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In this podcast, Nate Woodbury will be talking about how to become a YouTuber. He’s got Steve Spangler, a very special guest, on his show today. Nate’s been a huge fan of his science works and in this podcast, he shares how he became a YouTuber and how it has brought him success.
Thought i was going to be a teacher. Put my stuff on a cart and push my stuff room to room. Become an apprentice. You can’t just trust the, what you’re seeing on YouTube. Alright. Well, thanks so much. Thank you very much. Mr. Spangler. Just for those of you who are watching who don’t know who Steve is. I’ve actually been a fan of yours through YouTube. Watching some of your science videos. I’ve shown some of them to my kids and we purchased a product of yours the Solar bag. Yeah. Just… Would you let it go and accidentally have an f-16 show up over the house or. So, I admit I bought it in the wintertime and I’ve been saving it for the summer time to use it and I forgot about it until I saw you hit this event. I know where it is. So, it’s your let’s tell the viewers what it is. This is a bag that’s 3 feet in diameter. I think of a trash bag. Super thin black but it’s 50 feet. Did you buy the 50 footer? The long one, yeah. It’s 50 feet long. So, when you run in the park and you scoop up some air and then tie it off immediately, the Sun heats the air inside the bag to begin… The bag stretches just a little bit so it looks like this sausage. So, it’s a solar sausage and it begins to levitate and floats in the air and so, you get this beautiful… Now, you have to tether it. That’s why I’m saying. Otherwise, you’re going to release a 50-foot black UFO and and I have a feeling that you’ll get some f-16s it’ll show up so… And the mornings the best time? Morning’s great because you want the outside temperature… Now, we’re geeking out. People are looking at this going, “what is going on?” The outside temperature you want to be colder, of course in the bag and that you want the greatest differential to give you some left on it. It is amazing. That’s really amazing. Alright. So, you obviously, you’re a science guy. What’s what’s your background? Have you always been in in science? Is that your education and then you start teaching? Or… So, I thought I’d seen me a teacher. Get to teach chemistry, so I have a biochemistry degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. I took some… You understand? Biochem. You got it. And and started down that path. And one thing like I even knew the high school. They wanted to teach at. I was inspired by this wonderful chemistry teacher in Middleton in Littleton Colorado. And so, I thought, You know what, I had always been taught great teachers are made by the teacher next door and I wasn’t a great teachers. A great new teacher and so, why not get to learn from him and he probably had 4 or 5 more years before retiring. Long story short I got offered a job in elementary school in the Littleton area.
And so, I said yes and I was in the classroom for 11 years. Wow. Yeah. As they tell the story on stage, principal was brilliant. Super, super smart. She always knew that I would never have a classroom. She always knew that I would put my stuff on a cart and push my stuff room-to-room. Because she wanted me to interact with 27 amazing teachers. See one of the things that we do is a disservice in education as we take a teacher who’s young and put him or her in a classroom. Shut the door and then we give him a cake at 30 years later and say, “You did a great job.” You know. And sometimes they go to a conference, sometimes they don’t. We don’t get to see each other do what we do best and that’s teach. And when you hit that 15, 20 year mark, you’re in your stride. If you’re not a good teacher, you’re out. It’s too hard to be an educator. But when you’re great, you’re near stride, I want to see you and your stride. So, how wonderful for me to get to see an entire staff of wonderful teachers. It was the greatest gift anybody ever gave me. So, you did that for 11 years? For 11 years and time, NBC was doing NBC television, was doing a program. Yeah, I don’t know if you know this. But teachers make so much money that sometimes we get another job. And so, I was doing library shows on the weekends. And I was taking my little science stuff and going and doing birthday parties or whatever. A producer from NBC, a freelance producer was in Denver. Took her kid to a library show that I was doing. She approached me afterwards and she said are you interested in doing television? “I don’t know, sure, I guess I’m interested in doing television.” So, I got a chance to be a part of a program called “News for Kids.” And I had a 3-minute spot turned into a… It was a local show for Denver first and became a nationally syndicated show. So, all he owned and operated NBC’s carried the show and It was in the 1990’s. So, I was able to go back to my school district to my principal and say, “So, I get this television gig, too. What else could… And she said, “Run Forrest, run.” You know. Ends up but I get a chance to maintain that relationship with the school continue my job at the school but an amended kind of teaching schedule. So, I still got a chance, into this very day, I’m still under contract with the Littleton public schools in Colorado. Because 3, 4 times a month I still get to go kick open the door. Work on material. It sounds like a stand-up comedian or an entertainer by truly think of it as working on material. We are creating experiences for kids. And when we create experiences, we got to work through this process. It’s not just gee whiz bang. It has to be a method to the madness and if you can do it seamlessly, I think that’s what separates the masters from people who just dabble at it. You know. So, what’s your main focus today? Well, it’s kind of a loaded question. We just, were acquired. So, Steve Spangler science has been a product company, you know, that joke about they get into the job where there’s truth to that. So, we even… My wife and I had started a product business in the early 90s. Under the name Steve Spangler science. Stuff that I was inventing in the classroom. Stuff like that solar bag that you were playing with.
