. So I posted them on Reddit and they're like, I love this guy, they're so short. You know, I didn't make any money because they were so short, right? But 1,000 views, 2,000 views, 3,000 views. I made like 30 of these videos, gave me just enough of an audience to try out something else. Suddenly I was doing like a little Let's Play video, which were pretty big back then. I get a couple thousand on that. But for me, it started, I entered through Reddit and through making exactly what people said they wanted. So do they still want that? I don't know. But you can read the comments and really figure out what people are after and then build around that.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

So I I mean, you uh it's funny, I'm scrolling through your videos. And when you start from 10 years ago and scroll, you can scroll a couple times before it even gets to nine years. Like you were really on the grind. Yeah. Was it fun during all this time, or were you just trying to find the you know the connection so you could start actually getting a lot of views and start getting money? Or was this just something that you really were passionate about? Because I always tell people if they're gonna do a YouTube channel, I mean, you have to understand that there's probably gonna be a level of success if you're willing to go for it, but probably in the beginning, you're gonna see none of it and it's gonna be heartbreaking and heart-wrenching unless you love it.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

It was all passion. I mean, I still love it, right? Like I see a lot of creators today, even like they get burnt out, you know, but I love it. I work as hard today as I did back then. Like you, you know, you don't see it in the quantity of videos, but we're putting so much in behind the scenes on other projects that it's unbelievable. But there's like a passion. And the problem is if you don't have that genuine passion for like video production, recording, like, you know, studying the data on analytics, like whatever you're doing, if you don't have that passion, you're against people like me. There's a lot of people like me that really like it. And so you won't win. You won't, because it is competitive, right? At the end of the day, there's only like six slots on the homepage. And so your videos gotta get good enough to compete with Mr. Beasts, because they're right there, they're side by side. So it has to be from deep passion and deep love. And you know, you also have to combine that though with because passion won't take you there. You need a strategy, you need a very deep strategy, and that's why I always recommend to people you have to read, study, like so much. Like when I first left, I think I read like 300 books a year for the first three years. Wow. I'm telling you, I didn't go out, I didn't have a social life. Exactly. That's all I did. I still read a lot, but if you do that, I have like an MBA just from self-teaching myself business because YouTube is joining a business. So you have to read so much, and basically every day you just learn a little bit. What went wrong here? What went wrong here? I even would spend one month, I would make a three-year calendar, one month on one topic. So I spent a full month just studying typography, like which fonts are best in thumbnails and what subconscious you know influence do they have. Music. Then you can break those down and go deeper, like how to use stems, light motif, like light motifs, and all of these different things. So it's just a constant studying. And if you're just passionate and do the same thing every day, you kind of have what I had where for three months you go nowhere because you're like, should just work. I have good graphics.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

So when you when you were doing this, you had your full-time job and uploading, which is crazy to me. You had a full-time job and like uploading daily. I don't a lot of people ask, how do you balance that? And but you said you didn't have like a life outside, so you probably just literally what went to work, came home, worked.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

What did that look like? You know what? I exaggerate a little bit. I would go out pretty often with my friends when I lived in Philly. We were working in a big pharma company there, and it was pretty intense work. But I always tell people, like, you find a way or you find an excuse. And there are ways you can be so much more productive than you realize. Like, how much of our days are we like working but not actually getting work done? But then suddenly you have a doctor's appointment at two o'clock and you're done early and everything's finished, right? So I just applied that principle, which I think is called Parkinson's Law. Like, there's officially a name for it. And it basically says like your work will expand to the time you give it. So I learned this principle and I was like, all right, I have eight hours every night or six or whatever it is, I will get it done. And actually, sounds crazy. I rarely would work weekends. Um I managed to post daily because I was so efficient in those days. I would do like half a video for Monday, Tuesday, like an extra bonus for Saturday, and then another half to, you know, Wednesday, Thursday. So if you can really actually be, you know, focused on your output, it's very doable. But most people make excuses for it and they're like, you know, I can't do it. But like you're wasting like half of your time not really being productive.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

