Professor: And the spark we’re all born with, I feel like we do need to, it’s there, and we need to fan it as much as possible. 

Spencer: It’s better to have a loyal community that’s small than have like a million subscribers that don’t really watch your contents. 

Professor: A creator, a builder, has this thing within them. Like you just have to do it. 

Spencer: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut. Excited for another episode. So today I am joined by Professor Shadow. 

Professor: Hello, yeah, Professor Shadow here. Thank you so much for having me on board. Looking forward to going through some fun questions today. 

Spencer: Yeah, I’m excited. Your channel is super unique. And Professor Shadow is not your actual name, but that’s your channel name, right? 

Professor: Yeah, Professor, because I’m a martial artist as well and you get the title of Professor. So that gave me the idea of Professor and of course my stories are in the shadows. So one and one, and we come up with a great name for the channel, so that was interesting. 

Spencer: Yeah, that’s awesome. I love the name. And I really like your channel. It’s super unique. I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone on the show with your type of content before. So before I spoil it, why don’t you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your channel and kind of the videos you make? 

Professor: Yeah, Professor Shadow is a storytelling channel. It’s a dark, shadowy storytelling channel. So we don’t tell stories of fun things, but mainly like horror, suspense, that type of thing. More gothic, so I’m more of an old school horror. I don’t like gore. I don’t like the new wave horror. 

I prefer the old 1970s going back all the way to the beginning. Particularly the amicus and hammer horrors are my favorites, and I’ve drawn it obviously as a child. That’s what I grew up on and drew much inspiration from those, and my idea was to originally to create a channel to tell just basic horror stories. 

And of course it’s evolved into what we see today, which is obviously Professor Shadow. And yes, telling stories, unique stories, and when we opened the conversation, you said, I’ve never seen a channel like yours, and honestly you will never will see another channel like this one, because this is completely unique, and I’d love to go over some of the reasons why it’s unique a little bit later, but it is completely unique to me, so I doubt you’ll find another Professor Shadow type channel out there. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely, and I’d love to hear those reasons a little bit later, but before we go to that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got into YouTube, because this is a YouTube show, and all about the YouTube side of things. 

Like, did you have a friend or someone who was like, hey, you should start a channel to tell these stories, or I guess how did you actually get into making this channel? 

Professor: I got into YouTube, I mean, everybody knows about YouTube. Everyone has heard of YouTube, it’s the second biggest search engine in the world. So everyone knows what YouTube is, and many years ago, I’m a business owner as well, so I use YouTube as a search engine. So I knew about YouTube, I knew how it operates, I know how it works, and it was only a couple of years ago that I decided to, actually, I wanna do something for myself on YouTube, instead of marketing, instead of doing it for business, I wanted to do something for me as a person, because YouTube is out there, YouTube is this big entity, we sometimes, we look at YouTube as the monster, certainly coming from my perspective, but it is a big monster, but really, it’s just there to help us, and I like that idea, so YouTube is amazing, but how do I get into it? I already knew YouTube from working in business, but then I came up with my idea of starting a scary story channel. When I started this channel, I didn’t actually start it as we are today, I had originally called it five minute horror stories, that was originally my name. 

Oh, interesting. When I started, my idea was that I would create stories that I wanted to hear, so for example, if you go all the way to the beginning of Professor Shadow, you’ll see the first stories of five minute stories, and the first one is Dracula, I wanted to redo Dracula, just doing it myself, for fun, and then I have the Wolfman, and these are all old universal movies, and I wanted to do them for myself, for fun. As a passion, when I was a young boy, my favorite thing to collect was horror movies, believe it or not, I had one in my, in the end days, we didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have VHS recorders, we didn’t have DVDs or Blu-rays, what we had was we had cine cameras, and these were things that projected on your wall, and you put a film on it, and it went around, like at the movies, and it shined on the wall. When I was about 10 years old, I got one for Christmas, and the movies I got were Dracula, so obviously that’s where a big inspiration has come along from, and five minute horror was, because the cine movies were only like three to four, five minutes, and I just wanted to recreate something for myself, nostalgia, if you like, I wanted to create some nostalgia for myself, that’s how I came up to do the channel, I didn’t do it for money, I didn’t do it because I wanted to be famous, I did it because it was a passion of mine, that’s why I started it, and because honestly, I wanted to hear it back, that’s why I started it. 

Spencer: Yeah, that’s awesome, I think that’s the perfect reason to start a YouTube channel, you know, I think a lot of people think they’ll become rich and famous because of YouTube, and they quickly quit it because they’re not actually passionate about it, they’re just seeing the fame that other YouTubers have, so you starting with the passion, I think was a great way to get started, and I’m curious, and I don’t know if you have an answer for this, because there’s so many out there, but do you have a favorite horror movie? 

