Four years ago, Jeannie, known as PotasticP on Twitch, was on her way to becoming a doctor. One gap year, a pandemic and a detour onto Twitch later, Jeannie is a full-time content creator with a dream job she never knew she wanted.

We had the pleasure of talking with Jeannie to learn more about how she got started, what she’s learned along the way and what she has planned for the future.

potasticpyt

potasticpyt
Subscribers: 52K
Uploads: 21
Video views: 583,235
Content type: Games

User created: Feb 24th, 2024

The big pivot

Back in 2020, Jeannie’s boyfriend, Henry, already has a substantial following on his YouTube channel, MxRPlays. “I was doing, like, YouTube videos with him on my off time,” Jeannie recalls. As it happened, she was about to get a lot more off-time as she entered a gap year in her progression to medical school. That was around the same time the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“During that gap year,” says Jeannie, “my close friend — she was like, ‘Hey, since you’re not doing anything, why don’t you try streaming on Twitch?’” This friend convinced Jeannie that her personality was especially well-suited to Twitch, so she was willing to give it a shot.

Already accepted to medical school, Jeannie genuinely believed that the end of her gap year would mark the end of her nascent Twitch career. At first, her streams were nothing more than experiments to kill time.

From the beginning, though, Jeannie got overwhelming support from her existing fans from MxRPlays: “That initial turnout … and people who were saying, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so excited that you’re streaming’ and like, ‘because you’re streaming and I tuned into the stream, my day got a whole lot better’ … I was like, ‘oh, this is pretty awesome.’”

Looking back, Jeannie says this is exactly what she was chasing when deciding to become a doctor. “I wanted to be of some help to people,” Jeannie tells us. “But then I found there’s like this other avenue.”

In the end, what was supposed to be a single gap year turned into a pivotal moment. Jeannie made the decision: “Ever since that pivot, like, yep, this is now my full-time job,” Jeannie says, assuredly, adding, “And I hope that I continue to do it for many, many more years to come.”

Letting go of sunk costs

“I was really terrified,” Jeannie admits, thinking back to that period of transition. “I had invested basically, like my entire college life. And before that, like, so many years into saying, like, ‘Oh, I’m going into medicine.’”

Jeannie wasn’t sure how the people around her would react to the sudden change in ambitions, but her fears turned out to be unwarranted. “I was really scared to tell my friends and family,” she says, “but when I did, they were — shockingly — very, very supportive.”

Despite what one might expect, Jeannie’s parent turned out to be some of the most supportive of all: “I think I’m very blessed to have a very loving family. And so my parents were like, ‘Hey, our number one thing was that you’re happy. And if you say that this makes you happy, then we’re more than happy.’”

At the same time, Jeannie suspects her parents and others may have had other motivations for keeping her out of the medical field: “I think a lot of them were actually pretty happy in that the pivot happened in 2020. That was when COVID was spiking.” Obviously, it was a particularly risky time to be working in medicine.

PotasticP today

PotasticP

Jeannie describes her content as “all over the place.” Category-wise, PotasticP is a variety Twitch streamer. “I do cooking, I do gaming and I do IRL streams,” Jeannie explains. She says she chooses what to stream based mostly on her own self-improvement goals. Jeannie is always up for a new challenge, especially one she can share with her community. “I would say it’s variety with Jeanie trying to learn and improve on things,” she concludes.

“For me, I’ve been very, very blessed with having a community that at this point they’re very like, ‘Oh, anything you do is fun for us.’” Jeannie does take audience suggestions through the PotasticP Discord server. However, she emphasizes that she has to care about the topic to include it on stream. “If it’s something you don’t really care about, but then let’s say your audience super cares about … because your heart’s not really into it, then people who are watching, they’re going to kind of know,” Jeannie explains. This just leads to disappointment all around — not the experience you want to cultivate on Twitch.

When asked why she chose Twitch over other platforms, Jeannie points to one key factor: interactivity. For Jeannie, interactivity is crucial and the live interaction on Twitch is hard to beat. As for other social media platforms like X and Instagram, they’re more or less an afterthought: “When I think of what I can do, it’s always stream-focused first.” It all comes down to the interactions with Chat.

“For me, the key part is I want to keep feeling like there’s someone there,” Jeannie reflects. “A lot of the things I do, it gets enhanced if I know that there’s people there, that it’s either making them laugh or it’s getting them engaged.”