And then and that's true. Like I can think of the times when uh maybe I could be doing something else, but I'm watching like something on Hulu.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Like uh No, that's yourone out there who's like, I don't have time, show me your screen time right now. Show me a screen time.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

You know, no, not like this, not like this. Um, all right. So you so you found the time that was always there. I and back when I first started, same thing. Like I would I would be at work and during my lunch breaks, I would watch um how to grow on YouTube videos. Like Daryl Leaves all day. Daryl Leaves, I'm now I'm friendly. It's crazy because I grew up watching Roberto Blake, Daryl Leaves, Nick Nimmett. I'm friends with all of them now. Like they've they're my peers now, which is crazy to think about. But um, yeah, I mean, I I totally get it. So you know exactly what I'm talking about. So when thing what what was the time when things started picking up and actually working for you? What was there a video? Was there a series of videos? Tell me

The Breakout Video Idea

SPEAKER_01 15:29

about it. We dropped one video.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

My editor goes, Zach, this video is kind of a good idea. And it was called Risk It for the Biscuit. This was a video where I went on my my ARC server with players, and I basically would give them a random challenge, and I said, like something pretty like awful, to be honest. I'll like they had like a dinosaur they had to get in the game, and I was like, kill your dinosaur, and maybe I'll give you a prize. And so they would like kill it, and then I'll be like, All right, you don't get a prize, and I'll go to the next person. It was honestly pretty awful. And I called it risk it because you may or may not get the prize. Right. People loved it. My editor really put in a lot of effort into um this video because he's like, I think this is kind of weird and creative. And so we put it, and the video just went straight up, right? And the viewership went from like a baseline of daily viewers of like a hundred a day to suddenly like you know, twenty thousand a day. Like this one video never dropped down for like five years. Um and we maintained it, and you know, we did more, we started, you know, learning more and more and more. And uh it was a pretty special moment. It was literally like that. It wasn't a slow buildup, it was just interesting.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

So you grind for years, not much is happening, and then all of a sudden, this one thing changes everything. What did you learn from that one thing?

SPEAKER_00 16:39

What we learned mostly was that how important sort of the idea was, right? This was a really unique idea. In the past, we only played the game. We would sit down and play. But that was interesting in 2009, and it was like 2017, 16, I don't know, something like that. So once we started going in like this, we found out like, oh, nobody else in the world is doing this because nobody's interacting with their fans like this, and nobody's like making these funny videos like this. So we expanded to a bunch of other types of content. So like we made like weird ideas, like if you can paint it, you can have it, right? You can paint your dinosaur, you can have your dinosaur. Or, you know, we did one, it was like, whatever you think, I'll give you. And I was like, okay, what are you thinking? And I gave it to them. We just took this one idea and just exploded it into a bunch of ideas. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

So it's all about the idea. So uh I want to get to that in the few, like present time in a minute, where how do you do that now? Because obviously that's super important now. But let's talk a little bit about um Minecraft. When was the first time you played it on channel? And did it immediately start doing well? Um, or did it was it a couple times before you got that one that took off?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Man, you won't believe this, but the first video I made got a million views. It was my number one video when I released it. I'd never had a million views. I'm pretty sure this was my first ever. And I was like, what the heck?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

What is going on? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah. It was like a video I made up with my brothers. We called it Admin Wars. And it was this game we would play as kids where we all had a base and we had 30 minutes to prepare a base. And then after 30 minutes, you would go try to capture a flag or kill each other, right? That was the game. And we just did it and people loved it. It was the worst thumbnail ever.

unknown 18:07

I was like, what the heck?

SPEAKER_02 18:08

What's it like?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

All right, we'll start doing a little Minecraft, and then it ended up taking over and being the pivot we got into. And I could not honestly believe that worked as it did. It was really unusual.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Was it around this time when you went kind of full you you'd left your job, or what what what was that time like? What was the time zone uh time?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

