We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chase Holbrook a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chase, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?
In my three years of pursuing my passion for creating entertaining and relatable content for my viewers, The most significant misunderstanding I get all the time from older adults or people who are not in the gaming world or negative people frankly is “Oh all you do is play video games and press go live” or my favorite “Oh you’re not as big as Ninja or TimtheTatman so you’re not going to make it big.”
My response to the “I just play games and press go live” is my favorite one to respond to as it’s just a simple lack of understanding. While yes that is one part of what I do, they don’t see the hours editing, planning and sometimes traveling.
My response to the second one however is more strong. These big streamers like Ninja and Tim have been doing and honing their craft for 7+ plus years, so yes I don’t have the accomplishments they have, but that doesn’t mean my potential is capped. It’s like cooking a cake that takes 7 mins to bake but you take it out at 3 mins and eat it and say it’s a bad cake.
Chase, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
The direct answer to this is Content Creator/Entrepreneur and Entertainer. However, in order to understand this we must start from the beginning where my passion for content creation and gaming started. Growing up as a kid was rough for me and my half-siblings. I grew up in a small, one-stoplight town in Iowa and some of my earliest memories are hard to recall as I had to endure mental and emotional abuse at the hands of my mom’s boyfriend at that time in the early parts of my life.
Life moves on from there to when I’m 10 years old and for Christmas that year I and my older brother received an Xbox 360 with a copy of a video game that would spark my love for gaming for all my life which was Halo 3.
From watching my older brother playing it into the early morning to getting to play with him, this would only make me fall even deeper in love with gaming and eventually, I would get the Xbox to myself, and I was officially hooked on gaming. A couple of years would pass and my love for gaming would continue to evolve eventually, I would start to upload gameplay commentaries on YouTube as in my free time I loved watching big creators such as Woodysgamertag and Tmartn. However, out of all the big creators, I watched the one that inspired me the most and still does today was a young professional Call of Duty player and YouTube creator who lived in Chicago named Matthew “Nadeshot” Hagg who is now a multibillionaire and owner of the esports team 100 Thieves.
Nadeshot inspired me in many ways from how to improve my content and gameplay skills, ultimately, he showed me that goal of getting to do what you love for living in gaming and content creation is possible if you put in the work, time, and yourself. Believe me, when I said to my high school guidance counselor, that I wanted to be a content creator in gaming he told me to get realistic, and when I said it to my parents, they become worried that I was going to waste my life playing games, but It didn’t change me my heart was set on it. However, as life moved on and I would end up going to college in 2017 at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, KS as a general ministry major, I pushed my passion for content creation and gaming aside for ministry and my passion for people.
The early days of my streaming career always bring a smile to my face as it was challenging and super fun, I remember I went to local businesses in the Olathe area and at MNU and put up my homemade flyers promoting my stream. Another fun challenge I faced was teaching myself how to use Photoshop, so I could make my stream schedule for the week and promote my streams on social media and ultimately edit my stream to raise the standard of my stream to a more professional standard.
As time went on more people would come and become recurring viewers in my stream and eventually more people would come around my dream and passion for content creation and say we want to play a bigger part in this and so I would make my best friends Austin and Noah my first two moderators and eventually I would bring on my now senior Mod Justin and later my best friends Connor, Joe, Andrew, and their job is keeping my stream chat safe and friendly for everyone allowing me to focus on entertaining.
As I would continue to grow and build my stream with my team around me, it wouldn’t be till the middle of the lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic that I would discover the “why” to why I stream every day and keep going in it and it’s the people. One of my biggest passions has always been making people laugh whether that’s through me telling a joke or story or doing something outrageously funny like waxing my hairy chest or dying my beard (All are true).
I love to see people light up through laughter and I realized that in such a dark and hard time for people in the world and so I made it my goal to make my stream a place where people can come vent and laugh together with and at me through me playing video games and streaming!
As time went on things only continued to grow more and more, I got brought on an Esports Org as a content creator and Content manager for Exile Gaming and I would be involved with The TwitchKCCommuntiy As well and my community would continue to grow.
Out of my three years of streaming, there are two moments that stand out to me. The first one is how awesome the community I have built is back in 2021 we celebrated two years of streaming and one thing we have always done was a donation challenge to raise money to do more crazy streams and these challenges had a price tag next to them and if my community hit them, I would have to do them, for example, being tased and shaving my head bald! Our goal for that donation stream was $200 in under 30 mins of being live on Twitch we hit $500 and more which continues to blow me away even today.
The second one is how loving my community is, back in November of 2021 my father Dale Holbrook sadly passed away from Stage 4 Small cell carcinoma Cancer, I was live on stream that night playing halo infinite with my friends when I received that phone call that rocked my world as my dad was my hero. At that moment my community came around me and loved and supported me from daily texts to going to get dinner and lunch and kind tweets on Twitter, my community helped me stand through that really hard time and they still do today.
Even today, I find my passion for what I set my passion on long ago is still strong and burning bright. I’m currently working at Level Up Arena in Kansas City at Hyvee Arena part-time and also still streaming and creating almost daily, which has been interesting to find a balance between working and creating.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I think the most rewarding thing I have found as a creator is when someone finds humor in my creations. It could be a dumb joke or I do something funny or stupid while playing/streaming a game with my friends. The most rewarding part is when that comes up to me and references said a moment or clip laughs again about it and tells me it helped them through a really hard day or even time in their lives. I think hearing and knowing that my sense of humor helped to brighten someone’s day is the reassurance to me that I’m doing something right with my life in this big world.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
The biggest piece of advice for growing my audience that I got was to start with who you know and network like crazy. When I started content creation I was in college, which was perfect I talked to my daily profs, friends, and peers and eventually would make flyers to put up around campus and local shops in Olathe. After that go to events and talk to other content creators and meet new people presenting your content networking is key to growth as the goal is that one person you talked to while comes a brings a friend to your content and then that friend they brought will share your content with another one of their friends.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.twitch.tv/chasethegallant2
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_chasethegallant_/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/home
Image Credits
Planet Comiccon Picture Credit to KCTwitchCommunity. Top Photo: Left to right Justin, Blake, Joe, Connor