We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jessica Gullasch. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jessica below.

Jessica, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I often think about this. I do wish I would have started content creation and acting a lot sooner but most importantly, I wish I would have remained consistent in the pursuit of those careers. I feel like I would have been much further along now instead of still trying to establish myself in the industry. It’s been an uphill battle, but I plan on reaching the top and when I get there, I’ll be glad I didn’t give up.

Jessica, 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?

I’ve always been pretty bad when it comes to telling people about myself. I never know where to start!

I guess I’ll start with the basics… I’m Jessica Gullasch but I’m better known on the internet as TheJessLyfe. I’m originally from Detroit, Michigan but I’ve lived in Germany for over a decade (and yes, I speak German). After Germany, I lived in London off and on for two years before finding myself at the end of 2022 back on American soil in the good ol’ United States of Texas!

I’ve been a content creator on YouTube for almost 10 years and I do everything from gaming videos to reactions (JessLyfeReacts) to vlogs (JessNicco). I’ve been recognized by YouTube London twice for my content in their NextUp: Women to Watch Class of 2018 and their YouTube Black Voices Fund Class of 2022.

I started my YouTube career in November of 2013 when TheJessLyfe was a reaction channel. I used to react to K-pop videos, and I truly enjoyed it, however, I always wanted to game. It’s been a passion of mine since the very first time I picked up a controller. One of the very first games I ever played (aside from Mario because I think EVERYONE played that game) was Earthworm Jim. It was on the Sega console I believe, and it was such an awesome and immersive experience. My extreme reactions to gaming always made the people around me laugh and I knew even back then that I wanted a broader audience to experience my multicharacter personality.

So, around 2018, I decided to give TheJessLyfe channel a little make over and transform it into the gaming channel I always wanted. It was a “building from the ground up” experience. I lost a lot of subscribers, which I already anticipated but I was hopeful I would attract a new audience within the gaming community. I’ll admit, at the beginning of this journey to a successful gaming channel, I was discouraged because I wasn’t doing as well as I hoped I would, which lead to inconsistent uploads. I felt there wasn’t a point in posting if I can hardly get anyone to watch my videos anymore. It was discouraging to say the least but what kept me going was the fact that I loved gaming and interacting with the community that stuck around even though I stopped doing the content that they enjoyed watching. It made me happy that they continued to support me, and it was cool to see new people discovering my content as well.

During the pandemic in 2020, I went through somewhat of a downward spiral where I had to leave London and come back to Detroit. It was a time in my life that weighed heavily on my mental state, and I struggled to make content, let alone get out of the bed! However, I knew that I wanted to get back to London, I wanted to get back to the place I called home and I also wanted to improve my mental and emotional stability. So, I began therapy, and I also began writing. I started writing short poems/stories to express what I had been going through and all of the thoughts that were swarming in my mind. Before I knew it, I had one hundred and seventy-nine pages of my emotions typed out, just sitting there on my laptop in a folder. I spoke to my therapist at the time about it and how I desired to turn that folder on my desktop into a book. She encouraged me to do so and felt it would be healing, and with that, Just One Egg was born. I wrote my first book during a time when I wanted to just give up and it helped me. The best part was that it helped others as well. I self-published on Amazon where people bought my book, and they had nothing but kind things to say about it. I didn’t expect to have such an overwhelmingly heartfelt response. I did it mainly because I just needed to get it out there for my own healing, but it ended up being so much more than that.

When I finally made it back to London in 2021, I was surprised to see a casting director in my DMs on Instagram. At first, I thought it was a scam because it’s Instagram and who really reaches out to someone about something like this on that platform. They asked me to audition for a role in an indie film that was being shot in Austin, Texas. They wanted me to be the lead actor! I was shocked but I said screw it and went for it and I got the part! I always wanted to act I just never knew how to get my foot in the door, and this was my very first major opportunity in a feature film! To say I was excited would be downplaying the entire experience. I was electrified! I felt like I was in my element. I felt like I was meant to be there, and I was.

Besides content creation, a career in acting has always been my goal. So, after the completion of my first indie film in 2022, I decided to pursue acting seriously and since then I have landed roles in commercials with Bose and gaming companies as well as acting in a second indie film that I just shot this year in Baton Rouge, Louisiana!

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Share our work!

I feel “word of mouth” is still one of the best forms of marketing. Getting people to talk about and share your content across platforms is so unbelievably helpful. I don’t think people truly understand the power they possess when it comes to helping artists build their career and make their mark in the industry.

Yes, money helps (it always does) but reaching a broader audience is the key to success because then it becomes its own ecosystem. You’ll have a community that will force feed your content to unsuspecting consumers and that creates growth!

A share goes a long way.

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

I know some people believe that the opinion of others shouldn’t matter but it means a lot to me when some of my creative endeavors can put a smile on the face of my viewers or even invoke a certain emotion. I love to talk to my community and gauge what content they truly enjoy. I make content for my own enjoyment, but I also like to make it to entertain others. So, knowing I made my audience happy, getting them to discuss my content or even say they appreciated my acting in a short film or my reaction to a video is definitely the most rewarding aspect of all of this.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @thejesslyfe
• Twitter: @thejesslyfe
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejesslyfe (Gaming channel)
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/@jessnicco (Vlog Channel) https://www.youtube.com/@jesslyfereacts (Reaction channel)

Image Credits
Self-portraits