And over the course of 25 years, we’ve done over 350 products and kits. So, that business, 25 years old. Was recently acquired by a company called Really Good Stuff. Really Good Stuff is in a conglomerate from Excelligence Learning Corporation, a lots of stuff. Big things like E-P-I and discounts, school supply and Prague Street. And all these other they’re part of that, so we’re very honored that our brand was purchased. And so, now all the product business is with Really Good Stuff. And I still have my hand and create a new product for them. But they really are a huge company. 85% of all the elementary schools the United States… It’s a kind of a weight off your shoulders not having a managed that or… You know, well, and people have asked that and I never thought of it as a weight as much as I thought of it as what a wonderful opportunity. Because this is what they do well. I think in life, in 51, so one of things I wish I would have learned early on is to surround yourself with people who are really experts in these areas and trust them. Trust the process and trust them and say, “You run with it.” As an entrepreneur, we do it all ourselves. That’s exactly what we do. You know? Yeah. And yeah, I think you have to to some extent. But these people do what they do extremely well and I still get to invent my stuff and I think I do that okay. And so, I think it’s a wonderful partnership. So, I get to really focus on professional development for educators. We’re here at the N-S-A meeting. So, I do a lot of corporate work now. Would have thought a science guy, who blew things up on stage in Ellen show and whatever else and lots of television. But one day YouTube would one day be advising corporations on the science of engagement. How do we engage our customers, how to teachers engage students the same way the C-E-O or sales team engages a customer. What do we expect out of those things. Expect an experience. And experience as they say is the new product. And so, experiences change behaviors. It change the way people think. That’s what we’re trying to do, right? Oh yeah. We’re trying to create it. We all are… At certain point in time, you have to stop and say, “Why am I here doing this?” And we go back and you look at the lineage. It’s always because of a teacher. It doesn’t have to be a formal teacher. To be an informal. But a person, a human being inspired you to do what you’re doing now. Absolutely. That’s really important for a brand to learn. I think that’s really cool that that you’re still going back into the classroom creating those experiences and obviously working corporate levels. I saw the clip or maybe there’s multiple of you on Ellen. They’re obviously on big stages and the small stages .It’s been fun. Was there kind of a point where you decided, “I’m going to do a lot more speaking.” Or is it just kind of been a gradual change? So, I mean, we go back to teaching. Again, that whole premise, if we’re hanging something on is there had to be multiple areas to be able to work on your craft. And so, the classroom, you could work on it. Television, I was learning television in the early 90’s. But I got an opportunity to be on a school circuit as well. When you can go into a school. And you’ve got a program to do in a school. So, I had a 55-minute assembly program. Back in the 90’s kids still had speakers come into schools. Time wasn’t as constrained as it is now. And so, I really could book in the Colorado area. And Colorado is a big state. I could do 5 programs a day. 5 one hour programs a day. 4 days a week, 120 schools a year. And so, you practice as a speaker. I don’t know anybody who can get better at anything they do unless they do a lot of it, right? Can’t be a great soccer player piano player or whatever unless you’re doing it all the time. I don’t know how a speaker could ever do this without speaking. So, I had logged 4500 school programs by 2003.
