Mike: My wife and I had a very long, very serious conversation about whether this was a good idea. I’d love to buy a fancy cinema camera, but it’s just not necessary. 

Spencer: I like that you have the goal of incorporating your family more into it so you can spend more time with it, and that’s really cool. 

Mike: The reality is there’s only so many hours in the day. 

Spencer: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. Super excited for another episode. Today I am joined with Mike from the YouTube channel Projects for All. Mike, thanks for being on the show. 

Mike: It’s my pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on. 

Spencer: Yeah. We actually worked together a little bit. I edit some of your short videos. It’s been great to learn a new style and see the kind of content you do. I think I’ve told you this before, but the sound of your voice is very… I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s very relaxing. So that’s one of the reasons why I like your videos. 

Mike: I got comopared to Christopher Walken earlier today. 

Spencer: Oh, really? Wow.

Mike: Yeah, I get a lot of opportunities. I get Ray Romano, I get Christopher Walken. Those are the two big ones, but there’s been more. I’m not thinking of some good ones. 

Spencer: Yeah, but I’m just pointing out that your videos are great and I like working with you. 

Mike: Appreciate it. 

Spencer: To start off, like we do with all of our episodes, tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe where you’re from, what you like to do, anything like that. 

Mike: My name is Mike. I run a YouTube channel called Projects for All. We do mostly power tool reviews, but I do all kinds of other products, all kinds of anything that’s useful in a shop environment I feel is fair game for my channel. And I’ve been doing it for three years. This has become, I don’t want to say all my hobbies and everything has become this channel, but it’s kind of. So as far as other things I do, I have a family, a wife and a son who’s seven years old. And really my time is split between my regular job, which I’m at about 55 hours a week, my YouTube channel, most importantly, my family whenever, as much as humanly possible, really. 

Spencer: Yeah, cool. Yeah, that makes sense. 55 hours a week, that’s a lot. How did you get into YouTube? Did you just kind of do it as a hobby? 

Mike: It started because I’ve always had a weird, I don’t want to call it a phobia, because that’s a little extreme, but I never felt comfortable being on camera. So it started as a challenge to myself to see if this was something I could do. And just to overcome this weird phobia, I mean, it’s totally unreasonable. Why would you be afraid to be on camera? I don’t feel I have a confidence problem in real life. So on camera is, really no different. So that’s how it started. It started because I wanted to see if it was something I could essentially do. And I recorded my first video, which was taking the starter out of a motorcycle. And I did that just, it’s actually still on my channel. You can go, if you go way back three years, you’ll see it on there. I still haven’t removed any of the early ones that don’t really apply to what I do today. But that’s it. It was that and a coworker of mine started a YouTube channel that got very successful, very fast. And he is a very motivating person. So as soon as I showed interest in doing something like that myself, he was all over me. And he was super motivating and he pushed and pushed and, you know, I overcame all the challenges of doing that and started my own channel. And it’s been, it’s been three really interesting, challenging, fun years to do it. 

Spencer: Yeah. So you mentioned that phobia of the cameras. Do you feel like you’ve kind of started to overcome that fear? Or do you feel like it’s still a little awkward to make videos? 

Mike: You know, it’s interesting you say that because it is still a little awkward sometimes. If I haven’t recorded anything for the whole week starting like Saturday morning, I’ll get up real early and I’ll come out here and I’ll get all set up. And then I catch myself maybe cleaning up too much or just procrastinating. And I mean, I have a problem with procrastinating anyway, but you know, I find myself having trouble starting. Once I get started, I’m totally fine. And you know, it’s totally natural after that. Doesn’t give me any trouble, but I do catch myself doing that from time to time. And I have to pretty much just force myself like, come out here, I turn the camera on. Even if I’m not recording something useful, I’ll just goof off and talk to the camera and then just delete that video later, you know. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah, it’s still a little bit of a challenge. Although, I mean, obviously it’s you get used to it. The more you do it, the more you get used to interacting with nobody, which is very strange. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: You’re not used to it. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely not natural. 

