Dan Clancy talks to HOST AustinShow | Let's Chat Podcast EP 3

Hello, Dan. How are you?

Oh, yeah. Easy, easy peasy. We know each other very well. Um, going back to...

Totally. Number one enemy. I tell you big time, Dan and I rarely get along. We really do.

That's right. That's absolutely right. I love I'm digging the hat there, Dan.

Absolutely. It's your thing, so you should embrace it as you as you have.

Well, first of all, thank you Dan for having me. I'm I feel like a presidential candidate like I'm here I'm running for office. Uh no. Um well uh hello everybody. If you don't know me, my name is Austin Show. I've been streaming on Twitch since 2013. Um, I have done a lot of things on the platform that I'm very proud of. Um, and uh, yeah, where I grew up, I was born and raised in Oregon. Um, beautiful Pacific Northwest. Um, and uh, from a young age, I had a a really strong interest in entertainment across the board. I grew up watching a lot of reality TV shows, American Idol, uh, America's Got Talent. Um, I used to even host my own little um, talent shows in grade school. I would like bring people together um, and then do like little um, talent shows during recess. I I would do the same thing in my neighborhood. Um, and I would had a always had a passion for being on stage even as a young young boy and had a desire to be in front of the camera in some capacity. Sometimes it manifested as wanting to be a professional singer cuz my mom is a professional singer. So I was like, I want to sing. I want to do music. Um, obviously, you know, it's not my strongest uh thing. Um, or really not really what my passion is. Um, but yeah, you know, I grew up uh...

Like as as a young child or just like in in...

Well, I remember the first time I was on stage was I was in a play in second grade and we sang I don't know what the song is, but it 500 25,600...

So, I don't I don't know what the play was. Maybe it was Rent, but I was I played a jock in the in the play and that was one of the first moments that I remember really being on stage and performing. Another another time that sticks out is getting the opportunity to just speak in front of a classroom. Um I remember 8th grade we all got the opportunity to speak up in front of like the entire class and I like gave a speech and um ma made everybody laugh, you know, uh with what I was saying. And so that those are some of my earliest memories of be being on a stage in some capacity.

I was a terrible actor though, Dan. I was a terrible actor. I didn't get the lead role um in the play and I was extremely uh jealous of my friend who got one of the leads. So um but he didn't end up he didn't end up in entertainment at all. So clearly the producers missed it.

Well, I heard about uh I heard about streaming. I don't know how I heard about it. I don't remember how I heard about Twitch to be honest with you, but I started streaming in 2013. Um right right when Twitch was really in its infancy and sort of the wild west of the platform. And uh I heard about this Twitch thing. uh where I was at in life, I was uh I was an 18-year-old. I just graduated from high school. I was going into college. Um and uh I started streaming from my laptop in my dorm room um at the uh at at the college that I attended. And yeah, very early days. Twitch looks a lot different than it does now. Um but uh yeah, that that's that's how it started. I was streaming in my dorm room from uh freshman year and then into my sophomore year. And it truly started out as a hobby because when I started, Twitch wasn't a career. It wasn't it was it wasn't a career at all. This was not something that you would, you know, just start up and oh my god, this could be my job. So, I always looked at it as a hobby. And I would make I made some pretty decent money. I remember I had made, I think, $6,000 um from Twitch. And I remember thinking, man, if I walk away from this right now, man, I felt rich. You know what I mean? I was like, wow, I really what a success, you know, cuz I didn't expect to really make anything.

Yes. Yes. And from from the moment I kind of entered Twitch, I was always perplexed by the fact that everybody enjoyed and this is no I don't want to dis uh put down gaming. I I enjoy gaming. I came up on gaming. I played gaming as a kid. Old school Runescape, Madden, Halo, uh, Call of Duty. I played a lot of gaming. But for me personally, I was always perplexed by why people on Twitch weren't doing non-gaming content because I found reality TV and non-gaming content to be wildly more much more entertaining than than sitting and watching somebody play a video game. No offense, but for me personally, that's how I always felt. And so, I always challenged that uh part of the platform from the very beginning. in fact getting banned because I wasn't adequately playing enough games. For for those of you that that are here, you may not know, but there was a time on Twitch where it was actually a banable offense not to play a video game.

Yeah. So yeah, way back when. Yeah, for sure. Certainly did. But um but yeah, my philosophy has always been to from the moment I entered the platform is to push um I' I've always wanted to create things that were different than what everybody else was doing. For sure.

