Game Film

run it back

Jared Seidel
January 29, 2026

Game Film

"I SUCK" - I muttered to myself at 7am, hunched over my bed, checking the views on my last video before I left for the gym. That was me the last 3 weeks.

Remember how 7 months ago i thought i was hot stuff because I had one video hit 1.4M views. Jared 7 months ago let it get to his head. I really thought I had this whole content thing cracked and I hit the lottery and I was going to become a famous content creator and media business (i will).

I found a format that hit. So I doubled down. Then tripled down. Then milked the living hell out of it for months. I posted over 100 videos after that. Want to guess how many came close to 100K? Zero.

My follower count has been hovering around 1,300 since August. Complete flatline. One video I genuinely thought was good - put real effort into it - got 300 views. Three hundred. I've gotten more views on a Linkedin post.

I couldn't figure out what was wrong. So I did what I should've done months ago. I watched game film. My game film.

What do athletes do after every game? They sit down with coaches and watch tape. They study what worked. They study what didn't. They don't just move on to the next game and hope it goes better.

I was not doing that. My ADD monkey-brain was opening Instagram and TikTok to check view counts instead of actually looking at my content and asking what worked and why.

So I went back and watched my videos. No shit nobody wanted to follow me. I gave them no reason to.

Monotone delivery (I sounded like I was reading a terms of service agreement)
Rambling with no point
No clear takeaway
No reason to come back

^bad video (my fault)^

I was reporting on glucose spikes. "Look, your glucose went up when you ate a banana at the office" Cool. So what? I wasn't teaching anyone how to fix it. I was just narrating, poorly.

Here’s the embarrassing part. My girlfriend creates content. My friend builds fitness apps for some of the biggest creators on the internet. I had people in my corner who could've helped me months ago. I thought I could figure it out on my own.

When I finally mentioned I was struggling, my friend gave me feedback in 10 minutes that would've saved me months of flailing:

"Your hooks suck. You're reusing the same one over and over. Come up with 20 hooks and test them all. You don't have a content problem - you have a top of funnel problem."

People weren't even getting far enough into my videos to see if the content was good. They were bouncing at the door because I was boring Mr. Monotone.

“just a bad video here”

So I went back to the drawing board. I started thinking about what I actually want to teach - not just report on. How to lower glucose spikes, not just show you that it happened. Delivering real value. I'm thinking more about my hooks, my formatting, my packaging. Not chasing views but trying to build trust. Give people a reason to come back.

And it finally feels like things are starting to make sense. I have content pillars and ideas, I have contrarian views about health i know how to share. I have frameworks and formats that i can remix and repurpose. it feels good again to create.

So if you’re feeling stuck about something like why some post isnt performing or youre just not doing well at anything like your job. do two things.

Watch your own game film. Go back and actually look at what you made. Not the views. The work itself. What's missing? What would make you want to follow you?
Watch game film of the greats. Find 2-3 people ahead of you doing what you want to do. Study the details. How they're speaking study the structure remix it, make it yours.

Watch your game film. It wont lie, and you’ll become unstuck very fast.

You’re Awesome,

Jared

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