So, from 1991 to 2003, had about 4,500 under my belt. So, it helped me earn my chaps. But peaking just to youth audiences. And I’ll be perfectly honest with you, they’re far more brutal than any corporate… This is gorgeous, we’re at Hilton right now. You walk into a ballroom, there’s food, you walk into a gymnasium of sweaty kids. They’re going look we can either play dodgeball or watch this guy. I’d rather play dodgeball. So, somehow you had to learn how to engage. How to connect and how to create an experience. We call that a best day ever moment. And so, that’s what I’m traveling with right now. And talking about new book coming out called “Best Day Ever.” We’re talking about what it’s like when a kid wraps his or her arms around you as a teacher and goes best day ever. And sometimes, we don’t even know why. You know, you look at it and go, “I don’t know, we just had glue today. We had glue and paper and wood.” And the kids like, “This was the best…” And we don’t know when a kid has a best day ever. But at the corporate level, it should like to know when an employee has a best day ever. What does that look like? Is it extra time off? Is it little something in the paycheck? Is it acknowledgement for what they’ve given and what they contribute? What are the elements that create these best day ever moments? I think it’s powerful. So, as I… As I’m… Because I’m a brand new speaker. And as I something that I take away from what you’re saying. Because a lot of times I would think I should focus on myself, what I’m saying and just think. Whether I can focus on who I’m speaking to. and you mentioned the experience just help them have an experience. how do you crap that wonderful thing to think about? how do we craft those experiences for our audience? Because truly, if you just stop everything and say, “Why am I here?” If you’re not happy, ask yourself the same question? “Why am I here? What got me to a point where I’m not happy?” I have 3 boys. I’ve twins that are 16 now. And a 19 year old at the University of Puget Sound. There’ll be a sophomore this year. It’s funny because they’re at that point where we start to talk a little bit differently with one and another. And one of my boys said, “Dad,, you’ve never had a job, have you?” And we look at it like, “No, buddy, I’ve had lots…” But they don’t see this as a job. This is something that you really like to do. And I think it puts some pressure on them. I asked him, because I did the bad dad thing saying, “What do you think you want to do when you grow up?” And my oldest looked at me and said, “Just want to be good at something. I want to be really good at something.” I said, “Boy, I don’t understand what that means.” And he said, “I’d like to be the best at whatever it is I decided to do. I just want to be really good.” He says, “All your friends are really good at what they do.” Because he’s been surrounded by this all the time. These speakers. 2,500 speakers and teachers and entrepreneurs and PC’s. People who love to do what they do. Why in the world would you ever wake up in the morning and not do what you want to do? You’re can have it, if you can have a best day ever every day. Here’s the funny thing. Ask a kid like a five-year-old. When’s the last time you had a best day ever. And they look at you go, “Today.” And you… What was they… They don’t even know why. The younger they are… You have 3 best day ever moments in the same lunch period. And you ask an adult and sometimes we fumble around and say, “I guess I got married. Maybe I had kids.” And you know, “no, no.” You know what kids can do that adults forget is they say the words so far at the very end. Best they ever so far. I just don’t know what’s going to happen in an hour from now. Might be better. And of course it is. Because they’re selective about the experiences and they cut fast. When you can eat fish and cut bait and you’re not catching anything, a five-year-old goes I’m out of here. Let’s go to another pond. But adults sometimes we’re in the same thing and we go, “Well, got my Master’s, guess I need to keep doing this.” So, how can an adult make that shift back to that childlike attitude of the best day ever? I think we have to start looking through their eyes to see how they do it. And very honestly, a kid cuts bait pretty quickly and starts fishing another place. And I think it’s my job, as a parent to help my kid find the pond that’s biting the most. Where’s his spark? What’s the most exciting thing? And if I could help him find his spark, by the time he’s 18, 20, don’t want a kid living in my basement at 34, you know. Can I help him find his spark. But then Peter Benson from the search Institute, Peter has since passed. But he had a great advice he said, “Every kid needs 3 things. “He is spark.” Pretty hard to find it. If you can find that thing, you go, music as my thing. Soccers not. Whatever it is. “You need a champion. And you need support.” And so, here is the killer from from Peter Benson. “The champion can’t be your parents.” And go, “No, no. I’m going to champion and the cause.” And go, no. Because parents try to course-correct. They’re like, “No, you don’t want to be a teacher. You want to be in software development.” The kids like, “Well, I guess I should be in software…” You need a champion outside of that. It could be family, friends, coaches, somebody from church. Whatever it is that you have. Whatever that… “But it has to be outside the parents”, Peter said. And then the parents step in when you’re there for support. Once somebody’s champione and the cause and said, “I think he should be getting artists.” You should get a philosophy degree. Whatever it might be. Then the parents step in and say, “How can I help support and get you to that point?” I like that. I think it’s beautiful and asked me in a couple years of it’s working. But it’s so hard nobody teaches you how to do this with your kids. And as speakers and being in the business long enough. I think that we stop every once in a while to reflect. And instead of trying to do what’s my latest video that’s coming out and what am i putting on my social feed. And is my Instagram doing well and whatever. This is an opportunity like we’re here today just to reflect a little bit and just take it in and say, “So, what’s next?” Awesome. It is really valuable. Well, hey to switch gears for a little bit. Okay. I’m a YouTuber guy. I know. And I’ve seen… You’re an amazing YouTuber. Thank you. I’ve seen, you know, you’ve got a half million subscribers on your channel.