It was around then, yeah. I had blown up with that first arc video, and the money was coming in. I was making more money in a day than I made in like two weeks of an engineer, and I was like, oh my gosh. But I was scared, you know, it came so quick. Yeah, I was making 20 bucks a day, and now it's like so much money. So um, I said that I would stay at my job for three months, and it was the longest three months of my life because I'm sitting there making like you know, it was like 30 bucks an hour, yeah, which is good, but I'm like I'm like, I can make so much more if I like you know go to my own business. Yeah, and then one day my boss goes, Zach, we'd love to promote you. And I'm like, I'm quitting. Wow. And I left, and it was a new thing, and then uh yeah, we we got to put that time in and it really paid off. Wow, how many years ago was that? Oh man, it was like it's hard for me to remember, probably 2022, 23. Okay, so I don't know. Yeah, like 25, 26.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

So this is after COVID. So it was after, like, I'm sure the COVID explosion was was great for your channel, right? I mean, that's where a lot of channels grew.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

It was good, yeah. It was nice, but I didn't really know what I was doing, right? That was right at the beginning of when I was starting to get the flow of things. And so if that had happened now, probably would have 10x'd my returns in that opportunity for my business. Um, I was just still a lot of guessing. I I didn't really know. So it was very easy for me to like post flops, you know. One day we're getting three million views a video, and the next one gets 200k. And yeah, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what's causing it. Do you know now? Well, I hope so, but we still have a lot of flops, you know. Um times have changed a lot in the last few years. I mean, Minecraft's not as popular, and there is so many like lessons I'm still learning 10 years in that uh I mean, even in the last couple weeks, we've made like ginormous breakthroughs. Um like we just set uh our viewership daily record for the year yesterday. Um we had like five one of tens in a row because we've learned something new that I was like, oh my gosh, we're stupid. How do we do that? How did we not know that? Yeah. What like what can you give us an example of like what one of those things was? Yeah, I mean, honestly, the the biggest thing we learned is like we were so stuck on what had gotten to us or what had gotten us successful, right? Yeah, this thing got us successful and we just wanted to keep doing it. But that thing didn't necessarily uh it wasn't what people wanted, right? And so as we started making content that was more aligned with our viewers' interests and the entire like what do they actually want, it really helped us. And so you hear every creator say a thumbnail and title. They're so important, right? Make the thumbnail the best you can. So I spent years like trying to do that. And I studied thumbnail composition and color and saturation, everything. And I'm like, people just aren't clicking. You two keep saying they're not clicking. What the heck? And then I realized like the most obvious thing ever, it's like it doesn't matter how good your thumbnail is or your title if they're just not interested in that topic. Yeah, and so that was like a breakthrough for me. It sounds so obvious, but the topics that they were interested in in 2020, they're not really that interested anymore. Like their viewership interests have changed. If we look at the most popular Minecraft videos today compared to back then, they're wildly different. Back then I did a lot of testing. You don't necessarily see many testing videos, you know, getting three million views anymore. So we we swap that a little bit and it's been uh awesome, it's been really great. But you have to be not afraid to evolve your content. And if you get so stuck on what you used to make, I think you follow down a path of failure and then blaming the algorithm and being like, why don't I get views? But so many creators are making content that just doesn't compete in the modern day. We have a lot more lessons in technology now. AI makes it so much easier to compete. And so you might have won your niche back then, right? But now people that just start up are already where it took me five years to get to, like in a month. So it's a lot harder and easier at the same time.

Shorts Strategy And Evolving Topics

SPEAKER_01 21:51

So talk to us about when um you were you were going along, things were going pretty well, and then YouTube Shorts comes around. Um, what was your thought about them? Where were you Considering them immediately as soon as they came out. They were certainly OP when they first came out, and certainly till to a certain degree, even now, but way when they first came out, like they were ridiculous. Tell us your thoughts about shorts.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

I think shorts are good. Now, I did them right away. We had a lot of early success with shorts, but I found that I did just I don't enjoy making them. And even now, we're still trying to discover the right strategy. I think it's very important to do them. I think it's unbelievably important. So just because I'm not actively posting doesn't mean I'm not working on testing strategies to figure out how I want to do it. Um, but for me, I think they're very good tools to like slowly build up skills and experience in YouTube, slowly build up subscriber counts, sometimes really quickly, honestly. Um, but I think you I think you really need to do both, right? In 2026, you really need both. They can get you exposure. Uh, even on my business, my Minecraft server, um, we grew so much just by posting shorts about the server on TikTok, which we're gonna start doing again because we stopped for some reason. So um it's it's really valuable. And people convert more than um a lot of people say they don't convert, nobody watches long form. Maybe to an extent that's true, but I watch my own behavior, and I know for me, if there's like a shorts creator that I watch and see a lot, I will watch their long form. And I'm seeing shorts creators transition to long transition to long form be very successful. So I think it is very good to do, but it's also hard if you're you know starting out. It's a lot to manage. So making clips is a good idea as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Let's talk about uh the business aspect

