Gadgetory

hey what's going on guys Jays $0.02 here and if you guys : social media I made kind of a big announcement and I thought that maybe with the amount of comments and stuff that were going around it might be a right time to do a Jays to send state of the channel and I would like to immediately start off by stating yes I have a cold sore on my lip just funny they call it that because it's not cold at all factor kind of burns so if you do follow me on social media than you guys were amongst the first to know that I resigned from my full-time job and that probably surprises a few of you were helped the bet because so many of you already figured that I was nothing more than a full-time youtuber which kind of bothered me a little bit considering the fact that because I had a full-time job doesn't mean I wasn't putting full-time into YouTube as well but that's all about to change this channel started over two and a half years ago August 26 2012 mostly on a dare a great guy by the name of holiday doc MLG commentator came across my twitch channel he thought it was funny he thought I would be great at YouTube and I thought he was full of quite honestly I made sure to tell him that too but he kept nagging me until I offered at least to try it and fast forward now two and a half years later and here we are 267 thousand subscribers or maybe more I have no idea the numbers going so fast needless to say it has grown well beyond my expectations in fact my first year's goal was 1000 subscribers but we did that in three months for two months I don't even know it's all happened so quickly now just a little bit about my history I had been working with the same company for nearly ten years I was hired as an energy efficiency auditor for a company actually doing things like energy efficiency cost analysis and measuring the amount of energy a building was using it was for a clean energy company and then later on and they found out I was actually IT certified they needed an IT guy and I got into IT and then the company continued to grow and I continued to move up the ladder and I actually moved up into a very 10-year tenure to position with the company and was very very comfortable but as the channel grew I found myself having to constantly divide my time we're going into work meant I couldn't get things done on the channel and I couldn't fulfill promises and things were slipping and then I got to the point to where there was times I was using vacation time or even using sick time to catch up on the channel and that wasn't fair or honest either and so I found myself burning the candle at both ends where the only way I can make everybody happy the only way I could do this was if I was burning the candle at both ends by good at getting up in the morning early in the morning going into work starting at 6:00 a.m. there's actually a while they were I took an earlier shift to work an East Coast schedule my office is actually out of Boston and telecommuting 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and then coming home and then working until about 7:00 p.m. getting to spend one or two hours a night at the most with the family and then working to 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and doing it all over again so people who were saying like YouTube channels are easy to run no they're not in fact it was way harder than working IT full-time doing that easily for over the last year and a half at that type of schedule I was burning myself out for both I didn't want to do YouTube anymore I didn't want to work anymore I just wanted to lay in bed I gave up all my hobbies because I loved doing YouTube YouTube is my hobby and so it got to the point to where a decision had to be made now last year my wife and I worked very very hard to get rid of our debt that was our goal for 2014 and we did it we got rid of all of our credit card debt 11 credit cards tax liabilities and hospital bills completely paid off in fact little Jay wasn't even technically paid off for all of her doctor's visits for when she was first born and some health complications that she had and even that is paid off we don't own this house we rent so we have very little overhead in fact we are in a position now to where we can live on very limited means now growing up my parents always owned and operated their own businesses I they didn't go to work to a nine-to-five I got to see firsthand from a child up to adult how hard it is to run your own business now there's tons and tons of support on social media people saying way to go Jay be your own boss but of course there are people who are concerned and I don't fault those people I think they're coming off from a very good perspective a very conservative perspective saying Jay don't leave your job don't leave that security well guys I'm of the mindset first of all that working for other people does not equal security first of all second of all my successes and and my security depends on their personal abilities to run a small business which is no different than what I'm doing now I'm a hundred percent confident that I can do this but I can say this with with reassurance for you guys this is not a knee-jerk reaction this is not something I just woke up this morning and said you know what I'm going to resign and be my own boss this is something that has been in the works for a long time I spent many many sleepless nights trying to figure out if this is what I wanted to do especially with things being up in the air regarding YouTube and how they're handing handling monetization and stuff I said a long time ago I would not put all of my eggs into YouTube unfortunately they're not technically I've got five different avenues at which I currently earn right now and YouTube is only one of them so I would not be putting the security of my family or the livelihood or for them into YouTube's Adsense monetization not to mention the amount of people who use adblock we barely get monetized on those views anyway I don't fault you guys for using that because frankly the YouTube ads tend to suck but all I wanted to do was to address the public here saying this is a choice that I'm making because of my love and dedication to this everything you see around here is because you guys watch this channel and because the quality of life is improving and the quality of the business is improving I want to be able to see where I can take this and then became a point to where going into the 9 to 5 each day was costing me time energy and money at the end of the day where I could not devote the amount of dedication that I really want to with this now one other thing that I can say with complete confidence is know that I have done my research I've done my math and I have done my Studies on what it's going to take 1 to run a business been doing it already for almost 3 years to what it takes to cut to survive the amount of money I need to make and trust me when I say that we're well above the safe threshold there is money in the savings there is money in retirement in investments things are good and this is very very low risk involved especially in the near term I've got a long-term plan here guys and know that I have other things in the works that I can do because I'm gonna have more time on my hands I know that's something every single full-time youtuber says guys I've got so much in the works but I can promise you long term over the next couple of years this is going to be a very interesting ride but I'm okay with that because I don't want to look back at the end of the day or the end of another five years or even another ten years and say man if only I had not been afraid to try then I would be stuck just wondering what would have or could have been and that's worse than trying and failing I would rather try and fail and say well I know what didn't work and try again but I'm not the kind of person that's just gonna sit around and say I was too afraid to try it's not the way I am it's not the way I operate but I do want to say thank you to everybody who is very concerned that means a lot actually if you guys weren't concerned that means you don't care the fact that you guys care is a very big deal because we have to do this together it's community effort you guys watching is what allows all of this to happen my professional dedication now and the amount of professional time that I set aside means I'm gonna have more time for the family at the end of the day I get some weekends back hopefully I'm not planning on doing a video a day guys I'm not even planning on immediately upping the amount of videos I'm doing I'm just trying to up the quality of the content first and foremost I'm not gonna be putting advertising or ad revenue everywhere or taking every single advertisement opportunity that comes my way in fact I wish I could show you guys but I turn away more ad requests than probably anybody else in fact I turned down most of them I'm not willing to put ads all over your guys's faces for the sake of money that's not the way this works as far as I'm concerned now I know this video sort of been all over the place and let me just kind of recap here first of all guys I'm prepared for this I am setup I have all contingency plans in place as well as another business I'm actually doing on the side here independent of the that I'm also going to be doing at the same time we're going to talk about that in the future that's a that's a tease for now but I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't 100% confident in my ability to make this succeed nor would I be doing it if there was even any possibility of there being negative effects for my family my family is first and foremost my dedication and I have 100% confidence that I can provide for them they have a hundred percent confidence in me and I have a lot of backup plan in place to keep things running if hits the fan so I don't think I just woke up and decided to do this it's not this is a long-term well-thought-out process with a plan in place the other thing is I'm not gonna be putting ads all over the place I I'm with you guys ads are very intrusive and I'm if you guys have noticed I've done some ad integrations here now there will be more but they will always be relevant and they will always be non intrusive and they will not take away from the overall viewing experience of the video if you guys only knew how many ads I turn away I turn away money left and right in fact let me just say I turned down a thousand dollars today I know it's easy to just say that especially since I'm not putting the emails in front of you but the person who contacted me represented a company that I did not think was relevant to you guys therefore it was an easy decline I'm not willing to do that I think the quality and content that I create here is more than enough to sustain itself and we'll find out we'll see how this is gonna go but like I've already said I would hate myself in the future if I didn't at least try so you guys have certainly made what was a mediocre life before YouTube certainly really weird one but a very very exciting one and you guys have made everything you hear me say today possible and before that I am definitely grateful I know there's times where I come off a bit rough around the edges but that's because everything I do is very passionate and I definitely need to work at getting a little bit of the roughness under control but just know at the end of the day guys that maybe a larger youtuber here but I'm also human who makes mistakes and I will make more mistakes in the future but I'm working on that as well so that's it that's all I wanted to say today gotta get out of here in fact this video is coming up tomorrow the GeForce GTX 980 hybrid we saw this thing at CES and I cannot wait to do live unboxing and benchmarking of that thing as soon as we're done with this video so guys thanks for watching once again thanks for being a part of my life it's a very big deal I have nothing but absolute dedication to you guys now with my professional time I do have a couple of weeks that I'm gonna be working still before I depart there's some exit plans that have to be put into place I have to make sure that the company is going to be able to survive without me and I'm helping them come up with a strategy to replace me which is good they wanted me to stick around they really really wanted to know if there was anything that they could do to help me change my mind and unfortunately too dedicated to this for me too like I said not try so right around mid-april it would all be going full-time and I'll be hitting the ground running and the first thing I got to do is clean this pigsty up this place is an absolute mess and I don't like working in clutter thanks for watching and if this all comes crashing down well at least I tried hopefully you guys hang in there and if not I completely understand why you guys leave because not the prettiest thing to look at but I hope you guys all love me for my brain all right thanks for watching