Mike: It’s not. It’s not. You put up a camera in your garage and record yourself doing something. And when you start to do that, it’s very strange. It’s a strange, it’s a strange thing. 

Spencer: Yeah. So your coworker who was very motivating for you, was he also into like tools and stuff? Why did you go into like tool reviews, I guess is my question, because is that something that you are already interested in? 

Mike: For me, and I’ll give you just a quick backstory of my experience. I’ve been in the automotive industry since I was like 16 years old, like on my birthday. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: So I was a mechanic for a bunch of years when I was younger. I worked with a contractor as a second job for a while doing home remodeling. So I picked up a lot of experience there. I was a landlord for 10 years. I owned a small apartment building. Most of the jobs I’ve been in, I’m still in the automotive industry. So almost everything I’ve done is something to do with tools. My buddy who started went with the industry that we’re in. He went to the automotive and he’s had a lot of success with that. And everyone, all my friends and a lot of coworkers all said stick with automotive. You know that better than anything else. And really what I wanted to do is if I was going to start a new career path or do something totally, totally different from my day to day, I wanted it to be totally different. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Spencer: Yeah.

Mike: But I have enough experience with tools to obviously do this channel. And you know, I find this a lot of fun. This is a total break from my normal day to day job. It’s not the same. You know. So it’s kept me interested and motivated. I think if I worked 55 hours in my regular job and then came home and did more of that for hours, it’d be a little much. So I really want to do something different. 

Spencer: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And especially if you already have that background with tools, but I can totally relate. I don’t tell people this a lot, but I have like a side YouTube channel, like a gaming channel because I like to play video games as a hobby. But I don’t post on it very often because I’m a video editor for my job. And so if I’m editing all day and then if I want to make a YouTube video, involves more editing. So it’s like, that’s just more of the same work. 

Mike: Yeah, who wants to have a 16 hour work day? You know, if it’s different subjects, at least I feel like I’m not doing more work kind of. 

Spencer: Yeah. So you mentioned you work like 55 hours a week. That seems like a lot. And then to do YouTube and you know, have a family on top of that seems very, very busy. So how do you, I guess, balance all of that? 

Mike: When I started this, my son was really young. And what I would do is I would get up, believe it or not, because I start working 5:30 in the morning for my regular job. And I would get up at 2 in the morning and then do this for a couple hours and then go to work. So I did everything I could to still be around for the family. But you are going to make sacrifices. It’s just, that’s it. There’s only so many hours in the day, unfortunately. You know, I’m really at a point in my life where I wish there was 40 hours in a day. You know, I don’t know if that would be good enough. I wish because I have that much to do in a 24 hour day. So you sacrifice a lot, you sleep less. When I started this, the goal, the goal for me has always been to make this my full time career. And I will tell you three years in that that could still be an achievable goal, but it was not as achievable as I hoped from the beginning. Now, I’m not saying that to discourage anybody who wants to do that because everybody’s experience with this is going to be different. You know.

Spencer: Right.

Mike: When I started three years ago, my son was four. And, you know, he wasn’t in so many sports. He wasn’t in so many activities. He was just, you know, with us, like, as he’s gotten older, he’s into a million different things. He’s in three sports. And there’s a lot less time that I have to dedicate to this because I want to spend time, you know, don’t get me wrong. The main goal is always to spend time with the family. The goal when I started doing this was to make this a job to give me more work flexibility. So I don’t have to work 55 hours a week an hour away from my home. 

Spencer: Right.

Mike: And to actually see my family more often. The way it really worked out was I see my family less because now I have basically a second job. It’s still my original goal, I think, is still achievable. I’ve just had to scale back my expectations a lot. And, you know, I’m sure I would achieve more success doing YouTube. If I had, you know, a full workday’s worth of time to dedicate to it every day. I’m sure subscribers, views, everything would be so much bigger. But that’s okay because in the end, the family part for me is obviously the most important, you know. Hopefully YouTube will be around for a lot of years to come. And I’ll be doing this for years and years. And now that my son’s getting older, I’d like to start to integrate him a little bit, get him out here. You know, he’s all this stuff one day is going to end up being his anyway. He might as well learn how to do it. You know.