How PotasticP keeps it going

For Jeannie and Henry, a lot of their income comes from Henry’s channel, MxRPlays. It’s been around longer and has a bigger following. It also serves as a driver for new PotasticP viewers.

“I do know a huge portion of my current Twitch audience are people who watch those YouTube videos,” Jeannie tells us. “In terms of discoverability, Twitch is not very good … getting new people to come in and watch. I definitely think YouTube is where you get the newer viewers — and just a lot more viewers.” Comparing viewership on Twitch versus YouTube, it’s easy to see that YouTube gives creators better reach and discoverability. As a result, Jeannie says it’s critical to have a presence on YouTube to accelerate growth on Twitch.

The setup

In terms of hardware, Jeannie runs a dual-PC setup — one for gaming and one just for streaming. Beyond that, her gear includes a camera, some lights and a good microphone. “I know some people rock the [Elgato] Stream Deck and all that stuff,” Jeannie says, “but I’m just like, ‘it’s okay, I’ll just push buttons on my keyboard. That’s fine enough for me.’”

There are only a few gadgets in Jeannie’s setup, and her microphone is one of the essentials. “I think mic is very important as a lot of times people won’t even be watching,” Jeannie points out. “They just play it in the background. And if your mic isn’t very nice … I think it [makes] people tend to click off more.”

Jeannie sets up and runs her own streams, but she does have a YouTube manager who handles all the editing and promotion for the PotasticP YouTube channel, “which is really awesome,” Jeannie says, “because then I just need to handle the streaming side.”

As for the stream: “It’s just me, and I kind of like doing that because my stream appreciates, for some reason, like the fact that I’m doing this all by myself … my Chat is surprisingly very entertained to see how I try and figure it out live and how I try to fix it.” For advice, Jeannie turns to her friends in the streaming world along with online guides.

Long-term goals

When asked about her long-term goals for the PotasticP channel, Jeannie’s answer was simple: “Keep doing this forever.” She says that as long as PotasticP viewers get value out of her stream, she’ll keep going live. Other than that, Jeannie just wants to keep improving, both as a streamer and as a person.

Luckily, those goals seem to go hand in hand. Jeanie gives an example: “I’ve been doing cooking streams and that mainly is because I was horrible at cooking. Like, I didn’t know how to boil an egg, almost, back then. But, now that I’ve been doing cooking for like four years, I’ve actually improved on it quite a bit … I want to keep gaining skills in that manner and keep improving on stream and that way, and using stream as kind of like an avenue to document my improvements.”

Jeannie admits that this kind of learning in public isn’t always easy. “I can understand people who are like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to document [this] because I feel very vulnerable,’” Jeannie says, “but I think it’s actually a lot more friendly.” She explains that leaning into the fact that you are a beginner practicing a skill can be extremely beneficial. ”It’s more of a comedic thing,” Jeannie observes. “They tend to give more advice and be helpful and be encouraging rather than demeaning.” She also emphasizes the fun of learning in community: “Let’s say you’re just doing it all by yourself. All you have is you, yourself — you don’t have any of that feedback or advice.”

Boyfriend Tries My "Edible" Food

YouTube restart

More immediate goals include reaching 100K YouTube subscribers on her new YouTube channel, potasticpyt. It’s a relaunch, and you can learn more about the unfortunate circumstances here. Aside from having a home for her stream clips, a YouTube channel will also give Jeannie space to try out some different types of content that might not work as well in a livestream context. “I do have some ideas — let’s say, like a room tour or there are some like challenges that I want to try out — but it would be kind of difficult to do on stream.”

Final advice

“If I went back to 2020 Jeannie, I think I would tell her, ‘Don’t worry too much about the numbers.’” Jeannie goes on to explain that it’s essential not to let shifts in viewership dictate what you stream. She reminds us that you will always have a core viewership that keeps coming back for your streams. You can build your audience on that foundation.

“I think it’s more important to focus on the content.” To Jeannie, that means focusing on what she finds interesting first and foremost. “When I first started, I kept switching games … I never finished one because I’d be like, ‘Oh, wait, … maybe they’re getting bored.’ Then I just switch and I switch again.” Eventually, Jeannie realized this pattern meant she never got fully invested in a game — and it showed in her streams. She decided to switch it up and stick to games and activities she found engaging. “I find the most joy is if it’s something that you’ve been super passionate about or something that you’ve always wanted to learn more or improve on and share. And if you start off with that and focus on that … I think people will get magnetized towards it.”