We recently connected with Mark Englebrecht and have shared our conversation below.

Mark, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I have taken many risks in my life since I was 17 years old, the first risk was when I joined the Navy as it was a big step in my life and then 10 years later would turn around and make a career change switching to the Army. Being in the military especially when you have a family can be very hard because they have to adjust to your lifestyle and make a huge number of sacrifices in there life consistantly ( any military brat can testify to this lifestyle) making friends at a new duty station, or even when the service member is deployed in many cases that was my lifestyle. In my personal opinion I have regrets at times because due to the life that I had in the military it has affected my children as they got older with my relationship with them something that I cherish very much as well as the person I was married to at the time. This lifestyle can leave many long lasting scars. Since leaving the Army years ago it has taken so much hard work to rebuild the relationships that I had with them in so many ways. Eventually leading to the divorce with my first wife! I have sought repentance for the things that have happend and have found love once again with my current wife who has been very supportive of me in a way that I never thought. I recently spent time with her in the Philippines which became a life changing experience to me and will be travelling there in December of this year to help support a mission building a school for special needs students. This risk entails me putting my entire home into storage flying back to the Philippines on my own expenses and living there for a year. It will be a drastic change from my current lifestyle here in San Antonio Texas. But a wise person said when the lord leads you,listen, pray and follow! During this trip I will be posting many updates on my Youtube, Tiktok, Twitch and Instagram accounts. If anyone is reading this and is interested in sponsoring me for this please feel free to contact me.

Mark, 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?

In the beginning I never saw myself as being a vlogger on any streaming apps due to issues with self-confidence including age, my looks, and many other things that lead me to become nervous and lack of confidence. I was actually convinced by another streamer to start streaming because we became friends after a long period of time and started streaming on the application known as Tango. After a period of time I was unhappy although I gained a huge following in the Philippines, Thailand and many other countries. As a streamer it can be very toxic due to so many issues from people wanting relationships, to gossip, to other streamers becoming jealous and telling stories about other streamers. Being a streamer is a very competitive forum all the way around. I then left Tango for a period of time due to a viewer who developed feelings for me and when I turned her down I recieved pictures of her committing suicide which became very emotional in so many ways. After a period of time I started streaming on the application known as Twitch (which is very competitive with many social apps) but with Twitch it also taught me many things as well from changing the way I was doing things because of the huge amount of people that were already on the platform. But over a short period of time the channel began to grow and I started receiving sponsorships from a couple of companies (which I never thought would be possible) but, that also required a huge amount of research and work to accomplish that. I have continued to stream there but I have also been working on many other platforms including Youtube, and TIktok. I feel my greatest accomplishment though has been on Tiktok because it is the place that I met my new wife, she approached me on the application after watching one of my videos and she had gone through a hard relationship before and was going through a period of depression for a long time. She had watched one of my videos and it made her laugh over and over again making her interested in who I was. After watching a few of my videos she finally drew up the courage to message me starting the wave emoji, I then responded to her shortly after and we began a conversation. This conversation then lead to a frienship and many more conversations after. This became an inspiration to me because I was able to make her life turn in a more positive perspective. We eventually after a period of time developed a stronger relationship and began our own Long Distance Relationship channel on Tiktok, and has drawn a huge following after a few months of starting the channel. I am thankful for what this has all done in my life because I never expected the things that would be so life changing.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

For me the whole life changing experience that when I spent with my current wife in the Philippines that showed a huge amount of resilence would be my experience in Mindoro. I had never lived in a situation prior to going to Mindoro and living in a village with farmland, planting rice, and living in an area that experiences economic difficulties due to the social economic system in the Philippines. I learned that even through all these difficulties including flooding due to the typhoons in the Philippines, or taking a bath from the well systems, to provisioning food from the local resources i.e. the rivers, the rice fields, and other things, even though they have to develop the skills to survive and do not have the same economic advantages that we have here in the United States they still continue to find happiness in even the worst of circumstances. This became very inspirational to me because here in the United States we lose site of what is really important to us because we value more in material objects rather than family and the people around us and what I learned was to value the family there that had so little but gave so much.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Being a creator takes many skills from cinematography, to graphics illustration, to verbal communication, and many other skills that I wish I would have taken in a college course. I think the biggest learning curve has been video editing (which I had to learn from my wife Mery Grace). I have found that such resources such as Capcut, Shotcut, as well as stream elements, streamlabs and OBS have been the most utilized of all the tools that I have in my toolbox for doing my vlogs and streams.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://streamlabs.com/bakasensei0901/home
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bakasensei/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marko.englebrechto
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-englebrecht-4a90a2265/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bakasensei0901
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz1iL-0_ZCivYZkempyJ0sw
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@markandgrace14?lang=en