Professor: A favorite horror movie, I have many, sometimes I do a live show on a Sunday, and I get asked this question a lot, when I go back, if I think what horror movie I’ve watched again and again and again, and I could watch again and again and again, it’s probably a movie called From Beyond the Grave, and it is actually an old amicus, it was made in 1974, and it’s like an accumulation of small 20 minute stories, there’s four 20 minute stories on there, it stars the famous Peter Cushing, who is an absolute hero of mine, it stars him, he’s in it, which is one of the reasons I first saw it, but yes, if I could ever, I’ve watched many, I’ve watched these movies over and over and over, one that I can watch forever is From Beyond the Grave, and not only that, it’s been a great inspiration for many of the stories that I tell, not plagiarize, but inspiration, so many of the stories you get, ideas, nothing’s original, we always get from others, there’s a great book, Still Like an Artist, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, great book teaches you that nothing’s ever new, and so you borrow information, and From Beyond the Grave, I’ve been inspired so much by this movie, so yeah, I’m gonna say From Beyond the Grave, 1974, by Amicus Studios, starring the late great Peter Cushing, who’s an absolute hero of mine. 

Spencer: I haven’t heard of that movie before, I’ll have to add it to my watch list and check it out, I actually went to, I went to school for digital cinema, and we watched a lot of movies for a lot of my classes, a lot of older films, but I’m surprised I haven’t heard of that one, that one sounds really interesting with like the… 

Professor: From the Amicus Studios, they brought out five or six films with a accumulation of short stories, and yeah, absolutely. I think when we always say what’s our favorite, it’s not always really what’s our favorite, it’s what, when we watched it, what actually happened at the time we were watching it, because that would have put information into our brain at that time, if we were having a great moment and we watch a movie, that goes into our head as a great moment, and we’ll forever recall nostalgia on that. If, for example, the first time you ever watched that movie, the window was open and it’s freezing cold and rain was coming in and you were starving hungry, you would have a different interpretation of the movie today, and if you had a time when you was actually enjoying yourself, maybe you had an amazing day, you sat down to watch it and everything was fine, and it went into our neuro pathways and boom, it made that nostalgia. And forever when we look back now, we’re gonna see that, which is one reason why for me horror movies, why my channel works, is because that’s what I used to fall back on as a kid. I used to come out, rush home, and watch the cine camera, and then Saturday nights we had in the UK here, we had the horror double bill. We’ve always the two horror movies, staying up late as a child, watching those, really great times for me. So that’s a great nostalgia. I believe that’s why we have nostalgia because we had good times when that moment happened. 

Spencer: That’s awesome. I’m glad you pointed that out. I’ve never really thought about that before, but yeah, if you’re in the right setting, then that hits, whatever you’re watching, hits you differently than if you’re like you said. 

Professor: Absolutely. It’s gonna go into your brain, hit those neuro pathways, build connections. It’s gonna go into part of your brain called the hippocampus, which is where you remember everything. It’s gonna store good information. You can have a great vibe. So now when you go back and you see that movie, that vibe comes again, like if you had a great time and you smell a smell, and you’re, oh, that reminds me of a good time, or you smell a smell and you say, oh, that reminds me of a horrible time. All it is is what’s happened in your brain right now. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, definitely. That’s probably the case with YouTube too. A lot of people watch YouTube, consume YouTube, and they’re in a good setting. They probably are more willing to subscribe or continue watching that creator because of that. But I guess jumping back a little bit to your channel and kind of the evolution of your channel, how do you, you mentioned that it’s evolved over time. So how do you, I guess, come up with ideas for your stories and your videos? I guess what is your process like for making a video? Sure. 

Professor: Ideas for me are easy because the way my brain works, like I say, I’ve watched literally every horror movie pre-1980s, and there’s a lot of them. And there’s a lot of, and not just horror movies, but series like Hammerhouse of Horror, Tales of the Unexpected. Obviously you’ve got The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, all of those things that have this element of slow burn, suspense, and horror. 

So these are always in my mind, I watch them all. How do I come up with a process? So one thing, one easy way is every Sunday night, I have a show, a live show of my audience. I don’t have that many people turn up, but they come on and they suggest titles for me and things like that. And it gives me ideas. So once I have an idea, the first process is to create some images. 

Today we have AI. So my goodness, it’s so much easier today than it was because we have, we can go to Google Flow or something like this and just put in, I’ve got this idea for a, I’m working on one now, I’m doing a werewolf hunter story. And I literally put the first one out yesterday, I’m gonna do a six part, I put one out yesterday. And so I went and the first thing I did was create me imagery of the character. So when I can see the imagery of the character, maybe now in video because we have AI, so good, then that gives me more of the idea for the story. 

