Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Proof.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My path as an online content creator started back in the 90s as a kid calling random message boards, before the internet coalesce and became public. When it did I was just drawn to making things, blog entries, flash animations and games, and in time I learned to use flash animation to create videos that were a very early version of a video blog.
by 2006, when YouTube showed up on my radar I was immediately pulled into the community of creators. We were this little collective of weirdos, like a global A/V club for those of us poking around the edges of the internet.
I started making vlogs about my daily life, about working in Film and TV Production, I made Sketch Comedy and somewhere around 2007 I was featured on the front page of YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/samproof) and for a while things went pretty crazy. I ended up doing a daily live streaming show at Stickam.com’s Studio interview comedians, and musicians, running a sort of variety show to 30K live viewers a pop.
I was selected for the FIesta Movement 2, One of the first large scale influencer campaigns to be created. Ford really saw the potential in what we were doing as creators and had us creating these local events, and making videos about them online for months.
From there I ended up on the Tim and Eric Great Job, Awesome Show as the character Raz. I still get recognized as Raz to this day, some 15 years later. (https://www.adultswim.com/videos/tim-and-eric-awesome-show-great-job/vacation)
After all of that, I got married and shifted into being a dad—but I never stopped creating. I shifted from my personal brand to CuteAvalanche (https://cuteavalanche.com), an animal rescue effort we run as a family. We’ve saved over 200 cats, focusing on kittens under 8 weeks old as volunteers for Kitten Rescue LA (https://kittenrescue.org).
We’ve been fosters for 8 years, and we live stream our fosters on a 24/7 Cat Cam, multicasting to over a dozen platforms and reaching more than 50K followers worldwide, primarily through YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@cuteavalanche) and Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/cuteavalanche).
In 2024 tragedy struck and the home we were renting was lost to a fire. I was in a garage studio at the time and rushed inside to try and save our house cats and fosters. It was pitch black, and I could only feel my way around to open the crate and pray they’d find their way out. I tried to feel around for the kittens, but after a few minutes I had to leave before I passed out.
Firefighters showed up a few minutes later, thanks to a neighbors gardener and all the cats were saved, with little to no injury. Unfortunately we have not been able to return to the rental home, nearly a year and a half later and it’s still under repair.
We ended up moving into an apartment, and have continued to foster cats, but our efforts have diminished as we don’t have the same space we once did. We were able to foster multiple litters previously, having up to 3 separate batches and upto 14 fosters at a given time.
Now we’re only able to foster 2 kittens at a time. We’d love to do more again, but we don’t have the space or resources anymore.
But as fostering was forced to slow down, my creative life had an opening and out of the blue I received a message from Ray Stakenas inviting me to take a seat on the cast of the geek debate podcast ‘Who Would Win Masters’. (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-would-win-masters/id1260386680)
Ray and I have recorded over 30 episodes featuring guest debaters that come on to face off in the guest chair, championing a fictional character. I Emcee and deliver a judgement at the end of the episode, but we then toss the final result to our listening audience through polls on our Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/whowouldwinmasters)
And that’s where we’re at as of now
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Being a content creator is always tricky, because you’re beholden only to yourself. Having yourself as a boss is both awesome and terrible, you’re only as good as you’re will to over work yourself. It’s a tricky thing being your own boss, and if you don’t have a clear direction you’re prone to make the mistakes I made with my original YouTube.com/samproof Channel, which is it’s very directionless and “I” was the glue. Having worked on dozens of other channels, it’s become clear that having a Niche is an easier way to build an audience.
Much Like the youtube.com/cuteavalanche channel is focussed on just cats and fostering, it grew a lot faster and maintains a loyal audience. Which was instrumental when we had the misfortune of surviving a house fire.
Living through a house fire is one of the worst Traumas you can live through, and a year and a half later I’m just now starting to feel like I can talk about it. I’m just now starting to feel I’m “past” it, but the reality is we lost so much in that fire. Not just our ability to foster dozens of cats at a time. We lost 20 years of memories and things, and the stability of “having a place”. As renters, there were no guarantees we’d ever have our own place again.
This past year has certainly been the hardest one in my life
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My main focus these days are a few things, in addition to Cuteavalache.com and the Who Would Win Podcast, I’ve been a UGC creator, making videos for brands to post on their own social media and websites. I’ve brought my original sketch comedy into those UGC videos, with several using the “I’m You From the Future” trope. One of my favorites is a video I did for a small coffee brand called Norse Coffee that features my daughter Iris, it can been see on my portfolio at https://samproof.tv/ugc
I also did a series of videos for Pretty Litter, the cat litter. Their creative director was easy to work with and gave great feedback. But ultimately I could really go crazy and bring my unique level of crazy to their videos.
And really that’s one of the big things that sets me apart from other people doing UGC these days, I create Sketch Comedy that is eye catching, a little bit insane, funny and I do it fast.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Content Creation is rough, it’s a constituency game and honestly now that there are so many AI creators on the board, if you have the skills to do something else, do that.
Joey Ramone famously said, he was a musician because it was the only thing he could do, and that’s how I feel about Content Creation.
Pricing:
- UGC Videos starting at $500
- CuteAvalanche various brands ops starting at $125 at https://cuteavalanche.com/brands/
Contact Info:
- Website: https://samproof.tv/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samproof/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SamProof
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/samproof
- Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-would-win-masters/id1260386680
