#004: My guest today is Stephanie Peloza, known as “Stef Sanjati” online. She is a popular Twitch streamer who is also the head narrative designer at Paidia, the organization behind The Move Makers Podcast. We discuss her life-long content creator career and the moves she’s made to protect her mental health while continuing to foster a dedicated online community.
#004: My guest today is Stephanie Peloza, known as “Stef Sanjati” online. She is a popular Twitch streamer who is also the head narrative designer at Paidia, the organization behind The Move Makers Podcast. We discuss her life-long content creator career and the moves she’s made to protect her mental health while continuing to foster a dedicated online community.
(upbeat music)- So if you're approaching entrepreneurial content creation, I think what's important is to set realistic goals about your success, and that's not to say I discourage you from doing it. It's to more say take a healthy approach. Don't aim for 3 million followers, because 3 million followers isn't necessarily gonna make you happier or more successful than 10,000, right? And I know content creators that have a smaller following and have beautiful, wonderful, meaningful careers that they love, where they are working for themselves and they are contributing to the world in many, many important ways. And then there are creators with millions of followers that are not contributing to the world in meaningful ways, and I think we can see a lot of that. And I don't think that, that is controversial to say.- Stefanie Peloza also known as Stef Sanjati is a popular Twitch streamer and the head narrative designer for Paidia, the organization behind the Move Makers podcast. Now Paidia was created to provide a safe gaming environment for women and allies, and Stefanie was one of the first people brought on to help spearhead the company's collective efforts. And Stefanie actually started her content creator career whenever she was just 13, whenever she launched her YouTube channel focused on beauty and fashion. She amassed an audience of more than 600,000 subscribers before recently leaving the platform to focus her efforts on gaming and live streaming. Now her career has evolved in many different ways and we cover those moves deeply in today's podcast. So let's get to know our move maker, Stefanie Peloza.(bright music) Welcome, I'm so excited to connect with you today.- Yeah. Thank you. I've been looking forward to this all week.- Yeah, me too, me too. Why don't you kick us off by introducing yourself to the podcast?- Sure, so my name is Stefanie Peloza. I formally had a career on YouTube in fashion, beauty and transgender education under the name Stef Sanjati, but I have since retired from that. And I am now the head narrative designer for Paidia Gaming, which is super thrilling. It's a childhood dream kinda job. And I spend my days here at my computer desk, writing stories and playing video games and being a dog mom.- That sounds like a dream come true, right?- It is honestly. I'm having a great time over here. I am.- That's awesome. So can you share more about what is a head narrative designer? Like what is your role?- So I will say across the gaming industry there's lots of different titles for this sort of position, and they're all a little bit different. It really comes down to the team structure and what people need to contribute. But for me, within Paidia, as head narrative designer, I'm working with the art team and with the branding team to create characters and a world of fiction that can act as a backdrop for the website and something that we can use as we move forward for other opportunities, other kinds of content or creations, or theoretically anything that could use a fictional world, right? So I'm building that with concepts of social equity, climate change issues, things like that all kind of weave together, and I'm super excited and super proud of it.- That's incredible. And it sounds like, I mean, at the root of your history of just your career, storytelling's kind of really been rooted in that. Is that something that has always really been part of you? Have you always wanted to be a storyteller?- Yeah, absolutely. So my formative memory around why I kind of do this is when I was a kid in school I really, really struggled when I was younger, especially with reading comprehension and spelling. I just couldn't nail it, even speech. It was really hard for me. I'm actually deaf in one ear. So I kind of started speaking a little bit later than others as well. But when I was eight or nine years old on summer vacation I started playing World of Warcraft with my brother, and I was fascinated by the quest text. And it was just like pages and pages and pages of fantasy texts. And it was not easy for a kid to read, but when I went back the following year I had a high school reading level where previously I couldn't spell the word artist, right? So that was huge in terms of my fascination with that world. I clearly was in love with it. And as I grew older storytelling absolutely was at the core of what I liked to do and liked to experience. Games, films, books especially, I would get lost in them. And when I became a YouTuber, storytelling was what I did, whether I knew it or not at first, right? I thought I was a beauty guru. Then I thought I was fashion or trans education, but realistically what I was doing was educating or sharing or creating with storytelling at the center. And now that I'm aware of that, I can really focus on it, and it's been great.- You make such a good point, because I think whenever it comes to being a creator or creative, especially if you think about YouTube or Twitch and streaming, being yourself for a living, there still has to be that connective tissue, if you will, to an audience beyond just I'm playing this game, like me, right? I can totally relate to the dog butt in the background.(laughter) I love it.- Right next to her puppy picture too. It's her vibe.- That's so great.- Lord.- But can you maybe share more about the storytelling component of yourself as a creator and a Twitch streamer and a YouTuber? I think that's something really special that a lot of people could learn from.- Thank you. I think I made some mistakes along the way that helped me learn about this concept of storytelling as what I do. And I think there came a time with my YouTube career, for example, where the line between what I was producing and who I was, was gone, and I became the product. And the story was what am I doing with my life? And that was unhealthy, and it led to... I bring this up as a cautionary tale, I think, because a lot of people want to be a content creator nowadays and I came into it when it was new. When I started YouTube, it was not a career option, you know? So I really caution people when they're doing YouTube or doing content creation. The storytelling aspect is important, but it cannot be about your life in terms of what you're going to do. What you have done, sure. Right? And then when it comes to Twitch, so for example, when I left YouTube and I realized that it was unhealthy and the dynamic that I had there and the entire kind of content creation industry, there's a lot of questionable things happening. And I really needed to just re-configure the whole thing for myself, right? So when I went to Twitch I made a very conscious decision that I was not going to be the product and I was going to produce a product. I was going to produce and host a show, and I was going to tell stories on the show, I was going to explore stories on the show, and that can translate to many different formats of content creation. Let's say you wanna be a food creator, you wanna share recipes or whatever your niche is, you can tell stories about that. And that really is what TV, film writing, and even content creation, it's just an extension of these things. So if you focus on the fact that the storytelling is what's important and not you, it's much healthier and you can produce things that are much more meaningful.- I mean, you make such a really insightful point because yes, a lot of people want to be creators. A lot of people want to. And I think people who wanna be creators, who wanna maybe blog or be an influencer, or just be able to market and create their own kind of business based off of their personal interests, think that they are the product, they are what people are investing in. And I think there's a truth to that. I'm invested in your journey and like wanting to be part of knowing your story, but you make such a good point. If you can separate like, yes, I am a personality adding value to the product that I am creating and selling, I really think that's a strong mental shift that a lot of people can value from.- Yeah, and what's unfortunate is if you do make yourself the product, it will work. You will find success if you hit all the right buttons, right? But that doesn't necessarily mean it's good for you, right? People respond extremely well when people are overly vulnerable or share a lot of their personal life. They respond extremely well because that's what people want. They want connection with other human beings. But the problem is when you're a content creator and you're looking down 600,000 faces on the internet that you really can't quantify, and you're sharing these deep, personal moments, they're not personal anymore. Now they're public and I think that's really dangerous. So yes, you can find success by being the product, but nobody wants to be a product. And I think it's important to be conscious of that when you're approaching any kind of business really.- Did you go into your YouTube career with that mentality or was that really the shift from YouTube to Twitch for you? Like a learned lesson?- I actually went into YouTube thinking it was a creative outlet and a hobby. I never dreamed of it being a job, because like I said, when I started I was maybe 13 years old.- Wow.- I'm 25 now. So that was 12 years ago. And I just wanted to make... Actually at the time I was just making makeup videos in my bedroom. I stacked up some books and put my little point and shoot camera on the top and I just... It was terrible. It was awful. And so all of my YouTube career really grew from that place and it wasn't until I switched to Twitch that I started to have conscious thoughts about how am I approaching this? What is good for me versus what is gonna get me the resources I need to survive for example, or growth, right? And with Twitch specifically, I really decided, because of how unhealthy YouTube became for me, I really decided I'm not gonna focus on growth. I'm not gonna focus on infinite growth, infinite revenue, none of that stuff. I'm just going to host a show that I like and I'm gonna hope that I can get by. And that's what I did and it worked. But there's a big difference in those approaches for sure.- Yeah, that I think is really interesting because going from beauty and fashion on YouTube to gaming on Twitch, like those are two... I mean, you obviously made the jump very successfully. Can you share more about your move into gaming?- Sure, absolutely. So actually I'll share something relatively personal if that's okay. Is that appropriate for this podcast?- Yes, of course.- Okay. All right. So my career with fashion and beauty actually ended up landing me in a hospital for eating disorder treatment, because the cycle with content creation and consumption in that industry is so focused on what you look like. And of course it is. It's beauty and fashion, right? But it became extremely destructive just because of how Instagram, for example, you can upload something and immediately you're getting people validating you or telling you, just giving their opinions on what you look like, et cetera, et cetera. So when I moved to Twitch, it was entirely about... It was about a year after that experience, after I'd gone through that program, and it was entirely about what is gonna be healthy for me, what do I value, right? I had to learn about what I valued because I was so used to, with my YouTube career, looking at what other people valued and then giving it to them. And that was how I got to be successful, and that was clearly not a good idea for me as a person, right? So with Twitch it was all about what do I value, what do I want to share, how do I wanna do it. And I started that out with some rough plans. I said, okay, I want it to be cozy. I have this small town Canadian upbringing. I wanna bring in like the buffalo plaid and the campfire and you all that cozy, just warm stuff. I don't wanna worry about it being high fashion, high concept, none of that anymore. Right, and then I had the creative stuff down very well. And I actually met my partner, Travis, at the beginning of the pandemic, and he has a background in engineering and a lot of different technical kind of skills. And thankfully, through my whole YouTube career, I was never super tech heavy. I had a tripod and a camera, but I didn't know how to use it very well. So when Travis became involved in my life he really helped share and shape up the technological aspect of the stream in terms of what are the best products for my small space, in terms of secondary monitors, microphones like this one, the razor sign emo with the cute little emoji on it, I love this thing. That was from him. So he really helped provide the other side that I was kind of missing. And we worked together to build that stream up together during the pandemic, and it did very well. And I did focus on growth to an extent up until I got partner status, because that's kind of important as a creator on Twitch in order to... If you're gonna try to live off of that kind of platform, you do need to pursue partner status. And the community kind of grew around the content and it's really been very fluid and organic. As things have changed in my life, I've adapted the stream to still be there, but to be something else as I've needed it to change. So for example, right now, now that I'm head narrative designer for Paidia, which is a full-time position, I can't be streaming five days a week. So I've changed it to twice a week, Monday and Friday, and it's still there. It's like this cool little constant creative outlet in my life, and I really appreciate it for what it is. And I'm glad that I'm able to adapt it now to suit whatever I need at the time. And I've kind of returned to that approach of this is my hobby, this is my creative outlet that I started with when I was a teenager, and that feels very fulfilling for me.- What a journey, and I'm so glad that you found you were able to kind of come back and create boundaries and prioritize what's important for you and that you found success with that in Twitch, because I know sometimes putting yourself out there as a creator, having a Twitch community, having community period, can also kind of open up a can of worms. So I'm really glad that that transition was a healthy one for you. And what was it like starting? I know gaming experienced a huge growth spurt during the start, like the height of the pandemic with everyone being home and needing kind of that constant at-home stimulation entertainment outlet. Was that kind of like something that triggered the move to Twitch at that time? Or was this something you've been planning for a while?- It was something I had been planning for a while. And then when the pandemic came around, I just had a ton of free time. And my partner, like I said, who helped me a lot with the tech had a lot of free time as well. So it just became very easy to work on it rather than have it be the secondary thing that I'd maybe get to. But I will say, starting with the streaming at the beginning of the pandemic really allowed me to have a social experience while I was in isolation, because neither my partner nor I, we didn't go out to a restaurant or anything up until maybe like last month. Throughout the entire pandemic we just stayed inside. And the stream, I recognize that people coming to visit the stream on a regular basis are likely looking for a social experience while they're stuck inside, and I was also doing the same thing as the host, and it was great. It kept me sane. It kept me... There was something to look forward to, to do. And now that... Obviously the pandemic is not over at this point, early October 2021, but things are starting... I've got to get into the world, it's been too long, you know? And it's still there and it still gives me that social experience and it's still very valuable. So like I said before, it continues to adapt to my life circumstances as a creative pursuit and it's very fulfilling in that way.- Did you find that a lot of maybe people who've been following you for a while from YouTube and beauty, did anyone make the jump with you? Did you find that that transition for your community happened a bit? I don't know. Was it pretty seamless or did you feel like you had to grow from scratch?- It was not seamless. When I switched over, I will say that throughout my time on YouTube there was a little bit of chaos in terms of my approach to content, in terms of the choices I was making with my life, and that is because, like I said, I was not working on my own value system. I was looking at what other people valued and giving it to them because that was how you grew on YouTube as a personality creator. So when I made the switch to gaming there was a little bit of a reaction. There was two camps. There was one camp that was like, oh, whatever, eye roll, and then they would unfollow. And I did lose a significant number of followers, but I also had to learn to be okay with that because I had to be working on my own value system and not about growth and maximum attention, because that can get you stuck really bad, right? And then there was another camp that was excited to support it and knew throughout my entire YouTube career I had made references to wanting to be in gaming from when I was 19 years old. My original approach of branding with my YouTube stuff when I was 18, 19 was stuff from Final Fantasy, because I had this other worldly kind of look. And then I did a Skyrim makeup tutorial at one point, and I was always talking about it. It was always present. So when I made that switch, some people recognized, oh, I see you're reconnecting with this. That's great. Let me move on with you. And there've been some people like with my Twitch stream now that have been subscribed for almost two years straight, and I really see that. And now that my community is smaller, on a stream I have somewhere between 50 to a 100 people usually, rather than with YouTube when I would get hundreds of thousands of views. Now that it is 50 to 100 people, I can recognize these people. I can see them as individuals and it feels incredibly good to be like, I see. Yes, thank you for supporting me for two years. That is a personal person-to-person experience. So the transition was not seamless, but I will say what I lost is far less than what I gained through that transition.- I'm so happy to hear that. And with your community too and what we're really building at Paidia, do you find that... Have you, I guess, been able to feel like you're able to create and foster a really inclusive community with your audience, and how are you maybe taking lessons learned from kind of managing and growing your own community to really carrying that over into what we're building at Paidia?- Yeah, well, throughout my entire career, I started YouTube videos before... I guess for context for people listening, I'm a transgender woman. And like I said earlier, a lot of my early content revolved around transgender education. And through that experience I got in contact with lots of viewers from marginalized communities of all sorts, whether that was people of different racial backgrounds, national backgrounds, religious backgrounds, whatever, right? Or of course gender and sexuality, which was my focus and where I had the knowledge. And so I spent a lot of time listening to those people and trying to understand where they were coming from when they would bring up certain issues. I had to learn and adapt as I grew on YouTube to unlearn biases and the things that I had learned earlier in life that just weren't right about other communities, right? And I did that while educating others about my community and how other people had learned wrong things about us. And that is for me, when I look back at my YouTube career, the biggest thing that I'm taking away moving forward in my life was that kind of experience. And when it comes to Paidia, I'm extremely passionate about making sure this is not a half-assed attempt at trying to be inclusive. This is not a super whitewashed attempt at it. I want this to be sincere. I am sincere in my pursuit and I know everybody else on the team is as well. And I recognize that, that's why I joined, right? I really believe in what we can accomplish and I really believe in the people that I'm working with. And I am trying to bring what I learned through all those experiences as a speaker and as a teacher now into Paidia, and how I advise and how I try to help build the platform.- I get so stoked talking to you and people on our team with everything that we are creating. And it's so nice and refreshing to be on a team where we can hold each other accountable, but like also don't really necessarily need much reminding of that accountability, you know? And so to me, I'm really enjoying that experience. I'm learning so much, and I also just feel like even what we are doing internally feels inclusive. Like we're bringing in people and making sure that anyone who has like a perspective or opinion is considered and heard and it's so valuable. It's so refreshing.- I agree, I agree. I will say as somebody that's been an independent creator for my entire life, my entire career, I worked retail briefly, and then it was YouTube and just entrepreneurial stuff my entire life. And as a trans person, as a person from a marginalized community, I did have a lot of cynicism when it came to sort of company efforts. Every pride season I kind of roll my eyes at what a lot of companies try to do to be inclusive. I've even... I was contracted by a financial institution to create content about their pride initiatives, and literally halfway through the process, I just quit. I was like, I can't, this doesn't feel right. So knowing that when I was approached to be a part of Paidia, I did use a bit of my scrutiny as a trans person, which is part of my survival toolkit, right? And I will say everybody passed and I felt really good about being a part of it. And I think that, that says a lot for me. And I know that not everybody has my perspective, but I really do believe in what we're doing and I think we can do a lot. I think we can do a lot of good.(ambient music)- Move Makers is made possible by Paidia Gaming. Paidia empowers women and allies of all genders to safely connect, learn and play. When you join Paidia, you're unlocking access to an inclusive and kind gaming community, tournaments from your favorite content creators and competitors, along with exclusive content aimed at taking your gaming skills to the next level. Make sure you head over to paidiagaming.com today to sign up and follow along on social media at @paidiagaming.(ambient music) I think you make a really good point where big corporations for so long... And I've struggled this because my entire career has been more corporate. I was a consultant for a while, but still working with like big businesses.- Right, right.- And it's more often than not it's like I appreciate... It's sometimes not... This is no shade to any of like my former employers, but like one thing that kind of bothers me the most is that a lot of times it's like,"Oh, shoot, June is next month. What are we doing for pride?" And it's like, well, what are we doing to support this community throughout the year so that pride isn't an afterthought? And I think nowadays people are still catching up, companies are still catching up, but more often than not, there is that accountability both from a community and internally of like, this needs to be an always on conversation. And I was speaking with someone recently who said something like diversity is like a big goal for us in 2022. And I was like diversity should always be a priority for you 24/7.- Right.- Like it's different. It's not a KPI, you know?- Yeah. I don't think there's... Also, I don't think there is like a goalpost necessarily. Like if it's a goal, what does that mean? Does that mean when you're done, you're done and you don't need to worry about it anymore? Right? I don't think it should be approached that way. I think it's more of a philosophical and cultural thing that needs to be continuously monitored and thought of, and if it's not, it's gonna miss the mark, right?- And the only way that you're really gonna hit the mark or even get close to the mark is to start with prioritizing a diverse team of individuals internally to make sure that perspectives are being considered. So I think it starts from within, and if it's not being taken care of within then people aren't going to be thinking of it. Because to me it's so obvious, and I say this all the time, whenever it comes to marketing, the single most important thing that any team should consider or bring about is representation. Making sure that a vast audience of people and individuals see themselves represented in your product, and that it's not just for one note of person. And so it's like you can have key audiences that you want to grow, but you still need to make sure that everyone sees themselves and knows that they have a place at the table. And that to me, I don't understand how that's still not something that is so obvious.- I think that throughout... This is kind of a larger concept, but I think that throughout even, and forgive me for going back this far, but if we go back to like the conception of North America in terms of what it is today with just all of the history of what has been done to get us to this point is built on silencing those groups and on building up predominantly white and male people in power positions. And I think the reason why we're still struggling with this is because there has never been a moment where those people have been shifted away from their position of power or this generational wealth issue. There's so many problems and it goes back hundreds of years, and that's why we're stuck. But I think that you're right when you say the way forward is building diverse teams inside of these places that are working to make things better like Paidia, which is why I feel so good about Paidia, because I don't think there is a group like us yet. And if there is, we need to work together and uplift each other and work towards a brighter future because there are people standing in the way of that unfortunately.- No, you said it so well. So I'm so excited. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to continue working with you. And I can't wait to like reconnect a year from now and see how far things have gone. So I'm excited for that.- Likewise.