I tend to make a little trailer and then I sort of have the story in mind, make the trailer and I’ll work from there. I’m very image based. I suffer from this, don’t suffer, I have dyslexia. So it’s difficult for me to write and read so much. But with the birth of AI, people like me, with having dyslexia makes you very creative. So we’re very creative in our minds. So things like AI, imagery, pseudo write, things like that can help us so much to get our ideas on, I would say onto paper, but it’s not paper anymore, it’s onto the screen. So yeah, that’s the process I have, is I create imagery for, I have an idea, create imagery, then I’ll work on a story from there. 

Spencer: Gotcha, that makes sense. And I like that you mentioned the use of AI. We’ve talked to a lot of creators on this show who use AI as tools, but I think you might be the first one that actually uses AI video in your videos. Was that always the case? Have you always used AI video for your videos? 

Professor: No, two years ago it wasn’t really available. It was available as AI movement more than video. You’d get an image and you could make it sort of move in and out a little bit. That was the beginning. But as soon as I saw AI video starting to come out, maybe a year ago, I was all over it because I thought this is perfect because I like to see my videos’ stories as narrated horror movies. So instead of just like a horror movie or we watch actors, it’s more like a narration of the horror over the imagery. So now with today’s AI, specifically Google VO3, the video is so good you could literally make a movie almost. But now we can definitely make a narrated horror movie. So we can have imagery with the narration over the top. And that for me works absolutely perfect. 

I love this idea. In the beginning, I just used images from AI. And now with the, like I say, the onset of Google and VO3, the process has become a lot easier as well. It’s become a lot easier. VO3 is absolutely, I don’t know, next level to anything. It’s so amazing. 

And I started two years ago on this channel and I remember just putting basic images in. And then I think, well, what’s it gonna be like in two years from now? I think it’s gonna be incredible. And I’d love to see the day where we can put our script into something like Google and it creates the movie scenes for us. I mean, wouldn’t that be fantastic? I mean, I don’t think Hollywood would enjoy it, but we definitely are creators like us. 

We would lavish in this because we could then, it’s not just being able to, oh, look, I’m gonna put this movie up. We have to do it. We have this thing, a creator, a builder, has this thing within them. You just have to do it. You’re born, all of us are born with this spark, this thing. And it’s how we nurture it and we’ve got to do it. A lot of us keep it hidden. And then we look back in regret of I should have done this, I should have done that. 

I would have been good if I had done that 10 years ago. But that spark, we’re all born with. I feel we do need to, it’s there and we need to fan it as much as possible. And with the onset of AI, I truly believe it’s given us all, small creators like me and many others, the ability to do that, the ability. And a lot of people say, I’ve heard this before and which is, but if you’re using AI, it’s not really yours. AI is doing it. And then I’d like to think that if I was a painter and I was a really amazing painter and I was painting with a brush, and then I simply upgraded my brush and it made me a better painter, it still keeps me as the creator. 

So simply with AI, we’ve just upgraded our brush. We’re not, we’re still the correct, because if you took me away, the channel wouldn’t exist. AI would not have created the channel. It wouldn’t have come up with the ideas of the channel. So I get that a lot, is do you think that AI is taking over? I believe it’s not taking over, it’s aiding us to create, to be the builder, the creator. 

We’re just upgrading our brush and it’s making life easier and better for the viewer and better for us. If you watch your own videos back, which is what I do, I often listen to my own stuff. It makes it better for me to listen back to as well. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. AI can be both amazing and scary at the same time. Like you mentioned, what it will look like in two years from now. It might be kind of scary to think that we won’t be able to tell what’s real and what’s AI. 

So there could be a lot of bad things that happen with that. But I agree that AI is a great tool to use for videos and that it can really help us, if we’re not as skilled, it can help us improve our skills with the tools that are available. So I’ve used AI like images before. I haven’t necessarily used AI video. And sometimes when I put a prompt in, it doesn’t exactly spit out what I was thinking in my mind. 

So when you’re making AI videos, do you have to like do a couple back and forth with AI to make sure it spits out what exactly you’re thinking in your mind? 

Professor: Yeah, it’s always gonna give you sometimes the wrong thing, but then it’s prompt engineering in order to get the right prompt. I use chatGPT to create the prompts. So I’ll go to chatGPT and say, I need a prompt for this. For example, one of the characters that is spanned across my entire, like something like 600 video stories. And there’s one character that’s pretty consistent throughout many of them, is a female vampire called Serana. Now this character has a unique look. 