Spencer: Right. 

Mike: The goal has changed a lot from making this a career so I can spend more time with my family to bringing hopefully my family, if they like doing this, but bringing them in and making this more of a family business. So the time I do spend doing this, I can spend with the family at the same time. That’s where I’m starting to shift right now. At seven years old, my son’s not quite old enough to be using power tools and doing stuff. But there’s things out here you can do. And you know, he’s pretty handy with the camera and he has a lot of interest and he loves spending time with me, I mean, what kid doesn’t want to spend time with their dad. So 

Spencer: Yeah.

Mike: I think that’s the the avenue this is going to take for me. But I’m always reassessing how important this is and the benefits of this versus the time I spent doing it because I have a family. And at one point, if this ever becomes in the way of my family time and and too much is I would I would probably stop doing YouTube. But so far it’s worked out three years in and we’re still going still making it work. 

Spencer: Well, that makes a lot of sense, you know, families number one. And I think I think YouTube’s not going anywhere anytime soon. I think it’ll remain the top, you know, video platform for quite a while, maybe even forever. 

Mike: I agree.

Spencer: Just because it’s so good. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I can see it being hard, you know, transitioning from having a full time job to doing YouTube full time. There’s a lot to consider when making that transition. So but I like that you have the goal of like incorporating your family more into it so you can spend more time with them. That’s really cool. 

Mike: Yeah, as he is, my son gets older and, you know, I can trust him with more power tools. And if if he has an interest, you know, if he has no interest in doing this, I’m not going to force him to come out here and do it. You know. 

Spencer: Right.

Mike: The other thing I wanted to say when I started doing this, my wife and I had a very long, very serious conversation about whether this was a good idea and whether I should do it at all. Because you think this is going to be hard work. It’s going to take a lot of time. And it ends up being twice the amount of work that you you think it’s going to be. The editing, the filming, the redoing things. You are going to become your own IT department. That’s a big one. So every time something technically gets messed up, I have no one to ask. I got into the Apple platform with Macbook with the iPhones to do this. And I’m a suggestive my wife and I have three years experience with Apple only. I mean, I started out with with with no experience whatsoever and have learned over over the years. But you know, I’ve wasted probably three or four hours yesterday editing in, what did I do? I edited HDR video. Or was it? I don’t even know what I did. That’s the problem. And I think it’s the video and I uploaded it to my computer on an HDR project. And when I uploaded it to YouTube, the colors were all messed up and I had to figure out four hours yesterday afternoon wasted just trying to figure out what I screwed up. And yeah, that’s that’s kind of time dedication this takes, you know, you can’t always plan. 

Spencer: Right. Yeah, I think a lot of people think that, you know, being a YouTuber is so easy. They just see the video, but they don’t see all the work behind the video and like what it took to produce that. I think that’s a common misconception that people have. So a lot of I think there’s a ton of like brand new YouTube channels out there, but there’s not that many that like continuously do it for a long period of time. So.

Mike: One thing I think is interesting when I watch YouTube, because I watch a lot of YouTube, but if I’m watching, I watch people like me often, but I’ll watch, you know, whatever product reviews for something I want to buy. And now I watch YouTube differently. Like I’m not necessarily counting the camera changes, but you know, every time the camera changes, that guy got that camera, moved it, got his lights, moved those, looked at what didn’t like it, moved it again. And every single one of those, those movements is, you know, whatever, 10 minutes of goofing around before you start getting the shot. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: You know, and you can really tell how much effort some people put into that. What looks like a simple video to most people because, you know, it’s just a video, but for someone who does it, you realize how much work that guy really put into it. 

Spencer: Definitely. So one thing that I’m curious about, and I kind of ask this a lot to different YouTubers, but how do you decide what, you know, what tools to do a video about? Is it like, is it solely based on like what tools are sent to you, or do you see something like at the store and you’re like, oh, that, that would probably be interesting. Or do you do like research like, oh, this tool seems to be pretty popular right now. Maybe I should do a video on it. How do you, you know, decide what content to make? 

