I was recently watching Maynarde stream some StarCraft 2 when I was struck with inspiration for a post. He’s running a great series on improving in SC2 that translates directly to your business success. If you don’t know Maynarde, he’s an Aussie SC2 caster. I was first introduced to his casting during the original After Hours Gaming League and have followed him since. You should go follow him, he’s great and you’ll learn a lot about improvement.
Targeted Improvement
Anyways, the series he’s doing is based on targeted improvement. The idea is you pick one aspect of your game that needs improvement and you consistently focus on it. In SC2 this could be something like avoiding getting supply capped, scouting effectively, or not floating resources. If you were to look at other games you play there would probably be more effective metrics to pick, like experience and gold per minute in Dota.
How do you make sure you’re focusing on that metric? I think we can learn some from Maynarde here as well. He first takes time at the start of his stream to talk through his goal, why he thinks it’s important, and how he plans to judge progress. Then after each game he reviews his replay, judges his performance, and looks for ways to do it better. He’s brutally honest with himself- I watched a stream where his goal was to not lose a Reaper prior to 3:30 and he lost one at 3:26 in the course of some important scouting. Even though he was close to his goal and it was a solid tactical decision he still didn’t mark it as a success by that metric. His effectiveness at using this strategy has inspired some of his viewers to do the same thing as well!
How This Relates To Your Stream
You can use this same technique to improve your stream. First, pick something you can control. That means you’re not picking viewer count but instead something like how well you respond to notifications or your energy level. It could even be something like the amount of time you stream or just something basic like starting on schedule. Once you’ve picked what you want to track you need to come up with good, consistent criteria to judge your performance. You won’t do any good if you’re using different metrics for each performance because you won’t be able to realistically track improvement over time.
At some point, you’ll be performing consistently enough that you’re satisfied you’ve mastered the skill you were tracking. Congratulations! Take some time to pat yourself on the back; you just completed a big accomplishment. However, there’s always something else to improve. Each time you finish one metric you should find something new to improve. I don’t recommend going Kobe levels of scary obsession for improvement but focusing on it will help you accomplish a lot. The key here, as in many things in life, is consistency, focus, and honest feedback.
How This Relates To Your Business
Not surprisingly, it relates to your business in the same way it relates to your stream. In the past couple of weeks we covered the balance sheet and income statement. Those are great places to find the kinds of metrics you’d want to improve. Just remember, it needs to be something you have some control over. So instead of focusing on total income, focus on one piece of it; something like uploading consistent content to YouTube. If this is something that you don’t have the time for then it still counts towards your progress if you hire someone to do it. You do have control of your expenses to some degree so you could also track and test yourself on your spending.
You could also consider it from the time management perspective. How much time do you spend on the business, not just working in the business? Depending on where you stand your goal could be to either increase or decrease this amount. If you’re someone who is way too obsessed perhaps there are things you can outsource. If you’re someone who does their streaming but doesn’t spend time on running the business then perhaps you could focus more on it. Yes, merely spending time is not as valuable as knowing that to do and being productive during that time but it’s a start.
Conclusion
It’s important to improve! If you’re looking to improve it’s best if you have a system in place to make sure you’re actually improving and to effectively target that which you can improve. Learn from Maynarde (seriously, check out his VODs on this) and work on one goal at a time in a dedicated and data tracking way. If you have any questions on this or the money side of streaming, leave us a comment or reach out via the contact form.