So every time I can go to chatGPT, I can say, I wanna do a video with Serana in it. I’ll remind you that she has long jet black hair, pale skin, et cetera, et cetera. And I’ll always say, make sure you clearly demonstrate or clearly give the information to Google exactly how I want this character to look. Sometimes it will come out wrong. 

Yes, so we can look at what went wrong, go back to chatGPT and say, hey, chatGPT, I put this prompt in that you gave me, but they made it a redhead. Can you adjust it? Can you prompt engineer it to adjust it? 

And it will readjust it. Because sometimes you put specifically, you’ve got to think I’m working in horror. So there’s gonna be some scenes where maybe a vampire bites somebody or a werewolf attacks. Well, of course you can’t do that in Google because you can’t have violence. So you have to prompt engineer around that as well. So that’s another thing is like, you can put it in, it just doesn’t look right. 

So you’ll have to come back and redo the whole prompt. With Vio Free Google, which I use flow now, the credits for them are not that expensive. When it first come out, it was like 100 credits per video. And that’s like a pound, or one pound, so $1, $1.35 per prompt. That’s a lot of money. When you think I’ve got to do 80 videos a story, that would be pretty expensive. But now it’s come down to like 10, 20s. So that’s a lot better. 

A lot better. And because they introduced the new, like lower versions, we have V03, which is the original, the high level one. You can have V03 fast, which is not as good a quality. It’s still a mate. That’s what I use, is amazing quality. And it’s a lot cheaper. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah. That’s interesting. So you use Google Vio, is that what you said? 

Professor: Yeah, it’s V03. It’s Google’s… Gotcha. It’s the number one video at the moment. I’m sure there’ll be something new coming out. At the minute, it’s the one that, whenever you go to YouTube and you see all the big foot videos and stormtrooper videos, and these are all done through that. That’s what they’re done through. Gotcha. 

Spencer: I’m just wondering, so you currently use that, but how do you, if something new does come out, how do you stay on top of like the latest AI technology? Or are you okay with just staying with what you’ve got right now? 

Professor: No, I’m an absolute geek. I’m an absolute geek technology. If something new comes out, I’ve got to try it. And I believe that’s what makes the channel enjoyable, because I enjoy researching new things. I enjoy seeing new ideas, and as soon as a new one comes out, I want to give it a try. I want to see what it’s like. 

And that helps. As soon as Vio Free came out from Google, I was all over it. I was like, I really wanted to use this. And the first videos I created was a couple of vampire videos, and it just hit me off the screen, and I thought, this is fantastic. So, yeah, so I obviously delved in, learned about prompt engineering a little bit better, and now I can get a little bit better of the video to come out. And as soon as something new comes out, yeah, I’ll be all over it, because I love it. I’m very geeky in technology stuff. I’ll be all over it, yes, for sure. 

I think it’s the best thing. Sorry, if you don’t enjoy it, like we spoke earlier, if it’s a passion and you enjoy something, you’re gonna be all over it. If it’s a chore, you’ve got to do it. Passion, you want to do it. There’s a big difference. There’s a big difference. 

Spencer: Yeah, I agree. I was gonna ask, so do you follow someone that talks about AI, or do you just kind of do your own research over time to find these different tools? 

Professor: I follow Gary Vee, he speaks a lot of AI, he’s always on about AI, but he doesn’t necessarily give you which AI, the road I wanna go down. I don’t really follow anyone else. No, I just listen to him coming from a marketing business myself, I love his message, and I love the fact he speaks about AI and how it’s changed in the world. 

And he talks all about chat GBT and how to work with that as well. So I don’t follow him yet. I don’t really follow anyone else. 

I don’t follow anyone else. And one of these people, like I said earlier, I believe we all have something, a creator within us, whether we choose to dampen and hide that or fan the flames and let it go. And I truly believe that the creativity within us will find where we need to go. And when I see these things come out, I’ll give them a try. I’ll give it a try, and if I feel it fits my creativity, I’ll use it. 

If it doesn’t, I won’t. There’s been a couple I’ve tried, I didn’t get on with. I just didn’t get on with it. 

And I’ll just go for it. I’ve pretty much tried many, I’ve tried them. I think I’ve tried most of them. 

I just do like a month subscription or something just to test it out. But what’s really standing out for me is that Google, VO3 is just absolutely phenomenal at the moment, it’s phenomenal. Especially, probably not for everybody, but for me and the way my channel goes, specifically, I’ll say it’s a horror channel. Not necessarily horror with gore or shock, horror with soul, because I speak a lot of the spark within us. And that is predominantly what these monsters do, if you like. 

Because it’s easy, if I was to go on and speak about how we need to fan the flames within us, no one would listen to me. But if a vampire says it, it’s a big difference. 