Mike: It’s really all of the above.

Spencer: Okay.

Mike: I get a lot of comments. People ask for specific things. If I’m paying for it and people have been asking for it and I see it on sale, that’s, that’s a no-brainer. We did the Skil Auto Hammer recently. A viewer mentioned it was 40 bucks on Amazon. I looked, there it is, 40 bucks. So it’s like half price. So I ordered it for 40 bucks. I’ll take a chance, you know, and I’ve gotten a few requests for it. And that video did spectacular. That’s probably my best video this year, and it cost me 40 bucks. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: Sometimes I’ll spend 400 bucks on a big, a big tool and it’ll get no traction. Even three years in, I have trouble telling you what’s going to be successful. You know, that’s the silver bullet. You know, if, if I could tell you what was going to be successful all the time, I’d be a huge audience, you know. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. 

Mike: But yeah, it’s, it’s viewer requests. That’s a big one. If everyone on YouTube, I don’t watch other reviewers like me, very, very seldom. Occasionally, if I pop a video at the same time for a same subject as somebody else that’s similar to me, I might watch it just to see what their perspective was. But it’s always after the fact. But I do look at thumbnails and I will, I will type in searches into YouTube and search for specific tools or brands to see what other YouTubers are making videos on. That’s a huge free resource. You can do, anyone can do that, you know, see what’s getting the views. Yeah. I’ve gotten some good ones off of that, but you know, you never know. If you went and looked at that skill, uh, Auto Hammer, my video, I’d have to look, it’s, you know, well over 100,000 views. There are videos from two years ago that are the same. They have 10,000 views. So, So why did my video do so well when most of them got 10,000 views? Can’t tell you. And you know what? That’s the tough thing about it. Sometimes you just seem to be successful for no reason. 

Spencer: Yeah. I think there is some skill and quality that goes into videos. Because people are more likely to watch a well produced video with a good thumbnail good title. But I also think a part of YouTube is being at the right place at the right time kind of a thing. And maybe that was the case with your Skil auto hammer video. Maybe just a lot of people were looking for that right at that time when you published it. So, but you’re right. Sometimes it’s just hard to know. The algorithm is such a mystery sometimes. 

Mike: It is. And I think the people who are the most successful I think are the ones who have a good idea of what their audience wants to watch. But also who are just constantly releasing videos. Some people who clearly do this for a living release three videos plus shorts in a week or every other day new video. So I mean, it’s just law of averages. If you have a good understanding of what your audience wants and you’re just constantly hitting them with more and more of the same stuff when it works, it’s kind of a spell success for you for sure. 

Spencer: Yeah.

Mike: Sometimes I’ll do, I’ll review something just because I want it if it’s free. There was a thousand dollar hand truck with tracks on the back of it that climbs upstairs and they emailed me. It was an Amazon seller and I said, absolutely, I’ll do that because I personally probably wouldn’t spend a thousand dollars on that. But you know, people who need it more than I do would and it’s still really helpful to me to have because I can load things in my truck with it. That video, even though I’m not certain my viewers might want to watch that, it makes sense for me to make it just to get the item. You know, the item, I don’t want to say comes with this payment because if it wasn’t good, I would have told my viewers it’s not good. Don’t buy it even though it was free. And I think I’ve got myself a little bit of a reputation for doing that. But you know, I’ll do some things just because I need to do something in the house. When we bought this house a year ago, we had we had the home inspection and my wife wanted them to do the camera for the sewer. So we paid for that. They did it. There’s roots because it’s an old house. You know, there’s always roots. 

Spencer: Right. 

Mike: And three weeks later, I get an email before I even got a chance to address it from a company that wanted me to do a sewer inspection camera. Absolutely. 

Spencer: Wow. 