Monetizing A Minecraft Server Business

SPEAKER_01 23:24

of now. This is going to be something that's very specific to you because you have a server and stuff. So not everyone who's listening to this will will be able to take advantage of this thing. But I'm really curious. Um, explain to us Minecraft servers, how the monetization part of that works, what a Minecraft server is, so that people who don't play Minecraft know what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

You can set up online servers where your community or anybody can just join. And I pay, you know, thousands of dollars to run it, host the infrastructure, and then add a lot of custom features you wouldn't find in a normal Minecraft world. Um, these features are things like you know, the ability to have leaderboards or custom enchantments or like really awesome weapons that look cool. And so we'll monetize it by offering skins. People can buy cosmetics and things, they can buy um, you know, just a plethora of different um things on the server. And so we play on the server, we make videos on the server, and then people, this wasn't the plan, but people just wanted to join me. Yeah, so I was like, well, okay, we'll open it up. And it actually started like that. And then I was like, this is cool, but like a server isn't free. I need to like fund this.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

And so they were like, just sell something, we'll buy it. I was like, okay. So I tried it immediately, like 10 people bought it. We made a thousand dollars. And I was like, What the heck? So it was funded for like three months, and then from there I was like, wow, this could be like a real business. Again, I didn't know. Yeah, and so now we have like a team of developers, very high monthly expense and overhead, and it's like a full-on business. I mean, it is a lot of work, it takes a lot of time, and it is really rewarding to do. I love it so much.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

So people can go to your server, which I guess maybe if I remember, I'll put a link, I guess, in the description. Uh, because I'm curious about this. I actually now play Minecraft with some friends, so I'm kind of curious about it. Yeah, sure. And then they join, and then within that server, they can purchase skins and stuff. Is that what you're saying? That's kind of your modestation strategy.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Is that what it is? Yeah, exactly. We have a website, they can purchase things on our website, they can purchase um like ranks that might give them perks, different chat colors, or you know, all kinds of different things, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

And so you don't have to, right? In my videos, I never spend a dime, and I want people to know they don't have to. Um, but it also enables us to hire a full team of developers and you know, maintenance. You know, it costs a ton to do. I mean so uh it ends up allowing players to do things they can't do on their own. We have, like, for example, an entire economy, and so players the coolest thing, they literally run businesses, and you know, they might be 15 years old or 18, and they will start a business, they will hire people on the server, they'll do a building business or consulting business. We have like really leaned into that because players are so like into the business aspect, which I love. And so people are making money, they're selling things. People start golf courses, right? You can teleport, pay money to the owner, he'll get some money, and you'll play a little golf that they build. And so, because the game allows infinite building and creativity, people can build like parkour. Come play my parkour. If you win, you'll get money. If you lose, I get money. Just so many creative ideas. And then one of the cool things they do is they'll build malls. They rent out spaces in their mall, and then other players come to the mall where everybody's located and shop at all the different areas for items, and it's all player driven. And our goal is to make it the best economy in Minecraft. So we're studying freaking economics now, right? How do you create a balanced economy? How do we avoid inflation? Like, which we're struggling with. It's really fun.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

What's the what's the percentage of your overall income that comes from like your server?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Um, it depends on the month, probably 50-50, probably around.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

That's super high for a server, which I mean, you don't actively have to do anything there, but it's nice because it's actually also it would be the equivalent of like your studio in a way, right? So it it's something that I imagine from a tax perspective, you maybe it'd write off or whatever. But it's like part of the thing you would need anyway. And then you're monetizing on top of that, which is which is like seventh brain, 10th level type of uh intelligence. Like that's super smart. Um, and that continues to be successful even when views maybe slightly down. I'm obviously you're gonna have um times when views go up, so more people will sign up, obviously, right? But there, I would imagine if you give a good service, people are gonna stay for a long period of time. Do you track that?