Spencer: Yeah, much more willing to listen to that. 

Professor: Yeah, if something is going on and the reason the vampire’s been held down, because he’s forgotten who he is, or the reason he can’t see his reflection in the mirror is because he’s passed behind and he needs to find it. Those, now people wanna listen. People wanna listen to that. If I was just to say, well, you know, none of us really know who we are because we’re too busy trying to please everybody else. We’re trying to look and say, oh, I wonder what they’ll think of me. Instead of looking inside and say, well, this is who I am, take it or leave it. it. 

We’re often looking, oh, wonder what the Joneses will say about me if I did that. Whereas if you get a vampire say it, no one’s going to argue with them. 

Spencer: Yeah, that is very well said. I appreciate that. Nice. So I guess I want to change gears just a little bit and kind of talk about your community and like the, I guess the building aspect of that. I noticed on your channel you have quite a few member only videos. And I haven’t talked to a ton of creators who’ve done those type of videos. And so I’m wondering what I guess the purpose for you is for making those videos and do you see it like helping you build your community? 

Professor: Building the community, I’m not sure. The main reason I put those videos on is to pay for the software that I use for the channel. Because obviously if you have a membership, then you get people pay a small fee a monthly, which goes towards, I wouldn’t say it pays for it. I say it goes towards the contribution of the software. 

For example, Google video is expensive. So it goes towards those type of things. So do you not pay it all out of your own pocket in the beginning? Eventually your ad revenue will probably pay for it once you get a little bit higher. 

But in the beginning, it’s nice to have that little bit of fallback. And it’s nice to be able to put some videos out that maybe are a little bit darker and you can hide them in the membership area. So those that really understand what you’re talking about can go into the membership area and watch a little bit more into the shadows rather than what we see in the public. But that was my main reason for doing it. It wasn’t to build the community. 

I have a pretty good community anyway. It was simply to, okay, I want to create something. Number one, it can help me fund the software I use. And number two, I can put out some videos I wouldn’t necessarily put on the main channel. Gotcha. That was my reason for doing the membership. 

And that’s pretty much it. I think we can look at the YouTube channel. And like we said earlier, a lot of people start the YouTube channel for one reason and that is for financial gain. If I become a YouTuber, I’m going to become famous. I’m going to make lots of money. And in my life, I can go and live on the beach somewhere and I wouldn’t have to do anything. I don’t have to go to work. I just record some videos and then become a millionaire. 

It’s not as easy as that. So when you look at your channel, once you get a little bit higher, the first thing you’re looking at is things like Patreon and membership areas and maybe merchandise and YouTube itself. Once you get to the YouTube Partner Program, that offers you things like selling merchandise, memberships, special thanks where people can thank you and pay money for it. 

Super thanks. And then you get there and you think, oh, maybe I can make some money off this. But then if you go down that route, I believe you’re moving away from what made you start the YouTube channel in the first place. You start to chase the financial gain rather than chase your passion. I think it’s important to stay with your passion. And so that’s why I think you said earlier, important to do what you’re passionate about. 

If you just think, oh, this is currently working for Mr. Smith, I’ll do it as well. And if you have no interest in that subject, it’s not just going to be a long haul that’s very boring and you’re probably going to quit. Most people quit. That’s why people are going to quit. If you’re not passionate about it, you’re going to give up on your YouTube channel, for sure. 

Spencer: Yeah, definitely. That got me thinking there’s a fine line between doing it for passion and doing it for money, especially when you do get bigger and you see the possibility of making a lot of money from YouTube. 

So I’m glad that you brought that up. I was just curious about the member videos. If I don’t see them all that often on YouTube, I watch a lot of YouTube and the people that I watch don’t really have them. Do you do like, I guess, behind the scenes type of stuff in those members only videos, or is it just separate stories that are more on the darker side, like you mentioned? 

Professor: I do a little bit of behind the scenes, not much. Behind the scenes is pretty boring. If you think about it, watching me here in front of my desk making a video on this, it’s not really exciting. But I do put some extra, I mean, I call it horror with soul, because every story has a meaning, betterment for the viewer. I believe it’s a way that I can connect with somebody without boring them, or maybe self development, or philosophy, or however you want to look at it. Like I say, when a vampire says it, or a werewolf does it, it’s pretty interesting. It’s pretty interesting to see. 

So it’s a great way. But I also do put the concepts of my stories in the members area. So when, for example, if I did a story about, we spoke about a spark, if I did, someone had a spark, and they weren’t fanning it, and they were adhering to what everyone else says, I could go into the members area and make a video about probably that, you know, talking about that particular story, and why I did it. 

That’s right. But I also do put extra stories in there. I have a series of stories. On my channel have particular characters that connect. That’s what’s unique about the channel. 

