Variety spice of life for Chox the Muse

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This article was published 14/05/2020 (2163 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When it comes to her YouTube career, Strathclair resident Charlene Wilcox isn’t content with just sticking to one subject.

Ever since she debuted on the video-sharing platform seven years ago, Wilcox, known as “Chox the Muse” online, has produced step-by-step guides on a variety of topics, from gardening to crafting to cake decorating.

Wilcox told the Sun earlier this month that her expertise in adorning pastries didn’t come out of nowhere, since she worked as a commercial baker for a decade before making the jump to YouTube.

“I wanted to take the mystery out of cake decorating,” she said. “Break it down so that people can do it at home.”

Wilcox officially started making videos in April 2013, putting together a series of gardening tutorials and vlogs that mimicked her partner John Tumbling (JT) Bear, who launched his own YouTube channel a year earlier.

“I did a lot of gardening and that’s how I sort of eased my way into it, and then I found my comfort level with the camera and cake decorating,” she said.

It didn’t take long before Wilcox branched out and experimented with her format, deciding to replicate different craft ideas she saw on social media sites like Pinterest.

That choice paid major dividends in early 2014, when her video titled “‘Frozen Orbs’ Frozen Water Balloons With Food Coloring” went on to generate more than 13.5 million views.

While this video didn’t go viral overnight, Wilcox said she got a major boost when a Seattle radio station shared her content on its Facebook page.

“It was crazy,” she said. “It would rise by 10,000 views a day sometimes, and it just got really carried away.”

While Wilcox’s followup frozen orb tutorials attracted a ton of traffic to her channel, she said the YouTube algorithm gradually phased out this kind of content, causing her to rethink her approach to making videos once again.

Thankfully, Wilcox got to play around in a whole new environment in the fall of 2015, when she and Bear moved from the Okanagan Valley to Strathclair.

Not only did Westman’s longer winters provide time for new crafting opportunities, but Wilcox also decided to expand her reach into an alternate channel called “Char Wilcox” in 2017 and focus more on topics like spirituality and mental health.

“Those are other aspects of things that I love that didn’t quite fit into the Chox the Muse branding,” she said. “So I started the other channel for mental health and wellness, to do my Tarot readings and dance fit.”

Lately, Wilcox has been paying more attention to this alternate account, since it diversifies her income and lets her interact with fans more directly.

“On that channel, I do live stream Tarot readings twice a week, I take private readings and bookings,” she said. “So that one is run as more of a business, where I’m actually selling a service.”

Of course, Wilcox’s drive to cultivate different kinds of content is becoming increasingly challenging in YouTube’s current landscape, where the platform requires all of its creators to comply with the U.S. government’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

Since Wilcox’s videos don’t necessarily fit into that strict binary of “made for kids or not,” this Westman creator is trying to figure out who her content is made for moving forward.

But with a solid base of more than 24,000 subscribers on her main channel, Wilcox is still very keen on sharing her knowledge with the world, and encourages any curious entrepreneur to follow in her footsteps if they have the drive.

“Talk about something that you love,” she said. “People are interested in hearing things that you’re passionate about, and I think it’s only Ben Stein who can talk in a monotone and get your attention.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson