Why Most People Fail at Content Creation

In this episode of The Fuck It Shift, Adam Ross talks about the myth of “easy money” in the world of streaming, content creation, and online success.

What looks effortless from the outside often hides a massive amount of work, consistency, and discipline behind the scenes. Adam explains why so many people quit early, why chasing likes and quick success is a trap, and why the creators who succeed are usually the ones who genuinely love what they’re doing.

The conversation also explores a lesson Adam learned when he had just $77 in his bank account: if you focus on helping people instead of chasing money, the opportunities and rewards tend to follow.

Socials:

IG: @adamross_online
TikTok: @adamross_online
LinkedIn: Adam Ross

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to another episode of the Fuck It Shift Podcast. I'm Adam and I'm joined by Jay as always. And Jay has a question for me to kick it off.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Streamers are very successful financially. Not all of them, but a lot of them if they work at it and they can get there. There's there's a lot of pros. They get to create their own hours. They essentially get to wake up, roll out of bed, and go to work. They can work from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. It seems a lot a lot of fucking cool things. Yet personally for myself, I'm scared to go on a camera and talk and and play games or do something or be a live streamer. You talked about your your your kid said you should do streaming. You're like, nah, that's not for me. Why isn't it for people?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

You think the easy money is in being on camera, doing YouTube, streaming, Twitch, uh posting content, getting on there saying, just tell me what you want me to make and I'll make it. Everybody who starts down this journey and creates quote unquote content or decides to stream their favorite video game all day comes to a realization that it's real fucking work. And that's why you fail. You don't post enough, you don't work hard enough, and this fantasy of I'm gonna play Madden all day, and I'm gonna just stream it, and people are gonna follow me and pay me, and I'm gonna make a living. And there are people that do it. But if they were honest with you, it's work. It is a job. And I think people get into it or fall into this trap that it's easy. When I ask my kids, what do you want to be? The dinner table, and they're like, I'm gonna be a YouTuber. I don't shit on that idea. But we have us, we have layers of conversations about what do you think it means to be a YouTuber? What would your channel be about? What would you do to come up with content? What's your idea? What makes you different than somebody else that's doing it right now? Because copying so-and-so works for a little bit, but if it's not who you really are, it's not gonna work. Trying to encourage them to think about it that it is a real job. There's been people I have been very close to who say, that's it, I'm throwing everything away. I'm gonna be a streamer, I'm gonna make content. And I encourage a shit out of it because this is what we're doing. And I'm like, yeah, go for it. Knock yourself out. But it's work. And when you think that you're posting enough, you're probably not posting anywhere near enough. It has to be 10x. Can you come up with enough content to post three times a day? Can you play that video game you love? I like video games, but man, there comes a point where I get bored. Can you play the video game all day, seven days a week, for hours on end, and play new people and stream and talk and carry on conversations that are, you know, engaging with others? It's way harder than it looks. They make it look easy, and it's such a trap because young people today are set up with it's too hard. I'll never buy a house, I'll never have a good job, I don't have the right education, education systems crumbling thanks to AI. Now it doesn't matter. What do I even, you know, does a degree get me a job? I had a terrible, I had a friend send me a scary article that young men today are find more value in chasing crypto and gambling because they feel like those are outcomes they can rely on. The online betting world, I know we're going on a tangent here, is completely exploded with young men because they feel like that's a way to make money. Everything takes work. And when you try and run away from work and try and find things to do that aren't what you think are work, and then suddenly they become work. I had another guy that said he was gonna do it. He posted three videos and said no one liked any of my stuff, so I quit. What? We're chasing likes and comments and shares when in reality it's more about what you have to say or what you want to do, and if you really want to dive in and post the content religiously. And I think that's that's the problem is that people aren't don't realize that it's work. So when my kids say you should stream or you could do this, I'm like, it's a job, and I've got seven of them right now. I can't do the eighth. So I know it's about capacity, and if I had passion for it, I'd then put another job on the back burner and chase that. But it's a job, it's work. So don't kid yourself.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Multiple part question here, but would you agree that maybe the successful streamers never intended to be a streamer, but what they did was love to entertain and use technology to spread their message or to kind of get their distribute their craft to the public?

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

And and to follow that up, let me let me backtrack a little bit because I have a kind of a weird correlation here. But how many people today would you say that you have successfully helped ballpark? Could we just say thousands of people? Not directly, directly and indirectly. Thousands, that's right. Yeah. Through through everything you do. Let's backtrack to when you had$77 in your bank account. How many people would you say you had helped? Very little. Yeah. Other than the fitness world, but it was just a lot smaller.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

The fitness world was the catalyst.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

So do you feel like your bank account grew because you didn't chase money and you saw a correlation as the more amount of people that you helped than your bank account followed?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Well, let's get back to I answered the first part question. I believe the people that are really good today at streaming, doing content are people who are really passionate about and are just having a good time. They don't think about it's a job. They don't treat it as something they have to do, they think about it's something they get to do. And if it makes them 40 grand, 60 grand, 100 grand, they don't care. They're more in love, more turned on with the idea that they get to do that and the freedom that comes with it. They don't look at the scheduling, the amount of content that's required, the time that they have to put in as something that they have to do. And that's why I believe they're successful. They truly believe they get to do it. And they don't have FOMO worrying about what they're missing out or what they're doing. They just really love doing what they're doing. That's number one. Number two, when I had$77 in my bank account, I wasn't probably helping anybody until I got really close or really strict on guarding my mind and what I was feeding it and picking my circle and picking who I wanted to help. I had things I could do. I'm physically able. I can cut your grass, I can do things for you. I'm able to help, just not able to help with money. When you realize that there's lots of other ways to help people and you actually start helping. But somebody said to me in one of my personal training sessions with somebody who was very successful, um, who actually sent me a really nice message on LinkedIn following the career and was gave me some props for how hard I work my way out of it, because he knew me when I was at the in the middle of it. He said to me, if you learn to never worry about where money's coming from and you focus on serving, it'll always follow. And that really stuck with me. If you concentrate on being of service and not worrying about what's attached to it, the money will compound and it will follow you. The skills you gain and the insight, the education you'll get by being of service to somebody and really not worrying about whether you're getting paid for it or not will far outweigh it. Like the money will just compound and you will find ways to level your own life up, but you really have to buy into giving. It's all you have. It's all you have is time. You waste it on a screen. Give it to somebody. Volunteer, find a way, get in your community. We're so disconnected from that right now. Nobody wants to be a coach for a kid's team. Nobody wants to volunteer at the, you know, at the shelter. What are you doing? You're binge watching Netflix. Come on. If you learn to give, I mean, I was lucky. I was giving my time and my knowledge and helping people with fitness goals. I was also getting paid. But I never complained or said I wasn't getting paid enough, or I never worried about it. I learned to live on what I was making and I dove into helping people. I got more excited for your wins than you did. And today, all those lessons were so valuable. And we just don't focus on that enough. So, yes, man, if you just while you're going through some really heavy shit, if you just realize that planting new seeds is helping others, the fruit that will grow from that will level your life up and you'll be better off for it. And with that, Jay, remember nothing shifts until you say, fuck it. Till next time.