It’s not just a random story here. And if you went to my channel, every video will connect to another video in some way. Oh, really? That’s cool. 

So because of the way the characters are connected. About a year and a half ago, I made a series. Originally, it was a 10 part. It went to a 20, a 30, a 40, and now it’s 25 hours long. 

A series. And so of course, it’s got a lot of characters in there. And these characters then evolved, and then they spread across pretty much. So every story I do has a connected character within it. So if there’s a vampire by the name of Eldridge in one, he will have a connection to the werewolf story with an alpha werewolf or something. So it’s all connected across the board, which seems complicated. 

It is. But it really helps with the creative process. Because I can now think, I think I went off, sorry, went off subject, but I can now think, I want to do a story. I remember this film from many years ago, say Dracula, I really wanted to do a story where we go through that, not plagiarized Dracula, but a story where we go through the castle and we see those cobwebs and then the coffin opens and it’s something I could use one of my characters to do that. And so that really helps with the creative process. Because I have these characters, they’re like part of the creative process. So that’s where we go there. Yes. 

Spencer: So that brought up a question. So because all your videos are connected, so are they all in the same world? Or is it just like certain characters are connected to others? Does that make sense? I don’t know if my question makes sense. 

Professor: Yeah, pretty much as the world, I call it the shadowverse. So you’ve got Marvel verse or whatever it was, the multiverse. I call mine the shadowverse because Professor Shadow. And every story on my homepage, I have 19 playlists. And so for example, I did a story Call of the Moon, which is like five stories. 

But each of those have a character that is connected in some way to a different playlist somewhere. For example, Call of the Moon was about obviously a werewolf story. And in there we had an old werewolf hunter, an old hunter. And the story I’m doing right now, the sixth part I mentioned earlier, is about him in the past. And one of his friends is one of the main characters, which is a vampire in the shadowverse. 

So it’s just a huge mix up, which is great. And it’s like I say, it does seem complicated, but I find it really helps with the creative process. Because instead of just having to come up with, for example, a new story, I’ve already got characters ready to slot into those stories. And as I’m growing, many of my viewers love the characters. 

They all say, oh, this is my favorite character. I can’t wait for another story with this character in it. So I’ve always got these characters that I can use and put into new stories, which really, like I say, it really helps me with the creative process. 

I don’t think I could ever run out of ideas when you have. Imagine you’ve got like 20 characters lined up. It’s like Marvel or DC comics. For example, we just had the new Superman out. Now, it wasn’t a story, it was a Superman story. So they used the character Superman. So I can just find one of my characters, okay, what can that character do this week? That makes sense. 

Spencer: That’s cool. So you mentioned your audience loves the characters. Do you take suggestions of new characters from your comment section? Or do you ever introduce new characters? Or do you have like a set number of characters? 

Professor: Yeah, I introduce new characters. Always trying to find new exciting characters. I recently did a spin off from that 25-hour it’s called Crimson Dawn, the 25 hour story. And we set it in a different reality. So it was Crimson Dawn, but in a different reality. So it had different characters. And then because some of them characters I really enjoyed working with, I used that character and did a backstory on it. And now that see that character. And that’s the other thing. 

I’m run. I’m not sure what to create. Say next week, which character doesn’t have a backstory. So we can easily go and say, okay, well, we haven’t explained why this character exists in this way. We can look back and say, yes, we can do a backstory on this character, which is literally what I’m doing with the character, the six part one I’m doing right now. Like I said, I had that Call of the Moon series. There was a werewolf hunter in there. And now we’re going back to see why he’s the werewolf hunter in the first place. Gotcha. Cool. 

Spencer: That makes sense. So I got one more question. And then I kind of want to move into, I guess, your advice. But before we get to the advice, have you had any experiences doing YouTube that you would consider, I don’t know, crazy or weird? 

Like, have you had any crazy comments or subscribers or have you worked with any sponsorships that have been crazy, anything along those lines? This is kind of a shot on the dark kind of question. So if you don’t have anything, that’s okay. But I’m just just wondering, I’ve never worked with sponsors. 

Professor: But I’ve had some crazy comments. And I do have a crazy comment to share with you. Okay. So you consider what is the channel? Werewolves, vampires and some other creatures. I’ve had comments where someone suggested in the comments, you’re sort of right with that werewolf. 

But they do this, I know, because I am one. And then in the vampire world, a very similar thing. But I had almost an essay written in the comments about how this person is a true life vampire, and the so they do exist. They are real. We think they’re just myth. But in reality, they’re out there. The proof is they wrote on my channel. 

Spencer: So how do you respond to those type of comments? Do you or do you not respond? 