The Spangler effect, is that right? We have 3 channels. So, really they have about 1.8 million subscribers on 3 channels and collectively, about 280 million viewers. So, talk about… Which is tiny compared to guys like you. Why 3 channels? Okay, so I’m an early YouTuber. My Mentos and Diet Coke video hit, when YouTube was 3 months old. Wow. So, really my claim to fame from a YouTube standpoint is I’m just the guy who popularized the Mentos and the Diet Coke. And so, there’s guys back east that have lab coats and they’re pushing it all over the place. But it all goes back to the one video that was posted in September 2005. The original Mentos and Diet Coke. And that’s the original experience that finally got the attention of Perfetti Van Melle. People who owned Mentos to finally return a call. I had tried for 3 years and they weren’t interested in 2001 and 2003, 2004. But when that video hit… And back in the day, 2005, September 2005, YouTube being so young. I was told anyway that, from the YouTube people, that 10,000 views in a day was considered a viral video or what. But what was viral back then? You know, now you have to have millions and hours. Right? With incredible engagement. But I mention it just because we found some way to engage differently. I was a live in-person kind of thing. I had to come see you at an event and here was this medium called YouTube. Where not only could I show something. But then for so many years kids have been told don’t try this at home. No experiments should you try at home. And now, kids that I’ll get these quirky things called Mentos. What are those? Pretty famous now. And drop them in… And why Diet Coke? Go ahead ask me? Say why Diet Coke? I’m so glad you asked. Diet Coke, because the news anchor, Kim Christiansen from K-U-S-A. I worked for the N-B-C affiliate in Denver. She was in front of the bottle of Diet Coke, I was in front of the bottle of Diet Pepsi. Always Diet, why? Because it’s not sticky. Not because it shoots up higher, it has nothing to do with that but it’s not sticky because there’s no sugar. Awesome? She doesn’t step back fast enough, puts her hand here comes up hits her, splashes. Live TV she does it two more times. With a diet root beer over here and by the time we’re done with the segment, she’s just a drenched mess. Live television. She had 4 more newscasts to do. She had the 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock, 9 and 10 o’clock in Denver. Not a bad market. Were number 16. So, as a little attraction there. And who cares. There is this thing called the Internet. I mean every time we came back from commercial they were like, look at what Steve Spangler did to Kim Christiansen. It was Mentos and Diet Coke. They said it over and over. And when the internet got ahold of it and the Associated Press had that little piece it. News anchor gets soaked science experiment goes awry. That kind of thing. That’s all it took. So, isn’t it amazing that no matter how much Pepsi put into that and they put a lot of money into trying to get science teachers to do Diet Pepsi and mentos. The brand was solidified in social media. So, we learned. I was wondering why is it just Diet Coke. It’s not. So, my life… So, when I was invited to go to Perfetti Van Melle, I thought I was going to get sued because I had no permission to do it. I guess I didn’t have to have permission. But I had invented this toy called a geyser tube it dropped the Mentos perfectly. Really shot him up nicely and I couldn’t get their attention. In January 2006, I got to go see Mentos. And they said, “What do you want?” And I said, “I love to sell your product with this thing I invented and could we bundle the two together?” And their brand people said, “Yes.” So, from a YouTube standpoint, we just kept unloading channels. And loading content. And we only had one channel. And as soon as we were approached by Google in 2010. And they said, “We’d love to talk to you.” If you’ll send this in sign this N-D-A but this thing we’re doing with YouTube. And maybe creating some additional content. And they invited us through an interview process to be a part