Mike: Well, then I contacted a Viva. I’d done a video for them. I did a video where I hated what they sent me, even though it was free. Their table saw it. I emailed them and I said, hey, you want to send me a sewer router? So they sent me a sewer router. So I got two videos out of that and ended up doing the the task I needed to do in my house anyway. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: Now, those videos weren’t crazy popular. And actually, if you look at, if I were to show you the stats from when we bought this house for months afterwards, I was kind of doing that because I don’t have time for YouTube. So I was kind of integrating what I needed to accomplish in real life and YouTube. And it wasn’t playing out so well for YouTube. Views were just just slowly declining and, you know, interest was down, I think. So once I got established in this house, I had to kick it into high gear with YouTube and do things that I knew my viewers wanted to see. 

Spencer: Yeah.

Mike: That’s that’s one way and still produce something and stay on the platform and accomplish things you have to accomplish in real life, at least in my case. I mean, everybody’s subject matter is different. So it’s going to vary for different people, different creators. 

Spencer: Yeah. And I think there’s a fine balance between like doing what you want versus what your viewers want to see. You kind of have to balance both of them. 

Mike: Yeah. And it’s, you know, ideally, I would only ever do what the channel would be best for the channel. It’s just the reality is there’s only so many hours in the day and, you know, you’ve got to run, you got to, if you have to run a router through and you have a tool channel on the internet, it makes perfect sense to kind of combine the two, you know, at least.

Spencer: Right.

Mike: At least for one week episode. 

Spencer: Yeah. Definitely. So I guess changing gears just slightly. What are your thoughts on, you know, doing long form videos versus short form videos? Do you feel like there’s a benefit or like pros and cons to both or I guess what is your experience been with long form and short form?

Mike: Well, there’s definitely pros and cons to both. You know, it’s there’s some people who are wildly successful, as everybody knows, doing one minute videos, you know, for me, for what I do, my demographic for my channel is 94% male. And I love the 6% females that watch my tools. 

Spencer: Yeah.

Mike: But it’s night is is 94% male and it’s generally males. There are some 25 to 35, but for the most part, it’s over 35 years old, all the way up to retirement age. I started doing shorts, as you know, because you’ve edited almost all of them and created a lot of my long form content. But I did that hoping to pull in a slightly younger demographic and just move into that. I don’t want to lose the demographic I have because my viewers are awesome. They’re super helpful. They’re always nice on in the comments section. When you read my comment sections, the nicest comment section probably on the internet. And I don’t want that to change. But if I can expand a little bit and just make my audience a little bigger, that was my goal with starting to produce or put shorts out there. And I would say it had some success. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: I have the success I was hoping. And I’ve kind of tapered off posting shorts a little bit. Just because I don’t think the the cost benefit for me is quite there. But that’s the best answer I can give you. They’re they do get some views. YouTube seems to burn hot with shorts. Shorts come out and my shorts will hit 10,000 in like a day. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: And then completely flat line. Nobody wanted nobody sees them after that. And it’s very different because my my normal content is. In my opinion, kind of the best content you can have in that it’s it just lasts forever. It’s always getting some views. You know, even my three year old irrelevant bad audio, old videos have, you know, they get 100, 200 views a day. People are still watching them. They’re still producing income and they’re still they’re still relevant because tools have a long service life, long. 

Spencer: Right. 

Mike: You know, a company will come out with a new table saw and run that same model for a decade, sometimes two decades. So that review video, that table saw is still relevant. 10 years later, people are still watching them because people still want to know if they should buy it, you know. 

Spencer: Yeah.

Mike: The shorts are kind of flash in the pan. 

Spencer: Yeah. Do you feel like you’ve you’ve seen because I know some people have done shorts just to grow their like subscriber base. Do you feel like that’s the case for your channel? Like it’s helped you gain more subscribers or. 

