We were lucky to catch up with Xavier Torres recently and have shared our conversation below.

Xavier, 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?

We probably started at the right time but would have loved to start sooner than we did. TooTaku started as an idea in August 2016 that we didn’t put into effect until 2017. At this time I (Xavier) had just finished my bachelor’s degree while Alton was still in culinary school until 2017. Shortly after Alton moved to Alaska for 6 months which made recording the podcast difficult, to say the least. Timing-wise starting when we started worked out for us because we were both available to begin the podcast that we probably wouldn’t have if we waited until Alton had returned from Alaska. But starting sooner would have allowed us to be much more prepared for the physical separation than we were because during this time we questioned if we should continue or just put TooTaku on hiatus until he had returned. Realistically though if we had put it on hiatus I don’t believe we would have continued and if we waited till after his return to begin we would have never started. So starting when we did worked out for us but we both wish we started sooner more around High School. Because as content creators, you sometimes live and die by the timing of the content available. Before we ever started creating content we would talk about all of the theories and hopes we had for our favorite manga and anime and at that time those were Naruto and Bleach. This is why we wish we started sooner because we believe we could have capitalized on the popularity of two of the all-time biggest series and our enthusiasm for them. Starting when we did there was kind of a lull in series as big and popular which we believe led to us having a slow start. We also wish we had started sooner because it would have allowed us to work through the growing pains sooner and allow us to figure out what was truly necessary, what our niche is, and how to create engaging content earlier on. Now anytime people tell us about ideas they have a business they are thinking of we always tell them to start now and not to wait till everything seems perfect because it will never be but starting sooner will allow you to figure out if you want to do it and how to do it sooner rather than later.

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?

TooTaku is a podcast and YouTube channel focusing primarily on anime and manga content. We started in 2017 because of our love for them, which began early on for both of us. Xavier was introduced to anime when he was around 6 years old when shown a VHS of Mazinger Z. From there his love of anime started and was furthered thanks to Cartoon Networks Toonami which showed some of the all-time greatest animes. It had shows like the Dragon Ball franchise, Yu Yu Hakusho, Mobil Fighter G Gundam, Zoids, Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto, and many more. From there the love for anime only grew. Similarly, Alton was introduced to anime by his older brother and continued loving it because of Toonami as well. We got into podcasting and YouTube because of the hours of conversations that would take place between us and our desire to create a community of other enthusiasts who not just loved what we love but who could introduce us to other shows or manga that we would love. That’s why for our podcast we have staple seasonal episodes where we go over what we’re going to watch out of the new anime that come out and throughout the season discuss how we feel about them and invite others to give us suggestions of shows we missed and their thoughts on them. For YouTube, we mostly provide recommendations alongside vlogs and interview-style videos from conventions. Primarily we focus on the recommendation videos that we call “why you should” either read, watch, play, etc. And this is what sets us apart. We go about our recommendations by first having something that we love maybe have just found or have been reading or watching for some time and we try and tell anyone who’s watching about it like how a friend would tell you about a show or movie they think you might like. We don’t try and game the algorithm or follow trends because we want our recommendations and all of our videos to feel personal to the watcher like they’re the third friend being told about something awesome they may enjoy. That is also what we are the most proud of. We have been doing the podcast since 2017 and taking the YouTube seriously only really since 2022 and during that time there have been ups and downs for TooTaku but we kept on persevering and we didn’t change what sets us apart being that personal approach and nature. What we want fans to know about TooTaku is that we have larger goals and desires than where we are now. We want to grow from recommending anime and manga to creating our own and we believe that with them we can create something pretty amazing.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

With the podcast, the growth was slow going for a while and it took a few years to start building momentum. When we first started uploading we were using Soundcloud and it was working well for us but as our listenership began to grow we wanted to get more accurate analytics about our listenership. So we decided to switch hosting sites for the podcast believing that it would give us not just better analytics but better reach and shareability. It backfired tremendously and we lost at sometimes 90% of our listenership from the episodes and it was devastating. We really struggled then with whether or not we wanted to continue content creation because our lives were becoming more hectic and the switch almost completely wiped us out and stopped our growing momentum. Fortunately, now we can say we stuck with it because we didn’t want to give up the hope and the dream. But for about two years it was a real struggle as to whether or not the dream was worth it. We can say now though that the dream always is.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

We are actually pivoting right now. After we switched hosting platforms and that led to a loss of listenership it really opened the door for us to get into content creation on YouTube. Before our goal was primarily to be podcasters and grow into content creation later on but with the debacle we found ourselves in we said why not do it now what do we have to lose. So we pivoted away from the podcast to YouTube and are continuing to make the shift to the new medium by dropping how many weekly podcast episodes from 2 to 1 and investing more of our time and energy into the YouTube side of TooTaku until we inevitably fully make the switch over. That was never something that we planned to do but you have to take what comes to you and make the best out of it. You can’t let the dream die when something doesn’t go your way because like we have found pivoting even under unplanned circumstances can sometimes work out the best overall for you. Because right now we are happier with what we’re doing on YouTube than when we were at the peak of the podcast before.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tootaku.podbean.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tootaku/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@tootaku
• Other: https://tootaku.creator-spring.com/