Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Billy Visnaw. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Billy, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a story about the kindest thing someone has done for you and why it mattered so much or was so meaningful to you?
I always believed that one of the kindest acts anyone can do is give someone a chance, while I can think of many times in my career, life or content creation pursuits that have had an important effect on my life, the one that stands out the most to me is my team at Tales of Initiative. During the pandemic my old career couldn’t sustain itself as it was an in person customer service focused sales position, so I moved to a fully remote position with another company that made it clear that moving up wasn’t much of a possibility here. Feeling unfulfilled, I set out with a plan, to get full force back into content creation.
When I began my business plan, I knew I needed a team to film this with, after a month of pitching this plan to over 30 people, 5 returned with a schedule that could fit my vision. These people gave me their time every week, they showed up and we filmed for over three hours creating the best content we could come up with. While this team did not have a long life span due to scheduling, they sparked the creation of the future of our group. During a marketing meeting, one member of our team, Kai, made a casting call to bring on one to two more members through TikTok. Well, we definitely got the one or two, we actually had over 1300 people apply to join, 1300! this was 1299 more than I expected at the time. We brought on over 60 people after everything was set and done. The support we received from all over helped us build and cultivate the community we now have that is still going strong a year and a half later.
On a personal level I was humbled, I was inexperienced at managing a team of this scale, but the team was more than capable of helping me learn, grow, and trek further into the world of the D&D/TTRPG network creation. I actually had a panic attack the first week this became a reality, there are too many people to name in our successes but given that so many people wanted to start directing, acting and editing on their own under OUR team was just one of the most amazing feelings, I felt no matter how well we did, this project would always be a success to me just because of this.
These internet strangers, that assembled daily over Discord, became some of the closest people that I trust everyday with something that I hold near and dear to my heart. This project was something that would’ve never been able to grow into what it was without the daily kindness my team has shown me by being here and giving me their time.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
December 2020 came, and a friend of mine introduced my wife and I to Dimension 20, at the time an up and coming D&D/TTRPG show that focused less on the normal fantasy format and more on the what else was out there. Right then, I decided that looked incredible to me, the editing, the pacing, the cuts, the game, I’ve dabbled in D&D but combining my love of story telling with my love for content creation, this is what I wanted to do. After a very successful call to the social media community, we built a strong team of creators ready to make something special.
Now, our big hurdle was the field of D&D/TTRPG actual play shows was something that was beginning to become oversaturated, there are many talented role players out there who could dominate the field with their range and expressions, but we wanted to be more than that. When we began we established ourselves as a safe inclusive content network for TTRPG/D&D, housing all kinds of content from all walks of life. When you watch a Tales of Initiative actual play, know that we try every week to innovate the formula with anything we can, whether it be technology for better visuals/audios, more engaging tabletop programs, or even telling stories that we think are wildly unique in tone or message. We also provide consistency, we keep to our schedules as close as possible, making sure that if we promise a game will be every week on a certain day, you can come find us rolling away on that day without the worry that we won’t return as this is a passion project for our entire team.
One big pillar we wanted when we began the business was to use our resources to benefit charities, I can proudly say that our entire team has raised over two grand for multiple organizations focusing on a range of topics within our first year. We hope to go beyond in the current year really benefitting as many folks as possible. We are honored to get to run our “2nd Annual Tales Pride Initiative” charity stream this year in the summer.
We hope when you decide the next tabletop show you want to watch, you tune into us and we can ask: “Are you ready for more tales?”
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I think the biggest lesson I’ve had to take away was learning when to say something is finished, even if it’s not perfect. In the past, all the projects I’ve worked on I’ve wanted an unreachable level perfection, I was privy to reshooting content multiple times, trying out different camera angles, even trying out different technology to see what would make what I was working on better than imagined. The day that I made the realization was when one of our projects fell apart, we had a lot of issues on this project stemming from outside interference but one thing was for sure is to get what we wanted out of the this we kept scheduling practice shoots and reshoots to match the vision closer each time. This led to unimaginably long production times than we were all expecting which added a level of strain that made finishing impossible.
Reflecting back on it a month later with a team mate and great friend Matt, who runs his own production on our team and his own TTRPG focused small business, he told me that a production doesn’t have to be perfect but we just have to get the content out there then figure out what needs to be worked on overtime. Adjusting as we go based on feedback is better than having no content out there at all. For some reason that really stuck with me, and really changed how I worked on productions down the line. It removed a level of stress that was never needed and made my experience a much more enjoyable one.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
The biggest part to building your social media is consistency and that goes the same for content creation. Some people are lucky enough to have something that goes viral and that works for them, yet I see more and more as we evolve into the online generation that viral content engagement only lasts for 15 minutes meaning after the hype goes away the audience turns to the next viral moment. It’s extremely difficult to thrive off of getting lucky, but the creators that post consistently, engage consistently, those are the few that build friends and fans. We have built an audience based on showing our viewers that we are here, no matter what you will see new content coming from all different fronts.
While building an online brand is primarily consistency, I’d say the two important topics next would be transparency and engagement with your audience. Not being afraid to admit your faults if you make a mistake. The internet is ultimately an area focused on accountability, committing to keeping your brand, your area a safe place while proactively stopping toxic behavior is going to make your audience know that you care. On transparency, I see a lot of creators take long hiatuses, there is nothing wrong with taking breaks to focus on yourself, in fact more creators SHOULD be doing this, but if you leave for too long the audience that you managed to grow will think that you’ve abandoned them and move on, I’ve had that happen to me time and time again and most creators aren’t lucky enough to retain that audience meaning they have to start from square one. For engagement, staying current with the trends is important, your content will have a much easier time being seen through the algorithm if you are creating content based on what most people are searching or interested in. Always keep on posting too, even if you get one or two likes, at least you got something out there that day, it may not be popular now but who knows, one day it’ll give a dedicated viewer some great content to binge while keeping you active.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://talesofinitiative.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tales_of_initiative/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalesInitiative
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF7-eKlqkg711PD4mTnQdTg
- Other: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tales_of_initiative