Mike: A little. Yeah. My channel’s always been super stingy with subscribers and I have, I just looked actually this morning because it’s been a while since I checked. I have 5,300,000 views over three years and 25,000, I think 600 subscribers, which is probably what I would consider a low subscribers for the amount of views that I get. But I think for me, a lot of that is I try and I try and put as much information in my videos as I possibly can. So if you really are interested in buying the tool, you get to see it as if you are there, you get to see everything you could possibly look at, you know, and you get all the information you can about it. And that was my goal to make the most useful videos that I possibly could for people who are trying to buy it. And I think a lot of the times people come on and they’ll watch the video for the info and they don’t subscribe because they got the info they need. They’re out, you know?

Spencer: Right

Mike: For probably 10 years. Every time I put a tie on probably once a year, if that, you know, and I forget how to do a double Windsor and I watch the same YouTube video every time. I’ve been doing that for probably 10 years, but I don’t subscribe. Because I go on there, I get the info I need it and I’m done. So I think a lot of people do the same thing with me. So I get the views, which is fine because the views is what really matters. But I don’t focus on the subscribers quite as much as I did when I first started and I thought that’s what you really need. Because if you’re getting the views, you know, people are still watching your, your content and the algorithm is still playing it because people are still looking and searching for that subject matter. 

Spencer: That’s true. I think another misconception is, you know, subscriber count. Like it’s, it’s almost like a vanity metric now. Like, 

Mike: Sure. 

Spencer: Oh, that’s cool. But it’s really like how much watch time and views you have. That’s, I feel like the more important metric to track. 

Mike: Yeah, 100%. 

Spencer: But yeah, that totally makes sense about the, the watching the video just for the info and then kind of leaving. I will admit, I do that sometimes for specific things. Like if I need to do something for video editing and I need to know like one specific thing, I’ll watch the video up until the very point that I, oh, that’s how you do that. Okay. And then I’ll leave the video. Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah I do the same thing. I mean, yeah, I hit thumbs up now. And I will occasionally leave a comment and say thank you just to throw a comment, you know, especially, especially if it’s really helpful to a small YouTube channel with not a lot of subscribers or views. I’ll, uh, I usually will throw like a hey thanks that helped a lot in there. Just cause I know how tough it is to have a small channel with not a lot of views. 

Spencer: So do you feel like, um, in your three years of doing YouTube, uh, that you’ve made any, I guess, mistakes or learned anything that like our audience listening to this could benefit from? 

Mike: I’ll tell you, you know, don’t overspend on gear and things to produce YouTube. I’ve fallen into that trap. That’s, uh, probably the most important thing to spend money on when you start doing YouTube is a computer to edit. Because having a slow computer to edit video is not something you want to deal with on a weekly basis. So, um, what I did, my wife, who’s clearly a lot smarter than I am, said, switch to Apple, spend a lot of money and me being cheap, not wanting to do that. But in the end, she was a hundred percent right, at least for me, because, uh, there’s nothing wrong with PC and I’ve been on PCs my entire life. I’m new to Mac really, but Mac is, is a lot, uh, well, I want to say user friendly, but there’s, there’s just less bugs and there’s less trouble. So for somebody like me who’s not super technical with this stuff and self learning, it was not a terrible transition and wasn’t a terrible, um, learning curve to get going on this, but a trap that I constantly fall into and I do this over and over and it’s just my personality is I’m always trying to challenge myself and I’m always trying to do better. And, uh, just recently I spent a whole bunch of money. I bought a whole bunch of equipment. Um, I use none of it right now. I’m to the point where, um, I realized that monitors on my camera are nice, but they have to be charged and when they’re dead, it’s all just a lot of wasted time. So I, I switched to, uh, recording in log so I could, um, color correct everything myself and I ended up spending twice as long trying to edit videos. And in the end, nobody ever complained about the quality of my videos. So yeah, don’t try and solve problems that aren’t problems. You know, you’re like, uh, I’m like a solution looking for a problem. You know? 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Mike: So spend when you spend, when you initially start to do it, you can use your cell phone, which is what I’m using right now, which I’ve used for all three years on my channel, uh, iPhone 12 pro max. And now you’re looking through a 15 and it works perfectly fine. There’s a, there’s no reason I’d love to buy a fancy cinema camera and learn it and challenge myself to do that, but it’s just not necessary. Cause this is about as far as the camera ever is from me or my subject. And you don’t need a crazy camera for that. You know?