- You've obviously really started your career at such a young age, and to your earlier point, have been an entrepreneur your entire career. So what advice would you give to listeners who are maybe considering an entrepreneurial path or being a creator?- Definitely there's going to be... If you're trying to approach an entrepreneurial career and you see this aspirational content creator kind of thing, I think it's important to acknowledge the historical kind of precedent for this, and I think if we look at any generation previous to now, there's always been an aspirational future that has been sold to people. And the thing with social media is we're continuing to sell the American dream to people, and right now the American dream is a content creator that doesn't have to work for somebody else and you've got millions of followers and you can do whatever you want with your life and get paid for it, which is possible. But it's definitely that level of success is sparse and rare, and it depends a lot on you giving up aspects of yourself. So if you're approaching entrepreneurial content creation, I think what's important is to set realistic goals about your success. And that's not to say I discourage you from doing it. It's to more say take a healthy approach. Don't aim for 3 million followers because 3 million followers isn't necessarily gonna make you happier or more successful than 10,000. Right? And I know content creators that have a smaller following and have beautiful, wonderful meaningful careers that they love where they are working for themselves, and they are contributing to the world in many, many important ways. And then there are creators with millions of followers that are not contributing to the world in meaningful ways and I think we can see a lot of that. And I don't think that that is controversial to say. So what I did when I decided to take a healthier approach and what I'd recommend for people is identify what it is you value and it's hard to do that when you grew up being a creator, because you're constantly subjected to the opinions of others, but you have to know yourself separate from that before you start subjecting yourself to the opinions of others online, right? So identify your value system, whatever that is, what's important to you. And if you wanna create content around that, for example, for me, video games are a huge thing in my life and I do create content around that to an extent, just be mindful that the opinions of others are not influencing what you're making too much, because for example, no amazing film script is made posted on social media and then edited over and over and over until you get something that everybody likes, because it wouldn't really be a good script. And the same thing applies to any kind of content or art. So identifying your value system and sticking to your guns and sticking to who you are. super important, super important. As a follow-up something a bit more practical if you don't mind.- No, go for it.- Is with entrepreneurial pursuits, especially at the beginning of a content creation career, when you're these small little deals from companies and it's like, oh, I'll post this for 50 bucks, whatever, it feels like maybe you don't have to track things or keep records, or for example, how that interacts with your taxes, right? But it is important every step of the way to keep those things recorded, archived, records of that stuff. And then to just do your taxes, because there's so many creators out there that started this not thinking it was gonna be a career, and then they're three years in and they're really successful and there's a lot that hasn't been dealt with, right? And that's a common experience in this industry. So just stay on top of that because that's important.(ambient music)- To wrap things up, what can people expect next for you? What's your next move and where can people find you?- Well, my next major... I'm super stoked, and my main priority right now in my career is Paidia and the fiction that I'm building for Paidia. And what I can hope is that it will be used for something more interactive where you get to explore that fiction in the future. So keep an eye out for possibilities of that nature, but also just the characters in the world on the site. Keep an eye out for Paidia in general. That is my focus right now. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch under Stef Sanjati. That's Stef, S-T-E-F, Sanjati, S-A-N-J-A-T-I. It's still my creator name. And on Twitch it's theStefSanjati. And I stream there twice a week on Mondays and Fridays,
three to 5:00 PM Eastern Standard. And we go through different kinds of games. Story games is our focus and we like to do deep dives into the story and the design of those games. So that's what you can expect from me.(ambient music)- I'm just so inspired by Stefanie. She's such an intelligent and motivating individual whose presence so authentically captures the attention of any room. And I feel like I learn something new every time I have the opportunity to speak with her. I was especially impressed by her perspective on prioritizing her personal health, both mentally and physically whenever it comes to the demand of being at the center of an online community. And I think anyone who's interested in pursuing a career as a content creator can take a lot from her learnings. I wanna thank Stefanie again for taking the time to share her story with us today. Now get out there and make your move.(ambient music)