Professor: Does anyone respond to a comment like that? I simply put thank you so much for your input. I’m going to use that knowledge. Gotcha. 

Spencer: Nice. That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Cool. Well, let’s move into the advice portion. So these are a couple questions that we always ask every one of our guests that are on the show, kind of your experience doing YouTube. As you’ve done YouTube for these couple of years, has there been any mistakes that you’ve made that you wish you knew beforehand that you think our audience listening to this could benefit from? 

Professor: Yeah, I think it goes back to the financials. And that is when you start your YouTube journey, or if you just start, or a little bit into it, make sure it’s a passion project. Once the enticing idea that maybe you’re going to make some money off it, which you will, you will eventually. 

But once that idea hits you, you can then move off what we said earlier, move. Oh, maybe I should do Patreon. Maybe I should do memberships or merchandise or something. Why aren’t I making any money yet? 

I need to make money. And while you’re doing that, you’re not focusing on your passion. So I would always say stick with the passion because everything else follows that. There’s the reason you start the YouTube channel. I know, because I went there and I spent weeks and weeks thinking, someone said to me, you need to do a Patreon. You need to do this. You need to get merchandise. You need to do that. And when I was doing that, I wasn’t putting my effort into the creation of the channel. And I love my channel. 

And so I’d moved off into some another world of financials. Yes, the problem is that a lot of people see YouTube as a financial gain. It can be. And it is for many people. 

For example, if you ever reach 100,000 subscribers, you’re probably going to be making some decent money, probably, not guaranteed, but probably. So yeah, I’d say keep following the passion. Don’t be sidetracked. It’s like playing a video game and then you have to do a side mission. And then you’ve totally forgotten what the actual quest was in the first place. And your quest is to build something and it’s not quick. It takes a long time. 

It takes a long time. I mean, I’ve been doing this one for two years. I’ve put out hundreds of videos. I’ve made hundreds of videos. In fact, 500 and a couple of hundred shorts mainly focus on the long form. 

But I’m still not a financial place to say I can do YouTube as a full time job. I believe it takes a long time. So yeah, don’t be in a rush. 

That’s next month you’re going to be making money next year. Although we have seen it, right? We have seen people jump on YouTube and, you know, their first video hits 400,000 views and they get a bunch of subscribers and then it moves on and next one does well. But then that can be a force, a force of you as well, because the next one doesn’t do well. 

But it’s possible. I truly believe that if YouTube is something you have to nurture with your own passion, with you as a person. If you’re nurturing it with the idea of financials, that’s not who you are. It’s what you enjoy doing. Do I enjoy it? 

Do I have a passion for this? Could I do this if there was no benefit of financial gain in the future? If you can say yes, you’re on to something good, then you just keep doing it because if it doesn’t go right, it doesn’t matter because you’re enjoying yourself anyway. But if you say, I’ve got to do this, it’s got to make money for me, I believe that’s where most people are going to fail because it won’t to start with. 

Eventually, yeah, because everything, everything that you put your creative energy into, your passion into, that you understand what it is you were born on this planet to do and share and guide and help others with, and you keep nurturing that eventually, that will pay. 

Spencer: That would be my advice. That is very solid advice. I completely agree. And this last and final question kind of goes hand in hand with that. And it’s, do you have any myths about YouTube that you’d like to bust? Any common misconceptions out there that you think people think about YouTube that aren’t true? 

Professor: The obvious one is that I’m going to go on YouTube and become famous, and I’m going to make loads of money straight away. I mean, that’s a myth. It’s not true. 

I spoke about it earlier. YouTube is this big monster. It’s a friendly monster. 

It’s friendly. I look as a big monster, it’s just this thing and it doesn’t care about you. It cares about itself. It doesn’t care about you or me or anybody. It cares about itself. 

Probably cares about shareholders a little bit, but it’s more interested in itself. And you going out there thinking that somehow the monster is against you. And, oh, I’ve been shadow banned. Great word, by the way, shadow banned. I’ve been shadow banned or the algorithm just doesn’t love me or the algorithm is favoring someone else. That’s what I’m not doing. I’m not making, getting subscribers. 

It’s nothing like that. This is big monster and all you got to do is please it. So all I got to do is put out content that I feel I really love and the right people will find you. 

Your people. Don’t look as YouTubers. You’ve got to please everybody. I see a lot of creators get it so you get the most views. I want the most views because they’re going to hit everybody and a lot of those people are not your people. They’re not your people, which means even if they subscribe, they’re probably not going to watch your video, which is going to give YouTube a bad signal. So while you pick up subscribers, make sure your subscribers are your people and YouTube is a big monster, but it can be a very friendly monster. 