of the original 100 content creators. Wow. So, who would have thought that a little tiny science company and Englewood Colorado would get selected. Warner Brothers was doing their thing and all these big names. And for some reason they selected us. And so, we got to be one of the 100. We were funded and that’s where the Spangler effect was born. Got you. We couldn’t put the Spangler Effect on the sick science channel. Because we’ve come out with all this content called sick science. That’s a whole another story. So, if you go to youtube.com/stevespanglerscience, it also, because the Wizards at YouTube, they also made it sick science. And we had 256 science videos that were pre shot in a very different format that nobody’s seen before. Now, very popular with just showing the hands. And just showing the experiment the white background and that blown out thing. And 2010, go back and look. There was nothing there. And so, people who wanted to digest that content didn’t want to see the Spangler effect. And the Spangler effect people didn’t want to see our third channel called Spangler Science TV. And those are all the TV appearances. Every week when I do the NBC stuff or where the local affiliate or at The Ellen Show. And she’s been wonderful all the appearances on Ellen. All that Today Show, all that kind of stuff. Fox and Friends, that all goes on that separate Channel. So, at the time we divided the content because we figured people wanted to consume it differently. I don’t know if that’s a smart strategy anymore. There’s people looking here going and you, didn’t even know maybe there was another channel. So, you’re right one of those channels does have about 580 thousand subscribers but the other channel has a little over 500 thousand subscribers and the last one about 350. So, yeah. If you add them all along the way, just divided the content. Nice. I’m not saying that’s the right way to do it. You’re the guy, I’m just guy early on playing the game. It’s awesome, that’s a great story. Now, today what results are you seeing from YouTube in terms of getting more speaking or selling more products? I think it’s hard to tell. So, if you’re trying to look at it from a business perspective, you know, there are people there… It’s weird producing content for YouTube because the moment we finished the sick science project, this wasn’t something that was going to produce millions of videos. Even thousands of videos. We have 1800 videos loaded in the 3 channels. But that was always a defined project of 250 videos. So, when we stopped producing sick science stuff. The people are like, “Sick Science is dead. And you haven’t produced any more and blah, blah, blah.” You’re like, “Hey guys, that was just all the content I was going to produce.” We need Sick Science 2.0 and you know, I’m not doing it. This is what we did. And so, from that standpoint, that’s a body of work that’s still out there. Schools all over the country use our sick science videos as part of it. And now there’s a curriculum that has been written well around the Sick Science videos. So, from that standpoint, I get a lot of invitations to go and to speak at a district level or to talk to teachers. About effective ways to engage kids in the classroom using video. And the others are, I mean the Spangler effect, that’s what YouTube paid for. That’s the content they commissioned. We did 2 years. So, 68 episodes of the Spangler effect. Ultimately when Fox approached us to do D-I-Y Sci. Or they approached and said, “Would take to do a syndicated show?” Through rock-filled productions and we said, “Yes.” And so, we used the Spangler Effect as the template and turned it into that show. So, the spin-off of that show is we got a show on syndicated television that goes into a hundred million homes or so. Called D-I-Y Sci. So, that was fun. So, it just adds Authority. And I think from a speaker standpoint, if you’re an expert in an area, I shouldn’t be able to go to your YouTube channel and absorb or digest all of your content in one sitting. You truly are an expert. And I binge. I shouldn’t be able to get through everything, right?
