We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cody Schultz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cody, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

That’s a really good question, knowing what I do now I wish I would have 100% started way earlier! Content creation has come along way in the last 10 years, Nobody was really doing YouTube or Streaming back then. If you were one of those few who were in it early you probably have a drastic following at this point. The people who were the small group streaming had a lot less competition, now when you go to twitch there are millions of people who you are competing with, in thousands of different sub categories. Same goes for YouTube, when content creation was on the up and coming. If you were one of the few people who had game capture devices to record your game play, your content would stand out drastically over the competition. The people who had the nice gear and the best looking videos were getting the views, and getting the following. Good example is Faze Clan, 10-15 years ago those guys were posting call of duty videos every day just playing with their buddies, now they are a 250 million dollar company working with people like Snoop Dogg, Nyah Houston (Professional Skateboarder) and Bronny James, (Lebron James’ Son). Just goes to show if you are in during the start of something and ride it out you can make something out of nothing!

Cody, 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?

So my name is Cody Schultz, known by the gaming world as C_J_SCHULTZ. I’m 28 from St. Paul, Minnesota. I’m part of Las Vegas Inferno, a professional esports team based in Las Vegas, Nevada. I got into YouTube and content originally back in around 2014, just posting gaming videos around NHL15 and NBA2k. From there heard about a platform called ‘Twitch’ from my roommate at the time where you could go watch people play video games live, just like if you were going to go watch your favorite sports team on a Friday night. I checked it out and I was hooked, I wanted to be doing the same thing those guys were doing. I instantly started researching how to live stream and within a few weeks I started streaming from my room on a Xbox One. I did that on and off for a few months but got discouraged because I wanted to be like the big guys having hundreds of people watching me. A few years later towards the end of 2017 I wanted to try again, but this time it was solely for the fun of it. Just to have something to do, to be able to go back and watch what me and my friends were doing or listen to the funny things we would talk about and in the beginning of 2018 it all just happened. started streaming couple days a week and I have been at it ever since!

Then I only had a handful of followers and nobody knew who I was. Today I have amassed over 30,000 followers across all my social media platforms combined, nearly 5 million views on YouTube, and have had one of the best up and coming teams supporting me and my content for the last coming up on 4 years.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding is when you post something and you dont expect anything to come of it, and Boom it just blows up. YouTube shorts has done that a lot for me, posting random funny content and it grabs 3,000-5,000 views in the first hour or so…. Extremely rewarding and such a confidence booster in wanting to produce more content that will grab attention such as that did.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Networking, Networking, Networking….. The only way you will meet new people is if you go out of your comfort zone and try meeting new people. Interact with new creators, try playing or collaborating with new people, go out of your way to show support and appreciation to others hustle and hard work. 99% of the time building a relationship with new people will expand you into their circles and even more opportunities. Who knows one random person you just met could be somebody who could change your life in the creative space and give you the opportunity of a life time.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @Cody_Schu1tz
• Twitter: Twitter.com/C_J_SCHULTZ
• Youtube: YouTube.com/C_J_SCHULTZ
• Other: Twitch.tv/C_J_SCHULTZ TikTok – @C_J_SCHULTZ