Just put out what you love, what you enjoy doing. How can you possibly go wrong unless you’re doing YouTube and saying, I really need to make money. I can’t pay my bill. I can’t live in my house and pay my rent unless YouTube pays me at the end of the month. Do something else and do YouTube as a sideline. 

I’ve been using, so I’m still doing YouTube as a sideline. It’s my side hustle and I’ll be honest with you. I do it because I enjoy it. 

I love being able to put out my ideas to my viewers. I have 12,000 subscribers. It’s not many. It’s not many at all in the grand scheme of things, but for me, they’re all, I put one video, I get a lot of comments. 

I go live, I get a lot of comments. People message me. People write to me. 

People send me messages of how my videos have helped them, about the message in the video actually made them look at things in their life and they’ve turned their life around. That is because I’m passionate about it and I see the monster, but I see it as a friendly monster. Don’t think it’s against you. 

Just do what you do. I think that’s to me. Everyone’s got a thing. All right, I’ve got to find the right thing. I’ve got to find the right number, the right video that everybody wants to see and just be passionate about what you’re doing. That would be my advice and that’s, that’s, I think that’s a myth that you have to try and please everybody. I think it’s impossible. 

Spencer: I think that’s great advice. I also agree with that. And I love what you said about, make sure you are finding the right subscribers for your channel. I think we’ve talked about this on a previous episode. I could be wrong, but if YouTube sees that your subscribers are watching your videos, then it would push it out more and hopefully it would push it out to people who want to see your type of videos. So I also think that subscribers aren’t necessarily an indicator of how successful you are. It’s better to have a loyal community that’s small than have like a million subscribers that don’t really watch your content. 

Professor: So I think the key there is if you do have a loyal audience, you will get to a million subscribers. It won’t be straight away, but how YouTube work is, I have a bunch of subscribers. When I put a new video out, it’s going to seed that subscriber base. If people watch it, it’s going to put more of my video out to maybe more subscribers or into the real world, into YouTube world. 

So of course, if your subscribers are not your people, and the first time YouTube sees your audience, no one watches it, it’s not going to go any further. It’s going to die in the water. It’s just going to die. 

But if it seeds and people watch it, and a great example is the video I put out yesterday. I was on my show, I did a show on a Sunday evening, and I said, I’m going to, I’m midway through doing Jonas Creed, which is the name of the character, the werewolf hunter from Call of the Moon. And so of course, everyone’s going, oh, I can’t wait for that. 

Can’t wait for that. So of course, as soon as I put it out, they knew it was coming, they watched it. And so that, for me, has been the number one video this month because of that reason. So it shot up there. I think that proves it, that people were ready for it. They wanted to watch it. I put it out, and it’s become the highest viewing video this month in one day. And like nearly, maybe 1800 views in a day, for a 12,000 channel, that’s pretty good. 

That’s pretty good. And that will keep going. There’s one name ones who keep building. 

Keep building. Of course, we all want the 100,000, the 200, 1 million video, view video. It’ll come. 

It’ll come. I had a video reach 190,000, which is a pretty good one. Pretty good one. 

190,000 views on one video. My goodness. That was great. 

That was great for me. I’ve had others reach 100,000, 150,000, but I’ve also had others that reach 200. And yes, know your audience. Make sure you’re honest with your audience and honest with yourself. 

That’s the biggest one. You can turn around and say, oh, yes, I’m Professor Shadow. And what I like is I like horror with soul. 

When really you prefer football, it’s going to come. You’re going to get found out. It’s just people connect with you because they like you as a person. They don’t like who you pretend to be. 

Spencer: Definitely. I agree. Well said. Well, Professor Shadow, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. So you have your YouTube channel, Professor Shadow. Are you on any of the other social media platforms that are viewers, if they want to check you out, should go to? 

Professor: For Professor, I have a Facebook and TikTok, but I don’t actually have any numbers on those at all. I don’t really focus on those. Maybe it’s something I’ve sort of got them probably, or how should we call it, on the back burner for when I feel that I understand them a little bit more. I understand Facebook very well, but I’m not using it for this particular channel. TikTok, I don’t understand at all. So I’m just playing with it. So hopefully I can understand it. Like I say, I follow Gary Vee. 

He speaks about TikTok a lot. So that’s why I went on there. And I’m just playing with it. Just playing to try and get an idea about it. That’s pretty much how I started YouTube many years ago, because I just play with it and see how it goes. 

Spencer: Awesome. Well, thanks again for being on the show and thanks for our viewers and watchers for checking out this episode. Make sure to subscribe and like for more episodes like this for the behind the scenes of YouTube with real content creators. And if you ever need help with making videos, make sure to check us out at creatorluxe.com. Thanks. We’ll see you in the next one.