SPEAKER_00 27:19

We do, yeah. We have a lot of internal dashboards that we track, and uh, it's pretty crazy. About 35% of our players, um, they will play for at least 24 hours, like total playtime, minimum. Like that's they'll reach that threshold. And so, like one in three will last that long. And it's cool. I mean, there's a very dedicated community, and it's people have played for like 10 years. In fact, uh, we have had multiple people get married to the people they met on the server. Wow. Yeah. That's incredible. We have one guy who is a legend in the community. He has retired and he's spending his retirement on the server. He loves it so much. Um it's just amazing to be able to do something like that. And uh, we're, you know, putting in a ton of effort right now to revamp it, bring it up, and uh, you know, put more time back into it this past couple of weeks. Um, sometimes it's hard. Like we will neglect it more than we want to as we focus on videos. Because for me, videos come first. And, you know, I could hire more people to help, probably should, but right now we just you know don't have enough people for that. And so there are times where it does fall off a little bit, but it's uh it's a really good thing, you know, to have a business opportunity like that. So if you want to think about growing a channel, always think about what that business could be. And this is a great one for gamers to do. What's the website that people can go check out? I'm sure people are gonna want to know. Uh, it's hub.loverfella.com.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Okay, make sure you check that out. I have a link in the description. I think it's interesting because a lot of creators are so obsessed with like the creation and then of course the views and everything, but they forget that if they really want to do this full time, you have to have a business behind it. And um, you were in a unique position where you were very analytical, analytical to begin with. So, you know, finding out about this stuff, learning about it is actually part of your passion anyway. But if someone isn't like super analytical like you and just wants to get kind of in a way where it pays for itself in some way, what would be some things you would think of uh that you could, I mean, you've been doing this for a decade. Like, what are the things you've learned that would help them get to that point?

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Um, I would say, I mean, it's probably a cop-out answer, but the best thing you can be doing is buying investments in yourself. Like you really should just be buying books and courses, educational things, AI subscriptions. I wouldn't worry as much about like, you know, finding ways to make a business or a server, maybe early on. I would just be like, you know, go buy the $300 course from a creator because it's gonna teach you more than you need. I just bought one last week from an editor. It was like $450. Like, you know, you're never too smart for that. So like I would just spend all my money on that, like literally 100% of it to learning because you're gonna make back like a hundred times what you invest into it instead of like a business or a you know money-making strategy early on.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Well, I'm curious, what does your normal day look like? Like start us, start us from you waking up and to the time you go to sleep. What does a normal day look like?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

I think I'm lucky because since I worked in you know a real job, like most a lot of creators, like a lot of them never actually worked in like an industry job or whatever. Like they just made it when they were kids or whatever. So I have that routine of like waking up. I work from like probably eight till five, and some nights much much longer if I'm really into something. I'll just work like eight hours, I'll work out after, but during my work dates, you know, the mornings usually for my most important tasks till about 10 or 11, like meetings, tasks, like systems, whatever we got to do. And then I'll spend two to three hours recording most days. And then the afternoon is almost exclusively for me. Um, right now it's mostly growth studying research. Um, I I like I said, I don't stop learning. I think that the gap between where you are and where you want to be is covered just by knowledge, and what comes in is what comes out. So I just study all day relentlessly. Chat GBT, Gemini, these things really help because I can do more research now in a couple minutes than it would take me weeks. So if you're on my team, you'd know I'm sending them a thousand guys. Look at this, look at this, look at this. Like last week we were studying music, how to make better music. And so we're like so deep in understanding like how films use it. Like, I I had made this mistake of in my videos, I would constantly have background music. Apparently, you don't do that. So I started looking at other creators in movies. Only 40 to 60 percent of a video actually has music. If you look at David Dobrik, he doesn't use music the whole time, and that's because the music loses its impact when it's constantly playing. Yes, I didn't know that for 10 years, right? And so it's crazy. Like, how many other things are there that I just don't know? Um, I'm trying to fill the gap in. I mean, yeah, I saw, for example, um, a couple weeks ago you had Brave Wilderness, Coyote Peterson, on your podcast. I'm like, dude, I live next to him. So I was like, Can I meet you guys? Like, I want to learn. And so we're meeting up in like a month and a half. Um, like I'm like, I'm gonna learn everything I can from them. I know we talked about you wanted to get into gaming. I was like, let's go, I'll help you. That's okay. I want to learn about your filmmaking and stuff. So it's just, you know, constant learning for me.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

I'll tell you another episode you should watch when it comes out, probably. By the time this episode goes live, it'll be live. I just did an interview with Dan, the uh producer from Pocket Monster, which is a big Pokemon channel. And the entire episode is storytelling. And he breaks down one of their popular videos and how they did the storytelling and the editing and like why they used music and why they didn't use music, stuff like that. And it is one of the best, most educational. I've done tons of these episodes. It's one of the most chock full of actual takeaway knowledge that you can come across. I highly recommend if you're watching this and it's already out, go watch it, hit the subscribe button if you want to find it later. Um, an incredible episode. And I love how you talk about always trying to learn because I think a lot of people would look at you and go, oh, you made it. What if you just played Minecraft? You don't have to do anything anymore. But it doesn't feel like that's enough for you, which is good. I think that's great because so many creators will get to a certain point and then just they'll fall off because they don't have that hunger. Is that something that's been naturally in you, or is it something that you just have a natural curiosity for, or

Mindset, Hard Times, And Burnout

SPEAKER_01 32:57

what is that?

SPEAKER_00 32:57

So this is this is pretty interesting, but a little bit longer. But back when I I started YouTube, I told you that I had like no confidence, I was an introvert. Um, it was bad. I recognized that a lot of people reached success and they were depressed, right? They were desperately depressed. I mean, a lot of them have you know ended their lives because of how and I was like, how is this possible when you're so successful? I recognized in myself back then that the most important thing wasn't that you know, one day I get successful. I knew I would do it because I knew that it was just enough hard work and adjustment. It was that I need to get my mindset on the right path. Anyone can learn the strategies and tips. There's books and courses, easier than ever to do that. But the one thing people have to master is their mind. Because the number one reason people aren't gonna fail isn't because they, you know, don't know this algorithm trick, whatever. It's because their mind tells them to quit, they give up, they're depressed when they're already successful. And so for me, um, it's been all about what is my reason? What is my why? And that's from a book, right? It's called like start with why. All of this is from the books I've learned because I wanted to master my mind and I wanted to build the toughest mind in the world, um, which I needed for a lot of the things I had to go through. When I first started YouTube, all of this was happening. Well, I was also going through this while my mom was suing me for $100,000. I was $80,000 in debt. Uh, a girl I dated died from cancer. Um, there was like so many things that happened and so much more in like a short time period. And I realized life would be tough. I had to really build a strong mind to be able to see lessons and positivity in these things because many people would quit when those things get hard. And you see it all the time. Most viewers that are watching this won't make it because they don't know what to do. They'll they'll just give up. And that's a mindset problem. So when you find your why, like, why are you doing this? Then everything else comes along so much easier. And so for me, I found my meaning, I found my why. I love how movies make me feel, right? I love how I watch a movie like Project Hail Mary and it like makes me tear up. I'm in the freaking movie theater tearing up. My girlfriend doesn't even cry, and I'm like, what the heck? What's going on? I love how it makes me feel. Yeah. I want to make videos that impact people that way. Because when I was younger, when I was in college, when I was struggling, when I would like go to class and I literally would hyperventilate because my anxiety was so bad. So I had such bad like introvertedness, whatever. I was struggling, and so many people are. So my motivation is like, I want to help people like that with their mindsets, sometimes through videos, by getting them something that's genuinely enjoyable, they can share and enjoy. And sometimes I want to do it through teaching them like the mindset is what matters. All the systems and strategies in the world mean nothing when you lose your mind. And that happens to almost everybody because they work out their bodies, some of them, but nobody focuses on their mind. Literally nobody. And that's where you see people get success and they give up. People get success and they're not happy, or people get success and they always want more, and then they end up being like a multimillionaire and they're crying alone in their mansion. And I'm like, I never want that to happen to me.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

