My channel is absolutely grounded in not only the gospel of Jesus Christ, but in His organized church. I am a staunch advocate of following our church leaders and the scriptures. My discussions about entertainment will always contain either quotes from church leaders or scriptures. Each conversation is centered around how a particular entertainment topic intersects with a gospel topic or teaching. Ultimately, I will drive people's view of their entertainment choices to the doorstep of church teachings. This ends up being both in the positive and in the negative. For example, sometimes I will show why a certain entertainment creation goes against the teachings of the church and other times I will make the positive connections of how an entertainment offering dovetails with church teachings. This will help people more often see parallels between a movie they are watching and the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this way, people will begin to naturally have more gospel conversations with their kids and other family members.
My organization consists of two entities: Brother Jacobs Jams and Saints and Screens. Here are my mission statements for each: Brother Jacobs Jams: My mission is to create entertaining music, concerts, and firesides that give everyone the courage to be faithful, the permission to have fun, and the edification to reach for a higher level of joy. Saints & Screens empowers Latter-day Saints to navigate entertainment with purpose and conviction—finding what uplifts, rejecting what destroys, and creating art that inspires. From movies and music to books, sports, and media culture, we break down what strengthens faith, expose what weakens it, and ignite your potential to create bold, meaningful, faith-driven entertainment.
I will focus the remainder of this application on my Saints and Screens channel.My hope is to help Latter-Day Saints navigate the crossroads of faith and entertainment. I believe entertainment is a part of the frontlines for the battle of our souls and that we need to treat it as such. I hope to gain a wider audience and become a trusted subject matter expert of the connection between entertainment (both good and bad) and the gospel. I hope my channel can help people make good entertainment decisions and bring awareness to the growing trends, subtle attacks, and emerging countercultures of all forms of entertainment from movies, to music, to books, to sports, etc.Target audience is the parents of the youth. Typically, the millenial generation but inclusive of Gen X and Gen Z.The resources I need are as follows: *Mentorship in navigating the YouTube algorithm (creating thumbnails and titles that are SEO optimized for wider reach, proven strategies for viewer attention and retention, understanding everything that kills these objectives). *Better creation space, video quality and editing quality for the overall look and feel of enhanced professionalism. This includes how my home page is set up. *Help from people who are already successful in pushing my content and channel. Though very imperfect, I feel I create compelling videos and am an engaging personality, but no one is seeing the videos. I need help breaking through whatever barrier is holding me back. Collaborations and shoutouts from established creators will help. *Help navigating all the different platforms that I am on to get noticed according to the parameters of the individual platform. There seems to be a different strategy between YouTube and Instagram and I have a hard time keeping track of and tapping into that strategy.*Time!! With an experienced team I feel like I could have the time to create more videos, more shorts, more live streams etc. As it stands now, I have a full-time job and a family that only allows me to get one video out a week. I have felt momentum slip because of this.*Advertising. I've tried boosting a few posts and it has been an epic failure and hasn't led to anything sustainable. I need help and funding to know what to push and how to do it.What does success look like? Ultimately, success is in the audience being armed with the discernment to make good choices in their entertainment. I want families to understand the pitfalls of what the modern entertainment industry is and I want them to find the many good offerings of entertainment out there. That being said, from the point of view of quantitative success for my business and channel, I want my YouTube channel to reach 100k+ subscribers, create content that drives consistent and rising engagement numbers (20k views per video), consistent guest appearances as a subject matter expert on other shows that are making a difference for the Saints, and to be able to monetize in such a way that I can spend my working hours pushing the gospel and continuing to create content that will help drive the mission of the Lord's church.The audience should care about what I say because my experience in entertainment consumption and creation can lead them towards uplifting entertainment and away from entertainment that not only harms their ability to hear the Holy Ghost, but also has the power to alter the way they view everything in their life from faith to societal norms. I have the experience and expertise in navigating that. I can show them the pitfalls. I can help them take this seriously and intentionally as I fear many people view entertainment as something separate from gospel truth. They view it as just "blowing off steam" at the end of the day and don't realize they are marinating in deceptive and dangerous tactics of the adversary. The other thing they should care about is that I will help shine a light on all of the good entertainment out there! I will show them there is hope and they don't need to only listen to the Tabernacle Choir and watch church videos as their form of entertainment. I believe entertainment can be extremely uplifting and there is a lot out there. I dig through that and recommend to them things that are good. In this way, a whole new world opens up to them where they can enjoy entertainment without feeling they are selling their souls. On top of all of that, my personality is engaging. When they listen to my channel, they will not be bored. Its fun, funny, and absolutely grounded in the gospel.
Absolutely outstanding. I'm a current temple recommend holder and returned missionary. My loyalty to Christ and His church is absolute. I'm very passionate about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and am anxiously engaged in keeping my temple covenants, one of which, the law of consecration, is what has driven me to spend years of my life trying to use my talents to build the Kingdom.