Right. And so, if you have that much content, I think that helps to establish your of work. And for a buyer on the other end to go, “Is he or she truly the expert we need to bring in to talk to us about solving this problem?” To build that credibility? It does some Authority, some credibility. It’s the greatest demo reel you could ever imagine. In this world of professional speakers. Some don’t tow anybody this. But sometimes the demo reel is a little bit better than what you see on stage. Not always. So, how about like I get a body of work? How about something that’s even a little bit more than that great sizzle reel that you spent 5 grand to have somebody edited up for you? So, it’s been great all the way around. Pushes me, we continue to to do and we’ll we’ll be releasing more stuff on the Spangler Effect. That’s not a dead channel at all. So, that’s growing as well. So, that’s nice of you to be able to tell people about all 3 channels. Yeah. So, I’ve got one final question for you to kind of tie this all together. If somebody were to look at your career and say, “I want to do what Steve does.” And you’ve kind of talked about the journey you’ve taken from being a teacher and all the things that you’ve done. If somebody were to start today, is there anything different that they should do today or any changes that you would recommend based on the road that you took? Yeah. Today, when I started doing this fresh out of college in 1989. So, really jumped into this in about 1990 or so started speaking doing those school shows in 1990. You couldn’t get a degree, there’s no such thing as a science communicator. Today, universities all over the world, you can be a science communicator. What does that mean? I don’t know. Pretty awesome, right? So, how do I effectively communicate scientific content? And I would love to learn how to do that. So, if you truly we’re trying to learn what we’re what I’m doing, I think the other piece is I wouldn’t steer away from the education platform. If you are going to speak in front of a group of educators, I think you have to earn the right to do that. Just because you have good ideas, doesn’t mean that you understand what’s going on in the classroom. And you don’t have to have been in the classroom for 30 years to ever in that respect. So, I think that you’ve got to have, you got to have a sense of, if you’re going to speak to educators and you probably have to have some education background like, probably should teach for a while. Even though I only taught in the classroom for 11 years, it earned me the pedigree, so to speak. On the road, so to speak. You know, I had cockpit time. You know, as a pilot might say. To be able to stand in front of a group of teachers and to connect. I think the last part is, if you want to be if I just start talking about speaking, not the product development side and all the other stuff. It’s really completely separate business, that was exciting. But from a speaking standpoint, I have a number of people will come to me or my business manager Carly Reed and they’ll say, “I just want to talk about being a speaker and I think I’m going to do it.” And my first question is always, “So, how many speaking engagements you have under your belt?” And when they say, “About 4. 4 or 5.” But and you look at them and say, “Oh, you got to get a hundred.” So, instead of you taking me to lunch, how about you let me take you to the nicest dinner in the world. But get a hundred of them under your belt. And then you and I have something really to talk about. If you want to be a professional speaker, you can’t substitute anything for stage time. Metaphor in that cockpit time. Same as a teacher, same as a professional speaker. You got to do that. If you’re looking at just the demonstration part, I think that one of the things I didn’t see back then what I’m seeing now is liability is so much bigger now. And what we do in front of kids. The people that I looked up to. The demonstrators from, you know, when I was a kid, they got away with crap and there’s no possible… And I’m, you know, if you seen, we celebrated our 20th appearance on The Ellen Show. So, if you figure four big demonstrations, so we’ve done almost 80 things on The Ellen Show. And the Burbank fire departments always on their toes. There’s a lot of content there and so from a safety standpoint, you just trying to do crazy things. I think people see it on YouTube and they’re like, “We’re going to blow up ping-pong balls as well.” And they go out and they get a trash can or they shouldn’t have. They will get some liquid nitrogen. They have no idea how to handle it. Throw it a two-liter bottle and they don’t know how to handle it. And the next thing you know, you’ve seen these disasters. They’re trying to pour something. I saw as somebody tried to do it with rubber balls. A rubber ball will kill you coming out of a trash can. This thing bust open the bottom, they didn’t use a 55-gallon drum. So, I guess in a weird way, I’m just saying, probably should become an apprentice to somebody. If you really want to do these kinds of science demonstrations, you wan to do large-scale stuff. You can’t just trust the what you’re seeing on YouTube. Find somebody. Work with them. See how that comes together. And always make sure that you don’t let the g-wiz overtake the content. Because at the end of the day, we’re going back with art. Did you just see that? We just arced this whole little thing. We just… We go back to that connection that best day ever moment and say, “Why are you doing this in the first place?” We’re trying to create experiences that change minds. Trying to influence the next generation of scientists and engineers. And by, is the juice worth the squeeze? And am I letting the g-wiz overtake the content. Too much. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you thank you very much. Well, hopefully enjoyed this episode. I really appreciate the wisdom that you shared in the lessons that we’ve talked about. Thanks for asking all the questions. You’re great. So, if you like this episode make sure to like, subscribe and I’ll put links to see his channel, so you can check them out. They’re a lot of fun. Thank you.