By the way, why would your mom sue you? I don't understand what just happened there. Uh, there's a super in-depth video on my channel where I talk about it. It's my like channel trailer. But the reason that she did that was we had student loans, they were parent plus loans. She had um taken the loans in her name, right? So they were legally hers. Well, when she divorced my dad, um, she like abandoned the family, left. She never, I haven't heard from her in 10 years actually, since that day. But she left our family, and uh, she's like, Zach, take these loans back. And I was like, Okay, I need this info. Like, I haven't heard from you in like a year.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

And then her lawyer said, You will not talk to her anymore, only talk to me. Whoa. You don't, you know, pay these back, we're suing. And I was like, I'm trying to get the info, dude. What the heck? I got it, paid them off. Actually, funny story. I became successful on YouTube within a uh like six months of that interaction, and I had 80,000 in loans. I paid them off one month after I officially took them over fully because of YouTube, which was amazing. But yeah, you know, it sucks to go through stuff like that. I have no idea where she is today. 10 years later, we haven't I haven't heard from her. And it's tough, it's painful, but when you build that mindset, you don't give up, right? You don't say like, oh, I can't do this. You just ask, how can I do this? What does it take? You know, it's very important to have that because you will go through very, very hard things on this journey, and so many times they're just opportunities for you to give up, to say, I'm not gonna do it. Two years ago, my brother, who records with me every day, I've watched him get hit by a car in front of me, 35 miles per hour. Look up the death rate on that. He walked away with a couple broken bones, a punctured lung. It was traumatizing. But people use these things as excuses to stop. Life keeps going, you know. You gotta build a mindset, you gotta read, you gotta study, you gotta meditate. It's so important. More important than anything else is the mindset.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

I 100% agree with that. So I think this next question is perfect for you. How do you protect yourself against burnout?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

I was telling I had a podcast a couple years ago, he said that, and I said, I don't believe in burnout. He didn't like that either.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Really?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

But like, I don't think it's real. Like, there are so many people that live working, like I worked at a factory, right, in college um before my internship. I would get up, I would drive an hour and a half there for $9 an hour, which wasn't good then and it's not good now. I would drive an hour and a half home. My feet hurt, it sucked. Every day I did it, no days off. I would get screamed at. My boss got a heart attack and died. It was so stressful there. Many people in this world do that every single day because they don't have the option to get burnt out. So when creators and streamers go, Oh, I'm burnt out, I got it's like, yes, this is a hard job, but that is so much harder. That is so much more physically demanding, depressing. There's no question. I don't care like how hard you work, whether you're Mr. Beast or not, that is brutal. Because not only that, but also the mentality of getting paid literally nothing to stand on your feet. And then people go there burnt out. It's like, go work a job like that for two years when you literally can't afford rent and then tell me you can quit. And it's like, you don't have the option. And when you realize that's the reality of life and have that perspective, it's like, how could I get burnt out? This is the greatest job ever. I'm so grateful every day. When you have that gratitude, it's like, I don't care. I love it. I will never get burnt out. I can't have it.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

I feel like what you're saying there is so under uh represented in growth YouTube. Um, I do talk a lot about having to be mentally strong because you are you are going to go through these dips and valleys and haters and like if you if you succeed 100%, you're gonna get people telling you that you're crap on in your comment section. Like that's when you know you've made it, is when you have people coming in and hating on your content. That's when you have that happen.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

I know my video is doing well.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

Exactly. Congratulations. But that could be rough. Like, I think people go into content creation, just they forget that that's even a thing. They think, oh, everyone's just gonna love me and it's gonna be great, and everything's positive, and I'll make money. And what about the times when you get demonetized or or a or a month completely uh falls out? You get a bunch of 10 of 10s in a row and you don't make the money that you thought you were gonna make. If you have a team, if you're lucky enough to even have a team, maybe you can't pay them that much. You know, I mean, like there's so many different things about this um that it's it's really important to know. So take your 10 years of knowledge. I think you've done a great job on the mental stuff, but let's talk about the 10 years of knowledge you have. And you we have thousands of people that are just starting out on YouTube. Uh take filter out the stuff that maybe they don't need to know right now and let them know the things they need to know going into this uh and to be ready for. Uh, you've given some great some great advice about like mentally strong, but let's talk about some other things.