Well, I the first show that anybody gave a damn about is I think was a show called King of the Hill. And so, it started in like dating the dating realm, right? I would put four judges on the screen, male or female. Uh, King of the Hill was like four female judges. Queen of the Hill was four male judges and uh, we would bring on people. I was obsessed and still obsessed with the idea of bringing people in from the audience and bringing them onto the screen. I think that's such a fish out of water. You you also get to meet and get introduced to new new aspiring streamers and stuff like that. And I was obsessed with that from the beginning. So, we created a lot of our content early on was driven by this idea that we're going to pull somebody from the audience and put them in a fish out of water situation. So dating is like something that I've always found extremely interesting. It's extremely entertaining. It's widely relatable. So we created this format called King of the Hill where basically you would come on try to impress the judges based on your datability. And if you were good enough, you'd hold the hill and you would be competing against we would cycle through people and the as the people came through just like a schoolyard game.

Exactly. You have to stay on top. Um we did that. Um and then uh you know...

Yeah. More or less. I mean it you know the lines were blurred. Sometimes we hadu judges that were not in relationships or or not you know or or single or whatever that wanted to engage in sort of dating content themselves. And so the lines were blurred and and and and in in that respect. that that caught on quite uh quite quite quickly, I'd say. Uh and really really was one of the defining uh um shows I would say that sort of catapulted me into a more mainstream conversation on the platform. Um you know, but that that led into Lover Host. Um, and Lover Host became a massive massive show on Twitch that exploded through co. Um, and uh, still I I believe it's uh, maintains relevancy and when when collaborating with people that the the formula still works incredibly well.

So, for those of you that don't know what Lover Host is, Lover Host is a dating show where we take a main contestant, typically like a streamer of some sort, and then we pair them up with 10 uh people that are vying for their love. The key is here is that not all the contestants on the show are there for love. Some of them are there for host. Host used to be I was actually really upset when they took away host cuz it kind of made the brand name, you know, lover host. Now, nobody knows relevant.

I kept the brand though because I really don't think that the the the name of host really meant anything but really is host means betrayal, right? And the idea of the show is that you could either come on and choose love or host. Love meaning you're interested in the person and host meaning well I want all the viewers that come at the end of the show. So if you end up winning and you chose host well then you get you get hosted with all of the viewers from the show, right? And if it's love, then you match and it's happily ever after. So there's this multi-depth part of the show where it's like you have the person who's playing, the contestants on the screen are nervous, right? Because they don't want to be eliminated. And then the main person is nervous cuz they're trying to determine who's choosing love and who's choosing host. And even in instances where we had Syikudo on as one of the guests, main guests one time he got 11. We sometimes we put you know 11 people on. 11 people chose love. But even throughout that, there's still always the idea that somebody could choose host even up until the end.

Yes. Abs actually. Yes. So, like I I I can't I can't I I'm not sure if they're any longer. I I can't I don't want to speak on them publicly, but there are people...

No, I don't know any marriages, but I think we're in line with the success of other reality TV shows when it comes to...

Yeah, exact. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the one of the cool things about the shows that I put on were that, you know, like you said, they they had they we had a lot of viewers and so we would bring on people and I feel like we had a a unique ability to identify people that were really entertaining cuz that was our goal is to, you know, entertain. And then these people would get on and then they'd build platforms for themselves and some of them went on to get millions and millions of followers. Uh I I have a hard time taking credit for those people and really like, you know, mentioning being like, "Oh, it's because of..."

Yeah. Like, but but you know, a couple of examples like like Cutie Cinderella had early early spots on my stream, you know. Uh even Hassan [__] had early spots on my stream. This is before, but by I didn't make any of these people. They wanted to have very successful careers of their own. Um but uh you know I I feel like uh you know yeah a a lot of people I see I see I saw myself as somebody who I wanted to collaborate and I still want to collaborate with a lot of different communities and sort of be the bridge between them. Um, you know, I think there's a lot of different communities on Twitch and having the opportunity to put on shows where I'm mixing and mashing these audiences together in ways that they never would be together before, um, has been something that I've always prided myself in and something that I hope to have the opportunity to continue to do for a very long time.