Spencer: Right. 

Mike: Keep it simple. That’s the best thing I can tell you. I started adding an iMovie. I switched to final cut pro because one, it’s not that expensive, 300 bucks for a wife lifetime update. And, um, I realized my audio was sub par and people were commenting about it and I had to do something about it. So, um, make sure you have good audio. That’s, that’s key. And, uh, I switched to final cut pro and I learned that and it’s, it’s been great. 

Spencer: Yeah. I think that’s great advice. Uh, you know, don’t overcomplicate it. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. 

Mike: For sure. 

Spencer: Um, kind of mentality. So that’s, that’s great. So, um, when you were starting YouTube, did anyone give you any advice, uh, for starting out that you feel like was helpful for you? Or did you just kind of learn it all on your own? 

Mike: I kind of learned it on my own. I had, like I said, I had a, a buddy at work who became a huge, he’s huge now. And to his credit, he helped me a lot with understanding the algorithm, understanding what I needed to do on the platform to get started. And he was very motivating, but I was always like, Hey, watch this video before I post. He’s like, I’m not watching your video. He’s like post it and I’ll watch it. Like it’s, it was pretty much you learn on your own. I’ll tell you, you’re going to, you’re, there’s a very good chance. If you’re starting out, you’re not a hundred percent sure what you want to do. That’s okay. Because if you go back to my old first few videos, I was building things and doing projects and, uh, eventually I’ll take those videos down, but I still, I’m kind of nostalgic about it and they’re very irrelevant. But what ended up happening was I found a, I found a product that. Was, was like a little project and I built it. It was a little kit and I built it. And half of it I thought was really cool and innovative and work great. Worked great. And the other half I didn’t like, I thought it was poorly done. So I voiced my opinion about it, about it at the end of the video. And it wasn’t a review video. It wasn’t intended to be, but that video shot up like 30,000 views. So I decided to, um, to review my table saw, just to see if that was a fluke or if that would work. And that video got a bunch of views and that’s how my channel started. So you’ll, you’re going to start out doing something you like or want to do. And the viewers will tell you what they want and you have to be paying attention because, um, I immediately shifted to doing tool reviews. And that’s how this channel became this channel. Really. It was never meant to be a tool review channel from the beginning. 

Spencer: Yeah. This is the, the final question. Um, and we ask all of our guests this, uh, one, because I find it really fascinating. Um, but two, I think it’s really helpful for our viewers. Um, you know, our audiences, people who are either like YouTubers, like you, or starting a YouTube channel. But the question is, is there anything about YouTube that you think is a myth that needs to be busted? Like something that a lot of people think is true, that is not true, or, uh, vice versa. A lot of people don’t realize that this is something that you should be doing or anything like that. 

Mike: You know, uh, you sent me a few of these questions before this and I’ve read that and I was thinking about it and really YouTube is, is pretty cut and dry. In my opinion, it’s, I don’t know if there’s really anything that I’ve experienced to doing YouTube where, you know, I would say myth busted. Um, it’s not a quick scheme for sure. And that’s encouraging. And, you know, it probably keeps us all motivated, but the chance, unless you are the funniest person ever or have, you know, the best of something to offer. Um, it’s not a get rich quick scheme. It’s just, it’s, it’s really is a job. It’s, uh, it’s another job, you know, but it can be whatever you want it to be. And, um, but as far as the myth goes, no, to me, it’s, uh, just one guy in a garage making videos and throwing them on the internet and hoping people want it. 

Spencer: Well, I think it works for you. And I think that’s totally fine that you think there’s no myths. Um, you know, everyone has a different experience. So thanks again, Mike for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Um, thank you to our viewers and listeners for checking out this episode. Uh, make sure to check out Mike’s channel. And if you’re interested in, uh, getting help with content creation or video editing, make sure to check us out at creatorluxe.com. Thanks again for watching and we’ll see you in the next episode.