Stealing Formats The Smart Way

SPEAKER_00 39:58

If you're looking to like specifically have success right away on YouTube, I think the most valuable thing you can do is understand formats. And this is something I didn't know for a long time. When you understand the pipeline of like production and how to actually be successful, you can understand that there are videos out there that have already become successful, like Mr. Beast $1 versus a million dollars. That becomes a format, right? One versus million blank. You just fill in the blanks. You got to do your research, an immense amount of it. So once you get those formats, you identify these like repeatable types of content, you need like four or five of them and you just spam them every day until they stop working. And so you need to like purchase these tools that exist that are out there you can find that allow you to find these formats. And then you should be spending about 40% of your time on just the format, the idea, the thumbnail, how it all relates together. This part is so crucial. I see so many creators that don't use formats and their success is not here anymore. We just learned this, by the way, a couple months ago, and it has had an immediate impact on our channel. There are studios, like you know, if you've ever watched the great British Baking Show or Survivor, they use format Bibles where they literally have like this is the format, this is the pacing, this is how you edit it, the songs, whatever, this is how it's always gonna be. Because people crave the familiarity of that format. They also crave it being novel and new in small ways. And so if each time you're creating something completely different, like I did for years, you don't have an audience that's being built. So you've got to give them something familiar. Like this show has a format, and you know, most creators, like Good Mythical Morning, go look them up. Every show is like into these five buckets, or it doesn't get used. That is like the most crucial advice because I don't think people care as much. Like, as long as your video is like an acceptable quality, your mic's good, your camera's good, you're like, even if you're really weird, they'll probably like you even more. You know what I mean? Like, once they click, you don't make any brutal mistakes, you're gonna be mostly okay. It's all about getting the click, all about getting the formats, all about mastering that. And I would spend that probably first year just studying that. I wouldn't even be concerned about the rest.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

So I'm gonna do the thought exercise we do in almost every episode uh to land this plane, so to speak. You can use the knowledge that you have on YouTube to answer this question. However, you can't use any of the resources that you currently have, so no editors, nothing like that. Um, and you can't be in the same niche. What would be your new YouTube channel? Uh, and give me like an idea of the format in the couple of first videos.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

I would definitely do Zach Eats is my channel, right? I love food videos. All right, I'm cutting, I'm trying to lose some weight for this cruise I'm taking. But these food videos are so interesting. You can go to um uh TikTok or YouTube and see these shorts of people just sitting in their Tesla eating disgusting amounts of food, but it goes so viral, right? I think if you just look at that and figure out, like, okay, what's the new food dropping? And then you're kind of like weird, like the weirder you are in these, the more you're gonna stand out. You have good formats and lighting, like that sort of thing could go really viral. And man, it would be bad for my health. But you know, these people sacrifice their health for it, and they're they're kind of happy, some of them, I guess. What's your first video? Probably be uh eating every item from Raising Canes. I saw a guy do that last night, big old cup, disgusting. Oh, he just dips it in there, like puts his fingers in it. I can't look away, but like also I feel like I shouldn't watch it. It's nasty, but man, they give views. It's a good spot to be in, I think. If you're trying to get started, people get do very well with that.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Well, Zach, uh, thank you so much for spending so much time with us. And if you're interested, there'll be links in the description below. And if you're a Minecraft player, I mean there's a whole world waiting for you. I think uh Zach's uh community would welcome you in. There'll be links for that also in the description below. Um, if you want to check out the video fortune, the video per version of this podcast and you're listening to the audio version, that link will be in the show notes, and everything else will be also in the show notes. If you like interesting content like this, where I talk to different creators, I got a bunch of them. Hit that subscribe button, and I have a video for you right here. We'll see y'all in the next one.