So, so interesting that you said that. I think that you need you need a combination of both and you know with with the Elon acquisition of X uh or Twitter. Um it has really really put a wrench in my marketing strategy for my content and and overall platform. Twitter used to be a place where you used to be able to send out a notification and it would reach your followers. Now it gets put into an algorithm. So, it's almost like a lot of the a lot of the my ability to market my shows um is been diminished and almost become like almost like a luck. It's like luck that that people are going to see it or or engage with it. And it's not reaching the people that I know are going to click on a Twitch link, right? The people that follow me, those people are going to watch on Twitch. You know, if it just goes out in the ether to random people, they may not even click it. So to answer their question, yes, I did a combination of those things, but also my marketing strategy had to do with like I I would tweet out, I'd put it on, you know, all my socials. I' I'd come up with a banner, right? And that banner would get engaged with by a bunch of people and then I would also talk with the creator that was coming on the show. I would appear on their stream. I would talk about the show. I would get hype. I would I would I would leak guests, you know. I I would I would I would I would start buzz around the show and I would do it myself and with social media, but at a certain point you need the audience to buy into it to start generating that buzz exponentially. You need like a product that is something people want to talk about, you know.

Reels didn't exist back when you were doing Lover Host.

Uh, yeah, I did YouTube videos. Um, short form did exist. It it actually I I look back at some of my early Tik Toks and they actually we were uploading in 2021 um clips of Lover Host and they were getting millions of views at the time. Um I didn't it was a blind spot for me and it's a regret of mine that I didn't take it more seriously and didn't understand. I think this is something that I find really interesting about Twitch streamers in general is Twitch is a still to this day it's obviously much bigger than it ever has been in terms of its recognize you know how recognizable it is in reach but it a lot of people don't realize how insulated we are as a platform in some ways and especially back then I was not aware of like I didn't care about anything but Twitch the numbers on Twitch the views on Twitch. I didn't care about anything else. And a lot of Twitch streamers, I mean, still to this day, feel that way. You know what I mean? They they don't care about anything else. But there is a huge world of social media out there that can benefit and elevate your brand beyond anything that just Twitch. I mean, sorry, I'm on the Twitch channel, but you know.

Yep. Right. Yeah. And um the world's totally changed. Yeah. So for me personally like I have a short form content strategy and I tell the people that I work with is that this is the end all beall. I mean short form is the end all beall. It has to be the top priority of anything that we do and anything that we produce because there needs to be a it needs to start and end with the short form strategy. How are we capitalizing on every singular moment from our broadcast and pushing that out and creating clips and pushing them out into short form on YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, Tik Toks like that is that is the that is the strategy. There is no faster way to grow than than through short form.

Yeah. Yeah. And it it's uh it's sort of uh been something that I need to I need to still improve at. I I think I think like creators should have a combination of doing like the the Tik Tok that's just built for Tik Tok or built for short form and their stream stuff. And I also have doubts as to whether I'm pumping out enough clips from my um from my content. You see these clip farmers and stuff that are just pumping out just thousands and thousands of clips. So, I'm not really doing that. I'm I haven't employed that strategy. But I'm also a little old school. I come from a quantity a quality over quantity type of mentality and that sort of comes into a little bit of I mean there's a new generation on Twitch that I'm not saying they're lowquality by any means but but they pump out a lot more.

Yeah. I I think you know in terms of like you know going into my Twitch strategy I think I mean I I still believe that if you give you know I've got shows that I do lover host in the tub name your price um you know I have the flight stream show that I like to do. Um, you know, I just did a show called GDAR, which I think is which is a lot of fun, where we we again casting people from the public, but in person using traditional casting agencies live. Um, but I've always I've I've I I stand by my theory and strategy of I feel like if you create a piece of intellectual property, a show, you need to allow that show some space on its own to develop its own individuality and moment so that you can truly um like give it make something that people remember. So that's my goal is like whenever I make a lover host or whatever, I don't want to just like do a lover host and whip it up the day before, I want to spend a week to two weeks putting get putting together the cast and, you know, really really curating like uh and strategizing about what will this show look like when we put these people together? Um, and then hyping it up, getting to that moment, creating a show that builds to a crescendo and gives people something that they can remember, an impactful moment so that when you think a lover host, you think of that um, you know, you think of those moments as opposed to like just rushing through like a content slate. I I don't personally that's not something that I want to do. It's not something that I if if that's your strategy, that's fine. I I would like the things to to have a little bit more impact. And I feel like with how quickly things move these days, I feel like we forget a lot, you know, uh about what what just happened because they move so quickly.